This is another multigenerational grave: this time it’s a grandmother, grandson, and a beloved sister and aunt who spent most of her life in service to others, one way or another.
Mary Holt, or Mally as she’s known on this grave and in the record, was born in 1785 on the Lancashire side of the border, although we don’t know just where. Her future husband, cotton mill overlooker Mark Firth, would be born five years later on the Todmorden side. The couple married at St. Chad’s in Rochdale in 1809 and settled first near Heptonstall, but then later moved down towards Cornholme and to a house near Bearwise Mill, where Mark found work. They had five between 1810 and 1818; Hannah, Luke, Ann, Henry, and Mary. Mary was born at the beginning of 1818, and towards the end, Mark died. He was only 28 years old, young even for then, and Mally’s life was thrown into chaos. It didn’t help that their son Luke died soon afterwards. We presume the two are buried together up at Cross Stone but we aren’t sure.
What happened to Mally between 1818 and 1841 is unknown, apart from one event. In 1821 she gave birth to a son who she named Thomas. Thomas’s paternity is, of course, lost to time now. He never knew either, since many years later he left the field blank when he got married. But these things happened (sometimes in the usual way, sometimes because of less welcome circumstances) and Mally was hardly unique in this. Her children were very young and at first it will have been hard for her to make ends meet, but as they grew it got a little easier. And Mark, or her parents, may have been in a position to leave her a little more comfortable than some. By the time we get to 1841 the family were living at Dobroyd and Mally is described as “ind.” on the census, as in, living on independent means. Her children are all there, even Ann, who had herself suffered the loss of her young husband James Helliwell, and was living back at home with her mother, siblings, and daughter Mary Ann. Mary Firth, who is of course another person in this grave, was now 23 years old and working in a cotton mill.
But Henry Firth is named on this stone too, as the unlucky father of little Mark who’s buried here. Henry was a whitesmith and would soon set off for Bacup after marrying Cecilia Sutcliffe in 1842. They had a daughter, Sarah, in 1844, and in 1845 their first son Mark was born. Named for his grandfather, little Mark had a short life. He died on Christmas Day 1845 and was the first Firth buried here. Sadly for the entire family, Mally would be the next one to be buried here, only a month later.
Henry and Cecilia went on with their lives in Bacup, and the rest of the Firth siblings went on with theirs. Mary may have been nursing her mother near the end as she was in another nursing position by 1851 – living with James Taylor, one of the Unitarian Chapel’s ministers, in his home at Waterside as a servant. James was suffering from an unnamed affliction which confined him to the house and which meant the Unitarians had a rotating roster of temporary ministers while he still held the title officially. She took Mary Ann Helliwell with her, as Ann had remarried and for her own reasons not brought Mary Ann into the new household with her. Mary Ann was apparently not servant material; she kept working as a weaver! So we think Mary’s duties in the house were of nurse as much as general servant.
James Taylor died in 1856 and was buried behind the old Unitarian Sunday School, and Mary was once more at sea. She ended up leaving Todmorden altogether and going to live with her sister Hannah in Chadderton. Hannah’s trajectory after Mally’s death had been even similar to Mary’s but slightly more exciting. She had also become a house servant but for the Fielden family – THOSE Fieldens – at Centre Vale Manse. In 1851 the household was made up of Samuel, John Jr., their sister Ellen, and their other sister Ann and her husband Henry Brocklehurst and their daughter. There were as many servants as Fieldens in the house! What stories Hannah could probably tell. How she left their service is unknown but one way or another by the time 1861 rolled around she was making her living as a shopkeeper in Manchester and Mary was with her. No occupation, just there.
This continued for the next decade at least, with 1871 finding the sisters living at the now-demolished Alder Street in Collyhurst. Now they had a lodger paying their rent, David Hiley from Todmorden and his ten year old son Thomas. Who was David? Well, he was a mechanic, and he was a widower. He had married Mary Ann Helliwell in 1859! The couple moved to Manchester and after Mary Ann died in 1868 they moved in with her aunts so Thomas could have some support while David worked. But David remarried in 1872 and Hannah died in 1874, and Mary was once more without someone to share her life with.
Mary, though, was someone whose devotion to her family was not just noticed but returned, and she seems to have always landed on her feet. The 1881 Census shows her in Whitworth living with Edmund Firth, his wife Ellen, and their five children. Edmund was the eldest son of Mary’s half-brother Thomas. Thomas had died in 1860 and Edmund had gone to live with his Collinge grandparents but Mary had clearly kept tabs on him over the years. She’s described as a visitor so perhaps wasn’t living with them, but then again, maybe she was. Where else could she be? A lot of other places, actually. But Edmund and Ellen had five young children and Mary’s services would have been very gratefully received, even with so many of Edmund’s Collinge relatives being nearby.
When we said Mary had other places to be, we meant that she, like Mally, had some means of her own. Hannah no doubt left her some money, and she may have even been left some money from James Taylor that she invested well. By the time 1891 rolled round Mary was at long last back in Todmorden, at 4 Longfield Road (now one of the houses at Fair View), “living on her own means”. No lodgers, no visitors, just Mary. Time for herself. But her relatives were all dead or grown by now so it’s no surprise. Even Henry, the last sibling standing, was gone – he had died in the autumn of 1890. November 1891 was when Mary, the last of Mally’s children, joined all the rest of them in spirit if not in locale. Edmund, her nephew, was present at the end.
