of Norland, Yorkshire, England
“A Yorkshire ironfounder’s son and a druggist’s daughter - both born in Sowerby Bridge in 1847. James Wilson Berry and Isabella Jane Stott sailed for Australia on the Great Britain in May 1871 and spent the next twenty years farming their way across Victoria and New South Wales. Their story begins two generations earlier, in the smoke and iron of the Calder Valley.”
This Family Line
From the iron foundries of Sowerby Bridge to the farming plains of the Murray-Darling, this is the story of two Yorkshire families whose paths converged in marriage and emigration. The genetics match the records.
Francis Berry established the Calderdale Iron Works at Walton Street, Sowerby Bridge in 1832. From a small foundry behind the New Inn, he built a firm whose machinery would be found in practically every shipyard around the British Isles.
● Available now Chapter 2The second generation of Berrys - Robert, William, Francis Jr., and Ann - take the firm forward. The story of a Yorkshire industrial dynasty at its height, and the fractures that would send one branch to Australia.
○ In preparation Chapter 3The Berry brothers take different paths. Henry builds an engineering empire in Leeds. James Wilson sails for Australia. Two directions from the same Calder Valley foundry.
○ In preparation Chapter 4Isabella Jane Stott’s story - the druggist’s daughter raised by her grandmother after her mother’s early death, and the family connection that brought the Stotts and the Berrys together.
○ In preparation Chapter 5Born in Fitzroy in 1872, Ronald Pohlman Berry served in the Boer War and at Messines in 1917. His life spans colonial Victoria, two world wars, and the farming country of the Murray-Darling Basin.
○ In preparation PhotographsSowerby Bridge, where Francis Berry founded the family iron foundry, and the Stott and Pohlman places in Yorkshire - photographed on a visit in 2026.
○ Photographs coming soon