Biography of Robert Wilkinson

Robert Wilkinson was born June 30, 1884 in Hedley Hope, Durham County, about eleven miles from Croxdale where Martha Warburton would be born seven years later. He was the youngest of four children. John James was three years older, Charles Edward eight years older, and Emily twelve years older. The family also had a daughter named Elizabeth, who died at age two eight years before Robert's birth.

Bob's father, William, a coal miner, was 35 when Bob was born, and his mother Elizabeth (maiden name Fenwick) was 31. Although Bob might have spent some time in the mines early in life, by age 16 he was working as a shopkeeper and grocer.

As a young man Bob Wilkinson played piano (and maybe violin) in a local band, and Martha Warburton attended dances where he performed.

Bob Wilkinson married Catherine Huxley in the Fall of 1905. Bob was 21, Catherine was 27. The reason that Bob Wilkinson is listed on the Watkin's arrival card as a cousin is that Catherine was Martha Warburton's cousin; Bob and Martha were cousins by marriage. Catherine's mother was Martha's aunt Hannah.

Catherine's father William was a pork butcher and grocer. As a teenager Bob Wilkinson worked for a grocer. Maybe that grocer was William Huxley, maybe Bob fell in love with his boss's daughter.

Bob and Catherine had one baby who did not survive infancy. On September 4, 1908, Catherine gave birth to twin sons: William Huxley Wilkinson and John Fenwick Wilkinson. In November of 1908, when the twins were two months old, Bob sailed from Liverpool to Quebec, the first of five Atlantic crossings he would make in the next twelve years. He was on his way to join his brother in the coal mining town of Lafayette, Colorado.

Sometime in 1909 Catherine and the twins came to the US. By the time the census was taken in the Spring of 1910 the family was living in Wilkeson, Washington, a coal mining community outside of Tacoma.

In October 1910 all four crossed the Atlantic back to England. Bob returned to North America early in 1911. Catherine and the boys stayed in England. She was living with her parents William and Hannah when the UK census was taken in April of 1911.

In February 1912 Catherine and the twins sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then travelled on to join Robert in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where they lived for the next two years.

In the Spring of 1914 the family left Winnipeg and entered the US via Minnesota on their way to Canton, Ohio. They were going to visit Minnie Wharton, Bob's niece. Minnie's mother was Bob's sister Emily. Minnie eventually moved from Canton to Winnipeg, where she died in 1927. Emily died in Winnipeg in 1933.

In 1915 the Wilkinson's daughter Hannah was born in Canton.

In 1920 the Wilkinson family, including five-year-old Hannah, visited the UK for for four months. They probably spent time with the Watkin family; their stories about life in the US may have influenced William and Martha's decision to leave England two years later.

When Bob Wilkinson left Canton with Martha Watkins in 1931 he was 46 years old and had been married to Catherine for twenty five years. Their sons were twenty two and their daughter was sixteen. Nine years later the 1940 census shows that twenty five year old Hannah is working as a stenographer in a law office and living with her mother. And that Catherine's marital status is "widow"; her husband is dead to her.