Generations of Happy Couples - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt image features a happy couple.  Cue for me to continue this "good news" theme with photographs of couples in my own family   down the generations.

GREAT GRANDPARENTS

This is the only photograph I have of any of my great grandparents as a couple – John Matthews (1843-1918) and his wife Matilda (1849-1929).  

 My great grandfather John Matthews of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire was a man of many parts –  a third son in a large family; under hand roller, underhand shingler and hollow fireman  at an iron works;  a complete change of occupation to that of insurance agent and also shopkeeper; with his wife Matilda, parent to ten children,  and a prominent member of the local Methodist church where he was choir conductor.

Below is the silver crested baton presented to John Matthews in 1904 in his role as conductor of the choir. 

The tiny inscription reads:  Presented to John Matthews by the Choir and Congregation of Wesleyan Chapel, Ladymoor:  28.11.04.  To hold the baton used by my great grandfather was a delight to me, as a former choir member with a love of church music

There is something of a mystery about my great grandmother’s childhood. It proved to be a challenging research task, complicated by the need to distinguish three generations of Matilda’s, the birth of three illegitimate  children,  two possible questionable, unverified marriages and changing surnames of the children from Such to Williams to Simpson.

The couple married in 1871, with ten children born over the next twenty years including my grandmother, Mary Barbara (below).   Sadly four of the children met an early death. 

 

  John died in 1918 and Matilda survived for a further eleven years.

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MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS  

 

The only photograph I have of my paternal grandfather,. Albert Ernest Weston (1876-1947) here with his wife Mary Barbara Matthews  (1875-1959) - taken  after my parent's wedding in 1938.  

Arthur Ernest Weston was born  in West Bromwich. Staffordshire,  the son of  John Thomas Weston, an agricultural labourer and Sarah Ann Jones.  In some records he was noted  as Ernest Albert. The family later moved from the rural setting to the industrial hub of Bilston, Wolverhampton, with is mines and ironworks.

In the 1921 census, Albert’s  occupation was given as an  "engine driver stationary"   - this seemed an illogical description to me as surely a driver involved motion?  However it meant a person who maintained steam driven machinery e.g. at a mine, iron works, or power house. Two years later Albert married Mary Barbara.

Another move took the young Weston family, including my father to Broseley, near Ironbridge, Shropshire, cited as the birthplace of England’s industrial revolution.  My father had very fond memories of growing up in Broseley.

                              My brother, Albert and Mary's grandson at Ironbridge.
 

The Weston family seemed to move around the Midlands  presumably with Albert's work.  I recall Nana Weston claiming she had lived in 17 houses.

The 1939 Register (compiled in  preparation for wartime  ID cards) listed the Weston family in Leicester,  where 62 year old Albert was described as a Typewriter Works Storekeeper, with the note “Heavy Work”.  

The war saw heavy bombing raids over over the industrial Midlands, and Mary and Albert were particularly devastated when the news came that youngest son Charles  was a prisoner of the Japanese. Albert  never recovered from this blow and died in 1947, aged 69.  Mary made her home with her daughter Madge and family and died in 1959.

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MY MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS 

                                                  

William Danson (1885-1962) and Alice English (1884-1945)  of Poulton le Fylde,  Lancashire 

A photograph taken 1916  before William set off for the battlefields of the First World War.  He came from a long established local Danson family, traced back to 1736, and baptised, married and buried at the local church of St. Chad’s.

William was a taciturn country man, working as a cattle man at the local Auction Mart and later  a labourer in a local  chemical works. Like many men, he would not talk abut his wartime experience, which included being awarded the Military Medal for bravery. My memory of him is of him taking my brother and I walks around the local countryside  where I gathered leaves etc. for the nature table at school.  He used to buy us as a treat a bag of pear drops every weekend.

Alice English is my major, major brick wall, as I have been unable to find a birth record for her. I suspect she was illegitimate, with a father's name (Henry) fabricated for her marriage certificate   The 1901 and 1921 censuses cite her birthplace as Bolton, Lancashire.  Family relate how she came to Poulton as nursemaid to the Potts Family  from Bolton who were prominent Metthodists.  She married William in 1907   and they had five  surviving  children, including my mother Kathleen.  Alice died in 1945.     It  would have been lovely to have known her.

   

Photograph taken at my parent's wedding in 1938.

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 MY PARENTS 

 

My parent's wedding photogaph, 1938

Dad left school at the age of 14  and worked in a local grocer's shop before moving into being  a infomercial traveller.  He was a self-made man who achieved the status of Sales Director of a small Scottish firm  as his final work role.  Wherever we lived he threw himself into coal community affairs. A choirboy from the age of seven, he remained involved with the church until his death aged 91,   

He  often talked about his boyhood and also of  his war-time  experiences and I am afraid it did provoke the reaction “Not the war again, Dad”. We also used to joke about him being in the Intelligence Branch.  It was only later that we came to realise what a life-defining period it was and  I persuaded him to write (type) his memoirs.  He would have loved the world of blogging.  I am so pleased I have these now, as they, with the correspondence between my parents (discovered after their deaths),  formed the basis of two narratives I have written  based on Dad's memories.  

Mum too left school at 14 and was apprenticed  to a local tailor.  I often felt her motto  would have been "Happiness is Stitching", as she was always making something.  She was also a "joiner" of local organisations. 

My proud parents at my university graduation from in 1965

 

Finally to end this post of ancestral tributes, a lovely happy photograph of my parents  - Mum and Dad  with the telegram from the Queen to mark their 60th wedding anniversary in  1998. 

 

 

 

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers 

       to share their family history through photographs

 

 

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