Maurice Cooper of Middlewich, Elworth and Sandbach 1936

 

Above is my Grandfather's obituary from November 1936 . He died on the 27th November and coincidentally his son (my Father)  died on the 26th November 47 years later. If I put aside all the Masonic and  colleague mourners and concentrate on just relatives we have the following list:

Mrs Cooper (wife) - Elsie Margaret (nee Yarwood)

Mr Geoffrey Cooper (Runcorn - Brother) - One of Maurice's elder brothers. He was a chemist and had a shop in Runcorn .

Mr and Mrs A. Cooper (Macclesfield - Brother and sister-in-law) - Ashley and Janetta (nee Farrington) .

Mr & Mrs R. Cooper ( Brother and Sister-in-law) - Richard Moss Cooper and his wife Florence Mary (nee Quarrie) who lived in Crewe.

Mr & Mrs Ford (Brother-in-was & Sister) - Albert and Anna Barrington (nee Cooper) who lived in the Cooper family's former residence The Hawthorns, Marsh Green Road, Elworth.

Mr & Mrs Yarwood (Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law) - Thomas Grange Yarwood and Ethel (nee Stretch)

Mrs Fred Pierpoint (Frodsham)

Mr & Mrs William Horton (Haughton)

Mr W. Horton (Marton Hall)

Mr Watkin Johnson

Mr & Mrs Johnson (Byley)

Mr T. Mountfield 

Mr N. Mountfield (Preston Brook)

I haven't gone in to detail on the last 7 names as they are mentioned in the obituaries of Thomas Grange Yarwood and John Yarwood. The only interesting one appears to be Mr & Mrs Johnson (Byley) that I haven't been able to identify.

The Rev. A.W.H. Harlow and Roy Skerratt

This newspaper cutting for years had no meaning apart from the fact that it featured the vicar of Middlewich's St. Michael's Church. It was only after being handed the obituaries was a connection made . This was the vicar that had performed the funeral service for my Grandmother's loved ones in the 1930's. 

Obituaries for Thomas Grange Yarwood 1890-1937

There are actually 3 obituaries for Thomas Grange Yarwood in my Grandmother's collection but due to the length of 2 of the articles I have had to scan them in as 5 images.

***PLEASE NOTE THIS ENTRY IS WORK IN PROGRESS AND I WILL BE IDENTIFYING THE MOURNERS AS AND WHEN TIME PERMITS***

Obituaries for John Yarwood 1862-1930

Due to the length of the original article  I've  had to scan the obituary  in  two section.

Below is another obituary for My Great Grandfather John Yarwood . I've been able to use the information contained in these to identify some more relatives.
 Noted is the fact that it lists the Horton family as cousins which when I can find the exact link will probably lead to a positive connection with the Dallow family that I've previously featured.

Obituaries can be wonderful for throwing up branches of the family tree that have been forgotten with time . Certainly these obituaries threw up quite a few new names for me to research and piece together. So here's my attempt to identify the mourners listed above :

Mr & Mrs Grange Yarwood were the only surviving son of the deceased and his late wife Emma (nee Grange). Their names being Thomas Grange Yarwood and his wife Ethel (nee Stretch).

Mr & Mrs Maurice Cooper  (my Grandparents) John & Emma's only surviving daughter Elsie Margaret (nee Yarwood ) and her husband Maurice Cooper.

Mr G.B. Yarwood (brother) was George Baguley Yarwood , John's elder brother. George Baguley was also the name of John's maternal Grandfather.

Mr & Mrs G Mounfield (sister & brother-in-law) were John's sister Emily and her husband George Mounfield.

Mrs Fairhurst (sister-in-law) was one of Emma's sister , Annie (nee Grange) . Her late husband was John Fairhurst (a book-keeper born in Runcorn who went on to work in the offices of the docks in Liverpool whilst living in a large house in Toxteth .)

Mr F.R. Pierpoint (brother-in-law) 

Miss A. Mounfield and Mr J. Mounfield (cousins)

Mr W.Horton (born 1874) was William Horton the son of Margaret Grange and William Horton

Mr G.Horton (born 1877) was George Horton another son of Margaret Grange and William Horton

Mr & Mrs T Horton (born 1879) was Thomas Horton the youngest son of Margaret Grange and William Horton.

Mr Wilfred Mounfield

Mr Trevor Mounfield

Mr & Mrs J. Johnson - Johnson was the family of Emma's sister Mary Grange and her husband Samuel Eyton Johnson . 

Mr A.Cook

Mr L.Salmon was George Leslie S. Salmon (1900-1977) .The son of John's sister Mary Ellen Yarwood and her husband Thomas Francis Salmon.

(the above were nephews & nieces)

****2 mysteries above . Unable to identify Mr A.Cook as a relative and no joy with the J.Johnson - Watkin & Clarrie Johnson did attend but no luck locating a J.Johnson.**** 

More of the Dallow Family up to 20th July 1925

This photograph matches in with the previous picture of the Dallow family and shows the daughter absent from that photograph who has since been identified as Lizzie Dallow..

This is the reverse of the above photograph  and contains some faint writing .

This appears to be the complete Dallow family from around the time of WW1.
Since my original posting of this photograph the Dallow family members have been identified by their descendants as follows:back row left-right "Lizzie / Walker / Toppy ( Amelia) /William/ Frank/Jean
Front: Ebenezer / Sarah / Annie"

Above is the front and reverse of the last photograph I seem to have of Ebenezer Dallow.

The Dallow Family

Clearly at the turn of the 20th century one of my ancestors friends were using the term 'Comrade' alot . I'm still trawling through the 1901 census to see if I can put names to these people. Apparently (according to Ancestry) there are only 536 people with the Dallow surname in England. I'm on to my fourth possible household out of all of those.

Looking at the signature on the back it appears to begin with the letter B and contains the letter Z . Now if I combine that along with the surname on Ancestry.Com  I arrive at Ebenezer Dallow and his family who although they're from Stockton Heath they appear on the 1901 census living in Ealing , Middlesex. 

Now I'm curious to see if there is some ancestral connection as his second daughter has the middle name Horton which I'm certain I've heard that surname connected with my paternal Grandmother before now.

Willett Moreton West

Well we can't have one without the other.
 So here's the son of Thomas Moreton West.

Thomas Moreton West

My Grandmother's handwriting can sometimes prove puzzling . I've gone through as many photographs as I can to determine she is beginning this chap's first name with a T. 

Finally through a process of elimination I've arrived at the conclusion that this is a guy officially titles Thomas Moreton West . He's actually some distant cousin to my paternal Grandmother on her maternal Grandmother's side. The name 'Moreton West' has haunted me for over a decade and finally I was able to find that both a father and son carried that name. I knew from the Moreton part of the name that they were somehow distantly related on my paternal side with one of my GreatgreatGrandmothers being an Ann Moreton but it has took me a rather long time to find the exact links but thankfully after suffering many a headache and scratched head I have finally found the links.

James Frederick Gillies

This postcard is all I began with

I'm wasn't familiar with the handwriting on this one at first but after a lot of comparisons it would seem my Grandmother wrote different with a pencil than when she was writing with a pen.. Corporal J. Gillies proved a tough one at first as the army records listed him as the rank of private to start with.  It turned out that he joined the Lancashire fusiliers in August 1914 and left the army after being disabled by a gun shot wound to the leg . His army number was 3406. Overall I managed to obtain about ten pages of his army records and not really much else. Luckily for me there were not too many J. Gillies living in Stockton Heath back in 1914 .James Frederick had a brother John Reginald Gillies and a father James Gillies. It would seem that my Grandmother and her family would have known James senior as he was the local tea dealer based on Walton Road , Stockton Heath in the community where my Grandmother was growing up on the farm.

The beginning and Elsie Margaret Yarwood

 As I begin to document my research in to the photographs from my ancestors it is hard to state when my interest in these photographs began . In my youth they were just photographs of people most of whom I would never have known because their lives had already occurred . There didn't seem to be a big extended family as I was growing up and so the idea of asking an older relative to identify some of subjects of these photographs was just not possible at that time.

 In the mid 1990's my wife and I were expecting our first child . Prior to our relationship my wife had assisted her maternal Grandmother in tracing some lines of her family tree and although I'd asked a few questions after my own father's death in 1983 I must confess I was too young back then and knew of only odd names and places but not quite how it all connected . So armed with a collection of photographs that had once belonged to my paternal Grandmother Elsie and a wife who had some experience in genealogy we began to piece my family tree together.

 Fortunately for me my Grandmother Elsie had took the time to write names and sometimes addresses on the reverse of some of these photographs . Unfortunately for me though was that those pictures that had been used as postcards generally had had their stamps removed so the exact year ,which could've helped , was missing.

 So here's my first picture taken somewhere between 1910 and 1914 of my Grandmother Elsie Margaret Yarwood most probably at Mill Farm , Stanthorne , Cheshire. 

  

Elsie Margaret Yarwood 1895-1968