There have been many ways of spelling the name Alford in the various censuses and registers of births, marriages and deaths - Allford, Halford, Hallford and even Allport! This is perhaps not too surprising for a family which would have been largely illiterate in the 19th century and where names would have been reported verbally.
The earliest Alford we have is Daniel Alford (1801-1845) who was a collier in Dawley Bank, Shropshire. He married Ann Ratcliffe in 1819 and they had 4 children, including a daughter Elizabeth and a son William. Daniel remarried after Ann's death to Mary Powell and in 1841 there is an Elizabeth Powell aged 3 with them - whether illegitimate or from a previous marriage is not known. Daniel and Mary went on to have a further 3 children, including another Elizabeth!
William Alford was born around 1822 and continued to live in Dawley as an iron miner, marrying Sarah Carter in 1841 and raising 7 children, most of whom were also miners.
Richard Alford (1848-1906) worked as an iron miner and later as a coal miner. He continued to live in Dawley until at least 1861 but later moved to Portobello near Willenhall in Staffordshire and married Sarah Ann Vaughan (born 1855 in Old Wednesfield) in 1877 in Wolverhampton. By 1881 they had moved to Hucknell Torkard, Nottinghamshire, where they remained.
Sarah was clearly a strong character - as indicated by the fact that many of the next few generations of Alfords have Vaughan as a middle name. At the age of 6 she was in the Wolverhampton Union Workhouse with her father Thomas Vaughan (1832-1899), who was a coal miner from Bangor, Wales, but had clearly fallen on hard times - possibly as a result of injury or illness. Sarah's birth certificate gives her mother's name as Bridget Carr (formerly Garrett), who has not yet been found (apart from a possible sighting in Bilston, Staffordshire, in 1841). By 1871, Thomas and Sarah are in Willenhall, where Thomas is working as a boot and shoe maker and Sarah as a pit bank labourer. Thomas continued to live with Richard and Sarah until his death.
Richard and Sarah had 7 children, of whom the eldest was Thomas Edward Vaughan Alford (1873-1943), another coal miner who married Annie Elizabeth Tye (1874-1954) and moved to the Wakefield area around 1902. They had 8 children including Sue's grandmother Nora Lavinia Vaughan Alford who married Bryant Mahon Young (see Young).
Annie Tye came from a family of agricultural labourers who lived in and around Brandeston and Earl Soham in Suffolk. Her father was Robert Sewell Tye (1843-1929), a widower who married Annie's mother Adelaide (née Kettle) in 1868, moving to Nottinghamshire some time between 1871 and 1881. However, there is no sign of Robert in 1881 and Adelaide is calling herself a widow. She is at the same address in 1891 and listed as married to a James Tye (!), but by 1901 is back with Robert. We have speculated that Robert may have been in prison for a time, but can find no record of this.