cydlawenhau: the blog

We spent yes­ter­day a-​grave hunt­ing around Oxford­shire and came up with a few!

We vis­ited Leam­ing­ton Hast­ings, which is where the last Truslove to be born in Eng­land before the emi­gra­tion to Perth started, was born. I found two grave­stones tucked up right against the front cor­ner of the church. They were both in very good con­di­tion, though Ann’s was bet­ter. I can only imag­ine this is because hers was more pro­tected from pre­vail­ing rain. The inscrip­tions on the stones read:

In mem­ory of William Truslove; hus­band of Ann Truslove; who departed this life Jan 10th 1841; (indis­tinct) 71 years
Im mem­ory of Ann Truslove; wife of William Truslove who departed this life August 22nd 1854; (indis­tinct) 85 years.

These dates don’t match any of the data we have at the moment so Im quite inter­ested to work out how (if) these two fit in.

We then went on to Dunchurch, got lost try­ing to find park­ing and by chance stum­bled across the loca­tion where the Gun­pow­der Plot was hatched. You all know of course my birth­day is Guy Fawkes Day. There were a mul­ti­tude of stones just inside the church­yard gate, again tucked into a corner.

One of them had a tree grow­ing out of it to the point where the stone looked as though it was lean­ing upon it. How­ever, it was firmly rooted in place and read:

Sacred to the mem­ory of Susan­nah wife of Henry Truslove who died March 10th 1816 aged 44 years

This would be Susan­nah Dunk­ley, my Great to the power of 5 Grand­mother. It was fan­tas­tic to find the bur­ial place of one of my direct line ances­tors. I get the feel­ing she might of been the per­son who would be happy to now be a mas­sive tree.

The other stone read:

To the beloved mem­ory of John Truslove of Caw­ston, who died Sep­tem­ber 5th 1840,aged 76 years
Ann Truslove wife of the above died June 23rd 1860, aged 81 years
Ann Truslove daugh­ter of the above died Novem­ber 13th 1868, aged 59 years
Fred­er­ick Lawrance son of John Lawrance of Caw­ston died July 29th 1845, aged 10 years
James Lawrance of Caw­ston died April 18th 1875, aged 76 years
Mary Lawrance wife of the above died Octo­ber 26th 1889, aged 85 years

I can only assume the Lawrance fam­ily were good friends of the Trusloves to be allowed to share their bur­ial place but six peo­ple in one grave is quite astound­ing really.
There was another stone too indis­tinct to make out any­thing other than some­thing that looked like it was truslo but no other infor­ma­tion could be gained from it.

Update: I found John, Ann and Ann of the sec­ond grave­stone. John’s New Fam­il­y­Search num­ber is K2GM-​8XT and his wife and daugh­ter are already attached. It appears Ann the elder’s maiden name is Barn­well. Still work­ing on those Lawrances.