Page 103 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

Thomas and Betsey’s oldest girl, Martha Ann (1868-?), married in Halifax in 1891, but nothing more is known of this union. Their next daughter, Margaret (1876-1947), never got married and died, aged around 71 years, in Bradford. Their third and final daughter, Harriet (1878-1960), also seems not to have married and died in Halifax in 1960 aged around 82 years.
Thomas and Betsey’s youngest child, Thomas, (1881-1959), married Elizabeth A. Amos in Bradford in 1919. There is no evidence that they had any children.
Thomas Soothill’s younger brother, Benjamin, born in 1841, is the other source for this grouping. Again one would expect Benjamin to be in the 1861 census but, as already stated, there are no Benjamins listed. Benjamin married Harriet Woodsworth on 4 July 1862 at St John the Baptist, Halifax. It must have been an active year for this branch of the Soothill family for on 10 June in the same year his elder brother, Thomas, had married Betsey Bedford at the same church. Again Benjamin, like his brother, seems to have been a cabinet maker. Benjamin and Harriet had eight children – five girls and three boys – over a twenty-year period with their last child, Arthur, born on 18 January 1883.
Of Benjamin and Harriet’s five girls, nothing seems to be known about Hannah (not even her date of birth!), while Margaret (1869-?), Mary Ann (1870-?), Emily (1872-?) and Elizabeth (1875-?) all got married – in 1891 in Halifax, in 1890 in Dewsbury, in 1900 Halifax and in 1898 in Halifax respectively. The last decade of the century seems like an expensive one for Benjamin and Harriet if they were paying for the cost of their daughters’ weddings!
Benjamin and Harriet’s three boys – John William (1864-1929), Edward (1880-1928) and Arthur (b.1883) – all got married. John William got married to Sarah (née Woodward) (b.1867) in 1897 at the Brunswick Chapel, Halifax which is a
99