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- Carol Palmer wrote "I am a descendant of Edward Chapman LEONARD who was born on board the Chapman on 24 March 1820, upon its arrival in Table Bay. His parents were John LEONARD and Elizabeth TAYLOR. He married Helen VERRAN and they later had a son Edward Verran Collins LEONARD who was born in 1865 in Cathcart.
Helen VERRAN was not an 1820 Settler for she was born in St Agnes, Cornwall in 1837. She was the eighth child of nine of William VERRAN and Catherine HOSKEN and the 1841 Census finds her living in Kea, Truro, Cornwall with her parents and eight siblings. Her younger brother, Charles Wesley VERRAN died later that year at the age of two. I can only assume he was named after the poet and Methodist Charles Wesley. All records in England list her as Ellen and not Helen.
Her father, William VERRAN, was a Mine Agent and cut his teeth in the "notoriously difficult" Carnon Tin Stream Mine in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. He worked up the ranks and by the mid 1840's he had moved his wife and younger children to Montgomeryshire, Mid Wales, where he was a Mine Surveyor / Mine Agent for the Dyfngwm Mines which produced copper and lead.
His wife, Catherine, died in 1849 at the age of 49.
The 1851 Census finds William VERRAN, aged 51, and his daughter Ellen, aged 13, visiting William Cumming at his house in Lewisham, London. Mr Cumming was the majority shareholder of the Van Mine in Montgomeryshire where William VERRAN was the Mine Agent.
The 1851 Census in Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire shows William's younger children living there as he and his youngest child, Ellen, visited London...Mary VERRAN, 21, Proprietor's Daughter, Henry VERRAN, 19, Miner Agent, and Richard VERRAN, 17, Clerk to above.
Mining records state that under William VERRAN's "management the mine yielded large quantities of copper."
William VERRAN died, aged 58, in February 1858 in Greenwich, London. His probate, dated March of that year, granted the principal registery to his son, Richard Henry VERRAN, Mining Surveyor of Llanidloes, Montgomeryshire. Richard was his 5th son / 7th child.
The 1861 Census finds Ellen's brother, Richard Henry VERRAN, 24, Mineral Inspector, living in Montgomeryshire.
The mine was closed in 1862 "when the company was broken up in consequence of the death of Mr Cumming the principal proprietor".
Richard Henry VERRAN died in the Infirmary in Denbigh, Montgomeryshire in July 1871, aged 33."
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