Dear list, This is to let those who might be interested know that there will be a gathering of descendants of Richard ROWE (c1819-1903) in Beechworth on 27 April 2002. It will be held at the LaTrobe University, Hotel Management Conference Centre. The intention is to have a number of researchers make short presentations on where they have got to on their particular branches of the family. Other program details are in preparation. As background I have prepared the following short history of this Rowe family's emigration from Cornwall to the Beechworth area. Those interested in attending or finding out more about the arrangements should contact Eric Harrison at eric.harrison@bigpond.com who is organizing the day. Those who have queries about any of the names in the following are welcome to contact me. Thanks, John Burgess, Canberra background piece begins The ROWEs of Madron : from South West Cornwall to North East Victoria Richard Rowe, the focus of the family gathering in Beechworth on 27 April, was born in Madron, near Penzance in south west Cornwall, probably early in 1819. We know for certain that he was christened in the Madron parish church on 19 February of that year. His father was John ROWE (1787-1874), a ‘cordwainer’ or maker of fine footwear, and his mother was born Mary WALLIS (c1781-1867). Richard, who we believe to have been John and Mary’s fourth and last child, and a number of his close relatives from Cornwall were to settle in and around Beechworth in north eastern Victoria. The first of this ROWE family to depart Cornwall was John and Mary’s second child, James ROWE, who was christened in Madron on 3 March 1811. A carpenter, he had married twice in Cornwall (his first wife appears to have died young) and he and his second wife, Mary ROWE (also her maiden name but no relation) sailed for Sydney on the 'William Mitcalfe' arriving in March 1844. A few days later they sailed on to Hobart on the 'Sylvanus'. The couple had 5 children in Tasmania between 1845 and 1852 but the marriage appears to have collapsed. James then turns up first in Williamstown, Melbourne, and later in Beechworth where he and Amelia TONKIN, a third partner (no marriage has been found), registered another 5 children between 1858 and 1864, the last three of whom were born in Bowman’s Forest out of Beechworth. James died in 1867 in the house of his sister Mary who by then was living in Beechworth. Little is known about Amelia TONKIN who seems to have left James before his death. Surnames of James’ descendants will include ROBERTS, WOOLLEY, DOBSON, WARREN, LANGSHAW, POWER, DREYER, FOX, McLEAN and PEACOCK. James’ sister, Mary ROWE (1817-1904), was the next to leave Cornwall. She arrived in Port Adelaide on the ‘Himalaya’ in November 1849 with three children. Her husband, Robert MITCHELL whom she had married in Madron in 1836, died of cholera on the ship in Plymouth on the eve of departure and Mary must have made the brave decision to continue out to Australia alone. She married Charles Colwell OKE, a Cornishman from Truro, in Adelaide in 1851 and had two further children there. In the mid-1850s, Charles, a printer, accepted a position with Richard WARREN’s ‘Ovens and Murray Advertiser’ in Beechworth and the family moved there. It was probably Mary’s residence in Beechworth at this time that drew her two brothers there. Mary and Charles had two further children in Beechworth. Mary’s first child, Mary Ann MITCHELL, married Richard WARREN, the newspaper proprietor, in Beechworth in 1856 and after James ROWE’s death this couple adopted one of his children. Surnames of Mary ROWE’s descendants in the Beechworth area will include STRAUGHAIR as well as MITCHELL and OKE. Richard, the fourth child of John and Mary ROWE, his first wife Kitty née MICHELL (c1818-1873) who was from the parish of Zennor, and their four children sailed from Plymouth to the port of East Geelong in Victoria on the ‘Thomas Arbuthnot’ arriving in January 1857. They went straight to Beechworth and Richard was soon farming at Murmungee out of Beechworth. All four children of this first marriage married in the north east: Catherine Michell ROWE married Robert Joseph PYLE of Lower Three Mile, the family that was struck down by typhoid fever in 1889 and was recently featured in the Burke Museum in Beechworth; James ROWE married Agnes Campbell GLASS and moved on to farm in New South Wales; Mary Hannah ROWE married George Richard PORTCH of Chiltern; and Nanny Jane ROWE married John Alfred KNEEBONE of Gapsted. Other surnames of descendants of Richard from this first marriage include SPENCER, LEE, DEAM, CLARK, JOWETT, BROCKFIELD, SHELDON, BURGESS, SWORDS, HARRIS, STENBERG, GILMOUR, GRIFFITHS, HENDRY, SKERRY, HELMS, ROGERS, LILYWHITE, WALLACE, CHEESELY, EDWARDS, WHITE, SMITH, TREWHITT, BEILHATZ, HOGAN, TREHARNE, ROBERTSON, GILL, ALLAN, JARRY, SMALL, CREEK, PERRY, RASMUSSEN, SCHMIDT, SUTTON, KEENAN, McCLOUD, CARSON, HUGHES, WRIGHT, McKASKILL, RESUGGAN, HOTCHKIN, MEINZER, BROUGHTON, LECOULTRE, LAIRD, BELLINGER, WOODGATE and FARLEY. Richard remarried after first wife Kitty died in 1873. His second wife, Elizabeth Ann ROWE (also her maiden name but no relation to Richard), was only 16 at the time of the marriage in Beechworth in 1876. Richard was then 57. They produced another 8 children. Richard died in the Ovens Benevolent Asylum in Beechworth on 4 March 1903 aged 84. Elizabeth Ann died in Melbourne in 1930 after a further marriage. Surnames of descendants from Richard’s second marriage will include: HARRISON, SYKES, CLAY, HERRERA, MONSON, NEAVES, WALLER, HUTCHINSON, LUDLOW, GOLDSTONE, JUDD, BARNES, EWINGTON, RUIZ, CAMPBELL, DAWSON, RILEY, BERTRAM, BAXTER, TAGGART and BENNETT. Richard’s older children from his first marriage were in their 30’s at the time of this second marriage and there are some indications that they took a dim view of it. It is only in recent times that descendants of the two marriages have become aware of each other. A number of them will meet for the first time in Beechworth on 27 April. To conclude the story, the oldest child of John and Mary ROWE of Madron was John (born c1809) and it seems he stayed on in Cornwall carrying on his father’s cordwaining business and the farm his father had acquired in Madron. It has come to light recently, however, that two of John’s daughters migrated to the Beechworth area in 1859, married and raised families there. Surnames of their descendants will include WOOD and WELLS, the names of the husbands they found in Beechworth. John Burgess 14 March 2002 ends