Page 163 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

had four children – two boys and two girls. All of these got married. Their eldest son, James (1875-?), married Mary Ann Leonard at St Mary’s Church, Elland in Yorkshire in 1893 – Alfred (1901-1958) was born seven years later in Leeds in 1901. Alfred, aged 9, is the one shown to be in an institution in the 1911 census. I have no information as to why he was there. Also the nature of the institution is not clear. Alfred is with ten other boys aged between 7 and 12 years. The head of the institution is a young female aged 26 named Alice Gertrude Call. Anyway, he seems to have got out of that difficult start in life. Alfred married Lucy H. Price (1899-1969) in 1925 in North Bierley; their daughter, Minnie was born in 1926 and she, in turn, married in Keighley in 1944. Alfred and Sarah’s other son, William (1881-1941), married Elizabeth Lister at St Martin’s, Brighouse, Halifax, in 1910 – they had five children, Jessie (1910-?), James Albert (1915-1963), Willie (1917-1990), George Arras (1917-1929) and May (1921-1996). They all had children except George Arras. George and James Albert were twins; George died aged 12 years in 1929. Of the others, Jessie married in Halifax in 1932, James Albert (known as Jim) married Hilda Haigh (?-1975) in Huddersfield in 1937, Willie married Irene Crowther in 1940, while May seemed to retain her Soothill name until she died in 1996 in Halifax. May had a child, Linda A. Soothill (1951-?), born in Halifax, who was presumably illegitimate as the father is not mentioned. It is important to follow each of these lines through.
Hilda and Jim had five children – Kenneth (b.1938), June Margaret (b.1940), Janet (b.1949), Geoffrey (b.1951) and Valerie (b.1953). All five children married. Kenneth married Margaret Newstead and they went to live in Canada. They had David James (b.1970). I am not sure when they emigrated to Canada, but they are considered in Chapter 6. June Margaret married in Huddersfield in 1958. Janet married in Huddersfield in 1971. Valerie also married, but currently I have neither date nor location. Geoffrey married Cynthia Speight in Leeds in 2003, but that story comes later. So, in the 1961 census one should expect James Albert and his wife, Hilda, together with Janet, Geoffrey and Valerie. Kenneth may also be there, but perhaps by then he had emigrated to Canada.
Willie who married Irene Crowther in 1940 had two children – Thora (b.1942) 159