Appleby contd
Another of those tantalizing loose ends. Grandad died in March 1950, greatly missed.
Oxley
Grandmother Margaret Oxley was born in North Shields in September 1889. There must have been only a few days difference in age between her and grandfather.
Her parents were James Oxley and Jane Willoughby. James parents were Robert and Mary Anne Oxley; he is described as a merchant seaman. James was a ‘holder up’ in a shipyard but later became a seaman.
Grandmother was the second of four children, all girls as far as we know. We don’t even know the name of the fourth child. Grandmother had a very hard childhood. Her father was away at sea and her mother was, to put it mildly, a terrible parent, and in 1899 the children were taken into care. We don’t know what happened to them after that but there is evidence that grandmother lived for a time with relatives, possibly on a farm, because one of her tasks was to feed the pigs, a job she hated.
After she married grandfather in 1912 they lived in Dockwray Square until the late 1930s. They moved to Stephenson St. around 1940 and that’s where I remember them. I spent a lot of my childhood there as dad was in the RAF and mother worked as a shop assistant.
They both died in 1950, within a few months of each other. I remember them as wonderfully kind and loving grandparents.
