Whither the Blacksmith's Daughter?

Elizabeth Edwards was the blacksmith's daughter. Although hers is a common name, and she was born back in about 1846, I was not content to let sleeping dogs lie. Being the cousin of my Grandpa's grandmother, she needed to be found.

The start is bucolic enough, living at home age 4 and then 14 with her parents, and the younger siblings as they arrived, at the busy blacksmith's shop (Jim's Shop) on the main road perhaps, at Pengelly Cross, in the hamlet of Trenwheal, parish of Breage. There's a lovely retreat in the area now.

This happy idyll down by the water's edge, the River Hayle flowing close by, was doomed to end, of course. Whilst Elizabeth's younger sister (still toddling around) would remain in Cornwall until the 1950s, for the older sister we are looking at a different future.

In May 1866, the banks crashed, and the worldwide price of copper tumbled shortly thereafter, not aided by the earlier discovery of copper in South Australia. The following year, well we shall see.

Let us just reflect a minute on what life was like when Elizabeth was born (1846).

West Briton newspaper, 26 February 1847: I was informed by a respectable person from the parish of Breage, that a family of eleven persons… had scarcely any other food for several days than at dinner time, when they boiled the baking kettle filled with water, which they thickened with a little barley meal, to which they added salt and a turnip.

She had been born into the parish of Breage, admittedly not as poor as just described. Her father being a blacksmith near the main road would ensure a horse needing re-shoeing could pay for a meal on the table. Yet whither Elizabeth - there were several routes to explore what became of her. Could we find a marriage in one of the parish churches in Cornwall? Could we find a mention of her marriage (the blacksmith's daughter) in the newspapers? Were there any suitable death records for her in Cornwall? Did her parents make mention of her in their Wills? Are there traces of her family in the censuses in England, perhaps with aunts or uncles? Were there any unexplained DNA matches which could link to her?

The answer to all of the above was negative. We now proceed to examine the marriages in Cornwall, firstly those in Helston registration district (which included Breage), but first a gratuitous Poldark-themed map of the area:

Firstly, John Jose married in 1862 to an Elizabeth Edwards, most likely in the register office. The couple marrying with them, the Rules, resided at Ashton in Breage, but we cannot find the Joses. They remain possible.

Secondly, John Williams married in 1866 to an Elizabeth Edwards, most likely in the register office. I have not had any luck pursuing them, so they too remain possible.

Thirdly, William Dunn married in 1867 to an Elizabeth Edwards, most likely in the register office (along with the Penalunas from Crowan). An Ancestry tree suggests this couple emigrated to a coalmining county of Pennsylvania, USA, and death certificates for their children there confirm the parents 'William Dunn and Lizzie Edwards'. Importantly, this Lizzie is the right age, though sadly dies in 1897 age about 50 (date not known, year found on gravestone). This needs unpicking further as it might be right.

...

We now try to un-prove the Dunn marriage.

Against the Dunn marriage: what about our Elizabeth's cousin, a girl of the same name just a year younger who is living in Crowan, the very parish where the Penalunas reside? And with a stepmother living next-door to those very same Penalunas in the 1871 census for Crowan?

In favour of the Dunn marriage we have: the naming pattern of the children (slightly favours our Lizzie), Lizzie's age as given in the two US censuses, the fact that Dunn is living very near her in the censuses leading up to the marriage, and the evidence of the baptismal record (to follow).

Suffice to say, we have established sufficient proof, though we may yet purchase the marriage certificate to be certain. And now we return to the fateful years 1866/7.

Be aware that the American civil war, with its demand for brass buttons, copper canteens and bronze cannons and the Crimean war, had both recently finished. 'Copper-bottoming' of boats required less copper and more zinc. The value of copper nearly halved to under £80/long ton (source: wintons.com).

Today, cities, rail networks, wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars all use copper but these things were far in the future.

For now the Dunns were done. In 1866 the price fell, in 1867 Lizzie became pregnant hence the rushed (?register office?) marriage, and in early 1868 their son was baptised at Trenwheal Methodist Church (around the corner from maternal grandparents). She and her small family emigrated that year or the next to Carbon county, Pennsylvania.

The above map confirms that Beaver Meadows, where the Dunns settled, was coal country. This useful map came from Tales of the Towpath learning material suitable for schools in the area.

By 1880, William Dunn was a 'mine boss', later plumber, and his sons would become engineer, miner, public works clerk, moulder (at one of the iron foundries in the Lehigh Valley). Three of their sons died of heart trouble, so it is not unreasonable to assume that Lizzie's death at 50 was from this cause.

One troubling episode would have been the Great Fire of 1875 by which time Lizzie was 27 with four young children. Across the Lehigh valley at Mud Run in the Hickory Hills, a westerly wind caused ten miles of destruction as fire burned mills, houses, logs, timber, and standing trees.

Back home in Cornwall, her little sister was still only sixteen, and was destined to remain there until her death at 95, what a contrast. Her time would come though, called upon to act as mother to their brother's orphan children.

The blacksmith's daughter, whichever one you pick, would not live the tranquil life as depicted in our first link, above.

You can read more about Carbon County, Pennsylvania, where the tinner became coal miner, 'boss' and then plumber at https://culturedcarboncounty.blogspot.com. There are the slightly risical dramas surrounding the naming of the towns of Weatherly and Jim Thorpe (formerly the more historic Mauch Chunk), which can separately be read.

Getting Away with it in Helston?

When Richard Jenkyn died in 1766 he left a Will and much industry, ably transcribed here by St Erth's Dee: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~sterth/genealogy/wills1764_70.htm#Rjenkyn

Who was that niece Eliza Collins? I gave myself five minutes just to resolve her and move on.

Twenty minutes later, Eliza has been put to one side, as something entirely else is going on. . .

Richard first married Margery Row in the parish church in 1733 and their son was baptised the following year, and I haven't examined dates. The son dies and is buried in 1737 and 1738 (sic). There may be a daughter in 1741, but there will be no surviving children.

(By the way, if you lived in Helston you could choose whether you utilised the church there or the parish church at Wendron.  Eventually Helston would be split off.)

Elsewhere in Helston lived Joan Eva, unmarried, she's aged around 22 and begins to have a large string of illegitimate children each and every one triumphantly written 'Bastard' in the parish registers. These commence in 1738 and continue till about 1751. The inference would be that she had a steady partner, married to someone else.

Coincidentally, Margery Jenkyn dies in 1763 and in January 1764 (or 1765?), her widower, Richard Jenkyn is marrying to none other than Joan Eva!

Richard dies a year or two later, and Joan appears to survive listed as a pauper at her death in the fullness of time.

Her children? Joan junior marries and settles in Newlyn, while Richard (coincidental name?) settles in St Hilary. Neither probably will have much to do with their birth mother. The remaining siblings die soon after birth, although the eldest is not traced.

I'll not exactly sure what I think. Innocent til proven guilty, perhaps!

Elizabeth is Not Missing: Cornish origins revealed

A matriarch is really important to a family, and we had one, Mrs Elizabeth Rodda (nee Pascoe) mother of at least eight, right at the top of the tree. And that was the problem, who was she? Could we go back further?

For a long time I thought she was born around 1774 based on a death certificate. The document wasn't very convincing as the lady left a surviving husband,whereas our Elizabeth was a widow. The date 1774 was based on childbearing years running 1795 to 1817 - but it was simply incorrect. I even had a candidate baptised at Wendron, who I know now is... wrong. I wasted time digging around a James Pascoe (b. ~1790), based on a DNA theory - that too was mistaken.

This is the census entry which put me straight:

1841 Benner Down, Crowan: Elizabeth Rodda 69 minor, Elizabeth Rodda 20

It's short and sweet. She's a lot older than I was expecting (born about 1771) and lived much longer than I anticipated. But she was the only candidate left - with a burial at Crowan on 1 July 1847. Unusually the age at burial exactly matches this early census record.

(Her daughter and namesake is wrongly aged, being a good 15 years older than stated - maybe that's why I'd skated over this record in the past. She married the following year, perhaps reluctantly, and died in childbirth, but nonetheless great to know what happened to young Elizabeth, too.)

Finally, we can lock down a baptism for Elizabeth Pascoe, married in 1795 at Crowan to William Rodda. She was baptised 28 April 1771 in Wendron, daughter of Edward Pascoe and Elizabeth Thomas. 

Because she died in 1847, this explains why my Grandpa's great-aunt, born that year, was given the name Elizabeth Rodda Harris. Checking the dates and baby arrives just six weeks after grandmother's burial.

My grandfather did not know this matriarch, but he did sort of know his great-aunt (by reputation). So we can say that he knew someone born right at the end of Elizabeth's life.

-----------------------------------

Let's rewind the clock and hurtle back to the 1760s before Elizabeth was born. I have a transcript in my hand, the Will of one Richard Jenkyn of Helston. He was a blacksmith, twice married, but with no surviving children. He knew his time was coming, and made and executed his Will in the late Spring of 1766. He names various relatives including brother-in-law William Thomas, a tinner in Wendron, and by imputation, his niece, one Elizabeth Thomas of Wendron.

Wait - we have seen this name before. That's right, she's mother of our Elizabeth, and by comparing the dates, I can see she marries six months later, in December 1766.

So Elizabeth is not missing. We have two events book-ending her life, the Will of 1766 (the year which led to her birth five years on), and the birth of Aunty Rodda in 1847 (six weeks after her final breath).

We will obtain her death certificate, the right one this time, and continue to explore the early Wendron origins...

Pass me the Tabasco: the Pascoes and Iveys of Crowan

Obviously we needed a silly title, but I really did need that Tabasco sauce. I was poking around looking for clues I'd missed on my Ancestry DNA list of matches. We'd cracked a few high level ones, including Mick Hofna*, who I'm convinced is not related at all simply entered his name for a female friend (as they both joined social media the same day). That one was a bit of a run-around.

Yesterday we had gpagmaw which took me slightly longer to figure out. Or was it slightly less? gpagmaw is 'of course' Grandpa and Grandma W. Luckily they had a slightly similar version of this nickname as a Pinterest handle which listed their full names right next to it of Mr and Mrs W..... of some place north of Chicago. It was Grandma W. who was the connection, her husband was pure Polish stock, while her mother's obituary named her and then scouting through the various family lines. Nope, nope and nope, till we got to, ah-ha! Sarah Pascoe (born 1822 in Crowan Cornwall) and her husband Richard Ivey, emigrating to Wisconsin. Thank you very much.

Let me just say that gpagmaw had NO TREE, had not signed in forever, and no clue on the Ancestry page as to where she was based, excepting that she had 20%+ Norwegian forebears which does kind of scream midwest. Midwest = interesting = could she be Cornish? = yes!

American DNA matches with only a hint of the county in question in their ancestry are just my favourite. Most of Gma W's line are anything-but-Cornish (ABC), and of course how do I now For Sure that we connect this way?

Well, running through other folk on Ancestry who have Iveys from Wisconsin in their midst we find three other descendants of the Richard Ivey and Sarah Pascoe by two of their children, and guess what, they share matches with me and Gma W. Importantly, they too have no other known Cornish ancestry. I think that's good working proof for now, till we roll out the chromosome browser at some future date. I could be using DNAGedcom to have 'added' those other matches of Gma W. to the story but that would have taken just as long and - sometimes the less technical assistance the better.

We have our story. Now it's time to reveal that I have Pascoe ancestry in Crowan. (And no Iveys at all.) Elizabeth Pascoe marries in 1795 in Crowan and ...

... in the time it takes to tell the story, the dial has moved. I do not in fact have any Pascoe ancestry in Crowan. (Sarah Pascoe later Ivey, your story might take a little longer to come out.) Here is the census entry which changed everything, leading me to discoveries which fail to link Elizabeth to James (and his daughter in Wisconsin).

1841 Bennertown, Crowan: Elizabeth Rodda 69 minor, Elizabeth Rodda 20

For years I must have ignored this entry, with so much that doesn't fit the family tree, particularly if not entirely that young Elizabeth is thirty rather than twenty. But wiping away that blemish, THIS is my Elizabeth Pascoe, wife of William Rodda, and I can prove it. (Next blog relates an astonishing set of connections from before she was born...)

My carefully crafted Pascoes of Crowan guesswork crumbles away to nothing. Crowan, formerly Eglos-krowenn, I am leaving you behind in the rear-view mirror for now. It's time to go back, further back, to Wendron, half as big again, which where we need to go next.

Jenning Up (again)

Something made me this morning take a second look at my Sarah Hunter 1782 who married twice and moved away from Redruth. Big discovery at the time but really wanted to pin down her daughter Mary (1806) who also married twice - did she go to Canada or Australia? No further did I get. Took me about 30 minutes to put down my work.

OK - James Rodda born 1799, did he die in infancy or age 34. Quickly put that down as well. Time for another Cornish family.

Next up then, the Jennings family, where we had a bit more luck. Having untangled them a few years back, I wanted to soak up the success and find some DNA matches on Ancestry. I went in search of surnames which were good enough to seach on - Kemp, Opie/Oppy, Tozer, I was getting nothing. I was crying Foul! as these guys definitely emigrated and someone should match my line, someone....

(A brief interlude to explain ancestor Ann Jennings married her beau Francis Harris three weeks before Trafalgar, ONLY problem is he witnessed marriages of two ladies named Elizabeth Jennings in double-quick time thereafter ... only ONE of whom was his wife's sister, what a boggler.)

Back to business. So I examined the tree again. Looking into the next generation I saw that my Elizabeth Jennings 1786 had a granddaughter that married into the Knuckey family - let's plug that name into the search bar on my DNA page. Hello, what's this, the wrong Knuckey chap, but Benjamin Knuckey married in 1858 NSW to Esther J. JENNINGS. Turns out she is a niece of Elizabeth who I omitted from my Untangled Tree diagram. So their descendant, Christine can be tied in as my 5th/6th cousin with 10 centimorgan match.

Wham - just sorted that out, and big surprise number two came knocking. Something's up, Jenning up. IF Christine is a cousin then WHO is cousin Frank strolling in at 33 centimorgans which is arguably more? And absolutely definitely and truthfully who on EARTH is his forebear, just sitting there on the page, Mary Ann Harris born 1818 in Camborne?? To boot, her father is named as Francis??

SURE ENOUGH, I had ignored Mary Ann Harris baptised 23 February 1817 in Crowan, daughter of Francis and 'Hannah' (really seemingly Ann). She gets married nowhere near, I'd never looked for or given her a minute's thought and she turns out to be one of my closest relatives. Eeks!

Thanks to Christine in Oz and cousin Frank (still in Cornwall!) for doing the DNA test and giving me some embarrassing successes this morning. I was so normalised to the idea that Cornish DNA work was impossible, but frankly with 33 centimorgans matching, I am well pleased to add these folk onto the tree.

(But very embarrassing to note that Mary Ann Harris's husband has been on my files for FOUR years as the informant on her father's death certificate, 1855, which lead I had completely ignored!)

The tree which I was so proud of, that resolved the Jennings or at least bits of it is here:

Epic Epilogue. These things come in threes, right? Nosing around one more time on Ann Perry who marries 1780 in Crowan. Who is she? I rule out both the suitable baptisms in Wendron, ironically as we shall see.

Ann Perry baptised 1759 Wendron daughter of William and Jane marries I am comfortable in saying to William Symons at Constantine the next parish over, and there she stays. Naming pattern fits and there are suitable burials yet to be pinpointed for her.

Ann Perry baptised 1760 Wendron daughter of Bennet and Elizabeth marries in 1790 in that parish, relatively late to Sam Prisk and a suitable burial is found: sure enough her children include several named for her parents.

WELL, I promised you an epic epilogue, so what is going on. I examined the witnesses at the 1780 wedding of my Ann Perry (to Mr Jennings) one more time. Henry Odger is an old-timer, attending all the weddings he can, perhaps he's the parish clerk. Thomas Rogers however, who marks his mark (X), is no such man. In fact he doesn't do that much in Crowan at ALL.

Forgive me then for taking a deep and personal interest in the above event which just landed on my screen. For the cost of a click, I am seeing what I would describe as a Very Interesting Entry. My brain and my mouse are competing with each other. Not sure which one wins, but Thomas Rogers is of course..... a stepfather! I barely need the additional WHOMPH of evidence which is that he was a 'tinner at Crowan' upon his marriage, AND that Dunnet was a widow. Double whammy.

Work is ongoing (as they say on the nation's roads) to do more digging. No baptism is found for Ann, but that's no worries. ERRRR, actually, yes there is! Far be it from me to judge, but I smelt a big old rat. Of course Ann Perry is not the child of the second marriage to ROGERS, but NOR is she the child of the first marriage to PERRY! This is becoming the best mystery Agatha Christie didn't write. Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you the baptism of Ann Perry, who marries at Crowan in 1780... (and the common ancestor of all the above DNA matches)

HMM except there IS a baptism of Ann Perry 17 May 1761 Wendron after all (child of John and Dunnet), on the Bishop's Transcripts, so looks like the 1753 baptism is an earlier child (who maybe died young or maybe married in 1781 in Phillack). Dunnet, by the way, allegedly dies at age 96.

The fantastic Feltham sisters

 Edward Murrow - Elizabeth - Sarah - Sally - ANNA.

Anna was the tenth child, and only ten when her mother died. At 24, she was just three days shy of childbirth when she walked up the aisle at Ditcheat church, her ailing father perhaps accompanying her, and so she became Mrs Feltham.History repeated in that she too left a young family when she died at 40.

Thomas Feltham was a carpenter left with the following children: Ann 15, Susan 13, Jane 11, Hannah 8, Joe 2. They were not particularly religious baptising their children in clumps of two, except Ann who was of course baptised at the mother's parish of Ditcheat, a bit of time after the wedding. They lived in a cottage at Bayford, in the parish of Stoke Trister.

Undoubtedly the sisters had a tight bond as we shall see. Hannah and Joe would ultimately emigrate together. Ann and Jane would marry the same man, while Susan's eldest child (motherless too) would make her home with Hannah, and Ann would raise Jane's daughter having married her widower.

We peep into the world of the Felthams in 1840 when a farmer's daughter writes from Lamyatt to her sister in Ohio. Ann and Jane we learn are working for their uncle Joseph Whittock, farmer at Millbrook, Ditcheat. They would be domestic servants and Ann is still there the following June in the 1841 census, on the shelf.

It turns out that Jane had married in Bristol, to Richard Welch and the next letter refers to the newly weds settling in Ditcheat. Unfortunately Jane died four years later.

Around this time Joe Feltham (21) emigrates with his older sister Hannah to Springfield, Illinois, to work as a carpenter. We know this as his son's biography confirms it. It's 1844. She had been a highly competent maid at Cucklington Rectory, a short walk away, and most likely served as housekeeper. The arrangement cannot have lasted long as while Jane dies in Somerset, wedding bells ring out for Hannah in Illinois just two months later.

There are three more remarkable events to witness

1) 1847. Richard Welch, Jane's widower, remarries to her older sister Ann Feltham (now 37), who goes on to produce several daughters including at 43 the only Welch child who will continue the line. These will be the Millers of Ditcheat, ladies in a brief hiatus between their father's death and emigration to New Zealand.

2) 1855. Hannah returns to England from Illinois, now Mrs Rodham, accompanied by her young son Tom, who survives the crossing only to die back in the States. She must be tending to her widowed father, Thomas, who dies weeks later. Mrs Rodham returns like a will o' the wisp, back to America.

3) 1860. The year is unclear but it is after 1858 and before 1861. Susan has been dead ten years, and her family emigrate to South Africa where they will live an interesting and prosperous life as grocers and provision dealers to the silver- and gold-miners of Kimberley Town in Cape Province, numbering Cecil Rhodes among their customers. But, and there is always a but, tale remained there of a 14 year old girl who 'took the wrong boat'.

We return to 1855 to clarify matters. Accompanying Mrs Hannah Rodham back to the States was her 15 year-old niece, Anna. She emphatically had not got on the wrong boat, and we imagine had been in service to her grandfather, Thomas Feltham. She made a home with her aunt in Springfield before marrying at the age of 21 several years later.

So we have:

Ann - who by the way died a sudden perhaps gluttonous death at a richly furnished farmhouse in Kent miles from home, being found dead by a fifteen year-old servant girl (as she had once been). No longer the poor relation, on the shelf, but respected wife and mother. Though not by all. Marrying her sister's widower had cost her the home parish of Ditcheat where she'd so suddenly arrived in 1810. She could not stay to tend her infant daughter's grave but remained in exile. Her issue survive in Sydney NSW courtesy of her granddaughter Hope Smith.

Jane - died age 27 and buried in Ditcheat. Her only child had fits in later life, married a second cousin in the time of the hiatus and the line dies out.

Susan - died age 38 and her family lived in Kimberley, South Africa; and let's not forget, in Illinois courtesy of her eldest child.

Hannah - the ambitious one. Her descendants do trundle on, and in fact through her daughter, the female line continues. Hannah died at 53 like so many of these women.

Joe - including as a courtesy, but being male is outside the scope of this story. He marries a Frenchwoman and settles in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, and family flirt with Alaska unsuccessfully while another worked the forests of western Montana and dallied with life unsuccessfully.

May I say that Ann, at the heart of our tale, buffeted by fate, born in February 1810 so soon after the wedding, was born a Very Long Time Ago, and was dead by the time of the American Civil War. But as her son-in-law was born in 1861, and lived a long life (unlike Ann) we can exploit a quirk of the generations. There is a photograph in 1945 or thereabouts showing two lovely twin girls in Sydney (who are still alive I might add). In this photograph is their elderly great-grandfather, holding them!, just a year from death, and he is the son-in-law of Ann, born 1810. And of course I have met one of these twins, so we are just hop, skip and a jump from these fantastic Feltham sisters of so long ago.

Poor relations they definitely were, and we do not know their father Thomas Feltham's characteristics, but I remain delighted to see these ladies pickled in amber for us, hard-working ladies of their time, who moved from a life in service onwards to better themselves.

I wish to close with a photograph of a peaceful scene of a farm in Victoria, Australia, sheep safely grazing and one of Ann's descendants in charge of proceedings. But it would be an invasion of their well-deserved privacy, so I shall not.

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.

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.