It all started with a young girl who wanted to prove, or disprove, the family stories of Cornish smugglers in the family tree. That was over 30 years ago and I proved the Smuggler story quite easily ( John Carter of Prussia Cove) The problem was I couldn't find my Boase line. So out of sheer frustration a One Name Study was started, on the basis that if I collected ALL references to the surname, sooner or later I was bound to fall over the ones I could claim as 'mine' Well I'm still collecting, and still looking.

The Boase name seems to originate in the very West of Cornwall in the Parishes of Paul and Madron. Although the earliest references I have are of births in Illogan near Redruth. Unfortunately from a family history standpoint the Church at Paul was attacked by the Spanish in 1589 and all the church records were destroyed so the prospect of getting further back within that parish are limited.
In the early records the name was spelt with or without the final e – Boase or Boas and this seemed almost to be interchangeable until the 1820’s I have concentrated my research on these two variations of the name and do not include variants such as Boaz, Boaze, Bows, Bowes etc unless I can see that they are merely spelling errors as I believe that these other variants have occurred independently in various areas of this country and elsewhere.