The Allday Brothers

I like to do research the same way I like to travel. That is to say, I seem to spend a lot of time exploring the little side streets, alleys and hidden lanes instead of sticking to the highway!

I was sorting out some Fletcher census records the other day and the name of Richard Allday caught my eye. He married Elizabeth Fletcher, daughter of Robert and Muriel Fletcher. Richard and Elizabeth feature rather prominently in the Fletcher family story due to a long and drawn out litigation involving significant bequests to Elizabeth from her Uncle Richard and also her parents. (That is really another story!) However, the reason Richard Allday waved a flag at me was that I had only a few days before looked at two other Allday gentlemen who had married two Walford sisters. Sarah and Ann Walford were daughters of William Walford and Sarah Tomes of Long Marston (Marston Sicca). They are in my first cousin line but 5 x removed. The marriages all seemed to take place within a few years of each other and the Allday -Walford marriages took place in the same church - Halford, Warwickshire. Out of idle curiosity, I wondered if the Allday men were related and if so, how closely.

After a bit of scrummaging around, I am quite confident in saying that the three Allday men, Richard, Thomas and Joseph were brothers, born in Birmingham between 1796 and 1803. Interestingly, the censuses reveal that they were movers and shakers in the meat industry. Richard was a farmer and cattle dealer, Thomas was a butcher and Joseph's wife Ann ran a 'celebrated' tripe house and coffee shop! Talk about paddock to plate! The families must have had a relatively close relationship with each other as sometimes children from one family are living in the home of another family at census time. This is particularly the case for Joseph and Ann who don't appear to have had any children of their own.

 Joseph went on to become a prominent and controversial Councillor in Birmingham, starting as editor of a 'scurrilous weekly periodical' The Argus, which took as its motto " Yes, I am proud. I must be proud to see men not afraid of God, afraid of me!" Funnily enough, this little side trip into an almost unrelated family connection is leading me out into some more familiar territory. It appears that after his wife Sarah Walford died, butcher Thomas Allday remarried a woman from Quinton in Gloucestershire called Helen Southam. Her father was Thomas Corbett Southam who appears as an executor, overseer and beneficiary in several Fletcher and connected wills. Another trail to follow!