Not all stories are long – not every question can be answered.

There are some guesses we can make about Mary here, but they’re guesses. We think that she might have been Mary, aka Mally, Hollingrake of Heptonstall. We know she was born around 1807; so the Mally Hollinrake who was baptised at Cross Stone on June 25th 1808, daughter of William and Betty Hollinrake of Scaitcliffe, would likely be her. If she is Mally Hollin/Hollingrake then she married James Greenwood at St. Thomas in Heptonstall on October 31st 1838. Very spooky. But that Mally Hollingrake is entirely the wrong age – born in 1813 – so that can’t be right either. People lied sometimes though.

You see the trouble we have sometimes here…
Who was James Greenwood? We also know nothing. The problem with James is the perennial Greenwood problem. Identifying Greenwoods is a nightmare. And the 1841 Census, the place where sometimes we find people still living with families after marriage, is equally unhelpful. James and Mally Greenwood are living at Hough Stone farm at Hole Bottom, James is a labourer, and Mally is staying at home. Both have their ages given as 30 which means birthdates between 1807 and 1811 (as the 1841 Census always rounded up to the nearest 5-year age for adults). James was noted as having been born outside Yorkshire but Mally as born within Yorkshire.

The following year Mally, or Mary, died, and was buried here at Christ Church. Someone cared a great deal about her and ensured she had a large and beautifully carved flat ledger stone over her. Her cause of death was gastritis. She and James seem to have had no children during their (possibly) short marriage.


James’s whereabouts afterwards are unknown. He must have moved, and the only other James Greenwood buried at Christ Church who was born around the same time is an entirely different chap. We’d normally finish a story like this by telling what happened next but this story will merely have to end…