Before my Mother died she had started researching into her family history, mostly on her father’s side. She told me once that she wished she had asked her parents a lot more questions growing up, and now that they were gone she had no one to ask. She didn’t get very far before she passed away and about a year and a half ago I decided to finish what she started.
I had seen a free trial for Ancestry.co.uk and I thought why not give it a try? I had no idea what I was doing but hoped I would learn as I went along. I wanted to start with my Mother’s Father and his family as I hoped the name would be the easiest to trace. Luckily I managed to find my Grandfather Frank Walmsley fairly quickly through the records and I got very excited when I then found his father. I didn’t even know his name prior to researching and that is what started my family history journey.
My Great Grandfather William Walmsley was one of 12 children! My Mum always had this black and white photograph of a family and she never knew who they all were. I now know that it is a photo of William with his parents and siblings. Here is a copy of the family photo.
Back Row Left-Right: Hilton, William (my Great Grandfather), Frank, George, Joseph
Front Row Left-Right: Eliza, William(Snr), Grace (small girl standing), Thomas, Ann (Snr), Ann, James.
Grace and George were twins.
I looked through many census records and found that when William was 13 in 1901 he was listed as an Ironworks errand boy. I know from my research that his father William Senior was an Iron Turner, and so this is not unusual for Sons to follow in their father’s footsteps. I suspect that they would have worked at Cammel Laird’s. In 1911 I found he was in Belfast working as a boiler maker. I then discovered that he had in fact helped build the boilers for the Titanic and this was possibly the reason for his move there! It was in Belfast that he met and married my Great Grandmother Mary Hamilton Fraser in 1915. But more about her and her family in a later post!
The last census record I have of him is in 1939 and he was living at 920 Borough Road, Birkenhead, Cheshire and his occupation was listed as ‘Riveter Boiler Shop Heavy Worker’ so I suspect he is back working at Cammel Laird’s. Borough Road coincidentally is right around the corner from where I had been brought up. And through my research I found many generations of Walmsley’s that all stayed in the same area of Wirral.
I had found out about my Great Grandfather William, so then I wanted to know more about his father (My 2nd Great Grandfather) William George. He was born in 1856 and the first census record I have for him is from 1861 and he was living in Bidston New Road, which is again very very local to me. I next found him in 1871 working as an Iron Turner along with his father who was, you guessed it, an Iron Turner & engine fitter! I now know that I come from a long line of Iron Workers apparently! He spent most of his life in Birkenhead, apart from a short stint in Hull in 1881, but he did move around a bit. I suspect the constant house moves were to accommodate his growing family of 12 children! He lived in Homer Street, Barton Street, Rodney Street and Oxton Road. Here are some photos of Oxton Road and Rodney Street. I loved seeing these photos as it gave me an idea of what the area would have looked like during the time him and his family lived there.
William George died in 1915 and is buried in Flaybrick Cemetery. The cemetery has been out of use for decades and unfortunately has fallen into a state of disrepair. But through my research I discovered a volunteer group called Friends of Flaybrick who are working to bring the cemetery back to life. I contacted them and they were able to find out the exact date of Williams burial. I discovered that his funeral service was held by a Reverend Leigh-Mallory who I later found out was the father of the famous Mount Everest explorer George Mallory! It appears that my family were regular visitors to his church.
After finding out all of this wonderful information I then got to the sadder moments in my family’s history. Because not all of the past is a happy memory. William George and his Wife Ann Cottrell had 12 children together. But 2 of their children had died in childhood. They had a daughter named Annie Walmsley in February 1895 and she later died in August of that year. William and Ann called their next child Ann in memory of their lost Annie. This was quite common during this time and you find many families with several children with the same name after infant deaths, as if they are trying to recapture the child they lost. I am still trying to gain access to the death record for her. They also had a son named Ernest Walmsley in August 1889, he died in May 1898 at the age of 9 from long term tuberculosis. They had a daughter named Grace in 1903 and at the age of 21, in 1925, she died of pneumonia and heart failure. Through my research I have discovered that a lot of my ancestors died young and most before the age of 60.
Through the volunteers at Friends of Flaybrick I was able to be shown the exact resting place of my family. William and Ann and their 3 children and one grandson are all buried in the same plot in Flaybrick Cemetery. One of the volunteers met me there one Saturday morning and took me to their grave, which thankfully has a headstone. After months and months of research, I really felt that I knew them on a personal level. When I saw their grave for the first time I was overwhelmed with emotion. I knew no one had visited for many many decades, and they had lain there all but forgotten, but now I had found them and I felt that a part of me was now complete.
I still have yet to find the details for the burials of my other ancestors, but my journey is still ongoing. One cause of frustration during my research was the lack of birth certificates before the 1850’s and this made tracing my family even harder. After looking into my Great Great Grandfather William George, I then wanted to explore his parents, most importantly his father – Hilton Roscoe Walmsley. I tracked down Hilton in the parish birth records in Bolton-le-Moors in Lancashire in 1824. This was a surprise as I was expecting him to have been born in my local area. Unfortunately, only his mother Charlotte Roscoe is listed in the parish record as a spinster and his birth is recorded as Hilton Roscoe. During this time, being an unmarried mother would have been a huge taboo and she likely would have been ostracised by society. I have no idea at this point who Hilton’s father is. In later census records he has the name Walmsley so were did this come from? I can find no birth or marriage information for Charlotte at all. Interestingly, on Hilton’s marriage record it lists his father as a James Walmsley, occupation Bloc Cutter, and he has also picked up the name Walmsley. Could this be a step father? Perhaps it is his biological father who only recognised him in later life? This is one story I will never have the full answers to!
Next in my research I looked closer at my Great Great Grandmother Ann Walmsley (Nee Cottrell). She had a brother called William Cottrell who lived in Oxton. William had 6 children but I am only going to talk about 2 of them – Reginald Annesley Cottrell & Jack Trelford Cottrell. Reginald and Jack are my 1st cousins 3x removed (this just means we are separated by 3 generations). Reginald and Jack both served in the Cheshire Regiment and died during World War 1 and they are both commemorated on the war memorial at Hamilton Square. Reginald was killed in action on 18th August 1915 at the age of 29 during the Gallipoli campaign and is buried in Turkey. He left behind his pregnant wife Frances, and 6 children. Jack died on 16th July 1918 in Belgium when he was only 19 and is buried in Abeele Aerodrome Military Cemetery in Belgium. I plan to visit both of the war graves in the very near future. It has been amazing learning about my cousins and the sacrifices they both made so that I could have a future. I am immensely proud to call Reginald and Jack my family, however distant they may be.
That’s it for this post! I hope you enjoyed the brief look into my family history. Stay tuned for a possible part 2. The delve into my family history is still very much ongoing and I am forever surprised with the information I find. I highly recommend that everyone give it a try – it is very addictive! I hope that my Mum would be amazed and proud at the journey I have continued in her honour, and my hope is to keep passing these stories on to the next generation – so their stories will always continue.
Hannah
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The H Word 