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Abraham was the eldest – and possibly only – son of Abraham and Joan Roberts. He was my 5xgreat grandfather and was baptised at Falmouth, Cornwall on 29 May 1732.
There is a marriage of Abraham Roberts and Rachel James at Falmouth, on 2 May 1757, by licence, in the presence of Wm James and J. Woollcombe. Although they were married at Falmouth, the twenty-five-year-old Abraham seems to have already moved east, to Stoke Damerel, Devon, the parish which contained Plymouth docks (now Devonport). He is listed as of ‘Stoke Damerell’ and where the marriage is in the list of Devon strays his occupation is given as Shipwright (although the source of this information is not clear).
[A Rachel James was baptised at St Gluvias, near Falmouth in 1735, the daughter of William and Ann James, so this may have been her, her father putting his name to the marriage as witness. Rachel must also have been related to the Falmouth rope merchant Erasmus James, mentioned in the book Old Falmouth, by Susan E. Gay (1903): ‘To the rope-walk, leased by Mr. Thomas Deeble, who died in 1742, succeeded Erasmus James, who had a relation of the name in the wine trade.’ ]
Antony/Torpoint and Stoke Damerel
Abraham was soon tempted across the water from Stoke Damerel to the Cornish parish of Antony, bordered to the north by the River Lynher and St Germans creek. In the east of the parish, the town of Torpoint overlooks the estuary where the tidal rivers Tamar, Tavy and Lynher empty into Plymouth Sound.
In the mid-eighteenth century, Torpoint was a new development, built by Reginald Pole Carew of Antony House as a commercial centre for the naval traffic which was continually in and out of Plymouth docks. Abraham is listed at Torpoint as early as 1762, when he began supplying bell rope to Antony church each year (at a price of 17s 6d). In 1766 he also charged for rigging a flagpole on the church tower.
In 1765 his signature was included in the parish accounts, suggesting he sat on the parish council that year. The same year, Abraham inherited the ropemaking equipment and £300 from his grandmother’s brother, the Falmouth merchant Lazarus Steele. This must have been a great boon, helping him to expand his business at Torpoint. Abraham acknowledged this by naming his second son, born that year, Lazarus Steele Roberts, after his benefactor.
Other enterprising speculators who apparently arrived at Torpoint at the same time as Abraham were Hannibal Hawkins, aged forty-four, a ‘maltster’ (i.e. a brewer), Richard Tickell, a ‘tinman’ and John Williams, a ‘house carpenter’. Hawkins (who died in 1803 aged eighty-two) and Tickell are on the 1771 Freeholders List for Stoke Damerel. Abraham is not, however, presumably as he was based at Antony/Torpoint by then.
At some point Abraham entered into a business partnership with his cousin, Samuel Groube. According to Groube’s will, proved in 1785 (in which he bequeaths Abraham a mourning ring), he was – like Abraham – ‘late of the town of Falmouth but now of Torpoint’. Groube was also, like Abraham, the grandson of Thomas Grub [Groube] and Joan James.
They saw opportunities for ropemaking at Torpoint, now rapidly expanding as Plymouth dockyard workers settled in the town. Where there were ships (and there were plenty in the dockyard) there was a continuing demand for rope. It was made from hemp, mostly brought from the Balkans, and was spun into long thin strands of great strength before being plaited and twisted into rope. More details on how the rope was traditionally made can be found in Days at the Factories (1843).
The 1760s were turning into prosperous years for merchants such as Abraham and his cohorts. Within ten years, he had completed work on a store, quay, tar house, hemp house, spinning house and residence for himself and his family. His store and rope houses contained cordage, hemp, new rope, a hamperline, a hawser, reels of spun yarn, a cart, a great barrel and weights, two gun carriages, a sledge and an anchor.
The settlement at Torpoint grew more rapidly with the Navy’s engagement in the Seven Years War and American War of Independence. ... Abraham Roberts and partners had established another quay, possibly to the north-east of Carew Terrace, and tar, hemp, spinning and rope houses which extended along the coast approximately corresponding with Marine Drive. At this time there was another ropewalk, New Rope Walk, corresponding with Salamanca Street. Two further ropewalks, ‘Old Rope Walk’ at Carbeile Road established prior to 1784, possibly corresponding with a nearby quay; and another pre-1840 ropewalk which bisected Cremyll Road, Hamoaze Road and Marine Drive to the south-west of the town centre. (Torpoint Neighbourhood Plan 2022)
What might well have been Abraham’s rope walk (New Rope Walk) can be see in the bottom left of this map from 1774 branching out from the new settlement of Torpoint into the neighbouring fields (the red line marks Fore Street). Taken from Torpoint Neighbourhood Plan (2022)
Abraham’s name is mentioned in Statues at Large (1780) as a tenant in the parish of Antony and in the parish accounts as paying church rates on two fields at Torpoint: these were perhaps for the rope walk in the map above?
In November 1778, according to the Western Flying Post and Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, he conducted the ‘sale of a boat’.
By the 1780s, Torpoint was boomtown, rich on the profits of war. Plymouth merchants used Abraham’s warehouses for goods from prize ships. But the absence of a Customs Officer was a serious drawback to its development as a commercial centre. In 1783, the Commissioner of Customs restrained the landing of goods from foreign parts, declaring Abraham’s warehouses to be ‘unsafe and Subject to be plunder’d by the Cornish people.’ Abraham defended his position in several letters to Pole Carew:
Till I lived and Erected Warehouses here, there never was a Mercht who resided at Torpoint, and mine are the first Warehouses that ever were erected here – In the Peace I landed Hemp and Tar, for my own use, as a Ropemaker, with the approbation, and visitation of the Excise, and Customs, But I do not know of any other Goods being Warehoused here.
But it was too late. When peace came, the Navy had no further need for the storage. ‘The war is over and my Warehouses are no longer necessary to them,’ wrote Abraham. He had borrowed money from Pole Carew and mortgaged the town’s Prince William Henry public house with the Naval Bank. His one-time partner Samuel Groube was declared bankrupt in July 1776 and before long Abraham was too: although he appears to have continued supplying the church with rope annually until Easter 1790, when he disappears altogether from the Antony parish records.
His house, furniture and stock were disposed of in a sale that lasted four days. The property included a deal desk and stand, a spyglass and two lead letter presses.
It seems likely he moved to London shortly after this as a notice appeared in the London Gazette of 20 April 1790:
Whereas a Commission of Bankrupt is awarded and issued forth against Abraham Roberts, late of Torpoint in the County of Cornwall, Merchant, Dealer and Chapman (late Partner with Samuel Groube, deceased, by the Firm of Groube and Roberts, of Plymouth in the County of Devon, Merchants) and he being declared a Bankrupt is hereby required to surrender himself to the Commissioners in the said Commission named, or the major Part of them, on the 1st Day of May next, at Eleven o’Clock in the Forenoon, on the 8th Day of the same Month, at Ten o’Clock in the Forenoon and on the 5th Day of June following, at Eleven of the Clock in the Forenoon, at Guildhall, London, and make a full Discovery and Disclosure of his Estate and Effects…
The Times of 26 April 1790 also repeated the announcement, giving the attorney as ‘Mr Boulton, Elm Court, Temple’. Abraham might have fallen victim to financial misfortune, but he was by no means alone. Bankruptcy, it seems, was an all-too-common feature in the commercial landscape of the late eighteenth century. ‘In the last twenty years, Bankruptcies have been infinitely more numerous than at any former period,’ posits the introduction to A List of Bankrupts, Dividends, Certificates, Etc., published in London in 1806.
It is not clear what became of Abraham after this, but in 1792 the Torpoint ropeworks were up for sale, ‘determinable on the deaths of two persons’. Surely one of these must have been Abraham? (Perhaps the other was Samuel Groube?)
The works were described as ‘for many years in possession of Mr Abraham Roberts, and late of his son’ (Sherborne Mercury 10 December 1792). His son, however, had not died and was now in London.
Interestingly, an Abraham Roberts was buried at Falmouth in March 1813, aged eighty-one (thus born circa 1732, the right year).
Abraham and Rachel had several children including my 4xgreat grandfather, Abraham junior.
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