James Sagar Holden was the man who had lent my gran enough funds to set up home to rear her orphaned younger brothers and he remained a central figure in their lives, taking on the role of father figure. It has to be said that, without his help, the futures of the Jackson children, especially the boys, would have been very different and probably very unfortunate.

My mother could remember Uncle James Sagar Holden from when she was a young girl and he was a very old man but she never knew quite how he fitted into the family tree and set me the task of finding out.

It wasn’t easy to know where to start. At that point I had no Holdens in my line and didn’t know whether to look on the Jackson or the Calvert side. All I really knew was that James Sager’s mother was blind old Aunt Alice and that he was illegitimate and had never married. His father’s name was never known but from anecdote and rumour he was supposed to be the son of a wealthy man, possibly the owner of Billy Holts billiard works and a married man. He was certainly reasonably wealthy by the standards of those days and he was supposedly a main beneficiary of his natural father’s estate. We worked out that he would have been born somewhere around 1860 but that proved not to be much of a help.

Still, it wasn’t too long before I found my first signs of Holden when I discovered that my gran’s great grandmother Fanny Calvert was born a Holden.

Then I managed to trace back on my Holden line for quite a few generations, even discovering where the Christian name Sagar came from but still no sign of James Sagar. Finally, I managed to find his birth registration and this confirmed that he was born illegitimate, in Gannow and yes his mother was Alice but that didn’t take me very far. I scoured the 1881 census and found another James Sagar Holden but this wasn’t him, he was too old. This second James Sagar turned out to be Fanny’s brother so perhaps Aunt Alice was Fanny’s younger sister. Whoever she was, she was proving to be quite elusive and with a common surname like Holden it was something of a nightmare trying to find an Alice.

I began dipping in and out of my searches but it was continuing to be fruitless and I was beginning to pin all my hopes on the 1901 census. With the fiasco that that had proved to be, it was turning into a long wait.

However, the 1901 census finally came on line and lo and behold there was NO James Sagar Holden. This was particularly frustrating because I knew that he existed but no matter how hard I tried I could not find him. I turned my attention to the Calverts and found that Fanny Holden nee Calvert had died by 1901 and two of her sons were living at 5 St Johns Rd with an Alice Whittaker who was their aunt. Could this be Aunt Alice ?

The address was interesting because it was the same street that my gran had lived on when she married, where my mother was born and where I had spent many happy moments as a child. It was also next door to the other James Sagar Holden who was Alice and Fanny’s brother. I felt like the net was closing in on James Sagar but I still couldn’t find him. Back I went to the 81 census and there I found him living with his mother Alice Whittaker and “father” William Whittaker and a sister Elizabeth. He was going under the name of James Sagar Holden Whittaker.

Well, at least I had found him though it didn’t answer any of the questions and indeed raised a few more. William Whittaker was unlikely to have been James’s natural father ( if all family rumours were true) as he was a labourer. Elizabeth had been born in 1864, two years after James Sagar’s birth, so it was likely that William and Fanny had married around 1863/4. James Sagar was working as a clerk in the print works so there was no mention of any billiard works.

Back in the 1901 census, I finally found him living on Burnley Road and he had dropped the name Whittaker and was simply James Sagar Holden. I cant help wondering why he did that. Perhaps at some stage over the previous 20 years he had discovered that William wasn’t his father and for some reason was intent on reclaiming his Holden name. Maybe he didn’t get on with his stepfather. I will never be able to find out why.

Contrary to popular belief, Uncle James Sagar Holden wasn’t unmarried because the census shows him to be a widower though his marriage and his wife’s death would have occurred when my gran was a baby, or even before. He was also living with three widowed female cousins, though I have no idea who on earth they were and I have no intentions of trying to find out.

Did I achieve the objectives that my mother had set out for me ?
Well, yes in part. I found Uncle James Sagar Holden and how he fitted into the family tree. I discovered new things about him that had previously been unknown but I didn’t work out the connection between him and Billy Holt’s billiard works and who his natural father was. Maybe the stories were all wrong and he never really knew. It doesn’t really matter now except to sate idle curiosity but I do like to think he did know who his dad was because really, that is something every child should be able to know. Maybe one day a Holden or Jackson of Gannow will read this site and be able to tell me of tales handed down their side of the family of Uncle James Sagar Holden.