The uncertainty of the linked record: finding Ann in Utah

Ann Phillips was born in 1797 in Neath and came to Merthyr Tydfil as a young girl.

Ann Phillips might have married age 20 to John Thomas, and could have had children in the years after, the 1820, and might have stayed alive, along with her husband. (Although life in industrial Merthyr was pretty short and brutal and infectious).  If she could just survive until a census? Would I even recognise her in the census?

This is Ann Phillips (Thomas) in the 1841 census

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

As relationships are not stated, I cannot be certain that this was John Thomas who married Ann (Phillips) in 1817, and there are other John/Ann pairings in Merthyr (from the marriage registers), including as John Thomas and Ann (Tasker), each of whom could have married anywhere (Carmarthenshire, Brecknockshire) Moreover, although the population was lower at the time of likely marriage (rising from three thousand to at least 11 thousand by 1831), I still feel uncomfortable bolting this onto my tree. An Ancestry tree suggested the daughter, Margaret, lived briefly in Tredegar before a preposterous emigration, so this was sensibly ignored (for now!).

Here is an 1851 census entry, which might be the same couple:

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

So few details perhaps are overlapping. Different children, no baptisms for either daughter; I also could not trace the Evanses any further forward, nor the Thomases in 1861, I put the entry to one side for a year.

Looking again, however, some things do suggest a link between the two censuses. The name Margaret, the specific district of Merthyr Tydfil (Ynysfach), the ages and county-born statuses do in fact add up. The fact the couple had been in Merthyr a long time (daughter is 27 and born there) does help to convince me that these folk are locals, long-term residents of the area, and not recent blow-ins.

I can also see that a Neath/Vaynor born couple could only have married in Merthyr, the natural pull for both smaller communities.

The big disappointment was the complete disappearance, literal and figurative, of the other inhabitants of the household, from any future record, i.e. of the Evans daughter and her family. Whilst it could perhaps be explained by an early death/remarriage/transcription error 'hiding' the survivor's identity from future records, I could make no such link, and as such the useful 1851 census is deemed an 'island record'. The story of the Evanses would eventually emerge and prove shocking, thanks to only one record, but that is still some months away (see here).

What we really need here is a believable composite story, with one or two additional records to 'lock' Ann's life together. A keystone document, some additional reference that is not a piece of 'island data' (linked only by assumption) but one which works on several facts, a merged-fact document. For this we are going to need to look some more at the street of Ann's childhood, Heolgerrig, and in fact, Tredegar. We are also going to have to 'wake up' to the possibility of a Utah connection, which had been pushed to one side, earlier. But once we begin siphoning from the past, we cannot control what else we shall find in the flow...

HELP IS COMING: Mr Giles would be an anchor point on FamilySearch trees.

The death certificate of Thomas Phillip, Ann's father, was not expected to rouse the embers, but it did. 'Ann Thomas', the informant, appeared to be his daughter and thus indeed likely the wife of John Thomas. She is confirmed as living in Merthyr Tydfil. I remembered the lonely Ancestry trees that suggested she'd had a daughter Margaret, wife of Thomas Davis Giles. Mr Giles was something of a celebrity, and after recent Welsh/Mormon researches, it was time to look at FamilySearch trees.

Once we'd locate Giles on FamilySeach trees, there was more information on overlapping family interests can be shared. A researcher looking at Thomas Jarman knew from papers (sourced on the site) that he'd married just prior to his own emigration to Utah, to Ann Phillips/Thomas. This researcher had gone the extra mile and ordered the marriage certificate from Wales. Here it is. Finally the locking stone that links everything together

1851 28 Church Square, Tredegar:
Margaret Giles 29 born Merthyr (head of house), 3 children (Margaret, Joseph, Hyram); niece Ann Hughes 11 servant; lodger David Phillips 45 widower coal miner b Neath*

The above census shows that Margaret, the dressmaker in Tram Road from 1841 is now married to Mr Giles (away from home). As Ann Thomas is now a widow, it makes sense for her to be living with her in Tredegar, 1855. A wealth of further materials survive in America, Giles's journals, the shipping records, grave records, death records, personal recollections of Giles and of Jarman. Some of the linking evidence is shown below.

The whole family unit go out in 1856: Thomas Jarman and Ann, Thomas Giles and Margaret, their children plus the niece Ann Hughes (for discussion on that connection see elsewhere). The FamilySearch trees had not attempted to connect in the niece Ann Hughes, because of the difficulty in interpreting records in Wales. One researcher even put 'not trace of Ann Thomas [the grandmother]' in the 1851 census!

*Incidentally, David Phillips, is I believe a cousin of Ann Thomas (nee Phillips) and likely the widower of her second cousin, Mary Rees, who we think returns to Neath later that year to wed Gwenllian (Winifred) Williams. The other David Phillips living in Bedwellty have all been eliminated.

The marriage certificate of 1855 confirms that Ann Thomas is indeed the daughter of Thomas Phillip(s) the carpenter. At last, everything seems to be locking together.

We can now put together the story of Ann.