38.16 – James, Sally, James, Greenwood and Sarah Holt

The Holts and Crowthers were people who loved the high windswept places, and sometimes thrived there…sometimes not.

James Holt was born in Todmorden in 1814, two years after his future wife Sally Crowther. Sally was the sister of James Crowther, whose story you might have heard before, and her family were firmly ensconced on the hilltops above Lydgate at Gibbet Farm. After the couple married in 1836 they went to live at Gibbet with Sally’s parents and siblings, and there they experienced joy (three children within six years) and sorrow (two of those children dying before the six years were out). The two who died, Mitchell and Mary, are both buried at St. Mary’s.

(as an aside, we thought the continued use of the name “Mitchell” as a forename in the Crowther family stemmed from James’s son Mitchell, named after his wife’s maiden name, but Mitchell Holt was born a few years before Mitchell Crowther. Maybe the loss of two young, beloved Mitchells was what cemented the name in their minds?)

James and Sally had four more children after those first six years, bringing the total number of living children to five. James was a loom jobber and later overlooker. By 1851 they had left Gibbet for the nearby West End where they would stay for some time. Everyone in the family went into weaving of course, including Greenwood, now their eldest son. Eventually someone offered James enough money to tempt him away from those hilltop farms and almost the entire family decamped to the wilds of Mytholmroyd’s valley bottom. The 1871 Census finds everyone but son James living at Hawksclough. James wanted to stay where he knew the area, and he went to work for his uncle Henry Ormerod at Black Rock Farm above Frieldhurst. His uncle James Crowther had died, after all, and there was a place available at Black Rock for a general servant and hard worker.

Sadly the 1870s were a hard time for the Holts. James died at Black Rock in 1872, and it seems either before then (or as a consequence of then) James and Sally returned to the area and to Knotts Grove. Sally died there in 1874, and James Sr. in 1876. Three figures in four years, all dead and into the grave here at Christ Church since St. Mary’s was no longer open to burials. Greenwood had, by now, gotten married and he and his wife Sarah decided to forsake Yorkshire and instead find themselves a high windswept place over in Lancashire, which is how they found themselves at High Lee in Shore.

Back to this marriage: in 1866 Greenwood, an overlooker, met Sarah Stansfield while the family still lived above Lydgate. Sarah’s father John was a mechanic and she, her mother Sally and her siblings (including Mary who would go on to be buried not far from this grave) grew up first at Hartley Royd Lodge, confusingly enumerated right next to Fiddler’s Well on the 1851 Census, and then later down at the valley bottom again at Lineholme. No doubt the Stansfields and Holts crossed paths at work or church or leisure somehow. When James and Sally went to Mytholmroyd Greenwood and Sarah went too. Their first two children were Tod lasses but the next three were born over beyond Hebden Bridge, and by the time of their son Edward’s birth in 1880 they had made the move.

Shore Mill is where they will have all worked, and while Greenwood and the older children did so Sarah stayed home and kept going…by 1891 their eldest, Alice, had married and moved out, but the other seven children were still home and all over the age of ten were weavers or cotton operatives. Greenwood had been supplementing his income by looking after the farm, with Sally’s not inconsiderable assistance, but by 1901 he had given up the weaving and decided to semi-retire into only the one job. His health began to bother him though and the Holts moved from High Lee at last to Sutcliffe Place, a little further down the hillside, where in 1909 James died. Sarah stayed on with her second-eldest, Ada, and youngest, William, helping her keep things going.

Despite growing up and moving out, all the Holts continued to work at Shore Mill, and the 1921 Census shows Sarah still supported by Ada and now also Mary Ellen, with both employed there. When Sarah died in 1924 she died lucky enough to not just see all eight of her children live to adulthood but also to see her sons all avoid WW1; not many mothers and sons were so fortunate in that regard. There are probably still a host of Holts in Littleborough today who can trace their roots back to this Tod family…it would be interesting to see if any come across this post.