A plot marker with the initials J. D. opened up the story of several Davieses buried here at Christ Church, quite possibly in this very plot. But who was here first?
James Davies – our J. D. – was born in Todmorden in 1798. He was a younger brother of Peter Davies at 37.9 and one of the sons of Peter and Margaret (Pearson) of Preston, who settled here midway through their marriage and had a son and two daughters in Todmorden. James was a Walsden lad and became a timber sawyer and lived at Gauxholme.
In 1834 he married Mary Marshall, another Tod lass, who was ten years his junior. They settled at Knowlwood in the Butcher Hill area and began their family. Each child was a neat two years apart: Margaret in 1836, Elizabeth in 1838, Peter in 1840 and twins Alice and Mary Hannah in 1843, as if to make up for the slightly longer period in between. Alice died in 1845, a year before their final child Ann was born, and was buried at St. Mary’s. Ann joined her the same year she was born. This left James and Mary with just four children. Still, they were luckier than many around them!
Elizabeth is the key child, because she grew up, and at some point she met fellow Knowlwood resident Whitaker Stansfield. Whitaker was a mechanic, a grinder specifically, and the two caught each other’s eye. We are assuming that Whitaker was Elizabeth’s first love…maybe he wasn’t? We don’t know because back then you couldn’t register an illegitimate child with its father’s name. Anyway, in November 1858, the 20 year old Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Alice Hannah.
In March the following year Alice Hannah died from convulsions just shy of four months old. By this time St. Mary’s had closed their graveyard for all but a very small number of burials and James had already purchased a plot here at Christ Church so his family could remain together. This included grandchildren. Either side of this grave are burials from November 1858 and April 1859, and Alice Hannah is the only D surname buried in between those dates, so we think the circumstantial evidence lines up pretty well.
So that’s the first person into this grave; what came next? First a double bereavement for the Davies family in 1860 with the loss of both James and Mary Hannah. Meanwhile Whitaker and Elizabeth has gotten married in the summer of 1859 and soon had their first legitimate child, their son James William. Tragedy followed them though and in 1862 he died following an overdose of opium given to him by Whitaker to help treat an unnamed illness.
He was buried here with his sister, aunt and grandfather. At least we assume so – but Whitaker’s father Thomas died only a few weeks later and his mother Margaret in 1863, and both are also buried in apparently unmarked graves at Christ Church, so there’s a chance he’s in with them.
Whitaker’s journeyman status meant that he was moving around constantly and so he and Elizabeth moved from Todmorden to Rochdale to Bury to Wakefield and back and around again, and again, and again. More children followed – Margaret Ann, Mary Hannah, and Betsy. Betsy was their last, born in 1869 and died in 1870 not long after Elizabeth’s mother Mary also passed away. Betsy wasn’t buried here but Mary was, so that brings us now to five family members of James Dawson potentially in this grave: granddaughter Alice Hannah, James himself, daughter Mary Hannah, grandson James William (maybe), and wife Mary.
Whitaker Stansfield died in 1876 and was buried in Wakefield, and Elizabeth returned home with her remaining two daughters. Margaret Ann married Tom Greenwood and Elizabeth stayed with their little family first at their home on Wilson Street and then lodging with Alice Agnes (Stansfield) Crosland – not a relative of Whitaker’s that we can identify – until her death in 1904. Strangely though…after all that…Elizabeth was buried at Cross Stone. It makes sense though, since her surviving daughters may not have known about all their maternal relatives at Christ Church. The eldest was only seven years old when the final Davies relative died after all. These things happen in life and death!