MAY I use your letter column to find relatives in Accrington?

I am trying to contact any members of the Whittaker family. They were relatives of my grandmother, whom I went to see during my National Service in 1948.

I was kindly invited for tea one day, in Cotton Street, but couldn't visit longer, I was on embarkation leave, going to Egypt.

Unfortunately, my grandmother died while I was abroad, and I didn't keep in touch. Her name was Mary, she married a Frederick Dean, had a baby girl, then emigrated to America in 1892 with their three-month-old child.

They had a further five children there but returned to Accrington when a typhoid epidemic broke out in Derby, Connecticut, about 1908. They then took over tenancy of the Hargreaves Arms Hotel, Accrington, until another move to the Ogden Arms in Manchester, where Frederick died of pernicious anaemia in 1928. I am trying to confirm dates of that period.

FREDERICK MASON, 22 Dilston Avenue, Hexham, Northumbria NE46 1JE.