Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/718

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DEVONSHIRE CHARACTERS

with a spade to the depth of twenty feet or more. China-stone also is found similarly composed of disintegrated granite, and contains quartz as well as kaolin. It is used in the manufacture of glaze for earthenware. From S. Austell, where three thousand persons are engaged in raising and cleaning the kaolin, something like forty thousand tons are annually exported to Staffordshire for the manufacture of porcelain. But it is employed also largely in the calico-weaving districts as the principal ingredient in sizing and loading calico. It is also used in paper manufacture for the highly glazed and smooth sheets employed for illustrations.

But to come to William Cookworthy. He belonged to a Quaker family of Kingsbridge. His grandfather, William Cookworthy, married Susanna Wearmouth in 1669, and died in 1708. His father, a weaver, also William Cookworthy, born in 1670, married Edith Dobell in 1704, and died in 1718. William the third Cookworthy was born in 1705. After the father's death the widow was left in straitened circumstances, and received assistance from the Friends' Monthly Meeting. Although reduced to poverty, with a family of seven children, the eldest only fourteen years old, the widow struggled bravely through her difficulties. William, the eldest son, was apprenticed after his father's death to the firm of Bevan, chemists and druggists, London, also Quakers. At the close of his apprenticeship, with the assistance of his employers, he set up for himself as a wholesale chemist and druggist at Plymouth, the firm being entitled Bevan and Cookworthy, and the place of business was in Notte Street, and here he lived for many years, and there died.

"He was in many respects a remarkable man, and his life is one of the most illustrious examples of men who have risen of which England can boast. Empha-