NORTHUMBRIA-L Archives

From: GWilson404 <>
Subject: Sunderland Cemetery Help
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 06:52:33 EST

New Years Eve, a delightfully sunny day for a family history visit to
Sunderland, although it was dull and wet on the west coast in Lytham St Annes.

The main objective of the visit was to view the restored gravestone of my gg
grandparents, William and Mary Ann WILSON in Grangetown Cemetery. This is one
of three family graves in Sunderland Grangetown Cemetery that I had got to
know about from my fathers visits to one of them which contains his parents
and paternal grandparents. The other graves are next but one, and that of my
gg grandparents I had on a previous visit literally fallen over, because it
was lying on the ground. So I arranged for it to be restored and reerected.
Well, it has been superbly done by Scotts of Seaham and I am delighted.

Some time ago through the Genuki newsgroup I had promised to check on another
grave in Grangetown for Anthony Hesling in Australia. The grave contains his
ggg grandfather Henry O BOWMAN. The man in the cemetery office, Mr Jones, was
extremely helpful and has most of the ledgers going back into the 19th
Century. These tell you the names of those buried, date of funeral and name of
officiating clergyman, as well as occupation of the deceased. Separate ledgers
give the complete plan of the cemetery with grave numbers and who owns the
graves. From his date of death we were able to locate Henry's grave, which
also contains a further three people plus reference to one other lost at sea,
and I have now e-mailed this information to Anthony in Australia.

Having also three other dates of death that I knew from previous checks in the
registers were not in Grangetown, I decided to try the other two main
cemeteries in Sunderland. At Bishopswearmouth at the fancy new crematorium we
were told all records were at the Civic Centre and at Mere Knowles the curator
was on holiday. So we went to the Civic Centre and I found out something I
wish I'd known a long time ago. They have a duplicate set of the burial
registers from each of the cemeteries : beautifully bound ledgers. So we
looked up my three deaths in those and found one each at Grangetown,
Bishopwearmouth and Mere Knowles. (Yes, I know I'd already checked them all
without success in the register at Grangetown!) What they don't have at the
Civic Centre are the plot maps for the cemeteries, but I now had three more
graves to check on. But by this time it was getting dark, and there was no
more time to revisit the cemeteries, so I came away with more questions than I
went with. Well such is family history research!!

Actually I did find something out, which was that my g grandfather had another
daughter by his first wife that I didn't know about and the little baby is
buried with her mother in Mere Knowles.

If anyone has actually read this far, the objective of this posting is to ask
whether there is anyone living in Sunderland on this newsgroup who would be
prepared to go to any of the cemeteries in Sunderland and check on the
inscriptions on these three further graves. I have the plot numbers and can
give fairly precise instructions.

TIA

Gerald Wilson,

Gerald Wilson,Lytham,Lancs, UK.<>

Researching:Wilson,Scott,Walker, Cockburn,Fielder,Carr, Ayre in Co Durham,C19.
Jenkin in Cornwall and Co Durham, C19
Dawson, Robinson, Williamson in Lancashire C18 and 19.
Crocker,Palmer,Medland, Weeks, Newcombe in Hatherleigh, Devon C19

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• Sunderland Cemetery Help by GWilson404 <>