Trist Families of Devon: Volume 10 Leaving Devon: Emigration and Urbanization: Trist Families of Devon, #10

By Peter J Trist

During the Industrial Revolution Devon underwent de-population as younger people left to enter numerous occupations created by new technologies.

Younger people left the countryside for jobs being created in the rapidly expanding towns and cities in Great Britain. But they also emigrated overseas and joined up with the economic development occurring globally.

Since 1800, branches of the Trist family have sprung up in various parts of the world: in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America. I have come into contact with some present-day descendants of these groups, reminders of the rapid divergence from the family's English traditions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Trist
• Release date: Nov 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9780648985907

Book preview

TRIST FAMILIES OF DEVON

Volume 10

TRIST FAMILIES OF DEVON

Volume 10

Leaving Devon: Emigration and Urbanization (including Overseas Families Charts 5-9)

by Peter J. Trist

Trist Families of Devon:

Volume 10

Leaving Devon:

Emigration & Urbanization (Including Overseas Families Charts 5-9)

By Peter J. Trist

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the inclusions of brief acknowledged quotations in a review, thesis, article or published work.

The author and publisher have used their best efforts in collecting and preparing material for inclusion in Trist Families of Devon: Volume 10: Leaving Devon: Emigration & Urbanization (Including Overseas Charts 5-9) but do not warrant that the information herein is complete or accurate, and does not assume, and hereby disclaims any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in Trist Families of Devon: Volume 10: Leaving Devon: Emigration & Urbanization (Including Overseas Charts 5-9), whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause.

Copyright 2023 by Peter J. Trist

Published by Australian e-Book Publishers

ISBN-13 978-0-6489859-0-7

CONTENTS OF OTHER VOLUMES IN ‘TRIST FAMILIES OF DEVON’

Vol. 1 Research Methods

Vol. 2 What’s In a Name? An Etymology

Origins of Trist Surname

Vol. 3 Medieval

Vol. 4 Forbears: Their farms and Sidelines

Vol. 5 Their Farmhouses

Vol. 6 The Farming Calendar

Daily Life and Work in Devon Farming

Vol. 7 Life in a Farming Community

Everyday life in a farming household (diet, clothing, bereavement & re-marriage, size of families, kinship networks, education, parish governance, litigation etc in a village community)

Vol. 8 Local Gentry & Country Parsons

Genealogy for a Trist politician & various churchmen (Charts 2 & 3)

Volume 9 Politics and Trade in Devon

Plus a genealogy of Trist families on Dartmoor & at South Brent (Charts 4, 4A, 4B & 4C)

Vol. 11 Selected Documents, Wills & Court Cases

Vol. 12 Trist Names Index

Including Unresearched Family Groups (UFGs)

GENEALOGICAL CHARTS AND NOTES

Genealogical Charts and Notes are located as follows:

Volume 1

Charts 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D (Harberton, Cornworthy, Dittisham, Dartington)

Chart 2 (Harberton and Totnes)

Chart 9 (Philadelphia, USA)

Volume 8

Chart 2 (Harberton)

Chart 3 (Veryan, Cornwall)

Volume 9

Charts 4, 4A, 4B, 4C (South Brent)

Volume 10

Chart 5 (N.Z.)

Charts 6, 6A (N.S.W. Australia)

Chart 7 (Victoria, Australia)

Chart 8 (Canada & USA)

Chart 8A (USA)

Chart 9 (Philadelphia, USA)

Volume 11

Selected Documents, Wills and Court Records

CONTENTS

VOLUME 10

LEAVING DEVON:

URBANISATION & EMIGRATION

(Including Overseas Families

Charts 5-9)

Introduction to Volume

Chapter 1 The Nineteenth Century

Abbreviations

Chapter 2 New Zealand, Chart 5 & Supporting Notes

Chapter 3 N.S.W., Australia: Charts 6 & 6A & Supporting Notes

Chapter 4 Victoria, Australia: Chart 7 & Supporting Notes

Chapter 5 Ontario, Canada: Chart 8 & Supporting Notes

Chapter 6 Wisconsin, U.S.A.: Chart 8A & Supporting Notes

Chapter 7 Philadelphia, U.S.A.: Chart 9 & Supporting Notes

Appendix A

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Endnotes

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME 10

Figure 1 & Cover An American visits Dittisham, her mother’s birthplace

Figure 2 Robert Faremouth Trist (1813-1894, Chart 1/95)

Figure 3 Richard Trist & family (1847-1934. Chart 1/126)

Figure 4 15, Albert St., Southsea, Richard Trist’s pharmacy

Figure 5 Elizabeth Trist and Ellen and their married sister Hannah Vosper (Chart 1/122, 127 & 124)

Figure 6 10 Western Parade Brighton, the small hotel of the two sisters, Ellen and Elizabeth Trist

Figure 7 ‘Khandalla’, Port Isaac, in Cornwall to which Elizabeth & Ellen Trist retired

Figure 8 Author in front of 1, ‘Khandalla’ at Port Isaac

Figure 9 Port Isaac from ‘Khandalla’

Figure 10 Robert William Trist, (bn 1845, Chart1/125)

Figure 11 Robert William Trist and family outside their house in Canada.

INTRODUCTION

During the Industrial Revolution Devon underwent de-population as younger people left to enter numerous occupations created by new technologies.

Younger people left the countryside for jobs being created in the rapidly expanding towns and cities in Great Britain. But they also emigrated overseas and joined up with the economic development occurring globally.

Since 1800, branches of the Trist family have sprung up in various parts of the world: in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America. I have come into contact with some present-day descendants of these groups, reminders of the rapid divergence from the family’s English traditions.

Where information has been supplied by branches of the family in these countries, I have included it in the history albeit without (in many cases) directly checking the primary sources. At the very least I have tried to include sufficient information to link the emigrant families with their English roots. The Trist Name Index printed in Volume 12 should prove useful in this respect. However, it would be neither possible nor desirable to pursue every twig and off-shoot of the original English families. It should be possible for people to add the details of their own branch themselves, using the information supplied.

CHAPTER 1

MY FORBEARS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, terminated an affluent period for English farmers who had enjoyed scarcity prices and booming profits throughout the twenty-three years of the wars. A long period of farming doldrums began. The declining influence of the farming lobby in Parliament and the reform of the gerrymandered system of ‘rotten boroughs’ brought an end to the long-cherished protection of the English farmer from overseas competition. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 permitted the import of foodstuffs from Europe and eventually of cheap wheat from the wide plains of Canada, Argentina and Australia. Hence, despite the large increase in the British population, there was no corresponding increase in the price of farm products.

The nineteenth century marks the opening of a great divide between our own time and the era in which our ancestors farmed. The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 repealed not only a set of protectionist laws but also a whole way of life. The monopoly of English farmers in their local market was passing into history by about 1870 and so was the kind of country life they knew.

Between about 1870 and the Treaty of Rome in 1966 lies an ever-deepening rural and agricultural depression. It was arrested briefly during the two World Wars but thereafter proceeded apace until it had changed all the familiar cultural and social reference points, now unrecognizable.

Some English farmers, those who did not emigrate to the wide plains of Canada and the other dominions, still managed to survive. But they were the exceptions which proved the general rule. Exceptional individuals like Harold Cramp’s parents farming in 1920s Leicestershire could survive only by the ‘drip feed of the milk cheque’ by the grace of the Milk Board and by a kind of remarkable workaholism. The autobiographical accounts by Laurie Lee in Cider With Rosie and Nancy Phelan in The Swift Foot of Time are thus, in reality, portraits of rural life in the first half of the twentieth century, in the final stages of decay and impoverishment: a mere shadow of a world which had largely lost its purpose and importance.

As the nineteenth century progressed in other parts of England, especially in the north, lack of prosperity in the farming sector was compensated by amazing advances in industrial production and urban expansion.

Devon’s share of this compensatory development was limited. Devon’s woollen industry which had been experiencing difficulties since 1743, had been so badly hit by the effects of war, especially after 1792, that it needed a long breathing space to recover. It was never to have a sufficient respite.

The absence of coal deposits in Devon is sometimes cited as depriving Devon of a major driving force of industrialization. But the reasons for the continued decline of the Devon wool textile industry lie deeper. The main causes are embedded in the county’s long-established position as a producer of fine quality woollen cloth with a high degree of specialization and craft-consciousness. Mechanisation would have been the saviour of Devon’s wool textile industry but this came much too slowly for reasons discussed in Volume 9.

Slow to adapt to the new conditions, Devon was unable to arrest its relative economic decline. The centre of the nation’s