Family History 4.40

Joshua Caleb Robinson

 

In his teens, Joshua Caleb wasted no time when he heard of the gold strike at Thames. He went to Thames to seek his fortune but it eluded him.

 

We don't know what his father said when he came home, but he soon settled down to an apprenticeship with his brother-in-law in the painting and decorating business.

 

Joanne takes up his story:

 

He must have gained some measure of success because, in the next ten years before he married, the electoral rolls show him owning two properties, one in Wellesley Street and a three-roomed house min Wellington Place. When he married on 13 April in 1875 he gave his residential address as Wellesley Street.

 

His bride was Mary Ann Meneer Tremain, the eldest child of Edwin and Ann (nee Meneer) Tremain, who emigrated in the late 1850s from Cornwall.

FG in Egloshale, 2008

 

Egloshale, where they lived, is now virtually a suburb of Wadebridge, up the Camel River from the fishing port of Padstow.

 

They were married at Beresford Hall, the site of the Congregational Chapel, and they made their home at the Wellesley Street property.

 

Those first years of married life saw four children born to them: Edwin Joshua in 1876, Felicia Anne Tremain in 1878, William Harold Meneer in 1880, and Ernest Tudor in 1884. Sometime in 1885 they moved to Jervois Road in Ponsonby, and Joshua conducted his business from these premises.

 

The shop in Jervois Road was valued at 28 pounds, and a further wooden building in College Road at 22 pounds. He employed between two and twenty men depending on the work in hand.

 

This residence was where they completed their family, with the addition of five more children: Mary Caroline bron in 1885, Richard Watkin in 1890,Arthur James Osborne in 1893, Harvey Tremain in 1895, and Amy Emma Jane in 1898. Arthur only lived seven months, a combination of measles and bronchitis proving fatal.

Felicia Ann, Mary Ann, Caroline, and in front Amy Emma Jane

 

In 1912, with most of the family grown up, Joshua and Mary moved to Seymour Street in Ponsonby, the business still being conducted from 54-55 Jervois Road. Joshua had also acquired property at Waikumete. By this time his various properties were valued at 900 pounds.