A farmer’s grandson who made the ultimate sacrifice is remembered here. The question is…why? Maybe we can figure out the “why” from the first story here. William comes first. Born in 1807 in Todmorden, William was the son of a farmer and became a farmer himself. William Sr. lived at Scaitcliffe but William Jr., our …
Read more “37.21 – William and Ellen Mitchell, and Albion Mitchell Barker”
If that title gave you a headache, spare a thought for us poor researchers, trying to untangle this multigenerational tale full of illegitimate children and marriages that weren’t. Thankfully Daniel Noble’s excellent family tree on Ancestry gave us some help with piecing it all together. Mary’s story starts off easily enough. She was born in …
Read more “37.22 – Mary and John Dawson, and Betty, Mary Ann, John Thomas, Jane and John Spencer”
Charles and Sally have many children and grandchildren buried at Christ Church, and if we tried to link them all in we’d get very tired. But a good place to start to catch a little of their story is to read about the children we’ve written the stories up for so far: Richard, Hannah, Henry, …
Read more “38.23 – Mary, John, Charles and Sally Stansfield”
Men who died young and women who didn’t – a not uncommon scenario here in the graveyard. So who were the Eastwoods? What was their story? Who rests here under this laid-flat lancet with an unusual rose emblem carved at the top? This family’s stories start with two people and two extremes. John Eastwood was …
Read more “37.24 – John, Ada, Lucy, John Henry, Alice and Emily Eastwood”
This Firth family has a few graves at Christ Church, but as we’ve gotten to this one first, we’ll start with this one. Samuel Firth of Marsden and Betty Longbottom of Luddendenfoot are the ones who really started it, with their marriage in 1826 at the respective ages of 19 and 18. They were in …
Read more “37.34 – Mary Ann, Jim and James Firth, and John Jackson (Firth)”
A short story for a plot marker for a journeyman painter and his son. And that’s the bulk of what we know. James Rothwell was born in Haslingden in 1836, the same year his future wife Betsy Ormerod was born in Newchurch. James was a house painter and so good at it that he became …
Three generations of women, linked by one man, all resting here with him. Maybe it was a case of safety in numbers? Sally Barker, the first person buried here, is the matriarch. She was born Sally Fielding (or Fielden) in 1802, and married John Barker at Heptonstall in 1824. He was an agricultural labourer a …
It’s curious that this mother and son have a gravestone, because their lives were marked by poverty. Some of this was circumstantial, and some…inherited… Hannah Cunliffe was born in 1830, the illegitimate daughter of Ann Cunliffe of Burnley and later Heptonstall; and the story here really starts with Ann. Ann was one of many Cunliffes …
You may have encountered these Sutcliffes before – Lydgate Baptist stalwarts, we’ve already told the stories of their sons Thomas and Joseph. Joseph was the son of local grocer Robert Sutcliffe, although Robert hadn’t always been a grocer. At Joseph’s baptism at Patmos Chapel in 1816 he was described as a cotton spinner. Later though …
The eroded nature of this gravestone sent us down one or two false leads before we were able to figure out what this grave was about. “Semicircular stone, very badly eroded”, according to the TAS; then “Also of Sarah Ann, daughter of the above Richard Sutcliffe, who died Novr 24th 1878 in her 34th year” …