47.59 – Willie Dawson

Another plot marker for a small child. This time it’s Willie Dawson of 41 Garibaldi Street, who died a year old and was buried here on October 22nd 1877. Or is it?

Willie was born on December 2nd 1875 at the house on Garibaldi Street to Lord and Sarah Hannah (Mitchell) Dawson. Lord was a Walsden lad and Sarah Hannah was a Summit girl, and they married in Littleborough in 1872. Our friends Llewellyn and Sarah Pugh were their witnesses. The couple were both 21 years old and both the children of cotton spinners and twisters. Lord was a cotton spinner himself, working as a self-actor minder who kept two spinning mules operating at the same time which twisted threads into yarn.

The Dawsons had four children all told, but three died young. The only infant we know of for sure is Willie, and we know he’s buried here because his burial sits nearly between the two gravestones either side of his plot marker. Willie’s death was attributed to bronchitis and tracheitis, and gradual exhaustion. We also know about the one child who survived, Annie, who was born in 1883. Lord himself died very young, aged 34 in 1885, and is buried here at Christ Church but in an unknown location. Sarah Hannah never remarried and moved back to Littleborough with Annie and went to work as a cotton rover to make ends meet. Annie grew up and married Richard James Whiteside in 1904 and Sarah Hannah joined them in their home to help look after her little grandchildren. She died in January 1924 aged 73 and is buried at St. James Calderbrook, where Annie would later be buried in 1968.

Now this post here was written four months before this post about William Dawson and his two daughters. William was Lord’s brother and the first daughter he lost died three months after Willie. Everyone could be in this grave, or only one of these posts is correct in identifying who’s in this grave. You see, what we do isn’t an exact science. Sometimes we will be right and sometimes we’ll make a hell of an error. So this grave has two “stories”, and you can read both and make up your own mind about who’s really here…