For all your GROVE researchers out there :-) If anyone can claim this chap I want to know i was very amused ! I must see if there is a follow up article ! 1864 William GROVES, of Freshwater, a young seafaring lad charged with absconding with the goods and chattels (including the wife) of Absalom CROAD a labourer of Brook. Elizabeth CROAD, a middle age woman and mother of 9 children who wore gold ear drops and whose features to save her blushes, were almost hidden beneath a black veil, was placed at the bar as an accessory. But the court on hearing the charge ordered her to stand back and it was with very great difficulty that she was prevented by the police from laying violent hands on the old man in the box, who proceeded to say that on the evening of the 8th, he found his box gone from his bedroom and his 'good lady' nowhere to be found in or out of the house. Next morning with the help of PC Byles traced the guilty party to the Yacht Inn at Lymington, where he ascertained that the prisoner and the woman had slept together on the previous night......................... Prisoner arrested and brought to Yarmouth but on the voyage across, Mrs CROAD herself popped her head up out of one of the cabins and was brought back to the Island, sorely discomfited by this sudden end to her elopement with a lad to whom she was old enough to be his mother. Adjourned for the purpose of procuring a witness to them sleeping together at Lymington. All mail scanned with AVAST 2007 No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced

What a great story - thank you! William is one of the most common first names in the GROVES family (and in many other families, I know!). From my own limited information of the GROVES family, I can see two "possibles", who were born in the 1840s. The most likely by far would be William Groves, who was born in Freshwater in 1841 and died 1866. In 1861 census he was a "Prisoner in custody" in Newport police station, so no stranger to the law in 1864. No mention of him being a mariner, but many Freshwater GROVES were, including my own ancestors. The other "possible" was born in 1843 in Newport and became a Wesleyan minister - not so likely, perhaps! Susan.