| Welcome 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 |
This tells of the three Grove brothers, John, George Dodd and Christopher, with friend William Brookman, who changed the history of the family that had lived in or close to Penn in Buckinghamshire for the past 530 years. The quartet went first to Canada in 1863 or 64 to work in the lumber camps. When the American Civil War ended in 1865 they took advantage of the opportunities available to enterprising young men and journeyed to Audubon, Iowa taking up adjoining sections of land, where they settled down to farming. The life was hard, the country wild and undeveloped, but they built sod houses to live in and courted and persuaded cultured, well educated ladies from England to become pioneers as well as their wives. During the 18 years in Audubon, marriages were celebrated, 6 living children were born. The childless John Grove and his wife, who never settled in America, returned to England during this time, but throughout the adventurers followed the tradition of the Grove family that had seen them thrive in the homeland of supporting each other in their work, domestically and socially, and so they built a new life far from home. In 1883 after a favourable inspection trip, George Dodd, Christopher and William Brookman took a 250-mile wagon train journey with their wives and families to Dale, Nebraska, where there was better free land available to homesteaders. Here they again built sod houses, and settled down in adjoining farms. In 1885 shortly after giving birth to their fifth child, a daughter Lucy, Christopher's wife Mary died aged only 35. With help from the family, the widower Christopher carried on with the farm and the task of raising his children. George Dodd, his wife and family returned to England in 1889 and took up farming at Fawley Bottom Farm, Henley on Thames. Christopher remained in America, but shortly after the departure of his brother, took his family on another wagon train journey to Oklahoma, which was still Indian Territory. He settled at Konawa near the Sacred Heart Mission at Shawnee. Life was hard and the children in particular missed their cousins, but the family led and inspired by Chris worked together and made their own entertainment, and today the many descendants still living and working in the area are testimony to his perseverance and success. |