Moffatt, Elizabeth (nee Dunn) (1843-1914)

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Transcription of obituary published in the Primitive Methodist Magazine by W.P.

Mrs. Elizabeth Moffat was born at Lowick seventy years ago. Early in the seventies she moved with her husband southward to the collieries and spent the remainder of her life in Choppington and Ashington. She joined the Primitive Methodists on her arrival in the district, and she has been a loyal and earnest worker for the cause in all the intervening years—the last sixteen in connection with our church at Hirst. Her gracious presence in Sunday and week-day services was an inspiration to preacher and people, and the finance of the church often benefited by her activity. 

Her devotion to her family during long years of widowhood was exemplary, and she had the joy of seeing them grow up in honourable association with our Church, one of her sons being a very acceptable local preacher. 

After a painful illness she died on February 26th, 1914, and on the Sunday following was laid to rest in Choppington churchyard, after a service in our Hirst Church, conducted by Rev. W. Pickering.

Family

Elizabeth was born in 1843 at Lowick, Northumberland, to parents George Dunn, who worked the land (1851), and Elizabeth Scouler.

The 1861 census return describes Elizabeth as an “out door worker.”

She married John Moffatt (1838-1897), a coal miner (1891), in the spring of 1868 in the Alnwick Registration District, Northumberland. Census returns identify nine children.

• George (abt1869-1914) – a coal miner hewer (1901)
• William (1870-1871)
• Jane (1875-1900)
• Margaret Ann (1877-1949) – married Edward Sanderson, a coal miner (1901) and market gardener (1911), in 1898
• James (1878-1953) – platelayer in coal mine – underground (1901); coal cutting machinist (1911)
• Elizabeth Mary (1881-1952) – married Joseph Reynolds, a coal miner – deputy overman (1939), in 1917
• John William (b1884) – coal miner – hewer (1911)
• Thomas (b1885) – coal miner – waste man (1911)
• Ellen (b1888)

Elizabeth died on 26 February 1914 at Hirst, Ashington, Northumberland.

References

Primitive Methodist Magazine 1914/665

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

Note: many records spell the family name as ‘Moffat’.