Page 60 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

The second son of Thomas Hartley and Ellen was William. William, aged 22 years, married Margaret Ashworth (1839-1919) in Halifax in 1858. By the time of the 1861 census William and Margaret (Ashworth) were still living in Halifax at 4 Bedford Yard in a household comprising of themselves, then aged 25 and 21 years respectively and their 2 month old baby boy, William Edward. Also in the household as a boarder was William’s, 19-year-old brother, Abraham, who was working as a woolstapler. William’s occupation was identified as a stuff presser. In subsequent years William and Margaret’s family was to enlarge substantially so that eventually they had nine children. Curiously, Mary Ellen (1859-?) is identified as their first child but Mary Ellen does not appear to be in the 1861 census – perhaps she had already died? Anyway, after William Edward (1861-1935), there is Alfred (1863-1926), then Walter (1866-1951), followed by Clara Bertha (1870-?) and then two more boys, George Ashworth (1873-1880) and Charles Herbert (1875-1880), then another girl, Ruth Emma (1878-1954), and, finally, Herbert Ashworth (1882-1965). Certainly an impressive number of children accumulated over a 23-year period. The children had varying fortunes. Sadly, both George Ashworth and Charles Herbert died in 1880 before Herbert Ashworth was born in 1882. In contrast, Herbert Ashworth outlived the rest, eventually dying in 1965.
Of the three girls, only Ruth Emma is known to have married. Ruth Emma married A J McArthur in Croydon in 1910 and it is not known whether they had any children. Ruth Emma died in 1954 at the age of 76. The Soothill descendants rest with the efforts of William Edward, Alfred, Walter and Herbert Ashworth. They are all productive in this respect.
William Edward married Lucy Farrar. William Edward eventually became the most prestigious Soothill in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in becoming a missionary in China and then the first Professor of Chinese at University College, Oxford. I return to William Edward’s exploits later. Meanwhile, he contributed to the preservation of the Soothill name by producing children as well as by writing his books. William Edward and Lucy’s two children were Dorothea (1885-?) and Victor Farrar (1888-1956).
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