John Glasson of Crowan's will

[Deleted]

I have the will of John Glasson of Crowan in my possession and it is quite straight forward in its content. He mentions a number of children that suggests that John was the husband of Ann Perkin and therefore married in Camborne in 1735.

However, near the end, John refers to a number of sons and daughters in law - all with the surname Waters - to which he leaves a few shillings each.

Am I right in assuming that these "in laws" will be children from his wife's other marriage - given the fact that there was a marriage in Crown in 1751 between John Glasson and Ann Waters? The assumption is of course that Ann nee Perkin died prior to this second marriage for John.

Lannanta

[Cornish Terrier]

Lannanta - I need to confirm one point.

Am I to understand that the wife named in the Will was 'Ann'?

If so then I would suggest you are probably correct in your reading of the Will regarding the marriage to Ann Perkin.

I have not seen that Will myself but in my experience the naming of sons and daughters-in-law in such manner in a Will suggests a marriage to a widow with children.

One Will in my possession records such children as '(son or daughter) of my now wife'.

Keep in mind that you could run into some confusion with WATERS, WATTERS and WALTERS as I have done with another later connection.

You may be looking at the following marriage:-

Richard WATERS married Anne (not recorded) 13th November 1725 at Crowan. (Note added 19th November)

A search for the named Waters children should hopefully clarify this.

And here comes my point (as mentioned above)!

You say that John GLASSON married Ann WATERS at Crowan in 1751.

The transcript I have shows that John GLAZEN married Ann WALTERS 23rd June 1751 at Crowan.

CT

[Deleted]

CT

Am I to understand that the wife named in the Will was 'Ann'?

Yes that is correct - Ann

He names four Glasson children of his own; Robert, John, Elizabeth and Dorothy - and one brother Robert.

He also names four children "in law" - all Waters - Richard, Elizabeth, Ann and Alice.

Richard WATERS married Anne (not recorded) 13th November 1725 at Crowan. (Note added 19th November)

I suspect that the marriage above is correct.

I considered the Waters/Walters issue and have decided at the moment to treat them as one and the same.

At the moment I do not have the Crowan baptisms so I will have to rely on the IGI which I think is pretty complete for Crowan.

Lannanta

[Deleted]

CT

I should have looked harder at the early part of the will and I would have read this:

Also to my daughter Dorothy Glasson I give the sum of five pounds a year by quarterly payments, the half the milk of a cow and the use of the said room with her mother in law if she chooses to live with her during the time till she shall come to the age of twenty one years, if so long she ..... or continues unmarried and not otherwise to be paid by my executor as above.

The important words being "mother in law".

Lannanta

[Cornish Terrier]

That certainly reflects a second marriage for John.

I would be wary about considering IGI baptisms for Crowan as complete.

As I understand it the Crowan PRs are 1. a mess and 2. near indecipherable in parts.

For my Trewhella clan I have had a cousin check the PRs and there are a few entries that have been found that do not appear in IGI.

'A mess' means that (from memory) these registers have a lot of crammed entries and also pages with entries in margins etc.

'Indecipherable' means just that - many entries cannot be read because of water damage etc. although it appears obvious that even some of those entries are not completely 'gone'.

[donne]

Nov 6, 2009 7:05:34 GMT -5 Cornish Terrier said:

As I understand it the Crowan PRs are 1. a mess and 2. near indecipherable in parts.

Crowan researchers are blessed with the W.L BAWDEN transcript which rescued to some extent the damaged register entries, cross-correlated entries with BTs and provided a name index. This is a very useful first port of call before embarking on the registers themselves. I've seen copies of the BAWDEN transcript at the CRO and at the CFHS library - I don't know where else they are. While I would always encourage people to go back to the original PRs, my experience is that if it's not in BAWDEN you would be lucky to be able to read it from the fiche.