Holy Trinity, Low Moor: Hill Top Sunday School |
Holy Trinity had three Sunday Schools which met in the Church Day School premises at Central School (Scott's School), Hill Top and Raw Nook. There is a photograph of the original Hill Top School building which was demolished following a fire in 1926 and some of the present buildings were erected to replace it. How there was space for the 19 classes listed is a mystery. If your ancestors lived in the Hill Top area their names may appear in the registers. But remember that there were other Sunday Schools in the Hill Top area run by the Wesleyan Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, and the Wesleyan Reformers. It's worth looking for any siblings you may know of, as this might confirm that the entry is for the person you are seeking, as it's more likely the whole family went along to the same Sunday School. The Hill Top Sunday School Registers are in a large volume with specially printed vertical rulings. Most years have a title page listing the Sunday School Officers. Each ruled page carries a year, a class title, and a year's worth of attendances under the appropriate week. Most entries under the date say 1 or 2, some have 3,4 or 5. This may indicate how many classes they attended that day. At the end of the columns are some totals. Through the years there seems to be different totals in different columns and we do not now understand what these are meant to indicate, so we have just indicated the full total (where given). The higher the number to more times the teacher or pupil attended. Sometimes a comment is made again a particular date column, such as Left the district or Died and when this happens we have given the comment and the date column it appeared against. In other instances the word "dead" or "deceased" is written in pencil against the person's name. Where this occurs we have indicated it in a separate column. As there are more instances during the certain years of records we wonder if this had been done retrospectively, perhaps when inviting scholars back to an event and those who had since died were marked accordingly. So just because a person is marked as "dead" in a particular year it does not mean that was the year the death occurred. After we checked all the entries they were put together in ten year periods and sorted into alphabetical order by surname first and then by Christian name and within names into year order. In theory all the entries for (say) William Smith will be the same person, but this might not be so. Be aware that for some names there could be several people of that name in the village. A progression though different classes each year probably indicates one person. Names might be spelled differently in different years, so someone might be William one year and Wm the next and Willie another year so they will not be sorted together.
Abbreviations used for Class names |
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