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Yes I know it's just outside Briercliffe, but does anybody happen to know a contact telephone number or e-mail address for any member of the FRIENDS OF ST JOHN'S CHURCHYARD in Great Marsden? They are doing some important local history practical preservation work, and have a very interesting website at www.friendsofstjohns.co.uk, which even has photos of some members, but I can find no contact details at all for prospective members! I tried the published local number of a Mrs Butterworth, named in one photo, but it was the wrong person. The (modern replacement) church currently has no vicar and no curate, so the contact numbers published by the Diocesan website are disconnected. It's rather frustrating at long distance. DAN

That is frustrating Dan! You've tried all the routes I might have suggested!
Would it be worth contacting Nelson library to see if they can help?

There are some images from St Johns on the main site. When Kris and I were there some time ago, there had been diggers and all sorts driving between the gravestones. The area was quite a state but we managed to get around and take a few photos. http://www.briercliffesociety.co.uk/Gra ... arsden.htm

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

Good idea Mel I will try the library. You are clearly a wizard with a camera and PC, thank you for the link to your transcriptions and photos. Due to mud you couldn't get down to plot J where (according to the monumental transcriptions index in Preston LRC) Jane Speak is buried with her husband; but you did photograph the Hartley (of the Shooters Arms) grave in plot B, including Jane Hartley.
Now I enjoy coincidences but this one gave me problems, bearing in mind your longstanding advice not to assume anything from apparently good internet matches and not to believe what people put on birth and wedding certificates.
Jane Speak was born Jane Hartley, and lived at Southfield Fold, where in autumn 1857 she had a daughter Margaret but didn't name the father when registering the birth. A couple of hundred yards away, at the Shooters Arms, Southfield, lived the other, happily married, Hartleys (whose grave you photographed) - where wife ALSO Jane had a daughter ALSO Margaret ALSO in the autumn of 1857. The problems I have had sorting them out must be a common experience for many members! (I also had a great-grandfather James whose son had a son whom he called James - a few months before his father James had another son, whom HE called James as well.) It IS fun, isn't it? Dan

Ha ha and we do it because we enjoy it---all good fun

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.