This story was at times frustrating, but still fascinating – given that it spans 141 years that’s hardly a surprise!
James Turner was born in Spotland in 1773. He grew up a weaver, of course, and made his way to Walsden and to Knowlwood specifically. At some point he married the first of his two wives, the first of his two -Allys; this one was Mally, last name and date of birth or marriage unknown. We don’t know her date of death either, unfortunately. Three children that we know of for certain were born to them – Betty in 1802, John in 1804, and Ann in 1805.
By 1814 Mally was no more, and James was working as a “servant man”. He married again, this time to Sally Crowther of Walsden, and set about restarting his family. He was 41 at this point but Sally was 25, so she had plenty of time in which to have babies, and she sure did. Baby Sally came in 1815, then George in 1816…but 1816 was a bad year for James in a life-changing way. We don’t know why it happened but he experienced some sort of psychotic or psychiatric episode and attacked Simon Whipp, a local landlord who owned properties at Doghouse and Mount Pleasant.
His absence explains why there was a break in Sally’s pregnancies. He would have been released in 1817, and Sally might have needed some time to forgive him for everything…but in 1819 two daughters were baptised, Mary and Hannah. Five more children would come afterwards, culminating in Sarah Ann Turner’s birth in 1830. James was at this time 57 years old, and Betty – his eldest child – was 28.
There had been many losses before Sarah Ann’s birth, four children in total out of James’s twelve, but otherwise things were going well – or well enough. James’s career as a servant was over after whatever happened between him and Simon Whipp but he still made a comeback. On successive baptism register entries he was a labourer, and then an overlooker at a cotton mill. The Turners were settled at Shade and Gauxholme for most of this time and Wadsworth Mill seems to have been the main mill in their lives. By 1841 they were resident there. Betty was a cotton loom warper and Sarah Ann was a throstle spinner.
(A small aside: George, James and Sally’s eldest son, was one of the two men arrested for their part in the Poor Law Riots and the disturbances around town where windows were smashed and wealthy people threatened! He was sentenced to nine months in prison but his sentence was shortened due to it being determined that he was being led by others. A ghost of his father’s experiences? He’s buried in the private grounds at W11.7 so we’ll tell his full story another day)
By 1851 the Turners were living below Dobroyd and all the children had flown the coop (the home or this life) apart from Betty and Sarah Ann. They held the same jobs they’d had ten years earlier and as James was now retired they were essentially supporting the household. Sally died in 1856 and was buried at St. Mary’s, and in 1860 James died…but since there was no more room there, he was buried here.
Now the year before Sarah Ann had gotten married to John Sunderland, a young man seven years younger than her who hailed from Colden. The Sunderlands farmed at Everhill Shaw, where the workhouse for Heptonstall once stood, but their land wasn’t very large and Thomas Sunderland wasn’t employing anyone by 1851. John, who was 13 years old then, wasn’t even working as a farmer! He was a worsted weaver instead. But all that experience on a farm, with big animals, would come in handy. In 1861 when John and Sarah Ann were living at Dobroyd with Betty he had no occupation next to his name. This would soon change. He found work with the younger John Fielden and his suffering wife Ruth at Dobroyd Castle as a groom.
John and Sarah Ann had two children. James, their first, was born in early 1860 and died not long afterwards. Their second child William was born in 1862. Betty didn’t mind the young couple living with her and also didn’t mind John’s relatives, and a succession of siblings passed through the house at 16 Dobroyd at various points. We can tell this because of their marriage notices in the newspapers which all give their addresses as Dobroyd! We can’t forget that Betty was significantly older than her youngest sister though, and in 1867 she died and was buried with James. She had never married.
John would spend the rest of his life working for the Fieldens as a groom and then as a house porter. The money wasn’t enough for Sarah Ann to retire from working, but the job must have had its other perks. One hopes so anyway, since Ellen Mallinson Fielden was rumoured to be a hard woman to work for, and Ruth before her would have been a sad woman to work for.
Mally Turner isn’t our only disappearing person in this story. John and Sarah Ann’s only son William is another one. He was living at home in 1881, aged 19, occupation cotton warehouseman – but by 1891 he was gone. We haven’t managed to trace where he went or what happened to him. This meant that as John and Sarah Ann aged, the spare room William would have slept in was taken up by a lodger instead. They were still living at 16 Dobroyd and carrying on as before, which they did all the way up until John’s death in 1909.
Sarah Ann was now alone, and went to live with her great-nephew Robert William Greenwood and his wife Elizabeth at Hole Bottom. The 1911 Census confirms that as far as Sarah Ann knew her son William was still alive…where, though?
Sarah Ann died in 1914 and her burial here concluded the grave’s story. The stone has one last tale to tell, albeit a short one – scroll back up to look and you’ll see that all the engravings were done at the same time, in the same style, but James’s information had to be carved out and redone when everyone else’s was added. You wonder what sort of mistake must have been made to require it.