Welcome (Home)
UK Family Origins
Introduction
In The Beginning
Penn Parish Records
Manorial Records
Stonehouse
Watercroft
Grove Graves in the UK
Sir George Grove
Letter Extracts
Family Tree
Groves in America
Introduction to America
The American Adventure
Groves in Australia
Introduction to Australia
The Australian Family
Acknowledgements
Author and Researchers
Technical
As the Court Rolls of the Manor of Penn in the County of Buckinghamshire UK and A History of the Parish of Penn show, since 1332 generations of Groves are recorded as having lived, worked and undertaken civic duties in the same beautiful countryside.
According to The Official Guide to Penn, Bucks, issued by Authority of the Penn Parish Council price 6d (date not known but pre-decimalisation in 1971) as well as the Penn family, whose forebear William Penn founded Pennsylvania, the Grove family were a significant influence in Penn.
Extracted from The Official Guide to Penn, Bucks: "One of the families with the longest connection with Penn is the Grove family, who always played an important part in the life of the parish. George III was a friend of the Grove of his time (Yeoman Grove) and a frequent visitor to Stonehouse (the Grove family home) where pewter plates bearing the Royal Arms, brought by the Royal visitor for his own use, are still preserved. Sir George Grove (1820-1900) achieved fame as a historian of music with his Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He owned Watercroft, another property nearby where much of his literary work was done. Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) was a frequent visitor and composed The Lost Chord and Onward Christian Soldiers in the summer house." Sir George married Harriet Bradley (sister of the Dean of Westminster).
The first Grove recorded as living in Stonehouse was Edmund Grove (l660-1708). The eldest son was usually christened Edmund and inherited Stonehouse. In 2003 the property was reputed to be 500 years old, and to have been in the Grove family for many generations.
The Grove family's long connection and reluctance to move from the Penn area was to change in the middle of the 19th century when three young adventurous Grove brothers (John, George Dodd and Christopher) together with their childhood friend William Brookman decided to 'go west' to make their fortunes. With the result that a century and a half later the Grove descendants have established successful lines of the family in America, England and Australia. Descendants of Christopher are in America, many still proudly carrying the Grove name.
Christopher Grove
George Dodd Grove
George Dodd's descendants are in England (although no longer bearing the Grove name, however the name is believed to be carried on through Sir George Grove's line) and in Australia.
Sir George Grove
The Australian line was started when after the First World War, Isabel (born in America) the youngest daughter of George Dodd emigrated with her husband Joe Grant, son of the farmer next door (Coxlease) to her father's farm (Fawley Bottom, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire) to Australia. Coxlease is still a working dairy farm, although no longer worked by the Grants.
Isabel and Joe Grant and family
The resourceful spirit of the Grove ancestors continued in successive generations.
Yeoman Grove (1729-1823) is the common ancestor of all today's branches of the family. Collins Concise Dictionary defines yeoman as: A class of small freeholders who cultivated their own land, and the virtues attributed to yeomen as staunchness, loyalty and courage.
Until the 18th century yeoman farmers had been prosperous in England, but in the 19th century difficulties in farming left many small farmers facing financial ruin which led to forced sales and the consequent growth of large estates. Yeoman Grove who died in 1823 is said to have been the last yeoman farmer in the country.
Yeoman Grove had five sons, Edmund, Thomas, George, Jonathan, John and a daughter Mary who married a Mr Hunt. Thomas, Yeoman Grove's second son founded a fishmonger's business in Maiden Lane, Charing Cross, London which later became part of the Civil Service Supply Stores in the Strand. He became a Liveryman of London. He married Mary Blades in 1807. The couple had six children, the third son becoming Sir George Grove.
Yeoman Grove's third son was George, whose son also George lived at Hertfordshire Farm in Penn. As well as the other original Grove properties, the large house now called Hertfordshire House is still in existence.
Hertfordshire House in 2003
The fourth son Jonathan appears to have emigrated to Australia, and the youngest son, John, founded a fishmongers business in New Bond Street, London.
It is through Edmund (1770-1819, Yeoman Grove's eldest son, who married Mary Dodd) and this couple's youngest son, John (1802-1853) that the Grove line who are found today in America, Australia and the branch of the English line that this story chronicles, are descended. Edmund's wife Mary Dodd was the only child of Thomas and Mary Dodd. The Dodd family had owned property and lived in Farnham for generations. Mary had two childless aunts (daughters of Thomas and Sarah Slaughter), Anne (who first married Mr Clarke and then Mr Perryman) and Phoebe (who married Mr Field). John's father, Edmund Grove, died of a riding accident when his son was aged 17. John was devoted to his mother, who died when he was 21. He called his third son, George Dodd in honour of his maternal grandmother.
As a young man John (Yeoman Grove's grandson) was apprenticed to his Uncle John (Yeoman Grove's youngest son 1775-1868), at the fishmonger's business in New Bond Street, London. He married Emma Elizabeth Jinks of Oundle in Northamptonshire (who brought Catholicism to her Grove descendants) on 17th November l831. For a short time the newly married couple lived in a flat in London, near Emma Elizabeth's cousin Richard Jinks, who had established a blindmaker's business at 84 Southampton Row. This business grew to be so successful that when Laurence Batty was working as a young man in prestigious Aldwych House, then the headquarters of the Legal & General Assurance Society in London WC2, he was astonished to discover the window blinds had been installed by the company of his great grandmother's cousin. Shortly after John's marriage to Emma Elizabeth Jinks, the couple left London to live in the Dodd house at Farnham Royal. For a while they left to live in Eton, before returning to the former Dodd home.
John and Emma Elizabeth had ten children. The first a daughter Anne Emma was born in 1832 (She married William Brookman in Ohio in 1875. The couple were childless). The other nine Grove children followed at yearly or bi-yearly intervals, and among them were John, George Dodd and Christopher - the three adventurers. Like his brother, Thomas, John senior opened a fishmonger's business in London but this failed to flourish. From 1844 onwards he became known as a farmer. This may have had something to do with the death of his eldest brother, Edmund Grove in 1843. John and Emma Elizabeth lost three children, two babies Mary Frances in l834 and Mary Anne in 1840, and their eldest son Thomas who died at 17 after being ill with rheumatic fever for only seven days. In 1853 and only three months after the death of Thomas, John aged 53, also died. This must have been catastrophic for Emma Elizabeth. She was a widow at 49 and although the eldest daughter, Anne Emma aged 21, was working as a governess, some of the time in Dublin, she still had six children to support, and the youngest, Christopher, was only five. The l861 census shows six children living at home, Isabella (22) and Helen (23) are described as governesses, whilst Emma Elizabeth was recorded as an annuitant (private pensioner). The eldest surviving son John Edmund was described as a carpenter and the three children as scholars. In the house was also Mary Richardson, 83, described as a lodger and an annuitant. Presumably because of her difficult circumstances, the widow Emma Elizabeth opened a private school at Farnham Royal, which she did with the assistance of her daughters.
It seems likely that Emma Elizabeth and her family were experiencing financial difficulties, which may explain why all her surviving sons, John, George Dodd and Christopher emigrated to America to seek their fortunes. During the years of separation, the boys remained devoted to their mother and there were many comings and goings across the Atlantic. They always gravitated and stayed at their mother's house, often to deal with family affairs. Christopher was the exception. He returned to England only once.
By the time of the l871 census Emma Elizabeth was living at Prussia Road, Farnham Royal. Anne Emma had returned home and was described as a governess, presumably helping with the school. Her two sisters were also recorded there - Helen, as an invalid and Grace Mary, of no occupation. Three boarding pupils were also living in the house, one of which was 9-year old Henry Jinks, presumably a relative. There was also a servant, Elizabeth Russ aged 21, from Northamptonshire who may have been introduced by Emma Elizabeth's family.
John Edmund returned from America in 1870 probably to sell the family home at Farnham Royal for his mother, and eventually to find a home for her and her three unmarried daughters at The Old Farm, Crowborough Warren. Both he and Christopher were at home on Census Day 1871. Anne Emma left shortly afterwards with Christopher to keep house for her brothers in America. George Dodd and his wife returned from 1874 - 1877 and tried to make a living in England. William Brookman had married Anne Emma in America but they returned between 1875 and 1877. John Edmund, who had returned to America, was back in l877 when he proposed and was accepted by his future wife, Lucy Butt. When Lucy went out to a new life in America she was accompanied by her friend Mary Coakley, who later was to marry Christopher Grove. Lucy did not settle and was back in England permanently in 1878, soon followed by her husband John.
On returning from America, John invested in various properties in London, and also later returned to farming leasing Pishill Farm, Upper Assenden, near Henley from 1887 to 1903. He and Lucy lived at Wisteria, Assenden for four years before moving in 1915 to Newlyns, Station Road, Henley. Lucy died there in 1917. After his wife's death, John's nieces Agnes Emma (May) daughter of George Dodd and Emma Mary (Cousin Nan) daughter of Christopher, kept house for a time. He then employed housekeepers before he went to lodge with one of his own tenants in Stoke Newington.
George Dodd with his wife and family returned to England in l892, living at first in Horsham. In l893 the family were at Stonor Park Farm, Stonor and in 1899 they moved to Fawley Bottom Farm - a mile or two away.
Fawley Bottom Farm
Mary Agnes Emma and Grace Mary attended a convent school, and Isabel and George Joseph also attended school. As young women, Mary Agnes went into business, Grace Mary became a governess, and Isabel kept house (her mother having died in l908). At the outbreak of World War I George Joseph joined the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars. (See Common family tree).
George Joseph Grove
After the war George Joseph worked for Drummond & Company, Seedsmen in Dublin travelling all over southern Ireland on a Royal Enfield motorcycle and sidecar, getting and delivering orders. When Isabel (Tiny) emigrated with her husband Joe Grant and family to Australia on 11th January 1921, her 77 year old father, George Dodd was presented with a problem - how to manage on his own? He had been a widower since 1908. Joe Grant had moved into Fawley Bottom on his marriage to Isabel and took over the management and lease of the farm, while Isabel was in charge of housekeeping.
George Dodd with Joe Grant and daughters Mary Agnes Emma and Isabel Mary
Around l923 George Dodd retired from farming and went to live with his now widowed elder brother, John Edmund, at Newlyns, Station Road, Henley. George Dodd stayed at Newlyns for a year before moving to Crays Pond Farm, Goring which he had bought for his son, George Joseph and daughter Mary Agnes Emma (May). He died there in l932.
In his history of the Grove family written during the 1970s Laurence Batty (Grace Mary Grove's son) writes: Fawley Bottom still looks externally as it always did, save only that the granary has vanished and the winding platform over the well is no longer there. The house and farm buildings now belong to John Piper the artist (who went there on his marriage in 1935 to Myfanwy Evans the writer and librettist). He told me that he designed the famous stained glass window for Coventry Cathedral by spreading a huge canvas on the floor of what was the barn, and is now his studio, and walking about on it. John Piper designed the Baptistry Window in the new Coventry Cathedral which was consecrated in 1962.
Fawley Bottom is now (2003) a lovely private house. Peter Trotter (Isabel and Joe Grant's grandson) from Hobart, Tasmania on a visit with his daughter Penny in 2001 to this exceptionally beautiful part of the country said: "Whatever made them leave all this"?
Peter Trotter and daughter Penny at Fawley Bottom in 2001 on a visit from Tasmania
With the death of the childless George Joseph Grove in 1962, the line started by John Grove no longer carries the name in the UK, although descendants of Sir George Grove (John's cousin) do. John's line continues through the late Grace Mary Grove who married Thomas Batty in 1903. The couple had 10 children (Maurice died in infancy) and the Batty family is strong and thriving in the UK.
Grace Mary (Grove) Batty with her first son, Felix