Wigan Album

This is a photograph of my Grandma's cousin, John Sutch, his wife, Martha Kinnery and their first child Hester.
John was born in Platt Bridge in 1878 and began work in the Pits at a very early age.
He married Martha at St Peter's, Hindley in 1903 and two years later Hester was born. About 1908/09 John took his family to Somerset, Colorado, USA where his elder brother, Christopher Richard Sutch had gone earlier to find work in the Mines.
During their time in Somerset John and Martha had two more children, John Jnr born 1909 and Evelyn born 1913
About this time Christopher Sutch died and John moved his family to Castle Gate, Utah where another brother, Oliver, had set up home in 1904. John and Martha had another child here, Elizabeth May, born in 1916, sadly, in 1925 Elizabeth contracted Bronchial Pneumonia and died.
John moved his family again, this time to Seattle, Washington where he set himself up in business as a Barber on Phinney Ave. By this time his eldest daughter, Hester, was married with a family of her own, John Jnr was doing various jobs including Driving for a Coal Company, Machine Operator and Riveter and Evelyn was a Candler and then a Recandler (whatever that is).
John Snr carried on with his Barber business well into the 1940s (in 1942 he registered for the Draft for the U.S Army despite being 62 years of age)
John died in Washington in 1965, a million miles from the small Pit Village near Wigan where he had first seen the light of day 87 years earlier.