George H. Watson

Biographical notes
 GEORGE H. WATSON. George H. Watson was the owner of a music manuscript variously dated from 1880-1890. He is thought to be the George Watson who was born in 1859 and baptised at Skeyton Parish Church on July 3rd, the son of Richard, laborer (born in Felmingham) and Mary Watson, both of Skeyton, East Anglia. He was one of seven brothers and five sisters and was likely one of the older (but not the eldest) children, who records show were born to Richard and Mary between 1854 and 1878. The 1871 census lists him, at age 12, as an agricultural worker, and, in the 1881 census as an Odd Ware Maker (age 22), of Skeyton. He married Mary Knights of the nearby village of Swanton Abbot in 1883 and, by the 1891 census, the had two sons, aged 7 and 3. Watson was identified as a 'brickmaker' in the census document. In the new century the Watson family had moved to Fern Cottage, Cromer Road, North Walsham, and in 1911 their grown sons still resided with them, as did a couple of lodgers. George H. Watson died in North Walsham District in 1944. A few of the tunes in Watson's collection were accurately copied from Peter Milne's Middleton's Selection of Strathspeys, Reels, etc. for the Violin (1870).