Aunty Minnie: Jemima Myers Armstrong

Aunty Minnie is another of the aunties my sisters and I have had great fun speculating about. Who was she? What was her real name? We grew up with the names of these aunties floating around us but apart from being amused by their funny names we never gave much thought or interest to who they were. My southern brother-in-law thinks it’s just a typical northern name, basing his knowledge on Minnie Caldwell from Coronation Street.

Jemima Armstrong was granddad Armstrong’s aunt. Charles James Armstrong’s younger sister. She was born in 1870 in Hulme, Manchester. Her father James Charles Armstrong died when she was about nine years old. Her widowed mother Sarah Myers Baxter was living at 125 West Park Street, Salford in 1881 with 5 children ranging in age from 16 to 4 years old. Sarah had taken in a lodger, Henry Hinds Beanland, who she would later marry. He was a mechanic from Bradford who seems to have passed himself off as a widower but I’ve since found out that his first wife was still alive. In 1891 Jemima was still living with her mother and two younger siblings, Thomas and Annie. Henry Beanland is still lodging with them although they have moved to 99 West Park Street. Jemima is now 21 years old and working as a dressmaker.

She married Joseph Washington Naylor in 1893. He was a widower with one daughter, Amy Elindor Naylor. She had two sons, Joseph Armstrong Naylor, born in 1896 and Clarence Arthur Naylor, born in 1907.

She died in 1965 aged 95.