The week before Christmas, as is customary, ‘twas the time to collect Phoebe from University, and return singing “driving home for Christmas’ with much excitement looking forward to the fortnight ahead, Christmas with all 6 of our children and their respective partners gathered at Bath Street for Christmas day.
Loading Phoebe’s bags into the car, it was clear she’d a slight cough, but no problem, she’d had a Covid lateral flow test and was negative, so nothing to worry about. So we decided to make the most of the day, and visit some of our ancestral homes in Liverpool I’d printed off and perhaps a graveyard or two. All were within 20 minutes of Phoebe’s student house, so we plotted some on google maps and set off.
132 Leopold Street
Our first stop was 132 Leopold Street. The first thing that surprised me here, was that this house was only a few hundred yards from the student house that Jemima rented last year, in the student area of Kensington, quite close to the city centre. The area now is quite run down, but shows signs of previous affluence with large, terraced houses – very similar to many student areas around the UK. And this house was no different – a sign outside advertised it “for student let” and noted it as having 5 bedrooms. So what kind of a family in our ancestral history would live here?
The house was the family home of John Wallace, Rachel’s great grandfather. He lived here in 1911 with his daughter Margaret and son William Arthur Wallace, Rachel’s grandfather.
John was a ‘Master marble mason’ and William was a marble polisher, both employed by the marble business owned by John James Wallace, John’s father and Rachel’s 2x great grandfather. There was money in the family, though I understand that the business was passed down a different line from ours. Not surprising since John was the second son and William the youngest of 6, 5 of whom were boys.
123 Butler Street
Next stop was the 1911 home of Catherine Charnock, the future wife of 19 year old William Arthur Wallace from the previous house. Butler Street was only a short walk away, over the main road out of Liverpool, so its easy to imagine them meeting locally during their normal daily lives. Unfortunately, all houses of the 1911 era were gone, and post-war houses stood in their place one one side of the road, with light industrial units on the opposite side.
165 Molyneux Road
Next stop was the family home of the Smith family. Lilian May Smith, Rachel’s maternal grandmother was living here at the time of her marriage to James Fisher in 1928. Also in Kensington, it can’t have been more than half a mile from the other grandparents.
The home appears in the 1911 census, so was clearly their home for many years. According to the census it has 5 rooms. From the outside, like the Leopold Road, its well maintained and also “to let” for students.
Anfield Cemetery
Our next and final stop for this trip was to the cemetery. Our goal – to find the grave of Henry Smith, who died in 1939, and Annie Marie Simkin, who died in 1943. These were the maternal great grandparents of Rachel, and the owners of the house on Molyneux Street.
From a page of “resting places” included in uncle Jimmy Fisher’s family tree I found in Rachel’s father files after his death in 2018, I found the couple are supposed to be buried in Anfield Cemetery.
When we arrived, we quickly discovered the enormity of the task in funding their grave. Their must have been several thousand to chose from spread over many acres. You can get a feel from the photos.
Sadly, we never found it. More research is required, looking at cemetery maps, checking findagrave.com and we will return. While we were there, though, we took many photos of ‘random’ graves and uploaded them with GPS coordinates to billiongraves.com – some genealogy enthusiast will be very happy when they find their ancestors on there. We included quite a few of the hundreds of Chinese graves, for the people who lost their lives in the war, fighting and supporting the war effort on behalf of the allies.
Home for unexpected Christmas Isolation
2 hours in the car, a quick stop at Subway for a sandwich and we were home. The next day, with Phoebe heading out for Friday night with her pals, she decided to take another Covid test, just to make sure she was still OK to go out. And horror of horrors, it was positive. By this point, I was also starting a snuffle. By Monday, I tested positive also, followed on Wednesday by Rachel and Tilly! Christmas plans for us all to be together are therefore cancelled. Jemima is staying with Dave. Josh & Charlie and Daisy & James are staying away. And Dudley has just returned, equipped with masks and gloves and is giving us a wide berth. Not the Christmas we’d all hoped for, but time for a bit of genealogy – hence this write-up!! Every dark cloud has a silver lining….