When James Baker was born in 1831, in Folksworth, Huntingdonshire, England, United Kingdom, his father, John Baker, was 21 and his mother, Mary Ann Lewis, was 22. He lived in Washingley, Huntingdonshire, England, United Kingdom in 1851.
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The Factory Act restricted the hours women and children could work in textile mills. No child under the age of 9 were allowed to work, and children ages 9-13 could not work longer than 9 hours per day. Children up to the age of 13 were required to receive at least two hours of schooling, six days per week.
Dickens A Christmas Carol was first published.
School attendance became compulsory from ages five to ten on August 2, 1880.
English: occupational name, from Middle English bakere, Old English bæcere, a derivative of bacan ‘to bake’. It may have been used for someone whose special task in the kitchen of a great house or castle was the baking of bread, but since most humbler households did their own baking in the Middle Ages, it may also have referred to the owner of a communal oven used by the whole village. The right to be in charge of this and exact money or loaves in return for its use was in many parts of the country a hereditary feudal privilege. Compare Miller . Less often the surname may have been acquired by someone noted for baking particularly fine bread or by a baker of pottery or bricks.
Americanized form (translation into English) of surnames meaning ‘baker’, for example Dutch Bakker , German Becker and Beck , French Boulanger and Bélanger (see Belanger ), Czech Pekař, Slovak Pekár, and Croatian Pekar .
History: Baker was established as an early immigrant surname in Puritan New England. Among others, two men called Remember Baker (father and son) lived at Woodbury, CT, in the early 17th century, and an Alexander Baker arrived in Boston, MA, in 1635.
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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