Details provided by Arthur (Harvey's grandson) and his Aunt Edith; also by Freda and Margaret (James's grandchildren). Further information to be collected e.g. from records of Middleton Parish Church and its churchyard, where there is a tombstone of the earliest known of our family.
Sir Ernest Butterworth, father of the composer, was general manager of the NE Railway at York. Arthur's grandfather told him our families were related. George, the composer, went to Eton and made some mark there as a musician. He was killed in the Great War. Recently (1981) he has been featured in one or two programmes. George Kay / K. Butterworth, died 1916 on the Somme.
James Butterworth was Chief Accountant at Horwich Loco Works and sometimes had the use of the manager's private coach. He lived in one of the villas in Victoria Road, 'Ravenstone'. My father [Frederick] used to speak of his grandmother living with them but whether Smith or Butterworth I don't know. James went down to Chipping Sodbury when the boys were in the army and after the war still used to go there on holiday. He died 1922/3 while staying at The Grapes there and the certificate was signed by a brother of W.G. Grace.
He [James] married Florence Smith, who suffered badly from arthritis. There was a story that the Smiths were descended from the Duke of Bridgewater, whose fortune is still in Chancery. Her father was a teacher as well as singing in the Halle choir, and he married a teacher trained at the college in Salisbury, where Thomas Hardy's sister was trained. Florence had a brother Willie who married Minnie Hoyle on Thursday 8th September 1898 and they were prosperous & important in their own world at Middleton. There were two sisters, Connie and Lily, the latter of whom lived with her niece for some years.
The James Butterworth Children were:
Harry, who died on his 21st birthday, 11th December.
Next came Mabel, who taught at the little school in Rivington
and then at St Catherine's in Horwich.
To get to Rivington she had a bike and they used to tell her, 'No scorching!'
She and Great Auntie Lily lived in Crown Lane and she managed to save enough
from her salary for a memorial in St Catherine's and a legacy for each of her
brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces.
Mine enabled me to buy my first car (2nd hand) at a time (1955) when
not many women had one, and it was an important advance in my life.
I think Mabel died in 1927 but Auntie Lily survived her by many years.
Lilian was born 21st Jan 1891 and died Dec 1972.
She married Samuel Roberts Bailey, who worked at Horwich Loco Works,
and their daughter Mabel Florence Margaret was born 1st May 1911 and followed
the tradition to become a teacher and then headmistress.
[After she retired, she lived with her father (b. 20th Oct 1890) at Arkholme,
Lancashire. He died in 19**.]
John was born 17th April 1898 and died 21st June 1976. He worked for a short time at the Loco Works but then joined Jack Cumpstey in Blackburn, his wife's uncle who retired at Thornton House, Thornton & Cleveleys. His business was road transport and that remained Uncle John's main interest. He married Minnie Maybury, and they lived for the last part of their life at Ribchester. Auntie Minnie died in 1972.
Fred was born 14th Jan 1895 and died 26th May 1978 after about three weeks' illness. He like his father became Chief Accountant at Horwich Loco Works, though the private coach was no longer in evidence. I don't think there was a day in the month before he retired when there wasn't a farewell party for him, at Horwich, Derby, London or elsewhere. He married Muriel Tector, another teacher, whose father also worked for the railway. Their children were Freda, b. 27th May 1924, and John Donald, b. 2nd April 1932. He married Alice Abbott from Tyldesley, and their son is Christopher John, b. 18th May 1961. Muriel Tector was born 28th April 1898 and died 4th Feb 1964. Dad [Frederick] and she retired to Ribchester, in the next house to Uncle John & Auntie Minnie's.
The youngest brother was Willie, b. 26th June 1897'; died before the 2nd World War. He too worked at the Loco Works. His wife had been Blanche Downham from Westmorland, and they were married at Beetham near Milnthorpe. Her relations kept The Duke at Farleton; there was a Reuben Tallon. Willie's children were: Richard Cecil Butterworth, killed at the Anzio Beachhead; Jim, who worked in radio and television, married Pat and had one son, Paul; Margaret Rose, or Queenie; and Brian, who lived in Horwich with his wife Margaret and two daughters Ann and Carol Lesley.
James's sister Mary or Polly became Mrs Liddell and her children were Bessie and Roddy. Dad [Fred] often used to talk of Roddy & his visits to Horwich: 'If I and Sire de Porter were in Horwich on a Saturday night, we'd stand at the corner of Winter Hey Lane and conver-r-se in loud tones.' He also used to speak about a mysterious 'sea-sam', explained by Dad [Fred] as 'Sesame' from the Tale of Ali Baba. Bessie married Harold Mitchell and died only recently, in 1980. Margaret Bailey went to the funeral. Bessie's son Willie married twice, first Frances and the Maisie (?). Roddy died quite young, and his family had their misfortunes. He married Lily, and she died when their child was a baby. He remarried and they went abroad.
Joe's daughters [we haven't had a Joe yet!] were Edith and Annie, and one of them had a daughter who was an opera singer, Margaret Eaves.
Harry's daughter Fanny married George - and they had one son.
Tom lived at Blackpool or Bispham. I remember Uncle John telling how we went to see Uncle Tom who arranged for him to go out on a trawler from Fleetwood. Uncle Tom's first wife died leaving a son Reggie. Arthur thinks he was a chemist who practised in Withington or Didsbury and died only recently in 1980. Reggie married Gladys and their daughter was called Norma. Uncle Tom's second wife was Constance, who is still alive. Their children were Ronald2, who married Jessie but had no children; Muriel3, who married John ****, and their daughters were Rhona, who married Michael Goddard, and Julie, who married Laurence ?Tomai?; and Thomas Stanley, whose wife was called Joan, and their children were: Davis, who married Lynda and had two children, Lisa and Stephen; Philip; John; and Ian.
Harvey was an engine driver who retired early because of his strict Sabbatarian views. He was born in 1873 and died aged 70 in March 1943. His wife was Helen or Ellen Sanderson from Glasgow, and she died in Jan 1939 at the age of 60. They had 9 children, two of whom died in infancy.
Harold married Marie Nelson. He was born 16th Feb 1896 and died in 1945, and she was born in Dec 1895, so that Harvey's eldest son was just between the ages of James Butterworth's two youngest (Fred b. Jan 1895 and Willie b. Jun 1897). Marie died young and left one child, Arthur, though perhaps there was another child who died in infancy in 1923. Arthur married Diana6, who came from Scotland as did his grandmother. Their two daughters are Nicola, who is a student at London University, and Carolyn, who is in her last year in the sixth at Skipton. Both girls are musical like their father, who is a professional musician, player, teacher, conductor and composer.
(The James Butterworths were musical and used to make music together when the family was at home. Dad [Fred] was gifted with a good singing voice and a natural aptitude for the violin and piano, but for some reason never followed it up [he made sure I did - Chris]. Uncle Willie was versatile to the extent of transferring in the war to the Artists' Rifles and learning to play the bagpipes! Uncle John was the one to whom music meant most. He played the piano a bit but was an assiduous and devoted violinist, playing for his own amusement and as a member of various amateur orchestras, notably the Clitheroe Operatic. He loved the musical comedy of Offenbach, Strauss, Stolz, Lehar and so on but enjoyed opera and good singing. In the last years of his life he spent hours listening to records of Der Rosenkavalier and singled out the small part of the tenor who sings a song for the Marschalin, the then little known Placido Domingo.)
The Arthur Butterworths live near Skipton.
The next child was Herbert, b. Jan 1897, and he married a Stornoway girl called Catriona, and their children were Sheila Mary, b. 1937, and Margaret Anne, b. 1942. Catriona was a nurse and ambitiously started a nursing home succeeding so well that when she died she left a large and prosperous nursing home patronised by royalty and other notabilities. The girls recently sold the property but apparently keep up some of the contacts, as a princess wrote the preface for one of Margaret's books of poems and this last Christmas of 1980 they took their Aunt Edith to spend a day at Broadcasting House being feted by Kenneth Kendall. I think Sheila was a domestic science teacher & Margaret a linguist and actress, though at present neither has a job. Kenneth Kendall suggested to Margaret that she ought to take a job as TV announcer but she said she was too busy. They live in Surbiton.
Next came Helen or Nellie4, who died unmarried.
Then there was Arthur1, who went to Bolivia in 1927 and whose family has stayed in S. America. His wife was Mildred, and their son David, b. 1940, married a girl from the West Indies called Rosalind. They and their daughter Natasha live in Montevideo. I think cousin Arthur said that he remembers David coming to England as a schoolboy in Manchester and then working as an apprentice in the motor trade, for Leyland Motors.
Next was Lucy who in her 40's married Richard Burke, a widower with two children. I think she married in 1948 and died in 1956. (convert RC?)
Clara died when she was about 5.
Edith was born in 1913. She worked as a secretary for an insurance broker and recently retired to a nice new ground-floor garden flat in an old Edwardian or Victorian residential part of Manchester. As Edith is one of the youngest children of the youngest child in the main family she is actually younger than her cousin Lilian's daughter Margaret, and not more than a dozen years older than her own nephew Arthur. Edith enjoys entertaining and visiting.
Her youngest brother Fred died when he was only about four months old.
Youngest of Harvey's children is Dorothy, b. 1919. She married Harold Foster of Oldham. They have two children, Judith, b. 15th Nov 1948, and Andrew, b. 1952. Judith married John Curry of Ulverston in June 1969 and their daughter Philippa was born in 1976. Judith's husband left her and they are being divorced. The Fosters lived in Morecambe for a long time but now live in Dorset, near Sherborne, where Edith visited them in the Christmas season of 1980-81. Andrew is the art editor of the TV Times and is unmarried.
1 Harvey's son Arthur started working for the Lancs & Yorks Railway at Hunt's Bank (I think Dad [Fred] had a spell of working there, and so did Uncle John). He transferred to Derby in 1923 and about 1927 went to work for Bolivian railways. Arthur (Harvey's grandson) can remember when he was about 4 going with the family to the station to see him off. Arthur later moved to Uruguay and in 1940 married a girl of English descent, Mildred, who was born in Montevideo where their family now live.
2 Tom's eldest son by his second wife Constance, Ronald, was I think in the Royal Navy.
3 His sister Muriel I think now lives in Bournemouth.
4 Nellie, Harvey's third child and first daughter, was born in 1899, stayed at home and died in 1963.
5 There is a Professor A.E. Butterworth at Birmingham University but perhaps he is no relation.
6 Cousin Arthur, Harvey's grandson, carries on the family interest in railways as a hobby and in music as a profession. He was in one week offered a job with the Scottish, Northern & Liverpool orchestras, chose the first and found a wife. He has also played the trumpet for the Halle and has a fund of stories.