I'm not a Scouser. I sometimes describe myself as a Brummy, but then I did spend almost ten years in the city as a child and teenager and my parents still live there. But I am definately not a Scouser.
However, since being a very small child I've known that my maternal grandmother's father was born in Toxteth Park - making him a Liverpudlian by birth. In a family of secrets, this was one fact (about the only one) that was common knowledge. Even before I became interested (ok, obsessed) with my family history, I had researched enough to know that Toxteth Park was a rather rough and ready district, down by the docks.
My great grandfather Tommy Meehan was born in 1884 in Toxteth Park. Two years later his sister Annie followed. Before Tommy and after Annie, all the children in this Irish Catholic family were born in Bolton - where their parents had married in 1872. So why the move to Liverpool for a few years? I'd always assumed it was an economic move: 'let's try life in the big city, can't be worse than this mill town!'. But then they went back to Bolton, so maybe it was that bad after all.
Or were there other reasons for the family move? Recent Catholic church records published by Ancestry.co.uk reveal that Tommy and Annie were both christened in Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Toxteth; they were born at different addresses (which supports the evidence that the family moved regularly - moonlight flits, maybe?); and best of all - their godmothers were Meehans, too.
Until this point, I had no information about Meehans in England prior to the 1872 wedding and that great grandfather Tommy was named after his father and grandfather (gleaned from certificates).
The records reveal that my great grandfather's godparents were Mary Meehan and Patrick McMara; Annie's godparents were Esther Meehan and Bernard Caufield.
So - two new Meehans!
Initial research suggests there are two Esther Meehans to consider: firstly, the wife of John Meehan (born Esther Hatch), and secondly, the wife of another Thomas Meehan. The latter had two children in the same years as my Tommy and Annie and on both occasions recorded an address within three doors of my Meehan family. Were there cousins called Thomas Meehan, both in Liverpool in the mid-1880s, and is that why my great grandfather's parents moved to Liverpool, to join their extended family?
As always, one genealogical answer throws up many further questions!
I knew Tommy Meehan at Bolton: a very fine, handsome man who worked until his death in his 80s and sailed to Canada to see a daughter there on one of the last sailings of a passenger liner from Liverpool. It will be interesting to see how far back this can go but suspect it may need the help of a local history society in Toxteth or Liverpool to look at the wider social implications of why the family moved so often.
ReplyDelete