1929
Fanny Williams Dunkley, wife of Samuel Dunkley, 1838-1935.
She was born in Spratton to William and Elizabeth Bunting, seventh of eleven children. Elizabeth was a Lantsbery, another Spratton family. The family moved to Northampton in 1851, where William was listed as a Woolstapler and Life Assurance Agent.
On 1858, when she was 20, Fanny married Samuel Dunkley in the King Street Wesleyan Chapel in Northampton. They lived in Creaton and had four daughters and a son, all born at Court House. Samuel was deacon of Creaton Chapel for many years and one of the first County Aldermen. He later farmed at Creaton Grange in Little Creaton, and died in 1893. In retirement, Fanny returned to Court House where she died in 1935, aged 97. The Newspaper article with the photograph says:
Woman organist of 91. Minds not so contented to-day as years ago.
From our own correspondent, Northampton, Monday (not dated should be 1929)
Despite her great age of 91, Mrs. S. Dunkley still climbs the steep path from her home in Creaton, near here, to the village Congregational chapel a quarter of a mile away to play the organ twice every Sunday. On dark evenings she uses a lantern to guide her to and from the chapel.
She has done this for more than 50 years, and she told me today that she hoped to continue until she dies. Mrs. Dunkley, who, it is claimed, is the oldest woman organist in England, is wonderfully alert in mind and body. She said to me: -"Although today we have much brighter services without the long sermons and prolonged prayers of the past, there is no longer the religious fervour that animated young and old. People want their religion in homeopathic doses.
"The worldly distractions of the age are not altogether to blame. The internal dissentions in the churches and the groping after something more than a simple faith in God are deplorable causing scepticism.
" You must not think that because I am 91 I am altogether prejudiced against the present in favour of the past. We live in the most wonderful age in human history with the wireless, the gramophone, the cinemas, the motors; but with all these there is not the contentment and real innocent healthful enjoyment such as I knew as a girl.
"The Sunday-school festivals, the picnics, the singing and sewing classes of my girlhood may seem simple, but they not only inspired and deepened our religious faith but also taught us to take a pride in acquiring accomplishments beyond ordinary domestic duties and produced that serene, contented frame of mind which the world so sadly lacks today."
See also image 3031
Image Reference: 2780
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