Dobby, you made my day.
The info you posted bolsters a theory I have had for a number of years but could not prove.
As improbable as it may seem, it is not impossible that John North, born 1698, was the father of Ruth North Broadbent, born 1774. I have searched in vain for another John North who could be old John's son and Ruth's father.
Here is my supposition: John North (1698-1783), son of Benjamin and Ruth, wed Mary (Senior, we now know, in 1724). Mary died in 1759, and John remarried (at least once) to Elizabeth (Beumford, we now know, in 1773), who bore him Ruth. John dies in 1783, and Elizabeth remarries to William Hirst on March 5, 1784/5. Elizabeth is not included on North monument because she remarried; however, right smack against the North monument are the two Broadbent monuments chronicling the next three generations, even in America, starting with Ruth. (I think that there is a fourth monument nearby, to Edward Broadbent, but it is immaterial to this hypothesis.)
I grant you that it is more likely that John and Mary had a son John who married Elizabeth Beumford and had Ruth. But I cannot find (either in records or on a monumental inscription) a younger John to be Ruth's father, and it is rather compelling that old Johnny died in 1783 and very shortly thereafter in 1784/5 "Elizabeth North" married William Hirst in Kirkheaton. It is also compelling, though not probative, that the child of this unlikely marriage was named Ruth, probably after the old father's mother, nee Ruth Pollard. The only puzzle is what old John was doing between 1759 and 1773. This is why I had suspected he married Elizabeth Tweedale in Huddersfield in 1760. I strongly suspected that Ruth's mother's forename was "Elizabeth" because Ruth and James Broadbent seemed to employ that old naming pattern for their children, and their second daughter was named "Elizabeth." Again, not probative, but supportive.
If there was an intervening generation between old John and my Ruth, then where is it? It seems strange that a whole generation would go unmentioned in a six-generation chronicle on three adjoining tablets; it's not as if they had no room! for there was quite a span of time before some of the later Broadbents were added. And why would Ruth be the one to be buried there unless she was the likely candidate as old John's eldest child to the second marriage. Moreover, I have had no luck connecting our Coldroyd Norths with any other Norths in that vicinage.
Of course, the intervening "pond" does not help me in solving this puzzle.
Thanks especially for posting the Batch and Film numbers, because for some reason I cannot find Kirkheaton records from the mid-XVIII. century on IGI or on the films I heretofore examined at LDS Family History Center. No trouble finding the earlier and later ones; just that period in the middle.
I think I shall attempt attaching a collage I made for the Huddersfield cousin, showing Kirkheaton church, late cousin Maurice Broadbent at North-Broadbent stones, and garden view of the old house at Coldroyd, still standing, where the Norths, Broadbents, and Kilners lived.
Again, you made my day and earned some stars in your crown.
Taddy.
