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Cecily Emma Mercer was born April 21, 1876 in Great Harwood, Lancashire, England To Albert Mercer (b 1851) and Margaret E. Foster (b 1855, d 1898). Cecily had a much younger sister Florence. In 1898, Cecily's mother died and her father remarried a woman 1/2 his age with whom he had two more children, David and Winifred. The new wife didn't want to care for the older children and made life difficult for them. Florence was sent away to live with an aunt and Cecily quickly found a husband named Sagar who was a furniture maker in Great Harwood. Cecily had 3 children, Albert, Marie and Harold. Soon after Harold was born, her husband died. They did not have much money and Cecily was having a difficult time away from the priveledged life she had known growing up (when her father died, all the family money went to the second wife.) She then placed her children in an orphanage and fled to Blackpool (a resort city on the coast) and met her 2nd husband, mr. Williams-Williams, Lord Dunblair. She became Lady Dunblair. |
| The new couple entertained lavishly and had many shooting parties at their hunting lodge in Scotland (see pic on right - Cecily is 1st seated woman on left.) As time progressed, they squandered his money and he became a sort of con man and went to jail with heavy debts where he died. Cecily came back to Great Harwood and lived with her oldest son Albert and later, having borrowed money from her brother in law, returned to Blackpool. In 1937, she moved out to Los Angeles with her daughter Marie to reunite with her youngest son, Harold who had moved to Los Angeles in the 1920's and was now doing well in the oil business. Cecily was an odd woman who played the piano beautifully and enjoyed going to funerals (many of which she only read about in the paper!) She died in 1955 of perforated ulcers. |
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