Thomas Vaughan (born 1850) was Branch President in Witton Park!

 It wasn't a large branch and it didn't last long as many members emigrated to the United States, but it's right there in ink in official records:

LDS CHL CR 375 8 

This is from the Confidential Minutes of the Witton Park Branch in 1884. As a service missionary in the Church History Library, I have staff access to this which is listed as "closed to research." It is possible for others to get access upon a justified request. And I saw nothing of sensitive nature in this record. Anyway, I have it. And there it is in ink!

Our Elinor and Mary Taylor Mayo

The evidence is pretty solid that our Elinor* (1789-1861) was the traveling companion of Mary Taylor Mayo (1791-1856) in their travels to America and on the Pioneer Trail. Mary is the one who died just short of South Pass on the Overland Trail. She died September 13, 1856, in Nebraska Territory and was buried in Oregon Territory when the Ellsworth Handcart Company stopped for the night at Pacific Springs.

There are two contemporaneous lists of the members of Ellsworth's Company that departed Iowa City on June 2, 1856. Neither one is in alphabetical order. The people are generally grouped by families. Interestingly, Elinor is not grouped with her daughter, Jane Vaughan Lewis (1827-1890) and her family. They travelled from Britain to the United States in different ships within weeks of each other. However, Elinor and Mary Mayo are listed together on both lists.

CHL MS 1964 Ellsworth Folder 1, Journal list, Image 11,  p. 6, Eleanor Vaughan, Mary Mayo.

CHL MS 1964 Ellsworth Folder 2, Image 6, Co. List, Eleanor Vaughan No. 35.

CHL MS 1964 Ellsworth Folder 2, Image 7, Co. List, Mary Mayo No. 36.

The first thing to notice is that Elinor's age is given as 68 on these lists. This is much more accurate than most other records of the time. She is listed on the Enoch Train ship manifest as 78, and as various other ages in the records. 

As a service missionary in the LDS Church History Library (CHL), I have had the opportunity to discuss Elinor and Mary Mayo with the professional historian who is in charge of the Pioneer Database. In a recent conversation, she confirmed that seeing Elinor and Mary together on these lists was a good indication that they had been assigned as traveling companions, most likely when they both boarded the Enoch Train, as neither of then had any family to be with them on that stage of the journey. Their natural inclinations as elderly widows would be to look out after each other and that would have suited the Mormon Elders in charge of the passengers.

This likely continued on the trail. While "family" may be an important unit and would have usually slept together in the same tent, the handcart companies were often divided based on needs of the group as a whole. The youngest children able to walk were led out together in the morning before the families packed up. Mothers would be expected to carry infants. Young men were often assigned as teamsters, to drive stock, to assist the elderly and infirm, or other duties. Generally, each handcart was for five individual and each canvas tent slept twenty. In the second list above, the company appears to be counted by tens and twenties that may have reflected the "captaincies" and the tent assignments.

Another matter that I have yet failed to discuss with professional historians is that Mary Ann Jones (1836-1925) who later married Edmund Ellsworth, told of two elderly women who were not happy with the weight limit for their personal goods on the handcarts. One, who has been identified as Mary Mayo, carried a hatbox in her hands. The other, whom we believe to be our Elinor, had a teapot and colander tied to her apron strings. It makes perfect sense that these two traveling companions would have devised similar strategies. No one apparently challenged the two determined matriarchs.

The Enoch Train left England on March 23. Mary Mayo died September 13. That is six months that these two women likely spent in each others company day and night, in sickness and travail. When Mary died of dysentery, Elinor was most likely with her. The sick wagon, driven as a sweep behind the company to pick up any dead or ill of the company left aside the trail, would have come upon Mary and perhaps Elinor as well. Elinor would have walked with the body as they carried it to the grave on the side of Pacific Butte. She may have carried Mary's hatbox and placed it with her.

Twin Mounds on Overland Trail just east of South Pass.

Pacific Butte from Trail Marker at Pacific Springs - Burial Place of Mary Mayo

__________________________

*In most records, she is identified as "Eleanor." Her name at Christening in Whitney, Herefordshire, used the Welsh spelling of "Elinor."

Abednego Jones (John)

It's been a while. But I finally found something new.

I've been doing my part-time, senior-service missionary work for the Church History Library on the Welsh Missionaries in the Early Missionary Database. Levi Richards, brother of Willard Richards and personal physician to Joseph Smith, Jr., was back in Wales in 1852 as a Special Missionary to advise the Welsh Mission and to establish the boundary with the Herefordshire Conference. On 21 February, in Llanelli, near Swansea, he notes in his journal, "....had an interview with Prest Abednego Jones (John) stopped over night." Parentheses in the original! Here's the pic:

The 9 August 1851 editon of Zion's Trumpet reports that Abednego Jones was appointed to preside over the Carmarthenshire Conference. On 27 May 1852, the Carmarthenshire Conference was split created the Llanelli Conference on the south side of the Towy River in Carmarthenshire. Abednego Jones was to be President of this conference. On 3 January 1853, Abednego was released as President of the Conference presumably to travel to Utah as he and his family did on 5 February 1853. The first two Children of Abednego and Mary Jones in the ship's manifest match up with the children in the 1851 Census for Abednego and Mary then living in Llanelly, Breconshire (not be be confused with Llanelli, Carmarthenshire as was often the case). Llanelly, Breconshire was near the town of Brynmawr in the neighborhood of Merthyr Tydfil (two valleys over).

A Visit to the Vaughan Home in Cusop, Church Cottage

Skipping dinner was no sacrifice for me. I had a car hire for just a few days. There was no gap in the tour schedule, so I just took off when I could. We were already in Merthyr, so I just headed over the Beacons past Brecon and on to the Wye, up the backside of Hay, and into Cusop Village.

The Cusop History Group had already provided some good evidence of the location of Cusop Green and the only house there in the 1830s is the only house there now, Church Cottage, across from the lower corner of St. Mary's churchyard. This is very likely where John and Elinor Vaughan lived in the 1810s-1820s. Several of their children were likely born there. Possibly, that included John Vaughan (1825) in my direct line of fathers' fathers.

Church Cottage, Cusop Green, Cusop, Herefordshire

Cymru, March 2018 XV, Hereford Weeps

Even if I was in Herefordshire for the day, I was still staying in Wales so it counts. And I found wonderful things in Hereford Archives and Records Centre (HARC)!

After exhausting my known sources, I sat on the banks of the Wye and had a late picnic lunch. This was the view:

Then I walked past and back over the old bridge

I wanted to see the Mappa Mundi and chained library. But they were closed as there was to be a funeral service.

Trip to Wales, March 2018, Day II, Abergavenny, Blaenavon, and Llanfoist

There was time for a nap this afternoon as I felt so much contentment from having achieved my main purpose. It wasn't just visiting the replacement headstone we had put up, but I cleaned it and planted daffodils too.

There remains one more thing on my to-do list in Llanfoist. We'll see if tomorrow works out. It may just be perfect! Otherwise, I would stay in bed. (Check the weather forecast.)

At four o'clock, GMT, I seemed awake enough to call my wife at home. I then went back to bed and slept two more hours arising with the dawn and discovering the key to the back garden in this little place I'm staying for the first weekend. Out in the garden (backyard), I found the postcard pic for the Blorenge, the mountain that begins the Welsh Industrial Valleys to the West.

Trip to Wales, March 2018, Day I: Raglan and Llanfoist

The plane wasn't bad but a good night's sleep is out of the question which helps in a way because I'm so tired I will sleep all night. It's dark here now at 2 p.m. back home. And I have to wait until at least 10 to have a chance to sleep until the sun comes up.

I wandered the streets of Avergavenny tonight and will have to go back with my camera in the daylight having found the "town house" of the Vaughan's of Tretower. It's really something, but I don't want to oversell. I had to buy another Cadbury and asked for change in coin which seemed like the right way to phrase it as the Tesco checker gave pound coins. They are a necessity here for parking in some places and many other uses. Oh yeah, I found where Tesco is in Abergavenny. It's just a small grocery one.

I had to stop at Raglan to buy my Senior Cadw (Welsh Heritage) Pass. I can't even get the Park Service's Golden Eagle yet, but I'm good here! I only have to visit three sites to break even and I can cover that. And, I'll be back in August!

So the first pics are at Raglan looking for those new angles. And they are there:

"Family Burying Ground" on former Johns Ranch, Jacks Valley, Douglas County, Nevada Confirmed!

I've been trying to arrange some time to search archives in Nevada to access the local Genoa newspaper for any indication of Abednego Johns and Jane (Jeanette) Vaughan Lewis Johns. The prize would be a descriptive obituary giving their burial place. For some odd reason, I thought to search for an archived copy of the Genoa paper elsewhere and my search turned up the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. "D'oh!"

And I struck gold.

Genoa Courier, Friday, March 21, 1890

Genoa Courier, Friday, May 30, 1890

"Family Burying Ground in Jacks Valley" and "on the west end of Johns ranch." We are closing in.

This confirms my suspicions and possible inspiration from my last visit that there is a family burial plot on the ranch. I was thinking more easterly, but west up against the mountain does make sense and matches my initial thoughts. It would be a mile or so south of the well-documented Winters Family Cemetery on the current Ascagua Ranch that I visited last October.

Now that they are all securely archived and sourced on FamilySearch.org with enough evidentiary explanation and proudly proclaimed provenance that no one should ever try to delete them, I share them here. (Of course sharing them here gives me assurance that more people in the family have them in case someone has to go back in to FamilySearch to fix what someone else changed or deleted!)

This also gives a solid clue that at least as of 1890 (the year of the burned federal census) Jane and John Lewis's son, John Samuel Lewis, resided in Reno.

Still, the question remains, where are the graves? Do markers still exist? Has no one noticed them? The Washoe Tribe has not responded to my emails or letters. I'm going to have to try and call. I have some other potential contacts to try as well.

"Family Burying Ground" indicates a place already established by 1890. The others deaths in the family that we know of are in 1860 or '61. These are Mary Evans Johns (Jones), Abednego's first wife, who died in September 1860, and Jane's mother, my 4th-Great-Grandmother, Elinor Jenkins Vaughan, who died after the September, 1860 Census and before the January, 1862, Nevada Census, also in Jacks Valley.

As my Cousin Judy and I have agreed since we found out just a few years ago that Jane and her first husband, John Lewis, and son and her mother, Elinor Vaughan, came to Utah with handcarts in 1856, if we find Jane, we will find Elinor.

Well, we're pretty close to finding Jane "on the west end of the Johns ranch."

I think we need to talk to some Washoe archaeologists.

Jacks Valley, Nevada: Yesterday, Today, and Forever

On a typical less-than-busy evening at the North Bountiful Family History Library, I was working on my own family interests and came across a great picture of Jacks Valley, Nevada, from 1939:

Jack's Valley Pony Express Station
With the gracious permission of Sherratt Library Special Collections, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah, which owns the rights.

The photo caused one of those little mental shocks as should be obvious from this photo I took a couple of years ago at almost exactly the same spot:

North end of Jacks Valley, Nevada, looking Northeast from Jacks Valley Rd.. 20 October 2014
In the background against the hills is the Ascagua Ranch, originally established by the Winters Family.

Yeah, pretty weird, right?

Puddler at Forge

The mystery remains but we're closing in on how the sons of a fatherless butcher became puddlers in the South Wales iron works. A puddler was a skilled worker of some prestige in the boiling ores, blinding fires, and poisonous clouds of the industry.

The first indication we have is the 1851 census in which John and Elinor's son William Vaughan, age 21, is listed as "puddler at forge." What forge? We've wondered. And I only assumed, as there was no forge apparent in their resident village of Llanfoist, that it was the Blaenavon Ironworks over the Blorenge Mountain. It wouldn't be an impossible walk, if inconvenient, to travel over the mountain or maybe stay some days coming home on Sunday, likely the only day off, ever.

Then something came across my Facebook feed from Gwent Archives mentioning Llanfoist at the foot of the Blorenge and the tramways across the mountain:

the counter balanced incline planes at Llanfoist canal wharf which were part of Hill’s Tramroad, linking Blaenavon furnaces and Garnddyrys forge with the wharf to transport the wrought iron along the Brecon and Abergavenny Canal.

Garnddyrys forge! It was called a forge! "Puddler at forge" would likely refer to the closest forge in the vicinity along with the few other puddlers, rollers, or labourers "at forge" listed in the Census for Llanfoist.

Elinor's History

Judy and I want to get this well disseminated before the DUP attempts to lay sole claim. Not that we're willing to share and work with them too, but ya know:

Elinor's possible birthplace, Stowe, Whitney-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England - just a stone's throw from Wales.

Elinor Jenkins Vaughan

Mormon Handcart Pioneer of 1856

 Born 25 December 1789, Died about 1861

©by Grant L. Vaughn, 4^th Great Grandson, based on Collaborative

Research with Judy Vaughn Atwood, 3^rd Great Granddaughter

December 25^th is Christmas. No one ever forgets their birthday if it falls on that sacred celebration. Elinor[1] was a Christmas baby. The problem is that the year is not completely certain. At various times in her life, Elinor gave her age indicating birth as early as 1777. However, we have the record of her Christening as 7 February 1790[2] and it is most likely that she was born in 1789.

Her parents were William Jenkins and Jane Apperley. The place was Stowe [also “Stow”], Whitney, Herefordshire just across the border from Radnorshire, Wales, on the north side of the Wye River as it flows from the green Welsh hills onto the rich, broad, and green farmlands of Herefordshire.

Jenkins is a solid Welsh name while Apperley is not. Her mother Jane’s family name originated in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire and is of Anglo-Saxon origin.[3] The Jenkins name is very common on the Welsh border. We do not have much information on Elinor’s parents. However, she gave their names and her birthplace herself when she received her own LDS Temple Endowment in 1856 in Salt Lake City, Utah.[4]

Llanfoist and the End of the World

This was just to good to pass up. From the Monmouthshire Merlin, 9 September 1843:

I will have to add this to my "History of LDS Church in Llanfoist" page.

Llanfoist Tithes, Page 9: Now Indexed for John Vaughan

Let's hope the Centerville South Stake meets its Family Search Indexing Goals without me. I did my few hundred (Brazilians, off the Rio de Janeiro Registro Civil). Now I'm obsessed with the tithing maps from Archives Wales, that is Archifau Cymraeg, y Prosiect Cynefin. I love fixing the data points to link the old maps to the modern. I did one from Llanieu, close by Talgarth and Glasbury and really difficult because it was up the side of the Black Mountain.

Here's what the indexing part looks like from Llanfoist:

Chapel House, Likely Vaughan Home in Llanfoist

Thanks to Twitter at: Archives Wales retweeted

ArchifauCymru @ArchifauCymru · 
8 hours ago

New tithe maps website @ProsiectCynefin http://cynefinblog.archiveswales.org.uk  #ARCWforum @CynefinProject
I just did the coolest thing!

The Welsh National Archives are asking for our help to index and orient the tithe maps of Wales from the 1840s! I was able to locate several data points that matched a modern Ordnance Survey map with the 1843 Tithe map for Llanfoist, Monmouthshire! (By the way, I also learned that Welsh spelling for Llanfoist is Llanffwyst. It makes a difference.) You can see my work here. Click on "visualize" and you will see the overlay based on my data points.

A Probable (and Positive) Elinor Sighting

First, I need to lay out why I am convinced that Elinor Jenkins Vaughan, Jane Vaughan Lewis, and her son John Samuel Lewis ended up in Jacks Valley, Nevada. It was by following at least three of the "Five Jolly Welshman" to the gold and silver fields of the Sierras. John James, appearing to be one of the five, ended up in Genoa near modern-day Carson City, Nevada (back then it was still Utah).

So, naturally I looked at the 1860 Census for the area:

Please note that this is still Utah Territory, but more importantly, the date of the census was supposed to be "as of June 1" (see column no. 3), but this census was not taken until September 28th. This evidences the general governmental disarray in the area as we have previously discussed.

Now, look at the entries for the "Johns" Family:

Another Beautiful and Possible Grave Site for Elinor

Free use courtesy of Jim Herman - Many thanks!

Elinor Jenkins Vaughan could be here! We know that her daughter died and was buried in Jacks Valley - also in an unmarked grave. It is very likely that Elinor was too. The earliest grave identified in this beautiful cemetery is from 1860. There is plenty of space and apparent mounds for lost grave sites.

The Lost Mormons of Carson Valley

Genoa (Mormon Station), Nevada, Pioneer Cemetery

There is another tempting title for this, "Journey to Genoa" that has already been used for a highly fictionalized novel of some of the pioneer people of this area, including my family. It isn't very well written in a literary sense. Most of the entertainment value comes from the whoppers of wrong information such as the Cavalry riding in to rescue disaffected Mormons (in 1853) and a questionably historical visit to a San Francisco bordello and opium den. Sigh.

The different title might have distracted web searchers from the book which is decidedly anti-Mormon. And putting the title in here might have the same positive effect.

Likely Johns Home, Jacks Valley, Nevada

I'm pretty sure after comparing Google Maps with the 1862 federal survey with BLM's amazing GeoCommunicator and the 1870 Grant Assignment (also from BLM online) that this is the house that Abednego Johns lived in with his second wife, Jane (Jeanette) Vaughn Lewis Johns. I have seen a historical building in Reno from the 1890's with similar stone, door, and window layout.

Best evidence says this is the Abednego Johns House, Jacks Valley Road, Genoa, Nevada, from Google Maps

Jane Vaughan 1827, Found!

Jane (Jeanette) Vaughan Lewis Johns, Jacks Valley, Nevada

In a rapidly developing and miraculous story, we just received confirmation today that the woman who married Abednego Johns in Jack's Valley (Genoa or Mormon Station), Nevada, was named Jane Vaughan Lewis at the time of her marriage in 1860. Her own records establish that she was born in Breconshire, Wales, in 1827.

Finding Maranah

By Judy Vaughn Atwood:

I still recall my parents coming home from a visit to the Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City. I was a young teen and remember the smiles as they came in the door.  The first words were “We found our great-grandmother, Maranah!” They discovered her christening in the town of Penrhos, Monmouthshire, Wales, Maranah Watkins, the daughter of William Watkins and wife Hester, christened 17 June 1827. At that time I knew very little about our Family History, but I had a curiosity about those that came before me. I love the name, Maranah.

When I had a chance to research on my own, I went in search of Maranah. She did not read or write so her name was not always spelled the same. I found her listed as Maranna Watkins, on the 1841 Census in Llantilio Crossenney, Monmouthshire, Wales; she was a 15 year old servant on a farm, a short distance from Penrhos. Our relatives found the marriage certificate showing when John Vaughan (1825) married Maranah Watkins (1827) in Llanfoist, Monmouthshire, Wales; on 10 September, 1846.

John and Maranah Vaughan were found on the 1851 Census in Llanfoist with their first two sons George John and Thomas. Together, family members found parish records of the birth of their children, but not much more. Of course, one of the biggest finds was when they found her on L.D.S. Church records. She was baptized in the Stockton Branch, Durham, England in 1883. Other Vaughan family members also joined the Church in the early 1880’s. All of John’s and Maranah’s sons left England with their families and settled in Ogden, Utah from 1884-1888. Maranah stayed in England.