Mother and daughter, together forever – thanks to descendant Leesa Harwood for this story. We love guest posts, so if you have an ancestor whose story we haven’t told yet and that you want to share, get in touch!
Betty Lord was born on 30th June 1848 in Stansfield, Todmorden. Her father was John Lord (a labourer) and her mother was Sarah Lord (nee Judson). Betty was the third child of John and Sarah, and Sarah’s sixth child. Sarah had a daughter (Hannah) when she was 18, and two sons (James and William) before she married John Lord.
In 1851, Betty Lord lived at Stansfield with her parents and siblings. But their family life was shattered when in 1855, a month before Betty’s seventh birthday her father (age 40) died of TB, leaving her mother with four children under the age of ten and their three older siblings. By 1861, aged 13, Betty was working as a throstle spinner, and along with her four older brothers was earning money to support her widowed mother and siblings.
Also, in Stansfield, Todmorden, in 1861 13-year-old William Barker was working in the textile industry as a power loom weaver. William and Betty would meet and marry ten years later at the Wellington Road Baptist Chapel on 26th February 1871. The newlyweds moved to 20 Gate Bottom and by the time the census is taken in April we can see that they already have an 8-month-old daughter, Ada. William, Betty and Ada lived next door to Betty’s in-laws. Her father-in-law, John was a grocer and lived at the grocer’s shop with his wife and seven children.
By 1881 Betty and William had six more children and had moved to Newton Grove. By now, William had left the textile industry and was a grocer’s assistant, working, most likely for his mother, who has taken over his deceased father’s grocer’s shop. Betty had married into a family of grocers. Her husband William, brothers-in-law Thomas, Ingham, Ormerod, Alfred and John and her son Peter were all grocers in Todmorden. By 1891, Betty and William had moved back to Gate Bottom, but not to their old house at number 20. Instead, they moved to the grocer’s shop at number 19, which had been William’s parents’ grocer’s shop. William and Betty had taken over the shop and Betty’s mother-in-law mother had moved a few streets away to Newton Green where she lived with William’s younger brother Johnny. Betty and William’s seven children (aged between 20 and 8) lived with them at the shop. In 1901 they are still grocers, but now at 266 Burnley Road, Stansfield, and they are still here on April 2nd, 1911, just before Betty’s death on her birthday on 30th June 1911.
It seems that Betty’s death was sudden. She died on her 63rd birthday of a cerebral haemorrhage, that (according to her death certificate) began just 4 ¾ hours before her death. Betty’s husband, William Barker survived for another 16 years and died on 21st February 1927. The last record of his life is the 1921 census, where he lived at 778 Rochdale Road, Walsden with his son Frank, daughter-in-law Susan and 10-year-old grandson Cyril. He died at this address of influenza. Whilst records show that he was buried at Christ Church, Todmorden on 24th February, there is no record to substantiate this nor is his burial recorded on the headstone with his wife and daughter to indicate he was laid to rest with them.
Now, what about Sarah?
Sarah Barker was born in 1874 in Stansfield, Todmorden. Her parents were [the above] William and Betty Barker. She was their third child and second daughter. We first see her on the 1881 census at Newton Grove with her parents, and siblings, Ada (10), John (9), Frank (3), Alice (1) and Peter (5 months). William, her father was a grocer’s assistant, probably working for her grandfather John, a grocer nearby. By 1891 she is 17 and still lives with her parents and siblings. She has another brother, Edgar (aged 8). Tragically this is the last time we will see Sarah on a census.
When she was 21, Sarah married Charles Frederick Hallewell (left) on 16th April 1895 at the Methodist Chapel, Lydgate. Charles was born in Skircoat, Halifax, but in 1891 he was living at Scaitcliffe Corn Mill, near Centre Vale Park with his uncle Stephen Jennings, the corn miller. Charles was an apprentice corn miller. Scaitcliffe corn mill had been in production since 1706 and owned by the Crossley family. Stephen Jennings occupied the mill as miller from 1885 (when he
took over from the previous owner – William Fielden – who died from the effects of falling from a lorry at the mill on 14th March 1884). Records show that Jennings rented the mill from 1885, but in 1887 the occupiers were Jennings and Helliwell (Hallewell), suggesting that Charles became a partner with his uncle.
On 17th September 1895 Sarah had a daughter, Anice Irene Hallewell. Whilst it is possible that Sarah lived briefly at the mill after their marriage, it is more likely that they lived nearby at 266 Burnley Road where Sarah died on 12th June 1897 of endocarditis (cardiac infection). She was just 24 years old when she died, leaving a husband and a 22-month-old daughter. After Sarah’s death, Charles and Anice moved away and went back to live with his parents and siblings at Wharf Street, Sowerby Bridge and he became a butcher (source: 1901 Census). Charles married again in 1904, but when he set up home with his new wife in Wrexham, Anice stayed with her grandparents, Frederick and Mary Elizabeth Hallewell. We don’t know whether Sarah’s parents Betty and William Barker had any contact with their granddaughter after their daughter’s death. Anice went on to marry Clifford Portman, a civil servant at the Ministry of Labour. They had one daughter, Joan in 1924. Anice died on 7th January 1957 in Wakefield.
Sarah remained alone in this grave in Christ Church graveyard until her mother died in 1911 and was buried there with her.