Page 138 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

stemming from George will be around for the 1961 census.
In contrast, Arthur (1858-1939) – the fourth child of William and Mary (née Dean) - had a longer line. He married Esther [SURNAME?] (1857-1924), a Wakefield girl. They married in Wakefield in 1881 and probably moved there from the start of their marriage. Arthur and Esther produced four children – two boys, William (1882-1917) and Percy (1887-1957) followed by two girls, Mary (1890-?) and Elsie (1893-?) – all born in Wakefield. William had a short life dying at 34 years of age in 1917. William had married Mary Elizabeth Hirst in 1907 in Wakefield, producing Haydn (1909-1941) just before the 1911 census and Leslie (1912-1979) soon after. In the 1911 census William and Mary Elizabeth are living in the house of Mary’s mother – Elizabeth Hirst (aged 52) is a widow with four other of her children in the house.
Haydn married Margaret L. Matthewman in Wakefield in 1939 and they produced Anne in the same year. Anne, in turn, married in 1965 and so should be in the 1961 census as a Soothill. Haydn’s brother, Leslie, married Edith May Whitfield (Harriman) (1907-?) and Michael Leslie H. arrived in May 1945. Michael, in turn, married June Taylor (1947-?) in Burnley in 1968 and they had Karen Lesley in 1971. Karen’s grandfather, Leslie, had been born in Wakefield and could perhaps be regarded as part of the Wakefield clan, but Leslie married and died in Burnley and so it seemed to be Leslie who shifted the family across the Pennines.
Arthur and Esther’s second son, Percy (1887-1957) had a longer life than his brother William – just completing his three score years and ten and dying in 1957. Percy married Gertrude (known as ‘Gertie’) (1887-1974) in Wakefield in 1912 and so their children came after the 1911 census. Percy and Gertie had two children – Eric (1912-1977) and Muriel (1920-?). Eric who married Alice Mays (1906-1987) had two children – Peter John (1941-?) and Kenneth Alan (1942-?). Following the birth of Arthur in Wakefield in 1858, all the births, marriages and deaths of this group of Soothills, with some minor exceptions, took place in Wakefield. Peter John’s marriage in Leeds in 1973 rather broke the tradition, but all that comes later.
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