Another plot marker under the school – another lost plot marker – but we won’t let a plot marker go unidentified if we can help it, and while this one was initially confusing we got there in the end.
Joseph Sutcliffe was Lydgate royalty of sorts; the son of Joseph and Grace (Rigg) Sutcliffe, we’ve already learned about his family from the grave of his brother Thomas. This Joseph became a picker maker, good enough to be a journeyman, and in 1876 he found a wife of his own in the person of Sarah Wilson of Knotts Road. Sarah’s journey to Lydgate was a curious one. Her father John had been a calico dyer and manufacturer at Hebble End, employing over 30 men and serving on the Heptonstall Board of Guardians, but something happened after 1875 that meant John left it all behind to become…a stonemason. Perhaps it was due to his wife’s death, but by 1881 he had come to Lydgate, had a new wife, and had become a manual labourer. He would die in 1889 at a small terraced house on Brewery Street, his story a strange tale for another day (otherwise we’ll never get this story written).
Regardless of how Sarah got to Lydgate, she got there, and she and Joseph were wed at St. John’s in Halifax in April 1876. They were only babies, aged 20 and 19, and Sarah wasn’t even able to write her name. She was also still not ready to relinquish her father’s status. But Joseph was respectable and made a decent enough wage, and the two weren’t slow to start their family. In fact they’d already started – their first son Fred was born in the third quarter of the year. They continued much in the same vein with a total of ten children born over the course of the first 21 years of their married life. Sadly a few ended up here. First was Wilbert, their third child, who died in April 1882 at one year old and whose grave was marked by the now-missing J. S. plot marker. Next would be their ninth child, Mary Elizabeth, who died an hour after her birth in late September 1894. The family was by now at 22 Robinwood Terrace, with Sarah’s brother Fred living next door with his wife, father in law and son, and Thomas Sutcliffe and family two doors down on the other side. As with our other Lydgate and Lineholme stories, these streets were all family affairs.
By 1911 the Sutcliffes had left, though, and moved to 59 Stansfield Road. When exactly this happened in that time is unknown but we know that Wilson – their fourth child, born the same year Wilbert died – had already made the move. Wilson had become a shuttle maker and moved down to Eagle Street, become involved in Roomfield Baptist as a Sunday School supporter and entertainer, and somehow also found love in the form of Barbara Alethea Barker of Sheffield. Barbara was a Derbyshire lass, a few years older than Wilson, and had gone into service after her father Samuel’s death which might be how she made her way to Todmorden at some point and met up with her future husband. Wilson and his brother Sam, and Barbara’s sister Emma, made their way to Sheffield for the wedding in August 1908, and Wilson then brought his wife home to Todmorden.
One year and one month later, Wilson was dead. He was only 26. The cause of death was aortic regurgitation, where a heart valve doesn’t close properly and blood is sometimes forced backwards into the veins. He had started working as an insurance agent, presumably because shuttle making was giving him trouble…he had also already been suffering when he got married from what we can see.
He isn’t anywhere else at Christ Church that that we can see, so we think he’s in here with his little siblings. Barbara returned to Sheffield where her mother Ann was living with her sister Miriam’s illegitimate son Jeffrey, and licked her wounds there. But her own health was poor and she died in 1915, and her body was taken back to Bamford in Derbyshire to be buried with her father and some of her other siblings.
Joseph and Sarah had now lost three children and were scared of losing a fourth, as Sam had gone off to fight in WW1. He returned thankfully, to continue his life with his wife Clara and their son Wilson (who was born a month after brother Wilson’s death). Joseph and Sarah now moved to Barker Street with their two remaining unmarried daughters Adela and Clarissa. Joseph was still working for Crossley Greenwood and Sons at Calder Vale Mill in Cornholme, commuting there with Clarissa who was working as a weaver at Vale Mill. Eventually the family moved again, to Osborne Place (or Anchor Street depending on which account you credit), and it was there that Sarah died in 1927. She died in fact on the same day as Sam’s wife Clara…but Clara’s story is yet to be told at her and her sister’s grave at 11.3, so we’ll stop there.
Joseph followed his wife in 1928. He also had heart disease, although clearly less serious than Wilson’s had been.
