Penryn (Cornwall) OPC site

Warmington U.S.A. Family

 

   The story of the Penryn Warmingtons’ begins in the first decade of the Nineteenth Century when Richard Warmington from St Columb Major took on the role of Innkeeper at one of the local hostelries. He married a local girl (Dinah Hicks) in 1807. We know that he was innkeeper in 1809 but within five or six years he was simply identified as being a porter or a labourer.

 

     Richard and Dinah had 7 children, including Robert who was the father of J. Edward Warmington. Robert was involved with gardening as were other members of his family. Edward, however, (as well as his youngest brother, Tom) became involved with granite quarrying as stone masons / stone cutters in the Penryn area. Freeman’s were the principal quarry in the area - it was from their quarry that the plinth for the famous King Alfred statue at Winchester was hewn.

 

     J (John) Edward Warmington married Elizabeth King-Nicholls in 1864. They had 12 children, 10 of which survived childhood. Of their six adult sons, four (Edward, William, Frederick and Harold) plus their eldest sister (Edith) travelled to America to seek their fortune. The other three sisters (Bessie, Annie and Belle) all married local lads and remained in the Penryn area. The only son who stayed in Penryn was Ernest (my grandfather) – unfortunately he was killed in an industrial accident in 1934 working at Freeman’s quarry. The other son, Albert, followed their youngest brother, Harold, not to America but to the Swansea area of South Wales several years after the latter’s return to the UK.

 

     The three significant places in this story are: Westerly [RI], Rushville [Il], and Graniteville [MI]; as well as Quincy [MA]. All four can be identified (as was Penryn) as centres of granite quarrying. The emigration of the brothers together with that of their brother-in-law, Hart Mellow (Edith’s husband) must have been motivated by the possibility of better prospects in the granite quarrying business on the other side of the Atlantic. The end of the 19th century saw a decline in the quarrying and mining industry of Cornwall, with many Cornish quarrymen and miners seeking a new life in other parts of the world: USA, Canada, Australia, South America, etc. They used to say that wherever there was a hole in the ground, there was bound to be a “Jack” in it, with a “Jill” at home making pasties to keep him going.

 

     The first brother to go to the granite quarries of America was the oldest son, Edward – in 1885: heading for Graniteville in Missouri, via Chicago (where he married Lydia in 1887).  However, Edward wasn’t the first member of the family to make the move. J Edward’s youngest brother, Thomas (Uncle Tom) had emigrated three years earlier initially to Missouri before moving to Westerly (Rhode Island). Tom and his wife, Sarah, lived in Westerly for the rest of their lives and died there.

 

     They had two daughters, one of whom never married and the other had no children. They are buried at River Bend Cemetery at Westerly. As are another uncle and his wife (on mother’s side of the family): James and Ellen Nicholls. They emigrated around 1888 to Jersey City, but by 1910 were moving to Rhode Island to eventually settle in Westerly as well. Whether the attraction of fellow family members was a draw we possibly will never know! James and Ellen also had two daughters, as well as a grandson (Leroy Edwards) who was also buried at River Bend Cemetery.

 

     Edith and her husband, Hart Mellow, were married following her voyage to America [1887] at Uncle Tom’s house which was then in Missouri. The birth of their daughters reveal that they also looked at the possibility of settling in Westerly [1888] and Quincy [1890] before eventually settling at Rushville in Illinois, where Hart established the Rushville Granite Works (later the Rushville Granite Company).

 

     It seems that William was the first brother to actually settle in Quincy. He emigrated in 1887 or 1888, and by the time he married Minnie in 1889, their home was Quincy. In 1900, Edward and Lydia also joined them at Quincy; William & Minnie living on Intervale Street, with Edward and Lydia living on Trafford & Pleasant Street. Edward and Lydia’s fourth child, Frederick Harold (Howard’s dad) being born there in 1902.

 

     Frederick, was involved in the furniture retail industry, with Howard also working for the business. Years later, Howard established the Warmington Furniture Store – very much in the footsteps of J Edward and Elizabeth Warmington who had opened a grocery store at 88 West Street in Penryn during their lifetime.

 

     The Quincy Warmingtons were joined by younger brothers, Fred and Harold in 1905. Fred & Annie had been married four years before they left Penryn, and brought their three Cornish-born children with them (Evelyn & Russell being born following the move to America).

 

     Harold’s fiancée, Bertha (Evelyn Bertha Jenkin), joined him in April 1907 and they were married two days after she landed at Quincy Presbyterian Church. Unfortunately they did not settle in Quincy as his siblings had done so - by 1910 they had returned to the UK to settle in the Swansea area of South Wales where Harold found employment as a fitter in the local brick works.

 

     Although Ernest was the only brother who did not venture out of Cornwall (or even out of Penryn), his eldest son (also J Edward) followed his uncles to Quincy in the mid-1920s. He voyaged to New York in the autumn (fall) of 1923, and according to his son, Ernie, worked in the Metropolis establishing his own taxi company. Documental evidence shows that by 1925 he had joined his uncles and cousins at Quincy (becoming a member of the Manet Masonic Lodge) before returning to Cornwall in 1930, in order to marry his sweetheart, Hazel Stoddern.

 

And the rest, as they say, is history…..