Stories
93 entries in one run, from 1879 to 2023: 22 family moments and 71 accomplishments, in the order they happened. A further 30 accomplishments belong to living relatives who have not agreed to appear, and are not on this page.
93 entries, 1879 to 2023, and 2 with no date recorded
1879
Fourteen years a local preacher on the St Just Wesleyan circuit
On the circuit plan from 1879 to 1893. He stopped preaching after the flood and never said why.
1892
Samuel Trevorrow marries Grace Vingoe
14 May 1892, St Just in Penwith
St Just parish church. He is about 26, she is 20. Her father gives her away; in eight months he will be standing on a ladder in the dark with water coming up behind him.
Cabinet card of a wedding party, 1870s or 1880s. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain People in this moment: Samuel Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow, Nicholas Vingoe, Honour Vingoe, William Henry Trevorrow
1893
The flooding of Wheal Owles
10 January 1893, Wheal Owles
The men in the 65-fathom crosscut fire a round of charges at about a quarter to nine in the morning and break into the flooded workings of the abandoned Wheal Drea. Twenty of about forty men below come out. Nineteen men and a boy do not, and their bodies are never recovered. Nicholas Vingoe comes up the ladders. Grace, five months pregnant, waits four hours at the count house to find out. Sources: west-penwith.org.uk/owles.htm and nmrs.org.uk.
People in this moment: Nicholas Vingoe, Grace Trevorrow, Honour Vingoe
Came up the ladders out of Wheal Owles10 January 1893
He came out alive on 10 January 1893 and brought two younger men up the ladder ahead of him. Twenty of about forty men below ground that morning came out. Nineteen men and a boy did not, and their bodies were never recovered.
Source: west-penwith.org.uk
1896
Sent home four pounds a month for seven years without missing one
Cornishmen went to the Witwatersrand after 1886 because hard-rock skill was what the Rand needed and it paid several times Cornish wages. His money paid off his brother mortgage and kept two of his nieces in school.
Source: cousinjacksworld.com
William Henry Trevorrow leaves for the Rand
March 1896, Johannesburg
St Just to Southampton to Johannesburg, at twenty six. The Rand pays four times Cornish wages for the hard-rock skill Cornishmen already have. He will send home four pounds a month for seven years and it will kill him. Source: cousinjacksworld.com.
People in this moment: William Henry Trevorrow, Samuel Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow
1897
Kept seven households of laundry single-handed
From her husband death in 1897 until she was past seventy. Over 5,000 bal maidens worked in Cornwall in 1861 and the last were laid off in the early 1920s; laundry was where a great many of them went.
Source: balmaiden.co.uk
1901
Took the best tribute pitch in the Levant count house books
At the 190-fathom level in 1901. On tribute a man was paid a share of the value of the ore he broke rather than a wage. He told the story for twelve years.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
1903
Came homeSeptember 1903
A Transvaal Mines Department enquiry reported in 1902 that 17 per cent of Witwatersrand rock drillers died in a period of two and a half years, close to eight times the rate of other trades. Many did not come home at all. He came home in September 1903 and was dead in under three years.
Source: dyingforgold.com
1911
Paid off the mortgage two years before he died
In 1911, with the money his brother had been sending home from the Rand since 1896.
1913
Ran 7 Cape Cornwall Street as a miners lodging house for thirty one years
From 1913 to 1944. She started it in the year her husband died, with four children still at home.
Won the under-twelve-stone at the St Just Feast wrestling
In 1913, aged twenty.
Forty one years behind the same post office counter
St Just, 1913 to 1954. She knew every household in the parish and what was in their telegrams, and she never once repeated it.
Samuel Trevorrow dies at 7 Cape Cornwall Street
3 March 1913, 7 Cape Cornwall Street, St Just
Miners phthisis, at about forty six, leaving Grace with four children still at home and the youngest two years old. She opens the house to lodgers inside six weeks.
People in this moment: Samuel Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow, Hedley Vingoe Trevorrow, Elsie May Trevorrow, Loveday Grace Trevorrow
1917
Won the Penwith Sunday School scripture prize
In 1917, aged fourteen.
Taken on as a pupil teacher at thirteenabout 1917
Which almost never happened to a lodging-house keeper daughter. She had fifteen months of it.
The last British deep mine of the war
10 August 1917, Givenchy-en-Gohelle
251st Tunnelling Company fires it near Givenchy-en-Gohelle, making what is called Warlingham Crater. Nicholas John Trevorrow, a St Just tin miner, is with the company. The field postcard he sends home says nothing at all, because it is not allowed to. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/251st_Tunnelling_Company.
People in this moment: Nicholas John Trevorrow
Served with 251st Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers10 August 1917
The company was formed at Hayle from among others Cornish tin miners, took over the Cuinchy, Cambrin and Auchy sector near Loos in October 1915, and on 10 August 1917 fired the last British deep mine of the war near Givenchy-en-Gohelle. He was with the company when it did.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
1918
Elsie May Trevorrow dies of influenza
29 October 1918, St Just in Penwith
Fifteen years old, in the second wave of the pandemic, thirteen days before the Armistice. Everyone else in the house catches it and everyone else lives.
People in this moment: Elsie May Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow, Loveday Grace Trevorrow, Hedley Vingoe Trevorrow
1919
Served on the St Just relief committee after the Levant disaster
From 1919 to 1922, in the three years after thirty one men were killed on the man-engine.
Source: cornwallforever.co.uk
Rounded Cape Horn under sail in 1919
As an apprentice in a sailing barque, one of the last cohort of British apprentices to do it at the very end of commercial sail.
Kept the Levant relief fund widows and dependants list
From 1919, and went on keeping it after her own husband was no longer on it.
The Levant man-engine disaster
20 October 1919, Levant Mine
The link between the man-engine rod and the beam breaks at the afternoon shift change with 120 to 130 men riding it. Thirty one men fall and are killed; sixteen are injured. Nicholas John Trevorrow gets off at the 12-fathom level with a broken pelvis and a shattered left leg. He is back on the hill the next morning helping carry men out. Sources: cornwallforever.co.uk and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant_Mine_and_Beam_Engine.
People in this moment: Nicholas John Trevorrow, Annie Ellis, Grace Trevorrow
Went back up the hill the morning after Levant21 October 1919
He got off the man-engine at the 12-fathom level on 20 October 1919 with a broken pelvis and a shattered left leg. Thirty one men were killed and sixteen injured. He was back on the hill the next morning helping carry men out.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
1921
Thirty five years at the Empire Mine, Grass Valley
From 1921 until it closed in 1956, the last eighteen as timbering foreman. The Empire produced 5.8 million ounces of gold out of 367 miles of underground passages between 1850 and 1956, and Cornishmen provided the bulk of its labour force from the late 1870s to the day it shut.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The first crossing: St Just to Grass Valley
April 1921, Grass Valley, California
Thomas Vingoe Trevorrow, twenty two, sails for California because a man from Pendeen wrote and said come. He arrives in a town where two thirds of the population has Cornish ancestry and goes underground at the Empire Mine within a fortnight. Everything in the principal branch of this family begins here. Source: legendsofamerica.com/empire-mine.
People in this moment: Thomas Vingoe Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow
1924
Kept every letter that came from St Just between 1924 and 1969
Which is the American half of this archive, and the reason there is anything on this side to put on a website.
1925
Sang bass in the Grass Valley Cornish Carol Choir for forty Decembersabout 1925
The choir was organised in 1876 by John Farrell, a Grass Valley miner, merchant and lay preacher, and it was still singing in its 150th season in 2025. The carols were composed by Cornish miners who had learned their music in Methodist chapels at home.
Source: yubanet.com
1926
Raised her orphaned grandson in her own house
From 1926, when his father died of the chest he brought back from France. She lived to see him sail for California.
1927
Forty four years at Geevor Mine
From 1927 to 1971, the last nineteen as shift boss. Three generations of this family worked at Geevor because he did.
Source: geevor.com
1931
Ran the Grass Valley Methodist church pasty supper for thirty years
From 1931 to 1961. The Cornish pasty came to Grass Valley as portable food for miners and the town still holds a pasty-tossing contest each March on St Piran Day.
Source: theunion.com
1932
Marjorie Honour Trevorrow is registered
14 August 1932, St Just in Penwith
Mother: Loveday Grace Trevorrow, thirty six, unmarried. Father: blank. The blank has never been filled and will not be. This is a record, not missing data.
People in this moment: Marjorie Honour Chenoweth, Loveday Grace Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow
1934
Kept the family papers for sixty three years
In two biscuit tins under the bed, in order and labelled. Her granddaughter catalogues archives for a living because of those tins.
Fifty two years in the Pendeen chapel choirabout 1934
The same choir as her husband, on the other side of it.
1936
Built forty one working boats on the Swan River
He ran a boatyard at Fremantle from 1936.
1938
Her saffron cake is in the chapel cookery book under her own name
The 1938 St Just Wesleyan chapel cookery book, which is the only thing with her name printed on it anywhere.
1940
The war over Penzance and St Just
Over 700 air-raid alerts between 1940 and 1945, 867 bombs on the town and surrounding district, sixteen people killed, about 48 houses destroyed and 157 seriously damaged. Hedley Vingoe Trevorrow is an air raid precautions warden. His sister Loveday runs the parcel scheme for the evacuated children billeted around the parish. Source: 1stlinedefence.co.uk.
People in this moment: Hedley Vingoe Trevorrow, Loveday Grace Trevorrow, Ivy Trevorrow
Ran the St Just parcel scheme for evacuated children
From 1940 to 1945, for the children billeted around the parish.
Air raid precautions warden, Penzance, 1940 to 1945
Penzance and the surrounding district had over 700 air-raid alerts between 1940 and 1945, took 867 bombs, and lost sixteen people, with about 48 houses destroyed and 157 seriously damaged.
Source: 1stlinedefence.co.uk
Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry, North Africa and Italy
From 1940 to 1946, finishing as a sergeant. The Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry was the county regiment from 1881 to 1959 and recruited out of the Cornish mining and rural districts.
Source: nam.ac.uk
1942
Four years on the Fremantle harbour canteen
From 1942 to 1945, when Fremantle was the largest Allied submarine base in the southern hemisphere and 416 war patrols went out of the port.
Source: museum.wa.gov.au
1944
US Navy, Pacific, 1944 to 1946
On a fleet oiler, at eighteen.
1948
Made her husband write home after twenty one years of silence
Which he would not have done.
The letter from Fremantle
14 March 1948, Fremantle, Western Australia
Arthur Samuel Trevorrow last letter is posted from Valparaiso in 1927. Nothing comes for twenty one years. On 14 March 1948 a letter arrives at 7 Cape Cornwall Street from Fremantle, Western Australia. He has a wife, a son and a boatyard. He asks after his mother, who has been dead nine months.
People in this moment: Arthur Samuel Trevorrow, Doris Trevorrow, Barry Arthur Trevorrow, Grace Trevorrow
Wrote the 1948 letter14 March 1948
It took him twenty one years and it is the reason the Australian branch is on this tree at all. It arrived at 7 Cape Cornwall Street on 14 March 1948, nine months after the mother he asked after had died.
1949
Brought three families out of West Penwith to California
Two Pendeen families in the 1920s, and in 1949 his own nephew Samuel Nicholas, who had just come out of the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry. He put every one of the men to work.
Fifty one years in the Pendeen chapel choir
He sang the bass solo at his own mother funeral in 1949 because nobody else would.
Seven years underground at the Empire Mine, Grass Valley
From 1949 to 1956, the second man of his name to work it. He arrived twenty eight years after his uncle Thomas and lost the mine on the same day as everybody else.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The second crossing: St Just to Grass Valley
March 1949, Grass Valley, California
Samuel Nicholas Trevorrow, thirty two, three years out of the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry and North Africa and Italy, takes his wife and their first child to California and goes into the Empire Mine behind his uncle Thomas. His mother Annie never sees him again. Two crossings, twenty eight years apart, is what a Cornish American family actually looks like.
People in this moment: Samuel Nicholas Trevorrow, Thomas Vingoe Trevorrow, Annie Ellis
1951
First in the family, either side, to earn a degree
Chico State, 1951. Her grandfather could sign his name and that was the whole of it.
1952
Thirty eight years cataloguing for Nevada County Library
From 1952 to 1990, much of it in the local history branch on North Pine Street in Nevada City, a Carnegie library building completed in 1907 and on the National Register of Historic Places.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Thirty one years teaching fourth grade in Grass Valleyabout 1952
Two of her pupils came to her funeral aged sixty.
Thirty eight years at Geevor Mine, twenty six of them as mine surveyor
From 1952 to 1990. He went in at sixteen behind his father and came out at fifty three because there was no Geevor left to be in.
Source: geevor.com
1955
Thirty seven years as a nursing auxiliary at Plymouth
From 1955 to 1992, and she worked the night shift for twenty two of them by choice.
Sang bass in the Cornish Carol Choir for thirty one Decembersabout 1955
Standing behind his father-in-law, who had sung the same part in the same choir since the 1920s.
Source: yubanet.com
1956
Twenty four years with Pacific Gas and Electric
He went from the mine onto the lines in 1956 and retired as a district line foreman. He worked the Drum-Spaulding hydroelectric system across Nevada and Placer counties, which has twelve powerhouses, thirty reservoirs, thirty one dams and diversions and eighty miles of flumes, tunnels and canals, and which was begun in 1912.
Source: foothillswaternetwork.org
1957
Built houses across Nevada County for twenty six years
From 1957 to 1982, about sixty of them.
The Empire Mine closes and the last Cornish pumps come out
28 May 1957, Empire Mine
The Empire shuts in 1956 after a miners strike over falling wages, 106 years and 5.8 million ounces of gold after it opened, with 367 miles of workings under the town and Cornish hands doing the bulk of the work since the 1870s. On 28 May 1957 the last Cornish pumps are pulled out and it is formally over. Three men of this family lose their work in the same week: Thomas at fifty eight, his son Donald at thirty, his nephew Samuel Nicholas at thirty nine. Gordon Bennetts is on the crew that pulls the pumps. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Mine_State_Historic_Park.
People in this moment: Thomas Vingoe Trevorrow, Donald Vingoe Trevorrow, Samuel Nicholas Trevorrow, Gordon Bennetts, Ruth Bennetts
On the crew that pulled the last Cornish pumps out of the Empire28 May 1957
The Empire Mine shut in 1956 after a miners strike over falling wages, and operations formally ended on 28 May 1957 when the final Cornish pumps were removed. He was twenty nine and it was the end of a hundred and six years.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
1959
What the town did next
Three years after the mine shut, a physicist starts an electronics company in Grass Valley because he is tired of East Coast winters. It builds the television production switcher that defines the industry, merges with Tektronix in 1974 and employs 1,500 Nevada County people at its peak, and it spawns most of the other video companies in the county. Two men on this tree work there for a combined fifty eight years. Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Valley_(company) and ncerc.org.
People in this moment: Gordon Bennetts, Gary Thomas Trevorrow
1960
Read the lesson at the Methodist church every Christmas Eve for twenty two yearsabout 1960
In the church on South Church Street where the Cornish Carol Choir still practises.
Source: yubanet.com
Thirty seven years as an underground fitter on the Golden Mile
Which makes him the fourth generation of this family to spend a working life below ground, on the third continent it has happened on.
Twenty eight years in the machine shop at the Grass Valley Group
From 1960 to 1988. The company was started in the town in 1959 by Dr Donald Hare, built the television production switcher that came to define the industry, merged with Tektronix in 1974 and employed 1,500 Nevada County people at its peak. It is what the county did after the gold.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
1961
Two hundred and fourteen senior games in the Goldfields Football League
For a Boulder club, 1961 to 1975, and he coached the reserves for six years afterwards.
1962
Volunteer fire captain, Grass Valley, for eleven yearsabout 1962
His younger son did the same thing for a living for thirty.
Twenty nine years as the West Penwith district nurse
From 1962 to 1991. Every farm and every cottage from Pendeen to Sennen, in the dark, in the winter, in a Morris.
1972
Thirty years at the Grass Valley Group
From 1972 to 2002, the last eleven as a manufacturing supervisor. He was there for the Tektronix merger in 1974, for the sale that closed on 24 September 1999, and for the Thomson acquisition in 2002 that ended his part of it.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The last draft lottery
2 February 1972, Grass Valley, California
Drawn in the Commerce Department Auditorium in Washington for men born in 1953. Gary Trevorrow, eighteen, draws a number and his mother writes it on the kitchen calendar. Nobody from that drawing is ever inducted: the last call goes out on 7 December 1972 and the authority to induct expires on 30 June 1973. Source: vietnamwardraftlottery.com.
People in this moment: Gary Thomas Trevorrow, Marilyn Trevorrow, Donald Vingoe Trevorrow
1974
Indexed the Nevada County mining payroll books as a volunteer
From 1974 to 1981, in her own evenings, because nobody else was going to.
1979
The letter to the postmaster
Marilyn Trevorrow, indexing the Nevada County mining payroll books as a volunteer, finds the name Trevorrow in the Empire Mine payroll for 1921. She writes to The Postmaster, St Just, Cornwall, England. Loveday, who would have opened it, has been dead eight years. Her successor walks it up Nancherrow to Ivy front door. Fifty eight years of silence between the two halves of this family end with one letter and a wrong address.
People in this moment: Marilyn Trevorrow, Ivy Trevorrow, Brenda Joan Olds
Reconnected the two halves of this family in 1979
She found the name Trevorrow in the Empire Mine payroll for 1921 and wrote to The Postmaster, St Just, Cornwall, England. Fifty eight years of silence ended with one letter and a wrong address.
Traced her own birth record in 1979
And made peace with what was not in it, which took her another decade.
1981
The Penlee lifeboat
19 December 1981, Mousehole
The Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne is lost with all eight of her volunteer crew going to the coaster Union Star off Mousehole. Sixteen people die in total. No person on this tree was aboard and none is claimed to have been: the eight are named, real men and their families are living. What is on this tree is the consequence, which is that Jennifer Trevorrow set up the St Just bereavement visiting rota in 1982 and it still runs. Source: rnli.org.
People in this moment: Jennifer Trevorrow
1982
Set up the St Just bereavement visiting rota
In 1982, after the Penlee lifeboat Solomon Browne was lost with all eight of her volunteer crew off Mousehole on 19 December 1981. Sixteen people died. Nobody on this tree was aboard. The rota still runs.
Source: rnli.org
1986
Gave evidence to the 1986 lobbying effort over the Cornish tin rescue package
The International Tin Council collapsed in 1985 and the tin price fell from about nine thousand pounds a tonne to about three thousand four hundred. Wheal Jane and South Crofty got rescue packages. Geevor did not.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
1988
Set up and struck the Mill Street stage for Cornish Christmas, nineteen Decembersabout 1988
Cornish Christmas has run in downtown Grass Valley since 1967, on Friday evenings from the day after Thanksgiving through December, and the Cornish Carol Choir sings in the street at it.
Source: downtowngrassvalley.com
The 49er Fire
11 September 1988, Nevada County, California
Six days across Nevada and Yuba counties: 33,700 acres, over three hundred structures destroyed, at least eight thousand people evacuated, hundreds injured, and nobody killed. Dennis Trevorrow is on the line for all of it. His mother packs the photograph boxes into the car and in the end does not have to leave. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/49er_Fire.
People in this moment: Dennis Vingoe Trevorrow, Marilyn Trevorrow, Gary Thomas Trevorrow, Cheryl Ann Trevorrow
1989
Drew the final underground survey plans of Geevorabout 1989
The mine as it finally stood is in his handwriting. Those plans are now the core of the archive his own daughter catalogues.
1990
Geevor goes to care and maintenance
16 February 1990, Geevor Mine
Five years after the International Tin Council collapsed and the price of tin fell from about nine thousand to about three thousand four hundred pounds a tonne. Wheal Jane and South Crofty got rescue packages; Geevor did not. Kenneth Hedley Trevorrow, fifty three, mine surveyor, and his son Stephen, twenty six, fitter, come off the hill on the same afternoon. In May 1991 Stephen is one of the men who switch off the underground pumps and let the mine flood, thirty four years after another man in this family pulled the pumps out of the Empire. Source: geevor.com.
People in this moment: Kenneth Hedley Trevorrow, Stephen Kenneth Trevorrow, Jennifer Trevorrow, Demelza Jane Trevorrow
1996
Flew to Cornwall in 1996 with his mother copy of the 1948 letter
And gave it to Ivy, who put it in a biscuit tin with everything else.
2009
Catalogued the Geevor underground survey collection
From 2009 to 2013, including her own grandfather plans, which she catalogued herself in 2011 and had to stop halfway through.
Source: geevor.com
2015
Grass Valley is named Cornish Town USA
The California Cornish Cousins present the designation to the city at a council meeting. As late as the 1920s two thirds of the town had Cornish ancestry, and the town still runs Cornish Christmas every December and tosses pasties on St Piran Day in March. Four people on this tree are in the room. Source: theunion.com.
People in this moment: Gary Thomas Trevorrow, Cheryl Ann Trevorrow, Dennis Vingoe Trevorrow, Sarah Marilyn Trevorrow
2018
Recorded her aunt fourteen hours of oral history in 2018
Before it was too late, which is the only reason any of it exists.
Volunteer indexer at the Nevada County Historical Society archive since 2018
The archive was established in 1973 in an 1872 brick law office in Nevada City and holds over thirty thousand historical photographs, over two thousand glass plates and more than four thousand family portraits.
Source: nevadacountyhistory.org
2019
Kept his mother photocopies of the 1921 Empire Mine payroll
For forty years, in a drawer, and handed them to his daughter in 2019. This archive actually starts there.
Digitised 340 family photographs and 61 letters
Over two winters, 2019 to 2021. This is the material a family website would actually be built from.
2021
The Ordinalia at Plen an Gwary
September 2021, Plen an Gwary
The Ordinalia, three late fourteenth century mystery plays mostly in Middle Cornish and the oldest surviving trilogy of plays in Britain, performed over a fortnight in the medieval playing place by 248 local cast and crew to an audience of nearly 6,000. Demelza Trevorrow, forty five, and her niece Hannah, twenty seven, are both in it. Source: stjustordinalia.com.
People in this moment: Demelza Jane Trevorrow, Hannah Grace Trevorrow
In the Ordinalia cast of 248 at Plen an GwarySeptember 2021
September 2021. The Ordinalia are three late fourteenth century mystery plays mostly in Middle Cornish, the oldest surviving trilogy of plays in Britain, performed over a fortnight by 248 local cast and crew to an audience of nearly 6,000.
Source: stjustordinalia.com
2023
The letter goes home
Sarah Trevorrow flies over from California and puts her great-grandmother 1979 letter into Demelza Trevorrow hands at Geevor, forty four years after it was posted and a hundred and two years after Thomas sailed. The shared spreadsheet that became this archive starts on the plane home.
People in this moment: Sarah Marilyn Trevorrow, Demelza Jane Trevorrow
Put the 1979 letter into her Cornish cousin hands at Geevor
She flew over in 2023 with her great-grandmother letter to the postmaster at St Just, forty four years after it was posted and a hundred and two years after Thomas sailed.
Started the shared spreadsheet that became this site
On the plane home from Cornwall. There were four hundred rows in it inside a month and nobody could read it but her.
No date
These carry no date at all. A year has not been invented for them so that they could join the run.
Taught her daughter and two granddaughters to read
At the kitchen table on Sundays, which is where three generations of this family learned.
Made every wedding dress in two families for thirty years
And never charged a relative for one of them.