Two people who lived a quiet life – not a lot of story to tell here – and two of their three infants who now have their names back.
Sutcliffe Greenwood was born at Rodwell End in 1810 to William and Ginney Greenwood. He was baptised at Cross Stone where the register notes William’s occupation as stonemason. You get no points for guessing what trade Sutcliffe followed when he grew up. In 1830 he married Hannah Stott of New Gate Bottom on the Burnley Valley bottom, who was seven years his senior. They began a family with admirable pacing, one child arriving roughly every other year for a long time. Not every couple’s plans went so well; not every husband was so considerate, not every wife was so lucky or healthy.
The couple settled at New Gate Bottom, aka Gatebottom (to some people it wasn’t very new, maybe?) by 1841 and the census then shows four children – Betty, James, John and Stott. Stott was born in 1841 and was only five months old at the time the census was taken, in June. There were a few stonemasons and quarrymen living at Gatebottom and Newton Grove at that point and one wonders what projects they were working on there. It wasn’t quite the point that the railway to Burnley was being built, so the work Sutcliffe was doing must have been part of the general expansion of the town down towards Lydgate and Cornholme.
Sutcliffe and Hannah would have four more children, but only one who would live more than a few weeks. That’s why the last line on this stone reads “Also of their three infants”. Next was Samuel, who was born and died in 1843, then Ann in 1845 who did survive, and then Sutcliffe, who was born and died in 1847. Samuel died from debility, aka weakness, and Sutcliffe because of a difficult delivery. Not surprising since in 1847 Hannah was 44 years old, which can be a risky age to have a baby even nowadays. Samuel lived for two weeks, but Sutcliffe only lived for twenty minutes.
The third named infant must have been born and died long before the GRO. Thinking of Sutcliffe and Hannah’s good timing for babies, it’s possible that their first lost child was back in 1831, a year after their marriage, and two years before Betty was born.
Now: where are these children buried? Good question. Sutcliffe and Hannah baptised four of their children at Patmos Chapel in November 1842, and Ann was baptised there in 1846, but none of the other three children who died as infants were either baptised there or buried there. They aren’t buried at Christ Church either unless their burials weren’t recorded by the sexton, which is entirely possible. Perhaps they’re at Cross Stone, perhaps they’re at Myrtle Grove…they could be anywhere. We’ve identified some of their names, and that’ll have to be enough.
There’s not a whole lot else to tell about Sutcliffe and Hannah’s lives. Sutcliffe continued to work as a stonemason, taking first his sons James and Stott and later his grandson Sutcliffe on as apprentices, and moving around to where the work was. This paid off as Sutcliffe was able to hire on men and was no longer a jobbing labourer but a contractor. They went from Gatebottom to Peel Street in Walsden, then to “London Road” (which on the 1861 Census is given as being just after Cobden and Patmos in the town centre). Side note: there were a surprising number of Sutcliffe Greenwoods out there, which led to the Todmorden Advertiser having to publish an awkward correction to a piece they ran about Sutcliffe having been summoned for non-payment of the poor rate. It was the Salford Sutcliffe Greenwood, not (our) Patmos Sutcliffe Greenwood. Whoops.
Finally the Greenwoods moved to Dalton Street where in early 1871 Hannah died. This meant she didn’t appear on the 1871 Census. Then it was just Sutcliffe, son Stott, daughter Ann, James’s son Sutcliffe and Ann’s son Sam. Sutcliffe became a coal dealer soon after this and moved to a house on Stansfield Road. This change of occupation and scenery was shortlived, as he died in 1873. He died well off – stone and coal had paid off for him, and he left an estate worth under (but not much under) £1500, which was a modest but still decent inheritance to leave behind for someone of his occupation.