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Book Review by John Baxter
Waters, Santo and Crowle
by Jeremy Waters
Published privately : for further information contact author at Jeremy.waters5@btinternet.co
The History of Three
Remarkable Victorian
Cornishmen and their
Families
A small ship on the outskirts
of Syracuse on the South-East
coast of Sicily was an unlikely
place to become aware of
this book. The author, Jeremy
Waters, was a fellow passenger,
and an over-dinner discussion
had turned to local history in
Cornwall. It quickly became
clear that this retired chartered
surveyor and distinguished
yachtsman had carried out
extensive research into his
family history, an interest
stimulated as long ago as
1970 by the huge number of
cousins and aunts attending
his grandfather’s funeral.
It is not quite clear when the
actual research began, but it
is likely to have gathered pace
after the author’s retirement
from his profession and the
subsequent selling of his boat
after twelve years of largely
Mediterranean sailing. The
end result, in 2019, nearly fifty
years after the funeral, is this
immensely impressive and
attractive family history, now
into its third print run.
The author crisply summarises
the essence of the book in
the opening paragraph of
his Introduction. ‘This is the
story of three remarkable
Cornishmen closely connected
by marriage and their
strong Methodist faith. Each
rose from a very modest
background to a position of
considerable success, and each
had a significant influence on
the lives of those descended
from them’. The first point to
emphasise is that the spelling
of the three names in the title
of the book reflects that which
was most commonly used
by the beginning of the 20 th
century. All local historians
will be aware that variations
in spelling proliferated in
the 18 th and 19 th centuries,
particularly in parish registers.
North Cornwall readers will
be familiar with the variety of
spellings of Mably, probably
one of the most extensive of
families in this area.
Jeremy Waters was fortunate
(or challenged?) to have
access to a vast supply of
source material: family
letters, photographs, elderly
family members with good
memories, in addition
to such standard archive
gleaned from Record Offices,
newspaper files and the
Society of Genealogists. The
book, therefore, teems with a
rich array of source material,
sadly some of it unattributed,
an omission the author
acknowledges.
It is impossible to do justice
to this astounding piece of
research in a short review,
but it is important to try to
place the three families in the
pantheon of Cornish history.
The first of the three characters
to appear in the book is the
Rev. Richard Waters, the
author’s great-grandfather.
The first ‘official’ record of him
is in the 1861 Census where,
aged 9, he is described as an
‘engine driver in an iron mine’
at St. Issey. By the age of 23,
however, he became a Minister
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