Churchyard Stories: The Siblings Of Barnsley | The Cotswold History ...

There are a couple of gravestones in the churchyard of St Mary?s in Barnsley that share an unhappy similarity; they mark the death of two siblings at similar ages to each other, but in different years.

One remembers Louisa and Charles Poole. They were the children of Barnsley plasterer Robert and his wife Sarah, who seem to have lived next door to the public house in the village.

They had had at least nine children between 1847 and 1866, the last being born when Sarah was in her 40s. Louisa was the eldest.

The couple?s first son, born two years after Louisa, was William. He was the family?s first tragedy, dying some time in the late 1850s, and not reaching 10 years old. Charles, the Poole family?s third child, then became the eldest son and brother to the subsequent children ? Jane, Maria, another William, Samuel, Robert, and James.

Third daughter Maria also seems to have died a couple of years after her brother William, dying in either 1862 or 1863, when she was around six years old.

The Pooles then seem to have enjoyed a few years of calm before calamity struck again. Eldest daughter Louisa died in 1867, aged 20; then son Charles died seven years later, aged 22. Both died in the same month ? July.

So out of the Pooles? five eldest children, four died early; sad, but unfortunately not a rarity in 19th century England.

The second grave shows that even if one successfully negotiated the travails of infancy and childhood, one was not safe from the numerous illnesses and diseases that could strike people at will in Victorian Gloucestershire.

This grave commemorates two brothers who died at the same age. They were two of the children of road labourer, and former agricultural labourer, Abel Morse and his wife Mary Jane. They were another large family; they married in 1853, and were soon parents to James, Eliza, Dinah, Mary Jane, Albert, and Thomas. These were the children who survived infancy; it looks like they also lost other children young.

In 1881, Abel was 60, Mary Jane 49. They had three children still living at home ? James, 26, an agricultural labouer; and the younger children Mary, 12, and Albert, 6, both still at school.

But three years after the census was taken, James died, in his thirtieth year. His death was shortly before Hallowe?en, on 28th October 1884. His gravestone is engraved with the inscription, ?One step between me and death?.

In 1891, Abel and Mary Jane had their last two adult children at home with them ? Thomas, 28, a general labourer, and 22-year-old servant Mary, who was known as Polly. Two years later, though, on 8 May 1892, Thomas died, aged 30. He was buried in the same plot as his older brother James ? ?absent from the body, but present with the Lord?.

Mary Jane Morse died in 1897, aged 60, but her husband Abel didn?t die until 1908, decades after the deaths of his two beloved sons.

Source: http://www.cotswoldhistory.com/2012/02/churchyard-stories-the-siblings-of-barnsley/

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