Sunday 18 December 2011

Where there's a Will...

I've accumulated dozens of papers over the last few years, mostly wills from Llangynin and neighbouring parishes. These are fascinating documents as they give us a glimpse into rural life in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Two things have struck me:
1) Bad handwriting and bad spelling are not modern phenomena;
2) How few possessions our ancestors had.
For example, according to her will, Catherine Morris of the parish of Llangynin had the following possessions in 1687:
Two cows
Two heifers
15 sheep
8 lambs
One pig
One boar
Three old blankets and some old bedding
One little brass pot
One baking stone
One stand, one old chest
There are a few other bits and pieces I can't decipher but there does not appear to be a bed listed. Catherine probably piled her old bedding on top of a wooden pallet type structure every night. She would have spent virtually every daylight hour out of doors, which was just as well as the house would have been horrendously smoky from the fire. There may not even have been a chimney, the smoke given the freedom to find its own way out, via Catherine's lungs, no doubt.
The diet probably would have been reasonable with milk, meat, butter and vegetables  in good supply depending on the time of year...and Welsh Cakes cooked on the bake stone of course! There are plenty of springs in the parish but many are high in iron oxide which wouldnt have been pleasant to drink and would have the added disadvantage of turning your hair green! High concentrations of iron can cause high blood pressure and kidney problems too.  
In case I've put you off staying in the parish - modern UV filtration removes the iron from the water and I've never seen anyone with green hair within 5 miles of Cefnmeurig Cottage. 


Extreme Welsh Patronymics ( or a very Ap post)

The abbreviations "ap" meaning "son of" (e.g. John ap John) or "vch" meaning "daughter of" (e.g. Margaret vch John) were used in older wills and documents but rarely with as much style as one 18th century Welsh bankrupt. He signed himself as:
“Siôn ap William ap Siôn ap William ap Siôn ap Dafydd ap Ithel Fychan ap Cynrig ap Robert ap Iorwerth ap Rhyrid ap Iorwerth ap Madoc ap Ednawain Bendow called after the English fashion...John Jones


Love it. 




Children of Cefnmeurig Cottage Cause Confusion.

The search for one's roots is not a fashionable new pastime in Wales; it has always been popular.
Writing in 1899, J Gwenogvryn Evans said:
"A considerable section of the community takes the most astonishing interest in the subject of pedigrees... The writer has found it difficult to swallow his soup with grace as he listens to "a descendant of Rhodri Mawr" wondering if there was no way of recovering some of the family estate, which was so extensive in the year 946."
Six centuries earlier, the half-Norman, half-Welsh Gerald Cambrensis (whose mother was Nest, "the Helen of Wales", incidentally) wrote:

" ...Even the common people retain their genealogy, and can, not only readily recount the names of grandfathers and great-grandfathers but can refer back to the sixth or seventh generation."
He could have been talking about me. I am a common person and I can recount the names of my grandfathers and great grandfathers. I also know the name of my sixth times great grandfather, living at Cefnmeurig. And my mother's name is Nest.
Luckily, the 1747 will of John Rees of Keven Meyrick survived and proved the link. This is an important document not only for the family but also for the parish as it gives an indication of when surnames were fixed in the area.
Up until the 19th century (in some rural areas) the Welsh used an ancient PATRONYMIC naming system whereby the children of a marriage took their Father's forename as their surname (or very occasionally mothers). As a result surnames were not fixed and changed from generation to generation.
For example: my John Rees had three sons, John, William and David. 
The three sons went by the names of:
John John or John John Rees;
William John or William John Rees
David John or David John Rees
John John had a son, David, who was known as David John 
William John also had a son, David, who was known as David William
Thereafter all David John's descendants had the surname JOHN and all David William's descendants had the surname WILLIAM OR WILLIAMS.


This goes some way to explain why the pool of Welsh surnames is so small, most having derived from a quite limited number of forenames, popular at the time surnames were fixed.