A-Z Challenge 2023: Family Traits - E for ENTERPRISING & ESTEEMED

My Theme for 2023 A-Z Challenge 

 Family Traits,  Quirks and Characteristics 

E  for ENTERPRISING and ESTEEMED

My Cousin’s Mother & My GGG Grandmother

 

 

 

 

I have chosen to tell  the story of ENTERPRISING hairdresser "Elise" - or more rightly Elsie Oldham of Blackpool, (1906-1989),  my mother's second cousin.  

 

 "Bobbing, Shingling, Marcel Waving and Perming", was the promise of hairdresser "Elise",  whose business in Blackpool, Lancashire  was advertised in this lovely evocative 1920's "blotter above. 

    

Elsie Oldham - "Elise" c. 1920's

Elise's real name was Elsie but perhaps the French adaptation was regarded as more appropriate for a hairdresser.   The business was conducted from the rather less elegant setting of her family home (below) with the large adverts in the windows and on the pole outside. Behind the house were the stables of the family's business of carters and coal merchants.

The Oldham home in Blackpool, Lancashire
with the adverts in the window and  on the garden pole.

 

 

 

 

Elsie set up her hairdresser's in  about 1926 and it continued until the property was sold in 1975. Moving into a bungalow, one of the bedrooms was converted into a hairdresser salon, with Elsie working  until shortly before she died in 1989 - by that time the number of customers had dwindled to about three a week all of whom were as old as she was!  When the house was emptied a cupboard was discovered full of bottles of hair dye  in myriad colours - some of it must have been at least 20 or 30 years old!

Elsie's old set of scissors and hair clippers

Elsie came from an ENTERPRISING family. The Oldham family of Blackpool, Lancashire  were carters and coal merchants for  three generations - Joseph Prince Oldham (1855-1921), his son John William Oldham (1880-1939) a, with his granddaughter Elsie (1906-1989)  then taking over the business. 

 

 Two photographs of the young Elsie - left with her grandfather 

 

Elsie's son Stuart and I are third cousins and share the same Danson great, great grandfather (Henry Danson (1806-1881).  We made contact through my blog and discovered we lived only 50 miles  apart, so it was easy to meet and exchange photographs and memories -  we even discovered  we had been at the same time   to the same primary school in Blackpool! 

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E for ESTEEMED 

My GGG Grandmother

 

 

I came across this short but beautiful testimony to my gggrandmother Elizabeth (Betty)  Danson, née Brown (1766-1840), almost by chance in her death announcements. during a quite casual browslng of British Newspapers Online 1710-1953 on the website Find My Past. -

"Blackburn Standard Wednesday 20 May 1840:  Betty, widow of the late Mr. Henry Danson, yeoman, Trap Estate, Carleton, near Poulton-le-Fylde. She was much Esteemed  and will be greatly regretted by a large circle of acquaintances".

These few lines,  and in particular the word ESTEEMED somehow brought Elizabeth (or the more familiar Betty) alive for me, as no other record had done.  Moreover the  entry was in a newspaper I would not have thought of consulting for Poulton - a lesson to be open minded in a search and search by county.

 

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Onto F for FEISTY

 

 

 

  

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED

A for ADVENTUROUS

B for BIGAMOUS

C for CRIMINAL

D for DEVOUT

 

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