Research Note for the St. Blazey Families Project by Wesley Johnston - Begun 9 Dec 2013 - Last Updated 29 Dec 2013

Daniel GARLAND married Catherine GROSE at Luxulyan, Cornwall, 25 May 1780. The witnesses were William NANJULIAN and John GROSE. The immediate next marriage in the parish was the 30 May 1780 marriage of Daniel GARLAND's brother James GARLAND to Martha PETERS, witnessed by William NANJULIAN and Mathew ROBERTS. (William NANJULIAN witnessed almost every marriage in the parish in this period, so that he was probably not a relative of either couple.)

Who was the Catherine GROSE who married Daniel GARLAND? When and where was she born or baptized? Who were her parents? Who were her siblings? Was GROSE her maiden name or her married name? Who was the John GROSE who witnessed her marriage?

Thus far, there is no definitive answer -- nor even one that is a leading candidate. Each possible solution scenario runs into facts that undermine it. If I had to pick one solution scenario at this point, my hunch would be that Catherine was the widow of a man named GROSE, so that GROSE was not her maiden name. And yet that scenario has several facts that undermine it. None of the scenarios so far examined stand up clearly as the right one, and it very well may be that some scenario not yet examined is the right one.

But it is important to capture the analysis that has gone into these questions thus far. And that is the purpose of this research note.

The following consists of the results of research efforts by three researchers: Franzie Cummings (in Australia), Wesley Johnston (in California) and Dee Edwards. It is presented as it exists in a single e-mail, with (1) Fran sending the first e-mail to Wesley and then (2) Wesley responding to Fran and then (3) Fran sending to Wesley earlier messages that she had received from Dee. Clearly, this needs to be better organized, including providing URLs for the images of all of the records involved. But in the absence of the time to do that, it is more important to simply capture here what is in each of the e-mails.

https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-11664-11273-12?cc=1769414&wc=MMVH-JPD:n1690988392

Catherine Grose, "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975"

Name: Catherine Grose

Gender: Female

Christening Date: 31 Mar 1755

Christening Place: LUXULYAN,CORNWALL,ENGLAND

Birth Date:

Birthplace:

Death Date:

Name Note:

Race:

Father's Name: John Grose

Father's Birthplace:

Father's Age:

Mother's Name: Catherine

Mother's Birthplace:

Mother's Age:

Indexing Project (Batch) Number: P02026-1

System Origin: England-ODM

GS Film number: 0897356 IT 1

Reference ID:

I did quite a lot of research and was not sure I was on the right track and I found an entry in Geneaology Research Directory and contacted the following people

Supplied by W.J.GROSE <trevilder@lineone.net> and Dee Edwards dee@macace.net

The above had a huge amount of data on the GROSE FAMILY and on Catherine GROSE BUT they did not have my Catherine GROSE in their tree and did not know she had existed.

They thought she must have been living with her uncle John GROSE at the time of her marriage to Daniel GARLAND hence his name on the Marriage BUT she was not from this John Grose's family. They had WILLS etc which did not mention my Catherine but did mention another Catherine with her married name in the will.

They thought she was from this family

BAPTISM: IGI

CHRISTENED: 12 Nov 1761

PLACE: Probus, Cornwall, England

NAME: Catherine GROSS

FATHER: Joseph GROSS

MOTHER: Phillipa PERKIN

SOURCE INFORMATION:

BATCH No.: C053011

DATES: 1597 - 1812

SOURCE CALL No.: 0916955

TYPE:Film

PRINTOUT No.:6901100

TYPE: Film

I followed this backwards and have a large amount of information but have since disconnected the family from my tree as I really could not see Daniel GARLAND and Catherine GROSE having 11 children and not naming one Joseph or Phillipa. In that era everybody named Children after family. I put in a lot of effort over many months and could not find a suitable birth family for Catherine so her tree stops here for the moment.

Looking at the Catherine GROSE baptisms in Luxulyan in the 1750's, there were these, including one in 1749:

1749 Sep 21 to Richard and Catherine
1755 Mar 31 to John and Catherine
1756 May 17 to Richard and Catherine (sure enough, there is a burial 13 Mar 1754 of a Catherine, which must have been the 1749 sister of the one in 1756)

So in Luxulyan, there were really just two candidates for Daniel's bride. Looking elsewhere, there are none close to these dates other than the 1761 at Probus.

I suspect that the John GROSE who witnessed the marriage of Daniel and Catherine was her brother and not her father. The only John born to either of these couples was baptized 31 Mar 1744 to John and Catherine.

As you say, the absence of children named Joseph or Phillipa weighs against the Probus Catherine, as does her birth in 1761, since Daniel's wife was 79 when she died in 1833.

But the absence of a John among Daniel and Catherine's children similarly weighs against Richard and Catherine as her parents.

Daniel and Catherine's first son was Richard, which weighs in favor of Richard and Catherine as her parents -- but then where does the witness John GROSE fit in? Richard and Catherine's Catherine had two older brothers, Nicholas (1745-1822) and Richard (1747), so that if it was a brother who was to be her witness, then it would have been one of those two.

I do not have enough information right now to say whether the Richard and John who both had daughters named Catherine were brothers. Richard seems to be the 1796 son of Richard and Mary, and there is a 1718 John born at Luxulyan to Richard and Mary, so that they might have been brothers, so that John's son John might have been Daniel's wife's first cousin, which might account for him being the witness ... a lot of "might" here.

This is particularly frustrating to me because this same Richard and Mary were my 8th great grandparents.

At this point, there is just too much uncertainty to say which of the two Luxulyan Catherines married Daniel. I lean slightly toward Richard as her father, due to her first son being Richard (which was not Daniel's father's name).

Hmmm ... one more thought ... what other Catherine GROSE marriages were there at about the same time?

1771 Aug 5 to Lawrence HAMBLY at Luxulyan
1785 Jan 15 to James HAM at St Austell
1785 May 17 to William TENNEY at Luxulyan
1788 Aug 18 to Francis TREGONNING at Lanivet

And there is yet another possibility ... since she was 26 when she married Daniel GARLAND in 1780, it is possible that she was a widow and that GROSE was her married and not her maiden name. Daniel's brother James' wife (in the very next marriage) is explicitly identified as a spinster. But Catherine is not identified either as spinster or as a widow. If she was a widow, then John GROSE may have been a relative of her first husband, giving his family's approval of her remarriage.

So did a GROSE die just before their marriage? Searching Luxulyan burials for GRO*, I find none in the 1770's and none in 1780.

All the elements are correct but that doesn’t mean that all the connections are – except the burial of Catherine GARLAND was the Catherine who married Daniel GARLAND. But who was she? There are many John GROSEs around several Catherine GROSEs. The witness at Catherine’s wedding may not be her father – it’s often a brother. There was a Catherine d/o Richard and Catherine b 17 May 1756, but her father’s will indicates that she married Francis TREGONNING. Wills are vital in tracking female marriages.

What were Catherine and Daniel’s children called? Naming patterns may give a clue.

My feeling still is that the will of John GROSE 1804 has to be that of the eldest son of John & Jane UDY because of the mention of brother Nicholas & nephew Henry. That John’s daughter Catherine married William TINNEY & then Nevill HOOPER, so not Daniel GARLAND.

We have to keep looking.

Dee

Hi Fran,

Yes, without a son called John, I’m sure she isn’t the daughter of John GROSE m Catherine HARRIS.

The Richard is interesting as this is a GROSE name.

Also, sorry, I missed the attachments, so she clearly is of Luxulyan parish. But lots of GROSEs baptised there, even though they lived, say in Lanivet.

I have the will of a Nicholas GROSE, died 1822 unmarried & left his tin bounds etc to nephews & nieces, so giving the surnames of who his sisters married. His gravestone is in Luxulyan churchyard. He was the son of Richard GROSE & Catherine GROSE (she was the daughter of Nicholas GROSE & Catherine UDY – Nicholas was the brother of John GROSE m Jane UDY & she was the sister of Jane UDY!). This is where I got that this Catherine married TREGONNING. I’ll check this again because this Catherine was baptised 17 May 1756 so she’s clearly the best candidate for your marriage to Daniel GARLAND. No brother John, however to be witness but John GROSE was her uncle.

This Catherine has GROSE ancestors on mother & father’s side

Since the Catherines with the maiden name Grose did not match, the possibility that she was a widow Grose must be investigated.

So what marriages of a Catherine to a Grose existed before the 1780 marriage of Catherine Grose and Daniel Garland, keeping in mind that her age at death in 1833 was 79, which would put her birthdate about 1754?

There were only 15 marriages in all of Cornwall for all years of a Catherine (searched on "*at*") to a Gros* in the Cornwall Family History Society's research database. Twelve of those 15 were either before her birth or after her marriage to Daniel Garland. Of the remaining three, one was in 1763, when she would only have been about 9 years old. So there were only two candidate marriages:

So was there a burial before the 1780 marriage of either of these GROSE husbands?

There was only one Charles GROSE burial, at Gerrans 9 Sep 1776. There were no Walter GROS* burials in the period after the 1775 marriage and before the 1780 marriage.

Walter and Catherine had 9 children baptized at Luxulyan from 1776 to 1795, thus eliminating this couple. (There was another Walter and Catherine Grose baptism in the index for 1764, but this could not have been them.)

The only baptisms of children of Charles and Catherine GROSE were at Redruth - St Uny in 1800-1803. (The search was for all Gros* children with Char* as father, which had 31 hits, of which only two were with a wife named Catherine or any variant.) These two children were probably from the marriage of Charles GROSE and Catherine BUNT 9 Oct 1797 at St Mewan. So there is a possiblity that the Charles GROSE who married Catherine SMITH at Mevagissey 5 Jul 1774 are the couple, since they apparently had no children.

There were 75 *ath*r*n* sm*th hits in all years. (A separate search for Kate found none in the period of her birth.) None of these were baptized in the 1750's. The only ones in the 1760's were 1768 and 1769, which was too late. There were two at Mevagissey in the 1740's: 8 Jun 1747 to Hugh and Elizabeth and 10 Sep 1749 to William and Elizabeth. There were no others in the late 1740's in any parish.

So the Charles and Catherine marriage can still not be ruled out. But none of Catherine and Daniel's children were named either Hugh or William, although their fourth child was an Elizabeth.

However, it is clear that Daniel and Catherine GARLAND did not follow the usual namin pattern. Daniel's father was Benjamin, but they had a Richard and a Daniels before a Benjamin. And his mother was Mary, but they had a Catherine and an Ann and an Elizabeth before they had a Mary. So it really is impossible to use conventional naming patterns with this family.

There is a possibility that the Catherine who married Daniel GARLAND in 1780 was the widow of Charles GROSE, so that she would have been born Catherine SMITH. But the parish registers alone cannot verify or refute this scenario.