WILLIAM was born in Perranuthnoe to William and Mary in 1826, when his father was stationed there.
His father was posted to Penberth soon after, and then to the Kent coast in the early 1830s. The family returned to Penberth around 1840 when William is already a teenager. He probably started fishing around that time.
William was 35 when he married Grace Prowse in 1861. Their first child William was born in in 1862 and Mary Julian was born in 1869. She appears in the St. Levan School register as Julian so she was probably known by that name. Their second child Ethel Jane is born in 1873.
THOMAS was born in Penberth in 1829. On the families return from the Kent posting Thomas is aged 10. Like all the boys, he becomes a fisherman when he’s old enough. He marries a widow, Ann Legg, born Chapel, in 1827 and their son John Thomas, known as John T, is born in 1860. They have no more children and Ann dies in 1879. Thomas then marries Ann’s sister, Elizabeth Jane. They have three children; Elizabeth Jane (possibly known as Janie) (1883), Peter (1884) and Margaret (1887). John T is born in Penberth, but the other children are all born in Porthgwarra.
MARY is born in Penberth in 1830. In 1851 Mary marries Josiah Wallis(h) of Bernewhall. Josiah worked as an agricultural labourer. They soon took passage to Australia on the ‘Oithona’ leaving Plymouth in October 1854 arriving in Portland in January 1855. It seems they took on the challenge of populating Australia by producing 14 children between 1854 and 1875. Their first son William was born in St. Buryan earlier in the year before they left. Mary outlived all but 4 of her children, dying at the age of 101 in 1931, in Creswick, Victoria.
ROBERT WALTER is born in Kent in 1835. He marries Mary Chenhalls in October 1853. The Chenhalls were farmers living at Rospletha at the time they met. Robert and Mary’s family consisted of Mary Ellen (1855), John (1856), James (1858), Robert Walter ( 1861), Alfred (1863), Nanny Chenhalls (1865), Jessie (1871), Charles Arthur (1873), Catherine (Katie) Margaret (1875). Katie is the first child to be born in Porthgwarra so this appears to be about date of the move.
JOHN was born in Kent in 1837. He marries Anna Mary Trudgeon in 1868. Anna appears to have been born in Tresidder to a farming family in 1842. In 1871 John and Anna are living in Sparnon with their new son, John Earnest. However, John drowned off Porthgwarra in 1874 aged 37, the same year that his daughter Anna Mary Elizabeth was born. Anna and the children move back to Tresidder with her family.
MATTHEW, was the last of the children born in Kent before the family returned to Penberth. He fishes from Penberth before moving to Porthgwarra with his brothers. In 1881 he seems to be living with his recently widowed brother Thomas, but by 1891, when Thomas has remarried, he vanishes from the Porthgwarra census. 10 years later Matthew, now aged 61, is staying with his sister Elizabeth in Fowey and in 1911 he is staying as a visitor with the Bunt family on a farm in Blisland, near Bodmin. He’s a bit of an enigma and difficult to pin down his travels.
The Jacksons Of Porthgwarra 