Great grandfather of Tommy
William Spargo was born in Mabe in 1811, the 4th son of James Spargoe a yeoman farmer of 100 acres. It appears that he took up the trade of stonemason rather than farm labourer like his brothers. This was starting to develop as an industry in Cornwall. The training for a stonemason was generally by being an apprentice for 7 years.
At some point before 1834 he moves to the Penzance area and he married Mary Dale in Madron Church on the 19th March 1836. He had had some schooling as he signed his name in the parish register. In the 1841 Census they are living in Marine Place Penzance which is close to the sea front, although the building no longer exists.
Their first child Selina was born on 31st May 1836, rather soon after the wedding! Unusually at a time when child mortality was high they did not baptise their children as newborns. Infant baptism is an established practice in the Anglican church. The prevailing view up to the end of the 19th century was that a person who died unbaptised, could not gain entry to the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus it was important to be baptised as early in life as possible. Most commonly you will find a baptism occurring during the first month of life. From 1837 Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths came into being. Until then it was baptism records that were used to determine population numbers. The family at some point become members of the Methodist Chapel in Madron even though they were living in Paul, and all of their living children were baptised there in 1848.
They had a total of nine children, eight of whom survived to adulthood.
John Spargo was their 7th child and was Tommy’s paternal grandfather.
Was there a rift or perhaps just a disconnect with William’s family in Mabe. There were no members of either William or Mary’s family named as witnesses to the wedding, perhaps because Mary would have been visibly pregnant. Was the lack of religious conformity a possible conflict? William was the only one of his father John’s children omitted from his Will of 1851. However, he was not the only Spargo to move from Mabe to the Penzance area in the late 1830s. A John Spargo – not his brother, married in 1834 in St Buryan and William was a witness. Possibly a cousin? His nephew James Spargo, son of brother James married Elizabeth Poole in Madron near Penzance in 1853.
William worked as a stonemason all his life and lived at various addresses in Paul.
He died in 1883 aged 72 living with his daughter Selina Llewelyn and grandson Charles at the Red House just outside the village. His wife Mary died in 1873.
If you have a look at the family tree here, you will see that his children embedded themselves within the parish of Paul. The daughters married local men and the names continued down the generation in the area. The Llewelyn’s, the Warrens, the Simons, the Drews, and the Prowses. All visible in the records and the Cemeteries.