Peternal Emilie Holloway Dolman was my father’s mother, my paternal grandmother. “Pet” was the fourth child and eldest daughter born to William and Emilie Holloway. She was born on April 4th, 1887 in Sythnie, Cornwall. She joined two older brothers, William and Claude, and had two younger sisters Lottie and Elsie ( and a little brother Tommy, who sadly died age 2), and they were reared in Porthleven. Her parents ran the local Commercial Hotel, situated right on the harbour of the small town, where fishing and boat building were the main businesses.
Behind the hotel. Pet is next to her brother Claude ( with a tear in the photo running through her face). To her left is her sister Lottie. Noting their mother’s black dress and the children’s serious faces, I wonder if this photo was perhaps taken after someone’s death….. Their sixth child, Thomas, had sadly died aged 2 1/2. ( i think of infection after being burned in a fire), but he was a year older than little Elsie (sitting on the stool in front of photo), so his death would have been 4 years or so earlier, when Pet was 5 years old. Or perhaps it was the custom in those days not to smile for photographs. It still is in some cultures today.
Scenes of the family by their hotel.
Peternal most likely attended the local church school. In the 1890’s in England, it was mandatory for children to attend school until age 11. We do have a newspaper photo of the Church of England school class in Porthleven in 1897, taken on occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year, when Pet would then have been 10 years old. Peternal is not in the photo -perhaps she was helping out with the family business already or was absent from school that day – but her two younger sisters Lottie and Elsie are in the photo, and the schoolmaster was John Ernest Dolman, a young man with a very fine moustache.
John Dolman had come to Porthleven from Chenies, Buckinghamshire, as a very young teacher, age 23, in 1896. He faithfully spent ten years as teacher at the Church of England school connected to St. Bartholemew’s Anglican church. He had trained at Culham College, close to Oxford, which was known to be a fine teacher training College in its time. His younger sisters and his widowed mother also joined him in Porthleven for some of the time. John’s younger sister, Effie, Fanny Elizabeth, first moved down to help keep house for him; then she joined as an assistant teacher ( she is also in the 1897 photo above), so the youngest sister Caroline, also came to Porthleven to keep house for them. That’s what younger sisters did in those days😊
Here’s a link to the archives of Culham College with a bit of its history: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/915ab0f4-8adf-3020-9691-a9df646d337d
It seems that as it was in a rural setting, they not only focused on classroom subjects, but also had training in gardening and rural science and later added special education also. I believe the gardening rubbed off on my father as a young boy, and he continued to be an avid gardener well into his 80’s!
Pet’s father, William Holloway, died suddenly at age 39, of cardiovascular causes. Pet was twelve years old at the time and likely worked along with her brothers at the Commercial Hotel, of which the lease was renewed and run by their mother, my widowed Great- Grandmother, Emilie Jane.
I do not know when Schoolmaster, John ( Jack) Dolman and Pet’ s courtship began – perhaps he noticed his former primary school student, now blossomed into a young woman, at church or at the Commercial Hotel pub….or at the fish market! That part of the story I do not know, but they seem to have had a summer romance in 1905, when she was 18 and he was 32. They would have known she was with child sometime in October.
Wedding bans, as per Anglican tradition, were read for 3 consecutive Sundays at St. Bart’s starting in November, and they were married on December 18th, 1905.
Interestingly, John’s youngest sister, Caroline, met and married a general merchant also from Porthleven in October 1905. ( see church marriage registry above). My cousin Tony, who supplied me with many of these genealogical details, is the grandson of Effie Dolman, who was John’s assistant teacher. And, I just heard from Cousin Tony that his grandmother, Effie, also married a Cornishman, Bejamin Eddy, who was the older brother of her sister Caroline’s husband, Alfred Eddy. Their father ran a thriving fishing net business in Porthleven!
My father, Claude, named for his mother’s closest brother, was born on May 23, 1906, in Porthleven. In September of that year, Jack and Pet, along with baby Claude moved to Egloskerry, also in Cornwall, where John was Schoolmaster for four years. During this time, a little daughter, Mary was born to them, in 1908.
In 1910, the family moved to Wallingford in Berkshire, near to Oxford, where Jack was appointed to the Headmaster position in Brightwell Church Grammar School. The next year they had a third child, Charlotte ( Betty) who was born on my father’s 5th birthday.
My father was very fond of both his sisters throughout his life. The three siblings attended Brightwell school, and here’s a photo of them as adults visiting with their kindergarten schoolteacher, many decades later!!
I was thrilled to hear only recently from my cousin Tony that Peternal also began to teach once her children were older! She had a position of teacher at a girl’s school close to Brightwell, in Little Wittenham.
Although the family lived in Wallingford for twelve years, they did travel back to visit Cornwall and her family in Porthleven. My father describes himself swimming across the outer harbour as a boy, and what a feat that was. ( below, photographs of Porthleven inner and outer harbours, taken in December 2022, when Gary and I visited along with our son Tim and his wife, Erika.)
An aside: The history of Cornwall tells that Porthleven was a specially constructed safe harbour in an area that had many many shipwrecks! I could say much more on that….may expand one day. There was also piracy, and tin mining in the area, as well as boat building, fishing and an active port of call for ships. https://www.cornwall-calling.co.uk/gazetter-cornwall/porthleven.htm#:~:text=In%201811%20work%20began%20on,a%20dangerous%20and%20difficult%20harbour.
My father also spoke fondly of “Granny Holloway” in his boyhood, and I recently found a tiny New Testament she had given him when he was five years old!
Below: “Granny Holloway” with her three daughters, Lottie, Peternal and Elsie, and Pet’s three children, Claude, (my father), and younger sisters, Mary and Betty, ca.1913 or 1914.
The Holloway sisters: Peternal ( centre, age 26), and her sisters, Elsie, 22 and Lottie 24. ca. 1913.
In 1972, my father brought my mother, brothers and me to meet our Great Aunt Lottie and Great Aunt Elsie in Porthleven, where they both had lived all their lives, and telephoned each other daily when into their 90’s. Aunt Lottie took in their mother to live with her when she retired from the Commercial Hotel. They lived on Belvedere Terrace, which lined the inner harbour. Lottie lived to be almost 100 years old and her daughter Amy looked after her, also on Belvedere Terrace. I remember both great aunts were very old and had swollen legs and ankles, and i do especially remember Aunt Lottie’s face, looking as she does above as a young woman! Sadly, we never met our Granny Pet, who died in 1955 before we were born.
Bellvedere Terrace. Great Aunt Elsie at her home with the blue door.
I’ll end this section with some photos of the beauty around Porthleven, perhaps some of the scenic paths that my paternal grandfather and grandmother took for romantic walks when they were courting, perhaps packing and enjoying a Cornish pastie lunch, or a piece of parsley pie! ( local Cornish fare that my Mum learned to make!)
Cornish pastie; St. Michael’s Mount in distance. Below, Philps pasties for lunch, Porthleven – recommend! During our visit, December 2022.
I’ve enjoyed imagining the relationship between my paternal grandparents, since i heard very little from my father while growing up, although I have recalled some of my father’s reflections and dropped comments that have come to mind…more to share next episode. I’m very thankful to my cousin Tony for filling in many details 🙂
JenniEliz 