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.

Connecting the Sandercock families

I looked at some old files and found a copy of a New Zealand marriage certificate that had been sent by Harvey and Jan Saundercock. It was for William Thomas Sandercock and Elizabeth Harker, who were married in the Wesleyan Church in Pitt Street, Auckland on 12 May 1887. William’s parents were listed as Thomas Sandercock and Elizabeth Smale.

I checked in the records I had recently entered, to see if I could find their family in England, and it seemed that the parents were actually Thomas Sandercock and Ellen (not Elizabeth) Smale of Egloskerry, and managed to get several generations of the family linked. The Egloskerry Sandercocks don’t seem to be related to us, but at least that eliminates their family members from our search. The William Thomas Sandercock in New Zealand had a son Raymond, and if we can find them, his descendants may be interested, so if this is your branch of the Sandercocks, please leave a comment, and I can send you what I have managed to link so far.

Most of the Sandercocks seem to come from north-Eastern Cornwall. There’s quite a big bunch from the St Gennys-Poundstock area, and another from Tintagel. The ones I was looking at today were from Egloskerry. Ours are from Cardinham, with their earliest ancestors being William Sandercock and Mary Verran. There’s a picture of their gravestone in an earlier post in this blog. Several people have been trying to collect them and sort them out into families, including Alan Sandercott in Canada. Maybe in the end we’ll find links between these different groups.

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.

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!

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