Henry was an interesting chap in his own right, but this is yet another grave where side quests are inevitable and unavoidable when you’re trying to piece things together. When we first began clearing the yard we found a saucepan near this particular grave and someone distractedly balanced it on top of the lancet, with a frying pan (who brings a frying pan to a graveyard? And then leaves it there??) soon joining it. Hopefully Henry isn’t too cross at us for leaving them on there; it’s something of a landmark now for us.
Henry Holt was born in 1814, high up on the hill at Heptonstall. His parents John and Esther (Whitehead) lived up at Slater Ing where John was a labourer of some description. Henry was the baby, the last of six. He became a cotton winder and the Holts came down from the hill and into Walsden where they settled at Shade. Something was wrong within the household though and John and Esther began to live apart from one another. Henry stayed nearby, finding a house at Knowlwood, and he also decided to make a go of marriage himself. In 1836 he married Walsden lass Betty Parker at St. Chad’s in Rochdale and the following year their – his – only surviving child, Ann, was born.
Henry and Betty made the best of things but they did have their losses. A son, Arthur, was born and died in 1839 after only fourteen weeks of life. Henry’s father John died in 1843. Betty was not having any more children, and Henry was distracted by a matter which for reasons unknown was very close to his heart: temperance. He began attending meetings at the Sobriety Hall on Rose Street and meetings at the Oddfellows Hall and apparently was a good enough singer to perform a few songs to warm up the crowds. His enthusiasm was a family affair and Ann began to get involved too, reciting poems and later also singing. Betty doesn’t seem to have been involved in a noteworthy way, there are no mentions of her in the papers, and since there was a women’s temperance society operating simultaneously we would see her mentioned as “Mrs. Holt”, since other women who gave talks or were on the board received mentions in the paper.
Betty died in 1849 and Henry and Ann mourned, but Henry may have already had a cheeky eye aimed elsewhere. Who else would do for a man like him but a fellow sober soldier? And one was nearby: Nancy Law. Nancy gets a mention in Linda Croft’s John Fielden’s Todmorden as an example of women taking leadership and steering roles post-Chartism and she wondered, who was this mysterious Mrs. Law? Was she a Chartist or had relatives in the movement? No, it turns out that Nancy was like Henry – a regular person with a talent for inspiring others. She had been born Nancy Sutcliffe at Ewood, trained as a schoolmistress before having an illegitimate daughter in 1832, and retrained as a dressmaker and milliner. She first married widower James Law of Canteen in Lydgate in 1842, taking his six children in with her own, and after his death in 1848 became active in the temperance movement. Maybe James was part of her inspiration for involvement…who knows. But after Henry’s widowing, she caught his eye, and the two married in early 1850.
Now settled at Union Street with Nancy, Ann, Nancy’s daughter Jane and Nancy’s youngest stepson Amos, Henry continued working as a cotton beamer and as a Sobriety Hall regular. He also travelled to other parts of the upper valley spreading the word. His health began to fail though and we begin to see less of him in the papers and more of Ann, who seems to have been standing in for Henry when songs or recitals were called for.
In 1855 Henry died after an apparently “lengthened” illness.
The epitaph on his stone reads: Hark from the tombs a doleful sound, My ears attend the cry, Ye living men come view the ground Where you must shortly lie. Which is lovely but also, well, doleful, and typical of mid-Victorian death fetishism. Henry’s rest here is rather doleful, though, because he’s alone. Betty and Arthur are at Cross Stone with her family; Nancy, Jane and Jane’s husband (who were all avid temperance folks) moved to Halifax in 1874 and are all buried at Lister Lane; and daughter Ann, of the poems and songs? In the first quarter of 1858 she married a John Barnes, and in the second quarter of 1858 she died and was buried at…you guessed it, Cross Stone. So unlike many adults whose stones “hide” another possible later interment, Henry really does rest here in the singular. He needs adopting. Will you do it?