John Cruett was born in Menheniot in the March of 1833. He grew up on Polpinke Farm, near Clicker Mill, where his father was employed as an ‘Agricultural Labourer’. In 1856 John married Emma West when they were both aged 23. They settled in Tremar Coombe, St Cleer, where John worked as a ‘Sawyer’; a daughter they named Selina arrived a year later.

It was on July 16th 1864 that the Cruett family joined the ‘Great Cornish Emigration’ when they boarded the 815-ton ship ‘Adamant’ at Plymouth. John and Emma were aged 31, and Selina 7, when they arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, after 140 days at sea. They were heading for the copper mining district of Moonta, on the Yorke Peninsula, from where the news of high wages and good living conditions had reached Cornwall, encouraging many thousands of skilled workers to leave their homeland and ‘seek their fortune’ abroad.

Philip Payton wrote in ‘Making Moonta’ that ‘countless individuals had contributed so much to the development of Methodism on the Yorke Peninsula, including John Cruett from St Cleer at the Cross Roads Chapel’.

Sadly, Emma died less than two years after arriving in Australia, John married again three years later to Fanny Wigzell who gave birth to three sons. John died at Cross Roads, Moonta, in 1904 aged 71 and was outlived by Fanny for 29 years, which is not surprising as she was 13 years younger than her husband.

By Brian Oldham, Liskeard Museum volunteer and Bard of Gorsedh Kernow