Norwich – Rosary Cemetery (William Henry Watson + Ann Watson)

Since I’ve been grounded again by the Government, I thought I’d meander around the Rosary Cemetery located near to me in Norwich, in an attempt to see what stories lie there. It might not be the most fascinating blog content, but it’ll keep me quiet for a few weeks….

This would have been one of the first burials at Rosary Cemetery, William Henry Watson who lived from 1803 to 1832 and Ann Watson who lived from 1817 to 1844. William was also born into a non-conformist family, with the cemetery being one of the few options to the family at the time given those beliefs.

William was born on 30 December 1803, the son of John Watson and Susanna Watson, in the St. Clement’s area of Norwich and he was baptised on 24 January 1804 by Samuel Newton who was a long-serving non-conformist minister. William died on 8 March 1832 and was buried on 13 March 1832, still listed as a dissenter.

Ann Watson was William’s sister, born on 1 December 1817 and baptised on 28 August 1818. This baptism was performed by William Hull, a minister at St. Gregory’s Church who wrote numerous books on religious matters.

And this story judders to a halt here, in a little run of my struggling to get much of interest beyond birth and death dates. Finding anything on William was always likely to be difficult, he was seemingly unmarried, died relatively young and before national censuses were taken. And there’s not much on Ann either, she died in 1844, but I can’t find her on the 1841 census. In addition, there are two more names on the gravestone, that of Mary Starling and Joseph George Flower, so there some stories here hidden ready to be uncovered at some point in the future….