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”
A lost plot marker – a family who left – and two brothers who never met…and perhaps a grandfather and grandmother to boot. Edmund Tattersall Stephenson had a glorious name and a dirty job; that of engine stoker. He had been born in Newchurch in 1860 to John Dewhirst Stephenson and his wife Harriet, formerly …
One of the first stories we told from under the school extension was that of the Dodd family – that was because on the two out of their three sidestones, which are unaccountably resting on the outside of the school extension, one included a hitherto unrecorded family member. Since then we’ve found unmentioned people, stones …
Read more “S2.9 – Herbert, John Robert, Betsy and Arnold Cunliffe, and Jack Uttley”
This grave turned out to be a case of incorrect assumptions taken by the teenage transcribers in the 1980s, and is an excellent illustration of why projects such as ours matter. John Law was born in 1821 in Walsden. We don’t know much more than that; there was at least one other knocking around at …
A pair of proud parents and a proud uncle are buried here – at least, the father and uncle would have been proud if they’d still been around to see their son/nephew’s success. A tale of offcumden who embedded themselves in Todmorden life. William and Charles Goucke were brothers who had moved to Todmorden from …
The Shackletons were longstanding residents of Patmos both as Shackletons and Sutcliffes – and on the Sutcliffe side, were deemed important enough to be included in John Travis’s geneaology of the family. His inclusion of their little family unit is prematurely, briskly brief – names, issue, and their marital status. But he was right in …
Read more “S7.1 – Alice Elizabeth, Mary, Sally, Thomas and Mary Ann Shackleton”
A father and son are buried here – the son first and the father second. James Greenwood was born in 1836 to William and Martha (Pilling) Greenwood of Horsewood, a farm that is still standing above Lumbutts. He was their only son. William was a cotton spinner despite living in a farm cottage, and while …
This musical family rests under a walkway, and there’s a mystery contained therein too – we think we know who Sarah is, but because there’s no formal transcript, there’s currently no way to be 100% sure, Lord Halstead – what a name! – was born in 1836 in Heptonstall to John and Mary (Lord) Halstead. …
Read more “SA.1 – Sarah, Susy, Tom, Lord and Jamie Halstead”