Ancestral Lines
AUSTRALIA
1857: JOHN PROWSE 1833-1879 | JAMES PROWSE 1836-1904 | RICHARD JELBART PROWSE 1842-1907
All three brothers were from Gulval, Cornwall, sons of William Prowse and Honor Jelbart, who had eight children in total. While John's and Richard's WikiTree profile are scant of information, James' has more.
John and James arrived in Melbourne in 1857. Richard arrived a few years later. As with many from Cornwall, they came as miners, in this case mining gold in Western Australia. The brothers were quite successful. All three settled in the Adelong area of New South Wales and died there.
James took up farming. He married Mary Ann Wiley, an Irish immigrant, in 1864. They had 15 children, among them was John Henry Prowse - see Notable Descendants below.
Richard married Matilda Jane Quarmby in 1876 and had 8 children. The Quarmby's were a notable Australian family.
NOTABLE DESCENDANTS:
John Henry Prowse, who was for a time Mayor of Perth, and later a member of the Australian House of Representatives.
LIVING DESCENDANTS:
None known at this time
c.1850: EDWARD PROWSE 1824-1862
Edward was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire to Jame Prowse and Mary Ann Philpot. The 1841 census shows a crowded, multigenerational household in the heart of Bristol, near St. James Barton, James being about 17.
He emigrated to Australia as a single man sometime between 1841 and 1851 when the first record of him there is his marriage in December 1851 at Geelong, Victoria, Australia to Mary Ann Carbin (nee South), who had two known children (ages four and 18 months) from a previous marriage, the later of whom, Emma, carried Prowse as her middle name suggesting some connection to Edward when she was born, and the youngest of whom, Charles, adopted the Prowse name and died with it in New Zealand in 1937.
Edward and Mary Ann had six known children, two of whom died in infancy. The last of his children, Frederick Philpott Prowse was born around the same time as Edward's death, at the relatively young age of 38, in January 1862,
Mary Ann remarried in 1868 to William Wiere, who died in 1884 in the Geelong area. Many of Mary Ann's children had migrated to New South Wales and so Mary Ann died there at Saint Peters in 1900.
NOTABLE DESCENDANTS:
Convoluted as it may be, Edward's wife Mary Ann South's third husband, William Wiere, was the town clerk of Geelong for 34 years and had previously been married to Elizabeth Mary Batman, whose father, John Batman, is credited as being the founder of the city of Melbourne.
LIVING DESCENDANTS:
None known at this time
NEW ZEALAND
1839 ROXBURGH LINE: RICHARD PROUSE 1791-1875
He was born at Aveton Gifford, Devon and married Mary Snowden King there in 1816. In late 1839 he and Mary and their children departed Plymouth aboard the 'Duke of Roxburgh', arriving in February at Wellington, New Zealand. They settled near Wellington on the Southern tip of the North Island. The passenger manifest lists him as a labourer and lime burner but his death certificate lists him as a shoemaker. The family were devout Methodists.
LIVING DESCENDANTS:
Nathan Sergent
1872 NEWFOUNDLAND LINE: SAMUEL SAXBY PROWSE 1842-1914
Samuel was the youngest child of Robert Prowse, founder of the Newfoundland Line. Samuel and his sister Gertrude (Kiddle) accompanied his parents when they moved back to England later in retirement, appearing in the 1871 census in the London area. In the autumn of 1872 Samuel and Jane Isabel Armstrong sailed aboard the 'Jessie Readman' arriving at Wellington in mid-December. They settled in the Auckland area. Samuel and Jane married in 1873.
LIVING DESCENDANTS:
United States of America
1619 DIANA LINE: George Prowse 1604-unknown
George Prowse was born at Tiverton but at 15 years of age he was rounded up by the Virginia Company with about 100 other children ages 12 and up and shipped aboard the Diana to the Jamestown Colony in present-day Virginia to work as indentured servants until they were 21. The city fathers of London were complicit in this action as there was a problem with 'street urchins' at the time.
LIVING DESCENDANTS: