Author: Crossley, Thomas
Biography:
CROSSLEY, Thomas (1803-43: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 2 Dec. 1803 and baptised at Halifax Wesleyan Methodist on 5 Jan. 1804, the son of John Crossley, dyer, and his wife Elizabeth Priestley, who had married in 1797 and went on to have at least twelve children. He was given a commercial education at Thomas Steele Swale’s school in Halifax and displayed an early talent for poetry. He became a dyer like his father, but by 1824 had begun to contribute poems to the Imperial Magazine and local newspapers. He also contributed to the Poets’ Corner in the Halifax Guardian. He married Rachel Farrar, the daughter of a Halifax machine-maker, at St. John the Baptist, Halifax, on 20 Jan. 1831. They went on to have at least six children. Although he lived in Halifax all his life, he was knowledgeable about literary networks and seems to have known John Clare and Patrick Branwell Brontë (qq.v.). He may have drunk occasionally with Brontë at the Lord Nelson Inn in the High Street, Luddenden (still in existence). Clare owned copies of his first two volumes, listed here. His third collection, The Flowers of Ebor (1837), which lies outside the scope of this bibliography, contains poems which address or pay tribute to Thomson, Southey, Wordsworth, Burns, Bloomfield, and Clare (qq.v.). He was also known to the minor poets John Nicholson and Ebenezer Elliot (qq.v.) who called him the “Ovenden Bard.” He died 2 Sept. 1843 at Park Lodge (Cottage), Ovenden, leaving a wife and six children. After his death, his widow Rebecca, a bonnet-maker, continued to live with her children until her death in 1880. The sons became dyers and the daughters, some of whom married, became bonnet-stretchers. (ancestry.co.uk 5 Jan. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 5 Jan. 2022; Newsam, 200-2; Leeds Patriot 29 Jan. 1831; Bradford Observer 7 Sept. 1843; Halifax Guardian 9 Sept. 1843; GM Nov. 1843, 557; Catalogue of the John Clare Collection in the Northampton Public Library [1964], items 170-1; Goodridge) AA