Tregelles Family
One of the major families of Cornwall. As with some of the other wealthy Cornish families, such as the Foxes, they were Quakers.
Samuel Tregelles (1766–1831) was a merchant and rope maker. He married Rebecca (1766–1811), daughter of Thomas Smith (1725–1792), a London silversmith and member of the Quaker banking firm of Smith, Wright, and Gray; her surviving sister married Thomas Fox (1747/8–1821), a woollen manufacturer and banker of Wellington, Somerset
1789 Samuel Tregelles (1789–1828) was born (it is inferred) to Samuel and Rebecca
1791 Samuel senior was one of the twelve partners in the Perran Foundry.
1794 William Murdoch demonstrated his apparatus, for extracting gases from coal for use in lighting, to (the) Tregelles and others at the Neath Abbey Co's ironworks in Glamorganshire.
1806 Edwin Octavius Tregelles (1806–1886) was born on 19 October 1806 at Falmouth, the youngest of the seventeen children (eight being twins) of Samuel and Rebecca.
1813 Birth of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1813–1875), son of Samuel Tregelles (1789–1828), merchant, of Falmouth, and his wife, Dorothy (1790–1873), daughter of George Prideaux of Kingsbridge. He was the nephew of Edwin Octavius Tregelles. More information here.
1820 Edwin Tregelles was apprenticed to his cousin Joseph Tregelles Price (1784–1854), managing partner of the Neath Abbey Iron Co.
Edwin's brother Nathaniel (1803–1887) also joined the Neath Abbey Iron Co .
1827 Edwin's 40 first cousins were nearly all intellectually vigorous as well as active in commerce or industry, including Robert Were Fox (1789–1877) and Charles Fox (1797–1878). Edwin became an active Quaker minister.
From 1829 to 1835 Samuel Prideaux Tregelles was employed at the Neath Abbey Iron Co. After he left this employment he became a teacher and famous bible scholar.
1831 Rather than be party to supplying machinery to a Newport brewery, Edwin resigned his position at Neath.
1832 Edwin married Jenepher (1808–1844), daughter of Abraham Fisher of Youghal, Co. Cork; they had three children.
Edwin went into business as a civil engineer; superintended the introduction of gas lighting to towns in southern England.
1835 Edwin was appointed engineer of the Southampton and Salisbury Railway
Edwin surveyed the West Cornwall Railway
1847 Nathaniel retired from Neath Abbey Iron Co.
1849 Edwin reported on the water supply and sewerage of Barnstaple and Bideford.
By 1850 Edwin had become a tinplate manufacturer at Shotley Bridge, Co. Durham. In 1850 he married his second wife, Elizabeth Richardson (1813–1878): there were no children.
1853 Edwin retired from business and devoted himself entirely to Quaker and philanthropic work.