At some point between the record of this household and the census of 1871, Thomas ceased his agricultural endeavours, setting up shop as a grocer and coal dealer. Another child, a daughter named Ellen, followed in 1864. The 1850 marriage certificate attesting to Hannah and William’s union. © Findmypastįlailing not only from grief, but also from the gnawing worry of the need to provide for her children, Hannah quickly remarried, taking as husband one Thomas Thickett, a Derbyshire widower considerably older than herself who possessed a similar agricultural background, working as a farmer. The couple lived on Cambridge Road in the township of Nether Hallam with Thomas’ daughter from his previous marriage, Elizabeth, whose assistance around the house earned her the rather diminutive title ‘housemaid’ on the census, his infant son with his new wife, also called Thomas, and his two new step-sons, William Himsworth and his brother John, both school-pupils. Fate had played its cruel hand, abandoning the Himsworths to the vagaries of the century, exposed to the erratic whims of time. In doing so, the family’s main source of income was withdrawn. In 1856, when William was only four years of age, his father passed away at the age of 54, worn out from the exhausting labour of his profession, likely stricken with the effects of a weakened respiratory system. The blow when it came, then, was all the more painful for such vengeful dissimulation. Life leapt along nicely, as life often does, tempered waters obscuring the whirling eddies beneath. Paul’s, a parish church in the centre of Sheffield, a building promoted to cathedral status when the diocese was formed in 1914. A twenty-five year age gap separated the spouses. William Himsworth was born on the 21st of July in 1852 into a family typifying the contemporary Sheffield industrial foundation, his father William employed as a ‘razor grinder,’ a common occupation within the ‘City of Steel.’ The latter had married Hannah Taylor in 1850, the daughter of a farmer who had grown up in semi-rural Hurlfield – now a suburb of the city. The Himsworth gravestone at City Road Cemetery, Sheffield. Indeed, the pain of the loss of the Himsworth’s ‘beloved and youngest son’ in the dust of battle is etched into the very stone itself, compounded by the deaths of father and offspring a mere year apart, the breaking of the ties that bind, tragedy in a quiet corner of this sun-washed burial ground. Like many such monuments, the epitaph bears witness to the trauma of conflict, forming part of a complex mosaic in which the impact of the First World War on the relationships underlying a family, a community, and a city is enshrined. Emblazoned across the stone and crowned by the curvature of a Gothic ogee is a testament to the Himsworth family, residents of the wooded suburb of Heeley. In this way, I hope to let the monuments speak for themselves, building up a picture of those forgotten, adhering to the ethos of this occasional blog in ‘unearthing the lives of the dead.’Īmidst the tree-lined copse of Sheffield City Cemetery, a grave marker lingers, standing tall amidst the neighbouring stones that peer forward at a perilous angle, as if looking down into the very earth itself. The grass around the burial site lies parched, scorched under the burning gaze of unexpected summer rays, bursting out of the azure sky prematurely, glaring at a crisp and stark April day. Welcome to the first in a new series of (not so) mini-profiles inspired by my sepulchral travels! In these pieces, I will situate the stone centre-stage in reconstructing the life and lives of the departed, making use of archival facilities and newspaper repositories.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |