Like the story of Jane Chalcroft, this is one of a mother who followed her daughter to Todmorden and lived her final days in a school environment. Not noteworthy in itself maybe, but the fact that it’s the second such story is always interesting. Are there any coincidences in the graveyard?
Harriot – yes, that’s the correct spelling – Banks was born in Stow in Lincolnshire in about 1805. Her parents were named Thomas and Ann, and that’s all we know. One way or another (it’s always a bit of a mystery pre-Census and pre-GRO) she made her way to Bunny in Nottinghamshire and met and married a corn miller named Henry Dalby in 1826. The couple had three children together, but their marriage was doomed to be a short-lived one. William, then Henry, and then Mary Ann came along in the space of six years…but Henry died the same year he was born, 1830, and in 1834 his father Henry followed. Harriot was left with two little children and little prospects, and so in 1835 she married a farmer and lace maker named Samuel Yates. Samuel was also a widower who had been left with a daughter, Mary, although Mary was older than Harriot’s oldest. Harriot and Samuel got on well enough to continue building a family, and by 1841 they were living in Nottingham with two of their own, which would grow to five of their own by 1851. Sadly Harriot’s son William Dalby died in late 1841 so only Mary Ann was left from her first marriage.
We can’t quite pin Samuel down – by 1861 the family had moved to Wigston in Leicestershire, and it’s possible he was the Samuel Yates who got in a fight over a pew in the parish church there in 1856 – but there’s little to tell about the family for a long period of time. We aren’t even entirely sure when Samuel died. This is important because it would give a window into their lives.
Anyway, you’re wondering where the Todmorden connection comes in. Good question! We aren’t precisely sure how Todmorden entered the picture either. What we know is that at some point two Yates daughters, Emily Rebecca and Elizabeth Jane, came north. This seems to have been a result of them being intelligent girls, as both became schoolmistresses. How they got north is unknown though as both of the girls were no longer living at home in 1861 but cannot be traced definitively to any other location. Between 1851 and 1870 they’re gone. In 1870, though, both found themselves married; first Elizabeth to Henry Stansfield of Stones in the summer, and then Emily to James Whitehead of Hall Ing in the winter. Emily was living in Rochdale at the time but Elizabeth’s address was Prince Street, and Henry’s occupation was schoolmaster.
Incidentally, the only slate gravestone at Christ Church is in the private area, and it’s for Emily and James’s two lost infant children Arthur and Emily. It was engraved by a Nottingham-based stonemason and we always wondered why a stone had been sourced all the way from there; the answer is always in genealogy, of course, and here we are. It might be that Samuel and Harriot helped pay for it. Or maybe it was Sarah Fielden, who Emily was so close to that they apparently went on carriage rides together…
Back to Elizabeth though, as she and Henry are in this grave after all. Who was Henry? Well he was the son of Charles and Sally (Ratcliffe) Stansfield who are buried at 38.23 with several of their other children. Charles was a farmer at Stones Grange, possibly farming land owned by the Fieldens, and Henry would have probably grown up to become a farmer or weaver had he not been clever. Just like for Elizabeth, it opened doors otherwise not available to him. In 1861 he was still living at home but had become a pupil teacher, and by 1865 had joined the Todmorden Botanical Society. In January of that year he was inducted into the society along with his friend…James Whitehead. So now at least we know how James and Emily met!
Both Henry and James were Unitarians and interestingly, both married their sister wives at the Unitarian chapel in Rochdale on Blackwater Street. Was this pointed? Anti-Fielden sentiment perhaps? It’s a curious choice for both. And if it was anti-Fielden sentiment then that must have been a strange thing for Henry to manoeuvre as in 1871 the couple were resident at Waterside, and it’s entirely possible that Henry was the schoolmaster for the mill school there! Waterside being of course what our Chair likes to call a “fielden lair” (no, he doesn’t capitalise the F, no don’t ask him why or you’ll get an earful). Elizabeth was the schoolmistress there so likely they were each taking the boys and girls to their separate lessons. Elizabeth’s career was, of course, over fairly quickly as their first son Charles Samuel Stansfield was born in 1871 and was followed by another four. This includes Harriott Emily, born in 1875, whose name is the reason we know for sure that Harriot Yates really was Harriot and not Harriet.
Come 1875 and while James Whitehead wanted to continue teaching, and went to go work at Sarah Fielden’s school at Centre Vale, Henry had had enough of the thing and was looking elsewhere. He bought up James Duckworth’s wine and spirits business when Duckworth decided to retire and announced his new venture to the world in October 1875. It will have no doubt been a better earner than teaching, although whether children were easier “customers” than adults wanting booze is anyone’s guess. He also joined the Prudence Lodge around this time.
Back to Harriot now – it looks possible that Samuel Yates died in 1877, in which case, Harriot was once again without a husband and possibly a home. Her sons were grown and for reasons only she knows she felt that coming north was the best option. Emily and James had lost two of their three children by 1876, and would lose their fourth and fifth children in the spring of 1879. If I were Emily’s mother I would know where I needed to be too. Henry and Elizabeth were having much better luck, so Harriot went to be with Emily and James, and in the autumn of 1879 she died there at the schoolhouse and was buried here at Christ Church. Not in the grave where her grandchildren rested, as that was a Whitehead family grave and James had many siblings already buried in the double plot there, but in her own space in what’s now part of the public graveyard.
Elizabeth and Henry carried on with their family, and Henry’s business connections turned into political ones. James Whitehead was a Liberal but Henry was a Conservative, and in 1888 he was nominated to be an overseer of the poor. Think of it as an entry-level post. This was balm to ambitious son Ernest’s ears, and you can read more about his political accomplishments here. The Stansfield family seems to have owned a number of properties, including Clifton House on Garden Street and a house at York Place. Things looked good for their family. But in 1894 Elizabeth died suddenly, and Henry and the children (the youngest, Annie Elizabeth, was twelve) were left alone. Henry grieved for a few years, which was in its own way impressive as many men would give it anywhere from 6 to 12 months before marrying again, but in 1897 married Melina Clegg, the eleven-year widow of John Clegg and one of the daughters of Robert and Mary Leah at 46.53.
Henry still had losses to bear – Ernest died in 1906 – but he also was elected to the Todmorden Borough Council and the Board of Guardians, and seemed to have found his groove. In 1910 though he too died, and he was buried here alongside Elizabeth and Harriot. His obituary mentions a detail which we hadn’t found before, which was that he wasn’t just a general Unitarian but had at one point been the superintendent in the chapel’s Sunday School, back when the chapel was the smaller building and not the grand spire it was now. As the obituary stated, he had drifted towards the Church of England, but that’s hardly surprising – the man had ambitions, after all. But don’t let that be a criticism of him, and instead let the wreaths at his funeral speak for themselves:
There was a family connection. Many other family members of Henry’s are buried at Christ Church and couldn’t be seamlessly linked earlier; Henry’s brother Richard is at 50.58 – his sister Lucy at 37.24 – siblings Mary and John along with parents Charles and Sally – other sister Hannah is at 53.59, and other brother James at 34.24 – Ernest is joined at his grave by sisters Harriott and Marian – and Annie Elizabeth is at V1.6.
As for Elizabeth and Harriot’s family? Emily and James and half their children are buried at the Unitarian Church, barring the two who are buried here and their son James Allan who died in South Africa of enteric fever in 1902. Spare a thought for Elizabeth’s poor sister, and Henry’s poor friend; of their six children only two survived beyond the age of 2, and only one past the age of 21. By all accounts Emily never fully recovered from her last son’s loss and she experienced a “loss of mental faculty” which, along with a cataract, meant she died in 1913 from a fall after tripping on a step in a cottage they were renting in Blackshaw Head.