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ORAL NARRATIVE AND CORNISH MIGRATION:INTERPRETATIONS OF FAMILY, PLACE, AND SPACE
G
ARRY
T
REGIDGA
*
& 
T
REVE
C
RAGO
§
I
NTRODUCTION
In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the ‘Great migration’ of the 19
th
century, when hundreds of thousands of Cornish men and women leftthe far South West of Britain in search of new opportunities overseas. As weshall see the migration process can be inuenced by a multitude of determiningfactors that, while often economically related, can also be traced to other lessvisible cultural dimensions, which formulate a migrant’s decision to leave hisor her native community. Therefore the rst part of this paper will explore thethemes of ‘Family’, ‘Place’ and ‘Migration’ and having established the parametersvia the use of oral narrative this will be followed by a closer examination of thelatest Oral history methodology and its application to a specic case study at themicro-level.
 ‘W
ILL
 
YOU
 
THINK
 
OF
C
ORNWALL
 
SOMETIMES
?’:P
ERCEPTIONS
 
OF
F
AMILY
 
AND
P
LACE
Before studying the dynamics of migration it is essential that the uniquecharacteristics of the Cornish homeland be considered. Kinship takes on a specialsignicance in a Cornish context when it comes to notions of ethnoregionalidentity. Conversi suggests that language, religion, family, territory and raceprovide the distinctive symbols or ‘pivots around which the whole social andidenticational system’ of a distinct cultural group is organised.
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The effectivedemise of the Cornish language by the end of the eighteenth century ensured theloss of an obvious cultural symbol for the region’s inhabitants. A language revivalmovement, based on the work of pioneers like Henry Jenner in the early 1900s,made slow progress during the twentieth century. A recent survey concluded that,despite growing popular interest, there are still only a few hundred speakers withthe ability to have a uent conversation.
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In the place of language we can pointto religious differences, with Methodism, rather than the mainstream Churchof England, becoming the dominant religious force in the region from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Religious nonconformity, as Rokkan points out, wasoften integrated into the culture of a ‘subject’ province.
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This process applied toCornwall, where the social inuence of Methodism ensured that the cultural andpolitical life of the region was more akin to Celtic Wales rather than the adjacent
 
counties of southern England. Similarly, public concern since the 1940s overthe threat to Cornwall’s territorial boundaries, including possible inclusion into alarger administrative region of South-West England, has encouraged the rise of Mebyon Kernow, a nationalist party, and led to the adoption of anti-metropolitanideas by leading politicians associated with other political parties.What is the role of the Cornish family in terms of the Conversi model? Althoughdismissed by one academic as ‘unlikely’ to provide a political catalyst for ‘differentiating the Cornish from other groups’, the wider signicance of thekinship factor should not be ignored. Indeed, with an economy traditionallybased on small businesses and family farms it is perhaps not surprising that otherareas of Cornish life like Methodism, ethnomusicological tradition and politicalalignment have been based on the family unit. Kinship, in short, provided thecultural infrastructure for the region. Evidence to support this view can be seenin the autobiographical work of the historian A.L. Rowse. Growing up in the rstquarter of the twentieth century he represented one of the last generations toexperience ‘the age-long routine of Cornish life still unbroken’. For Rowse thissense of a ‘continuity of custom’ was inextricably linked to kinship, which wassymbolised by ‘the families, the family names which for generations and even forcenturies had belonged to some particular spot … there were always Jenkinsesat Phernyssick, Pascoes at Holmbush, Tretheweys at Roche; Kellows, Blameys,Rowses at Tregonnissey’.
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This family/place nexus was particularly signicant given the fact that themajority of Cornish surnames are derived from places of residence. Take theco-author’s surname: Tregidga. It was apparently rst recorded in 1332 as aplacename, Tregrisiou, in the mid-Cornwall district of Roseland
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and descendantsof the local family that took this name were living in the same locality over vehundred years later. Only then did domestic issues lead to the disintegrationof the surviving family unit, with some members migrating to the miningcommunities of West Cornwall, others going to the china clay district a few milesto the east and some travelling even further aeld to London and California.Oral tradition was crucial in passing on a folklore narrative relating to the specialbond of family and place. In the case of the Tregidga’s this was based on a story,possibly inuenced by the rise of the temperance movement at the family andcommunal level, that in the rst half of the nineteenth century the family hadlost their ancestral home, Tregidgeo Farm, because of the social ‘evils’ of alcoholand gambling. We can see this in the following extract from an interview with theCo-authors father, Stanley Tregidga:
Well, the rst I knew about it, when my Uncle George used to come up Christmastime. And, er, after we had a meal, my Uncle George was settling way down, thewhiskey ant that, me father and me auntie would start to go out the door [...] andme Uncle George used to say ‘where are you pair going? I suppose you’re going onthe beer. And he said ‘I call you “Whiskey Bess” abd “Beerey Ern”. He said... “all ourfamiliy was like that, my grandfather and his brother, they lost the farm through beerdrinking and gambling.
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Migration added a further dimension to the cultural symbolism of the Cornishfamily. In recent years there has been a remarkable reassertion of the links withthe homeland as Cornish descendants overseas turn to a communal identity based
 
upon conceptions of the Celticity of their ancestors.
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Celtic festivals and Cornishtartans have been coopted as cultural icons of local communities in Australia andNorth America, while organisations like the Cornwall Family History Society, withover 5,000 members, operate on an international basis. Some families, such asthe Udys, Rosevears and Lobbs, seem reminiscent of the clans of the ScottishHighlands by holding grand reunions in Cornwall for descendants throughout theworld. James Udy’s study of his family history demonstrates how the focus onkinship can have wider cultural implications for the Cornish overseas. Conversi’scultural pivots of family, race and religion effectively provide the framework forthe book, with considerable reference to both Celtic identity and the passion of Cornish Methodism. This reects the way in which Udy’s genealogical researchpaved the way for a personal rediscovery of his Celto-Cornish heritage:
As I gazed on this typically Cornish scene, I felt strangely moved as I realised that myUdy family roots were here in the parish of Roche and the surrounding parishes … Asthis was their country, I felt that it was part of my spiritual country too. In Australia Ihad grown to manhood oblivious of my Cornish heritage, but now, having immersedmyself in the study of early Cornish documents for some time, the name Udy wasbeginning to conjure up vivid associations with Cornish history and Cornish culture.
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Oral history is a useful medium for enhancing our understanding of this multi-faceted process. In December 2000 the Cornish Audio Visual Archive (CAVA)organised an interview session at Rescorla Methodist Chapel in mid-Cornwall.Built in 1873, at the height of the Great Migration, the chapel itself is a livingreminder of the enduring family links that still exist between the Cornish homelandand its branch communities overseas. For example, a bible on the pulpit lecternwas donated by a local family that had emigrated to British Columbia in the1940s, while a marble plaque was presented by a Mr Pendray of Detroit, USAin memory of his parents. Of particular signicance for our purposes was aninterview, or rather a free-owing conversation, which was conducted with threelocal characters: John Tonkin and Sam Gregory, who are in their seventies; andthe 91 year-old John Rundle. The result was a wide-ranging discussion coveringsuch topics as family life, politics, religion, social conditions and labour relations.Signicantly, however, the migration of individuals and families provided acommon link for many of these subjects, whether in terms of the social impactof in-migration on traditional Cornish society or the cultural-economic inuenceof the Cornish Diaspora itself.Above all, the Rescorla session points to the broader impact of migration onfamily identity. Rowse’s ‘continuity of custom’ narrative referred to earlier caneasily create an image of a parochial and unchanging way of life that was onlyundermined by the intrusion of Anglo-urban society after the Second World War.How does this concept relate to the global picture where Cornish families playedan important part in the creation of new and vibrant nations like the UnitedStates and Australia? This paradox is clearly evident in the comments of JohnTonkin. In conversation with Gregory and Rundle he laments the post-war declineof community life as a result of social and demographic change, particularly inregard to the family unit:
You haven’t got the continuity, boy. Then, the families had been together for severalgenerations, say grandfather or somebody had moved in as a young man and raised
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