Here’s another old photo from my family photos. This is my Great Aunty Emily, who was born in 1886 and died in 1935. On the back of this small photo, mounted on card, my Mother wrote ‘Aunty Emily Miss Taylor at Blackpool’. You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.

I doubt she was actually sat on the beach at Blackpool when this photo was taken, that deck chair looks remarkably near the waves and the sand looks very solid. I suppose she was on holiday there, but as the photo isn’t dated I don’t know when this was.

She was my Grandmother’s younger sister and I’ve found out from the Census Returns that she was born at Lostock Junction, Bolton in Lancashire. My Great Grandfather, her father was Thomas Taylor, a domestic gardener, born in 1856 at Bulwick, Northamptonshire. He had another daughter, Florrie, born in 1901 and a son Thomas William born in 1892. All his children were born in different places, as he moved from Northamptonshire, to Lancashire and then to Cheshire.

Emily never married, but stayed at home acting as Housekeeper for her father after her mother died in 1911. I have a copy of her death certificate 1935, which records that she was aged 51 and died at 94 Victoria Road, Hale, Cheshire of a cerebral haemorrhage. Her occupation was described as ‘Housekeeper (domestic) Daughter of Thomas Taylor a Gardener (domestic) (deceased) of 6 Oak Road, Hale’. My Granny, Evelyn Owens, was present at her death. Had my Granny come to stay with her because she wasn’t well – at that time Granny lived in Pen-y-fford, in Wales?

I knew Florrie because when I was a child she lived in the next road and I used to visit her each week with my Mother. She was lovely and looked very like Emily does in the photo (only older).

I also have a vague memory of Thomas William - Uncle Tom, because when his daughter, Joyce, her husband and their daughter Jennifer (who was born just over a year later than me) emigrated to Australia there was a family party before they left. I don’t know how old I was at the time, probably about 5. I remember Uncle Tom as a very large old man, who was very upset about his daughter emigrating! As usual I’m left wishing I knew more about these people.

See more Saturday Snapshots on Alyce’s blog, At Home With Books.

I don’t have many photos of my grandparents. Here are two.

The first is a photo of George Ellis Owens, my Taid (grandfather on my mother’s side) at his home in Penyffordd, North Wales. My mother has written on the back ‘My father 1930‘. He was born in 1880 and was a steel worker at John Summers at Hawarden Bridge Steelworks Shotton.

He is the grandparent I knew the most, because he and my grandmother came to live with us when I was 5. My granny died five years later and he lived to the ripe old age of 87, when I was 20. My other grandparents died when I was 6.

Below is a photo of  my granny, my father’s mother, taken in her garden at Bowdon Vale, Cheshire with my cousin Sylvia. I do remember her fairly well. She was always smiling in contrast to my granddad who was always grumpy, I thought. He had a big mustache and a loud gruff voice which made me nervous, plus he had his dog tied up to his armchair which scared me. She had her hair in a bun – just like grannies in picture books. She was born in 1878 and died when she was 74. I was named after her.

and this is me when I was 5½. I’ve cheated a bit here as this was a school photo.

To participate in Alyce’s Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. All Alyce asks is that you don’t post random photos that you find online.