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The Family Story
Chapter
1 1834/35
- 1860
Chapter 2 1860 Typhoid
Chapter 3 1861 Henry marries Elizabeth
Chapter 4 Emigration to New Zealand 1879/1880
About
Pensilva the families home town in Cornwall
- 1st Chapter: 1834/35 - 1860 Henry
& Elizabeth (nee HEARD) HODGE
- At either Milton Abbot or Lifton, district
Tavistock, Devonshire Henry HODGE Scrapbook was born 1834/35. Census records vary. His father was William, mother unknown. It is safe to assume
that William was a farm labourer,
- His death certificate in 1903 gives his age
as 71 years. It is presumed Henry (like his father William) began working
life on the land. He had no schooling, as noted on various certificates.
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- Henry HODGE married Jane
Wallace, date unknown, and their 1st child, Amelia,
was born 17 January 1853 at Lifton Downs, Devon.
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- Sometime after Amelia's birth Henry
took his young family to Alternun and it was there a son, Samuel,
was born in early 1855. Daughter Mary was born also at Alternun about 1859.
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- By 1860 the family was living at Upton,
Linkenhorne.
- From these facts we can see despite his
country heritage, Henry left the land and turned to mining in Cornwall. A
farm hand in the mid 19th century had to work long hours for very little money, so like
many others at that time Henry went to the Cornish mines, which where at
the peak of production.
- Daughter of Jacob & Elizabeth HEARD nee
NORTHCOTT Elizabeth HODGE Scrapbook (nee HEARD 2nd marraige WOOLRIDGE) was born at Lawhitton in the district of
Launceston, Cornwall, on the 28th February 1839.
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- Her fathers occupation was entered on the
birth certificate as husbandman. This family too had no schooling. Little is known of her
early life other than she had 7 brothers killed at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean
War 1854/1856.
- Elizabeth married John Woolridge,
probably in 1858 and there was one daughter of the marriage - Anna Jane, though her Birth Certificate has her as Hannah Jane
born 13 January 1859, at Luccombe, Lawhitton.
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- Also noted is Fathers name cited as John
Wollridge. John was also uneducated. After Anna's birth this family also moved to
Upton. And so Henry HODGE and Elizabeth
WOOLRIDGE (nee HEARD) became neighbours & friends, and it was also early in 1860 that
the plague struck.
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- 2nd Chapter: 1860 Typhoid
- Although Cornwall didn't suffer as much as
the rest of the country, plague's of cholera and typhoid took their toll. In the mid
1800's the demand for labourers was greatly increased and small cottages and single rooms
became greatly overcrowded through lack of accommodation, with the natural consequence of
fever being increased.
- Both Jane
HODGE and John WOOLRIDGE caught typhoid - and both died. Jane's
death certificate dated 14th February 1860 - cause of death: typhoid and pneumonia.
- Henry too contracted typhoid and was
hospitalised, where according to family history, he developed a raging thirst and when no
one bought him a drink, he managed to get out of bed and over to a jug of water.
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- He drank copiously, returned to bed and slept
for hours. That sleep marked the turning point and he subsequently made a full recovery.
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- 3rd Chapter: 1861 Henry marries
Elizabeth (nee HEARD 2nd marraige WOOLRIDGE) HODGE
- After the death of her husband, Elizabeth
cared for the three HODGE children, and it isn't hard to picture the situation.
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- On one hand Henry, now a
widower with three small children, needing care while he worked, and on the other hand, Elizabeth
a young widow with a baby. They indeed needed the support of each other.
- They married on 27 April 1861 in the
Registers Office in Liskeard. Their eldest child Richard Henry HODGE was
born 2 December 1862 at Tokenbury. Subsequent children were born at Tokenbury and
Middlehill, Pensilva. Several of the children died in infancy.
- The average life span of a miner was 47
years, if he managed to survive the many accidents underground, and when he came to the
surface he ended his days in an overcrowded cottage, spitting black dust and existing on a
diet of potatoes and barley corn.
- Henry contracted the so called 'miner lung'
and when his daughter Alice Scrapbook was christened
in 1877, his occupation was listed as invalid. The bubble had burst and with his health
ruined, Henry, with his growing family faced a bleak future, although by
this time Mary Jane, Scrapbook Amelia and
Anna along with Richard, Kate Scrapbook and John were working - if indeed there was work to be found.
- Nobody today knows when Samuel HODGE,
son of Henry & Jane left Cornwall for America. We surmise it would be before the
family came to New Zealand.
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- 4th Chapter: The Emigration to New
Zealand 1879/1880
- Presumably it was through the sponsorship of Amelia and Ephraim that Henry decided
to come to New Zealand, and they sailed from Plymouth on the Eastmister. As assisted
emigrants the family would have traveled steerage.
- At sixteen in 1879, Kate
Scrapbook often
recounted in her later years her memories of leaving Cornwall and the journey out.
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- She remembered how their belongings were
loaded onto a cart and of them walking behind it for the twenty miles from Pensilva to
Plymouth, accompanied by their Grandmother who cried the whole way.
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- She would have realised they would not see
each other again, and with no schooling there was little chance of letters.
- With her hair up and her long dresses, Kate
found the voyage a delight with dancing and flirting in the evening.
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- Not so her mother! Elizabeth
was pregnant with Charlie, Scrapbook who was born two months after their arrival in New Zealand, and she was ill
throughout the voyage, barely able to leave her bed.
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