Emily Tweedale, born in 1831, was the oldest surviving daughter of Lancashire woolen manufacturer John Tweedale. She was married in Whitworth in 1855 to George Atkin, a Liverpool businessman, who had inherited his father’s tea company. Later his successful firm, Geo. Atkin & Co., also invested in asphalt byproducts. Her husband, a Liberal, was also a justice of the peace for neighboring Birkenhead, where the family lived. They had nine children of whom only four survived to adulthood, three having died in October, 1870. Of her two surviving sons, one, Hope Tweedale Atkin, married Sir William Dawson’s youngest daughter Eva in 1890 in Montreal; the couple then returned to Birkenhead where their first child was born in 1891.