The following information has been taken from GENUKI: Staffordshire

and

Staffordshire Past Track

"A county of England, bounded by, Shropshire Cheshire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. It is in length about 54 miles, and varies in breadth from 18 to 36. It is divided into 5 hundreds, which contain 1 city, 21 towns, 181 parishes, and 670 villages. The principal rivers are the Trent, Dove, Sow, Churnet, Stour, Penk, and Manifold. The air is reckoned pleasant, mild, and wholesome. The middle and southern parts are level and plain, and the soil is good and rich; the north is hilly, and full of heaths and moors. Staffordshire is famous for its potteries, its inland navigations, and its founderies, blast furnaces, slitting mills, and various other branches of the iron trade. The mines of coals, copper, lead, and iron ore are rich and extensive; and there are also numerous quarries of stone, alabaster, and limestone. Stafford is the county town. Population, 510,504. It sends 17 members to parliament."
[Barclays Complete & Universal English Dictionary, 1842-1852]

Our ancestors have been traced back to 1806 in Rocester, Leek, Staffordshire. Our Ancestor  b.1806 married his wife b 1795. They lived and raised their Family in Rocester, before all the children moved to Manchester.

"Rocester is a considerable village, with a cotton mill, betwixt and near the confluence of the Dove and the Churnet, four and a half miles N of Uttoxeter. It has a railway station on the Churnet Valley line, from which a branch railway is about to be extended to Ashbourn. Rocester parish contains 1146 inhabitants, and about 2600 acres of enclosed land, belonging to several freeholders, the largest of whom are the Earl of Shrewsbury, Mrs Whyte, and William Henry Bainbridge, Esq. The latter is lord of the manor, which was the demesne of Algar, Earl of Mercia, in Edward the Confessor's time. In 1146, Richard Bacoun, nephew of the Earl of Chester, founded a priory here for canons of the order of St Augustine. Some of the Stafford family afterwards settled here, and were great benefactors to this priory, of which no vestige now remains.
The hamets in this parish, and their distance from the village, are Combridge, on the Uttoxeter canal, one mile SW; Quixhill, one and a half miles N; and Rocester Green, one mile W.
Woodseat is the pleasant residence of Thomas Wardle, Esq, on an eminence above the Dove, one and a half miles NW of Rocester. Near it is Dove Leys, the seat of TP Heywood, Esq, and one mile S of the village is Barrow Hill, the mansion and estate of Mrs Whyte."

  and his family showed up on from 1841 - 1861 in Rocester, and his children then all moved to Manchester.

Here are some pictures of Rocester and the places that our Ancestors lived and worked;

Description: High Street, Rocester 1910 -1915. In the distance, on the left-hand side of the picture is the Cross Keys public house, where the Houldsworth Lodge of Oddfellows met; the Red Lion is directly opposite. Only the latter building still survives today (2003)	Description: Redhill Bank Brickworks and Railway Station, Rocester 1902. The land was later taken over by JCB, who built a large factory on the site.	Description: Rocester Cotton Mill  1905-1970.A view of the Cotton Mill at Rocester, showing the long east range built in about 1782 by Richard Arkwright. It was the major local employer until it closed in 1990. It was then purchased by JCB Excavators Ltd.	Description: Rocester School was originally built in 1830 but was greatly extended in 1880. At this time it could take 220 pupils. the headmaster in 1905 was John Gandy and the girls' mistress was Agnes Slater.	Description:  Rocester Train Station 1905. This station was completed in the early 1850s. The North Staffordshire Railway Company's Churnet Valley line ran through this station taking passengers to Leek and Macclesfield. Another service took passengers to Ashbourne and Buxton. The Ashbourne line closed to passengers in 1954, and regular passenger trains on the Churnet Valley line in 1960. This picture shows signs on the platform for the Porter's Room, Gentleman's First Class Waiting Room, and a Ladies Waiting Room. There are also milk churns on the platform, awaiting collection.
This is the street were our Ann Wardle and 2 of her daughters were living in 1861.	This could be possibly be were William and his sons worked as they were brick setters and brick layers by trade from 1841 onwards.	As this was the only Cotton mill in Rocester, it is possible that this was were Williams daughters worked. As they they were cotton doublers & weavers. As per various census returns.	This would have been the school our ancestors would have gone to.