| | | Getting Around | | These days, when we take travel so much for granted that we moan about a two hour delay on an intercontinental journey, it is easy to forget that at the beginning of the 17th century it would take 16 days to travel by stagecoach from London to Edinburgh. It was quicker to walk on many journeys. Main routes were not well maintained, turning to muddy rutted mires in winter. Most local routes would have been no more than cart tracks, footpaths and bridleways. Turnpikes began to spread through the country in the 18th century, enabling road maintenance to be funded by tolls, and transport improved. Coaches acquired springs of a sort, and journeys were timetabled. Even so, by 1815 only about 700 miles of the 6000 miles of Devon's roads for wheeled traffic were maintained by Turnpike Trusts. The majority of our ancestors would only have moved around a cluster of parishes such as those surrounding Crediton and Sandford, travelling the few miles a laden cart could manage in a day on country tracks. | 
West Country Mail Coaches at the Gloucester Coffee House, Piccadilly - 1828 |  |
William Frith's The Railway Station, (1862)
 | By 1850 most towns of any size had railway stations. Our families took advantage of this improved communication, migrating much further afield to seize the opportunities that accompanied the changing social and economic climates.
In 1845 the Bristol and Exeter Railway provided access to Bristol and beyond. It joined the GWR, and from Bristol, of course, one could travel to its London Terminus at Paddington, or join the great rail network that had spread across the country.
In 1860 the London and South Western line finally linked London's Waterloo Station to Exeter via Salisbury and Yeovil. By 1870 the railways nationally were carrying 350 million passengers per year. Of the family members who migrated to London, it was almost as if once arrived in the capital, they could go no further; several of them settled in the districts surrounding those two great London termini. Heards, Pittses, Feys, Turners, Carpenters, Labbetts and Wensleys all settled in Paddington. Feys, Loyes, Burridges and Linscotts settled in Bermondsey, Lambeth, Southwark and Camberwell, near Waterloo. |
Paddington 1885
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Heards | The first generation of our Heards to spread their wings were the grandchildren of John Heard and Agnes Hattin - my great grandparents' generation. By 1871 John Heard, b.1852 in Sandford, had moved to Normanby in Yorkshire, with friends from Sandford and Morchard Bishop, and all were working as ironstone miners. The career change must have looked promising, for in 1873 John's cousin Mary Heard married agricultural labourer William Dadd, and in about 1875 William and Mary followed John north to Guisborough where William too began work as an ironstone miner. William's brothers George and John Dadd seem to have moved to Guisborough about the same time. The Dadds settled in Yorkshire, but after the 1871 census John Heard disappeared. Did he go to the goldfields of Australia? I'd love to hear from anybody who knows. The census returns suggest that there may have been a recruiting drive in mid-Devon as there were several Devonshire-born miners working in the northern ironstone mines. Fey in-laws the Robins family also went to Guisborough to mine in the 1870s. The family had other connections with the area, for Yorkshire-born Great Great Aunt Jane Coulson moved to Sandford as a lady's maid in the household of the Ferguson Davies, and married Great Great Uncle James Wright. They moved back to Yorkshire where she died suddenly and was buried in Guisborough cemetery.
Daniel Heard, another cousin of John and Mary, b. 1849 in Sandford, was working as a carter on a farm at the age of 12, but clearly felt this was not the career for him, and in 1871 was in service as a footman for banker Frederick Milford at Matford House, St Leonards, Exeter. Married in 1873, after a brief spell in Brixham, Daniel and his young family moved to the Midlands, to Leamington. Daniel was now a butler. The family settled in the town, and by 1901 Daniel was working as a waiter "on own account". Daniel's eight children stayed in the Midlands, in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, thus establishing a branch of the family there. Two generations later some of Daniel's descendants were to emigrate to Canada, establishing Heards in Alberta, and their in-laws to Australia, carrying the Cornish name Treliving to Victoria.
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Guisborough
 Ironstone Miners |
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Leamington, Warwickshire 1910 | 
Southall, about 1900
| In the early years of the 20th Century, Great Uncle William Heard, b.1885, who had served his apprenticeship as a wheelwright in Newton St Cyres, moved to Southall, Middlesex, where he married local girl Lucy Groves. Their nine children established a branch of the Heard family in Middlesex.
William's second cousin, Walter John Heard, born Sandford, 1887, married Sarah Lynes, in 1913, a Warwickshire girl in service, who had probably moved to Exeter following work. Work also seems to have taken the newly-weds to Barry, S.Wales, where their first children were born. They returned to Devon, but the marriage did not work out. Sarah went back to her family home in Warwickshire. More Heard children were born. Sarah then settled in Wales with the youngest children. As a result whilst some of Walter's children remained in Devon, Heard family branches were also established in Warwickshire and Wales, and are there still. |
Barry, South Wales, 1905 |
Feys | Carpenter James Fey, born in Shobrooke in 1821, must have been one of the first of the family to take advantage of the railways. He married Elizabeth Coles of Newton St Cyres and moved to St Michaels, Bristol in about 1851. Some time during the 1860s his nephew, builder Edwin Fey followed, with his wife Sarah Hector. And around the same time another nephew, builder James Fey, born in Cheriton Fitzpaine in 1842, also moved there. More Feys followed, and the Feys became well established as a Bristol family, such that by 1881 their concentration there was second only to that in mid-and south-Devon. By 1998 the Bristol and South London frequency of the Fey surname had overtaken its source in mid-Devon.
John Fey, another carpenter born in Shobrooke, in 1833, seems to have been the first to settle in Southwark, having moved there in the early 1860s. His younger brothers Matthew and Luke Fey followed him, and they were joined there by subsequent generations. For some time Feys were living in Webber Row, just a stone's throw from Waterloo Station, according to Booth's survey of London a mixed area, housing those of chronic poverty through to those in comfortable circumstances.
Thomas Fey b.1832, who originated around Bow and Spreyton, seems to have learned his trade in Exeter, then moved to London, settling for a while in South East London, his first wife coming from Bermondsey. Thomas moved to Chelmsford, where he married his second wife, and his descendants are there still. Thomas was a skilled leather craftsmen, and the skills were passed from generation to generation. At least one of his grandchildren moved back to South-East London, and there were several generations of Fey descendants living in Bermondsey in the 20th century. | 
Bristol
Southwark |
Webber Row today,
redeveloped since the Feys
lived there.
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Emigration | In the 16th and 17th century some 750,000 people emigrated to the American colonies, so emigration was well established long before the 19th century. And of course the the Empire drew traders and entrepreneurs, administrators and managers, teachers and lawyers as well as the military. Later emigration seems to be concentrated around the 50 years before the First World War.
Amongst the earlier travellers in our tree is Elizabeth Berry b.1812, daughter of builder John Berry. Married to teacher Thomas Fursey they travelled to the Far East. Their first son George was born in 1839 en route to India on board the George IV. Second son Samuel Dunn Fursey, named for his famed ancestor was born in Batavia, today's Jakarta . But Thomas and Elizabeth seemed not to have emigrated, and in 1843 they were back in Appledore, Devonshire, and they remained in England thereafter, moving to Cheltenham. The travel gene seems to have passed to the next generation. Samuel Dunn Fursey's son Reginald Fursey emigrated to the Hawaiian Islands where he was a field supervisor or luna on a sugar plantation. His sister, a teacher like many of her family, Violet Christine Fursey, joined him in Hawaii. There she married Scots chemist, James Wallace Donald. Before her death she also taught for a while in Colorado. Husband James worked all his life as a sugar chemist on Hawaiian plantations.
Another sister Edith Dunn Fursey was for a while a tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas II. She remained in Russia for a few years after the Revolution, then moved to New York. | 
Batavia in about 1842, year of Samuel's birth
Kekaha Plantation, Kauai, Hawaii,
where James Donald worked. |
Samuel Dunn Fursey
Violet Christine Fursey |
Crockers & Blacklers | 
Launceston, Tasmania
Second cousin, and daughter of railway porter Thomas Blackler, Milinda Elliott Blackler was born in 1864 in Tormoham, and as a girl was sent to Australia in 1880 for her health. She seems to have been pretty robust despite this! She married Richard Morris, the Australian manager of a cattle station in the remote Barkly Tablelands. Melinda was probably the first white woman in the Northern Territory. She bore six children without the help of doctor or midwife and endured numerous hardships. You can download an account of Melinda's adventures here.
Her sister Betsy Blackler seems to have been an early emigrant, going to the US in 1872. Louisa S Blackler (1863-1930), another sister, emigrated from Liverpool to New York on 3rd February, 1892, sailing on the Teutonic. She settled in Ohio, where she married Jerome Shaffrauk, from Germany. Brother William sailed on the Teutonic in September 1890. Yet another sister Ann Blackler also sailed on the Teutonic in August 1892, with her young son Charles. Akron, Summit County, Ohio seems to have been the New World gathering place for these Blackler emigrants.
Kate and brother Alfred Blackler, cousins of Melinda and Louisa, emigrated to the US on the SS Campania, arriving at Ellis Island in October 1911. Kate took up a position as governess with a Colonel Brown's family at Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Within a few years of Kate and Alfred's departure their youngest sister Cecilie Ida Elliott Blackler sailed to Australia, where she married second generation Australian, Tasman Arthur Phelps Furze and had four children. Tasman's grandfather Henry Furze had been a Bristol printer, who with his wife Elizabeth Adams sailed from London on the SS Tasmania, arriving in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia on 12 may 1855. | South Hams ancestors the Crockers and the Blacklers were amongst the earliest of the family's emigrants, and various cousins continued to uproot and set sail for pastures new throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A third cousin, John Crocker (1793-1863) married Mary Giles and was farming at Stroude, near Ermington when they decided to emigrate, and with their seven children they sailed to Hobart on the Mary Anne in 1829. They were to have four more children in Tasmania. The Crocker daughters married and settled there.
In March 1842 John's brother Henry Crocker and wife Sarah Coleman sailed from Plymouth on the Orleana, with four children to Hobart, where they were met by John on July 4th. Henry set up a business as a coachbuilder in Launceston, Tasmania, his son Sampson joining him in the business. Pioneering brother John and three sons moved on to Richmond, New Zealand . The Crocker family, however, became well established in Tasmania over succeeding generations, particularly in Launceston and Port Sorell. Henry Crocker's great granddaughter married the son of Alice Corrick of the famous family of entertainers.
 Barkly Tablelands
Teutonic at Liverpool
The immigrant ships seem so much smaller than the great liners that crossed the Atlantic between the wars.
SS Campania | | 
Port Phillip Bay, Victoria in the 1850s
| An Emigrant Family | Another daughter of railway porter Thomas Blackler, Priscilla Blackler (1859-1952), married blacksmith John Davis of Yealmpton in 1891. They worked and lived on the large Plymstock estate of Radford, then owned by Thomas Bulteel, banker and JP. John was a blacksmith at the breakwater works at Oreston. He also did some gardening on the estate, where Priscilla was laundress. John and Priscilla had five children who survived to adulthood. Thomas b. 1888, Milinda b. 1889, William b.1892, Gladys b. 1894 and Miriam b. 1903. The whole family were to cross the Atlantic, four of them permanently. Eldest son Thomas was indentured to a shipwright in Plymouth, in 1903. But after a few years he 'd had enough and reckoned better prospects awaited him further afield. He managed to talk his employer into releasing him from the indenture, and with the help of the family raised the £5-£6 steerage fare and sailed from Southampton on the Oceanic on 15 September 1909. 21 year-old Tom never expected to see his parents again. He arrived at Ellis Island with less than $35 in his pocket. He joined his Uncle and Aunt Jerome and Louisa Shaffrauk in Akron, Ohio. Akron had grown from a population of 3,000 to over 42,000 between 1850 and 1900 and became the "Rubber Capital of the World". Tom got a job in the moving business, and settled to his new life. | 
Elizabeth Davis, nee Ellery - John's mother, at the gate to the Radford Estate. Elizabeth lived in the Lodge, where John was born. | 
The Davis family lived in the Boathouse on the Estate. Several of John's children were born there. | 
Goodrich Rubber Company, Akron | In the following year Tom's younger brother William decided that he too could do better in the USA, and accompanied by an Albert Jones, Bill sailed from Southampton on the Adriatic on 13 July 1910. At Ellis Island both Bill and Albert declared their destination as the home of Tom at 445 Commins Street, Akron. Bill made a brief return to the UK in 1913, but by Christmas that year he was back with brother Tom. In the following year he married close neighbour Kaatje (Katie) Steltman in Akron. Katie was an immigrant from Amsterdam. She had arrived with her parents and four sisters to join her brother in Akron in 1910.
Bill seems to have initially worked as a machinist in the drill factory with brother Tom. But by 1930 he was working as an inspector in one of Akron's several rubber factories.
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SS Adriatic | In 1920 sister Gladys Davis arrived having sailed from Plymouth on the Ryndam. Gladys was able to travel 2nd Class. She joined her brother William in Akron.
By this time Tom had been working for a few years with Whitman & Barnes, a drill and tool manufacturing company in Cleveland. When the plant was moved to Detroit, Michigan, Tom moved too.
In 1821 sister Milinda sailed to Canada. She had decided that she would remain British and emigrate to the British Dominion. Milinda was always the most determined and independent of the children. She had a son, Ewart b. 1913, and in about 1920 she acquired a husband, soldier Jim Washer. The family settled in Windsor, Ontario, just across the water from Detroit.
After her initial visit to Akron, Gladys returned briefly to England, where she collected the rest of the family - her parents John and Priscilla and her sister Miriam: they sailed back in August 1923. Tom found work in Detroit for his father and his sister Miriam at Whitman & Barnes.
Quite a feat for this old Devonshire couple to leave their past behind for a life in a new world! But with the stock market crash in 1929, John lost his job, and was unable to live there on his pension. Reluctantly John and Priscilla were forced to leave America. Gladys had been in service with the Firestone family in Akron. She had not been too pleased with the unwelcome attentions she had received there, and had decided that she would leave too. She and her parents returned to England in 1932. Miriam stayed on. |  | The Davis family, about 1930. Back row l - r: Tom, Gladys, Milinda, Bill, front row l-r: John, Priscilla, Miriam. | %201859-1952%20-%20circa%201950%20-%20Plymouth,%20Devon,%20ENG.JPG)
 Priscilla in about 1950
| With half the family back in Plymstock, and the other half in the US and Canada they were never to all meet up again.
Father John Davis died not long after returning to England, in 1939. Priscilla lived through the war, enduring the Plymouth blitz to die in 1952 in Plympton, aged 92.
Much to his family's surprise Tom married Sarah Stewart at the age of 47. A nurse at Whitman and Barnes, she had been a friend of sister Miriam for years before Tom and she became romantically involved. He spent most of his life with the same company, working as a tool-grinder, moving from Detroit to nearby Plymouth, Michigan, ironically for a man of Plymouth, Devon. In his declining years he moved to California to be near his daughter, where he died in 1972.
In 1930 Miriam married Cyril Baggott, another emigrant, from Newcastle -on-Tyne, whose ancestors had worked on the canals of England. They lived in California, where Cyril died tragically in 1950. Miriam later remarried, to Lester Bolton, and moved with him to Utah, where she died in 1980. | 
Detroit, home of Tom and the family, seen from Windsor, Ontario, Milinda's home. | Tom and Miriam in Detroit
in about 1938 | Millie remained resolutely British, and never forgave her brothers and sisters for becoming American citizens - "Paper Americans" she called them. She even bred bulldogs for a while, and was a great admirer of Winston Churchill. She continued to visit the family across the Detroit river, from her home in Ontario. After Jim Washer's death she married Horace Liddington. She died in Windsor, Ontario in 1978. Son Ewart joined the Canadian Essex Scottish Regiment during the war, and was posted overseas near Plymouth, Devon, where he was able to spend some time with his grandmother and aunt.
Back in Plympton Gladys married Harold Smith in 1934. He served overseas for 5 years during the war. After the death of mother Priscilla, Gladys and Harold spent a year in the US to be with the family, but moved back to Plymouth. Gladys died in 1980.
Bill moved to California, where, like his father, he became a gardener. In 1941 he was head gardener at the Los Angeles Rose Garden. Katie died in 1957, and in 1963 he married Irene Bailey. Bill died in 1981, the last of his generation.
In many respects this is not a remarkable family. But if we reflect on their early poverty, their upbringing, the world they were leaving and the uncertain futures that awaited them, we must acknowledge what grit, daring, spirit of optimism and determination they must have had. They seem to enshrine the values of all the families that travelled to the New Worlds and transformed them. | 
Thomas Davis with grandson, c.1956 | |
I am indebted to Emily Rocha for sharing her stories and photos with me with such generous and enthusiastic support.
| | Photographs of the Radford Estate reproduced with the permission of Plymouth Library Services. |
Feys Again | After the Fey migration to Bristol, many members of the family travelled further. One of the first to leave the UK was Edwin Fey, b.1848, Sandford, who seems to have gone on an exploratory expedition to the USA during the 1870s, then having failed to persuade wife Sarah to travel back there with him to make a new life, he left with an alternative companion. Edwin seems to have done well as a builder, and carved out a successful career in the States, and died in Glendale California in about 1923. | 
Chicago at the turn of the century
Brisbane
SS Rimutaka
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James Fey in 1902
| | In 1883 Edwin's brother James Fey, born 1842 in Cheriton Fitzpaine, took his family to the US, settling in Chicago, where Cora, the last of their 8 children to survive into adulthood, was born. Some of James's children returned to the UK and some settled in the USA. Edwin and James were both builders; brother William Fey, born Cheriton Fitzpaine 1844, had followed the family trade of carpenter and clearly learned from his siblings that the construction industry industry in the US could make use of his skills, for having moved from Crediton to Bristol in by 1881, three years later he followed his brothers to America. William settled in La Veta, Huerfano County, Colorado, where he built many of the town's buildings, and was listed in the 1911 Colorado Business Directory as Fey,Wm., Carpenter. | | Most of our married emigrants seem to have separated for a period whilst the husband went ahead to the country of choice to investigate the prospects. Edwin Fey's daughter, Minnie Fey, b. 1870, married Bristol bricklayer Sidney Daw in 1889. They moved away from Bristol living mainly in the West Midlands, but in 1908 Sidney sailed to Australia on the SS Tainui. Evidently Sid paved the way successfully, for in 1912 Minnie and their 12 children sailed to Queensland on the SS Rimutaka, along with Sid's brother Harry Daw. They settled in the Eight Mile Plains area of Brisbane. There is a Daw Road named after them there. Sid remained a bricklayer all his life and brother Harry became a policeman. After Sid's father died in Birmingham, his mother and sisters joined them in Australia, settling in the same area. | 
SS Taiunui
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to the United States of America... |
Castle Garden, US immigrant reception centre prior to Ellis Island
| Although there are no records of the mid-Devon Heards emigrating in the nineteenth century, it was not only the Blacklers, Feys and Crockers who were willing to try for a new life on the other side of the world. Other family members were willing to try their luck. George Fursdon, b. 1863, dairyman of Sandford, sailed to the USA with wife Rosetta Bannan some time during 1889. They settled in Chicago, and three children were born there. It seems that the old country retained some pull however, for in 1897 the family were back in the UK, and settled in Teignmouth.
The Sharlands began to emigrate during the 1880s - it seems likely that George or his brother Walter were the first to leave Devon. Walter may have arrived in the US in 1878. Certainly in 1879 George emigrated on the Alsatia , arriving in New York on 28th March. In the 1880s the brothers were joined by siblings Ellen, Arthur, John, Matilda and Annie. Some time in the 1890s William joined them and in 1903 sister Mary, by then widowed, was the last to leave England. The family settled in Ingham County, Michigan. Most of them married there and raised families.
Nathaniel Wensley Eastmond, b.1873, son of James Eastmond and Mary Wensley, was helping on the family farm at Yowlestone, Puddington in 1901. The Ellis Island archive records his arrival in New York on August 15th 1903. He sailed on the Saint Paul from Southampton. He described himself as an English farmer, last residence Puddington. He had $70 and with no address to go to, he was not sure of his future movements. He appeared in the 1910 census as a hired man, working in Fresno, where his death was registered in 1962. | 
Ellis Island
SS Majestic. Mary Bradford,nee Sharland, sailed on her in 1903
SS St Paul |
to Canada... | 
Bathurst, New Brunswick about 1900
Edmonton, Alberta, about the time the Willings went there
| For generations the Bicknell family were tailors in Crediton. Cousin John Bicknell, born 1825, seems to have had the itchy feet in the family and left Crediton to work in London in the 1850s, then in Hertfordshire. In about 1890 the family emigrated to Canada, and settled in the township of Bathurst.
Family papers of the Pitts of South Allington suggest that several members of the family were in Canada in the 1820s, including Elizabeth Garland nee Pitts and her daughter Eliza, in Quebec and in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. There were still Pitts in Prince Edward Island in the 1901 census.
William Drew b.1863 in Sandford emigrated to Canada in 1882. He was followed by his brother John Drew b. 1856, and then brother George Drew b. 1871. The brothers settled in Keewatin, Ontario. In about 1924 William and his nephew George moved west to Vancouver.
Francis Willing b. 1888, had worked with his old school friend Nicholas Pitts at Lapford before travelling to America to investigate prospects there. He decided to try his luck and took a farm in Alberta, where he was joined by Nick Pitts' sister-in-law, Nellie Wright, to whom he had become engaged. They were married in Edmonton in 1916 and raised their family. They were hit hard by the depression, and returned to the UK in 1937.
Heards from both Devon and Warwickshire emigrated to Canada after the Second World War, settling in Ontario and Alberta. | |
to Australia and New Zealand... | There are a good number of our extended family in Australia and New Zealand now.
The only extended family member whom we know to have made the trip to Australia unwillingly was John Coleman Grubb . He was transported to Tasmania in about 1852 - one of the last convicts to have been sent to Van Diemen's Land, as transportation there ended in 1853. His crime - stealing a bag of coal from his coal dealer employer. It appears that his family accompanied him, though through some kind of subterfuge - there is no record of their departure - only of their arrival in Tasmania. Certainly the records show that he was with his family within a few months of his arrival. | 
Sydney
Great uncle John Prettejohn Pitts b. 1864 went to Australia some time during the 1880s. In 1891 he married Charlotte Cecilia Carter b. 1868 in Dundalk, the daughter of a soldier. Charlotte had travelled around quite a bit in her eighteen years when she sailed to Sydney from Plymouth on the SS Belgic that left Plymouth on 8th September and arrived in Sydney 25 October 1885. Nonetheless her spirit must have been typical of that of thousands who sailed to their new lives. She was an 18 year-old housemaid, and it must have been a daunting experience to make that 6 week journey apparently unaccompanied. John was a butcher in Sydney. Their first child was born there, but something about the life didn't suit and by 1897 they were back in London, where John died 13 years later.
Ellen Sheriff Loye (1880-1965) - John Pitts' third cousin - sailed to Australia on the Jumna, arriving in Rockhampton on 18th November 1900. She married Nottingham tailor Louis Glover (1880-1922) and they had seven children. Their descendants seem to have spread out through Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales. 
John Prettejohn Pitts | | 
Tasmania 1852
| Sarah Crocker Loye, born in Ringmore in 1841 - her mother was a Crocker - married Bigbury carpenter John Hamlyn, and on 20 May 1865, with their two young children they left Plymouth on the Young Australia. On the journey they befriended single man John Stone, 19, of Torquay. During the journey John Hamlyn contracted scarlet fever, and was quarantined on their arrival on August 20th. Hamlyn succumbed to the usually fatal disease. John Stone, honouring a promise he had made to his new friend that he would look after his widow and children, married Sarah Hamlyn in 1866 and became a stepfather to her children. They settled in Toowoomba, Queensland.
The Treliving family, who married into the Leamington branch of Heards were also early settlers. Benjamin Treliving and wife Sarah Ann Clarke sailed to Australia in 1864. Sarah was carrying their first child. Her son was born and tragically died while the ship was in the port at Victoria. It must have felt like an ill-omened arrival in the new country, but the family stayed on and thrived in Collingswood, and their Treliving descendants are in Australia still.
After his failed marriage 1n 1879 Harry Pickett emigrated to Australia, and in Sydney he met and married Jemima Blackburn Lancashire. Harry was working as a warehouseman. He seems to have remained in the Sydney area. He and Jemima had four children with the result that there are four or five generations of Pickett descendants in Oz, and some of his descendants have moved to America. |
John Willing & wife Sarah Jane nee Pilditch emigrated to South Australia on the "Yalta", arriving on Saturday, 23rd October 1869. John was 43. With him was Sarah Jane, Amy, Charles, Sarah, Eulila , John, Richard, Tom and Sydney. Tragically 4 year-old Sydney Willing died in a fall from the mast while at sea.
It is said the family intended to travel to America and it was only after the ship left port they discovered it was headed for Australia, so our Australian Willing cousins could have been Americans! Thanks for the story Faye!
John & Sarah had 10 children and in 2002 there were 607 descendents plus 315 partners: a total of 923 in the family and that number is steadily growing. |  Victorian Adelaide | | Henry Davey was Clerk of Works to Sir John Amory at Knightshayes Court, and held other posts in the local community including Churchwarden, Water Bailiff and Fire Brigade captain, yet in 1914, with son Robert he sailed for Sydney where he had been offered a saw mill to manage. Arriving at the outbreak of war, he would not take the job from men who were being laid off , but instead purchased some land, planted an orchard and built a house at Wyee, New South Wales. Wife Lydia nee Snell followed Henry in October 1915 on the SS Athenic, accompanied by son James Wallace, and daughter Muriel. Son Leonard joined them after the war. | 
SS Athenic | Robert Willingale Fursdon, b. 1862, Torquay is one of the few of our family who sailed to New Zealand, after 1900, perhaps to join children who had emigrated.
Huxtables moved to Australia; family rumour says they were sent there because their gambling debts were ruining their families in North Devon. ..Individuals moving in their youth, families moving in their middle ages...moving through a spirit of adventure, or forced by economic necessity. There must be more of our extended family who emigrated. Families continue to move on to pastures new still, though this takes us into the territory of living relatives. But I would be pleased to hear of any of our family members not mentioned above who have emigrated, and stories of any of those who are mentioned here. |
SS Jumna
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