Here are Aunty Mary’s memories of her father and mother. She wrote this sometime between 1982 and 1990. In 1998 Jackie Andrews (her daughter) typed out the text and sent a copy to my mum Marjorie Stevenson. I have made no alterations….

My father’s name was Hugh Fowler, when he was a young man he skipped his ship, and then at a later date he exchanged papers with another seaman, whose name was John Stevenson. My father was John Stevenson when he married my mother, he had one brother George Fowler who was a soldier, he was killed in the Great War, and his wife’s name was Minnie. I can remember his son called George, he used to visit our home, he probably would be about the same age as my brother Hugh, I think his family lived n Leeds. When we lived in Maitland street we used to have a photograph of Uncle George on the wall. On armistice day we used to place our poppies in the frame, in those days children bought their poppies in school. Of my fathers sisters Aunty Mary was the one “we knew”, she lived in Fearnside Street off Earle Road, and was married to a sea captain his name was John Brown I think their eldest child was May, Isobel, Martha and Georgina was the youngest child. They also had a son called Hugh he always went to sea and was lost at sea during the second world war. There were two more sisters, Harriet who as a young woman went to America, she married and had a daughter called Isobel. My father tried to find out were she lived in America after she married but she could not be traced. The third sister was Martha, she went to Canada, and then returned to Liverpool and lived with her husband, we didn’t see her very much, my mother used to hear about her from Aunty Mary. Then after my father died we didn’t see much of Aunty Mary. I think the last time she came to our home was when Hugh Brown was drowned, that would have been about 1944. His ship was torpedoed in the North Atlantic.

My mother had one brother, I think his name was Albert or Egbert, but she used to call him Teck. His wife’s name was Jane, they had three children Albert, Agnes and Silena Florence, who was known as Lena. Lena was my sister Harriets bridesmaid. Teck died of appendicitis, Aunty Jane remarried and her husbands surname was Halsall. They had four children two boys and two girls, the eldest was called Richard(Dick). Agnes was married to John Robinson. My mothers father died when she was aschoolgirl, and her mother remarried. We used to call her stepfather Grandad Jones. Before he died he was in Brownlow Hill Hospital. On Sunday my mother used to bake for him and Jack and I had to go to Hospital with a basket of food for him.