One and All: The Cornish in New South Wales by Patricia Lay

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Minor marks on tail and right foredges. Previous owner has signed inside page, now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker.

Emigration was a common nineteenth-century Cornish experience. It occurred as Cornish men and women dispersed across the world due to downturns in mining and in the other traditional Cornish industries of farming and fishing.

There was no mining industry in New South Wales before the mid-nineteenth century, and early Cornish immigrants to the colony were generally those from the landowning classes who had sufficient capital to set themselves up on land in the colony. It was only when schemes for free and assisted passages were introduced later in the century that Cornish men and women from the labouring classes could contemplate emigration to New South Wales.

The stated occupations of the majority of these assisted immigrants were labourers or tradesmen, with a minority of miners. Although they did not fit the general pattern of miners forming a discrete community near the mines, these Cornish immigrants followed settlement patterns similar to those in other emigrant destinations. They settled and remained as cohesive and recognisably Cornish groups in New South Wales because of their cultural and ethnic differences from other settlers. (back cover)