Because I've been in Belfast since last week, poncing about in a cloak with a sword and pretending to be Jorah Mormont :-) Normal service will now resume.
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1829 was obviously a caring time to live! I wonder if the future Major of Liverpool will stop his hackney carriage to convey windowcleaners to hospital?
A few more snippets on Mr Lawson, but nothing groundbreaking. I haven't quite determined how he's related to the Syers family yet, though many are listed in his will as cousins ( and the handwriting is a bugger to decipher). Its nice to be able to start to flesh out the lives of some of the earliest residents though, with even the most elusive Mr John Gordon popping up in a number of places. Our 'Miss Gregson' also has several connections to Lawson and Pritt though Committees they both served on around 1815, which suggests a little more about how tight knit the community was back then. More newspaper research tonight I think.
Its always great to find details of new occupants but I'm rather gutted when they turn out to be dead ends. Its a useful cautionary tale though. I found records of the death of Mr Humphrey Hime, quite a famous musician and music seller, claiming he died at his residence in Abercromby Square. Always wary, I then look for duplicate sources, and found contradictory accounts of him living in Abercromby Terrace ( just twenty yards away, the other side of Chatham Street, but not actually on the square), but also a newspaper report giving an exact address as 6 Abercromby Square.
I had a William Nicol as the main householder at the time, but renting and relations are not impossible, so I tried to find links but couldn't get any. In the end it was back to searching the 1841 census, which sadly gives Mr Hime at 6 Abercromby Terrace, an amalgamation of the two. But never necessarily trust a newspaper report alone. Other interesting news comes from research into Mr William Lawson, one of the prime movers in the creation and landowning of the Square. As it turns out he was a relation of the Liverpool architect Peter Ellis, who I'd always kept an eye out for in relation to the square, as there are some links between him and Culshaws and other firms associated with building in Abercromby. It isn't a close family tie, and is through Ellis's wife, but its interesting that Lawson forgets his actual relation's forename, only referring to her as wife of Peter Ellis, with whom he's clearly familiar. I'll post if I get any further on this. I'm actually very surprised how little seems to have been reported in the papers on the actual building of the Square. By the looks of things the first houses were completed 1818 or 1819, a good few years before Gore records occupants, but there's barely anything about what would have been a fairly high profile exercise.
I'll get back to my chapter 2 draft postings soon but I'm far too distracted by searching through the rather wonderful newspaper database at the minute. Hard to believe this was only seventy years ago this April. On one hand I'm glad to see Abercromby Square on the positive side ( kind of), on the other side...
Ooh, the discontent in the Liverpool Mercury in 1829 when some unknown fellow decided on the modern spelling!
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