Family Matters - 4. From Breage in Cornwall to Wilkes Barre in Pennsylvania - A tale of two burials
Back in June 2007, together with my brother, Mick, and Trevor and Margaret Goninan from Camborne, we met up with Janet and Don Sipes from Wisconsin who were visiting Cornwall with their family. We had a very pleasant day out together visiting the Geevor Mine Museum, St Michael’s Mount and Breage Church.
In the Church, Trevor found a typed transcript of very early burials dating from 1559 or thereabouts. Glancing through he spotted the following entry in 1582 (in latin):-
Jeneta uxor Johis Gonenan
Translated this means, I think, Janet (or Jane) wife of John Gonenan. It is quite significant because this is the earliest written reference to a Goninan that has been found. The spelling is unusual but it is clearly the family name. Not having come across this particular spelling that I could remember I thought I would try a few searches starting with Google. This didn’t turn up much although it is interesting to know that the word gonenán is the native american Apache word for the number ten.
I then tried the IGI. This gave me a marriage of a Charles Remphrey to a Martha Gonenan Paull on the 8th Feb 1883 in Hancock Township, Houghton in the Upper Michigan. This made me sit up and take notice because I knew that a Martha Goninan had married a Thomas Paull in Cleator Moor in the North West of England on the 28th August 1874. Thomas was a miner. Martha’s name was recorded as Goninnion and her brother William was a witness. She gave her age as 17 whereas in reality she was no more than 15 and I have often wondered whether the marriage was legal. Recently though I did some research on this and found that the minimum age for marriage wasn’t raised to 16 until 1929. Before that the minimum age for a female was 12 and for a male 14, not that many marriages occurred at these ages.
You might wonder what the Cornish were doing in Cleator Moor which is on the edge of the beautiful Lake District. Well the answer is not the scenery but iron ore and for a time there was a significant community of Cornish miners in this area. A search on the 1881 census for people living in Cleator who were born in Cornwall produces a list of over 260 people (including women and children).
Martha was one of ten daughters born to William and Grace Goninan and she was baptised at Gwithian Church in Cornwall on the 12th October 1859 (although her birth was registered in the first quarter 1859). Her father was a miner and he was one of the children of Richard Goninan and MaryAnn Tellam.
In the 1881 census Martha was in lodgings in Cleator Moor (in the house of a Catherine Lobb). She is not shown as a widow so we must assume that Thomas is still alive but he has not been found on the census. There are no children listed. It is possible that Thomas is in the Upper Michigan because Martha’s brother, William, went there sometime between 1878 and 1880.
William had also been married in Cleator Moor. In 1872 he wed Margaret Grenfell and they had four children in England before migrating to the Upper Michigan. There they had four more children and then around 1896 William and most of his family moved to Rossland, British Columbia in Canada but that is another story.
It is quite possible that sometime after 1881 Martha went to the Upper Michigan either to join her husband or her brother. I am pretty well convinced that Thomas must have died and that the Martha Gonenan Paull that married Charles Remphrey is ‘our’ Martha.
Unfortunately the 1890 US census was destroyed in a fire so we have to be content with the 1900 census. A search on this reveals that Martha, now widowed again, is living in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvannia. The census states that she has had 5 children of which 4 are living although there are only three in the house:-
Martha born 1887 Pennsylvania
Charles born 1893 Michigan and
Ruth born 1896 Pennsylvania
the child that died must have been the Charles Remphrey that had been born in the Upper Michigan in 1890. Martha’s date of immigration was given as 1881.
Wilkes-Barre is famous for its anthracite mines, which gave the city the nickname of "The Diamond City." Many thousands of immigrants flocked to the city, seeking jobs in the numerous mines and collieries. Many of these immigrants would have been from Wales with experience of coal mining. The Cornish, who were primarily hard rock miners, also went to Pennsylvia, but not in the same numbers.
In 1910, Martha was still in Wilkes Barre living in Jones Street with two of her children, Charles and Ruth. In 1920 again she was in Jones Street but living with her daughter Ruth who is now married to Charles Swank and has two children, Charles and Robert. This was the same in 1930.
There is no census after 1930 that is available for public searching and the trail could well have gone cold at this point except that I found an obituary of a Donald Pryor who had died at the age of 90 in 2006; had lived in Wilkes Barre and was the son of a Herman Pryor and Martha Remphrey Pryor. Clearly the mother had to be Martha’s daughter Martha and indeed had I looked a little closer at the census information I would have seen that Herman and Martha jnr were also living in Jones Street in 1920 and 1930.
The obituary also mentioned a son, Kenneth Pryor of Wilkes Barre so I then looked at the US white pages and found a K. Pryor living in Wilkes Barre so I thought ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ and I wrote to this Mr Pryor explaining that I was looking for descendants of Martha Paull/Goninan.
About a week later I was delighted to get an email from Ken Pryor jnr, the son of the Kenneth Pryor I had written to. Ken jnr lives in Boston. Whilst not aware of the Goninan connection, he was able to confirm that his family is descended from Charles and Martha Remphrew and thus belong to the Goninan clan (Gwithian branch).
So there we are, it started with a burial in Breage in 1582 and it ended with a burial in Wilkes Barre in 2006 - it’s been an interesting and productive journey.
Postscript:- Family member Ernie Orchard recently visited the Upper Michigan for a Cornish Gathering and very kindly obtained for me a copy of the marriage certificate for Charles Remphrey and Martha Paull. This proves conclusively that Martha was Martha Goninan as it gives her maiden name as Goninan. Interestingly one of the witnesses was Charity Kendall a cousin of Martha’s. Charity was the married daughter of Jennifer Goninan, sister to Martha’s father William Goninan.