When I’m doing my little odd bits of research it’s quite usual for me to find something interesting in a side issue of what I’m supposed to be delving into. I’ve been looking at old advertisements and seeing what I can find out about the products and whether the product still exists in some form, and what the company was who made whatever it was.
I looked up information on a couple of stoves,a gas one and a coal one, and I began sidetracked by the people who had the foundries which made them. My eye was caught by a family from Scotland who had a big iron works in Salford, and the reason my eye was caught was that they were living in the same road in which my son had lodgings while he was at university!
The men who owned the iron foundry were brothers, living next door to each other and in 1881 had their sister and brother-in-law and all their children living with them. I believe they had come south from Scotland in the 1870’s, bringing their foundry skills with them. By 1901 the elder brother, William was the managing director of a foundry manufacturing stoves, the stove no doubt that was advertised which originally captured my interest.
By 1911 William was retired; sadly his wife who had come from Scotland with him had died but he had remarried and had a stepson living with him and his new wife. His own son was a heating engineer, his step-son was a journalist! His brother Alexander was also retired, and his sons also carried on the business; Alexander too had lost his first wife, and he too had remarried, a woman from the Isle of Man.
Lois Elsden 