BORN IN RUSHDEN - TOWN’S OLDEST FAMILY?

  To-day (Friday) brings the golden wedding anniversary of a Rushden couple, Mr. and Mrs. William Margetts, who can claim – as few others in their position can – that they both were born in the town.

  Mr. Margetts, whose home is at 79, Portland-road, also claims that his family is the oldest in the town.  The late Mr. J. Enos Smith, he says, traced the Margetts family back some two or three hundred years.

Mr. and Mrs. William Margetts

  Mr. Margetts is the son of the late Mr. Edwin Margetts, a builder reputed to be a very good stone-cutter, and was born in an old cottage near the “Wheatsheaf” in High-street South.  His old home and the cottage next door have since been made into one house.  Mrs. Margetts entered St. Mary’s Church on the wedding day as Miss Deborah Green, and the ceremony was conducted by the Rev. Canon Barker.  They were a young couple, for to-day, though they have two sons, two daughters, and eight grandchildren. Mr. Margetts is no more than 69, and Mrs. Margetts a year younger.

  Mr. Margetts spent the whole of his working career in the boot trade and was with Messrs. Wm. Green and Son over 40 years, retiring just over three years ago.  He was for some time a member of the Men’s Adult School, and his wife belongs to the Park-road Baptist Sisterhood.

  “I remember the time,” says Mr. Margetts, “when I could sit down and write the name of every girl in the town, but to-day I could not write those of my own street.”

  Mr. Margetts’s elder son, Mr. Charles Margetts, is a director of the Byfield Leather Co., Northampton, and the younger son, Mr. Harry Margetts, is a clerk with Messrs. Harris Bros., curriers. All the family will join in a celebration at the home tomorrow (Saturday).

  A very noteworthy circumstance is that a brother and a sister of Mrs. Margetts have already celebrated their golden weddings – the late Mr. C. Green, of 127, Queen-street, Rushden, at Easter, 1926, and Mrs. W. Parker, of the Woolpack, Bedford, in May, 1933.  There were five brothers and sisters in the family.