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Thank you so much for that. I will copy that to David's Great Great Great Nephew whom I told about this today. I know he will be fascinated. There is still a Railway pub in Leyland beside a railway bridge. Not sure if it is the same one. But if it is you can bet he will be heading there for a pint.

Thanks for all the detail about Mary.I had not looked into her yet. Based on the marriage records the Occleston name left the Preston area around the 1880s as I cannot find a later marriage there beyond David Occleston to Sarah Turner in 1881 at St Mary's. Though I have not looked very hard.

I think he and John (David's other child) were the last two Occleston's to marry locally. John seems to have married Margaret Hague in 1878 at St Thomas's. The ages are about right.

Certainly David's third child - Alice - was born in Carlisle, not Preston as the others (though even she was baptised in Preston). As a train driver on the then new main line up toward Scotland Preston and Carlisle were (and, indeed still are) the two major rail centres. So I would imagine they shuttled back and forth a bit.

In 1861 (with Alice just 2) they were back in Preston (at 28 Pedder St) but by 1871 they were now at 9 Charles St in Carlisle with David still driving his trains (he seems to have lived to 1916). His first wife Mary Hodson had died in 1860 and he quickly remarried after the 1861 census (on 5 October) to Margaret Bleasdale (daughter of farmer Thomas Aughton).

They all seem to have been the quick fire remarrying type and the records suggest that your John and my David were close brothers as they seem to have been witnesses at each others various weddings!

David's oldest son, Alice's brother (another John Occleston) was also by 1871 working as a railway fireman at 19. Wonder if he joined the family line as a train driver.

Ancestry has some railway records of the LNWR for the two drivers John and David, by the way, though hard to read and limited in detail.

By 1881 David had left the railways and become an ironmonger. John is elsewhere (not looked for him yet) but the other child David is seemingly assisting his dad in his new business.

Daughter Alice, then 22, has started work as a dressmaker - a profession she kept up after moving to Manchester - somewhere between 1881 and 1886 when she married the already widowed (like everyone in this story!) Henry Isherwood (my friend's great grandfather). He was a handkerchief maker and shirt hemmer so they presumably met professionally first.

By 1891 Alice (now Isherwood) was living in Fallowfield, Manchester and had two of her three children (Henry had 3 from his previous marriage already) and so she was very busy. The two eldest girls from Henry's first marriage seem to have been running her dressmaking business whilst she raised the young ones - one of whom was Clarence Isherwood (b 1889) - my friend's grandfather. 

Clarence was to go on to have an eventful war (he survived the horrors of Gallipoli with the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915). 

Alice's husband, Henry, ended up seriously ill by 1911 and in a home of some sort in Cheshire leaving her to look after her 3 growing children (24,22 and 11 then). She died on 19 November 1920 living at 1 Birch Grove in Weaste, Salford. She left £68 13 s and 8d to Clarence via probate.

After the war he became a wood carver.

Hi, I am doing research for a friend and we seem to be on this same course. He is the great grandson of Alice Isherwood - ne Occleston. They married in Manchester in 1886.

Alice was the daughter of David Occleston, who was the younger brother of John in your search. Like his brother he worked for the L N W R in Preston and was an engine driver working up from a fireman. You will see them both together with James and Alice Whittam in the 1851 census referenced earlier in this thread (12 Ladyman St Preston)

This Alice (Whittam) was their mother because she was married to David and John's father (John Occleston) who married her (as Alice Potter) in Penwortham on 26 July 1819. But John died in Leyland on 23 May 1834 and she then remarried to James Whittam on 13 July 1840.

The Preston Chronicle of 13 September 1862 might help answer your question about John's change of status. It reports a fatal accident when he was driving a banking engine pushing a freight train and someone walked across the tracks and died. Though he was not responsible for the death it very likely was highly traumatic.

Hope this helps.