On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 09:18:24AM -0400, Alice L McVearry wrote:
I'm new to the list, new to Welsh research, not exactly dumb as a stone,
but certainly needing to know where to acquire specific information. As I
live in the US, personally visiting Wales and the resources there is not an
option.
The most prominent question is where can I find information on BMDs prior
to 1837?
For instance, a previous researcher has recorded a marriage on 4 Aug 1835
in Llanbeblig, Caernarvon (I don't know where that is yet), between Richard
JONES, b. 1815 Penrhoslligwy, Anglesey, and Hannah WILLIAMS, b. 1813
Llanwenllwyfo, Anglesey. These birth years and place names have been
verified by the 1841 - 1891 census records.
As I understand it, even if I could find and purchase a death record at
FreeBMD it would not indicate who Richard's parents were, only what he did
for a living.
If there are obviously children missing from the census records of this
couple from 1841 onward, but one doesn't know what names to look for, did
the Welsh have a naming pattern similar to the Scots?
How do I go about finding out who are the parents of Richard JONES and
Hannah WILLIAMS, how can I find their actual birth dates, and how can I
verify the marriage date and place recorded by the previous researcher?
Are FHL films the best or only choice? Online sources would be the ideal.
Any and all suggetions will be appreciated and explored. -- Alice
Alice,
The LDS records available via
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm#Page
show the marriage of Richard Jones and Hannah Williams at
Llanbeblig (essentially the parish of Caernarfon Town) on 4 AUG 1835 and
with some patience you can trawl through the baptism records to find
their children. I had a quick look and found,
Richard Jones 22 AUG 1838 at Llanbeblig, son of Richard Jones and Hannah
John Jones 04 JUN 1837 at Llanbeblig, son of Richard Jones and Ann
I am including the second entry even though the mother's name only
sounds similar to Hannah.
In 1835 the marriage register could record the parish of the groom and
bride, the occupation of the groom, both fathers' full names and
occupations, the signatures of groom, bride, both fathers and/or both
witnesses, but in practice the entries would not be complete and fathers
details are fairly often not recorded.
Nevertheless the best approach to find the fathers' names would be to
get the marriage register entry, either via the LDS microfilm of the
Bishops Transcript or the original document - there are reports that the
LDS are currently microfilming the parish records of Wales, so if you can
wait a year or two ...
Other sources are the baptism records of Richard and Hannah, graveyard
records transcribed by the Gwynedd Family History Society
http://www.genfair.com/shop/pages/gyn/index.html
and the index of Wills (prior to 1837) if an ancestor owned property.
http://www.a2a.org.uk/search/index.asp.
If the ancestor owned a great deal of property then you could also use
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?includedb=willperf
which is a partial transcript of John E. Griffith's Pedigrees of
Anglesey and Carnarvonshire Families.
Traditional modes of Welsh naming are described in
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/ParishRegs.html
After the use of a patronymic was replaced with a surname,
the tradition of naming first children after a grandparent was quite
common.
Robert