Hi to Jeff Thomas and everyone else --
This is my first chance to post here since we, too, have just returned from a visit to
Brynmawr and vicinity. My laptop, which I took on the trip and which consequently has all
the information we acquired there, is acting up and at present (among other woes) cannot
access the internet, so details on what I'll summarize here will have to wait -- but
I've discovered something which was wonderful news to me and may be news to many of
you as well.
[Background info: My POWELL / NEWMAN ancestors also emigrated from Brynmawr to
Pennsylvania in the late 1860's -- specifically to Plymouth (near Scranton), where my
g-g-grandfather William Powell and his eldest son James were killed in the great Avondale
mining disaster of September 1869. William Powell and Eliza Newman (of Nantyglo) had
married 3 Feb 1846 at Calvary Chapel. They had six children betwen 1847 and 1863, the
youngest of whom was my great grandmother Sarah Ann. Details on this family can be found
in my earlier posts to this maillist, so I won't repeat them here.]
Before my trip, Barrie Jones and a number of other kind souls on this and the
Monmouthshire maillists as well as Gwent FHS had given me a lot of help trying to locate
further records on my Powells. I was most specifically searching for church BMD info and
burial records, as well as anything that would help me pinpoint the precise year of their
emigration. My Powells, being nonconformists, left scarcely a trace on any of the indexes
I've searched repeatedly online and in Salt Lake City, including Llangattock, Llanelly
(St. Elli), Nantyglo/Blaina (St. Peter's), the Brynmawr Municipal Cemetery, and all
other published monumental inscriptions and Anglican parish registers in the area. Since
Powells with my family's Christian names are superabundant on the GRO indexes for the
area and I'm not a zillionaire, I sure couldn't afford to send for GRO
certificates for the scores of index entries which might just possibly be
"mine". The overall impression I got from everyone who hel!
ped me was that Calvary (Baptist) Chapel records have simply not been preserved and that
the cemetery is long gone. Then to cap off my discouragement, I learned just before our
departure that the Powys archives (containing much of the material for Brynmawr in that
era) would be closed for the entire month during which our visit was to take place -- the
most horrible luck imaginable. So all in all, I felt my prospects of finding much in the
Brynmawr vicinity were pretty dim.
Imagine my delight, then, when the friendly volunteers at the Brynmawr museum (at various
times Vivienne Williams, Norman Griffiths and Myra Howard) helped me make contact with
Pastor Foster of Calvary, a former miner and local elected government official who is now
retired and recently widowed and lives in Maesgwartha. He met my husband and me at the
chapel, gave us a very interesting tour of the church and the neighborhood and told us
many great stories of the congregation and the region's past. He's a good and
delightful man. Sadly, this chapel which was once such a central feature of Brynmawr
community life now has only 17 active, elderly members, so its prospects for survival are
iffy at best. But here's the good news: when my husband and I questioned Pastor
Foster about records, he dug around in a closet under the stairwell and produced several
very old, dusty ledgers. The earliest -- and the first we opened -- was the membership
rolls from 1844 -- and whom shoul!
d I find on that first page but my g-g-grandparents, not even married yet. As we leafed
through successive pages of this and other volumes -- records of baptism (which of course
in the Baptist church are adult, not infant baptisms), membership, transfers from other
congregations, restorations to the church, etc., I found my relatives again and again.
This has enabled me to flesh out the family chronology quite a bit more.
We also discussed the matter of the church cemetery. To my surprise, Pastor Foster said
that it is still there, then showed it to us -- right behind the chapel. The problem is
not that it has been razed, as other chapel cemeteries have and as I understood had
happened to Calvary, but rather that it has just not been maintained at all. Today it is
a grassy field in which a few tombstones at the top of the slope are visible from the
church windows. There may well be others that survive which were hidden in the tall grass
and weeds. There is no public access except through the church. Unfortunately, we were
quite late for another appointment by that time and did not have time to walk through the
cemetery and note detailed information on it -- but the point is, there IS still something
there. I did take a photo which I'm happy to e-mail. Perhaps a kind local person
might be persuaded to make an appointment with Pastor Foster to take more detailed
photographs and/or sketc!
h the cemetery, if this has in fact never been done.
I told Pastor Foster that I thought there were MANY people who would be surprised and
delighted to learn that Calvary Chapel still has so many records, and that numerous people
around the world with Brynmawr roots in that chapel would consider the information as
precious as I do. [To other listers -- can you please verify for me that this Calvary
information is not, in fact, generally known??? I want to be sure we're dealing with
an archive which has not in fact been preserved for the general public yet, not simply one
which I personally hadn't found out about but which others have already safely
preserved.] If I lived near Brynmawr rather than on Whidbey Island, Washington, USA I
myself would so very gladly transcribe all the records to make them accessible to others.
But under the time constraints we had, I did all I could think of -- took quick digital
photos of much (but not all) of the information from the early years. Since my good 5
megapixel digital camera had!
just bitten the dust the day before (another bit of bum luck), I had only my older 2 mp
backup camera, no tripod, and very poor lighting in the room. Consequently the photos
leave much to be desired -- but they are for the most part legible images of the pages I
shot.
As soon as I can get the information out of my laptop, I'll post further particulars
here of exactly what images I have. These include photos of the chapel exterior and
interior today, Pastor Foster, the cemetery, a few pages of an old published
congregational history, and of course the handwritten records themselves. Since I took my
personal website down when I retired from teaching college, I no longer have a spot to
post these images on quickly -- but Jeff, I would gladly post them on yours or some other
appropriate location. [Suggestions, anyone?]
IF someone at Gwent FHS, the Brynmawr museum or the Gwent archives in Cwmbran can verify
for me that these are records which indeed need preservation and dissemination, I will be
very happy to volunteer to transcribe what I've got images of for a start. And if
that is so, I also hope that someone official will call upon Pastor Foster and arrange for
better images (photocopies, digital photos, microfilm, microfiche or all of the above) to
be taken and stored safely in regional archives. My feeling as a historian (albeit a
retired one) is that, when so many nonconformist chapel records have already vanished,
something should be done post haste to ensure the safekeeping of these very ephemeral but
valuable ones. I'm willing to do all I can from thousands of miles away to help with
this effort. I already intend to duplicate the images I have and send them on CD's to
Gwent FHS and to the Brynmawr museum.
This has gotten awfully long, but let me just say quickly that the folks at the Brynmawr
museum and the Brynmawr library were warm and hospitable and made our first visit in 23
years a great pleasure. The Brynmawr area is looking ever so much better than it was in
1981, and it's gratifying to see the pride people are taking in preserving their rich
local history. The museum folks were still excited about your visit, Jeff, and
immediately pulled out the copy of your manuscript history which you had left with them.
I had already intended to write and ask you for a copy, but now your query gives me an
even better reason to write you!
Again, apologies for the length here -- more info to follow ASAP.
Best regards,
Judith Sylte
Whidbey Island, WA USA