Crossing the Rubicon again and again in Wales

I am in the middle of working out how long it could possibly take to identify Mrs Lloyd. The answer, at the minute, seems to be about 13 years. It was in 2008 that I began the journey and possibly another 13 years before that if we want to go back to the beginning. There would be a number of rivers to cross.

I had just finished my lambing at a little village on the Welsh border west of Kington. I was still a teenager and it was time to take my new (old) car for a bit of a spin through Wales before heading home. I found myself at the foot of Cefn Vaynor in the Brecon Beacons: a cracking walk. I was here because in 1834 Blanche Morton had got married at Vaynor to my forebear William Francis and taken the line forward to me. I knew this from the Family Bible and from the International Genealogical Index on microfiche in the library.

Actually we need to read that the other way around. Blanche getting married at Vaynor will be taking me back from 1834, in many directions possibly all at once. But it was the route to Mrs Lloyd that has taken the longest, so far.

The first Rubicon. The first child of Blanche was to die young (like so many others of her brood, and that of her twin's), but at her baptism at Pontmorlais Methodist Chapel in Merthyr, the little infant is listed with her maternal grandparents' names: David and Margaret Morton. Seeing as Blanche herself has no baptism, the first Rubicon is crossed. We are now in Monmouthshire, Blanche's birthplace.

The second Rubicon. Although Ann Morgan's baptism takes place as expected, at Cadoxton-juxta-Neath, it's probable we would know nothing of her siblings were it not for an extremely helpful will. The Will of Elizabeth Pengilly, found in 2009, means we can link Ann to her parents, siblings and half-siblings.

The third Rubicon. It was another seven years before I found the marriage of Jennet William to Mr Philip, and became confident the bride was correctly identified. It was a further three and a half years before I found Mr Philip's death certificate and re-examined the evidence indicating that his daughter was part of the Thomas and Hughes families.

The fourth Rubicon. In the same summer as the last (2020) I needed compelling proof that Ann Thomas (circa 1814) had indeed married the most likely David Hughes and that the couple of this name with a daughter Elizabeth were one and the same. Obtaining all permutations of birth certificates confirmed this. I still required proof that the child Elizabeth stayed behind in Aberdare whilst her sister, mother and grandmother each and severally emigrated to Utah. This came in the form of a DNA test, which was completed favourably, and analysed in the summer of 2021. Elizabeth's descendants are matches of the appropriate degree to her sister's descendants, found in some number in Utah*.

Four Rubicons crossed: although with the peregrinations of the family taking us through the same towns more than once, it does feel as if there have been several crossings of the same mighty river.

As the rivers were crossed, swathes of genealogical forest became accessible. If the search had been easy, it would certainly not have been completed.

 *Full analysis would necessitate the use of a chromosome browser. As this whole exercise has been 'for my entertainment only', I do not currently intend writing up the results, corroborating as they seem to do, the documentary evidence.