Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Dobson
I have been looking at the marvellous book called 'An Accrington Chronology and Men of Mark, by Crossley (1924) and come across an unusual name. I wonder if any descendants can tell me by what name Arsenius Massey of Clayton was commonly known. known. He was a councillor and died 1917 aged 77. I have not come across this forename before. I cannot see it catchjng on these days, except perhaps by members of the Hall family
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Hi Bob, You will perhaps be surprised to hear that Arsenius Massey was the brother of Winifred Blake (wife of John), so he is an ancestor of mine. Indeed, he never married (who would want to be lumbered with that name?). The family possesses a manuscript 'memoir' (full of gloom and doom) which he wrote when he was the last survivor of his family. His father was Reginald Massey, also a councillor in Accrington and at one time quite a prosperous cotton manufacturer (but he lost all his money in the Cotton Famine and left £14 when he died). And it was probably me who altered his name on Ancestry.
The name is indeed the equivalent of the French Arsene, but you can understand why it didn't catch on in the UK can't you?