Page 77 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)
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James
Son
16
Spinner of ...
Thornton, Yorkshire
Lydia
Daughter
14
Spinner of ..
Thornton, Yorkshire
Ambrose
Son
12
Thornton, Yorkshire
I have no information about the forebears of either Abraham or Martha. I do not know when or if they ever married. However, by the time of the 1861 census Abraham (1813-?) is heading a household of seven Soothill members (including himself). Certainly there is much more previous and subsequent information about the other Abraham (1841-1925) in the 1861 census. Perhaps this Abraham is an uncle to that other Abraham, inspiring the use of the fairly unusual name again, but that suggestion is really clutching at straws!.
Abraham and Martha’s five children – three boys and two girls – arrived over an eight-year period between 1840 and 1848. They were all born in Thornton, Yorkshire, which was also their mother Martha’s birthplace. They were now living in Northowram, Halifax, Thornton is a village in the city of Bradford and Northowram is about ten miles away, so they had not moved far. Abraham’s birthplace is shown as Wilsden which is a village to the west of Bradford in West Yorkshire, so it is among the Bradford families that one might expect to find Abraham’s kin. But what of Abraham and Martha’s children?
Curiously, nothing more is currently known about Joseph (1840-?), Hannah (1842-?), James (1844-?), Lydia (1846-?), and Ambrose (1848-?). I suspect that the family went abroad after the 1861 census, but currently I have no evidence to back up that suspicion.
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