Catching up with the Sandercock family

My great great great grandmother was Elizabeth Sandercock (1766-1866) who married William Growden. She was the daughter of Thomas Sandercock and Ann Couch of Cardinham, Cornwall, England. There are various spellings of Sandercock, and Saundercock is also quite a common spelling.

For the last week or so most of my family history activity has been concentrated on the Sandercocks. I thought I’d pretty much done with them a couple of years ago, once the FreeCEN censuses for Cornwall were available almost completely for Cornwall from 1841-1891. But there is always something more, and it kept me busy for quite a few hours, catching up and adding more Sandercock descendants.

There are several different Sandercock families in Cornwall, and the Cardinham Sandercocks seem to be quite distinct from most of the others, which seem to have been mostly from North-Eastern Cornwall. I’ve been more-or-less doing a one-name study of Sandercocks, though concentrating on the Cardinham (sometimes spelt Cardynham) family. That is useful for purposes of elimination, which his becoming increasingly important with the proliferation of wildly inaccurate online family trees, where people happily copy the errors of others into their own family tree, and ad new errors of their own, which are in turn copied by others.

Disk crash and lost e-mail

I’ve had quite a lot of computer problems recently, including a dying hard disk. I won’t go into the details here — if you really want to know you can read them on my general blog at Notes from underground: Frustrating computers.

I managed to replace the dying disk drive with a new and bigger one, and restore backed-up data to it, but lost most of my e-mail for the last three months, from 1 September to 7 December, including messages in my “to-reply” folder.

I didn’t lose anything in my family history data files and notes, as I back those up and transfer them every day to my laptop computer, so the biggest loss is the e-mail, and in family history most of it relates to the Sandercock family, as we started the Sandercock mailing list in October. Most of the list mail is accessible on the web, but some people sent me things privately. So if you sent me something and were expecting a reply, and don’t receive one, please, if possible send a copy of your original message, or at least a reminder.

I also received something on the Descendants of Edward Sandercock and Elizabeth Higgs from an anonymous correspondent. It had quite a lot of new material, which I have entered into the family file, but am unable to attribute it to any source, because I no longer have the original e-mail.

Tombstone Tuesday: earliest Sandercock

Here is the gravestone of the earliest Sandercock ancestor we have managed to find:

In memory of William Sandercock
who departed this life
the 25th day of November 1786 Aged 80
And in memory of Mary his wife who died July the 2
1786 aged 81.

Grave of William and Mary Sandercock, Cardinham, Cornwall

William Sandercock is the 5th Great-Grandfather of Dr Stephen Tromp Wynn Hayes

Common Ancestor

* William Sandercock
(Abt 1705-1786)
* Mary Verran
(1707-1786)
Married 25 Jan 1729
|
|
* Thomas Sandercock
(Abt 1737-1825)
Ann Couch
(1739-1817)
Married 1 Jun 1761
|
|
William Growden
(Abt 1764- )
* Elizabeth Couch Saundercock
(1766- )
Married 26 Nov 1792
|
|
* Matthew Growden
(1800-Cir 1883)
Christiana Dyer
(Abt 1810-Bef 1881)
Married 10 Dec 1844
|
|
* William Matthew Growdon
(1851-1913)
Elizabeth Greenaway
(1842-1927)
Married 2 Aug 1868
|
|
* George Growdon
(1873-1948)
Janet McCartney Hannan
(1882-1946)
Married 2 Jun 1909
|
|
Frank Wynn Hayes
(1907-1988)
* Ella Growdon
(1910-1983)
Married 24 Jun 1933
|
|
* Dr Stephen Tromp Wynn Hayes
(1941- )

There is more on this family on our family Wiki pages. If you are related to this family, please visit the family Wiki and contribute something to the story there. Anecdotes and other material about the descendants of William and Mary Sandercock are welcome.

Tombstone Tuesday: More Sandercocks

Henry Sandercock tombstone in Cardinham Churchyard

Henry Sandercock was a blacksmith in Cardinham, Cornwall, and was my second cousin three tiems removed. After his death his sons and wife emigrated to Queensland, Australia, and some of their descendants are still living there today.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on the Sandercock family in the last week, trying to fill in some of the gaps. It seems to have been confined mainly to Cornwall and Devon until the mid-19th century, when some emigrated to other countries, or moved to other parts of Britain.

This particular Sandercock family is related to all our Growden family — the earliest Growdon in our line we know of is William Growden who married Elizabeth Sandercock in Cardinham in 1792, so this whole Saundercock line is related to our whole Growden line.

There are other Sandercock families from other villages in Cornwall, who may or may not be related. They come from St Gennys, Launceston, Tintagel and St Teath.

The surname is sometimes spelt Saundercock, but that is less common. Other variant spellings are Sanderlock and Sandercott.

Tombstone Tuesday: Sandercock, Cardinham

Sandercock tombstone in Cardinham churchyard, Cornwall

Charlotte Sandercock, wife of Richard Sandercock, and daughter of George and Catherine Riddle.

We’re not sure if they are related to us, but we do have related Sandercocks who lived in Cardinham.

Looking for William Growden, born c1764

Today I went to the LDS family history library in Johannesburg, and looked at the microfilmed parish register of St Neot, Cornwall. I was looking for my ggg grandfather, William Growden, who was born about 1764, and married Elizabeth Sandercock (or Saundercock) at Cardinham, Cornwall, in 1792.

I didn’t find him. There were some Growdens there but they too seem to have come from nowhere — a Joseph Growden who married an Elizabeth Cocker. Perhaps Joseph and William were brothers, but until we can find their birth and parentage, there’s no way of knowing. The film was fairly uneven. The middle of the pages was easily legible, but the top and bottom were dark, with poor contrast, and so it would be quite possible to miss an entry.

I also found a few Sandercocks, who might be related — i still have to check for possible connections.

Sandercock/Saundercock family

Nola Buzza writes:

I’m very excited to report that I have just found three Saundercock brothers who died in USA – William born 1866, Thomas H born 1870, Robert born 1872 – sons of William Thomas Saundercock & Emma Jane Wellington. It seems that William may have married and had at least one daughter – more research needed there. Great fun isn’t it? Hope all is well with you and your loved ones. Cheers – Nola

That’s a signal for the rest of us Sandercock – Saundercock researchers to get busy!

Technorati tags: Sandercock genealogy, Saundercock genealogy