Leaves from a Leeds album: The Salvation Army

These photos are from the collection of Leeds postman Tom Wheldon (also spelt Weldon) who served in 1/8 Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment during WW1 and was a veteran of the Boer War. The handwriting on the face of some of the photos is Tom's.

Margaret Jane, one of Tom Wheldon's sisters, joined the Salvation Army and is shown here with Tamar Stafford (on the right). The photo was taken in Scranton, Pennsylvania, probably in the late 1880s. In the autumn of 1886, Scranton received a visit from William Booth, making his first tour of North America since Lieutenant Eliza Shirley held the first Salvationist meeting in the US in Philadelphia in 1879.

Margaret was born in Easington, Co Durham in 1864 but her family moved to Bishop Auckland in the early 1870s and eventually to Leeds.

Tamar was born in Blyth, Northumberland in 1861 and moved to Newcastle in 1879 with her parents, Bolton and Alice Stafford. An obituary for Bolton in 1915 describes him as a former master mariner who gave up the sea in the late 1870s, joining the Salvation Army in Blyth in 1879. He was to become one of their "pioneer workers" in the North East. Bolton briefly ran a Temperance Hotel in Blyth which was badly damaged by fire in 1879 and presumably resulted in the move to Newcastle where he worked as a warehouseman. Several of his family members also joined the SA. These included son Bolton, who was a bandsman, daughters Tamar and Jane (whose husband Harry Rogers became a brigadier) and a number of his grandchildren.

The following photo of Margaret was also taken in Scranton.

There are also two "tintype" photos - the one on the left is definitely Margaret and the one on the right looks like Tamar. They are both wearing their Salvation Army badges and elaborate bonnets. There is no indication of the location of the photos in this case.

Both Tamar and Margaret subsequently returned to the UK. Tamar married blacksmith Frederick Wilson in Northumberland in the summer of 1890 and eventually returned to North America - she died in British Columbia in 1923. However, Margaret did not have long to live - she died of tuberculosis in Leeds, Yorkshire on 30 January 1891 and was buried in St Mark's Church, Woodhouse, Leeds four days later.

The final photo of Margaret was taken in Bishop Auckland so it looks like she was in the Salvation Army before the family moved to Leeds. She appears older here than in the Scranton photos.

The following photo was taken by the same photographer in Bishop Auckland but the subject remains unidentified.

Another unidentified member of the Salvation Army appears in a photo taken in Willington on Tyne (on the north side of the Tyne near Wallsend).

Finally there are pictures of the Booth family - first of all William Booth.

And this is his wife Catherine.

I think this one is their daughter Emma - the dedication written on the back reads "To our darling Weldon who will always be true to God and the S.A".