This grave is one of a small number at Christ Church which contains a father and son who served in the World Wars, and only one is buried here – but the one missing is not, as is more commonplace, the WW1 veteran. Jack Ingham was born in Todmorden on the 15th September 1919, the …
Julia was born a Crossland in 1860, and was first married to John William Howarth in 1879 before marrying James Taylor in 1885 after being widowed a year earlier. James was from Shawforth, born the same year as Julia. In 1888 they set sail for the USA, for reasons we can’t quite work out, and …
Read more “3.26 – James, Laura Ellen, and Julia Virginia Violetta Taylor”
Bridget Greaves was born Bridget Stanton in 1849 in Dublin. Because a lot of Irish records were accidentally destroyed over time, it can be hard to track people down before they arrive in the UK or some other country. The first time we find Bridget here is in Newchurch, Bacup, in 1871, lodging with the …
Read more “2.15 – Samuel and Bridget Greaves, James Luke Stanton”
John Arthur Woodhead was born in 1889 in Todmorden – in 1891, he was living at 12 Shade Street with his parents, 5 siblings and maternal grandmother. His father John Herbert Woodhead was a clogger with a mildly chequered past; serving time at various points for stealing and unpaid debts, with the theft being from …
You could be forgiven for missing Peter Carroll – his name is on the plinth of a larger, newer stone, whose inhabitants lived very long lives and whose names are picked out in black. But Peter is the reason this grave gets freshened regularly – he is one of the seven servicemen whose died in …
Read more “17.3 – Peter Carroll, Gilbert and Elizabeth Halstead”
There are only six graves in the graveyard which we can access that are Commonwealth War Grave Commission graves. The 7th is on the grounds of the school, the extension built around it in a way that allows the stone to still be visible and visitable (although the mechanism by which this was achieved is …
This was listed as “unmarked”, but look – initials carved into the sidestones. JC, MC, KC and AC. We know that Michael Coleman (d. 1908). Kate (Catherine) Coleman (d. 1943), and John Coleman (d.1951) are buried there…but who is AC? Michael and Kate had a daughter named Annie, who married William Mayers and died in …
Read more “9.7 – John, Michael, Kate, and Annie Coleman (previously unmarked)”
Charles Stansfield and Mary Crowther were married by banns on 10th October 1822, in Heptonstall St. Thomas. Mary was originally Mary Jackson and had married Thomas Crowther in February 1817 in Halifax, with their daughter Sarah being baptised in September of the same year (whoops) at both Cross Stone and St Mary’s in Todmorden even …
Read more “39.36 – Charles, Mary, Maria, Mary Ann, and Jane Stansfield”
“Here let him lie in his quiet grave while other men shall carry on the work in which he took a sincere and active interest. Here let him lie until the final hour shall come for the grave to give up its dead.” Another stone on the back slope whose inhabitants played an important part …
“In Memory Of Wildsmith Burchell, Native of Arundel, Sussex, who died August 3rd 1839 aged 20 years. This Stone was placed by his disconsolate Mother, to perpetuate the Memory of a beloved Son, the youngest of 10 Children, suddenly left Orphans in the Year 1820“ With that name and that epitaph, you have to ask …