Family Matters - 7. Gwithian Parish – analysis of the 1851 Census
Gwithian Parish is important in the Goninan family story. I reckon that all of the known family members living in the United States are descended from the Gwithian Goninans, as are all Tasmanian family members.
I thought in would be interesting to analyse the 1851 census to see what it could tell us about life in Cornwall at that time. This is feasible because Gwithian was only a small parish; the official count in 1851 was a mere 629 people (although in my analysis I have managed only 622) . Because of its small size the Parish was merged with the neighbouring Parish of Gwinear in 1934. Of the 622 I found in the Parish, 30 were Goninans. The five employed Goninan males were all copper miners. There was some 124 households.
We can tell almost as much about the Parish by what was not there as what was – thus there are no doctors, no paid police ( the Cornwall Police Force wasn’t formed until 1857. From 1836 the Parish Council appointed a local constable but this position was unpaid), no landed gentry and even the Minister did not reside in the Parish. In fact there is no mention of anyone associated with the Church or Chapel (The Methodist Chapel, situated in Gwithian village, was built in 1810. It is the only thatched chapel in Cornwall.). Despite all the miners, there are no mine owners or mine captains and there is only one shopkeeper. There were no professional people like lawyers and no one involved in transport. Also there were no fisherman – although Gwithian is on the coast there is no harbour within the Parish. There were however three coastguards (plus three retired coastguards). No doubt their main function was to catch smugglers who were trying to avoid excise duty.
There were two main settlements – Gwithian village itself and Connor Downs. I suspect they were quite different in character – Gwithian village consisted mainly of people working on the land whilst Connor Downs was made up mainly of copper miners and their families.
There were 313 males (out of the 622) and of these 157 (50%) were under the age of 20. There was only one male over the age of 80. 207 were shown has having an occupation with the youngest being just 10 years old and he was an agricultural labourer.
There were 23 farmers (including 3 women) but apart from one of 300 acres the farms were very small, i.e. 100 acres or less and down to as little as 10 acres. One of the farmers was also a miller. There were 75 agricultural labourers ( 72 males and 3 females)
There were 66 copper miners plus 5 engine operators (all males). Thus agriculture and mining made up over three quarters of the occupations for males. Other occupations shown for males included 1 shoemaker, 3 sand carriers, 1 rope maker, 1 inn keeper, 1 cabinet maker, 4 carpenters, 2 stone masons and 2 toll gate keepers. I think the toll gate was in Connor Downs through which ran the main route between Camborne and Hayle.
The age distribution for females is much the same as for males with 158 of the 309 females being below the age of 20 (51%). The information provided for occupations of females does not give the complete picture. Married women are show only as ‘wife’ but it is difficult to believe that none of the married women had paid occupations. When it comes to the Connor Downs area of the Parish, the census enumerator has been particularly slack with many examples of unmarried women of working age not having any occupation noted. We end up in fact with no women at all being shown as working at the mines whereas we know that such employment was commonplace. In fact it is doubtful if any mine could have operated without the efforts of women (and children) working at the surface on the initial ore processing. Occupations that are shown include 13 servants, 1 school mistress, 1 shop keeper, 1 beer seller and 6 dressmakers.
The census also tells as where people were born, or at least the Parish. From this we can see that 58% of the people were born in Gwithian Parish and if we include the neighbouring Parish of Gwinear, the percentage rises to 70%. If we include all Cornwall (and mainly this means the nearby Parishes of Camborne, Crowan and Phillack) then the figure is 97% with only 22 people given their place of birth as outside of Cornwall. You might think then that, in those days, the Cornish did not roam far from home but that was already changing with a rapidly growing exodus to far away places in the US and Australia.
Source:- Cornwall Online Census Project http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kayhin/ukocp.html
this is a free site and they have done a great job