Goninan Times

Welcome to the first edition of ‘Goninan Times’. I live with my wife, Pat, in Lanner in Cornwall.I am descended from Richard Goninan who married Mary Ann Tellam in Camborne in 1810 (ie the Gwithian Branch). I hope to ‘publish’ this journal every three months or so. My objective is to share with you both my interest in the social and economic history of Cornwall and my love of Cornwall and all things Cornish. In addition of course there is the continuing research into the family tree. I would be happy to receive feedback, comments, ideas, etc including any items of your own that you would like to have ‘published’.

In this first edition the emphasis is on the family tree and I have two items, The Hunt for William Thomas Goninan and the Sisters of Richard Goninan (parts 1 & 2):-

The Hunt for William Thomas Goninan

William Thomas Goninan was born in St Just in Penwith in West Cornwall in 1863. He was the first child of Alfred and Rebecca Goninan. Whilst a great deal is known about his brothers, and in particular Alfred and Ralph (who settled in Australia), William is something of a mystery.

In 1871 he was living in St Just with his parents. In 1881 he was still with his parents in Cape Cornwall Street, St Just together with his brothers, Alfred, Edward and Ralph and his sisters, Janie, Nancy and Mary. William was then a carpenter’s apprentice. However, he is not to be found on the 1891 census.

It’s worth mentioning at this stage that, whilst there are other William Goninans, William Thomas Goninan of St Just is the only one with the second name Thomas. Actually his mother’s maiden name was Thomas and this may have been why the name was used rather than merely as a common christian name. Also he is the only Goninan I have come across who lists his occupation in a census as ‘carpenter’.

The trail went dead until browsing the internet one day, looking for references to Goninans, I came across the marriage of William T Goninan to Mary L Delbridge on the 24th Dec 1904 in Shasta County, California – see http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~shastaca/marriageg.html

So far efforts to trace anything more on William and Mary have failed. Recently however I took advantage of a ‘free period ’ to do some searching via the website http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ and this revealed more on William:-

Firstly, it looks as if his marriage to Mary was his second marriage because a Wm T Goninan married a Lilly Scott in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The date is quoted as 2nd Sept 1899 although I have doubts about this date (see below).

Secondly I found William and Lillie and family on the 1900 California census (Inyo County). This says that they had been married for six years and had three children – John (born Jan 1895), Emma (born March 1897) and Will (born Feb 1899). William gave his year of birth as 1864 (it was actually 1863) and Lillie was born in 1874 (in California). The children were all born in California and William’s occupation was a carpenter. In 1900 he had been in the US for 18 years.

This raises all sorts of intriguing questions –

what happened to the family?

did any of the children survive to adulthood?

did any of them get married and have families?

are there currently descendents of William living in the States?

So I am issuing a call for help – is there a family member in the US reading this journal who enjoys a bit of research and could see if anything more can be turned up on William and/or his family

the challenge is on the table………………………

The Three Sisters -Part 1

Edward Goninan and Margaret Rodda were married at St Just in Penwith Parish Church on the 2nd May 1774. At some point they moved to the Crowan Parish which lies to the south of the Parishes of Camborne and Gwinear. There they had a large family but only one son and three daughters survived to adulthood. Their son was called Richard and he married Mary Ann Tellam and this couple went on to form the Gwithian dynasty. Thanks to the efforts of various family members we now have a wealth of information on this branch which includes, for example, the descendents of Henry Goninon in Australia and those of Matthew Goninen in the States. However in some areas of the family tree, research into the families of Goninan daughters has so far been somewhat neglected. This is not surprising in a way because following a rare name like Goninan is a good deal easier than trying to trace someone called, say, Williams or Richards – both fairly common names in Cornwall. It often needs a current living descendent to come forward to fill in the more recent generations. In my case, for example, I knew my grandmother who was a Goninan. She was born 1868 so I had no trouble in filling in the last 140 years or so.

The purpose of this ‘project’ is to see what we can find on the sisters of Richard (Mary, Margaret and Ann) and in the process show what sources of information are available for anyone wanting to do genealogical research in Cornwall. I hope it will be of some interest.

The coming of the internet has brought an explosion in the amount of data available such that it is now possible to do much of the research sitting at home. However I want to avoid, as far as it is possible, the use of ‘pay to view’ sites as paying for what should be readily available free information offends my sensibilities. Along the way as well I would like see what we can find on the social and economic climate in Cornwall in the 19th century because without this background a family tree can just be a sterile list of names and dates.

We don’t know much about Edward. He was born in the Parish of St Just and his parents were Richard and Ann Goninan. Prior to the introduction of the dreaded workhouse system, Parishes were required, by the Poor Laws, to provide relief for the destitute in their area. However they were only required to help those that had been born in the Parish or were entitled to be there. This inevitably led to disputes between Parishes and sometimes these cases were taken to the courts for a decision. At some point, Edward must have fallen on hard times because there is a reference to him in the quarter sessions in Truro in April 1804 which dealt with a dispute between the Parishes of Crowan and St Just. Crowan was trying to recover costs they must have incurred supporting Edward and his family but the court did not find in their favour. This information was obtained using the website http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

For information on Cornwall and its Parishes a very good website is http://www.genuki.org.uk/ This is also an excellent starting point for any genealogical research in the UK

The page for Crowan Parish lists the sources available on a range of subjects. There are also various bits of statistical information, for example we are told that ‘the parish comprises 7478 acres of land and 18 acres of water’. The population of the Parish in 1801 was 2,587.

Another website that is going to be useful in the future as more data is added is

http://www.cornwall-opc-database.org/ (thank you to Richard Goninan of Melbourne for telling me about this site; it has a good deal of information relating to Breage Parish, although at the moment there is nothing for Crowan)

The civil registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages did not start in England and Wales until 1837. Prior to that we are reliant on Church registers. In Cornwall most of the Registers relating to the period we are interested in are now held by the Cornwall Records Office in Truro. Some Registers have been lost or damaged but the coverage is pretty good. There is also something called the Bishop’s transcripts which are the copies of the Registers that Ministers were supposed to make and forward to the Archbishop in Exeter. Where these have survived they can sometimes fill gaps in the original registers. Most of the registers have been microfilmed.

Most of the old parish records of baptisms and marriages have been copied and included in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) maintained by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Just why the Church has invested huge sums in the collection and maintence of this data escapes me but the IGI is a useful tool for the genealogist. It should always be treated with care though because there are both gaps and mistakes. Wherever possible information should be double checked against the original records. To use the IGI go to:- http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp

As far as the original registers are concerned, trying to read and interpret poor quality microfiche of badly written records can be hard. We are fortunate with Crowan in that it is one of the parishes that Mr W.L. Bawden, a dedicated local researcher, has transcribed to a very high standard and a copy of this is available in the Cornish Studies Library in Redruth. One of the advantages of this copy is that Mr Bawden has also produced an index and of course, unlike the IGI, it includes burials. His transcript goes up to 1845.

Crowan is unusual in that on occasions whoever was recording entries has given us more information than was strictly required – thus sometimes we have not only the date of baptism but also the date of birth. Similarly sometimes with a burial we get the cause of death.

Using Mr Bawden’s transcript I was able to confirm the dates of the baptisms of the three sisters,

Mary        30th Sept. 1785

Margaret  24th June 1787

Ann           3rd May 1789 (born 17th Feb 1789)

Ann’s baptism is not found on the IGI; this might be a spelling problem.

If you want to browse the whole or part of the registers via the IGI then go to this website –

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountyCornwall.htm#C

click on the batch number(s) for the parish you are interested in and follow the instructions

We have not as yet got very far, we already knew that Richard had three sisters and when they were baptised. The real question is ‘did they get married’ and if so ‘did they have any family’. These questions will be tackled in Part 2 which follows:-

The Three Sisters – Part 2

Mary, Margaret and Ann Goninan, daughters of Edward and Margaret

Part 1 finished with the question ‘did they get married’ and the answer is yes. Again using

Mr Bowden’s transcript of the Crowan Parish records we find:-

Margaret married Samuel Bastard on the 23rd October 1806

Ann married William Williams on the 13th Dec 1812

Mary married Jacob Holman on the 23rd March 1815

If any or all of these couples had children then there must be a lot of ‘Goninans’ out there yet to be traced. Let’s start first with Margaret:-

I suppose the name ‘Bastard’ is slightly embarrassing but it was fairly common in those days. However, as will be seen, there is something odd with the name. Mr Bowden in the index to his transcript has cross-referenced the names Bastard and Bastian. He doesn’t say why but it looks as if the names were interchangeable in some way. Thus we find these baptisms:-

Thomas, son of Samuel & Margaret Bastard baptised Crowan 3rd March 1808 (died in August of that year)

Samuel, son of Samuel and Margaret Bastard baptised Breage 23rd July 1815 (I am assuming that this is the same Samuel and Margaret)

Thomas, son of Samuel and Margaret Bastian baptised Crowan 14th Sept 1817

Hannah, daughter of Samuel and Margaret Bastian baptised Crowan 18th Dec 1821

If we go on a generation, we find a Samuel Bastard jnr married a Jenifer Moon on the 18th October 1833 at Crowan but we then find several children baptised at Crowan, parents Samuel and Jenifer Bastian. I have not found a marriage for a Samuel and Jenifer Bastian and it begins to look that the way the name was recorded depended on the whim of the person making the entry.

Perusing the church records for Crowan has been a somewhat depressing experience. As mentioned before, the burial records sometimes show the cause of death. If we take 1814 as an example we see that there were 47 burials but of these only 14 were of people over the age of 50. Some of the causes of death and the ages of the deceased were as follows:-

measles (age 3)

fall in mine ( age 32)

inflammation of the lungs (infant)

run over by a carriage (age 36)

scarlet fever (ages 3, 6, 9 and 20)

in labour (age 27)

worm fever (age 3)

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that so many Cornish left their homeland to seek a better life in the new world.

Going back to Samuel (senior) and Margaret, the next task is to try and find them on the 1841 census. For this I can use the excellent free sites  http://freecen.rootsweb.com/ and

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html . Both are ‘work in progress’ but the Cornwall coverage is good. The first site covers all the UK and the second is just Cornwall.

A search for Samuel Bastian (or Bastard) though gives disappointing results. A search using the UK site finds Samuel jnr but not Samuel snr or Margaret. The Cornwall site doesn’t even find Samuel jnr (which must be a fault). I gave up with this and tried  the 1851 census and using a combination of the two sites I found Samuel snr living at Churchtown in the Parish of Madron. Samuel is 74  and described as ‘a pauper – was an engineer’. He was born in Crowan Parish. Living with him are four daughters – Mary age 41; Anna (Hannah?) age 28, a mine labourer; Ann age 24 and Eliza age 16 a mine labourer. Anna and Eliza were born in Crowan Parish, Mary in Breage Parish and Ann in St Erth Parish (from this I found her baptism on the 21st Aug 1825). Samuel is shown as a widower and subsequently I found the burial of a Margaret Bastian at Madron on the 28th Nov 1850.

Having found Samuel in Madron, I wondered if the family had been living there in 1841 so using the Cornwall census site I browsed through the Madron records basically looking for anyone called Samuel and I found them although the name has been recorded as Bastern which is why I couldn’t find them before. Samuel is described as a tin miner and there are five daughters – Mary, Hanna, Ann, Elizabeth and Eliza.

More to follow in Part 3 in the next edition of the Goninan Times

If you wish to receive future editions of the Goninan Times (by email) please contact me:- cornishroots@tesco.net

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