Pass me the Tabasco: the Pascoes and Iveys of Crowan

Obviously we needed a silly title, but I really did need that Tabasco sauce. I was poking around looking for clues I'd missed on my Ancestry DNA list of matches. We'd cracked a few high level ones, including Mick Hofna*, who I'm convinced is not related at all simply entered his name for a female friend (as they both joined social media the same day). That one was a bit of a run-around.

Yesterday we had gpagmaw which took me slightly longer to figure out. Or was it slightly less? gpagmaw is 'of course' Grandpa and Grandma W. Luckily they had a slightly similar version of this nickname as a Pinterest handle which listed their full names right next to it of Mr and Mrs W..... of some place north of Chicago. It was Grandma W. who was the connection, her husband was pure Polish stock, while her mother's obituary named her and then scouting through the various family lines. Nope, nope and nope, till we got to, ah-ha! Sarah Pascoe (born 1822 in Crowan Cornwall) and her husband Richard Ivey, emigrating to Wisconsin. Thank you very much.

Let me just say that gpagmaw had NO TREE, had not signed in forever, and no clue on the Ancestry page as to where she was based, excepting that she had 20%+ Norwegian forebears which does kind of scream midwest. Midwest = interesting = could she be Cornish? = yes!

American DNA matches with only a hint of the county in question in their ancestry are just my favourite. Most of Gma W's line are anything-but-Cornish (ABC), and of course how do I now For Sure that we connect this way?

Well, running through other folk on Ancestry who have Iveys from Wisconsin in their midst we find three other descendants of the Richard Ivey and Sarah Pascoe by two of their children, and guess what, they share matches with me and Gma W. Importantly, they too have no other known Cornish ancestry. I think that's good working proof for now, till we roll out the chromosome browser at some future date. I could be using DNAGedcom to have 'added' those other matches of Gma W. to the story but that would have taken just as long and - sometimes the less technical assistance the better.

We have our story. Now it's time to reveal that I have Pascoe ancestry in Crowan. (And no Iveys at all.) Elizabeth Pascoe marries in 1795 in Crowan and ...

... in the time it takes to tell the story, the dial has moved. I do not in fact have any Pascoe ancestry in Crowan. (Sarah Pascoe later Ivey, your story might take a little longer to come out.) Here is the census entry which changed everything, leading me to discoveries which fail to link Elizabeth to James (and his daughter in Wisconsin).

1841 Bennertown, Crowan: Elizabeth Rodda 69 minor, Elizabeth Rodda 20

For years I must have ignored this entry, with so much that doesn't fit the family tree, particularly if not entirely that young Elizabeth is thirty rather than twenty. But wiping away that blemish, THIS is my Elizabeth Pascoe, wife of William Rodda, and I can prove it. (Next blog relates an astonishing set of connections from before she was born...)

My carefully crafted Pascoes of Crowan guesswork crumbles away to nothing. Crowan, formerly Eglos-krowenn, I am leaving you behind in the rear-view mirror for now. It's time to go back, further back, to Wendron, half as big again, which where we need to go next.

Jenning Up (again)

Something made me this morning take a second look at my Sarah Hunter 1782 who married twice and moved away from Redruth. Big discovery at the time but really wanted to pin down her daughter Mary (1806) who also married twice - did she go to Canada or Australia? No further did I get. Took me about 30 minutes to put down my work.

OK - James Rodda born 1799, did he die in infancy or age 34. Quickly put that down as well. Time for another Cornish family.

Next up then, the Jennings family, where we had a bit more luck. Having untangled them a few years back, I wanted to soak up the success and find some DNA matches on Ancestry. I went in search of surnames which were good enough to seach on - Kemp, Opie/Oppy, Tozer, I was getting nothing. I was crying Foul! as these guys definitely emigrated and someone should match my line, someone....

(A brief interlude to explain ancestor Ann Jennings married her beau Francis Harris three weeks before Trafalgar, ONLY problem is he witnessed marriages of two ladies named Elizabeth Jennings in double-quick time thereafter ... only ONE of whom was his wife's sister, what a boggler.)

Back to business. So I examined the tree again. Looking into the next generation I saw that my Elizabeth Jennings 1786 had a granddaughter that married into the Knuckey family - let's plug that name into the search bar on my DNA page. Hello, what's this, the wrong Knuckey chap, but Benjamin Knuckey married in 1858 NSW to Esther J. JENNINGS. Turns out she is a niece of Elizabeth who I omitted from my Untangled Tree diagram. So their descendant, Christine can be tied in as my 5th/6th cousin with 10 centimorgan match.

Wham - just sorted that out, and big surprise number two came knocking. Something's up, Jenning up. IF Christine is a cousin then WHO is cousin Frank strolling in at 33 centimorgans which is arguably more? And absolutely definitely and truthfully who on EARTH is his forebear, just sitting there on the page, Mary Ann Harris born 1818 in Camborne?? To boot, her father is named as Francis??

SURE ENOUGH, I had ignored Mary Ann Harris baptised 23 February 1817 in Crowan, daughter of Francis and 'Hannah' (really seemingly Ann). She gets married nowhere near, I'd never looked for or given her a minute's thought and she turns out to be one of my closest relatives. Eeks!

Thanks to Christine in Oz and cousin Frank (still in Cornwall!) for doing the DNA test and giving me some embarrassing successes this morning. I was so normalised to the idea that Cornish DNA work was impossible, but frankly with 33 centimorgans matching, I am well pleased to add these folk onto the tree.

(But very embarrassing to note that Mary Ann Harris's husband has been on my files for FOUR years as the informant on her father's death certificate, 1855, which lead I had completely ignored!)

The tree which I was so proud of, that resolved the Jennings or at least bits of it is here:

Epic Epilogue. These things come in threes, right? Nosing around one more time on Ann Perry who marries 1780 in Crowan. Who is she? I rule out both the suitable baptisms in Wendron, ironically as we shall see.

Ann Perry baptised 1759 Wendron daughter of William and Jane marries I am comfortable in saying to William Symons at Constantine the next parish over, and there she stays. Naming pattern fits and there are suitable burials yet to be pinpointed for her.

Ann Perry baptised 1760 Wendron daughter of Bennet and Elizabeth marries in 1790 in that parish, relatively late to Sam Prisk and a suitable burial is found: sure enough her children include several named for her parents.

WELL, I promised you an epic epilogue, so what is going on. I examined the witnesses at the 1780 wedding of my Ann Perry (to Mr Jennings) one more time. Henry Odger is an old-timer, attending all the weddings he can, perhaps he's the parish clerk. Thomas Rogers however, who marks his mark (X), is no such man. In fact he doesn't do that much in Crowan at ALL.

Forgive me then for taking a deep and personal interest in the above event which just landed on my screen. For the cost of a click, I am seeing what I would describe as a Very Interesting Entry. My brain and my mouse are competing with each other. Not sure which one wins, but Thomas Rogers is of course..... a stepfather! I barely need the additional WHOMPH of evidence which is that he was a 'tinner at Crowan' upon his marriage, AND that Dunnet was a widow. Double whammy.

Work is ongoing (as they say on the nation's roads) to do more digging. No baptism is found for Ann, but that's no worries. ERRRR, actually, yes there is! Far be it from me to judge, but I smelt a big old rat. Of course Ann Perry is not the child of the second marriage to ROGERS, but NOR is she the child of the first marriage to PERRY! This is becoming the best mystery Agatha Christie didn't write. Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you the baptism of Ann Perry, who marries at Crowan in 1780... (and the common ancestor of all the above DNA matches)

HMM except there IS a baptism of Ann Perry 17 May 1761 Wendron after all (child of John and Dunnet), on the Bishop's Transcripts, so looks like the 1753 baptism is an earlier child (who maybe died young or maybe married in 1781 in Phillack). Dunnet, by the way, allegedly dies at age 96.

The fantastic Feltham sisters

 Edward Murrow - Elizabeth - Sarah - Sally - ANNA.

Anna was the tenth child, and only ten when her mother died. At 24, she was just three days shy of childbirth when she walked up the aisle at Ditcheat church, her ailing father perhaps accompanying her, and so she became Mrs Feltham.History repeated in that she too left a young family when she died at 40.

Thomas Feltham was a carpenter left with the following children: Ann 15, Susan 13, Jane 11, Hannah 8, Joe 2. They were not particularly religious baptising their children in clumps of two, except Ann who was of course baptised at the mother's parish of Ditcheat, a bit of time after the wedding. They lived in a cottage at Bayford, in the parish of Stoke Trister.

Undoubtedly the sisters had a tight bond as we shall see. Hannah and Joe would ultimately emigrate together. Ann and Jane would marry the same man, while Susan's eldest child (motherless too) would make her home with Hannah, and Ann would raise Jane's daughter having married her widower.

We peep into the world of the Felthams in 1840 when a farmer's daughter writes from Lamyatt to her sister in Ohio. Ann and Jane we learn are working for their uncle Joseph Whittock, farmer at Millbrook, Ditcheat. They would be domestic servants and Ann is still there the following June in the 1841 census, on the shelf.

It turns out that Jane had married in Bristol, to Richard Welch and the next letter refers to the newly weds settling in Ditcheat. Unfortunately Jane died four years later.

Around this time Joe Feltham (21) emigrates with his older sister Hannah to Springfield, Illinois, to work as a carpenter. We know this as his son's biography confirms it. It's 1844. She had been a highly competent maid at Cucklington Rectory, a short walk away, and most likely served as housekeeper. The arrangement cannot have lasted long as while Jane dies in Somerset, wedding bells ring out for Hannah in Illinois just two months later.

There are three more remarkable events to witness

1) 1847. Richard Welch, Jane's widower, remarries to her older sister Ann Feltham (now 37), who goes on to produce several daughters including at 43 the only Welch child who will continue the line. These will be the Millers of Ditcheat, ladies in a brief hiatus between their father's death and emigration to New Zealand.

2) 1855. Hannah returns to England from Illinois, now Mrs Rodham, accompanied by her young son Tom, who survives the crossing only to die back in the States. She must be tending to her widowed father, Thomas, who dies weeks later. Mrs Rodham returns like a will o' the wisp, back to America.

3) 1860. The year is unclear but it is after 1858 and before 1861. Susan has been dead ten years, and her family emigrate to South Africa where they will live an interesting and prosperous life as grocers and provision dealers to the silver- and gold-miners of Kimberley Town in Cape Province, numbering Cecil Rhodes among their customers. But, and there is always a but, tale remained there of a 14 year old girl who 'took the wrong boat'.

We return to 1855 to clarify matters. Accompanying Mrs Hannah Rodham back to the States was her 15 year-old niece, Anna. She emphatically had not got on the wrong boat, and we imagine had been in service to her grandfather, Thomas Feltham. She made a home with her aunt in Springfield before marrying at the age of 21 several years later.

So we have:

Ann - who by the way died a sudden perhaps gluttonous death at a richly furnished farmhouse in Kent miles from home, being found dead by a fifteen year-old servant girl (as she had once been). No longer the poor relation, on the shelf, but respected wife and mother. Though not by all. Marrying her sister's widower had cost her the home parish of Ditcheat where she'd so suddenly arrived in 1810. She could not stay to tend her infant daughter's grave but remained in exile. Her issue survive in Sydney NSW courtesy of her granddaughter Hope Smith.

Jane - died age 27 and buried in Ditcheat. Her only child had fits in later life, married a second cousin in the time of the hiatus and the line dies out.

Susan - died age 38 and her family lived in Kimberley, South Africa; and let's not forget, in Illinois courtesy of her eldest child.

Hannah - the ambitious one. Her descendants do trundle on, and in fact through her daughter, the female line continues. Hannah died at 53 like so many of these women.

Joe - including as a courtesy, but being male is outside the scope of this story. He marries a Frenchwoman and settles in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, and family flirt with Alaska unsuccessfully while another worked the forests of western Montana and dallied with life unsuccessfully.

May I say that Ann, at the heart of our tale, buffeted by fate, born in February 1810 so soon after the wedding, was born a Very Long Time Ago, and was dead by the time of the American Civil War. But as her son-in-law was born in 1861, and lived a long life (unlike Ann) we can exploit a quirk of the generations. There is a photograph in 1945 or thereabouts showing two lovely twin girls in Sydney (who are still alive I might add). In this photograph is their elderly great-grandfather, holding them!, just a year from death, and he is the son-in-law of Ann, born 1810. And of course I have met one of these twins, so we are just hop, skip and a jump from these fantastic Feltham sisters of so long ago.

Poor relations they definitely were, and we do not know their father Thomas Feltham's characteristics, but I remain delighted to see these ladies pickled in amber for us, hard-working ladies of their time, who moved from a life in service onwards to better themselves.

I wish to close with a photograph of a peaceful scene of a farm in Victoria, Australia, sheep safely grazing and one of Ann's descendants in charge of proceedings. But it would be an invasion of their well-deserved privacy, so I shall not.