Page "Gerald Gardner (Wiccan)" Paragraph 4

Gardner's family were wealthy and upper middle class, running a family firm, Joseph Gardner and Sons, which described itself as " the oldest private company in the timber trade within the British Empire.

" Specialising in the import of hardwood, the company had been founded in the mid-18th century by Edmund Gardner ( b. 1721 ), an entrepreneur who would subsequently become a Freeman of Liverpool.

Gerald's father, William Robert Gardner ( 1844 – 1935 ) had been the youngest son of Joseph Gardner ( b. 1791 ), after whom the firm had been renamed, and who with his wife Maria had had five sons and three daughters.

In 1867, William had been sent to New York City, in order to further the interests of the family firm.

Here, he had met an American, Louise Burguelew Ennis, the daughter of a wholesale stationer ; entering a relationship, they were married in Manhattan on 25 November 1868.

After a visit to England, the couple returned to the US, where they settled in Mott Haven, Morrisania in New York State.

It was here that their first child, Harold Ennis Gardner, was born in 1870.

At some point in the next two years they moved back to England, by 1873 settling into The Glen, a large Victorian house in Blundellsands, a seaport in Lancashire, north-west England, which was developing into a wealthy suburb of Liverpool.

It was here that their second child, Robert " Bob " Marshall Gardner, was born in 1874.