Wards of Truro

Before I started researching my family history in the late 1990s (writes Colin Ward) I had always assumed that I was a Cornishman through and through. Certainly, my mother’s side of the family was traceable back at least to the 1600s in Cornwall. It was a surprise and shock, therefore, to discover that my paternal Ward ancestors were not of Celtic stock but of Anglo-Saxon origin, emanating from England and the county of Hertfordshire. (The Cornish have long regarded Cornwall as being a separate entity from England). However, the fact that my branch of the Wards have been in the Duchy for over 160 years perhaps qualifies them as Cornish by adoption!

My great-great grandfather, John Ward, was born in Preston, Hertfordshire on 26 June 1819, the fourth child of Daniel and Ann Ward. He was baptised at the Back Street Independent Chapel, Hitchin on 15 June 1823 along with his sisters Maria and Mary. The family were probably dissenters from the established Church hence the reason for a non-conformist baptism. This may also explain why there is no trace of the marriage of John’s parents in any of the parish registers for the area. The Hardwicke’s Marriage Act 1753 required that all marriages were to be performed in a parish church. The only exemptions were for marriages in accordance with Jewish or Quaker ceremonies and, as we have no evidence that the family were of either of these persuasions, it is quite possible that Daniel and Ann were not legally married

John Ward arrived in Cornwall sometime during the early 1840s. It is not known how or why he decided to make the long journey to the South West. As far as we know he was unskilled in a trade, as the census returns invariably stated his occupation as ‘labourer’. Thus, he did not come to Cornwall to work in any of the traditional industries with which the County is associated – tin mining, fishing or china clay extraction. John did not appear on the 1841 Census in Cornwall but he may well have been the John Ward, labourer, aged 20, who was living in the Borough of Hertford when the census for that year was taken. It is also possible that he was the John Ward who was living at Chipping Barnet in Hertfordshire in 1841. He was also recorded there as being a twenty-year old labourer. (There is perhaps a stronger case for the latter, particularly as John’s birthplace according to the 1871 Census was stated (erroneously) as Barnet, whereas in other censuses his place of birth was given as Hitchin).

By 1846 John Ward was living in Church Street, Falmouth, Cornwall and on 7 September of that year he married Mary McDermott at Falmouth Register Office. The couple’s first two children, Caroline and Charles John Daniel, were baptised at St Gluvias Church, Penryn on 26 May 1848 but Charles died shortly afterwards. A second Charles, my great grandfather, was born on 11 February 1850 at Budock Mills, near Falmouth. During the following year, the Wards moved to Truro, the city where some members of the family still reside today. John and Mary had eight children, the last, Joseph Solomon Ward, being born in Truro in 1865. The family lived in the Calenick Street area of Truro for over a hundred years.

John and Mary’s children were:

Caroline b 1843 d?

Charles John Daniel b 1847 d 1849

Charles b 1850 d 1929

Joseph Crew b 1853 d 1863

John b 1855 d 1919

Eliza Ann b 1858 d 1940

Mary Ann b 1861 d 1862

Joseph Solomon b 1865 d 1944

The family were never particularly well-off and none achieved illustrious careers, although one of John’s sons did become a dental mechanic and artificial tooth maker, as well as a Truro City Councillor, after retiring from the Royal Navy!

Eliza Ward, the youngest surviving daughter of John and Mary, married an Italian, Antonio Bertolucci. Born in Lucca, Italy around 1847, Antonio arrived in Truro during the 1880s to work on the building of the new cathedral. He was a plaster moulder, a skill which would have been in great demand for the building of the first Anglican cathedral in England since St Paul’s in the seventeenth century. The couple married at Truro’s Roman Catholic Church in 1898. Most, if not all, Bertoluccis around the country today are almost certainly descended from Antonio and Eliza.

John Ward died at Truro in 1886, aged 66. Mary survived her husband by twenty-four years.

Charles Ward, my great grandfather, married Mary Anna Crowl at Truro Register Office in 1870. The marriage was a short one however, as Mary died in 1876 shortly after the birth of her fourth child. Three of the four children born to Charles and Mary between 1871 and 1876 died in infancy. Charles remarried in 1883. His second wife, Maria Sanders, bore four children, the first of whom was my grandfather, John Charles Ward.