I am researching my family tree and found that my husband's great grandfather apparently played for Clapton Orient and/or Bury football clubs before WWI, but I seem to have ground to a halt in identifying if he was a player for either or even if he did indeed start for them.
His name was James William Williams, born around 1884 and he died on the Somme in 1918. He is NOT the welsh footballer of the same name, but a North East England "sometime coal miner". He is identified as a "Professional Footballer (Deceased)" on the grandmother's marriage certificate, which started our search. We found reference to his playing for Orient in a newpaper article -(Sunderland Daily Echo of 1914) unfortunately it referenced him abandoning my great-grandmother, but the clubs mentioned were Clapton Orient and Bury.
I've tried the fan club of Orient, but Bury went into administration.
So, rather a long-winded way of asking if anyone has any ideas of finding out if he did actually play football professionally? My father-in-law (now in his 80's) also had some football trials in his youth, so we're trying to clear this up for him.
Many thanks in advance for reading this, Sarah
Researching: Williams (Gloucs, Durham), Dockerty (Durham, Co Mayo, Yorkshire), Curran (Durham, Co Monaghan), McCourt (Cumberland, Durham)
