OUT NOW !
CAPPEN JAN JAKE, A CORNISH TALE
BY WILLIAM HOWARD WATSON
Republished by his Great Granddaughter Holly Duval Cornell / Hudley Flipside.
This book has been with me since I was a child. It was passed on to me by my mother. She received it from her family. It is my maternal great grandfather’s story.
When I first saw it, my mother told me a few things. Her grandfather was a minister from England. She did not know if he was Cornish, Welsh, English, or Scotch-Irish. Who listens much as a kid?
As I got older and wiser and really took a look at the undercurrent of this narrative. Modest that it is, I have come to say it holds a bright gem of Cornish Character. A rich narrative about Cornwall England during the years of mining and changing religiosity. The central point being Redruth, Cornwall England.
This narrative has a light rich touch as the Cornish slang within the story. Written by my great grandfather who tells a moral story valuable to understand and fruitful in human experience.
I have since come to find through my own research and study that Howard Watson was in fact a Methodist Minister who lived in Cornwall England.
After this book was published, he and his family came to the United States and traveled up the Mississippi on a steamboat to the Dakota Territory. He entered a blend of lawlessness, slavery, and growing law and order. He came at a time of planted towns, trains, and the creation of barbed wire. The Buffaloes were almost gone. A shifting time in our American wild west.
Yet this book is a story about characters before this. Cornwall, England is almost like an Island and so rich in ancient history. My eyes are opening to a time that amazes me. A place that supplied the industrial revolution where the Cornish people ‘mined’ for what was needed.
My goal here is to republish this book for my own satisfaction. My great grandfather is preaching to me and the once twinkle in his eyes has passed on to twinkles in mine. His whispers are real as well as his story about a place and time, in Cornish history.
I have added a glossary at the end as well as my own illustrations to enhance the overall narrative. I hope my great grandfather will appreciate my style of art.
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