Two Williams, father and son, with a world between their two jobs, and one of them with one eye on worlds other than these…
William Dixon Sr. was born in 1772, probably in Batley near Leeds. Mary Hepworth was born in, we think, Huddersfield in 1776. Somehow they met, married in 1807, and started a family whose full size we can’t be certain of. Some family trees have eight or nine children, some only have one. Obviously only one is incorrect! In terms of certainty we only have three names: Sarah, born around 1807 and possibly their first child, William Jr., born in 1811, and Harriett, born around 1816. Thanks as always go to the 1841 Census for that. William Sr. seems to have been a corn miller in his younger days but by the time we found him in Todmorden he was working as a loom jobber.
The 1841 Census, by the way, wasn’t taken until the first week of June, much later than normal. How the Dixons got to Todmorden is unknown but by that point they were living at Gauxholme. It might have been a family move; a few doors down was a John Dixon who was of an age to be William and Mary’s son, and two doors down from him was a Joseph Hepworth, who was the right age to be a younger brother to Mary. So many possibilities! But one name is missing from the Dixon household: William Sr. He died, as we know from the gravestone here, on May 10th 1841. His cause of death was debility. The Dixons’ neighbour, Joseph Baume, was the informant at his death.
Mary carried on with Sarah (now Sarah Hardacre) and Harriett, and Harriett’s son Edwin who was illegitimate, his father being Henry Townsend according to his baptism record. Harriett would later marry widower James Taylor, who adopted Edwin as his own, and Joseph Baume must have been a very good friend of the family as he was one of the witnesses…but we’re getting sidetracked. That was in 1846 and whether Mary stayed with Harriett and her new husband or not is unclear. She died the following year and was buried here.
What about William? William had been born in Wakefield as the Dixons made their way from Batley to Tod, and was slow to make his way to the valley. In 1831 he married Susan Sutcliffe of Todmorden, which makes us wonder if William Sr. and Mary had already made their way here and that’s how they connected. Susan was born in Heptonstall in 1811 and while the couple got married at St. Michael’s in Thornhill, Dewsbury, their first child was born in Wadsworth, and apart from their final child William III they would all be born in the Upper Valley area.
William and Susan settled for a time at Lower Mill, Midgehole, the gateway to what’s now Hardcastle Crags. Did he work at Gibson Mill? William was a power loom manager, not too shabby, and he would continue in this line of work. It’s hardly surprising that he was able to find employment as a manager given Susan’s father John was a cotton mill owner himself and major employer based at Hebble End! 1851 found the family living at Haworth, where their last child William Henry (aka William III) was born the following year. By 1861 the family had moved to Heywood and it was in the Rochdale area they would stay (although on the 1861 Census Susan’s name is notably absent – she was off visiting her father and siblings at their home in Ovenden). William was very well off now, continuing to move upwards from overseer or mill manager to becoming, by 1871, a “clothes broker”. He was not just managing the making of cloth, but actively selling it too. But also, in the meantime, William had been busy with another piece of work – not a textile piece, but a literary piece. Or rather one of many.
IN 1852 William had quietly produced a book called The Thinking Man’s Friend; or, a series of religious dialogues designed as a confutation of infidelity while briefly living in Halifax prior to the Dixons moving to Haworth. The book is available nearly in full on Google Books and covers everything from sin and the afterlife to atmospheric buoyancy and magnets (how do they work?). It also chronicles in great, great…great…detail his thoughts on Christian philosophy and faith, including a long account of his own conversion from youthful, boastful atheism to pure Christian conversion. We can only speculate as to how popular this title was, since it wasn’t until 1870 that he produced a second edition of the book. Now situated in Heywood, he made sure that mention was made in the local paper, both on publication and later on.
William certainly knew how to sell the thing. Not so much mention in the advertisements of 1870 of Christian philosophising and more mentions of mesmerism, witchcraft, and capital punishment. He knew what the masses wanted! It was also very interesting of the Heywood Advertiser to call it a pamphlet, as the 1852 edition ran to about 180 pages; perhaps this is why he began republishing it in parts even though he also billed it as an “enlarged” edition? And were the contents as pious as its predecessor?
How much the sales of his work supplemented his income we don’t know. By 1881 the house and shop on Bridge Street was occupied by only William, Susan, and their granddaughter Emma who worked as a cotton weaver but also probably helped around the house. Susan was home as a housekeeper but she was 69 and William was 70, so they weren’t spring chickens anymore. William continued to sell clothing and spent his spare hours writing poems for himself, maybe with an eye to publication, and cross letters to the newspaper. But in February 1887 time caught up with him and he died. He was brought back to Todmorden to be buried with his parents. His death warranted only a single line in the Heywood newspaper.
Susan, very admirably, continued to run the shop after William’s death, at least for the first few months (we know this because of some girls who stole some linens and a pair of trousers from her shop in April 1887). William had left her about £605 so perhaps soon some common sense prevailed. She would have been 75, after all. She went to move in with her daughter Sarah and son in law James Taylor, a wool washer and “extractor” (?) who lived on Ramsay Street in Rochdale. Her occupation was “living on her own means” which tells you all you need to know. Her final years were spent relaxing as far as someone who had had the energy to raise all those children and constantly be on the move can relax…which is to say she either was grateful for it, or continued trying to do things around the house against her daughter’s will, one of those two. Her own death came in December 1893, and she would be the only person buried in this grave who was actually born in Todmorden.
