The Halliday Family
Henry Thomas Halliday’s grandfather Alexander was a carpenter born Berwick-upon-Tweed, Scotland in 1808. He married Elizabeth Marshall [1814-179] settling in Middlesex, England where their five children were born. Their son James Alexander [1837-1916] came with his family to Western Australia in 1852 where in 1866, in Guildford he married Sarah Jane Arnold [1840-1925].
James and Sarah’s son Henry Thomas Halliday was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1867. After his schooling he followed the Halliday men unto the family building trade and in 1892 married Edith Stone [born Leighton-Buzzard, England 1866]. Edith Stone had come to Australia as teenager with her widowed mother and siblings, settling in Warnambool, Victoria. A few years later they moved to Western Australia where Edith met and married Henry Thomas Halliday in 1892.
After their first some Stoughton Henry [1893-1979] was born, they moved into this partly built but comfortable enough house. Between 1895-1902 five more children were born, however two girls died as infants leaving Rudel [1896-1985], Coralie [1900-1974] and Mervyn [1901-1969].
Henry Thomas Halliday was a founding member of the Baptist Church in Guildford Road, holding positions of Sunday School Superintendent, Deacon, Treasurer, Organist and Choirmaster. In 1897, he became the first of Bayswater’s ‘First Citizen’, a title then given to the President of the Shire Council. In 1914 Henry Thomas Halliday died suddenly of heart failure leaving six unfinished houses to be completed by Stoughton before his business could be dissolved and Stoughton enlist in the AIF during WWI.
Edith stayed on at ‘Leighton’ as the family matriarch surrounded by her sons families. Her daughter Coralie, with her English husband Donald Platt and two daughters Norma and Valma, sailed for England in 1933. Edith did not see them again before she died in 1935.
