39.24 – Alice, Joseph and John Willan

Not every grave has a long story – some are pretty short, because we have so little to work from. This is one of those graves. Maybe you know something we don’t?

John Willan and Alice Eckersall were both from Whitefield in Prestwich, and their journey here was probably purely down to the Industrial Revolution. They were married in Prestwich in 1829 and all three of their children were born there. There was Elizabeth in 1830, Joseph in 1832, and Mary in 1834. The Willans, along with some other Willans (likely siblings of John’s) came to Todmorden at some point after that and these Willans settled at Toad Carr. John worked as a cotton warper, setting up power looms so that the weavers could begin their side-to-side work.

In February 1840 Alice died, and in July Joseph followed her. John hired a female servant to help look after his daughters, which would have cost him not a little amount of money. Her name was Hannah Garnet and if she was any relation to John or Alice we haven’t figured it out. She was a fleeting figure in the girls’ lives at any rate. When John died in 1846 Hannah disappeared, and the two girls went to live with other families in Todmorden. They grew up, got married, and one is buried here along with her husband’s family (Elizabeth Collins, 1859) and the other is buried in Fall River, Massachusetts in the USA (Mary Fielden, 1886).