Some of those in our Victorian Lives database had parents with backgrounds that were more out of the ordinary than others. Alfred Preston was one. We meet Alfred’s mother, before Alfred had been born, in Bodmin Jail in November 1848. Mary Ann Preston, then aged 22, and her brother Thomas, a 19 year-old sawyer, were … Continue reading The long arm of the law
Tag: Calstock
Harriet Rodda and the wild west
Harriet Rodda grew up at Colley Cliff, overlooking the Tamar River in the parish of Calstock. Her father was a miner, originally from the west, who had moved east to mid-Cornwall in the tin mining slump of the late 1840s. Harriet was herself employed as a tin dresser at a nearby mine by the time … Continue reading Harriet Rodda and the wild west
An interim glance at the big picture
It’s becoming apparent that, as expected, the proportion of women we have traced through the census and registration data from 1851 to 1891 is consistently lower than that of men. This is the case despite the generally accepted conclusion that men were much more likely to disappear overseas than women. Overall, of the 921 entries … Continue reading An interim glance at the big picture
Magnetic north
By 1891 for every one boy in the 1861 Calstock database left in Cornwall, two could be found in the north of England. Although the numbers are too low to draw any hard and fast conclusions, it looks as if there was a marked propensity to move from Calstock to Northumberland and Durham in particular. … Continue reading Magnetic north
Victorian Cornwall’s boom parish
To find Cornwall’s boom town in the mid-nineteenth century we have to look east, as far east as we can go and still be in Cornwall, to Calstock on the tidal reaches of the Tamar. In 1851, when the folk in the Victorian Lives database were 11 years old, Calstock was in the middle of … Continue reading Victorian Cornwall’s boom parish
Cornish studies resources 