We’ve told the story of quite a few of Eli’s children so far, so it’s worth reading about John and William, and James, to learn more about his life. With that being said, pinning Eli down has turned out to be harder than we thought, and required some going back and editing of those other stories to delete information about the wrong Eli Crossley. Would you believe that there were five Eli/Ely Crossleys having children left right and centre in Todmorden in the early 1800s?
John Travis gets us the closest we can manage to being sure of this Eli, although he doesn’t explicitly say who his parents were in and doesn’t name either of his wives. He also gets the order of residences reversed and a bit wrong, which doesn’t help. He also gets two of his sons’ names wrong. Travis is an invaluable resource but every now and then you do need to take what he says with a pinch of salt…
Back to our man though. Our Eli was born in 1776 at Howroyd, although he was baptised in Goodshaw near Haslingden. These Crossleys were Gorpley folks and Eli would, after his first marriage to Sally Farrar in 1797, settle at Midgleden and work as a farmer (according to Travis – we don’t have any other identifying information about him in those early days).
After Sally’s death in 1809, when she was buried at St. Mary’s, Eli was left with six children between the ages of fourteen and one. No surprise then that in 1810 he remarried. Alice started her life as Alice Mitchell, although several trees (including ones we trust) name her as Alice Mitchell Higgin. A mystery, you love those, we hear you cry! Well this one is staying a mystery. We have no clue where the Higgin comes from. There are Alice Mitchell baptisms around the right time which could be hers, but almost all those parents were married, and not a single Higgin to be found amongst those who weren’t.
Alice was Eli’s age and the pair got busy. In fact there was quite a lot of being busy in multiple ways, because it wasn’t until 1813 that Eli and Alice got round to baptising their children. Edward, Eli and Sally’s last child, was baptised on the same day as Eli and Alice’s first and second born together, Henry and Alice Jr. – those baptisms also featured a new location, Cross Lee, and the occupation of weaver. Eli and Alice would eventually have five children together to complement his six with Sally.
Now…you’re thinking of all those Elis and wondering if we haven’t gotten something wrong. A lot of research has gone into this and there’s almost no direct evidence that these two groupings of people – Eli and Sally, Eli and Alice – share the same Eli. By 1841 it was just Eli and Alice in their home at the long-lost cottages on Mark Lane, with daughter Hannah and her husband William Pickles and their children in the house too. All the children from his first marriage had flown the coop and weren’t nearby to help confirm the hypothesis. However, think back to John and William’s story, and maybe you’ll know what comes next.
Eli died in 1849 and Alice was now more or less alone. John died in 1850 and William for some reason decided to come back to Todmorden, leaving brothers Thomas and Edward in Halifax working as picker makers. William instead went to work for his brother James at Lydgate, and lived at Newton Grove with…Alice, his stepmother. That’s the link that brings Eli-and-Sally and Eli-and-Alice together and confirms the match of the man. Alice died in 1852, being laid to rest with Eli, and William went to rest with John at his death in 1854.
In summary: thank you, John Travis, for helping clear a few things up…but it turns out that even you were no match for all those Eli Crossleys.