Hello Dave –
I can’t thank you enough for these transcriptions, and for taking the time and trouble to attempt to decipher what sound like almost illegible entries in the parish registers.
I suppose that, given the state of the records, we will never know for certain, but the entries you managed to find certainly sound as if they might be the records of my Horsfall ancestors which are not found in Wilson.
James Horsfall s of h'b (small) Horsefall bapt March 30th 1760 Wad Hep
[it is not impossible that h’b (superscript) = Ab = Abraham]
Suzan Horsfall D of A -- Horsfall bapt March 28th 1766 Wad Hep
[D of A = daughter of Abraham Horsfall?]
Betty Horsfall d A Bapt July 12th 1765 wad Hep
[d A = daughter of Abraham Horsfall?]
A Hors--ll S A ba-t 10 --g 1770 wad –[SA = son of Abraham?]
First of all, it’s interesting that ‘Wad’ appears at the end of each of these entries. I take this to mean that these children’s father lived in Wadsworth, Heptonstall (Wadsworth is now an area just to the east of Hebden Bridge). I know that Abraham Horsfall and his wife Martha lived at Pickovergate from at least 1774 (the Wilson record of Philip’s birth – father, Abraham, Pickovergate, Stansfield) – but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have lived at Wadsworth before then. The earliest two records (from Wilson):
John (1755) – the father, Abraham, was a webster (weaver) of Eastfield.
Richard (1758) – the father, Abraham, was a webster of Stansfield.
The fact that all the names you found are names of Abraham’s ‘missing’ children adds weight to the supposition that they belonged to the same family. They are certainly all in the right timeframe.
Again – we may never know the truth, but we’ll regard it as a workable hypothesis that these records you were kind enough – and patient enough – to find are likely to refer to the children named by Abraham Horsfall in his will of 1807, but who are missing from Wilson’s list.
With thanks and best wishes
Ian
