Homebodies: Benjamin, Edith and Thomas Herbert Victor of Mousehole

Mousehole Harbour, Cornwall, England

On my own blog starryblackness I’ve recently written about the Victor branch of the Rowe family.

Born in the small fishing port of Mousehole, Cornwall, England, sister and brother Mary and John moved at different times to Devonport (Plymouth) for work and their brother Edwin ended up in Glamorganshire, South Wales. However their brother Benjamin happily stayed behind in Mousehole, which is just 6 miles from Land’s End in the western tip of Cornwall.

Benjamin was the son of a fisherman called Bernard Victor and his wife Alice (nee Rowe). He was born around Christmas 1860/New year 1861 as he was 3 months old by the 7 April 1861 census.  He was baptised on 28 April that year, one of eight babies baptised that day – Paul Parish Church must have been so noisy!  However, scrolling down the list of baptisms that year in Paul Church, 13 October 1861 must have been wilder as an astounding 17 babies were baptised.

Looking down Fore Street, Mousehole

The family were living on Quay Street at that time, but by 1871 they had moved to 2 Mill Place – this picture of Fore Street is the view Benjamin would have got as he came out the house and turned down to head to the harbour.  He was still at school at that point.

By 1881 he was working as a boot and shoe maker, living on Church Street in Mousehole with his parents and two of his brothers, widowed Gamaliel and younger brother Edwin.

His father Bernard died in summer 1891. His father had been a quiet man, interested in the Cornish language and history, and perhaps the love he had for his home village was passed on to Benjamin.

St Mary's Church, Penzance, Cornwall

Although there was hostility between neighbouring Newlyn and Penzance (the latter was the far side of Newlyn from Mousehole), Benjamin met and fell for a Penzance girl called Edith Wilkins. They married in her parish, Penzance St Mary’s, on 3 November 1890. Her father was an engineer called Thomas Wilkins and witnessed the wedding; by that time Benjamin had become a boot maker like his grandfather William Rowe.

They settled down in Mousehole, where their son Thomas Herbert was born on 6 September 1894. Their daughter Annie Olive was born on 5 August 1898.  I know they also had a third child who’d been born and died young before 1911, according to that census.

Benjamin continued to work as a boot and shoe maker and they lived in Mousehole at various addresses over the years.

Benjamin’s mother Alice Victor (nee Rowe) died in 1903.

Penzance Public Library (L) and School of Art (R)

In 1911 Benjamin and Edith were living at home in Mousehole with Thomas and Annie. They also had a widowed aunt staying, a lady called Ann Curnow who had been senile for two years. At this time Thomas was an art student, which I found intriguing as this is the time when the Newlyn School of Art was flourishing and there was an art college in Penzance next to the Library, built in 1880.

So I googled Thomas Herbert Victor and – yes! A ‘famous ancestor’ at last! I found him on the Cornwall Artists Index and he indeed did go to to the Penzance School of Art where he had a scholarship from the start.  He was offered a scholarship at the Slade School of Fine Art in London but chose not to leave Mousehole and indeed lived there all his life, never travelling further than Truro, 32 miles away.

Bernard died in 1914 and was buried in Paul Cemetery.  Edith outlived him and the first world war by many years, dying on 15 January 1941 in Mousehole; her son was her executor.

Their children lived into their 80s, Thomas dying on 10 March 1980 in Mousehole, and Annie two years later, also close by in the same registration area.

© Lynne Black, 21 October 2015

Cornish Family History: Treasures of Penwith

You can't beat a bit of local information!

I'm not long back from a family holiday in Newlyn, near Lands End in Cornwall, England.

During the holiday I did the holiday stuff like a family barbecue, meeting for meals, enjoying a day out at Land’s End and just spending a lot of time with my mum. However I also visited a cluster of ancestors I've spent the last few months getting to know.

I’d managed to do a lot of work online during the spring thanks largely to the exceptional hard work of the local Online Parish Clerk Diane Donohue who transcribed and made available free online decades-worth of baptisms, marriages and burials, amongst other resources, from OPC Newlyn St Peter and Paul parishes.

I also joined Cornwall Family History Society  whose online records also gave me a lot of information prior to my visit, some of which is on FindMyPast but not all, as far as my search results indicated.

I had also made pages of lists in my book of graves to track down, streets to check out for photos of ancestors’ homes, churches to visit and places to visit, such as the shops my ancestors ran or their schools. The following are a few of the main sources I appreciated.

Morrab Library 

The Morrab Library in Penzance (next to Newlyn) is an amazing private library in what was formerly the home of the local dignitary and MP Charles Campbell Ross. I had planned to go check out their range of resources which I knew from the web they held, specifically old parish records for a couple of nearby parishes St Buryan and Sancreed.

Morrab Library, Penzance

In the event the first time I went along there was staff sickness and the Library had needed to close for the afternoon.  Fortunately this was early in my holiday so I gave them a call the following day to check they were open again. The volunteer who answered the phone who had the dubious honour of fielding my many questions told me that yes they have a photo archive which is open on Wednesday mornings only. Ha! The next day. So one itinerary change later and I was back the following morning.  The team were great, really helpful, and showed me the various hard-copy photo albums they had sitting there, and told me about the catalogue they have. 

There were so many images of Newlyn and Street-An-Nowan (the specific part of Newlyn I'm most interested in) so I spent some time working my way through their catalogue. There were no photos in the archive of my family’s ice-cream shop so maybe we should contribute one!  I had planned to stay all day and check out the OPRs but my eyes get bleary quite quickly when scanning so when the photo archive closed I just went home and joined family for a day out at Lands End [their 4D dinosaur film was brilliant!]  But I did order a digital copy of a couple of photos of a family house and they were emailed to me within days. It was fascinating to see the streets from the war without yellow lines at the side of the road or best of all, without wheelie bins in the photos!

Penlee House 

I went to Penlee House art gallery to see an art exhibition of work by the Newlyn School artists such as Stanhope Forbes, mainly because my mum told me to. However I liked it and I found some of the pieces really engaging, especially those showing local Newlyn girls and women just having a laugh or going about their business like Frank Bramley's Eyes and No Eyes.  Others were really haunting, especially a couple of portraits of women who've just lost their fisherman husbands at sea such as Walter Langley's Among the Missing.

Penzance Library

Penzance Library (left)

After I’d finished at Penlee House I was walking about and by chance walked past Penzance Library so I thought I would just pop in and see what they had.

In addition to microfilm and readers, in their family history section they had whole sets of local books such as Kelly’s directories. Not something to start working through just when you've dropped in on the off-chance with no notes with you. However what they did have that I wouldn't have got anywhere else was a book about Newlyn's history by a local author, published privately and one of only ten in existence.  I took many, many notes from that one!

Newlyn Archive
Newlyn Archive is another local organisation which is run by volunteers and it too was only open half-day a week, although that’s just the public face on it and doesn't reflect the hours of work behind the scenes by volunteers. I spent a while chatting with Pam and colleagues and looking through some of their books, mainly those which work by surname. They have so many documents that I’ll need to check their catalogue online and I have contact details for following things up. My mum told me to leave hard copy of some of my Newlyn-related blog posts with them which disconcerted me as I didn’t want to force anything on them, but they seemed interested and quite pleased.  I’d previous bought their books about Newlyn at Play and Newlyn at School and this time I left after buying Newlyn at War.

Before leaving Newlyn I checked out Newlyn Post Office. I’ve found in other towns that often post offices have local books  of the areas and also postcards, and this turned out to be the case here too.  And it had the added bonus of being sited (I believe) in the old Customs Building.  If this is the case it’s where my grandfather James E Glover worked, which made me happy.

Finally Hannah of Cornwall Council was really helpful. I actually rang her up during my visit as I’d run out of time before the holiday. I was very embarrassed that I’d not given her more notice in my request for grave locations, but she was really kind and efficient and she popped the information about 2 graves’ locations in the mail to my mum’s house. 

Susan Richards' grave

So, after spending an hour earlier in the week walking along rows of graves in Paul Cemetery and checking out the Paul QuietGarden graveyard I was able to walk in Paul Cemetery direct to the grave of my great-great-grandparents Benjamin Jaco Rowe and Susan (nee Sullivan) and their daughter Susie Richards. It was lovely to finally get to find them.

Later that day we went on a drive to a couple of local parishes where my ancestors lived in the 18^th century: St Buryan and Sancreed. By chance St Buryan Church had its Tower Open Day so the church was really busy. So not only did I get information leaflet and postcards (and of course dozens of photos!) but mum and I had a nice cream tea in the church, which was vaguely surreal but very tasty. And no I didn’t climb the tower, but would like to another time to get a view over the whole parish.

Sancreed Church, Cornwall

Sancreed was a beautiful church and not at all what I expected. Pulling up in the parking space across the road from it it gave us a beautiful classic view of a church, with its gate and its beautiful cemetery walls covered in flowers, with the church in the background. What I wasn't expecting – although to be honest I’d not thought about the church more than just that I wanted to visit it – was that the beautiful graveyard was the resting place of Stanhope Forbes and other Newlyn School artists. Their influence also was obvious inside the church, which although very old, included more recent artistic flourishes.

So what next?

The remaining graves will still be there when I go back, but this time I’ll contact the Council a few weeks in advance...

There are lots of family biographies that can now be written and illustrated.

I'm sure I’ll be back in touch with the Newlyn Archive soon.

And there seems to be so many publications and resources at the Morrab Library I will pay that a longer visit when I'm down.

But so much to do first!  The more you learn, the more you realise is still to be discovered!

Lynne Black

Blog: Starryblackness: https://starryblackness.wordpress.com/ 

© Lynne Black, 21 August 2015

Benjamin and Susan Rowe of Newlyn: from fishing to baking

Benjamin ‘Ben’ Jaco Rowe, my great-great-grandfather, was a Cornishman who was born, lived and died in Street-An-Nowan area of Newlyn, Cornwall, England.  However as a fisherman he roamed much further afield.

Born in 1860, Ben was still a scholar in 1871, but by 1881, aged 21, was working as a fisherman.  In July 1884 he married 19-year-old domestic servant called Martha Jane Laity Quick from neighbouring Mousehole in 1884, up on the hill above Newlyn at the parish church at Paul. 

Newlyn Harbour, by Tim Green, Flickr

On 29 June 1885 he would have been involved in the huge celebrations for the ceremony of the layout of the foundation stone of the new Newlyn south pier (shown here on the right with the light-house).  The story reporting the celebration is the longest I have come across in the Cornishman and details the many decorations along the way of the procession which walked for a mile from Penzance. The stone itself was laid by Charles Campbell Ross, the Conservative MP for St Ives and several-time Mayor of Penzance, was invited to lay this stone. The north pier is the one on the left in the photo and was built in 1888.

Mr Ross’ home has now become the Morrab Library and Morrab Gardens.  The Morrab Library is an independent library, and satisfyingly is home to a large genealogy and history archive which I had already planned to visit later this summer when I should be down in Newlyn & Penzance.

Ben’s young wife Martha died three years after their marriage in summer 1887 aged only 22; I can’t be sure without the actual certificates but I believe they had a daughter, named Martha for her mother, who was born and died in late 1886.

Ben was alone until 1891, when he married his second wife, Susan ‘Susie’ Sullivan of Newlyn, just before Christmas 1891.  Her father Henry, variously described as a fisherman and a shoemaker – possibly both depending on opportunity - had died before she was five years old.  Her mother, also called Susan, had been a teacher when Susie was young; Susie had worked as a domestic but later worked with her mother and two sisters hawking fish.

Susie, my great-great-grandmother, was a few years older than Ben, being 36 to his 31 when they married.  Perhaps she had thought she may have, well, missed the fishing boat when it came to marriage and family, but their oldest daughter was born in late spring 1893. The baby was named Susan for her mother and grandmother and also became known as Susie.

12 November 1894 saw huge flooding in Newlyn. The flood waters washed away a bridge, and people were being rescued from their upstairs windows into boats.

In May 1896 there was rioting in Newlyn, as fishermen took action after ‘Yorkies’ (Lowestoft men) tried to unload in Newlyn on the Sabbath. As there was such a strong Methodist & non-conformist community local men did not fish on Sundays but the men from the east [of England] were getting better rates for their Sunday catches than the local men during the week. Penzance men supported the Lowestoft fisherman, and there were 3 days of rioting which was suppressed with solders and a naval boat entering the harbour and threatening to destroy Newlyn men’s boats. The riots stopped but a civil campaign was put in place and the situation was eventually resolved with a solution that neither side liked but both worked with. Further info on the Newlyn Riots.

That same summer, three years after baby Susie was born, her younger sister Catherine, my great-grandmother, arrived into the world on 10 July 1896.

Newlyn Harbour present day, Tim Green, Flickr

On 2 September the following year the Cornishman newspaper reports good line fishing from Newlyn pier and also good catches of mackerel.  Immediately underneath that report is a story about Prince Bendon cycling up the very steep hill in Newlyn.  Prince who!?  Turns out Prince Bendon, real name William John Bendon, was a Devon-born ventriloquist who went on to make a career in the Scottish cinema industry, one aspect of which saw him establishing the first film rental company there. If Ben wasn’t at sea perhaps he, Susie and the girls was in the crowd as:

“the hill was alive with people, who so crowded the rider that his task was rendered more difficult than it would otherwise have been.  The feat was a remarkable one and satisfied the spectators.  Twice the rider had to dismount on account of his chain slipping, but he made the ascent dexterously and descended without a mechanical break.  He used his foot as a break in his descent.” [The Cornishman]

Although for a long time Bendon had been based in Glasgow, it looks like that was the year that he travelled to London to look at including films in his act so this sounds like a great publicity stunt; maybe he was touring around and happened to be in the Newlyn area.

Wolf Rock Lighthouse, Paul Gillard, Flickr

On 30 April 1898, with Catherine under two years old and young Susie only five, Ben was out fishing in his boat, the Eleanor.  As ‘the mackerel do not approach the Cornish shore... the boats go long distances in search of big shoals of fine fish’ [Royal Cornwall Gazette]. The Eleanor was one of several boats caught by a bad storm in the west near the Wolf Rock with its lighthouse, 8 nautical miles off Lands End. While others made it to safety in the Isles of Scilly or headed back to Mounts Bay, the Eleanor went missing overnight with ‘five married men and a boy on board’ as reported as far away as Aberdeen [Aberdeen's People Journal].

One can only imagine the strength and determination of both Ben and the crew, as they fought the wrath of the storm out near the Wolf Lighthouse, and of Susie as she waited for news of her husband, with her daughters by her side, sick to her stomach.  What relief when the news came in on the 1^st May that the Eleanor and her crew had survived. Her own childhood without her fisherman father must have been very much on her mind.

Benjamin was still working on the Eleanor in 1905, but following the death of his father that year either his heart wasn't in it, or things weren't working out financially, and by 1911 he was working as a baker in Newlyn.

Family tradition goes that he saved the life of an Italian man who gave him a recipe for ice-cream, and he sold it in his shop in small quantities in addition to bakers’ wares.  Although Susie was very soft hearted and would give away sweeties to children, they made a good living.

In 1819 they became grandparents when Catherine’s oldest child, Mary, was born.  However, tragedy struck the family in 1920 when their older daughter Susie died, aged only 27.

Ben and Susie lived on together until November 1938, when Ben died suddenly at home and was described in the intimation as ‘one of the best’.  The service took place at Trinity Methodist Church and he was buried in a plain oak coffin in a wall grave at Paul cemetery.  Susie died the following year after an illness and was also buried in Paul with Catherine’s tribute reading ‘to the dearest and best of mothers’. They had lived to see a four grand-children and a great-grandson.

Sources: 

Ancestry, FindMyPast, British Newspaper Archive, family information.

Text by Lynne Black, first published 21 April 2015 on Worldwide Genealogy blog

Images from Flickr under creative commons licence, Tim Green and Paul Gillard as indicated.