Fearless Females 2013: Day 16: Thomasine Dunstone Avery

If you could have lunch with any female family member (living or dead) who would it be? Where would you go? What would you eat?

No question! I would have lunch with Thomasine Dunstone AVERY (my paternal great great great grandmother).  She was a pub landlady for many years in the latter half of the nineteenth century - so we would eat pub grub!

Here is a pic of the inn she managed: Halfway House Inn, Kingsand, Cornwall:

Once again, in honour of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog presents Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.  I know this is really US-centric - but that's not going to stop me honouring my own Fearless Females...

Fearless Females 14: Ancestor fined for assault

Once again, in honor of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of  The Accidental Genealogist blog presents Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.

March 14 — Newsmakers? Did you have a female ancestor who made the news? Why? Was she famous or notorious? Did she appear in the social column?

Thomasine Dunstone AVERY (1814-1897) was my paternal great great great grandmother.  I enjoyed reading this excerpt from the Royal Cornwall Gazette of Friday 15th January 1858.  It detailed a case held at the Torpoint Petty Sessions on Tuesday, 12th January, before J.C. Roberts, W. H. Pole Carew, J.S.Tucker, Esqrs. and Rev S.W.Roberts, justices:-

Thomasine Avery, wife of George Avery, of Kingsand, a shipwright in H.M.Dockyard, was summoned by Elizabeth Trevethan, of the same place, singlewoman, for violently assaulting her, on the 29th December.

Complainant has had 3 bastard children, and having boasted that she had received 2 sovereigns of defendant's husband on the Saturday night previous, Mrs.Avery on meeting Trevethan, asked her for them, and on her denying that she had them, Mrs.Avery, to use defendant's words "turned her upside down" and took away her pocket, containing about 2s.8d, and also some letters. Mr. Beer appeared for Mrs.Avery.

The bench considered the assault to be proved brutal - but at the same time, taking into account the character of defendant, and extenuating circumstances, they only inflicted a fine of 1s. on the defendant with costs.

Surname Saturday: Dunstone

So far I have traced the DUNSTONE name in Cornwall back to the early 1700s.  Next stop...?

The DUNSTONEs lived in and around the St Germans area of Cornwall, then moved to Rame (not too far away!) and I have evidence of them in the Cawsand and Kingsand areas as well.   Emma Elizabeth DUNSTONE (my gg grandmother) was the one who stayed in the Bodmin County Lunatic Asylum and was described as having a room which was 'all in disorder'.

But an even more colourful DUNSTONE was her mother, Thomasine.  In some of the censuses she is enumerated as 'Tamson' - can't you just hear her Cornish accent coming through?  Thomasine was born in 1814 in Cawsand, the sixth child of John and Ann DUNSTONE (who are proving to be another brick wall), with six sisters and one brother.  Thomasine married when she was twenty, to George AVERY, a ship's carpenter then a shipwright (yet another brick wall, as he seems to have appeared out of nowhere!), and the censuses record her living in Cawsand, then Kingsand.  She had ten children, four of whom died when they were tiny, so Thomasine was not a stranger to tragedy quite early on into her marriage.  In the 1871 census, George and Thomasine are listed as living at the 'Halfway House'  Beer House - are they the publicans? Her husband, George, died when their youngest was only 14, but Thomasine did not sink into despair and end up being farmed out around the children or, worse, end up in the workhouse.   Only a couple of years after George's death, she is listed on the 1881 census as being the landlady of the 'Halfway House' Beer House in Fore Street, Kingsand, and she remains there until her death in 1897.  I would like to know more about this brave lady.  The 'Halfway House' still stands and runs as a bar and restaurant, in what they call 'Cornwall's Forgotten Corner', so maybe I will email them and see what happens.  Watch this space...

Surname Saturday: Avery

Samuel Avery was a carpenter back in the early 1800s.  His son married into a family connected to the sea, and soon the AVERYs were known for building and designing boats and ships.  Later, the AVERY name is found in its highest concentrations in Canada and New Zealand (interesting to note that it is found mostly in the New Plymouth district of NZ - all my AVERYs came from Plymouth and the surrounding area.

Kingsand, Cornwall

'My' AVERYs lived in the villages of Cawsand, Kingsand, and Rame, in Cornwall, England.  When my great grandmother Emma Maud AVERY married into the Haywood family, although they stayed in the same place, one of her sons (my grandfather) became a shipwright.

The surname itself is Gaelic.  Cornwall (where my AVERYs came from) is well-known for its connections with Ireland, and some of my ancestors on my mother's side were either Irish themselves, or served in Ireland as coastguards.