Blind Lane royalty, or rather, Blind Lane lifers. Three generations of Dawsons are here and their stories are brief, but still interesting.
Thomas Dawson and Esther Fielden (or Fielding) were married in April 1838 at St. Chad’s, only a short time before the birth of their son James. We can’t go further back than that because we can’t figure out where Esther is from or which Thomas is this Thomas, even with their fathers’ names on the marriage certificate! Both families lived in the Toad Carr/Blind Lane area though, and this would not change for a looooooong time.
Little James had a short life, dying in 1839, and while he’s buried here at Christ Church we don’t know where he is. More children followed though – Amelia, Thomas, James 2 (who also died very young, only 25 weeks old in his case), Susy, Fielden, Betsy and finally Emma in 1853. Thomas was a stonemason but his contributions to the history of the town are unclear because of the timescales we’re looking at. He also kept his nose clean so there are no newspaper mentions of him before a magistrate or getting into trouble.
Emma was almost a posthumous baby – Thomas died in June 1853 and Emma was born in the Apr-May-Jun quarter of the year. Son Thomas was only eleven years old when his father died but he was already starting to help in the business, and by 1861 was a stonemason himself. The other children worked with cotton as weavers, doffers, or frame tenters. Together they kept the house going, but Esther died in 1865, and after that everyone theoretically had to make their own way to some degree. What happened next? Well, they didn’t go their own ways at all, not really.
Amelia: Amelia had, in 1860, had an illegitimate son named Arthur. Arthur’s father is unknown and he was raised within the Dawson household. Amelia’s story sadly is a very short one now, because she died in 1867, two years after her mother. Arthur was left to be raised by his maternal aunts and uncles and, to their credit, they did a good job and he remained close to them his whole life.
Susy: Susy never married, and as the eldest sister once Amelia died, became the de facto head of the household. She retained either ownership or the tenancy of the family home at 14 Blind Lane (long since demolished, on the Adamroyd side of the street) and in 1871 was the head of the household. Come 1881 and she still lived there with her nephew Arthur and with Frederick and Emma Pugh and Frederick’s brother Thomas William. She had moved from being a cotton winder to a linen winder so was probably working at Croft Mill near Stackhills, which at that time was the only mill in town as far as we can tell which was producing linen. Susy died in 1886, again with no fanfare or newspaper coverage of her life or death beyond the general notice.
Thomas: Thomas took his time to marry, but when he chose a wife he chose one who had some experience of marriage – and of masons. Susey Butterworth had been born in 1832 and first married stonemason Henry Crabtree. After his death she stayed single for a short while before falling in love with stonemason Riley Cropper. She first had a son with him and then married him, with a certain Thomas Dawson acting as one of the witnesses.
Susey had grown up at Newton Grove so between that and her father John’s employment as…you guessed it…a stonemason, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the two had known each other for a long time. Riley died in July 1871 and in September 1872 Susey and Thomas were wed. His first, her third. And for both, their last.
Susey was 40 when they married and whether by design or not, there were no children of their marriage. Frank had struck out on his own by 1881 and Thomas and Susey were living at Newton Grove then, and Thomas was finding additional work by bidding for jobs with the Todmorden Town Board – streets, flagging, or walls, he was your man (when he was the one whose tender was chosen). Self-employment didn’t last long for him though and by 1891 he was an employee, not an employer. He and Susey stayed at Newton Green and we can more or less say until both their deaths, his in 1906 and hers in 1907. His death, however, actually occurred at Stansfield View in the workhouse section. It’s probably not surprising – being a stonemason is hard work and hard on the body, and you can’t do it forever, and as his health began to decline he would have been unable to work.
Susey stayed at Newton Green until he death the following year, as we said. She’s buried elsewhere.
Arthur: and what about Amelia’s little boy, who stayed with Susy Dawson at Blind Lane until her death in 1886? Arthur became a weaver and after Susy’s death the Pughs took over the house at 13 Blind Lane, and Arthur stayed with them. Like his uncle Thomas he was late to the marriage game, maybe for financial reasons, maybe for personal reasons, and maybe because he had a little bit of a naughty streak – see his regrettable way of starting the new year in 1889.
But marry he did, in 1900, at the age of 40 – to fellow illegitimate child Ann Johnstone of Garden Terrace in Walsden. It’s almost a shame that her parents are buried at Cross Stone because what a story that is. Agnes Brown from Dumfries came down to Accrington, married a blacksmith named John Johnstone, had one child with him before he disappears from the record, came to Walsden and shacked up with farmer and landlord Martin Mitchell, and had two children with him before finally marrying him in 1865. Ann was the second of those two children and bore the surname of her mother’s first husband as a result. She must have known – but it was a sore point, because on her and Arthur’s marriage certificate they both left the father’s name section blank.
Like his uncle Thomas, Arthur married late, and so he and Ann had no children of their own. They had three years together before Arthur’s death in 1903. Seven years later Ann married her sister Jane’s widower, Ashworth Brown, and the two stayed married until Ann’s death in 1929.