Amos also served in the First World War in the trenches. His first wife died of consumption while he was in France. His daughter Ada was brought up by her grandmother Elizabeth Nuttall (nee Amos) .
After the war he remarried, a lady called Helen. He had two daughters, Barbara Nuttall, a teacher who went to live in Africa, where she married a man named Charles McNeil-Coventry and had two children, Francesca and Blayde. Patricia Nuttall, his second daughter was very clever, and specialised in Maths and science and went to Cambridge. Elizabeth Married Kieth Renshaw from Sheffield, they had 3 children, Elizabeth, Alison and Ian. Josephine Musker was the God-mother of Elizabeth. Amos also had a son, Keith, who went to live in Canada where he became a lighthouse keeper and had a large family.
Amos was very clever and his teacher wanted him to go to Grammar School and then go on to train to become a teacher. Amos could not go because the family was so poor, so Amos worked down the pit and eventually became a police man. For a good while (ten or more years), the family lived in the Police House in Cliviger where Amos was the village ‘bobby’ –a police sergeant. Apparently, Helen used to go and visit the other police houses and the wives of the other police men as part of her role as the wife of the police sergeant. The police wives were afraid of her as she used to inspect their homes and report to her husband if she found the wives lazy or running dirty homes. They must have moved when their daughter Barbara was eleven as she was accepted at Paddock House Girls Grammar School on Fredrick Street in Oswaldtwistle. Although it is possible that Barbara and her sister Patricia, who also gained a scholarship to Paddock House, travelled by bus each day.
Amos and Helen bought 114 Countess Street in Accrington. This is where both Amos and Helen died. |