Charles Edmund's Story.
EARLY LIFE
Charles was born on 20th April 1897 at Bury, Lancashire, the son of Edmund and Margaret O'Connor.
In the 1901 census, four-year-old Charles was at 38 Mill St, Macclesfield with two spinster aunts (or possibly great-aunts), Mary and Elizabeth Walsh, aged sixty and fifty-four respectively, and their thirty-year-old niece, Mary Ellen Byrne; all three women were milliners. Ten years later Charles was back in Bury with his family.
Charles emigrated to Canada in 1915, leaving Liverpool on the Northland bound for Montreal. He stated on the passenger list that he was a journalist.
Edmund and Margaret O'Connor later lived at Birtle Dene, Hardhorn Rd., Poulton-le-Fylde, Preston, Lancashire.
Charles attended Bury Grammar School and more information about his life is available on the Bury Grammar School Roll of Honour website.
WW1 SERVICE
Charles enlisted in Montreal on 28 June 1916 and was killed in action on 16 August 1917 during an attack north of Lens.
COMMEMORATION
Private Charles O'Connor is buried in Grave Ref. I. H. 17. in Aix-Noulette Communal Cemetery Extension, in France. His mother asked for the inscription JESUS MERCY, MARY HELP to be added to his headstone.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission holds casualty details for Private Charles O'Connor, and he is listed on the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First World War website.
In Macclesfield, Private Charles O'Connor is commemorated on St Alban's Church war memorial. Elsewhere, he is commemorated on the Bury Grammar School Roll of Honour.
SOURCES
GRO (England & Wales) Index: Births
Census (England & Wales): 1891, 1901, 1911
Canadian Personnel Records of the First World War
Ancestry: Canada, War Graves Registers (Circumstances of Casualty) records
Find My Past: Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960
Commonwealth War Graves Commission website
Bury Grammar School Roll of Honour
Photo: Bury Guardian
Research by Rosie Rowley, Congleton.