I wrote some time ago about the CREIGHTON family remembered in St Oswald’s churchyard (see Two Yorkshire Cricketers and The Churchyard Project). Ernest Creighton’s representation on the Shared Tree is still relatively meagre. His daughter-in-law Elsie died on 6 February 1997 aged 91 so I thought I would look for information about her forebears that might help FamilySearch contributors.   

(There is another dot of Creightons to connect here.)

Elsie was the second child of William WILD and Beatrice Sophia WHITELEY. In 1911 she was five years old and her maternal grandmother Sophia Whiteley, a single woman, was with the family on census night. (Grandma’s death was registered in Rochdale, her home town, in September 1920.) It took some time to find this information and it led to the discovery of another fragment of pedigree.

William Wild’s father, Samuel, signed the marriage register “Wilde”.

Less surprising than the clerk dropping the ‘e’ from Samuel’s family name is his statement that his father William was a Brewer. In the 1851 and 1861 Censuses, William is said to be a “cotton yarn dresser”, and in 1871 a “gentleman”. The Wilde family home was in Flowery Field in 1851. In 1871, the recently married couple was with widower William in Thomas Street, Newton, Ashton under Lyne according to the Find My Past transcription. William died in 1879 and two years later Samuel and Elizabeth were living in Beeley Street, Hyde with four sons, the eldest aged ten and the youngest just one.

William Wild, born in 1877, did not follow Samuel into the hat-making trade. He started out as an office clerk but then moved into ironmongery. He was an ironmonger’s assistant in 1901, a traveller in 1911 and an ironmonger in 1921. He was still working when The Register was taken in 1939 – as a “colliery furnisher” in Doncaster.

He had married Beatrice Sophia WHITELEY in Rochdale in 1903 and by 1911 they had brought three children into the world. Elsie was the second to arrive. William’s mother-in-law was with the Wilds in Wakefield on census night. She may have been a long-term guest but her death was registered in her home town, Rochdale, in 1920. The family had moved to Doncaster before 1921 and the parents were at the same address, 29 Balmoral Road, in September 1939. Elsie was with them. She had been Mrs Creighton for over four years but the onset of war may have separated her temporarily from her husband.

John Richard Studley Creighton’s death was registered in Sheffield in 1990 and Elsie’s in Canterbury, Kent.

Here is a simple representation of Elsie’s most recent forebears, compiled from information gathered over the last few days.

Feeling confident that I’d find some “green people” on the Shared Tree…

Sophia GARSIDE LDJ7-4WQ

James WHITELEY KCFM-2DT

Sophia WHITELEY GM41-7FL

Jane WOOLLEY LWLH-BJ6 (marriage)

James GEE LWLH-BKN (marriage) G8XQ-C9N (daughter Elizabeth, no spouse)

Elizabeth GEE G8XS-GD5 (with father, husband Samuel WILDE and 5 children)

Samuel WILDE MSBK-382 (with wife, 5 children and his parents)

William WILDE KZ1B-WX9 (with wife Margaret DELEY and six children)

Margaret TAYLOR is not the same person as Margaret DELEY (M66X-MMG)

Note that Margaret Deley married at fourteen and her first child was born in 1827 after eight years of marriage.

William marrying Margaret Taylor in 1826 seems more realistic.