Elias Nixon established a Green Grocer business in 1881 or 1882 at 71 Warrington Lane Scholes Wigan having previously been a Collier. Elias died in 1887 after a road traffic accident, the inquest returning an open verdict but noting that Elias who was driving and a passenger had appeared drunk. Elias’s occupation is given as Hawker in his posthumous son’s birth certificate so maybe he was selling goods from a cart.
After Elias’s death his wife Elizabeth took over the business and moved to 86 Darlington Street Scholes Wigan.
Elizabeth’s son Thomas was working as a Grocer by the 1901 census.
Elizabeth’s son Alfred was also working as a Grocer’s Assistant for his mother by the 1921 census, having previously been a Postman, then in the armed forces during the First World War. Alfred had Malaria from the First World War, maybe that stopped him taking more charge of the business as in the 1939 Register Alfred was a Retired Grocers Assistant.
In the 1921 census Thomas was a Grocers Manager for his mother. At this stage the Nixon family occupied 3 adjacent houses in Darlington Street Scholes Wigan, 86 was the Grocer business, Elizabeth and son Alfred were living at 84 and son Thomas and his family were living at 82.
Elizabeth died aged 76 in 1931 and Thomas died aged 54 in 1935, being a Grocer.
Thomas’s son Thomas took over the business and he was a still a Grocer in the 1939 Register (also involved where Thomas’s son Alfred and Thomas’s daughter Margaret) but by the time of his daughter’s marriage in 1960 he was an Engineer so the business is likely to have be wound up between 1939 and 1960.
Elias was the brother of Susannah who ran the Barton Grocers with her husband Thomas in nearby Harrogate Street Central Wigan.
Norman And Marian Barton Family Tree 