Back to my story!

I mentioned in my first column that I had one Grandparent from Buckinghamshire, one from Pembrokeshire and two from the Llanelli area. I also hinted that things aren’t always the way they seem to be!

I’ve always known that my maternal grandmother was born in Dafen. I made the common mistake of assuming that this meant that if she was born in Dafen, then probably her parents must have been from the same area also. First lesson in Family History: never assume anything!

My grandmother was born in August 1902, in Dafen. She grew up in the hamlet of St. David’s, situated between Dafen and the Bryn. The hamlet had come about as a result of the workers who came there in the 1820’s and 1830’s, looking for work at the coal pit of the same name.

I knew from that my great grandfather was called Josiah Harries. I hoped that the name Josiah was unusual enough so that it could be easily found.

I found the record of their marriage in Llanelli in 1883 in the Free BMD marriage index. This only confirmed in my eyes that they were from the Llanelli area. I then found Josiah’s birth record in the Free BMD birth index and that’s when all my theories fell apart!

Josiah’s birth record showed that he was born in Brecon in 1854 and not Llanelli. I then found a Census record for Josiah and Mary in 1901 which confirmed this. I searched for other Census Records for Josiah, but couldn’t find any! How was this possible?

The only course of action was to send for a copy of Josiah and Mary’s marriage certificate and Josiah’s birth certificate, in order to get information on the previous generation, their parents. I sent off to Llanelli’s Registrar’s Office for the wedding certificate and to Breconshire’s Registrar’s Office for Josiah’s birth certificate.

Using the information I found on both certificates, I searched for Josiah in the 1861 Census without success. The certificates showed that Josiah’s father was John Harris, without the “e”, and his mother was Mary, nee Davies. I still couldn’t find Josiah in the Census records, even though I searched for both spellings of Harries, the one with an “e” and the one without!

As I mentioned in a previous column, giving tips on researching your family tree, one of the best tips is to check all variants of the name you are looking for, and not only for surnames! Unfortunately, this was right at the start of my search in to my family history and I hadn’t yet learned that lesson!

At the time, I was conducting my research at Llanelli Library, using the Library‘s subscription to Ancestry.co.uk for free. In desperation, when I next searched for Josiah on the Census records, I chose an exact search for J Harries, born in Brecon between 1850 and 1860. This meant that anyone with the surname Harries, with the initial J, born in Breconshire between those dates would show up. For my previous searches, I had just typed Josiah’s full name in the search box. Still no result. I changed the surname to Harris and I finally found him!

The difficulty all along was not only did his surname vary from census to census, from Harries, Harris and even Harrie but his name did not appear as Josiah until the 1901 Census! His name had been put down on the previous census forms as Joshua, Josua and Joshia! I had learnt my lesson about checking for different variations of the names I was looking for!

It didn’t help that Josiah, his parents and siblings lived at different locations around Wales for nearly every Census record up until 1901. Because Josiah had been born in Brecon in 1854, I had concentrated my search in that area, after establishing that he wasn’t from Llanelli.

In the 1851 Census, before Josiah was born, the family were in Dolgellau, Merionethshire. By the 1861 Census, the family were living in Neath. Other locations that they lived over the years included Carmarthen, Aberdare, Hirwaun and, of course, Llanelli. The reason for this soon became clear.

John’s (Josiah’s father) occupation was given on Josiah and Mary’s marriage certificate as “tinman”. It was also given as John’s occupation on 3 out of the 6 census records I had for him. I thought that being a tinman meant that he worked in the tinplate industry, but after looking into the meaning of the occupation of a tinman, I found out that it also meant someone who travelled around, repairing small kitchen utensils made of tin, such as kettles. This made complete sense as to why the family seemed to live in a different location in Wales for almost every census.

I noticed at a later date that on the 1861 Census, John’s occupation was actually given as “tinman/tin kettle maker, the last part of which I hadn’t been able to decipher for a couple of years!

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find my great grandmother Mary’s family. In the 3 Census Records I have for her since her marriage to Josiah, she stated that she was born in Llanelli. The marriage certificate I have for Josiah and Mary’s marriage shows that she was living in the Centre Hotel, Stepney Street, Llanelly at the time of her marriage and that her maiden name was Jenkins. I have no way of finding out whether she was living and working at the hotel or if she was a guest there whilst waiting for her wedding to take place.

Mary’s father’s name is given on the marriage certificate as John Jenkins, occupation collier. At the moment, I have no evidence to show where Mary comes from. There are no exact matches to her data in the Llanelli Census Records from before her marriage. The only close match I have for Mary is for a person who was born and lived in the Llandeilo area until the 1881 Census, but I have nothing to prove that this is the Mary Jenkins who went on to marry Josiah Harries in Llanelly just 2 years later, in 1883.