SOME time ago, Brenda Vazquez of New York put a message on the Evening News' Old Pals message board, and received a reply from Dale Gerrard on behalf of his grandmother, Florence Wolstenholme from Farnworth.

"Florence is my grandfather's niece, and Dale sent me a picture of my grandfather when he was in the First World War, and said my grandfather moved to Farnworth in the early part of the last century with his sisters and mother," writes Brenda.

Now Brenda has sent me this picture of her grandparents taken in about 1920. Percy Ashes had been born in Stockport in 1890, but her grandmother Annie (nee Latham - her parents lived in Clamourclough Road, Kearsley. Annie's mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Whitley) was born in Kearsley in 1895.

Percy is standing at the back, and others shown are Annie, holding her son Percy (the second!), aged 10 months, Mary Elizabeth, aged five, and son Albert, aged seven.

"Percy and Annie were married in 1913, and their first three children were born in Kearsley or Farnworth," Brenda tells me. "My grandparents and their children came to America in 1920 to work the mines in West Virginia. After a few years they moved to Philadelphia, where my father James was born."

Other members of the family also went to America, in 1921 Emma Whitley (nee Latham) and two other sisters, Dora Latham and Barbara (Latham) Hope, and her two children and husband William. William died in a mining accident in West Virginia. Barbara returned to England for a few years before returning to America and Philadelphia with her children, Amy and Bill.

Annie's brother Fred and his wife Sarah and their three children also went to West Virginia in 1920, and stayed there.

Good heavens, with all these people moving out of Kearsley, there could hardly have been anyone left there!

Brenda says: "I hope there is still family in the Bolton area."

Well, if there is, and any of you want to contact Brenda, her address is 248 Hanley Road, Hannibal, N.Y. 13074 (e-mail: SAVlOUR@aol.com -- incidentally, to save confusion, what looks like a capital "i" in the word SAVIOUR in in fact a lower case "L")