Grid Reference: P 3a

Thomas George Adey

Personal Life

The Adey family are recorded in Wednesfield a far back as the 1750 establishment of St Thomas’s Church as a chapel of ease to the mother church in Wolverhampton (St Peter’s).  Thomas George Adey’s family line went directly back to those early Adey’s.

Thomas was born in Wednesfield in 1878, the last child of eight siblings to Frederick and Julia Adey. Frederick was a locksmith, but must have changed his trade at some point as an 1896 newspaper article reports that a boy from Bilston Road was charged with stealing a horse and trap from Frederick Adey, fruiter, of Wednesfield.  This is certainly Thomas’s father as Thomas himself later became a Fruiterer & Potato merchant. As for the thief, he was “severely reprimanded and discharged”.

Thomas continued in his father’s footsteps trade-wise for the rest of his life.  In 1897 he married Alice Doughty from Penkridge and they had 3 children. Alice died in 1926, and her probate record described her as ‘of the Crown Inn’ Wednesfield. When Thomas himself passed away in 1947, probate gave his home address as 63a Vicarage Road, but he died at the Royal Hospital in Wolverhampton.