Sue Appleby

 

Sue has a deep interest in the history of all things Cornish. Her mother's family came from Cornwall and she spent much of her childhood staying with family along Cornwall's south coast. After moving to the Caribbean in the late 1960s, she she has spent most of her adult life working for various international, regional and national organisations. Married to Bernie Evan-Wong, she has two daughters, Meiling and Sarah, and lives in Antigua. 

 

Her first book, "The Hammers of Towan: a Nineteenth-Century Cornish Family", looks at the impact of the Great Emigration on her mother's Cornish ancestors, and a new edition - containing newly researched information, family photographs, and old Cornish recipes, was published at the end of May 2021.

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In 2019 Sue published "The Cornish in the Caribbean from the 17th to the 19th Centuries" which was shortlisted for the 2020 Cornish Publishers Awards - the Holyer an Gof. A paperback version was published in 2023. The book tells the story of the contribution made by Cornish people in the Caribbean: the miners in the copper mines of Cuba and Virgin Gorda, and the gold mines of then British Guiana and Aruba; Methodist missionaries; the captains and crews of the Falmouth Packet Mail service; colonial governors; wealthy planters; and navy and army personnel stationed in the Caribbean. "The Cornish in the Caribbean" also became the catalyst for songs written and performed by the Cornish-Cuban band Kewbanda as part of their Cornish in the Caribbean Project.

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Her new book "Wives-Mothers-Daughters-Widows: Cornish Women in the Caribbean" was published in June 2024. It is the first book to examine the lives of Cornish women who lived and worked in the Caribbean during the colonial period: indentured servants, 'ladies of quality', 'the middling sort', mining women, and missionary wives.

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