James Berry was very hard to find on the 1901. He's written up on the census as a woman, Jane Berry. And he's living with a Mary Walton, the name of the woman he lived with subsequently on the Isle of Man. They are in Southport, Lancs.
Who is Mary Walton? On the 1901 she states that she was born in Crosshills, which is next to Sutton where James was born. So has James run off with a shirttail cousin? I need some nuts and bolts to fasten it down, but James' mother Mary Ann Laycock who married James' father Thomas Berry is, I think, the daughter of the publican James Laycock.
James Laycock has several occupations over the years. If I'm right, Mary Ann had a sister Hannah who married a Walton, and in later years James Laycock was living with Hannah Walton, i.e., she took in their father to live with her. So I wonder if Mary Walton is one of that family but I have no proof.
James Berry, by 1911, was in Onchan, Isle of Man. The census says that the head of house is James Walton and that Mary Walton is James Walton’s wife. James Berry (mistranscribed as Beng, as I recall) is listed as a boarder.
My mother and her sisters were taken now and then as children to see their grandfather, and especially just before they emigrated, sailing in August 1912. So they were present there around the time that this 1911 census picture was snapped.
My mother's story to me was that her grandfather had a housekeeper by the name of Mary, and that the children were instructed to call her "Aunt Mary". There is no sign of any James Walton in these family stories and the census page is signed off by Mary Walton herself. So I have wondered if James "Walton" was a face-saving fiction and James Berry and James Walton were one and the same.
I'm meant to be packing for a trip so I have to drop this now!
