Sepia Saturday - Families Together

Sepia Saturday give bloggers an opportunity to share their family history and memories  through photographs.

This week's prompt shows  a family group with lots of features for inspired bloggers to comment on - hats of varying styles, children, sailor suits, yachts, pocket watches, a parasol, a buttonhole flwoer, unsmiling faces - and even a dog! 

I am indebted to my cousin Stuart's collection for his contribution towards my theme of "Families Together". 

Stuart's Great Grandparents -  Joseph  & Mary Oldham and Family. c.1908

Here are Joseph Prince Oldham (left) and his wife Mary Alice Knowles (right) with their son and heir John William Oldham,  and three daughters - Edith (standing), young Beatrice (holding the dog lead),  and seated  Sarah Alice.

The Oldham family of Blackpool, Lancashire were carters and coal merchants for three generations.  The business was founded around 1890, steadily became prosperous and in 1905 moved to near North Station, Blackpool in a house with a large yard, hay loft, tack room. and stabling for around seven horses. An accident at the coal sidings in the railway station resulted in Joseph being blinded and he died in 1921, with his will, signed with his "mark". 

Joseph's son  John William took over the business,  where workers included George Butler who had become  his brother-in-law,  by marrying Sarah Oldham in 1910.  Five  years earlier, John had married my grandfather's cousin Mary Jane Bailey.   Young Beatrice married Jack Clark  on 26^th December 1919,  in a much  more informal  postwar wedding than her sister's,  judging by the style of dress and hats. Middle daughter. Edith became in 1939 the second wife of Harry Fearnehough, following his divorce.  

**********

Weddings of course are a great occasion  for family group photographs - as seen here: 

 A magnificent array of hats (and buttonholes)  in this wedding group at the marriage in 1910  of  Wilfred Hyde and Annie Coombes, relations of Stuart's wife.

 

 Another Coombs wedding -  Albert Leslie Williams & Hilda Florence Coombs

in London  in 1931. 

  
At this time, hats in the  Dutch style were obviously in fashion across the country  for bridesmaids - below at the wedding in 1929 at Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire  of my great aunt Jannie Danson to Beadnell Stemp.  

 

    

Jennie was the last child and only daughter out of a large family  of sons, born to James Danson and Maria Rawcliffe.  At her wedding she was given away by her eldest brother  Robert Danson (on the left),  The little bridesmaid on the left was  my aunt Peggy Danson, with the matron  of honour on the right, Jennie's niece Annie who had married a year earlier.

**********

 Three generations of the New Zealand branch of the Oldham family, c.1927 

The little girl, Edith Nancy stands between her grandmother Sarah Oldham. nee Cross and her father and mother seated  - James William Oldham and Edith Keyner.  ARthur Oldham,  Standing are young Dorothy Lilla and grandfather Arthur Oldham.   

Alfred and Sarah Oldham emigrated to  New Zealand in 1906, where they ran a wholesale tobacconists and stationery business on Karangahape Road,  Auckland.   

This photograph is a postscript  to the one below  of the two little Oldham girls in their knitted dresses that  featured in my last week's Sepia Saturday post.  

Click HERE to see what other Sepia Saturday bloggers 
have come up with this week. 

[With apologies - blogger is playing me up,  as I cannot get rid of the small type for my introduction, despite the draft on screen showing Normal size].