Cornish World magazine has subscribers in 27 countries worldwide. The vast majority of these people are Jagos and Hoskins, Pengellys and Pascoes, Chellews and Jenkins - they are known as the Cousin Jacks and Jennies. No country, community or region has seen so many of its people leave for elsewhere and yet remain still quintessentially Cornish.
Between 1815 and the 1920s as many as 250,000 Cornish people left Cornwall for overseas, with as many more spreading out into the rest of the British Isles. They left for a better life but a love of Cornwall, its culture, heritage and traditions has been kept alive almost religiously.
There are large Cornish enclaves in America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but there are also communities, or the remains of them, in Cuban, Chile and Peru, Mexico and parts of Asia and Africa. The Cornish overseas are known as the diaspora There are numerous Cornish associations in North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada - and in other very unlikely places too.
They organise all kind of events, conferences, gatherings, festivals and lectures to keep the Cornish culture, language and heritage alive in far away lands. No land has lost so many of its best people and kept so much of its heritage. The Cornish conducted a mass emigration from Cornwall, but kept this land of windswept cliffs and fishing coves, moorland and wooded estuaries within their hearts.
Cornwall is a hundred mile peninsula at the foot of the British Isles, the Cornish ancestors are a worldwide community who have never relinquished their links with home.
The first part is Bo meaning house or dwelling but the second part, depending on which reference work you look at, is suggested as possibly form any one of three different Celtic words, Lethyow, meaning ‘dairy’, Leath, meaning ‘damp place, or Leghow, meaning ‘slabs of rock’. Why such a wide variance, you might ask? The answer is simply that as with all names of this age, they have evolved over centuries. In those earlier centuries there were few scholars and nobody wrote down a definitive glossary or lexicon of words and their meaning which has survived to the modern era. Not that it would have had too many customers; for the vast majority of folk in Cornwall, and indeed elsewhere in England, learning to read and write several centuries ago was not something they ever thought of. It was not until the Victorian era that we find schooling and learning to read and write beginning to creep in as a necessary or even obligatory activity.
The name Bolitho can claim to be one of those names which is truly Cornish, despite the apparent differences of opinion amongst modern day scholars as to its origins.
On the 1861 census, nearly 95% of the Bolitho names are here in Cornwall and a few who are not have birth places here and are working elsewhere. About 50% of the Cornish Bolitho names are in the Helston area, with others spread to Towednack in the west to Callington in the east.
Bolitho’s bank is a firm part of the Cornish history. Established in 1807 by the brothers Thomas and William Bolitho as Mount’s Bay Commercial Bank and based at Chyandor, its name changed in 1810 to Bolitho Sons & Co. In 1834 the bank moved to premises in Market Jew Street in the centre of Penzance and was renamed the mount’s Bay Bank.
The census of 1881 shows no less than five Bolitho family members involved in the banking business in Penzance, with addresses which were, and still are, substantial properties on the outskirts of town. No book on Cornish folk would be complete without a musical note or two. One such can be fitted here in the name of John Bolitho. He was born in Bude in 1930, the son of the local butcher and his working life began with ten years in the Royal Navy. His passion for singing led to an audition with George Mitchell and a 12- year spell with The Black And White Minstrel Show. He became a bard of the Cornish Gorseth upon his return to Cornwall in 1970 and stood as Mebyon Kernow candidate and delivered the worlds first speech in Cornish. He died in 2005 at the age of seventy-four.
You can discover more of the history behind Cornwall’s family names in Bob Richards’ book Cornish Family Names, available in most good bookstores or for a discounted price on our website. No bookshelf is complete without it!
