If you have a fondness for St. Peter’s in Walsden, then this one of the men to thank.
George was born in either 1803 or 1807 – depends which source you trust – in Stansfield. His father was supposedly James Crabtree, he would say later at both his marriages, but there are no baptism records either within the Anglican or non-conformist churches in the area for his birth…so perhaps we need to start out already with a pinch of salt. There’s other reasons for wondering if he had a different surname at birth than Crabtree. Because of the nature of pre-1837 record keeping we don’t know a great deal about him until we get to 1841, when he appears living on George Street with a teenage girl named Sarah Greenwood as his domestic servant. The census gives his age as 30 – rounded down from up to 34 – but a man born in 1803 would have been aged as 35 on that particular census. Sarah Greenwood is aged as 15. Strangely her actual relationship to George is obscured by this and subsequent censuses. Sarah was George’s niece, born in March 1825 to Robert and Sally (Crabtree) Greenwood of Slack in Heptonstall.
In 1844 George got married, to Sarah Holdsworth of York Street. Sarah had been born Sarah Horsfall and was a wealthy widow with three grown children, and twelve years George’s senior. Or perhaps more; on their marriage certificate his age is given as 37, which would give him a birthdate of…1807. Which one is it George? Anyway, wealthy widows have their perks, and if the two were in love then that was a bonus. The couple had four years together before her death in 1848.
George also made the papers the following year as the joiner contracted to do the carpentry at the new St. Peter’s church being built in Walsden, which would have been quite the feather in his professional cap. The work led to more work, and so in 1851 we find the widowed George living at Cross Street with Sarah Greenwood, still, and the census mentioning that he employed twelve men in his joiner and building business. Tax records show that he owned several houses on School Lane as well as a shop and a wood yard (unsurprisingly), so his success belies the question: what other buildings in Todmorden did he and his men work on? Frustratingly the record is silent on this.
George found love again in 1854, marrying Elizabeth Barker, the daughter of a lime merchant. It was George’s turn now to be the “senior partner” in the marriage as Elizabeth was either 29 or 25 years his junior, depending on which DOB you believe for him. It was, however, also George’s turn to be the first to go. He died in April 1856 and was buried here on his lonesome (his first wife Sarah had been buried with her first husband and infant daughter at St. Mary’s). Elizabeth remarried the following year and set off for an exciting life crossing back and forth across the Atlantic with her wealthy and more age appropriate new husband, Sidney N. Matthewman. Sarah Greenwood stayed in Todmorden, living at Cobden and taking up work as a power loom weaver. She died in 1862 at her sister Grace’s house in Walsden at the age of 35 and is buried at St. Thomas’s church in Heptonstall.
Sadly, a modern visitor to St. Peter’s won’t see much of any of George’s hard work on the church – all that woodwork was destroyed in the fire of 1948 – and the attached school was sold off a long time ago. In the end the only monument to him we have left to go and look at is this stone. We’re sure there’s more though, there must be more! So if we discover anything else we’ll add it to this story.