41.53 – Edwin and Sarah Wood and family

Six children, some only young, some grown; the Wood family suffered some terrible losses which are masked by this ornate “wooden” cross. Who were they?

Edwin Wood was born in Ashton under Lyne in 1853, the son of John Wood, a baker and German yeast dealer and his wife Sarah (nee Booth). The yeast was German, not John, we hasten to add…

In the 1871 census Edwin was still living with his parents and siblings in Ashton under Lyne. He is shown on that census as working in a cotton mill. It appears he didn’t like working in a cotton mill as the following year, 1872, Edwin moved to Todmorden and became, like his father, a yeast dealer. We know he arrived in 1872 because on the 4^th August 1876 an advert, stating he was to become an auctioneer in addition to being a yeast dealer, was placed in the newspaper thanking people for their custom for the previous four years. A later newspaper article reveals he’d had a stall on the market since 1872.

On the 9^th March 1877 Edwin, who was living at Cobden, married Sarah Jane Greenwood, from Hanging Ditch, at Todmorden Register Office. She was the daughter of John Greenwood, an iron dresser, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Wild). Sarah gave birth to their first child, a daughter, named Sarah Ellen in June 1877 not long after their marriage. Sadly, she didn’t live long – only three hours – due to her apparently premature birth.

She is mentioned on the gravestone but her name isn’t on the burial register, so doesn’t seem to be buried at Christ Church or didn’t have her burial recorded. They went on to have another 7 children, 4 sons and 3 daughters – three of them died when young, Henrietta who was born and died in 1880, and John James whose birth and death do not seem to have been registered, so was possibly a stillbirth.  Their son, John Edward was six when he died of phthisis and a mastoid abscess in 1892.

Their other four children, Albert, who was born in 1879, Florence, who was born in 1881, Beatrice, who was born in 1884, and William who was born in 1888 all survived to become adults.

In the 1881 census Edwin and his family were living at 6, Rose Street and his business as a ‘Yeast and General Fancy Goods Dealer’ was nearby in Myrtle Street. There aren’t any adverts that specified he sold toys, so they must have come under ‘fancy goods’. By 1891 they had moved to 5 York Street, which was their home and also where his shop was situated. His stature and importance in the town grew during the 1880s and 1890s. His business was thriving and in 1880, as one of the stallholders, he was on the Market Committee.

In 1889 he was nominated to stand as a town councillor and was also nominated to be a member of the school board. He was obviously a valued member of the local Liberal party and may have been elected to the council before 1896 but that’s when I’ve first found him in the newspapers as a Liberal councillor for Langfield Ward. In March 1899 he gave up the shop in York Street, moving (back) to the market (9) and this, presumably, is when the family moved to Major Villas, which is where they were living in 1901. The family had different addresses on each census return, in 1911 they were living in Wellington Terrace, and in 1921 they were in Joshua Street, which is where he was living when he died. (His place of death on his death certificate is 92 Burnley Road as that’s where he was taken when he became ill on the bus – his obituary explains).

He seems to have been a very enterprising man and the Todmorden Advertiser reported on the 15^th September 1899 that he had taken a touring party of 13 people to visit Northern Ireland. In July 1901 he advertised for a tour to the Channel Islands the following month. In 1904, as a member of the Wellington Road Baptist Church, he travelled to Jerusalem and later gave lantern talks  about his experiences. He became an agent for Thomas Cook, organising holidays abroad, Boulogne in 1905 and in 1906 to Brussels, and continued as a booking agent for them in the years up to the start of WW1. He certainly had a good CV for such a job and also seems to have been a success! Between December 1905 and December 1909 he placed 27 adverts regarding a family house to let (which differed very little) so it looks as though he was also a letting agent. Did this man ever stop?

On the 14^th June 1910 Edwin and Sarah’s daughter, Beatrice, died at their home in Wellington Road. She was buried in the family grave, joining her siblings,  on the 17^th June 1910. (I tried to get her death certificate as she was so young when she died, but for some reason it’s not available as a download and I’d have to order a paper certificate from the GRO). Sarah, who by this point must have been a heartbroken mother indeed, died five years later on the 22^nd July 1915 and was buried at Christ Church on the 26^th July 1915. During those war years both of Edwin’s sons served in the Army, Albert with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and William with the Army Service Corps, Motor Transport Section. Both returned home safely but too late for their mother’s relief to be felt.

In 1920, at the Wellington Road Church’s 75^th Anniversary, Edwin spoke of his childhood and being a ‘nipper’. There isn’t any evidence of him working in the mines from the census but if he did it was perhaps another job he didn’t like – and perhaps made him more determined to be successful in business so he wouldn’t have to work in the mills or in the mines.

Edwin died on the 10^th July 1923, almost 8 years after his wife. He was buried at Christ Church on the 13^th July 1923. His obituary in the newspaper gave his cause of death as “heart affection”. I wonder if they put that because his eldest son, Albert, who was a stationer in Manchester, had died earlier that year as a result of appendicitis and pneumonia and they wanted to attribute Edwin’s death to grief. Edwin’s death certificate shows he died of arteriosclerosis and cardiac muscle failure.   

Two of Edwin’s children were still living when Edwin died, his daughter, Florence, who was living with him and his son, William.

Florence had become a dressmaker and had given birth to a daughter, Ada, in 1902 (I obtained the birth certificate to check she was Florence’s daughter). To Edwin and Sarah’s credit they didn’t object so much to this that he threw her out of the house or anything; she continued to live with them and work while raising her daughter, who would be her only child. In 1921 Florence, Ada, Ada’s husband Wilson Crossley and their daughter Irene Wilson Crossley were all still living with Edwin. Florence died on the 9^th March 1928 at Joshua Street and was buried at Christ Church on the 13^th March 1928. Her name is chiselled on the side of the gravestone, on a smoothed out ‘boulder’.

One little geneaological tangent, if you’ll allow it…Edwin’s youngest child William, married Sarah Greenwood (another one!) and they had two sons, Ellis and Russell. Ellis was a good musician and became well known in Todmorden as the leader of a band known as ‘Ellis Wood and the Astorians’. The band was formed in 1930 and was originally known as ‘The Alverado Dance Band’ under the direction of Ellis Wood’ but had changed its name to The Astorians by 1932. The bank played at various venues during the 1930s and early 1940s and by the mid-1940s and into the 1950s was playing every Saturday in the ballroom at the Cooperative Hall.

Ellis played his farewell gig in 1960 and retired from the dance hall circuit.

I haven’t found where William and family are buried. William died in 1963, Sarah in 1972, Ellis in 1992 and Russell in 2005.