Youngs and Wilsons
My mother's parents, Margaret Ellen Wilson and Frederick Young lived in Hartlepool in Durham. I didn't see much of them because of the distance from London to Hartlepool. One of my pervading memories is the journey up the old A1, in a car that generally broke down, and was usually full of my father's cigarette smoke. I just remember being frequently car sick and very glad to arrive in Hartlepool.
I think generally we went to Hartlepool over Easter, and on some occasions Nan and Pop as my grandparents were known, traveled by coach down to either Victoria Coach Station in central London or Baldock in Hertfordshire from where my father collected them, to avoid either party having to go into central London. I have a very vague memory of Pop carrying me from the centre of Dartford, all the way to the Fleet Estate, after I'd hit my head and concussed myself. Pop must have been well into his 60s at this time but I suppose a small boy of five or six did not weigh that much. This might just be a memory that I don't really have, but it does stay in my head.
Over Christmas 1964 our family moved from Dartford right across London to Eastcote in north west London, between Ruislip and Harrow. This would be when the journey to Baldock started. I have very few memories of Nan and Pop in Eastcote. I do remember in the very early 1970s giving Nanny the instruction to buy me an LP, 40 hits of the 50s and 60s from Woolworths in the town. I still have that record as testimony to the fact that she achieved her mission. (In May 2024 it is available second hand for £30!) It must have been 1973, soon after it was released.
The memories of journeys up the A1 to Hartlepool still fill me with dread. I don't know what the family car was, but I do have recollections of a Ford Popular, blue in color and then a very large Austin A70. There might have been other cars but I don't remember any of them being particularly reliable.
I very vaguely remember Nanny and Pop living in Thornton Street, Hartlepool, in a terraced house, where you stepped off the pavement almost immediately into the hallway. I can remember nothing else of the house.
In the late 60s or early 70s I remember them living in a bungalow. We never actually stayed with them, always staying with my mother's sister Marjory, husband Stan, and their six children. They were quite overwhelming, as the three older boys, David, Stephen & Paul were very much bigger than me and really dwarfed me. There was also a fourth son, Mark, about the same age as my younger brother, and also, even younger, twin sisters. Sadly Mark died in a motorbike accident in 1984.
On at least one occasion Marjory and Stan must have stayed with us in Eastcote as I can remember sitting at a coffee table which is still in my memory, with Stan teaching me how to play chess on a very small cheap plastic chess set, on a cardboard playing surface.
In 2018, as part of this family research, I contacted somebody on one of the family history websites, who was researching Frederick Young. I contacted him not realizing who it would be. Amazingly it was Marjory and Stan's third son, Paul, who had joined the Merchant Navy in the late 60s or early 70s, and who eventually became captain of his own ship, and visited over 70 different countries.
I hadn't seen him for 50 years, and and we have been in touch ever since and have met on a couple of occasions. He has quite a large collection of family photographs, much larger than that held by my parents. Sadly Paul's brother Stephen died during the pandemic.
Again, my memories are very vague, but I recall meeting Nanny's siblings, brother Uncle John, and sister Auntie Louisa, known as Lou. It never struck me as odd that we never met any of Pop's siblings, one of whom, Bertie, was killed in the German bombardment of Hartlepool in 1914, when over 1,000 missiles hit the town. All Pop's siblings lived in Hartlepool, so why we never met any of them is a bit of a mystery. Discounting Bertie, Pop had 10 siblings, born between 1885 and 1907. His parents were David William Young, an Engineer's Machinist (1911 census) and Sarah Elizabeth Beasley. At the time of Pop's birth, the family lived in Slake Terrace, Hartlepool, moving to Princes Street by 1911.
My only guess is that possibly it was connected to Pop marrying the daughter of an Irish Catholic girl. Nanny Margaret's grandparents, Patrick McDonald & Margaret Hopkins had married in Hartlepool in 1865, in St Mary's Church. Nothing is know of them before this date. Most Irish records were destroyed in a fire in Dublin in 1922. My DNA test results show that I have significant Irish ethnicity, 28%, split 11% maternal and 17% paternal between what I inherited from my parents.
I never heard any mention in my childhood of Nanny's father, Edward Samuel Wilson who died in 1947. He was, according to my cousin Paul Evans, "a gambler who lost two fortunes," leaving his daughter strongly against gambling. The 1939 Register lists Edward as the head of the household, in Stockton Road, Hartlepool, a retired Ships plater, with Pop as a school caretaker.
Edward had married Mary Ann McDonald in 1898. He had previously been married to Mary Agnes Brennan, in 1892. She died in 1894, not long after Edward had twice appeared in court charged with her neglect.
Nanny's date of birth is given as 30th October 1898, following the May 1898 marriage of her parents. This intrigues me a bit, as I can remember Nanny telling me that if you took one year off the old century (18th) and added it to the new century (19th), it gave her age. Nanny died in 1898, just a few months short of her hundredth birthday. Pop had died in 1983.