Cymru, March 2018 XIV, Brecon Midst the Beacons

It rained hard that morning. As I still had a spot reserved at Powys Archives. After taking some pictures of where I thought my ancestor's flax fields might have been, I went back to check the indices and browse through the books on the shelves. Not having had enough time to digest what I had already found, I headed off to Brecon.

Pen y Fan, I believe, the highest peak in the Brecon Beacons.

Brecon is the old county town and I hadn't yet been and I needed to go. Unfortunately, the Brecon Museum is undergoing extensive renovations and is not open at present. I was still able to get a feel for the medieval city.

Aberhonddu

Cymru, March 2018 Xiii, Powys Records Office and Our Last Prince

The early walk around Talgarth gave me a morning rainbow which is always a good sign.

Then it was off to Llandrindod Wells, Wales (they really need to work on some of these names) for Powys Records Office!

A new facility since my last visit.

 They were waiting for me and were so very kind and helpful. And as I blogged here and here, I found what I came for. There's more to do now, of course, which will necessitate a return. Such is the nature of research.

They Possibly Lived at Bryn

Using a different mapping system for the same area of the lands likely leased by Roger Vaughan (1734-1797) to grow flax, I found a cottage name: Bryn.

It is a simple name meaning "hill." The hill would be Pipton Hill with its wood on top where the Wye River comes close right in the area of Bryn Cottage and the field that was occupied by a John Jones on the 1840s tithe maps of Wales.

Yes, the day after Easter is a bank holiday making this a big weekend in the UK. Many of the Sacsens were like, "Oh, la-dee-dah, let's go to Wales, Dear! I hear it's so quaint. They even have books now!" So they all pile into their Rolls or Auston Martins or whatever and drive on over to Hay-on-Wye, the Town of Books.

Ha! They don't even know where to park for free.

I KNOW!

I apologize profusely to my many English friends and ancestors. But I do know where to park in Hay. I also know where to use the loo without paying 20p. And if you have to pay, put your 20p in the handicapped or gender-free loos because they are much cleaner and actually function.

Cymru 2018, April 1 EASTER Edition

We're skipping a bit and I'll catch up. It's just that Easter is worth something on its own and out of sequence.

The sky was blue and bright this morning. Then the sun came over the Black Mountains (Y Mynyddeodd Duon). It was time to get up there. Originally, I had planned to go up on the Equinox and mark the shadow of our little standing stone. I was wise about the weather that day and stayed on lower ground. This bright morning, the shadow is still pretty close to due West, but then every shadow is, of course, with the sunrise. The question is, did our Neolithic ancestors know and mark that? You will see there is a rock on which the shadow falls. It is likely the standing stone was set straighter a few thousand years ago and most of the stones of the circle are missing, so who knows?

Still, the mountains were glorious!

Penybegwm (Pen-y-Beacon or Hay Bluff) on the left, Twmpa (Lord Hereford's Knob) on the right.

Possible Discoveries: Roger Vaughan (1734-1797) and Fields of Flax

Leaving aside my Itinerary through Wales for a bit, let me explain what I have discovered so far on the possible area where Roger Vaughan grew flax in the area of Glasbury, Wales according to his petition for a bounty.

I apologize if my panic spread to my wonderful collaborators back in the States. I was frustrated that the document I long believed was in the archives actually was and did not give any field names. We have field names on the tithe maps of Wales now digitized.

So let's pause for a moment and see what this document does tell us. First off, our Roger is identified as a yeoman. That means he was a property holder and a leasehold would be adequate property at a basic value.

Hiraeth: 2016 Day One

It's November which is Thanksgiving month in the US of A  and I am grateful for my Welsh Heritage and the blessings I have  had to travel to my ancestral lands where the bones of my ancient fathers and mothers lie. I've been twice in recent years, 2010 and 2016. Both trips were great adventures with dear family and friends.

"Hiraeth" meaning, homesickness, longing, or in Portuguese "saudades," as we have no adequate English translation, compels me to share photos with a bit of context. I hope to convey a bit of that Hiraeth to family and friends. My wife says we can return this next summer with the compelling need to visit the replacement headstone monument our extended family put up for my 4th Great Grandfather in Llanfoist Churchyard.

But we start the first day of our 2016 trip on the banks of the River Wye in the small, ancient parish of Aberllynfi, the mouth of the Afon Llynfi into the Wye, and the surrounding parish of Glasbury.

I woke early and went out in the mist to explore the churchyard at St. Peter's just down the road:

The back of St. Peter's Churchyard, Glasbury, Powys Wales (formerly, the Breconshire side of the River Wye)

The graves of my Sixth Great Grandparents, Roger Vaughan (1734-1797) and Elizabeth Powel (1732-1803) are in this picture, three rows back from the rear of the church, but I did not know it at the time. I walked right past it. We came to it later in the day with the wonderful help of the parish treasurer who had a plot map of the churchyard.

Grant & Linda's 2016 Trip Report No. 1

Six years ago on the Mountain at Blaendigeddi Fawr, it was peaceful but not so quiet. The bleating of sheep was nearly constant. It was a peaceful noise and maybe that’s why you’re supposed to count them to go to sleep. Other than the sheep, it was very quiet and certainly peaceful.

This excursion began, as per usual with every muscled strained and tightened to the max as I held the wheel of our tiny Toyota only occasionally, and more naturally I might add, the left hand slipping to the gear shift hoping not to slip the gears. Standards are very popular here and much less expensive to rent. I thought that was compelling reason enough to be economizing and not extravagant as my wife would usually prefer. But apparently her muscles were tighter than mine when she tearfully said, “You’ve known me for 36 years, so you should know!”

“Know what?” I wisely said only to myself. As we went along, she explained that she would expect me to know how nervous it made her for me to drive in Britain and how I should have paid the extra money to get an automatic as that would be one less thing for her to stress about. And I thought I was a male hero for economizing. Venus and Mars.

Our marriage is still intact and I didn’t hit anything at all except for a small rabbit for which I am very sorry. It wasn't the rabbit that bothered her.

Back to the quiet. Our inn at Three Cocks (the proprietor told us that some overly sensitive Americans prefer to call it “Three Roosters”), was so quiet with its thick stone walls and modern windows inside the thick casement of the older window. And there was not a sheep to be seen or heard for at least a quarter of a mile!

Tantalizing Hints of Nonconformity

Ruins of Tredwstan [also "Tredustan"] Chapel built about 1690 near Talgarth, Breconshire.
Note the old gravestones still standing.

A researcher I've worked with once emailed that "Roger Vaughan" seemed like an uncommon name and shouldn't be too difficult to spot. Maybe that's true in the rest of Wales, but in the mid-Wye Valley it's rather common because of the illustrious ancestor who may or may not have fought and died at Agincourt. His father-in-law, Davey Gam, certainly did as Shakespeare even picked up on to include in Henry V. This Roger, the originator of our Vaughan surname, died somewhere. Maybe in the breach at Harfleur, or more likely of dysentery somewhere along the march and family legend preferred to have the death linked with that of the father-in-law's.

Honing in on William Vaughan (1768) and Fir Tree Cottage (1798-1851)

Fir Tree Cottage, home of William Vaughan (1768) and likely John Vaughan (1789)

We were in the right neighborhood, just a bit down the road. I clinched it when I skimmed through the Glasbury tithing maps of 1847 that I've been "crowd-source" indexing and found lot no. 680 tithed by William Vaughan. When I looked at the overlay on the modern map, it fit right on, or close enough to, the existing houses. I'll put in the letter here I wrote to "Resident Family" that explains all the connections. The clincher, of course, is the fir tree.

Sleeping with the Ancestors

[From my other blog, February 10, 2010]:

Arthur's Stone, above Dorstone, Herefordshire, August 15, 2010
Merbach Hill and the Black Mountains (Wales) in the far distance

Last night I went to bed late and I got up this morning way too early so this evening I'm still in an other-worldly daze. I went to sleep last night ruminating on the Roger Vaughan problem in my family history work. My researcher consultant thought that the Roger Vaughan who showed up as "the grandfather" in the Hay Vestry records in our critical year of 1789 would be a fairly unique name. Maybe in most parts of Wales, but not in the valleys along the Wye and over to the Usk. This is probably due to the famous forebearer, Roger Vaughan, defender of the King at Agincourt, whose effigy lies just down the hill from this 5,000 year old burial site. If one ancestor lies in close proximity, is it possible more ancient ones were buried in this tomb?