Well, it had to
happen. Anyone researching Welsh genealogy is likely to find a Jones
somewhere in their tree. I’d been lucky until I started looking at
my paternal 2x great grandmother, Elizabeth Lloyd (c1820 – c1890).
I’m planning a post
about how I discovered more about her on my A Rebel Hand blog, so I
won’t go over the details here, but eventually I found enough
evidence pointing to her being born Elizabeth Jones in Llandysul,
Cardiganshire (now Ceredigion) in Wales. Jones! Now that’s going to
make research into her family easier, I don’t think.
Some of the material
I used came from maps. If you’re a regular reader of Worldwide
Genealogy you’ll have noticed that I love maps, old and new. They
can fill in so much detail about our ancestors’ lives and can help
solve the problem of streets, houses and farms which have changed
names as well as when they were built. I’m going to write about how
maps gave me a bigger overview of the background of Elizabeth and her
husband, John Lloyd, who married in 1841.
1841 Wales census via Ancestry |
Here she is with her
parents, Jinkin [sic] and Anne and her brother David in the 1841
census. (I still haven’t come near to pinning David down. David
Jones in Wales? I mean, please!) But where are they living? It looks like Gwarllenoydor.
Google couldn’t find anything like that. Luckily I had an image of
Elizabeth’s marriage to John Lloyd which had Gwarllwynoedos as the farm’s
name.
Image via Findmypast |
Of course, census
enumerators could have, ahem, eccentric spelling, and if this one
didn’t speak Welsh he’d have made a stab at it without being able
to recognise some words,such as llwyn, bush or grove. So armed with the new
spelling I searched again and found... nothing. I went back to the
census and looked for a nearby farm, Cribor, adding the parish name,
Llandysul (also spelled Llandissil), to get an idea of where to look.
Yes! It was near Pontshaen (also Pontsian).
Now this is where
luck came in. I was looking at the family story that my Lloyds were
related to Frank Lloyd Wright.
I’d been intrigued by Eliot Ball’s Wikipedia Ancestor Challenge
at North Sydney Family History
(thanks to GeniAus’s GAGs for
pointing it out). And Frank's family came
from... near Pontshaen.
I tingled. I had a map of the area already
saved!
Ordnance Survey map showing Gwarllwynoedos |
And what a map. I’d
found it by looking for
Frank’s ancestors’
chapel, since his Lloyd Joneses were famous Unitarian preachers, and
luckily it was a listed building. The Listed Buildings Online
site led me
to this Ordnance Survey (OS) map. And there, in the top right corner,
was... Gwarllwynoedos. Thank you, genealogy map fairy! So, here’s
a hint: if you’re looking for ancestors in Britain and they lived
near an old or unusual building, try Listed Buildings Online.
Google map not showing Gwarllwynoedos |
I find the OS maps
better than Google's for places in the countryside – here’s the
equivalent – and Bing is great for getting an idea of the
landscape, which can be so important to how our ancestors lived
and who they met and married.
Bing aerial view of Gwarllwynoedos area |
But for finding named buildings, OS is
the one for me. Why not try all three out for yourself?
I’m not so keen on the OS’s own get a map feature,
though.
After I’d had my
genealogy happy dance, I decided to see if I could find where John
Lloyd, Elizabeth Jones’s husband, lived. The marriage document said
Blaencerdyn, also in the parish of Llandysul, which was backed up by
the 1851 census (as Blaencerdin). I had no luck with the Blaencerdyn
spelling, so I tried the other. This time Google recognised the name
– but came up with Blaencerdin Fawr and Blaencerdin Fach, both in
the same area of Llandysul. Fawr means big and fach means small, it’s
a common pairing in Welsh place names, so I was fairly confident that
I was looking in the right place.
But Google Maps didn’t recognise
either spelling, so I tried GenUKI’s list of Llandysul farms.
I was excited to see that Blaencerdin Fawr was in the district of
Llanffrene, just like Gwarllwynoedos was. I tried the OS get a map site,
and was thrilled to see that the two farms were near each other.
Elizabeth and John were neighbours! So that’s how they met.
OS get a |
With
this information, I went back to my listed buildings OS map and found
Blaencerdin Fach. So I had the ‘big’ farm and the ‘little’
one on two different OS maps. I needed both on the same map, though.
OS map of both Blaencerdins |
I took a gamble and
zoomed in on the listed buildings OS map and got lucky. Hint – use
the + and – symbols, not your mouse scroll wheel, they’re more
accurate for this map.
But which one was John Lloyd’s farm? This is where Ancestry’s back and forward
arrows on the census images came into their own. I’d usually
pinpoint the building by seeing what their immediate neighbours were
and check the enumeration district details at the beginning of the
record, then hope to find the places on the map. But this time I got
lucky. One page on in the 1851 census there was a family living at...
Blaencerdin Fach! So I knew that John was at the ‘big’ farm,
Blaencerdin Fawr.
OS First Series map showing Blaencerdin (top left) and Gwarllwynoedos (bottom right) |
I could also have checked at A Vision of Britain,
Ordnance Survey First Series 1:63360, 1805 to 1869, which shows the two
farms as Blaencerdin and Blaencerdin Fach,
or Old Maps Online, but I’d need the
co-ordinates for that since Blaencerdin doesn’t come up in their
search. I’d have needed more information to use the National Library of Scotland’s wonderful map-matching service,
too.
There was one last
map I needed to go to. My own. I mark the places where my ancestors
lived using Google Maps. I added them to my Lloyds map, alongside
Sadlers Hall, where John and Elizabeth's son Rhys (my great-grandfather) later lived. And only this
week I was able to add Rhyol, another Jones farm. Now that was a real
toughie to track down!
But this post is
l-o-n-g enough already. I hope you weren’t put off by the length. I
wanted to ‘show my workings’, as they told us to at school, and
hope that something here gives you a helpful tip for using maps to
trace ancestors from Britain, if you have any.
Have you got any map
tips to pass on?
Thanks for sharing your tips. Another source for maps is CuriousFox; and when I have trouble identifying UK place names the Parish Locator programme often helps.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Judy, I'd forgotten about CuriousFox (tsk!) I'm off to look at Parish Locator now.
DeleteGreat piece of research! I will have to give this a try.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Diane. Let us know if you find anything new, won't you?
DeleteI think Elizabeth's father was Jenkin. This fits with the Jenkins surname being popular in Wales.
ReplyDeleteSuper helpful post - and I love maps! I think I have some Welsh ancestors way back - they were found in Caernarvon Pennsylvania (big clue...), but haven't even begun to start to commence searching for them. Thanks for all the tips for maps, and searching areas in Wales.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, Hilary. The enumerator might have been using 'phonetic' spelling, which would fit with his eccentric way of writing down the farm's name...
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your post, the thoughts, the theory, the research, and the maps!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Carol! And since posting I've found another (hand drawn) map of the area... only three days later. And people ask when we'll 'finish' our genealogy research...
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete(Removed because of spelling mistake I didn't spot until I'd posted. Sound familiar?)
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