Thomas Austin (b 1824) son of Thomas and Mary (Manning) Austin.

About 1890, Watervliet, Michigan, USA

Fulford family in Canada now traced and living relatives in contact.

Hi David,

Charity's father Able are the only Heal Faily members  know about. I am looking for ore though.

John

Here is a 1910 postcard of the Bideford/Buckland Brewer area. If you click on it it will appear in correct proportion.

Have today photographed and indexed the gravestones at Eckworthy redundant Baptist Chapel, Tithacott, Buckland Brewer - all 21 of them - plenty of Hookways!

Janet, are you publishing them on this site? If not, could I ask for a copy via my email - grateful

Dave

Don't think there's really room on this site - they will eventually be made public along with those from teh other 2 graveyards - happy to answer queries though. Did you just want the Heal's Dave?

Heal's and Hookway's please Janet. My gt gt grand mother was an Ann Hookway who married Henry Griffey of Northam

Janet - are there any Fulford, Kelly or Lake?

Janet - I seem to be on GenealogyWise with two accounts.  Any idea how I delete one?  If not - can I take myself out of this group and rejoin with my other account?

OK - found out how.

1906 Postcard of Buckland Brewer

My house in the picture below. Bottom right hand corner with thatch at right angles to the road. No thatch now!

Surnames on stones at Eckworthy are

HI Janet,

what are the  names for Heals, I am still looking for Charity Heal's family members.

John 

Thornhillhead Methodist Church (former Bible Christian Chapel) gravestones now fully indexed, thanks to my gallant helpers. Too many different surnames (111) to list here as space is restricted. Will answer queries and look to making them public together with those from the Baptist and Anglican churchyards when all are done. 

Thanks Janet for all your work.

Expressed myself badly below - happy to answer enquiries on Thornhillhead now - just can't list all the surnames here.

Hi Janet - dont suppose there are any Shaptons in Thornhillhead ?

No, no Shaptons I'm afraid. Here's the first part of the alphabet.

Well that seemed to work - here are some more

Hi Janet,

Could you check for any of my following family connections?

Littlejohns - John Oliver b 1855, Rosalind b1860 + Thomas b1810?

Marshall - Ann 1798-1800 or Grace b 1794

Morrish - Enock b1858 or William H b 1859

Also have several Martin + Allins, but not directly linked to B/Brewer!

Many thanks

Stuart

Hi Stuart

God is the helper of the fatherless.

Sacred to the memory of THOMAS LITTLEJOHNS of this parish who died on the 15th of November in the year of our Lord 1866 aged 56 years.

There remaineth a rest to the people of GOD. Heb. Chap. 4. v.9

Sacred to the memory of MARY late wife of Thomas Littlejohns of this parish who died on the 26^th of Novr 1852 aged 40 years. Death is swallowed up in victory

No Morrish or Marshall graves but I am in contact with a descendant of Ann and Grace Marshall's brother, Thomas.

I've just added some information about Buckland Brewer to my personal website http://thehistoryinterpreter.wordpress.com/community-history/buckla...

Thanks for the info on my Littlejohns!

I dont actually have Thomas for some reason, but would be happy to exchange what info I have with others, if they want to connect?

Many thanks

Stuart

Janet,

Do you have any info on Austins buried the the BB area?

No Austins yet Gary - some may turn up when we get on further with the main Anglican churchyard.

i have been researching the Bridgman and redecleave family from Buckland Brewer and surrounding area. I am coming from s.wales and would like to visit the churches and grave yards were they where married and buried any help i would be very greatful

                                      Jeff.Cooper

Hi Jeff, No gravestones for these names in any of the churchyards but many burials have no stones so they may well have been buried here.

Jeff, As you say you are researching the Redecleave and Bridgman families, I assume your interest would be with Sarah Redecleave. Sarah's parents William and Elizabeth do have a gravestone in the churchyard of St Mary and St Benedict’s Church. They died within 9 days of each other in 1866. You can request a free photo of it from here http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/findfamily.php?name=Ridecliffe
As you can see the spelling used is Ridecliffe, the name is rarely spelled in a consistent way. I much prefer the rather ancient sounding Redecleave (or similar) than the Redcliff/Redcliffe that it turned into. My connection with this family is through William Redecleve's sister Elizabeth who married William John's.

Simon

~Thanks Simon We have finished transcribing the stones but they are not yet indexed. I had to search by using the find feature and didn't include that variant. We hope to finish the indexing in the next couple of months

Simon thank you for info on the redecleave family.Sarah was my great great grandmother

Starting to get the Buckland Brewer gravestone inscriptions online http://thehistoryinterpreter.wordpress.com/community-history/buckla... click on the links for Thornhillhead and Eckworthy graveyards. Plans for these and the inscriptions for the main churchyard will follow shortly. Can use the 'find' facility to search for the names you are interested in. Eventually we may sell CDs including transcriptions, photographs of all gravestones and a database of all names mentioned, with additional detail from the burial registers. Comments welcome before I upload the hundreds of stones from the main churchyard

Janet - this looks to be a first class sourceof information about the Buckland Brewer graveyards.  The format looks good.  The only addition I would make is a map of the area showing the graveyards.  The minumum would be the address / co-ordinates.  Could you please pass on my thanks to the team.  Chris

... and where is the spell-checker when one needs it?

Thanks Chris - maps and plans are on the to do list! Debated waiting until everything was 'finished' before putting anything online but decided partial information was better than none.

Janet - I fully support your approach - partial information is certainly better than waiting for perfection.  Chris

Hi Janet,

A job well done :-)

Unfortunately most of my Cole-Heal-Osbourn ancestors who passed away in Buckland Brewer dont seem to be buried there :-( Do you know where I can look for thier resting places? I think some of them would be in Langtree, Little Torrington as well as other niebouring places.

Keep up the gr8 work,

John

Nothing available for Langtree or Little Torrigton yet but there is a newly formed historical society for Little Torrington so maybe they will get to work. Keep an eye on http://www.gravestonephotos.com/public/area.php?area=Devon&coun... nothing there yet but it is being added to all the time. Of course not everyone who is buried in Buckland Brewer had a gravestone. We will be indexing the burials too in due course. WEeve made a start. I've added a few more for St Mary and St Benedict today. Went out to check them but the Buckland wind was very keen so despite sunshine didn't get as many done as I'd hoped! 

Plans and grid references now uploaded for all three churchyards - also added another 100 or so stones for St Mary and St Benedict this week - still another 100 or so to add. In total there are about 700 stones in the three churchyards and nearly 2000 entries in the database for people mentioned on the stones (some are duplicates).

Wow!  Brilliant work.  Chris

Just uploaded the last of the Buckland Brewer gravestone inscriptions http://tinyurl.com/a6trc6y 700+ gravestones and nearly 2000 names recorded. We will be adding those from inside the church and the war memorial soon. A full index of the burials for St Mary and St Benedict is almost complete. Still searching for the burial registers for Thornhillhead and Eckworthy

To repeat my previous comment: Wow!

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.

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.’

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.

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

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.

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).