People in Looe know quite a lot about Joseph Thomas's engineering work, but may perhaps also be interested in the known facts about his family.  Judy Buckley, great-niece of his grandson Bill Tinkham of Hannafore Point, who has been researching the family for the last 20 years, has made new discoveries in 2010, and here is an interim report.

Joseph Thomas the Civil Engineer (1838-1901, here numbered “II”) was the eldest son of Cornish roads contractor Joseph Thomas I (1813-1892) and his wife Harriet (1814-1881).  He and his younger brothers Edwin (1840-1873) and Nicholas (1845-1923?) all went to sea in their teens.  Edwin sadly died at sea in 1873 leaving his wife Anne (nee Pengelly) with four young children, but Nicholas captained ships from Plymouth all over the world until he retired to live at Hannafore to the age of 78.  Their sisters Emma (1848-1933) and Mary Elizabeth (1854-1932) married George Knight (1841-1920) a London Butler and Samuel Pascoe (1850-1938) a London Policeman from Callington.  A third sister Anne (1843-?) cannot be traced after 1861.

Joseph II (1838-1901) married Mary Anne Rollings (1841-1903) from Pelynt in 1859 and their children were Philippa Harriett (1859-1940) Joseph III (1860-1900?) and Mary Anne (1863-1913). As the three children grew up, the family lived in Looe and Plymouth, then moved to Camberwell in South London when Joseph II was appointed Resident Engineer of the Royal Albert Dock in 1878.  In 1881 the Census recorded them all together at

In 1885 Joseph II built “Roche Villa” Carnarvon Road, Stratford E15, and moved closer to his work, but it seems that only young Mary Ann (22) moved there with her parents, since both Philippa and Joseph III had sailed for Sydney where Joseph III, a Mechanical Engineer, was probably going to work on the New South Wales Railways, with his sister to keep house for him.  It is possible that they travelled with one of their aunts, either Ann Thomas or Ann (nee Pengelly) widow of their uncle Edwin (see below) since neither of those ladies have been traced in England after 1881.

The first new discovery found in 2010 is Philippa's marriage, on 2nd December 1885 to Alfred "Fred" Scrooby (1860-1886) in Bathurst, (200 km West of Sydney) by the Rector of Blayney (35 km West of Bathurst).  Fred was most probably another engineer, who appears to have arrived in Australia from New Zealand, but no record has so far been found for his father, Alfred Scrooby senior.  The marriage lasted only 5 months, for on 6th May 1886 Fred died aged 26 in Petersham, Sydney.   On 14 July 1886 baby Hudora was born to the widowed Philippa, and to add to the tragedy Hudora died aged 8 months on 31 March 1887 in Gouldburn, New South Wales.

In 1887 on 14th August Joseph Thomas II (in London) wrote his will, mentioning his daughter Philippa Scrooby (widow) as well as his other children, but not her whereabouts.  On 3rd December 1887 the Scrooby-Thomas marriage was advertised belatedly in the Sydney Morning Herald, and on 5th May 1888 Philippa put a Memorial Notice for baby Hudora in the same paper.  Two years later in 1890 Philippa married John Moorhead in Sydney.   They had two daughters; Hudora in 1891, and Hilda in 1893.  The former seems to have died young, but the latter died unmarried in 1978 aged 85.  John Moorhead, who came from well known Grafton family, died in 1916, but Philippa survived him until 1940. Both of them died in Grafton and both were buried at Baryulgil Cemetery not very far away.

Meanwhile a Joseph Thomas (probably our Joseph III) married Isabella Harcus in Petersham, Sydney, and three children were born to them in Canterbury, Sydney; Ethel in 1889, Joseph A in 1891 and Elsie in 1893.  Research is in hand to prove that this family were indeed descended from our Looe line, but when Joseph died in Sydney aged 39 in 1900 (a year before his father's death) his parents were recorded as "Joseph and Mary A.", so it does seem very likely.  Isabella married again in 1901 when her children were 12, 10 and 8 respectively, but died in 1902 (in West Maitland, 162 km North of Sydney, perhaps in childbed) and more work is needed discovering what happened to the three orphaned children. Perhaps the instruments and tools Joseph II bequeathed to Joseph III were inherited in 1901 by Joseph A who married a Catherine Thomas in Sydney in 1917? 

Both Philippa and Joseph were mentioned in their father's will dated 1887, but not in the Cornish Times report of his funeral in 1901, which said he left a married daughter, which was his youngest child Mary Ann, who married William Tinkham, a London Solicitor's Clerk, in 1886.   Their only son William (1887-1949) born in his grandparent's house in West Ham, was the only direct descendant know to the Cornish Times.  Bill, who attended Christ's Hospital School in London, married Annie Elizabeth Noon (1883-1977) in Dulwich in 1916, and they owned and ran Hannafore Point Hotel 1924-1942.  Sadly they had no children.

Joseph II's next brother, mariner Edwin Thomas (1840-1873) and his wife Anne (nee Pengelly) had two boys and two girls.  Edward (1864-1929) and Nicholas Edwin (1873-1954) were brought up by their Thomas grandfather after their father's death.  Edward worked as a Stores Clerk in West Ham and married Harriett Kebby.  Nicholas became a Boot Salesman and emigrated to Brisbane in 1912, where his wife Rose and family; Joseph (1899-1990) Rose Emma (1901-1975) and Annie (1904-?) followed him in 1913. The girls, Harriet (1866-1952) who married Alexander Ferguson (died 1935) and Ann (1867-1936) who married Edwin Goldsworthy (1872-1951) also emigrated, to Queensland, Australia.

Captain Nicholas Thomas (1845-1923) married, first, Mary Jane Battershill (1843-1877) who gave him a daughter, Emma, in 1870, and his second wife Annie Butland (1853-?) seems to have been childless.

Joseph II's brothers-in-law were his executors. George Knight, living in Saltash in 1901, was the active one, probably because Samuel Pascoe was still living in London.  Both couples, the Knights and Pascoes, seem to have been childless. The Knights retired to Hannafore and shared a house with Captain Nicholas, and their grave and a memorial pew can be seen at St Martin's, where they worshipped regularly.

Bill Tinkham's nieces and great nieces cannot remember any mention at all of Australian cousins! Can such an apparently close family really have lost touch so easily?

Bill Tinkham allegedly inherited his two houses at Hannafore next to the Headland Hotel in 1924 from “two aunts.” Aunt Philippa (who survived in Australia until 1940) and aunt-in-law Isabella (who died in Australia in 1901) must be ruled out, as must his great-aunts Mary Pascoe (who died in Saltash in 1932) and Emma Knight (who died in Looe in 1933) and who lived, anyway, at Woodquest, Hannafore with his great-aunt-in-law Annie.  Other possible ladies were the two great aunts called Anne, or his first-cousin-once-removed, Emma, the only daughter of Captain Nicholas.

Judging by the lack of response to my two-year-old request on this website for help from anyone in Looe, my searching must all be done (at a distance) in the southern hemisphere ... but I hope to be updating this report again very soon!