Londoners, coming up here, taking our jobs, stealing our women! Well, you don’t hear that last bit these days, but for the sake of accuracy in this story we’ll pretend that’s still a relevant gripe in Todmorden. But people have always travelled for work and to try and do something different with the skills they …
Read more “42.ii – Mary, William, Sally, Betty and William Gunn”
This grave holds a mother, two of her children, a grandson and a daughter in law; their story starts in Leeds, but also, in France! Mercy’s story comes first, and it’s not an uncommon story for the time. Mercy Smith was born in Wetherby in 1813 and at some point moved to Bramley with her …
Read more “41.60 – Mercy, Young, Susannah and John Henry Potentier, and Emma Stansfield”
A weaver and his wife, with somewhat unremarkable lives. Still lives, though, and it goes without saying that as a group we are very unhappy about the big fencepost that’s been driven through their bodies… But who were this unfortunate couple? Thomas Blakey was born in Habergham Eaves in 1830. The Blakeys were all cotton …
These Congregationalists are just a small fragment of a large, blended, and ultimately rather mysteriously tragic family. The tragedy of this family is a fairly standard one for its time, if an exaggerated version of it. Medicine wasn’t all people wanted it to be back then. But even so… To start at the beginning we …
Two Williams, father and son, with a world between their two jobs, and one of them with one eye on worlds other than these… William Dixon Sr. was born in 1772, probably in Batley near Leeds. Mary Hepworth was born in, we think, Huddersfield in 1776. Somehow they met, married in 1807, and started a …
One of the more impressive plot markers in the yard here, it consists of a full-sized flat ledger with two initials at the base: G on the left side, F on the right. The year for the stones along from it is 1835, so we went looking, and there it was… The story begins with …
Two husbands, four children; some of them are here, along with the woman whose affection they all held in common. John Binns was born in 1811 somewhere outside of Todmorden. The short time he was alive and the time he was alive in means we know nothing else about him apart from that he was …
Read more “42.16 – John Binns and Joshua, Betsy and Richard Taylor”
Much like the story of Peter and James Studdard, this story is also about the people who aren’t here – the bridges. John and Ann are grandfather and granddaughter. Their stories are short, but the story in between…well! But first things first. John Staley was born in 1796 in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire. Quite a …
These three siblings stayed close in life and death. There are many Crossleys in Todmorden and this batch weren’t one of the well off ones – not Crosslees or Crosleghs, but straightforward Crossleys. Not of Scaitcliffe but of Honey Hole. That doesn’t mean they were poor, but they weren’t the gentry. William Crossley, their father, …
A grave where we know little about the inhabitants, but we’ve done our best to bring them to life a little bit. Robert Suthers started out life with only one parent – born in Mereclough in 1807, by the time he was baptised in October of that year his mother Mary had already died. An …
Read more “42.25 – Elizabeth, Ellen, Robert and Betty Suthers”