| Notes |
- We have nothing on Henry as of August 1, 1998.
08/25/00 Ashley and I have gone to England in July 2000 to do more gen ealogy. While there we found the Sandal Magna church in Sandal, a coup le of miles south of Wakefield. Gill Cunliffe, the church caretaker, m et us as we were entering the churchyard and she offered to take us in a nd show us the church. This turned out to be a day I will never forget . The church goes back to Saxon times and the original date does not s eem to be known (see Sandal Magna history). The first date mentioned is t he building of the second church in 1150. There were many interesting p arts of the church but, the highlight of the tour came when we reached t he far end of the church behind the pews and there stood the Baptism fo nt. The Font was dated 1647 and was made of stone and had a wooden cov er over the bowl area. It stood about 4 or 4 1/2 feet high. As I stoo d there, I realized that many times over the years my family had stood a t this very spot and had their children baptized and the results of tha t I have been finding in my tracing of the Sandal Magna church records. G ill took off the wooden cover off for me and I was able to see that the i nside bowl was made of lead or zinc. After showing us the 10 different s ections of the church, we went into the Parish Office. Gill unlocked a c orner cupboard and as she pulled out the cemetery records for the churc h, she said, "OK this is the part you really want to see. We opened th e book and immediately found a couple of different listings of Stafford . We were fortunate to have a new digital camera and were able to take p ictures of the pages and see the image and know that it was clear. (see t he photograph section) One of the listings included Henry, Thomas (jun ior's) son where this note is listed and his wife Sarah. To my surprise , the plot also included, Thomas(junior), his wife Margaret (Hoist) Sta fford, Thomas senior, his wife Mary (Conway) Stafford and in our direct l ine Charles, another of Thomas junior's sons, this was Henry's brother.
Several weeks after coming home, Ashley had her pictures developed from f ilm and she showed me a picture of another grave that she took in the S andal Magna Churchyard. It is a gravestone of another Henry Stafford. T he gravestone appears to be that of Henry, Hannah, Richard and Maria lo cated in section 1 of the cemetery. If so it is listed in the Sandal M agna cemetery records as grave 1267 in that section. We have no proof t o believe that these people are direct ancestors but, the information h as been kept should we determine the connection in the future. There w ere not that many families in the area but, there were at least two dif ferent lines of Staffords at this time. I am sure the two lines come t ogether but, have not been able to find that as yet.
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1801 - 1864 (63 years)
, d. 24 Dec 1802, Newmillerdam, Yorkshire, England 