"Starmer" is a household name to collectors of sheet music and appears on innumerable covers dating from the early 1900s to the 1940s.
Their work was of consistently high quality and they were turning out nearly a quarter of all large format covers from the late 1890s to around 1919.
They were sons of James Starmer, a shoemaker, married to Ann E. and living at 26 Woodsley Grove in Leeds.
The 1910 U.S. Census lists the family as living in Long Island, William being noted as a commercial artist and Frederick an illustrator.
The 1930 census records William Starmer as having in 1925 taken a new wife, Edith Mary, born 1871, an Englishwoman who came to North America with her family in 1877.