Hello everyone! Apologies for not commenting on all the amazing discoveries you have made today. Unfortunately that pesky thing called real life got in the way of more important stuff
Thanks so much for all this. What a can of worms I opened when I started this thread! The stuff you've found about Thomas is fantastic. It's been an object lesson in how to use different sources to get an answer. I will order birth certificate of son Thomas to check father and occupation.
The newspaper entry saying Eliza was his second daughter suggests that perhaps the Sarah Adcock baptised 3 Jan 1836 to Mary was Thomas'. Alfred b. 1842 could also be theirs out of wedlock. I suspect that Thomas and Mary were "together" for some time, then finally decided to marry while in Edinburgh, and the other children followed. Without a baptism for Alfred, we can only surmise.
Lizzie, I did have the Buxton newspaper report of Alfred's illness, thanks. He died of TB, although the family story has it that he left his second wife with two children, ran off to Liverpool with a younger woman, and drank himself to death! We have a photo of him with his face rubbed out - ouch! His wife remarried a man called Thomas Greenhalgh, and when Alfred's youngest daughter got married in 1899, she named him and not Alfred as her father on the registration. Had we not known the history, it would have caused some confusion and speculation in itself!
The musical gene was passed on: his grandson, also called Alfred, was lead trumpet in the Harry Roy swing band in the 20's and 30's - a big deal, I believe.
