The last week or so has been spent consolidating what I know and sorting the facts into order. Writing a blog is good, but the narrative lacks the kind of thread that you get with a book. I'm now rewriting what I've discovered in a book form. Will I ever finish it? Will I publish it?
I don't know. I do know that i'm having a great deal of fun researching and discovering facts about the family and the time and place they lived in.
As I write this, I'm researching the Hayes family for a chapter in the book.
I know some facts, but I expect to be trawling through lists of entries in search or more.
Nicholas Harvey was a gifted and successful engineer and well respected among his peers. He was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers and on his death in 1861 a glowing obituary was published. You can read it here
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/wiki/Nicholas_Oliver_Harvey
There's enough information to assume that he met his wife Juliana while on one of his many trips to Prussia. It records that
"His death occurred in the year 1861, in his sixty-first year, leaving a widow and a family of young children to mourn his loss."
Fredericka was the upper nurse at the time, yet within two years she had left Juliana's employment and married one of the workers at the Harvey Foundry.
I wonder why?
I knwo that Juliana ended her days in Madron, just outside Penzance. Did she stay in London or move back to Cornwall straight away? The Harveys were a close knit family. As far as I can tell Nicholas and Juliana lived with his younger brother William in a large house a few yards from the works and overlooking the millpool. It's a nursing home now.
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