The story of Ann Phillips: Neath to Provo

Ann was baptised in February 1797 at Neath parish church. Her parents had married four years earlier at Merthyr Tydfil, and it was to Merthyr Tydfil that they returned, for the births of their remaining children. She did indeed marry John Thomas, and we shall see how/why we can infer that, in our earlier research notes.

The John Phillip(s) who gave his permission was likely an uncle, her father then perhaps working away. He may controversially have had some objection to the marriage (shown here under 'eliciting approval'). Just four months after that, John Thomas gives his own permission for Ann's sister Gwenllian to marry, then only 18. He will later witness the marriage of his daughter Ann in 1837. In the 1840s he joins the Mormon church, and invites his son-in-law, Thomas D. Giles along to the meeting. They remain close.

We come to the first of our merged-facts-records, the death certificate for Ann's father, some 30 years later, in a much swollen MT. Thomas Phillip, lived high on the Heolgerrig (road), which leads from Ynysfach and Georgetown up the Mountain. I have walked it, and it is steep. It turns into a lane, then track as it goes over the hill. It was perhaps their original road into the town, from Neath.

Although we know very little of Thomas Phillip, we can now happily discount a much earlier death for him (c. 1810) and spy him in the 1841 census at Heolgerrig. Ann's sister Gwenllian also on the road, and we think she had died 3 years prior (t.b.c.), leaving Ann as eldest daughter to check in on father. This death certificate gave us the excuse to re-examine Ann Thomas, which we had thought was ‘wrong’, ‘inconclusive’ or ‘impossible to move forward with’. We volunteer an explanation of why her uncle John Phillips (rather than father Thomas) had allowed the under-age bride to marry, here.

Thomas entertained visitors during the hours of divine worship in the 1830s , and was fined accordingly (the other two accused had public houses that may have hosted meetings). Was he a nonconformist - surely Baptists did not receive such censure?

Thomas is living by himself in Heolgerrig and as an old man of about 80 (the parish registers have him as 79), dies of a fit and is registered the following day later by his daughter Ann, note that no relationship is specified on the certificate, as is common.

Meanwhile Ann and John Thomas have raised their children in Merthyr, witnessing the rise in population. John is listed as an (iron) miner in 1841, but by 1851 is a coal weigher, arguably a less strenuous job, perhaps given to older men.

1841 Tram Road, Merthyr Tydfil:
John Thomas 45 (iron) miner born outside county, Ann 40, Margaret 20 dressmaker

1851 Ynysfach Merthyr Tydfil:
John Thomas 54 coal weigher b Vaynor =Ann 54 b Neath
daughter Amy 27 b Merthyr (=Evan Evans 30 carpenter b Merthyr), Margaret 4 b Merthyr

In between the two years, in 1844 (per Giles’s diary), John Thomas becomes a Mormon at the hands of the charismatic elders W. S. Phillips, A. Evans and T. Pugh. They appear to meet in the houses of the Elders, and larger meetings take place in public houses. The minister promised a place where all would be welcome. Not much time was dwelt on fundamental theological differences. the preachers were all Welsh, 'one of them'. Perhaps new found friends got John a better job, above ground.

Ann's three daughters are married: Ann to David Hughes about whom we knew very little; Margaret to Thomas D. Giles coal hewer whose head injuries made him blind (became President of LDS locally), Amy to Evan Evans.

Ann could not have predicted but her life was about to change hugely, due to the Latter-day Saints. More visitors to her family home, after 35 years of marriage, a new husband, in a new town, New Tredegar.

There is no trace of the family unit of 1851 in future British censuses. The Evanses disappear completely. What has happened?

In January 1852, her daughter Amy Evans sets sail from Liverpool to New Orleans to begin a new life in Utah Territory, but mishap dogs the journey. We know that the steamboat Saluda, on which vessel the family moved up the Mississippi and then the Missouri from New Orleans to St Louis and beyond, exploded in March 1852, carrying 250 Mormons.

In September, her husband John Thomas took sick and died weeks later. It was now only Ann remaining from that 1851 census entry.

What next for Ann? It would be a short period with her daughter, Margaret, and the Giles family. They were dead-set on Utah. Ann was now an older widow - could she make the long journey, months of walking through desert? Ever practical came a solution: remarriage. She would remarry, then take ship for Liverpool, Boston and then the railroad to Iowa City.

Her certificate of second marriage is here:

The husband she married at Tredegar Wesleyan Chapel would in a few short months be pushing her handcart 1200 miles west from Iowa City at the very latest part of the summer, to the extremities of the united states (Utah was still then a territory).

Journey to Utah

This would be a test of anyone's mettle. Ann's journey would be exceptionally tough and she would take small comfort from survival. The very next two series of 'handcart' pioneers were caught in the snow of Wyoming. Ann too would experience personal tragedy and hardship on the trail, including the loss of a second daughter in cinematically brutal circumstances.

From Iowa City to Salt Lake. On arrival there by railroad the pioneers could not wait. They could not delay. Autumn was not quite in the air. The animal grease, old saucepans and harness leather with which they covered their four-dollar cart against the whipping Nebraska sand would save them.

Those who left England barely a week later, on the same route were destined to die in huge numbers in the October blizzards of 1856 in Wyoming, the ill-fated Willie and Martin handcart companies. But Ann was in the Edward Bunker company, arriving crucial days earlier in SLC, on 2 October. The majority of Bunker's casualties were her own family, who could not be helped.

Ann made it, to the Salt Lake Valley. She and Jarman set up house together: his tender third wife and step- daughter eased her journey to the next life. Her brothers and sisters kept their own counsel and did not, we believe, join in her crusade to the new life.

She leaves many descendants who can marvel at her achievements, although too many do not have her on their family tree! Thank you to those peripheral family members who have posted useful materials from their forebears on FamilySearch.

Ann and her husband, Thomas Jarman, settle in Provo, Utah and are happy and content enough. On Thomas Jarman’s gravestone is says ‘We shall meet again’.

xxx

More on Amy Evans
1852: Amy Evans, her husband and two children (daughter and un-named child of 3 months) sail from Liverpool to New Orleans on 10 January on the Kennebec bound for the Salt Lake valley, as shown on the very thorough Saints by Sea https://saintsbysea.lib.byu.edu/. Their minister was W. S. Phillips. It was a dangerous route with no railroad. These are early migrants, intended to be accompanied to Salt Lake by Mormon leader A. O. Smoot. We find them in no further records in Wales or Utah, as far as we can tell. There is a 'Brother EE' now settled in Argoed (Blackwood) later that year who we have yet to eliminate, or locate. But the company pressed on, up the winding and unpredictable Missouri river, up beyond the confluence with the Mississippi at St Louis. Not only did the boiler explode on the Saluda, ferrying so many immigrants inland, but cholera then wiped out many of the survivors. Aside from this shipping record, the Evanses (who did not died on the Saluda) have sadly and simply vanished. There is a brief entry in brother-in-law Giles's journal, 1852, at the death of his own father on the banks of the same river a year earlier (!), but nothing makes it into the account it seems for this tragedy.

References from Thomas Giles's diary
1852 (October): John Thomas sickens and dies. (Son-in-law Giles is now the man of the family.) Giles resides in Tredegar and visits his mother-in-law often.
1855: Giles records his mother-in-law (Ann)'s marriage to Brother Thomas Jerman (Jarman). This took place at Tredegar Wesleyan Chapel, orchestrated by Giles and Jarman in contemplation of emigration.

Dates in 1856
1856 (May): The ship leaves Liverpool just in time.
1856 (September): Mrs Giles, Ann's second daughter, goes into childbirth. Death. Niece Ann Uce who accompanied her and calls her mother, gets lifelong frozen feet. She's just 15.
1856 (October). The handcart company arrives in Salt Lake valley on 2 October.