This is the story of a merry widow who had a second chance at happiness, and her only child.
Susannah Mitchell – you guessed, didn’t you – was born in 1795 to Joseph Mitchell and an unknown mother, we know not where. We know only that in June 1818 she married Samuel Holt at St. Chad’s in Rochdale. Samuel’s occupation is unclear to us but the pair would eventually settle at Wadsworth Mill, where we think – think! – he may have been a grocer. Susannah was 23 when she got married for the first time; Samuel was a little older. 22 years older, in fact. So it may come as no surprise that he predeceased her. The couple did actually have nearly twenty years of married life together, but interestingly, no children we’ve found any trace of.
When Samuel died in April 1837 at their home, now on Bridge End, he was buried at St. Mary’s. Susannah found herself a 42 year old widow with no children and an unclear income stream. By December though she was giving marriage a second chance, this time with weaver James Crowther. Their marriage certificate describes them both as “of full age”, ie. over 21 years old, but that buries the lede slightly. James was 23, nineteen years younger than Susannah. Susannah was in fact only three years younger than James’s mother!
But the pair were happy, and at the age of 43 Susannah found herself in an entirely new situation – pregnancy. Their son Mitchell, named for her maiden name, was born in April 1839. James, formerly a weaver, was now working as a shopkeeper, which makes us consider that maybe he took over Samuel Holt’s old business (if that was his business, and this is purely speculation). Sadly Susannah didn’t get to spend much time with her second husband and son because in November that year she contracted typhus and died at the small isolation hospital at Cinderhill.
James Crowther’s parents, John and Mary, were hand loom weavers and farmers by trade, and up on the hillside above Scaitcliffe there were several Crowthers working the farmland around Gibbet Farm, which used to sit near the top of the clough, between Brink Top and Dyke Green farms. Now it’s a ruin, but then there were several buildings making it up and the land itself was upwards of 60 acres. After Susannah’s death James gave up the shop and moved back up to Gibbet with little Mitchell so that his mother and sisters could help look after the seven month old baby while he went back to work, now as a power loom weaver. Sadly Mitchell failed to thrive and in February 1840 he died from convulsions, and was buried here with his mother.
James seems to have never moved on from his wife and son’s death, and as all the other Crowther siblings moved out and away, he stayed behind. In 1851 and 1861 it was just John, Mary and James in their particular farmhouse up on the hillside. James never remarried. January 1864 dealt him a double blow with both parents dying within a few weeks of each other. They’re both buried at Christ Church too but their graves aren’t marked. James left the hillside and went down to the valley bottom and across the road to his brother in law Henry Ormerod’s farm at Blackrock, where he lived out the last few years of his life before dying under mysterious circumstances in September 1867.
We say mysterious only because his death wasn’t certified, instead being notified to the registrar by Henry. A check of the newspapers reveals no mention of any coroner’s inquests. Natural causes, unnatural causes, broken heart? You decide for yourselves. He is also buried at Christ Church in an unknown location. Maybe it’s here, maybe it’s with his parents…we think it could be here, if only because the Ormerods would have known this grave was here. We base this off of the fact that in 1850 Henry and his wife, Susan (Crowther) Ormerod, had two sons. One was named Abraham after Henry’s father, and one was named John after Susan’s father. When Susan gave birth that year to their third son, they named him Mitchell.
So yes, the then ten-years-gone Mitchell remained clear in their memories, and it doesn’t seem implausible as a result that they made sure his father got to be buried with him.