When I began researching my family history in the 1980’s, the Pennell and Crew lineage were the first surnames where information was readily available. My Aunt Edna (Ollivier nee Smith) had been gathering information about her maternal heritage for years, before personal computers, printers and photocopiers and the internet, when researching involved a pen and a family group sheet. I visited her several times where she shared copies documents and letters, memories and family gossip. Those visits were great.
However, she only shared what was “respectable” and kept silent on anything that would disparage the family’s reputation. As they say, history is written by the victors, so rarely the complete truth.
With that in mind and in retrospect, it was no surprize that Aunt Edna stuck with Pennell line and the Crew line. Although she had a lot of information about the Smiths, it was all from her memory and she didn’t research the Smiths. I made the assumption that the paternal line was boring while the maternal line was more exotic, taking her to England and Australia.
Aunt Edna even invited an English couple to visit Canada when I was in my teens. She brought them all the way north to Porcupine, where we lived at the time, for an overnight visit. While I sat in the dining room listening to them talk, I had to keep asking my Mom what they were saying – I didn’t understand a word, their cockney accent was so thick. I can’t say for sure who they were, but they must have been George March and Margaret March (nee Sweetlove), as they sent Christmas cards and pictures to my parents for years after, and their daughter, Sandra Tongeman (nee March), corresponds with my sister, Carol. Margaret March’s grandmother was Ann Charlotte Crew, sister of my Great-grandmother, Rachel Sarah Crew.
The story of the Pennells and the Crews is interesting, and I cannot relay the whole story without also adding in two more surnames – Hone and Bradfield.
In the late 1800’s, the patriarchs of all four of these families were brick makers in London, England. As a matter of fact William Crew (Rachel, Susan, Maria and Eliza’s father) was a “highly successful London brickmaker for whom Bradfield, Crew and Pennell had worked.” (The Unreasonable Man: The life and works of J. J. C. Bradfield by Richard Raxworthy, page 13)
Canada – Pennell and Hone and Crew
What we know as fact…
Alice Maria Pennell was my grandmother and her parents were…
Richard William Pennell (b. Apr 2, 1834, Northfleet, Kent, England) was my great-grandfather.
Rachel Sarah Crew (b. Nov 3, 1834, Barnet, Hertfordshire, England) was my great-grandmother.
They were both buried at St. Margaret’s cemetery in Rutherglen, Ontario, in 1916.
Richard was from a large family of about 10 children. Of particular note was Richard’s brother Charles who married Rachel’s sister Susan.
So, of Rachel’s siblings, three sisters are of interest here. Susan who married Charles Pennell, Eliza who married James Hone and Maria who married John Bradfield.
In 1857, John and Maria Bradfield set sail for Australia on the S. S. New Great Britain. Two years later, in 1859, William Henry Crew (Susan’s brother) and Charles & Susan Pennell, escorting William’s 3-year-old daughter Elizabeth, followed the Bradfields on the S. S. Glentanner.
On May 11, 1871, Richard and Rachel Pennell, along with Eliza and James Hone, boarded the S. S. Niger departing Liverpool, and sailed to Quebec City, arriving May 29, 1871.
These families had the same dream – to use their skills and build brickmaking businesses.
Myrtle Connolly writes about the Pennell and Hone families coming to Canada…
They settled in Carleton Place, Ontario, where they established a brickyard. Lumber being the main source of building material and available, therefore was not a demand for brick. The settlers homes were mostly constructed with log timbers, this forcing the Pennells and Hones to take up farming at Rutherglen, where they obtained crown land.
Australia – Pennell and Bradfield and Crew
While being exceptionally innovative, William Crew, Charles Pennell and John Bradfield suffered the same fate. According to The Unreasonable Man: The life and works of J. J. C. Bradfield by Richard Raxworthy (page 13)…
Subsequently, they [Pennell and Bradfield and Crew] went into partnership to found one of the first mechanised brickmaking businesses in Queensland.
And William Pennell writes in 1969 to Myrtle Connolly…
Bradfield thought there would be a great scope for brick making business at Ipswich, some 20,000 miles from Brisbane. They were the first to manufacture machine bricks in the country. Unfortunately, timber was too plentiful and cheap at the time, and the bricks could not compete to any real extent.
