Martha Ann Georgina Finch was born in Plymouth in 1849, the 12th year of Queen Victoria’s reign.

Her father died a year later aged only 25, and her 21-year-old mother, was working as a ‘House Servant’ in the home of a Plymouth ‘Boot Maker’ named Thomas Morris. Martha was sent to live with her maternal grandfather William Tregonning, a 56-year-old ‘Farm Labourer’ in the hamlet of Crumplehorn, near Polperro, in the parish of Lansallos. Martha and grandfather are both listed in the 1851 census at Crumplehorn, as well as her three uncles aged 16, 10 and 6, her auntie Jane aged 14, and her 48-year-old Grandmother, Ann Tregonning.

There is no record of Martha living her mother again and, by the time she was 21, she had arrived in Liskeard and was employed as the live-in ‘Cook’ at the home of ‘Attorney-at-Law’ Albert Charles Lyne Glubb, Pendean House in West Street. Also employed and living-in at Pendean in 1871 were the Nurse Jane Cornish, and the Housemaid Frances Tamblin. Among the five Glubb children that Martha was preparing meals for was five-year-old ‘Scholar’ Albert de Castro Glubb. In May 2025 the first ‘Pobel a Gernow’ (People of Cornwall) plaque was unveiled at Pendean to commemorate A de C Glubb for his outstanding contribution to Cornish history. Four of the many ancient monuments that Glubb saved from private ownership, to be preserved for the nation are now under the stewardship of the Cornish Heritage Trust: Trethevy Quiot, King Doniert’s Stone, Dupath Well and The Hurlers.

Martha left domestic service when she married Liskeard born ‘Cabinet Maker’ John Rodd in 1875. They immediately became part of the Great Cornish Emigration, in the following year had settled in Timaru, New Zealand. Martha gave birth to seven children in New Zealand, all but one survived into adulthood. Whether Martha and John were just visiting, or had moved permanently to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, I’ve not been able to establish, but that’s where John died in 1897 aged only 47. Martha remained did remain permanently in Melbourne, she died there on September 6, 1935 aged 86 and lies at rest in Victoria’s St Kilda Cemetery.