Page 47 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

1871), William (b.1882) and Percy (b.1887) to carry the Soothill flag among this branch of the family.
Now going back to, Sam(uel), the second of Thomas and Elizabeth’s six boys. In 1861 Samuel (aged 28) and Harriet (aged 25) Soothill are heading a household of themselves and two children (Thomas aged 3 and Isabella aged 1). Although Samuel is shown as 28 years of age in the 1861 census, I suspect he was actually born on 27 May 1831 which would make him a couple of years older. Samuel was born in Halifax and his wife in Thornhill Lees, Yorkshire, but both their children were born in Dewsbury. In fact, Samuel and Harriet were married on 18 April 1857 in Dewsbury, so that is where they had spent their married life prior to the census. After the 1861 census Samuel and Harriet had three more children making five in all - Tom (or Thomas) (1858-1934), Isabella (1859-?), George Henry (1862-1940), Mary Ann (1870-?) and Elizabeth (1873-?). Sadly, after having the five children Harriet died in 1883 at the early age of 46 or 47.
Information on the five children is varied. Tom (or Thomas) married a Leeds girl, Mary Elizabeth Green (1862-1938), in Leeds in 1884. In fact, their life seems to have been spent in Hunslet which is only two or three miles from Leeds. Tom and Mary had two children born in Hunslet quite widely apart – William Barton in 1892 and Clarice in 1905. Tom died in Leeds South in 1934, while the date of Mary’s death is not currently known. Certainly by this time their links with Dewsbury had probably been severed and they could no longer be regarded as a Dewsbury family.
Currently nothing is known of Isabella, Tom and Mary’s eldest daughter, except for the fact that she was born in 1860. More is known about their second daughter, Mary Ann, who was born either in 1867 or 1870. Mary Ann is in the 1881 census living in Halifax. She married in Dewsbury in 1890 but, after that, there is no further information. The third daughter, Elizabeth, who had been born in Dewsbury, was married in Dewsbury in 1897, but again there is no further information.
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