According to a family account, after Thomas Dewsberry Senior drowned off Demerara, family life changed from abundance to desolation. The Dewsberry home was broken up and Thomas Dewsberry went to live in lodgings. He worked first at the the Herculaneum Pottery in Liverpool and then in Saint Helens (probably at the Greenbank Pottery) where he met Richard Guest. Through him he joined the Temperance Society and married Richard’s sixteen year old daughter Sarah. Theirs was the first Temperance wedding recorded since the Society was formed. Thomas and Sarah Dewsberry and Richard Guest left Saint Helens and walked to the Potteries where Thomas Dewsberry became the first worker employed by James MacIntyre when he started his business in a small factory behind the site of the George Hotel at the top of Nile Street, Burslem. He was paid 18 shillings a week until a row with his employer who had asked him to teach another man to fire the ovens. He left and the business was at a standstill so he was able to dictate his terms: three pounds a week. He stayed there until MacIntyre moved to the Washington Works in Waterloo Road, Burslem years later. By the time of his death he owned three houses and provided in his will for the care of his daughter Elizabeth who had learning disabilities and was cared for by her sister Sarah.