Thanks to Gardener for the comment -
> But her mother Alice was still alive in 1891 - you would have thought that she would know about the first baptism? Assuming that they were talking ;-)
This prompted me to look at what I had written and I should have written -
> nor any other PILLING burials in this grave.
I had not checked for any other names. I have now and the table below lists all the burials I can find in that grave in order of their burial -
Forenames Surname Abode Date Year Age Calc YoBirth
Jesse Waterhouse Elton 08-Dec 1863 13 1850
Jesse Pilling Elton 03-Dec 1878 5m 1878
John Waterhouse Elton 06-Nov 1879 1 1878
John Waterhouse Elton 17-Jul 1880 63 1817
Sarah Ann Pilling Elton 20-Dec 1882 27 1855
Alice Waterhouse Birtle 29-Jun 1892 68 1824
Emma Waterhouse Elton 24-Mar 1894 36 1858
With the help of Census data you can probably arrange these in a family structure, particularly if you relate these persons to information from LancashireBMD.
I was puzzled originally by the place of death of Alice Waterhouse - Birtle. This is on the east side of Bury and was originally a township in the parish of Middleton.
It is possible that Alice died in the Union Workhouse which was built at Jericho in Birtle in the 1850s and which by this date had some hospital facilities - some details are to be found at
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Bury/ Her death certificate should give fuller details of the place of death.
None of this begins to explain why the family did not know about Sarah Ann's baptism as an infant. May be Sarah Ann's mother was already in the workhouse (known as Jericho) and perhaps the family were just not sure if she was or was not baptised.
Hope this helps
Jim Lancaster (Bury, Lancs.)
