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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Cornwall => Topic started by: JaneyCanuck on Saturday 04 August 12 20:31 BST (UK)
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I'm from away. ;)
My gr-grfather was born in the Linkinhorne area c1850. His mother was baptised in St Stephens by Saltash. His father was born in Devon, but his (the father's) parents appear to have married in Cornwall.
In 1857, a batch of the younger children in the family, including my gr-grfather, were baptised in St Ive. In 1861, the mother and children were living in Plymouth; the father was probably in London but I can't find him. I've never found a marriage for the parents.
There were three children in the family older than the batch baptised in 1857. They were born about 1842-1845. The eldest of the three was supposedly born in Jersey but there's no trace of birth or baptism. The next two were born in Stoke Damerel, properly registered. The youngest of those three was baptised in London at the age of about 28, obviously in contemplation of death (he was already married).
And here I find the middle one being baptised in Torpoint at the age of five, after the 1857 batch in St Ive and before the 1861 census.
And my question is ...
The parents' address on the baptism record is given as Thanckes.
I see that in Torpoint today, there is Thanckes Park, and there are some houses called Thanckes (self-catering cottages in Portwrinkle, which are apparently modern builds).
Torpoint is in St German's reg dist, which doesn't show either Thanckes or Portwrinkle in its list.
http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/st%20germans.html
(I see on a map that Portwrinkle and Torpoint are on opposite sides of the peninsula.)
Nobody seems to give Than*s in Cornwall or Devon as place of birth in a census.
So ... what did it mean in 1860 when the parents' residence for the baptism in Torpoint was given as "Thanckes itp" (in this parish)? Was it a place, a house ...? Anybody know, or any ideas?
Thanckes! ;)
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Hi there
If you do a search for Torpoint, Cornwall you will see it mentions Thanckes.
It was a house with a large ornimental garden and home of the Graves family.
There is also a muddy lake called Thanckes lake. It is now a Park and has
been preserved as a recreational place and used for that always. It is a small place but
your family could well have worked in the house or land for the
Graves family maybe?
The house has gone now but it does lie near a naval fuel base which
again could have brought people there to work. I think by the sounds
of it it has been swallowed up by Torpoint now.
regards Sandymc
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Aha, interesting, and I shall read further.
The father of the child baptised was a mining agent. This isn't the same as the "mine agent" in Cornish mines, a sort of health and safey officer. He was an agent for mines; although I'm not really clear on just what he did, one of his sons-in-law did it, too, probably through the connection with his wife's father. His other son-in-law was probably the reason for it all: his uncle was a big copper and timber magnate in Wales, and Australia, and Chile ... Around 1870, my guy, the father of the child baptised in Torpoint, went bankrupt as a share dealer in London. In 1859 there is a draft licence for 21 years to work minerals granted to him (he is identified as of Middlesex) and his business partner, by Thos. Tristram Spry Carlyon of Tregrehan, esq.
So if it was that house, possibly they were tenants for a period? or there were smaller houses belonging to it, or something ...
Anyhow, one more bit of annoyance from this insane family, about the only one of mine who weren't nice plain ag labs or footwear workers. So thanks, and I shall read up!
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Hi Janey
You have given alot of information but not really any names you were talking about.
Maybe if you could give us the names of someone you are interested in we
could find them for you, hence a better understanding of where they were?
regards Sandymc
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Well, I'm sometimes a little cagey about actual names, just for privacy reasons. My gr-grfather is one of the children, and that's the point where I kind of draw the line sometimes on giving names.
I know where everybody in the family was:
- (well, in 1841, I don't know where either of the parents was, although I have theories about them - common names, lack of detail on census, crossing between Cornwall and Devon ... the second and third kids of the couple were registered in Devon in 1845-6, then the next ones in Cornwall)
- in 1851 in Cornwall (the family all together, as they're all listed in the household ... but there are questions about the paternity of the child born later that year and the next child, despite the certificates; DNA kit is waiting to get done later this month!)
- 1854 a batch of younger children baptised in Cornwall, 1859 the father is identified in the mining licence as resident in Middlesex, 1860 the stray eldest son is baptised in Torpoint
- in 1861 in Plymouth (mother and all kids, father not found yet but as of the 1859 mining licence thing he was identified as being in the place in London where he met his next wife around 1867)
- in 1871, all of them accounted for in different places (the father in London with his new "wife" - and their child - whom he married a few weeks later, while the first wife was still living - she was also in London with some of the kids - but then I've never found a marriage for them)
It's the father in 1861 I can't find, and if I can't find him, he isn't there. ;) He could well have been in Australia where the magnate from Wales (his daughter's father-in-law) was in the 1850s and 1860s.
It seems the parents were separate/estranged sometime in the mid-late 1850s, if not before (there being, of course, a tale about who the "real" father of the kids born 1851 onward were). But the baptisms still took place in the 1850s as if the family was intact, and it could have been, with him just living away for business. They may have cohabited in London in the late 1860s, as his former address in his bankruptcy proceedings was the wife's address in 1871. Broad Street! - the daughter was an actress. ;)
In case you're wondering ... amid all this wheeling and dealing and on-stage performing in 1871, my gr-grfather was hauling crates of biscuits in a factory in Berkshire, and ended up a gasworks lunchroom attendant in London, married to a police sgt's daughter, many years later before emigrating to Canada. If there were money and connections to be had in that family, we didn't get 'em. When his son married my grandmother in Canada, her father, a railway fireman, considered the marriage to be well beneath her.
Let me poke around at it over the next little while and see whether I can get any idea of what they would have been doing at Thanckes. Hell, maybe it was just the mother who was there, and I might find a clue about how she crossed paths with her alleged paramour ... ;)
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Here we are, a little info already ... I'll just stick some here for the record and in case it interests anyone else someday.
http://archive.org/stream/registersofparis00stco/registersofparis00stco_djvu.txt
CORNWALL,
FROM THE YEAR 1539 TO 1780.
(published 1881)
... Towards the close of the seventeenth century two brothers (sons of Stephen Warne of St. Columb) settled in the' neighbourhood of East Anthony ; the elder, Mr. William Warne of Thanckes in East Anthony, left an only daughter, married to Captain Thomas Graves, E.N. (father by his second wife of the first Lord Graves), to whom she carried the estate of Thanckes. ...
While the mother in my family was baptised in St Stephens by Saltash (her father's home parish), she gave Antony as her place of birth in censuses.
http://www.friendsofthanckespark.org.uk/history.html
The original Thanckes house was built 1714 and demolished in 1870, and rebuilt. The article suggests that by the turn of the 20th century, the house had been let as a country house and became a hotel (and was subsequently moved stone by stone to Portwrinkle!).
And the 1881 census shows it occupied by a Bradshaw family (he is captain in the RN, from London) with many local servants. No useful names, of course. There are also a house and lodge ... Gravesend House is occupied by Captain Branch, who is absent - but luckily somebody entered him anyhow! - and his servants. So Thanckes had been rebuilt, and both houses were occupied by naval captains.
In 1871, and also in 1861 and 1851, the Graves are in residence -- but at Gravesend House, not Thanckes House. Thanckes House was demolished in 1870, presumably why there is no one shown there in 1871.
In 1861, the Graves family are at Gravesend House. Thanckes House is occupied by Hon George Edgewoods, retired diplomat. I wonder whether my family were the tenants just before that, then.
In 1851, the Graves family also has the address Gravesend. I don't see a Thanckes House that year. There is a Thankes Cottage occupied by a farm labourer.
I think what the local history people call Thanckes House was called Gravesend by the family - but may have been called Thanckes generally, locally.
edit - here we are:
http://www.historic-cornwall.org.uk/csus/towns/torpoint/csus_torpoint_ca6.pdf
Gravesend House, a smaller country house on Gravesend Point, was built in the 1750s by another Admiral, Henry Harrison.
It's still there and its grounds are part of Thanckes park.
I now have to read up on Graves. 1851 describes him as Baron, Peerage of Ireland. Well, the mythical real father in my tale was the brother of a Baron, Peerage of Ireland ... just not this one. ;) And my best guess is that he was the brother killed at Alma in 1854, a few weeks before the actress daughter who carries his surname as a middle name, and adopted it as her surname before marrying, was born ...
Doncha just love a blue blood story? ;)
Now I have to see whether the two Barons were buddies, and maybe my grx2 grmother was at Thanckes in the late 1850s in this connection. But why on earth she'd be having her eldest son baptised there when he was already -- oops, my arithemetic, he was about 15, not five! -- and she'd had a batch baptised just five or so years earlier, I don't know.
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Fantastic story and isnt the net great that you can dig all this information up.
It might have been the prestige of christening the child in a posh place as
in those days you had to have prestige even if you had no money.
Living amongst the gentry could have spurred her on.
Understand about the names and privacy but I am sure people will find it
interesting no matter.
regards Sandymc
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Here we are, a little info already ... I'll just stick some here for the record and in case it interests anyone else someday.
http://archive.org/stream/registersofparis00stco/registersofparis00stco_djvu.txt
CORNWALL,
FROM THE YEAR 1539 TO 1780.
(published 1881)
... Towards the close of the seventeenth century two brothers (sons of Stephen Warne of St. Columb) settled in the' neighbourhood of East Anthony ; the elder, Mr. William Warne of Thanckes in East Anthony, left an only daughter, married to Captain Thomas Graves, E.N. (father by his second wife of the first Lord Graves), to whom she carried the estate of Thanckes. ...
While the mother in my family was baptised in St Stephens by Saltash (her father's home parish), she gave Antony as her place of birth in censuses.
http://www.friendsofthanckespark.org.uk/history.html
The original Thanckes house was built 1714 and demolished in 1870, and rebuilt. The article suggests that by the turn of the 20th century, the house had been let as a country house and became a hotel (and was subsequently moved stone by stone to Portwrinkle!).
The Graves family let Thanckes house, because the second Lord Graves had been living at Bishops Court, Sowton, near Exeter and as Torpoint housing developed, the house was not secluded enough from the public. After the 4th Lord Graves revamped the house it was moved to Portwincke and in the press cutting that I have about the move, it states that the Ghost got left behind, who was a servant girl in the house and was murdered by the butler.
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The Graves family let Thanckes house, because the second Lord Graves had been living at Bishops Court, Sowton, near Exeter and as Torpoint housing developed, the house was not secluded enough from the public. After the 4th Lord Graves revamped the house it was moved to Portwincke and in the press cutting that I have about the move, it states that the Ghost got left behind, who was a servant girl in the house and was murdered by the butler.
Dang this board formatting! I've finally had time to take another look and saw your message (quoted above in this one) buried in the quotation of my post.
Thank you, more interesting tidbits! At least I know that my ancestor wasn't the servant girl in question. ;)
Although ... just after the record of that baptism, the family is living in Plymouth in the 1861 census (minus dad) ... and the eldest girl, then still in her teens, has never been found in any records after that ... When would this servant girl have been done in?? ;D (No grinning matter of course if it was so, just grinning at the idea of more tall tales and mysteries in my tree.)
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Running across this again, and having relocated since I started the thread, back to my southwestern Ontario home turf, I became curious.
As a kid, I wrote a bunch about local history here. John Graves Simcoe was one of the leading characters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graves_Simcoe
John Graves Simcoe (25 February 1752 – 26 October 1806) was a British Army general and the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York (now Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, and freehold land tenure, and also in the abolition of slavery in Canada.
... Simcoe was the only surviving son of Cornishman John (1710–1759) and Katherine Simcoe (d. 1767). His parents had four children, but he was the only one to live past childhood; Percy drowned in 1764, while Paulet William and John William died as infants. ... The family then moved to his mother's parental home in Exeter. His paternal grandparents were William and Mary (née Hutchinson) Simcoe.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NKY7-5YS
Name John Graves Simcoe
Spouse's Name Elizabeth Posthuma Gillam
Event Date 30 Dec 1782
Event Place Buckerell,Devon,England
He was born in Northamptonshire. I'm wondering, given the apparent maternal familial Exeter connection, whether his "Graves" came from his mother's side, about which nothing seems to be known, and how remote his connection with Thanckes might have been.
Just idle historical curiosity. ;)
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Name John Graves Simcoe
Spouse's Name Elizabeth Posthuma Gillam
Event Date 30 Dec 1782
Event Place Buckerell,Devon,England
He was born in Northamptonshire. I'm wondering, given the apparent maternal familial Exeter connection, whether his "Graves" came from his mother's side, about which nothing seems to be known, and how remote his connection with Thanckes might have been.
Just idle historical curiosity. ;)
[/quote]
John Graves Simcoe was the Godson of Admiral Samuel Graves 1713-1787 and he married the Admiral's ward Elizabeth Posthuma Gwilliam at Buckerell Church, which was near to the Admirals home at Hembury Fort House. The Admiral was the nephew of Rear Admiral Thomas Graves of Thanckes 1680-1755, who was the father of Admiral Lord Thomas Graves 1725-1802.
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Thank you so much!
Seeing the Graves name, and having recently moved back to southwestern Ontario, really did just bring back to mind my projects and classes from all those years ago about the settling of this area, and the itch to know needed scratching, but some quick googling wasn't telling me.
I should have tried harder (but my procrastinating was getting out of hand, so here I am on 4 hours' sleep trying to meet today's deadline ...)
http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/simcoe/simcoe-early-years.aspx
https://torontoist.com/2016/07/historicist-elizabeth-simcoe/
And now I know what I didn't know before, because of course in my day we didn't learn about women in history -- that Elizabeth, like other women diarists, is a voice through which we know much of what we know about life in that day.
Gotta meet that deadline, then I'll go back and browse some more. Thanks again!
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I have had a look again at Thanckes House and it was first advertised to let in December 1827. The Dowager Lady Graves, had died in March aged 89 and Lord William Paget, her daughter-in-law brother had been living there after her death.
In 1844, Lord Lisle was in occupation.
By 1861, the Hon George Edgcumbe was living at Thanckes with his family.
In March 1870 the 3rd Lord Graves died at Thanckes and thereafter the 4th Lord and his family were living there, during his time he pulled down the old house and in 1872 he built a new mansion in the grounds, which he advertised to let in The Morning Post on the 24th August 1876 and fourteen subsequent advertisements up to the 17th October.
The Royal Cornwall Gazette on the 28th August 1875 printed a story "Alleged Abandonment of Child in Nobleman's House", which involved one of the maids Emma Buie, who had given birth to a male child and had hid it in a box when only a few hours old.
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Well, I can only apologise for neglecting to answer your post, G Mix. Pandemic ... my partner and I have still not left the house since Feb 28 of last year, except for essential medical and veterinary reasons (and of course our double doses), so you'd think that would have left lots of time for family historying. It didn't happen.
In Feb of this year, right when this post was added to my old thread, I suddenly got very busy with work. I've always worked at a home office, so COVID actually had far less effect on us than on most others. The worst effect for us was on my mum, living 200 miles from me, 90 years old and isolated in her apartment in a senior cits' building. She had been in cancer treatment for over two years, one of the first to get a wonderful new immunotherapy and one of the lucky ones on whom it worked miracles, making her a poster child for others to have access to it -- so she had gone from being bedridden in agony and needing one of us kids there 24/7 (I did it in 10-day shifts; my sister living nearby tended to all her shopping and hospital apointments, from then through the pandemic) to doing laps around the block with her walker. Ten weeks after the date of the post I'm replying to, 8 weeks after eagerly having her first shot, she died suddenly and alone late at night, not of cancer or COVID but apparently of heart failure. I will forever hate every single person everywhere who selfishly defied pandemic rules (and now stupidly and evilly refuses vaccination) and contributed to my mother not seeing two of her four children for over a year, and to the depression she didn't survive. Rant ends.
Thank you G Mix. I know I did read your post and take it on board -- because I was recently closing a slew of old open tabs and ran across the ones where I'd hunted for Emma Buie. :)
The thing is that the missing daughter in that family of mine -- the eldest child, born in the 1840s, according to the two censuses she appears in (51 and 61) -- was named Emma. So imagine my ears perking up.
Emma Buie, age 16 (b. c1856 Clerkenwell), seems to have been a servant in a Monro household in London in 1871 (so place of birth may or may not have been correct). That seems likely to be the one, but I see no other records of her. The surname Buie seems to be Scottish. My Emma would have been nearly twice as old in 1871.
I can also add, all these years later, that some DNA work was done and that the family in question -- whose "real" surname is not the surname my mum inherited -- matches closely with the YDNA of a family that lived for generations 10 miles from where my family was in the 1850s with a totally different surname. But not closely enough to find a paper crossroad, probably, even if I had any clue who my most recent Mr. "real surname" -- who married c1820, grandfather of the children batch baptised in the 1850s, who is evident in any other records only from the fact that his widow remarried in the 1830s -- was and where he came from... although I do know that his wife (whose DNA doesn't count in the male surname line) had the same surname as the YDNA match name with my family -- !! So many webs, so tangled.
I stay on the trails, but I'm kind of stuck where I was a few years ago, except for ever-narrowing bits and pieces. Like discovering the grave of my great-grandfather's sister (one of the batch baptisms in Cornwall in the 1850s) in Canada, of all places, where her husband abandoned it when he departed back to England later that year with their kids (one of whom settled in S. Africa, whose granddaughters, whom I had already found online, had never heard of their great-grandmother buried in Canada and knew only more genealogical tall tales) and his new wife, and then left the kids behind and left for parts even more exotic. One half of a couple dissembling is enough; when both of them and their kids and their siblings just lie about everything, in different ways, this is what you get.
It was interesting to read this thread again. We are in the midst of a paroxysm of statue toppling and name-changing here in Ontario (Messrs. Ryerson and Dundas, for example, having been associated with the "Indian" residential schools where crimes against humanity were committed), but I haven't seen anything yet calling for Col. Simcoe's deposing. He was a mixed bag, of course, as aren't we all.
I think I'll go hunting for my Emma again. Or make lunch.