Mexborough and Swinton Times December 3, 1937
Family Tree Trail
American’s visit to Mexborough
Tracing his ancestor
A tall globe-trotting American, with a genial smile and a keen middle-west accent breezed into the office the other evening, fresh from Salt Lake City.
“Gee! but it’s good to smell a newspaper office again,” he said. He cast an approving eye over a couple of nails of galley proofs and chuckled at the paper – bescattered desks of the reporters’ room.
This bronzed visitor, Mr. James M. Kirkham, is, by marriage second cousin to Mr. Fred Long, well-known borough fruiterer and a prominent member of the Mexborough and District Rotary Club. Mr. Kirkham is tracing his ancestry, and he wants Mexborough to help him. His quest? Antecedents of a certain John Long and Hannah Shaw, parents of his wife’s father’s mother.
Mexborough Associations
The facts, briefly, are these. Mr Kirkham married a Miss Kate Woodhouse, whose father, John Woodhouse was born and witness Street in Doncaster. And the Long, mother of John Woodhouse is believed to have been born in Mexborough. John Long was and Long’s father: he married a Miss Anna Shaw.
Mr Kirkham is endeavouring to trace the ancestry of these two. It is believed that they were married between 1775 and 1780 that they dining Mexborough roundabout 1835. The John Woodhouse referred to went out to America in 1851. Mr Kirkham’s own grandfather, a Mr John Mercer, and have from Lancashire to America with a Mr John hacking in 1840. Mr Kirkham himself was born in America
First Call.
Mr Kirkham has made England his first port of call on a trek round the globe in genealogical research. He is studying also the cultural developments of the nations of the world. Soon, he will be off to Oslo.
He bears with him a document bearing the great golden seal of the State of Utah, and the signature of the Governor of that State, Mr. Henry H. Blood. His interest in journalism? He has been “in the game” for over 40 years. Originally he owned three small country farming newspapers in America. He later joined a farming newspaper and was with that paper for some 20 years.
He subsequently went to the desert new in Utah and his assistant general manager there. He has been released to make this trip, and left America in October. He has already visited London, Plymouth and Bath, before coming to Mexborough. Bath is a of his father’s relative
The Family Unit.
The chief object of the trip lies in the fact that Mr Kirkham is a Mormon. “Our Church,” he said, “emphasises the family unit. We are trying to find our ancestors. It is the hope of the church to do that. I have had that hope for over forty years, but I have never been able to get over here. I have traced my mother’s ancestry back to 1648, to Waddington, a parish in Lancashire. She was a Mercer.”
Nine Children.
Mr. Kirkham has nine children, five sons and four daughters. One son, Mr. Albert Kirkham visited Mr. Fred Long nine years ago. His eldest daughter, Zelda, is in the advertising side of journalism, and his eldest son, Mr. James Arnold Kirkham, is editor of the “Utah Farmer.” Another daughter, Miss Alice Kirkham has charge of the advertising department of that journal. Mr. Kirkham plans to visit York where his grandmother, a Mary Astington lived. Her grandfather, he said, was with the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. He hopes to find something of his life history too. He will be deeply grateful two any Mexborough resident who can supply him with any clue to his search in Mexborough.
Will they please communicate with Mr. Fred Long, at High Street, Mexborough, or to this office. It may be that local” knowledge will reveal what the records have failed to do.