All,
When this list started ("we have a list") there were not the
resources that are around now, Ancestry wasn't anywhere near as big,
Rootsweb was pretty innovative. Things have changed a lot, but a
mailing list seems to be as much a community as a source of information.
I hope someone can find the time to take over the admin - it's not
that difficult. :-)
Following a spell working away from home other things have come along
and family history has found itself on the back burner, but not
extinguished - I expect to revisit when I retire in a few years time.
My BEBB family are from the Newtown area, mainly the surrounding
villages. They moved late 19th c to the Rhondda, Ton Pentre, for
mining work. My GGF did pretty well to reach his 60s but died with
his lungs full of coal dust. My GF joined the Army, thinking it safer
(WWII notwithstanding) and moved out of Wales.
The first Bebbs appear to have moved into Wales c 1540, possibly as a
result of Henry VII and VIII sorting out the troublesome Welsh and
imposing a bit of order. Some early entrepreneurs, it seems.
Originally around Llanllwchaiarn, the family seems to have centred on
Llanbrynmair in the 1700s and spread out from there.
Branches of the family moved around, notably to Ohio and northern US
but some stayed fairly local, in Shropshire, while others moved west
to Aberystwyth way - Ambrose Bebb the author, Dewi Bebb the rugby
player, and even more recently Guto Bebb, an MP. There are many still
around Newtown.
It is a very odd feeling, coming from an area where the name is
scarce, to visit a place where it is fairly common. When somebody
says Mr Bebb here it is bound to be me - in mid-Wales it usually isn't!
I did find some tenuous links from my Berriew family to the
Llanbrynmair Bebbs, although I will need to revisit and renew the
research. That is a target, to find that link, something still to
accomplish. The unbroken chain of Thomas Bebb, father and son, gives
a good lead back to early 1800s but it gets a bit fuzzy then.
More recently I have visited the area, having a motorhome. It sends
shivers up the spine to see the places that I only knew from census
reports and BMD certificates on matter-of-fact modern signposts, to
visit modern Newtown and walk across the canal aqueduct across the
Rhiw to have lunch at a pub in Berriew. The mountains in my
imagination have been replaced with rolling hills, there are still
many places to visit, and far too many of the local accents are
English. But I guess that's life.
So I am interested in Bebbs - 1540 to present - and there are a good
few Davies in the mix, too. I've just been contacted by a possible
distant relative, which has sparked the interest a little, and the
next holiday in the van is planned for West Wales.
Malcolm
Malcolm's posting and his mention of Berriew reminds me of a gravestone I found in
Virginia City, Nevada, in 1966.
Its inscription read "In memory of William L Williams. Born in Llanfair,
Montgomeryshire, Wales, AD 1836. Died in Virginia Sept 16, AD 1870, aged about 34 years.
Erected by his only surviving brother David."
I felt there was a story there and tried to find William and David in Montgomeryshire
records around Llanfair and Berriew but failed. I'm wondering if a Powys member might
have the answer.
Brian Jones