Four sons – four sons! – and no parents anywhere around. Unusual for these plot markers here, so what gives?
What gives is…we don’t know. William Fielden, a cotton weaver and warehouseman (and grandson of Roger Bramley), married Grace Pearson at St. Peter’s in Walsden in 1865. William and Grace were both Walsden born and bred, Grace having been raised by her mother Sarah and stepfather-maybe-real-father Joseph Haigh (one of the Inchfield Haighs) up near Moorcock. We only give the caveat about her paternity because she didn’t name him on her marriage certificate.
The Fieldens moved down to Montreal Place, with Grace’s grandmother Alice in tow, and proceeded to have eleven children over the next 25 years. They had good luck until William Jr. was born at the end of 1880. He died in May 1881, five months old, and was buried here. He lived just long enough to be included on the 1881 Census.
The Fieldens then moved to Nelson where their next child, Joseph Haigh Fielden, was born in January 1883. He died a month later and was brought back here. Josiah was born in June 1884, and died 15 weeks later and was brought back here. Jesse was then born in April 1886. You probably know where this is going…he died in June 1887, 14 months later, and was brought back here. Four children in a row; how it didn’t flatten William and Grace is hard to comprehend.
The couple stayed in Nelson and had one more child, their son Walter, in 1890, ten years after the birth of their last surviving child Sam. That would be it. They never returned to Todmorden after this, both dying in Burnley in 1916 (Grace) and 1919 (William) and neither of them being buried here at Christ Church. Their quiet lives means we know nothing else about them.