Month: November 2018

Godfrey Turner, who was almost certainly the first southerner to play for Everton Football Club, came from an eminent family background. His father, Charles, was a prominent floriculturist in Victorian England and was the lessee of the Royal Nurseries at Slough, where he employed around 100 people. He had formerly held the licence of a flower nursery at nearby Chelvey with his wife, Susannah. Godfrey, their sixth child, was born there on 26 July 1854. Godfrey was educated at Crawford School and Twickenham College, after which his movements are something of a mystery. Official FA records place him acting as umpire at…

Unlike many of the early Everton football players who met on Stanley Park, Thomas Fayer did not come from the newly-established Anglican community around the Breckfield Road area, but from an Anglo-Irish neighbourhood in another part of Everton. His father, William, had been born in Preston where he had met and married Newry-born Anna Horn before moving to settle at 151 Great Homer Street in Liverpool. Their first child, Thomas, was born here on 11 January 1866 and baptised at the church of St Anthony. The family later moved to Rokerby Street where two additions to the family were baptised…

During the 1881-82 season, Everton were faced with a number of injuries to players and selectors were forced to cast their net wider in order to strengthen the team for an away fixture against Northwich Victoria. This process led them to enlist the help of Frederick G Heaton. Heaton was born in 1858, near the Staffordshire town of Leek, where his father Edwin was a land agent. Frederick, was the fifth child born to his wife Elizabeth, and were shown on the 1861 census living at Basford Villa, Chaddesden. Frederick first appeared playing football, under the rules of Staffordshire FA,…