Page 181 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

the household. Thomas married Elizabeth A. Amos (1900-1963) in Bradford in 1919. It is not clear whether they lived in the house at Brighouse or, indeed, whether they shared the house with Thomas’s sisters. Thomas was nearly twenty years older than his bride at the time of their marriage and there is no evidence that they had any children. However, Elizabeth who died in Bradford in 1963 should appear in the 1961 census.
Thomas Soothill’s younger brother, Benjamin, born in 1841, is the other source for this grouping. Benjamin married Harriet Woodsworth (1843-1892). All their daughters had married by the time of the 1911 census, but their three boys – John William (1864-1929), Edward (1880-1928) and Arthur (1883-?) – would all be around at this time.
John William had married Sarah (née Woodward) (1867-?) in 1897 at the Brunswick Chapel, Halifax which is a United Methodist Free Church. Sarah had already been married to a person named Mann – presumably she had become a widow to marry John William. In fact, in the 1911 census there is also 17-year-old Herbert Mann in John William and Sarah’s household who is shown as a stepson of John William with an occupation of ‘cotton picer’ [sic]].
John William and Sarah had three children – Frank (1899-1949), Annie (1902-?) and Arthur (1909-1990). Frank apparently never married and died in Halifax in 1949. Annie married in Halifax in 1929 and no more is known about her, while Arthur seems to have been married twice. Arthur’s first marriage was to Rose M. Norville (1902-1950), but this marriage in 1946 to a woman seven years older than Arthur only lasted about three years as Rose died early in 1950. Arthur then married 42- year-old Gertrude Burrow in Halifax in 1951; four years later in 1955 Arthur and Gertrude appear to have had a baby, Shirley P., who herself got married in Halifax in 1975. Nothing more is known about Shirley. For the 1961 census one might expect Arthur and Gertrude and their daughter, Shirley to appear.
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