This week Deceased Online will launch a new collection of burial and cemetery records from Blackburn & Darwen in Lancashire. Here I look at the history of Blackburn and the background to lives of many who are remembered in the burial registers. I grew up in rural Lancashire, about 30 miles away from the heartland of the former cotton industry that is Blackburn and Darwen. Although there were a few mills around the area in which I lived, they were nothing compared with the vast numbers of mills and factories that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries in Blackburn, Darwen and their near neighbours, Preston and Burnley. Like Blackburn, my village lay in the shadow of the brooding Pennine hills and our grass was bright green from regular rainfalls. Jubilee Tower, Darwen (c) John Darch Today, Blackburn is remembered as "Cotton Town", a name that lives on in an excellent local history project: http://www.cottontown.org/Pages/default.aspx The origins of the town's ...