Sometimes only a fleeting spell in Todmorden is enough to draw someone back later, in the hopes of a better life. Thanks to Leesa Harwood for sending us this story about her ancestors! The gravestone in Christ Church Graveyard marks the burial place of Charles Neesham, his wife Jane (Kilburn) Neesham and their daughter Margaret …
This grave piqued this researcher’s interest while writing up the story of Winifred Hogan, mainly because Mary here started her life as a Hogan. The TAS’s transcript knew about three of the four inhabitants here, and the fourth – Mary – is only a guess, but it seems like a realistic one. Where else would …
Read more “21.34 – Sarah Hannah, Mary, John and William Butterworth (unmarked)”
Winifred looks to be lying here alone, but we think she might have some family with her – some small comfort (hopefully) for a woman who died young. Winifred’s story begins with that of her parents, William Hogan and Margaret O’Donohoe. William and Margaret were both Irish immigrants who married in Shrewsbury in 1852. William …
This is one of our mysteries of the graveyard, and a tale about the power of grief and shame. Caroline Coles was not a poor woman, and her husband not without some local prestige; so where’s her grave, and where are her two children who are buried here? They might be at this plot marker …
Read more “Caroline Elizabeth Coles and her children (location unknown)”
A Todmorden couple who crossed the border to Burnley, but held on to their Todmorden links to the end. Alice Stott opens this story as the older member of the pair. She was born Alice Davies in 1827, the second youngest child of her father Peter and mother Hannah (Jackson). She grew up in the …
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 …
Read more “SB.3 – William, Joseph Haigh, Josiah and Jesse Fielden”
More Stephensons underneath a plot marker beneath the school, this time three young sisters and a brother, whose parents may or may not be resting with them. And there’s still a mystery at the end of it all even though we figured so much of the story out… William Stephenson – no relation to the …
Read more “S6.7 – Sarah Alice, Florence Mary, Alice Stansfield and Harry Victor Stephenson”
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 …
Read more “S8.1 – Wilbert, Mary Elizabeth, Wilson, Sarah and Joseph Sutcliffe”
A lost plot marker – a family who left – and two brothers who never met…and perhaps a grandfather and grandmother to boot. Edmund Tattersall Stephenson had a glorious name and a dirty job; that of engine stoker. He had been born in Newchurch in 1860 to John Dewhirst Stephenson and his wife Harriet, formerly …
The Holts and Crowthers were people who loved the high windswept places, and sometimes thrived there…sometimes not. James Holt was born in Todmorden in 1814, two years after his future wife Sally Crowther. Sally was the sister of James Crowther, whose story you might have heard before, and her family were firmly ensconced on the …
Read more “38.16 – James, Sally, James, Greenwood and Sarah Holt”