John and Elizabeth Millward nee Handford
John and Elizabeth Millward were both Derbyshire people.
John Millward was born on 2 June 1887 in Brackenfield, Derbyshire, the son of John and Jane. He was baptised on 29 June at Clay Cross. When he was 13, at the time of the 1901 census, he was working as a gardener, whilst his father was a coal miner and a "small farmer". By this time John had four younger siblings.
Aged just 20 John married Martha Chirm in July 1907, and by the 1911 census they were living with her father in her home town of Pilsley, Derbyshire. John was now working underground as a miner and they had a five month old daughter. John and Martha had two more children before she died in early 1920, leaving him with three children under the age of ten. Later that year he married for a second time, and went on to have two more sons.
Elizabeth Olive Handford was another Pilsley girl, born on 30 March 1896, the daughter of David Handford and Mary nee Cutts. She was baptised there on 26 April. Her father was also a coal miner and the family lived close by the Chirms. However, by 1911 she lived near Alfreton and was the adopted daughter of the family of Jacob Robinson, a colliery corporal and farmer; sadly, Elizabeth's father had died in 1908 and her mother in 1909.
John and Elizabeth were living at Arnesby Lodge in Lutterworth at the time of the 1939 register, and he was working as a farm foreman. Their two sons, Bernard and Geoffrey, were working as horsemen there.
John died on 20 February 1974 and Elizabeth less than a year later, on 30 January 1975, at which time she was living at 10, The Almshouses, Stoneleigh.