Buckland Brewer, Devon - History and Genealogy

Comment

Comment by John Cole on March 19, 2013 at 3:08am

I believe that my 3g-grandparents were Bible Christians who settled in Norfolk Co. Ontario, although the only evidence I have is a baptism of one of their children by the Bible Christians. I have been told they likely went via merchant ship to Canada in the early 1840s, but unfortunately I do not have any documentation to confirm or disprove :-( So, as both Barry and Janet have said, there is a possibilty they may have departed from Padstow and arrived in eother Port Cobourg or port Hope and then moved on to Charoletteville.

I have attempted to locate the Bible Christian records, but they are seemingly very elusive. I am told they are with the United Church archives in Toronto, but they dont seem to be a very easy group to work with, at least online. Wish i lived a lot closer so i could check the archives out myself. Perhaps next time I am in southern ontario I will get the opportunity :-)

Comment by Barry Bowen on March 18, 2013 at 2:17pm

I think that the Bible Christians chartered boats to North America and many of these used Padstow as their port of departure. In Ontario (Upper Canada) they came to Cobourg and Port Hope. I the 1861 census of Hope Township just west of Port Hope, approximately 45% of all of the households were Bible Christian. Most of the little rural chapels in that part of Ontario were originally BC. Ebenezar Church on Courtice, Ontario (named after the Buckand Brewer Courtices) is still a thriving congregation. I have looked at the 1841 census for St Gennys parish in Cornwall and am able to find several families including my own in the 1851 and 61 Hope Township census. 

I understand that the farmers came to Durham County, Ontario and many miners went to Minnesota or Wisconsin.

Huron County in western Ontario opened up in the 1850s and had a large population of second generation Bible Christians. 

Barry

Comment by John Cole on March 17, 2013 at 10:59pm

Hi Deborah,

 

My 6thG-grandparents are Mary Wakely and Richard Cole. Are you related to Mary? She was born in 1691 and died in 1761/2 I believe in Buckland Brewer. They had at least 4 children.My family settled in Simcoe, Norfolk Co., ON..

John

Comment by Deborah Ann Boden on March 17, 2013 at 6:49pm

As a novice, please forgive me if I do not represent this information in the best way, also my research is primarily from Ancestry.ca family trees and have few source citations to confirm them. I have John WAKELY (1875 -) married Suzanne LARROUMY (1725-1795). Their son John WAKELY (1750-) married Sarah ? (1750-) around 1773. Their daughter Mary WAKELY (1772-1839) married John PINCE (1757-1833) around 1792. Their daughter Elizabeth PINCE(1792-1875) married William Charles PROUSE in 1812.Their daughter Maltilda PROUSE (1826-1926) married Richard Watts BROWN (1833-1899) not known when. Their son William Wesley BROWN (1870-1933) married Mary "Minnie" WRIGHT (1885-) not known when. Their daughter Elizabeth Matilda BROWN (1907-) had a son Edward Garfield BROWN (1923-1994) out of wedlock, hence the maiden name. Edward was my father, my mother was Viola Beryl HANCOCK - they never married!. Richard Watts BROWN has roots in St. Teath, Cornwall which is not that far from the Buckland Brewer area. Matilda and Richard had 8 other children and they were living mostly in the Vespra Township, Simcoe county, Ontario, Canada (now Barrie). Sorry no pictures yet (other than one of Elizabeth PINCE and her gravestone).

Comment by Janet Few on March 16, 2013 at 12:11am

Many went from Bideford, I have some leaving from Padstow in Cornwall.  Especially at first, quite a number went to Prince Edward Island. Cobourg was a popular point of entry. There are no systematic passenger lists of those leaving the UK until 1890. Others went to New York and then dispersed from there to US and what was then Upper Canada

https://eric.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/88193/F... Takes a while to download but see pages 320-327.

Comment by John Cole on March 15, 2013 at 4:25pm

HI Janet,

 

You mention the exersion of Bible Christians to Ontario. Where would they have sailed from and do tou know which destination port they would have went too?

 

John

Comment by Janet Few on March 15, 2013 at 12:58pm

Second bit of previous comment - too long to post all at once!

Sir James did not let this pass and replied in the following issue. ‘I had hoped that my long and unswerving political consistency, and, above all, my well-known attachment to the cause of civil and religious liberty, would have saved me from the garbled and incorrect description of what took place some time ago at Dyke…   I make it a rule in general, never to answer anonymous letters in newspapers … [it was clearly attributed to James Thorne] On my return to this place last summer (after an absence of more than twelve months), I was informed by many of the most respectable and influential persons in the parish and neighbourhood, that this chapel was becoming a perfect nuisance; that their servants and apprentices made it the excuse for remaining out till two or three o’clock in the morning; and that the proceedings of some of these Bible Christians were so uproarious and disorderly as to make it necessary for a policeman to be sent to this chapel for several Sundays in succession.’

During their few years at Dyke, the two eldest Prouse daughters, Harriet and Thirza, married the Jewell brothers Joseph and Henry of Dyke Green Farm.

Elizabeth Prouse née Pince had been born in Great Torrington. It is likely that she was the daughter of John and Mary Pince who were living at Bilsford when they died in 1830s. It may be that the death of John Pince, in 1835, prompted the family to return to Buckland Brewer, as by 1841 Elizabeth and her younger children are living at a property which is described in the documents as ‘Hakeys Bilsford’ and ‘Walkeys Bilsford’ but in reality was probably Wakely’s Bilsford, Wakely being a local family name. In 1841 the areas is described as ‘Bilsford Village’, it appears to have been a collection of six or seven labourer’s cottages, with perhaps one more substantial dwelling, Bilsford Cottage, housing the blacksmith, who was another member of the Prouse family; possibly William’s nephew. Henry and Thirza Jewell née Prouse had also come to live at a Bilsford cottage and they had at least five children born in Buckland Brewer.

William Prouse, some thirteen years older than his wife, died in January 1841, when the youngest of their nine children was seven years old. At least three of the Prouse children emigrated to Mariposa, Ontario, Canada. Now known as Kawartha Lakes, Mariposa is near Peterborough, about thirty miles north of Lake Ontario. It is likely that the first Prouse to leave Buckland Brewer was William, whose marriage to fellow Bible Christian Isabella Rodd, probably took place in Canada. They are believed to have emigrated about 1848 and taken up a farm in Mariposa. William’s sister Thirza and her husband Henry Jewell and their children left at some point in the 1850s and settled close by. Youngest son, Edwin, also left Buckland Brewer and went to farm in Mariposa. The family retained their affiliation to the Methodist Church, as Bible Christians or Congregational Methodists once in Canada. Mariposa, along with Darlington Township had the highest concentration of Bible Christian Chapels in Ontario. William Prouse was a trustee of the Betheseda Chapel which was erected in 1861.

The only son of William and Elizabeth to remain in Buckland Brewer was John Prouse. After a spell at Braddons, he returned to Bilsford until his death in 1893.

Comment by Janet Few on March 15, 2013 at 12:57pm

Welcome Deborah. I would be really interested to hear Matilda's story. I know quite a bit about some of her brothers and sisters but I didn't know what had happened to her. I don't suppose you've got any photos of the Prouses? This family were part of the Bible Christian emigrations from North Devon.

In 1812 William Prouse married Elizabeth Pince in Buckland Brewer. William’s origins are uncertain; he probably came from Woolfardisworthy or Clovelly. He seems to have been a farmer of some substance in the village, described at times as ‘yeoman’. Although their eldest daughter, Harriet, was baptised in Clovelly, the family spent most of the first twenty years of their married life at Cleave in Buckland Brewer; William also worked Dean’s Moor. In the early 1830s they moved to East Dyke in Clovelly. This area was significant in the Bible Christian movement as the Jewell family of neighbouring Dyke Green, rented the land on which a Bible Christian Chapel stood for about forty years. This chapel later became the subject of great dispute when, in 1858, the landowner Sir James Hamlyn Williams of Clovelly Court, in an apparent, volte face, withdrew the right to the chapel. A heated exchange ensued in the North Devon Journal, begun by James Thorne in the issue of 2^nd December 1858. ‘We shall be anxious to see what explanation or extenuation Sir James Williams can offer. The case as it now stands, appears to be one of unmitigating intolerance, wholly unworthy of his antecedents.’

 

Comment by Deborah Ann Boden on March 15, 2013 at 11:59am

Just joined. From Little Britain, Ontario Canada where several former Buckland Brewer residents lived ( and were buried). I have ancestors in the PROUSE family, specifically my 2x gt grandmother, Matilda PROUSE (1826-1896) d/o William Charles PROUSE & Elizabeth PINCENT. It was pure coincidence that we ended up living in the same location in Canada that some of my ancestors came to so long ago.

Comment by Christopher Gray on March 13, 2013 at 12:58pm

To repeat my previous comment: Wow!

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