Clifford Trethewey

Clifford Trethewey BOOK 2 Introduction Plymouth’s First Generation It really was quite a sight. Black and white hulls moored three and four abreast, without their spars, as far as the eye could see. John and Ann had been to Plymouth Dock before when the war with France was still being fought and the Hamoaze was devoid of ships. Three years had passed since that time and John was carrying a small boy who had never seen a ship before. That boy would eventually become the father of four brothers who would all join Victoria’s Navy, but that was still years into the future. Ann’s passenger was asleep in a carrying basket as the boatman helped her into the boat with all their worldly possessions. When he pushed them off the beach and deployed his oars before the tide could capture their hesitation, he set the boat’s head towards North Corner. There, they would set foot in Devon and the new life that awaited them. Of course this is a Family History that is more than 200 years old. Facts and records are scarce. I am fortunate in the fact that John and Ann had EIGHT children, but they also buried three of them, yet every record survives to follow their path from house to house and job to job. No Family Historian encourages conjecture, but neither does any family exist without the question ‘why did they do that?’ It has been particularly difficult to suggest a way in which John became a stonemason. He could not have done it without help and in a strange and overwhelming town that help was most likely to come from a relative or a friend. To identify the fact that a relative was in the area at a similar time was a surprise. It does not, however, link the two together as there is no surviving evidence that would do that. I have explored the bounds of possibility in several other sets of circumstances based upon my amateur knowledge and instincts for the local and social conditions that existed at the time. The folklore surrounding Buck Tretheway is one example. I have explored that fable in some depth and everything I have suggested was possible and we have to add to it that there were barely any Tretheweys in Plymouth at that time. John’s ownership of not one but two houses is also unusual in our family and mystifying for its source of capital. I have suggested one possibility, but there is little doubt that he did own those houses, but how he came by them and what happened to them at his death, remains unknown. Despite John’s strenuous efforts on Bodmin Moor in establishing a viable source of good quality granite for major building works, he was not the one to benefit. It is true that he was the Exhibitor at the Great Exhibition, but all he had done was to sow the seed for others to reap the rewards and that story is told in STONE UPON STONE – BOOK 3. The family that John and Ann had created was not a success story, for by 1866 there was barely anyone or anything left and that story will follow in BOOK 4 – NO PLACE CALLED HOME. 18084 Words - January 2020 MOUNT STREET & TANNER’S YARD CAMBRIDGE STREET JUBILEE STREET JUBILEE STREET The Moment of Truth - 1817 t was May 1816, when the last evidence of John and Ann living at Enniscaven, was recorded. It I was the baptism of their daughter Ann Yelland T and this was soon followed by the deaths of both of John’s parents. His younger brother William took control of Gothers and that, as the say, was that. There was no future in St. Dennis for John’s family, but what could he do? The only thing he could do was to go back to Plymouth. If he couldn’t be a farmer, then he would turn his hand to something entirely new and 1817 was the year to achieve it. Husbandman to Stonemason - 1817 to 1824 hey had decided not to return to Dock, because it had been too crowded, too noisy and too T industrial for folk that were used to living in the countryside. They didn’t fare a lot better in Plymouth. The townspeople were suffering the after effects of a protracted war. Bread was scarce and Dr. Robert Hawker at Charles Church was struggling against a tide of deprivation that verged upon starvation. The workhouses were full and 7000 paupers were receiving doles at the church door.1 Somewhere among this misery the family attempted to start a new life. John was attracted to the fringe of the Town to the east of Charles Church where there were two large, wealthy estates, but without a trade or any prospects, it was a struggle. The Baptism Register at St. Andrew’s did not demand an address in 1819 when John and Ann brought their third child to the intimidating expanse of Plymouth’s mother church. Their second son was baptised Richard in memory of John’s father and the ceremony took place on Wednesday 28th July. This choice of a weekday would seem unusual to us today, but that was the choice that John and Ann were used to back ‘home’ in St. Dennis. The Register records that John was a ‘husbandman’ and this is an interesting choice of word in a Town church. Was it John who was familiar with that word or was it the Parish Clerk deciding that John could not be a ‘farmer’ AND be resident in his crowded parish? It certainly suggests that John has found employment in the work that he knew best and he may have taken advantage of the fields that made up the estates of the Culme-Seymour Family which spread eastwards and northwards towards the Laira and the Mannameads. Perhaps it is also suggesting that he has already met with Robert Westaway, a yeoman-farmer, and they have found something in common between them. Three years later the family made their appearance in yet another of Plymouth’s churches and this time it was Charles Church. Sunday 2nd June 1822 was the day chosen for the baptism of John and Ann’s second daughter Grace Jane and the names chosen were in memory of John’s mother Grace who had died six years before and her sister Jane. The change of day may have been linked to John’s change of occupation. He was now a common ‘labourer,’ but the Register was more enlightening when it revealed their address to be Jubilee Street. It was only a short walk from the church gate down Vennel Street and into Green Street, through Britonside and Exeter Street to their new home in one of the houses that lined the left of the street eastward out of the Town. The street was quite new having been built to connect with the new embankment to Crabtree and relieve the stage coaches of the steep and hazardous climb over Lipson. It had been named in 1810 in honour of George III’s golden jubilee and it was very soon lined with large, new houses. Even now, living on the very edge of Plymouth, it was a far cry from the fields and heaths of St. Dennis. 1 ‘Plymouth a new history’ by Crispin Gill p 210 This was a different world with many baptisms every day. The three others sharing the occasion on Wednesday 28th July were a Private in the 55th Regiment, a sail-maker and a Royal Navy Lieutenant. The remainder of the page included a cordwainer and a baker – everyone was either a tradesmen or a servant of the King. Charles Church was a church where a man could feel he was among his own kind. On page 102 there were two painters and four mariners together with a nurseryman from Compton, but John and Ann’s occasion was shared with nobody. They could feel at ease with themselves FRIARY & GATEWAY JUBILEE STREET BRUNSWICK TERRACE There was nowhere for the children to play outside. The turnpike road to Exeter ran past their front door, and the children were afraid to go into the overgrown grounds of the derelict friary. Everyone said it was haunted, but that was an adult ruse to keep them out of the clutches of the beggars that inhabited its desolation. Across the road was a grand terrace of redbrick town houses where the middle-class merchants had servants who thought themselves more superior to those who lodged opposite them. The road outside was so filthy that they had their own raised pavement surrounded by railings, but the Trethewey children had been warned not to venture over there with their games. They would NOT be welcome. Two years following the baptism of Grace Jane in Charles Church, an entry appeared in one of the Registers belonging to St. Andrew’s Church, which caused a furrowed brow. It was a Burial Register. The puzzlement was not caused by the name, for the entry recorded the burial of one Grace Jane Trethewey, it was caused by her age - 8 years old on the 30th June 1824. My first reaction was that it was an error, but the 8 was clearly written as one would expect at St. Andrew’s Church. The next thought was that it was not ‘our Grace,’ but there was no other child in Plymouth that fitted the circumstances. Unlike St. Dennis, Tretheweys were few in Plymouth and there was only one other couple in the Town in that period (cordwainer William and Mary).

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