DAVID Whitworth of Mount, researching his family’s background, came across a clue that could point knowledgeable Family History readers in the direction of a house in Paddock.
The truth is that the house may no longer exist – so readers could be relying purely on memory to help David out.
The story is this: Arnold Riley was David’s maternal grandfather. He married a woman called Pollie Jagger in 1899, and David knows that the couple had a honeymoon in Blackpool, because they had a photograph taken there.
Arnold was 34 and Pollie 24.
David has discovered that Pollie was the daughter of a Cawthorne coal miner and, when she and Arnold met, she was in domestic service somewhere in Paddock.
“Arnold was a painter and decorator and lived with his parents in Tentergate, off Shires Hill, at the bottom of Paddock,” said David.
“ I don't know how they met – maybe he did some work at the house where she was a maid.”
Pollie owned one prized possession, a Jones sewing machine, and this has passed down to one of David’s cousins.
Inside this, Pollie wrote her address, presumably the place where she was in residence as a domestic servant, at the time she met Arnold.
It appears to read ‘Delph House’.
Sadly, Pollie died not long after the birth of their daughter Kathleen in 1902. Arnold went on to marry David’s grandmother, the daughter of a coachman, some 12 months later.
