Following my discovery of this wonderful photograph of the forge, The Wergs, near Wolverhampton (see Secrets on a postcard) I've been digging around in the 1911 census records looking for the name of the blacksmith living there then, which is about the time I believe this photo was taken.
I came across the delightfully named Francis Benjamin Talbot ONIONS, who moved to The Wergs some time between the 1901 census (where he was listed as a farrier and blacksmith, living in Dartmouth Street, Wolverhampton with his wife, Eliza (nee EVANS) and son, Cecil, ) and the 1911 census. By the time he'd moved to The Wergs, Francis's first wife, Eliza, had died and he'd married Harriet WILKINSON in 1905.
Could it be Francis pictured in the photograph? Could the young man on the right be his son Cecil, who would have been aged 16 in 1911?
Francis continued to live at the forge in The Wergs until his death in 1954.
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