Family History × Historic Places
Property deeds, bankruptcy records and an Isles of Scilly council book trace Samuel Lemon’s path from Marazion merchant to HM Customs collector, while leaving unanswered what role his cousin Sir William Lemon may have played.
An eighteenth-century legal report records my seventh great-grandfather, Captain Samuel Lemon, as the owner of a one-forty-eighth share in Great Work Mine. Following that small entry helped me understand my family’s place in Cornwall’s mining history.
A visit to Heligan led me to an eighteenth-century family diary—and an entry recording my ancestor coming to dinner.
Following my Rashleigh connections brought me to Menabilly and Polridmouth Cove, exploring the landscape around a place woven into my family history.
A family surname change connects Bath to Montreal, while a visit to Cornwall brings me together with a Cleaver relative in Padstow to share stories and compare family trees.
Dr Charlotte MacKenzie’s research led me to new records concerning my Lemon ancestors. In January 2024, we met at Morrab Library in Penzance to discuss the family and the evidence that places them within Cornwall’s eighteenth-century commercial history.
An afternoon in Breage took me from the weathered grave of Jane Lemon to Pellor House, where her brother Samuel once lived. Walking the short road between the churchyard and his family home placed two branches of my Lemon family within the same Cornish village.
In January 2024, I visited Germoe Parish Church, where generations of my Lemon family worshipped and buried their dead. There I learned that a bell cast in 1753 bears the name of my seventh great-grandfather, Samuel Lemon, and found memorials to later branches of the family.