My Grandad was from Staffordshire and apparently the family name can be traced back to the 1200s from the Trentham area. My Gran's side were an old Cheshire family. It seems that some of the descendants from the Staffs side of the family were some of the first settlers in America, but I seem to have got about 25 miles away in all that time! What was it that Chris said about me getting out of Cheshire more? I reckon it'd genetic homing!
Interestingly, my Grandad didn't have a broad Staffordshire accent, just a slight accent and a softish voice.
I believe the Cheshire dialect (sadly now pretty much lost) is meant to be one of the oldest dialects in the country. The reason supposedly being that in the pre-railway and cotton mill days, Cheshire folk didn't marry much outside the county, which preserved the regional dialect for longer than that of other Counties where the dialect was diluted by incomers or were so large they had sub-dialects that merged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire_dialect and for individual words:
https://archive.org/stream/glossaryofwordsu00leigrich#page/12/mode/2up
It's a shame so many regional accents have been lost (or virtually lost), Cheshire phrases such as 'One and welly-one' for one an a half (a corruption of 'one and well nigh one') are now a thing of the past.