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 Challenge to our Circumstantial Case for Rees Price as Father of John Vaughan (1789)

We have been researching to break through the brick wall of a 1789 illegitimate birth in  Hay, Breconshire. That is our direct surname origin (although the numerous Vaughans in the Middle Wye and Usk Valleys all claim descent from Sir Roger Vaughan of Bredwardine, legitimately or not - and we connect with a few other of those lines).

This weekend, I had some correspondence on Ancestry.com with another user who took some umbrage with us naming her direct ancestor as the putative father of John Vaughan (1789-1851). She gave me permission to share it with her Ancestry user name. Here is the correspondence:

Abednego Rising

My order of the great historical losses in the word:
1) the Library of Alexandria;
2) the Library at Raglan Castle, Wales;
3) the 1890 US Census, and;
4) the 1831 Merthyr Tydfil Petition of 11,000 signatures to save the life of Dic Penderyn.

Some of those 11,000 on the petition to Lord Melbourne may have joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1840s. We think we know one of them.

There's some irony that during the longest federal shutdown, being locked out of work, I've read The Merthyr Rising, by Gwyn A. Williams (University of Wales, Cardiff 1978). The Rising came about because of the Ironmasters conspiring to lower wages and shut-down work making it very difficult for the families of working poor in the ironworks, the coal, ironstone, and limestone mines, and processing mills to feed their families.

"Bara gyda caws!" was the shout of the crowd for "bread and cheese" in front of the Castle Inn when the 93rd Highland Regiment fired on the crowd killing two dozen and wounding dozens more. It only gave the leaders of the town and small contingent of soldiers an opportunity to escape to Penydarren House, which was more easily defended.

The workers held the town for a few days in June 1831. They even held off the Highlanders' relief troops from Brecon at the steep slopes of Cefn Coed just north of Merthyr Tydfil. However, within a few days, the gentry militias and soldiers of the King converged on the town and the workers went back to the mines and furnaces. The British Parliament and the ironmasters were smart enough to establish some reform.

We found a newspaper article from 1833 that Elinor Jenkins Vaughan's son-in-law, Abednego Jones (1811-1890), appears to have participated in the Rising. The book confirmed my source. Here's how Professor Williams lays it out in his Preface about the stories he heard growing up in Merthyr:

It was astounding to me, or to be more accurate, it became astounding tome in retrospect, how often the talk curled back to 1831. One story lodged in my mind like a limpet intruder. They would shriek with laughter as they told of a young boy, Abednego Jones, who went about Merthyr during the Rising carrying a huge white banner as big as himself (by the end of the evening, it would be twice as big) and piping in a shrill, choir-boy treble: 'Death to kings and tyrants! The reign of justice for ever!'
     I did in the end find one 'huge white banner': it was carried by workers on the  march to the Waun Fair which started the rebellion. The young boy I never found. But once, quite by accident, I came across a court case in the Merthyr Guardian for 1833. A miner sued two others for cheating him out of his stall, won, and was then exposed as a man who had 'carried a banner during the Merthyr Riots'. This phrase recurs constantly in obituary and other notices; it evidently marked a man out. The judge read the offender an appropriate sermon. His name was Abednego Jones. [footnote to the same article that I found.] In 1833, he was no boy. Perhaps he was short. The Merthyr Rising, at 14.

Grandma Elinor's Departure from Waterloo Dock on the Enoch Train, 1856

The bad news is that the Waterloo Dock in Liverpool was significantly modified in 1868 and is now blocked off by apartments and offices. But we know where it was at the lower end of Waterloo Road just north of Prince's Dock.

The good news is that I found an 1850 article from the Illustrated London News about emigration from Waterloo Docks. Grandma Elinor embarked on the Enoch Train from Waterloo Dock in 1856 for Zion. It couldn't have changed that much in six years.

The article is mostly about Irish emigration because of the potato famines and general conditions of abject poverty. There are important confirmations in the article that ships sailing to and from the United States used Waterloo Docks and that steerage passengers were boarded 24 hours ahead of sailing to be organized below decks and likely to clear space before the saloon (first-class) passengers boarded.

Christmas Eve Services, Llanfoist, 1841

It isn't much, but another missionary journal from Elinor's era in Llanfoist tells us:

“My next appointment was at Llanfoist where I found a steady and attentive congregation. This is a dark and sootey place owing to the vast amount of coal and iron works here.” 

James Palmer Reminiscences, circa 1884-1898 LDS CHL MS 1752_f0001_00071. 

This source must be based on a contemporaneous journal as there are dates that would not be remembered unless recorded somehow. James Palmer occasionally traveled with Elder John Needham who baptized Elinor Jenkins Vaughan on 17 December 1841, just one week before the Christmas Eve meeting in Llanfoist. Elder Palmer also visited the Branch at Llanthony in the Black Mountains and was the first missionary to preach in Abersychan in June 1841, apparently without much success.

Elder Palmer is credited with the first recorded baptism in South Wales. His Reminiscences records that on either the 23rd or 30th of November, 1840, he baptized John Preece and William Williams in the River Monnow at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire. It just so happens that I took pics there on my visit last Good Friday, not knowing about this history (even though it's recorded in Truth Will Prevail: the Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles 1837-1987 (University Press, Cambridge, UK 1987), p. 240, as well as the Reminiscences at p. 13.)

The River Monnow at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, Wales. First baptisms in South Wales near here.

The SS Nevada of the Guion Line, Liverpool to New York, 1886 and 1887

The SS Nevada of the Guion Line or the Liverpool and Great Western Steamship Co.
Oil painting presumed to be by James Douglas, in the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia

Sometimes, playing around on Google pays off. I found this image of an oil painting from the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA. It is the ship that brought my Great Grandfather George Robert Vaughan and his family to America in 1887. His father, Thomas, arrived a year earlier on the same ship.

The color and detail are so helpful. Note the two rows of portholes along the line of the hull just above the water line. One of those might have been opened during calm seas to get some fresh air to my infant Great Grandfather. The black smokestacks with the red stripe were distinctive of the Guion Line.

The ship had only one propeller which necessitated the sails in case the engine failed. Steamships were soon outfitted with two engines and screws for additional speed and if one system failed, there was another for backup rather than having to rely on the sails. This artistic representation is a bit fanciful as the sails were rarely used especially if the ship was at full steam as appears here.

The Nevada was built at Palmer's Shipbuilding & Iron Co., Jarrow-on-Tyne outside of Newcastle, England in 1868. That was the same year that Mormon emigrants began using steamships rather than the slower, less-expensive and soon outdated sailing ships. Steamships were coming into their own just as the transcontinental railroad was close to completion across the United States. Steamships and railroads greatly facilitated and expedited the journey from England to Utah. The Guion line became the preferred company for organized Mormon emigrant passage because of the favorable treatment and reduced fairs arranged between the Guion agents in Liverpool and the Church leaders of the British Mission. The Mormons were organized and orderly passengers generally respected by the captains.

Old Postcard of Alexandra Dock

This undated postcard photo of the Alexandra Dock, Liverpool, is probably from the early 20th Century. The ships look like freighters with their derrick booms for loading cargo and no masts. The buildings around the docks appear to be old enough to have been there in the 1880s. Alexandra Dock was built in 1881.

Meet me at Alexandra Dock No. 3 on Saturday!

This just might work. If only it were Saturday, May 22, 1886, in Liverpool!

Ever the one to want to stand in exactly the same place where my ancestors have stood and to lead others to their ancestral spots, I had to know where the actual dock was where my Great-Great-Grandfather boarded the S.S. Nevada to come to America.

The Mormon Migration database is a great resource to find immigrant ancestors who came from Europe from the 1840s through the early 1900s. The Mormon immigrants were well organized by the British Mission with transport arranged at the lowest fares. The ships are documented with passenger lists and departure dates from Liverpool, England which saw no less than 1,695 Mormon emigrant ship sailings!

On my recent trip with Mormon Heritage Association, I found the Liverpool docks fascinating. Liverpool is on the Mersey Estuary with tides from the Irish Sea. The docks are not what I was used to in US harbors with piers sticking out into Elliott Bay (Seattle), San Francisco Bay, or the New York Harbor. Liverpool docks are more like rectangular pools of water separated from the Mersey by locks and short canals. As a tidal river, the Mersey mud is exposed at low tide. At high tide, the locks can be open and the ships enter and depart through the canals in or out of the various rectangular docks. "Sailing with the tide" now makes a lot more sense.

Canning Dock in the very nice public space of the Liverpool Waterfront.

The Mersey at low tide with mud exposed outside the docks.

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

Isabella Bowman and Thomas Vaughan Connections in County Durham, England

Please note "5-mile" scale in key. This area is not large.

So I've been researching a bunch of ancestral sites for people going on our tour in a couple of weeks. I realized there is still a lot more work to be done for our own people.

Still kicking myself for not going north with my Aunt and Dad's Cousin in 2010, I will try to get there next summer. In the meanwhile, I am tracing Thomas and Isabella Vaughan who joined with the LDS Church in Stockton, County Durham in the early 1880s leaving for America in 1886 and 1887 respectively.

The 1871 Census finds Thomas still in South Wales working in his father's profession as a puddler in the ironworks of Abersychan. His first appearance is his marriage to Isabella Bowman in the Register Office, not a church, in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England on the Third of August, 1875. They both gave their residence as Blue Row, which I assume was their first home. Sadly, Blue Row no longer exists. I did find an old picture of what it looked like:

Blue Row, South of Bishop Auckland, 1950s (from Facebook page on Bishop Auckland History)

An Apostle's Family Forged in Welsh Iron

Albert Ernest Bowen (1875-1953). LDS Apostle 1937.

Albert E. Bowen is not one of the big names in LDS Church leadership. He was a serious-minded, hard-working man. He appears to be best remembered and quoted in LDS General Conference for his teachings on Self-Reliance and the Church Welfare Program. He wrote a booklet entitled "Constancy Amid Change" that was updated in the 1980s as well as authoring a Sunday School course of study, "The Church Welfare Plan."

One of the more recent General Conference quotes attributed to Elder Bowen was in an address by Elder J. Thomas Fyans in 1982:

The only way the Church can stand independent is for its members to stand independent, for the Church IS its members. It is not possible to conceive of an independent Church made up of dependent members—members who are under the inescapable obligation of dependency. The Lord must want and intend that His people shall be free of constraint whether enforceable or only arising out of the bindings of conscience. It is not believed that any person or people can live from gratuities—rely upon them for means of subsistence and remain wholly free in thought, motive and action. History seems to record no such instance. That is why the Church is concerned that its members, who have physical and mental capacity to do so, shall render service commensurate with their capacities for aid extended. That is why the Church is not satisfied with any system which leaves able people permanently dependent, and insists, on the contrary, that the true function and office of giving is to help people into a position where they can help themselves and thus be free.

Elder Bowen knew a lot about self-reliance. Born on a farm near Samaria, Idaho, he worked hard in his youth. He spent a harsh winter with a brother homesteading a parcel of land in Star Valley, Wyoming. His mother, Annie Shackelton Bowen (1840-1929) shared her love of books and learning and Albert did well in school, served a mission in Switzerland and Germany, and studied law at the University of Chicago. He excelled in the practice of law and business in Cache Valley and Salt Lake City, Utah. He was called to be an Apostle by President Heber J. Grant in 1937.

What interests me is that his father was David Bowen (1837-1910), born in Blaenavon, Monmouthshire, Wales. He traveled to Utah in the Ellsworth Handcart Company in 1856 along with my 4th Great Grandmother, Eleanor Jenkins Vaughan (1789-1861). The Bowens and Vaughans must have known each other.

Traveling the Seminoe Cutoff on the Overland Trail to South Pass

The Wyoming State Historical Preservation Office (WSHPO, pronounced "Wyoming Shipo") and historians with the LDS Church interpreting the Devil's Gate/Martin's Cove area on the Overland Trail in Wyoming, have established that it was Charles (1812-1865), not his brother Basil LeJeunesse (1814-1846), who was known as "Seminoe" and established the fort at Devil's Gate.

These brothers were amazing as most Mountain Men were. They all knew each other; Basil traveling with Kit Carson and John C. Fremont's mapping expeditions. Basil was killed by Modocs at Klamath Lake. Charles abandoned his post at Devil's Gate in 1855 due to troubles with the Cheyennes. Cheyennes killed Charles in 1865 at Clark's Fork, Yellowstone. His half-Shoshone sons took their vengence by killing Cheyenne Chief, High Backed Wolf.

Generally aware of the Handcart stories, I knew there was a ramshackle trading post at Devil's Gate that served as a shelter in the miserable winter of 1856-57 for those guarding the freight emptied from the wagons to carry some of the handcart pioneers of the Willie and Martin companies to Salt Lake City. In the past couple of years, I also became aware that the earlier and more successful handcart companies of that year took the Seminoe Cutoff. It was only two weeks ago that I managed to put the two together to understand it was this "Seminoe" guy who explored the cutoff that saved some trouble for my handcart ancestors and had established the fort/trading post at Devil's Gate.

A portion of the archeological site with the reconstructed fort right next to it. And Devil's Gate behind.

Looking up the Sweetwater Valley from the original site of Seminoe's Fort. Martin's Cove is to the right.
Split Rock can be seen in the far distance.

Likely Vaughan House in Cusop

Forget the Thirty Acres!

Church Cottage, across the road and Cusop Green from St. Mary's Church, Cusop, Herefordshire

The Google view from the other direction. St. Mary's Church is on the right. The church car park is right behind this view.

Cymru, March 2018 XVII, The Final Adventure

This is the last post on my recent trip. I returned with a few good books for me to continue the intellectual adventures. One was a great survey of politics, social life, religion, and war (of course) in Medieval Wales:

A good read!

Reading along, I came across a person named Rhys Gryg. I said to myself, "I know that guy!" Well, at least I discovered his castle. And I'm getting ahead of myself in this story.

My old college professor and again my mentor for new adventures in historical travel sent me an email while I was still in Wales. He wanted help in finding a location of an ancestral farm of one of the individuals signed up for our Wales/Scotland tour coming up in August. It was in Carmarthenshire.

Great! I hadn't yet been to Carmarthen, the city of Merlin ("Caer Merddyn" in Welsh meaning "Merlin's Fort or Castle") It would be easy to swing by the town after I found the farm.

And I did find it way up on the highlands above Carmarthen. 

My question is: How did Mormon Missionaries ever find this place in the 1840s?

Cymru, March 2018 XVI, We're Still Here!

It rained and I didn't care. There was more to see and do, especially the Good Friday "fireside" at the Merthyr Stake Center. Until that evening, I was off schedule with much to do.

Starting at the Valley of the Rhiangoll, or Cwmdu, just above Tretower, I needed to stop and photograph the standing stone. There is one in the middle of that valley that I could never see because it forms part of a hedgerow and is covered in greenery during the summer. I thought I had seen it as I drove by on the narrow highway up that valley. At Tretower they told me I should just stop at a farm gate and walk along the highway to take photos.

It actually worked. Even on that narrow highway, the fast drivers slow down for pedestrians. There isn't much shoulder to walk on, less to park on, but I did find a farm gate and parked only halfway in a ditch. And I got it!

Well over two meters, it is higher and produces that bump in the hedgerow to look for.

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.

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.