A different world - Bolton in the 1950s

My mum grew up in Bolton in the 1950s. I find it strange to imagine those early post-war years with rationed food and very tight budgets.

My grandparents did well for themselves and left Bolton to move to Blackburn - seen as a move upwards then, I believe - to run a newspaper shop. Being shop managers was quite an achievement for two people born into poverty: Grandma in a back-to-back two-up, two-down in Bolton (demolished 1934 for being a slum) and Granddad from the toughest neighbourhood of Glasgow tenements.

These evocative black and white photographs  published today by the BBC of 1950s Bolton inspire a sense of wonder  in me: 60 years on we live in such a different world of technology and plenty, mechanisation and sanitation - would any of the people in the photos even recognise their home town?

Long lost cousins - found at last

Further to my earlier post about finding my grandmother's maternal aunt Ada, I have now received images of Ada and her husband, Edward Holgarth. Ada (1886-1943) and Bertha were two of the five children of Squire Chadwick (1857-1915) and his common law wife Sophia Haywood, or Heywood (1852-1901). Their other children were Jane (born 1881); Squire, who died aged 9 in 1899; and Martha (1884-1926), whose will named Edward Holgarth as executor.

Ada(above) and her husband, Edward (below) - my great grandmother's older sister.

And here is my great grandmother Bertha Meehan (born Chadwick), 1893-1925, at work in the weaving shed with two pals (she is on the left).

Thanks again to Ancestry and GenesReunited for helping rejoin our family after 86 years!

Liverpool leads

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!