Anthony (Mc)Nally and family (location unknown)

For the past 2.5 years we have used an old, rickety shed which is perched at the back of the upper slope, below the church itself, as a toolshed. Once it served as the storage shed for the school’s gardening club, but the club folded, the graveyard became overgrown, and the new owners of the church weren’t fussed about it. They said go ahead and use it, and we did. But we got a new shed eventually, and the old one began to puzzle us. It was built around the same time as the false retaining wall which sits atop at least three graves that we know of, and the rickety shed was suspiciously rectangular….almost….flat ledger shaped. Was it? Could it? Would anyone dare? Who’s that disrespectful or downright foolish???

On February 2nd we took it apart. The base was slate flags. Beneath them was some hardcore and shattered pottery bounded by stones. Beneath them was a ledger stone.

But this isn’t the story of the people named on that ledger; it’s the story of someone named on one of the stones that bounded the hardcore. Because as we were removing them we found that one had an inscription on it, albeit a mostly scrubbed out one. Would it be possible to figure out where this stone came from? We assumed it was a stone which had later been updated and the old one broken up and defaced, as per custom. Well weren’t we wrong.

Having “Ant” and “861” was enough. Behold, young Anthony McNally, who was buried here on March 1st 1861 aged three years old.

…or two years old, if you believe his death registration, which is probably more accurate. He died from pneumonia.

The McNallys were known as both McNally and simply Nally, but we still tracked them down. Anthony was an Irish hawker who married Bridget Swift, the daughter of a tailor, in Rochdale in 1844. They were Catholics and moved to Todmorden shortly after their first child, Mary, was born. Anthony had been discharged from the Irish army in 1840 after developing a serious problem with his eyesight from being sick and in damp conditions while in barracks but it doesn’t seem to have stopped him earning a living. He was relatively quiet though, not appearing much in the papers. Not so Bridget! Although that would happen later in her life. In the meantime she was busy having children – eight children in sixteen years. And curiously, the first to die and be buried here wasn’t Anthony, the first name on this stone, but daughter Ellen who died in 1858 aged three.

When we say here though, we just mean Christ Church. None of these McNallys are in marked graves. After Ellen came Anthony, as we mentioned before. Then came a Mary McNally in 1862 who was 49 years old, presumably a relative of Anthony’s but not one who was living with the family in 1851 or 1861 and who we haven’t tracked down yet. Then there was a pause for a while. During this pause, Bridget clearly began to have some troubles with alcohol, as did her sons Thomas and Richard, and in one notable appearance in the Todmorden Advertiser in July 1868 was up in court for calling her neighbour “a bitch and a whore” and her husband just her “bully”, presumably as in bulldog. The witnesses and neighbour all pointed out that Bridget had a daughter who had been married bigamously and they rested their case. She was found guilty and given the choice between paying a fine or going to jail chose jail, and thanked the magistrate and police on her way out the door back to the prison.

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Anthony and Bridget’s daughter Bridget was the twice-married daughter, but their other daughter Mary was also out living her life, and in 1872 had an illegitimate daughter named Margaret. Sadly Margaret was not long for this world and died in 1873 aged 10 months old. Anthony Sr. then became ill, to the point where his non-payment of the poor rate was excused in court as he was unwell with “no chance of recovery”. He died in 1874. The sharp-tongued Bridget died in 1875.

That’s six McNallys buried here in a 17-year period – Ellen, Anthony Jr., Mary, Margaret, Anthony Sr. and Bridget. Not a single one is named on a stone anywhere here, apart from on this single large fragment. So what on earth happened?

The bit at the bottom with “2 Y” implies that the second person on here was 2, or -2, years old. This doesn’t apply to anyone else buried here, only little Anthony. Mary was 49, Anthony was 69, and Bridget was 55. It woudn’t make sense to put Ellen on the stone after Anthony when she died first. Was this first stone defaced and discarded because there was a mistake on it? Not likely that this would happen without a replacement being put on the grave. If this stone was broken up by someone maliciously, then where’s the rest of it? Not here under the shed – none of the other stones were marked or shaped in any way. Solving the mystery of the name on the stone has only created a fresh mystery of where on earth this stone is meant to go. Such is the way at Christ Church.

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