Many people stand on their principles at some point or another – few follow those principles to jail. Herbert followed his to jail not once but twice…but his principle was that he wouldn’t pay child support “and would not be made by the best man breathing”. We can’t all be heroes! There isn’t much to …
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)”
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 father, a son, and a daughter in law – and a telling gap in the engraving that raises a question…where’s Sarah? Abram, or Abraham, Stansfield was born in Todmorden in 1811 to parents whose names we can’t be certain of. There are only 14 Abraham Stansfields on a census return in 1841, and thanks …
Read more “41.7 and 33.20 – Charles, Abram, Betty and Sarah Stansfield”
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 …
We like giving unnamed infants their names back – “also five infants” is a challenge, and we LOVE challenges – but sometimes giving them their names back is a slow process. The register and Sexton’s book for this plot both read “Olga Smith”, who were we to argue? Except they were wrong. Trust Researcher Sally …
Read more “9.40 – Alga Smith, not Olga Smith (unmarked grave)”
We usually cover family graves separately from each other, but this is an exception – the Davis family unit here is very important to our group for a number of reasons. Fred and Rachel’s grave reads “Dead, Yet Speaketh” at its base, and what else are we doing here if we aren’t giving the dead …
Read more “V7.8, 31.43, and 47.60 – Frederick, Rachel, Eva and George Davis”
Sometimes you’re in pursuit of one person and you stumble across another. This name was too long to miss and the location of death, the White Hart Inn, indicated a travelled or outsider to the town. How Walter came to rest here, both while alive and dead, is a mystery. Join us in a brief …
Researching the Todmorden families that came before us is a wonderful privilege and highly rewarding thing to do, every single name provides a whole new and entirely different story, you just never know where the research will take you. Sometimes you have a giggle at something quirky, sometimes it’s simply ‘wow’, quite often though (especially …
Read more “18.21 – Frances, Minnie and Annie Verity (unmarked)”
Thanks to family member Christopher Hiley for contributing this article – you can find his family history blog here. Jesse’s grave Jesse Hiley occupies an unmarked grave, 11.37, in the churchyard at Christ Church, Todmorden. He died on 15th July 1901, aged 8 months, and was buried on 17th July. The death certificate shows the …