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| True Love, a Tea Set and Another Mystery Solved |
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Page 1 of 4 True Love, a tea set and another mystery solved. As a complete contrast to the would-be assassin we met in the last issue, true love, they say, conquers all and a story recently came my way as a result of a simple census entry. The 1861 census of Little Tregoning in the parish of Newlyn East, near Newquay, shows a family of Harriet Tremain, widow with three daughters and two sons. Her husband, William, had died in November 1855 and she and the family stayed on and worked the family farm of some 235 acres - quite a sizeable holding for those days in Cornwall - with the help of a carter, Aaron Carne, and two ploughboys, Philip Gilbert and William Sunndry, as they are noted on the census.  The United Free Methodist Chapel at Tregona, which is in dire need of repair. When I sent this information over to New Zealand, I had an email back saying that it confirmed an old family story. It seems that one of Harriet Tremain’s daughters, also called Harriet, ran away from home just a couple of years after this census in the company of the carter, Aaron Carne. Their relationship was very much against her family’s wishes, probably because of perceived class difference in those days; she being the eldest child of a reasonably well-off farming family and he a mere cart boy. So one night she packed her belongings, literally climbed out of the window of her room, and was never seen again by the family. The couple travelled to London where, on November 3,1863, they boarded a ship, the Otago, and sailed to Melbourne, Australia. They were married very soon after their arrival on February 9, 1864, in the Cathedral Church of St James. He worked in the goldfields around Melbourne and she stayed at home and raised a family of seven children. There was no contact with the family in Cornwall for many years but, thanks to the modern era of e-mail and the internet, the story has been pieced together for a descendant now resident in Nelson, on the northern tip of South Island, New Zealand. Harriet Tremain senior died on November 15, 1877, and is buried in the Churchyard at St Columb Major. We can only guess at her feelings over the years about her daughter, thousands of miles away and out of all contact. Did she even know where she had gone, or even if she was still alive? It seems not. |
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