David Hiley (1868-1961) featured in the post of 22nd August 2019. He lived to the age of 93 and was recorded as the longest lived of all the Hiley/Highley members in the family tree (where we know the years of birth and death.) I invited readers to get in touch if they knew of any Hileys who reached a more advanced age.
I am delighted to report that a reader has written to say that David's sister Alice lived to the age of 102, and so now takes over the title of longest lived member of the Hiley family.
Alice was born in Oldroyd, Langfield on 1st July 1865, the daughter of John Hiley and Hannah Crossley. The family lived at 8 Shade Street, Walsden and Alice worked as a Cotton Weaver. John was killed in the boiler explosion at Lord Bros. in Todmorden in 1875 (described in a previous post).
In 1894 Alice married John Thomas Mitton. The 1901 census showed them living in Major Street, Todmorden with Alice's mother Hannah. John Thomas was working as a Newsagent. The couple emigrated to Australia in 1910 but returned, disillusioned, the following year. They lived in Formby and in the 1921 census John Thomas was listed as a Farmer and Grocer and Alice as a Grocer's assistant. John Thomas died in 1926 aged 61 and was buried with Alice's parents in Christ Church graveyard in Todmorden. The couple had no children.
Alice remained in Formby and looked after a shop there for many years. She died in 1967 aged 102.
It tells the story of the gruesome suicide of William Henry Gledhill who married Elizabeth Ann Hiley in 1873. Elizabeth, born in 1851, was the daughter of John and Alice (nee Haigh), and was descended from David Hiley, born in 1700, and Dorothy.
Elizabeth's father John was killed in the boiler explosion at Lord Brothers in Todmorden in 1875. This was covered in the post of 5th November 2019. Click on this link to read the post.
Plot markers can be difficult things to work out – sometimes the initials are of the plot owner, sometimes of the person buried there. Christ Church’s fairly regular grid pattern allows us to occasionally make an educated guess, and in the case of the mysterious W.H.G. under the school, we can guess that it’s William Henry Gledhill of Watty Hole who died on November 13th 1882.
Or rather, who took his own life.
William Henry Gledhill was not the only William Henry Gledhill to be born in 1851. Another existed who was the son of Joseph Gledhill, headmaster of the National School – wouldn’t that be a coincidence – but there’s room for only one former head of the school under the extension and that honour is held by Mary Crowther. THIS William Henry Gledhill was the son of Robert and Hannah Gledhill of Brown Hill, located just a little north of Blackshaw Head and accessible from the road between there and Colden. Robert was a weaver, and William was the youngest son and the second youngest of ten total children. The Gledhills lived in the area until 1861 when they reappear living at Sharneyford. The reason for the move is unknown. Hannah died in 1868 and was buried up at Blackshaw Head Methodist Chapel, as was Robert when he died in March 1882.
(Side note: we know this because of the work we’ve carried out with Blackshaw Head Chapel to produce a MI transcript for their graveyard that incorporates their incredibly detailed burial records. Many thanks to them for their interest in our project, their enthusiasm for the concept, and their 170 years of meticulous record-keeping.)
As you can see, by 1868 the family were in Walsden, although by 1871 they had moved from Wood Bottom over to Friths Wood Bottom, so to Bacup Road from Hollins Road. William also went into weaving, and in April 1873 married Elizabeth Ann Hiley (or Highley). The couple moved to Watty Hole and for the next nine years lived happily, or happily enough, having two children of their own.
William lost his father in early 1882, and the loss sat with him for a while. He began to worry about work after a spell, and began to lose sleep. He also began mentioned to both Elizabeth and to his neighbour and workmate, Enoch Fielden, that he was worried about his father. Elizabeth’s response that “what occasion has tou to be bothered about him for; he’s been dead and buried six months, and he’s happy now” wasn’t sufficient to do more than quiet him. Why was he worrying about his father? What was the cause? Was his mind disordered, or was he pondering some long-ago event or difficulty or revelation about the man? On another night Elizabeth woke to find him awake and standing at the bedroom window watching a comet (the “Great Comet” of 1882) and asked her to get out of bed and watch it with him. We’d probably do the same in the circumstances, but after the fact something about the incident that perhaps didn’t make it into the newspaper made it stand out in his wife’s mind as unusual and worth mentioning.
Everyone thought that William would be all right, although Enoch had a moment of thinking that William was going to drown himself because he was so quietly unlike his usual self, although he waved the thought away after getting home the night in question and hearing from his wife that William had already returned. Thinking his friend was fine, he went to bed. But he was awakened in the middle of the night by William’s sister, Grace Uttley, banging on his door and telling him to go next door and help Elizabeth because William was dead.
William had gone downstairs in the night, assuring Elizabeth he’d be back, and then at some point had cut his throat so deeply that he died almost instantly. By the time Enoch made it into the house he was long gone. The coroner’s jury had no difficulty deciding that he had killed himself in a fit of temporary insanity, and so he was buried here in consecrated ground.
You always wonder what happened to the families afterwards; and why is he here on his own, with only a plot marker and never a full stone? Well many full stones only get put up after a few more people are added to a grave, or the grave is filled. His wife isn’t here because she remarried. In fact, she remarried Enoch Fielden in the autumn of 1883. His wife Ann had died in the first quarter of 1883, leaving him with three children, and not long before his death William had gotten Elizabeth pregnant – so she was left with two young children and another on the way. There was already a friendship of sorts there so it made sense. Tom was born in the summer of 1883, the marriage took place a few months later, and the pair went on to have another three children together.
The Fieldens moved to Milnrow and Elizabeth became a widow again in 1896 when Enoch died. She died in 1921, and the two are buried together along with their daughter Ada at St. James in Milnrow. William’s three children with Elizabeth either stayed in the Rochdale area or emigrated to the U.S., far from the father that only two of them even had any living memory of. That’s how a plot marker never gets replaced, and how someone gets forgotten before the digital age came along and gave us a fighting chance of discovering who they really were.
The following extracts come from Linda Briggs's Todmorden and Walsden website. They were taken from The Halifax Guardian and extracted and transcribed by John Alan Longbottom.
After the jury had viewed the bodies - Hannah Hiley was the 1st witness. She said she saw her husband that day the first time after the accident had happened. Her husband's name was George, and he was 38 years of age. They lived in Shade Street. He was a "stretcher" at Messrs. Lord's. She last saw him alive on Thursday morning at half past five, when he left home to go to his work. At that time he was quite well and hearty.
On Wednesday a seventh death occurred, that of James Sutcliffe of Oldroyd. Several of the deceased have already been buried, Hiley and Hodgins were members of the Todmorden Brass Band, and members of the band attended their funerals. Hiley was buried on Tuesday and Hodgins on Wednesday. Large numbers of people assembled on the way to the churches. Several others are not expected to survive. The inquest on Sutcliffe was opened by Mr. Bairstow on Thursday and adjourned until Monday next, along with the one on those killed at the time of the explosion.
John (not George as reported above) was the father of David Hiley who appeared in the last Blogpost on 22nd October 2019. He was born in Langfield, Todmorden in 1827. John had 3 children, Elizabeth Ann, Mary Hannah and Tom, with his first wife Alice (nee Haigh), and 4 children, Tom, John Edward, Alice and David, with his second wife Hannah (nee Crossley).
