Samuel Tremethick 1867-1943: from Newlyn to Australia

St Peter’s Church, Newlyn

Samuel was born c1867, the fifth son of a Cornish fisherman Thomas Tremethick and his wife Patience Daniel Rowe.  They lived in Foundry Lane, in the Street-An-Nowan area of Newlyn, Cornwall, at that point and Samuel was baptised in the relatively new St Peter’s Church on 15 May 1867.

Like most of his brothers he chose not to go to go sea, although as his father had died in 1878 when Samuel was only 11 perhaps that wasn’t an option.

Florence Place, Newlyn

By 1881 Samuel, aged 14, was working as a grocer’s assistant still in the busy Cornish fishing village of Newlyn near Land’s End. He was home with his widowed mother and five of his brothers and sisters, living in Florence Place in Tolcarne (immediately next to Street-An-Nowan).

In summer 1888 he sailed on the Liguria, registered in Liverpool but departing from London, to Sydney Australia.

This is where my UK-record trail goes cold, but via online records and the help of friends I have put together what I believe to be his story:

Samuel arrived in Sydney on 12 June 1888. There is a record of him marrying a Clarice Gaskell 500 miles away in Bourke, NSW in 1891 and later in 1900 he married Margaret Lewis, in Charville, Queensland.  they seem to have worked their way around New South Wales and South Australia over the next 35 years.

He and Margaret had a family together, many namesakes of Samuel’s sister, brother and nephew back in Newlyn: Albania (1901) and Thomas Rowe (1904) both in Augathella, Maranoa, Queensland plus Arthur Harold (1907) in Unley, South Australia. They were followed by three more sons with no immediately obvious (to me anyway) name links to Samuel’s youth: Eric James (1909, Tolarno Station, Menindee, NSW), Ian Allan (1915, Wentworth, NSW) and Ralph Mansfield (1919, Bordertown, South Australia).

In 1930 and 1936 they were living in Coff’s Harbour, Cowper, NSW.

Samuel died in October 1943 in Adelaide, South Australia. Margaret lived on until December 1972; she also died in Adelaide.

What I would love to know about Samuel is what he did for a living, travelling around so much, and why he left England.

© Lynne Black, 29 December 2015
First published: https://starryblackness.wordpress.com/