Mary Ormerod, in this triple-sized grave, gets a story page all of her own. Why? Because Mary is a unicorn in the graveyard, and because she is the quintessential “lost woman” in her family’s story. Mary was born Mary Stansfield, in 1815, to corn miller William Greenwood of Scaitcliffe Mill and…well. This is why she’s …
The three Wilson children in this grave are another example of children whose families moved on and never came back – and also a reminder that access to medicine or medical knowledge wasn’t enough to save you back then. It’s also a mystery all of its own for other reasons… Matthew Wilson was born in …
Here’s one of those tricky graves where the most popular surname in Todmorden’s past runs into two of the most popular forenames; we did our best, and we can’t be certain of every detail, but this is – hopefully – the true and accurate story of a mother and son. Mary Jackson, as she was …
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 …
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 …
For the past 2.5 years we have used an old, rickety shed which is perched at the back of the upper slope, below the church itself, as a toolshed. Once it served as the storage shed for the school’s gardening club, but the club folded, the graveyard became overgrown, and the new owners of the …
Not all stories are long – not every question can be answered. There are some guesses we can make about Mary here, but they’re guesses. We think that she might have been Mary, aka Mally, Hollingrake of Heptonstall. We know she was born around 1807; so the Mally Hollinrake who was baptised at Cross Stone …
This grave holds two parents and commemorates three unnamed infant sons. We did our best to try and identify these children but sadly weren’t able to; they must be buried elsewhere, which is common, although usually where they’re buried is also mentioned. We have some theories about why this might not be… John Holt was …
This is one of the most frustrating stones at Christ Church. The names here were taken in the 1980s by the ACT team who came through and cleared brush, but between then and 2006, someone built a bloody great retaining wall overtop this stone and the Ogden stone next to it, carelessly (callously, thoughtlessly, extremely …
Read more “43.23 – Ebenezer, William, James and Susan Fielden (inaccessible)”
After many, many days, researchers are stumped; how do these couples connect? The answer sees to be that they don’t. So here’s their stories, and perhaps someone knows the secret reason that they were joined together in death. Editor’s note: the connection has been found; we’ve tacked it onto the end of the post! William …
Read more “V7.12 – William and Ann Oldroyd, and Willie and Olive Marshall”