Gale, Summit, what’s this now; what are these Littleborough folks doing at Christ Church? The answer is of course that they weren’t always from Littleborough…so what’s the story behind this table tomb, one of a very few in the graveyard and the only one in the public area?
James Scarr was born in Todmorden in 1815 to John and Susan (Helliwell) Scarr, not their first and not their last either. John died in 1822 at their house on Roomfield Lane, which is now the stretch of Halifax Road between Key Sike and the Central Methodist’s, and his and Susan’s last child Hannah died less than a year later. James was seven years old when his father died but his older brothers had already become stonemasons and he followed in their steps.
In 1837 he married Betty Ingham, a nice girl from Newchurch who was the same age as him but who conformed to a caricature of women and made herself out consistently to be a year younger than she really was. Her parents James and Mary (Heap) Ingham were weaver and she was also a middle child. She and James had their first child, Susannah, the same year. She died in 1838 and is buried here at Christ Church in an unknown grave, as is their third child and second son, James (who for some reason is named as Thomas in the baptism and burial registers, but whose parents are named as James and Betty…no, we don’t know either) who also died at one year old in 1842. But other children came and survived and the family settled at Mount Pleasant with Betty’s younger brother Pickup Ingham in tow. Betty and Pickup were close and he would later follow the family to Littleborough.
By 1851 the family were all living at Patmos, James, Betty, Pickup, and their children John, Jane, James and Mary. They would soon start to make some moves though, and the first of these was to Wheatshaw, aka Wetshaw or Weetshaw, a farm above Barewise Wood on the border between Lydgate and Cornholme. Here James made his occupation both mason and farmer for a few short years. Tragedy struck, though, when one day John (who was now sixteen years old and working for Booth and Scholefield’s joiner shop at either Dale Street or Salford Woodyard) was in a fatal accident. The newspapers give more information; John forgot to wedge a door open, the wind blew it shut, and he was startled and fell. The family were all heartbroken and left Weetshaw for Gale near Littleborough, where James died four years later.
Betty was now left a widow with seven children and only seemingly Pickup to help her manage. The family disappear completely from the 1861 Census so we have few clues where they went from here, but in 1871 they were living at Wildernes, cottages just south of the Summit Inn and next to Ebenezer Chapel. All the children apart from James Jr., who had recently married, were at home. Pickup had also found a wife and left home. Betty had two boarders to help make ends meet. She wouldn’t have to worry long because her death came in 1876. She left £200 for her family.
Before then, though, Betty had one last loss to bear. Jane, born in 1844, had grown up. We don’t know her occupation because of the missing 1861 Census record but by 1869 she was 25 years old, and somehow she met George Butterworth of Rochdale. George had been born in Oldham to working parents (an overlooker at a cotton mill and a dressmaker, respectively) and who himself worked as a doffer in a mill in the town. The pair were married in November of 1869 at the Methodist Chapel on Union Street and they set about having a family. They wouldn’t, though. Jane gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in early September 1870 and both died shorty afterwards. The burial register tells the sad story. Jane was 26 years old and Elizabeth was one and a half days old. They were buried here at Christ Church.
George would remarry a few years later.
Back to the other Scarr children. Betty’s death left her remaining children at something of a loose end, especially the girls. Mary had gotten married a few months before Betty’s death and both Frances and Sarah Ann married a few months later. William Henry went with Frances and her new husband to Sladen, just down the road, and Sydney stayed put. These latter children were all born after 1851, some of them not even until after John’s death, which is why their names haven’t come up before now. Sydney is, of course, our last Scarr into the grave here, and his death came in 1880. No suspicious circumstances, no coroner’s inquest, just a death at a young age. Frances had already named her second son after him and hopefully his memory was able to live on that way.