Alice Pownall

Born 11th March 1838 in Parr on the outskirts of St. Helens in Lancashire, Alice's parents were Thomas (labourer) and Alice (nee Peak), the address on the birth certificate is Parr Flat.

A large scale map, probably late c19th early c20th (left, courtesy of Norman Penketh) shows a small open area at the bottom of Derbyshire Hill Road opposite Moss House called Parr Flat. I am reliably informed by local resident and fellow genealogist Andrew Latham, that Parr Flat nowadays runs from an area at the top of Derbyshire Hill Road down to Swan Avenue, a distance of approximately ½ mile, and includes Provident Street, Brunswick Street and Cotswold Grove amongst others. The Victoria History of the County of Lancaster (1907) describes Parr as "A township unpleasing to the eye, where the natural amenities have been replaced by everything unlovely that man can devise. Scarcely a green tree is to be seen, whilst collieries, chemical and iron works, huge banks and heaps of refuse take the place of woods and fields and green meadows." Not very complementary!

Alice, at the time resident in Bold, married Francis Yarwood at the Parish Church of Farnworth on 15th April 1861 aged 23. Bold is about 5 miles south of St Helens, "an area of flat and open country divided into arable fields and pastures, interspersed with plantations, and dotted with farms. In the north there are collieries and the country is even less wooded than in the south." Nowadays Farnworth is almost part of Widnes, the main railway line separating the two. How Francis and Alice met is unclear, perhaps Francis went across the Mersey looking for work? He took his new wife back to Cheshire where their first two children were born, returning to Merseyside for 5 years or so in the late 1860s producing three more children. Another three were born back in Cheshire making eight in all, the last being Mary Alice in 1880, perhaps named in honour of her grandmothers. Her baptism was at the United Free Methodist Church on 23rd May 1880, a place were her future sister in law Mary Ann Moore was also baptised 9 years earlier.

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