Morning everyone,
I have had a very helpful email from the Torpoint archivist for the OPC who I emailed in the hope she could help me with anymore details about HENRY DAVEY + MARY ANN SMITH. She has sent back a fantastic email that might be able to open up a few more doors -
Hi Anna,
Thank you again for yours. What a complicated family with far too many
possiblities!
Firstly, the marriage. It did not take place at Torpoint. Torpoint was
split off from the parish of Antony in the early 1800s when a new church
was built, Torpoint having been just a chapel of Antony before then. As
the dockyard on the Devon side expanded Torpoint became a popular place
for dockyard workers to live as there was the Torpoint ferry to take
them over the River Tamar to work and to Plymouth. The new church was
built for this rather unruly influx. However, Antony Church remained the
burying ground for the parish, and the church with old traditional ties
to forbears. Henry Davey and Mary Ann Smith married there 22 September
1834, but I have no further details. This is characteristic of earlier
registers which only record simple names.
Very close in date is the marriage of Richard Davey to Selina Jewell
28.6.1835 and the marriage of Richard Davey to Ann Trathern 2.10.1836.
Whether this is a case of the same person rapidly widowed and remarried,
or two different Richards I can't say, but I did wonder whether there
might be a family connection to your Davey (see Richard Davey latter on.)
I have looked to see whether there was a chance to identify your family
in the Torpoint area. I have checked some local Daveys, in particular
the Davey family of Sheviock where Henry seems to have been a family
name but, as far as I can tell, their Henry's are all accounted for.
You mentioned the two baptisms in Torpoint and these are Elizabeth
(possibly Ann as middle name) b.1836 and Emma Mary b.1837. The perhaps
most interesting detail on the baptismal record is that the father was a
miner. I have checked the originals of these records to be sure thay
have been transcribed fully and accurately - and they have. However,
Torpoint is not really a mining area. There were mines nearby at
Menheniot - silver and lead - which certainly drew miners from Cornwall
to them but my initial reaction would be that there's a good chance that
a miner in Torpoint came from another area. The Torpoint area and east
Cornwall was a more agricultural area - it had a mild climate which
produced early fruit and vegetables fertilised with night soil from
Plymouth - and there was a constant demand for foodstuffs, woollen cloth
and meat to supply the naval dockyards.
The great mining area was around the Redruth area and further west,
where the granite ridge down the centre of Cornwall bore copper, tin and
rarer minerals like cobalt. When times were hard Cornish miners
emigrated with their skills to areas with similar geology - Australia,
South America and South Africa.
