History

A MISCELLANY OF HISTORY A TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES A TEXTUAL SAMPLER Chapter Five Now to the subject of emigration: I recall meeting a woman in the churchyard at Randwick who had just completed her tending of a grave one early snowdrop day in February 2024. I chatted about a name on a gravestone and wondered if that person was descended from the village namesake transported to Australia in the 19th century. In a scene reminiscent of a Dickensian or Hardyesque coincidence, the woman with her trowel and flowers stopped to tell me about Simeon Pearce who emigrated to Australia in 1842 and became mayor of the Australian Randwick. Her family, she went on to tell me, later bought the land and farm owned by the local Pearce family in the village: ‘We don’t all move far,’ she told me. Here is another tale of local emigration, with thanks to ‘Moving On: Stroud Local History Society exhibition of emigration research by Penny Gay; layout by Marion Hearfield (both of SLHS) 2015: ‘In May 1850, Thomas Freeman (b 1780) and his wife Hester (b 1782) left Brownshill and sailed from London to join their children in Wisconsin. The arduous journey took many weeks. The parishioners of Eastcombe Baptist church were astonished, as the Church Book shows: “gone to America May 1850!” it says, including exclamation mark. Thomas Freeman had been a deacon of the church for years and, in the cloth trade, had risen to the status of Mill man, but now the once thriving local cloth mills were being used to fashion umbrella handles and walking sticks. He lived at Prospect...