So far I have not been able to find any reference to the name RUBERRY, or anything similar in Cornwall before the late seventeenth century, when James RUBERRY married Audry TUCKER in 1686 at Constantine. Their first children were baptised at St Hilary, and later ones at Perranuthnoe. Their children either remained there, or moved to St Just in Penwith, but appear to have died out by the third generation due to a high number of male infant deaths. If the family did not originate locally, as would appear, it is possible that James came to Cornwall either as a mariner, a metal worker or a mine worker. It is known that Rs were employed in all those capacities in other areas.

What connection, if any, there is between James and the three RUBERRYs who married in the early eighteenth century in Cornwall has not yet been established. The first of these was John, a blacksmith of Germoe, married in 1713 at Perranuthnoe to Jael KITTOE. They had three children baptised at St Hilary, but the only son to survive to adulthood was a mariner who predeceased his father. Then in 1718 two marriages took place, Jane at Perranuthnoe to John GEACH and Richard to Elizabeth NINIS at St Hilary. It is from the latter marriage that all the present day members of this branch descend.

This branch forked into two separate limbs. From their son John, baptised in 1719 at St Hilary, came the farming families of Ludgvan. Members of this family have moved to the USA, Canada and Australia where they have all settled and founded families. From his brother James, baptised in 1721 also at St Hilary, arose the ship building families of Porthleven. One of this branch died in South Africa, as is commemorated on a tombstone in Porthleven churchyard, and another settled in Bermuda. Others also travelled to America, but eventually returned home.

The small coastal graveyard of Porthleven contains many fine RUBERRY gravestones, possibly due to the fact that from ship-building some of them turned to carpentry and building and hence to the undertaking business. A fellow GOON, Tom Danks, lived in Porthleven and was kind enough to photograph the headstones for me. In an interesting coincidence Tom himself has RUBERY ancestors as he descends from Elizabeth RUBERY baptised in 1810 at Tipton, a member of the RUBERY & Owen Family Tree. The photograph (taken in 1997) shows his granddaughter Rachel standing beside the little grave of Audrey RUBERRY who died in 1923 aged 2 years old. To the left of the photograph can be seen the Methodist Chapel, where William RUBERRY was an early class-leader; in the far distance the clock tower and the sea and to the right the parish church of St Bartholomew.

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  Richard RUBERRY married in Cornwall in 1878. He settled in Idaho where his family now live.

  The records of Ellis Island contain quite a few RUBERRYs, all but one of them from the Cornish family.

  The RUBERRY surname.