This family is scattered across various Todmorden graveyards, but these three are together in the same grave. There’s even a tantalising gap between names, one of our favourite gravestone mysteries. Who were the Barkers? Robert Barker was born in Walsden in 1788, five years before his future wife Martha Jackson. We know little about her …
Read more “37A.36 – Robert and Ann Barker, and Harriet Greenwood”
A plot marker that was getting in the way, and now rests temporarily at 37A.30 until it can be put back where it belongs. This does seem to be a problem we see a lot at Christ Church…and which there is a small rant about at the end of this story. L. H. here was …
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”