Final Thoughts before getting down to the Nitty Gritty

What sort of people were they?

Well, there's no point in beating about the bush! Of fame and fortune there is little although there is evidence that some of the early Prices may have been comparatively well off as freeholders and there are tantalising hints that William Price (the earliest Price we can identify with certainty) was a part heir to a considerable estate. Generally, most of them were hard working farm labourers, shepherds, council road men with some of them managing to farm for a while on their own account.

How far back can we go?

This is always one of the first questions that I'm asked and when I say that I can trace my mother’s ancestry back to around the middle of the 18th century, most people are not that impressed. In fact it's around four to five generations to the birth of the earliest member around 1720. But just consider that the Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1803 to 1815 and Nelson's victory at the battle of Trafalgar took place in 1805 it sort of puts things in context. I like classical music and when I remind myself that J S Bach died in 1750 and Mozart was born in 1756 – both lived within the period of my mother’s documented family history.

Forwards or Backwards?

Everyone who wants to trace their ancestry has to start in the present and gradually work backwards. This is steady work and may come up against many roadblocks on the journey backwards but it generally has the advantage of following the path from the twig to the branch to the bigger branch, to the even bigger branch to the trunk until eventually one hits the inevitable root beyond which all is hidden underground and may forever remain that way.

But having arrived at what appears to be the earliest traceable ancestor, the journey forward begins and now the fun really starts. Nothing prepares you for the way that the descendants of those early Joneses and Prices branch out in many surprising directions. I well remember that in my youth I like other people of my age would jokingly call anyone from Senny, Sennybridge or Trecastle 'cous' or 'cousin'. Well, perhaps I was nearer the truth than I imagined - it’s amazing where relatives seem to pop up. Of course the explanation is simply that people born into rural communities before the advent of road and later rail travel didn’t travel far and tended to marry local partners and settle within their own community.

When it comes to recording all this information there are two main questions. Do you start at the end and work backwards or vice versa and what is the style that you will use? In answer to the first question I have decided to start with the earliest members of the families and work forward. In answer to the second question I have tried to make each blog post factual and added narrative where I have something to say about the generation or person(s) described.

I have one final confession to make. Having spent so much time looking at the Myddfai and Llywel census returns from through the whole 19^th century, I became more than a bit obsessed with trying to discover how every Price in the parish was related to every other Price in the parish. This certainly side-tracked me from the main family line – but still proved an enjoyable investigation. It is here that I expect some correction from those who may know better.

Final Disclaimer.

The history contained in these pages and the opinions and occasionally the inferences that I have made from the data are entirely mine. The records are often not complete. For example in the case of Parish Records for baptisms, marriages and deaths there are often gaps and incomplete entries. Sometimes the Bishop's Transcript of the record will help to fill in these gaps but in the case of a parish like Llanddeusant for example, the parish records have been lost. The Llywel records have many gaps in them also and so sometimes it is not possible to trace everyone in this way. Similarly it is sometimes tricky to find people in the census records. I acknowledge the help of many people in this journey. Staff at Record Offices and the Registrars have often helped beyond the call of duty.

A Special Appreciation

One of the great experiences of this research, which I would not have had if my maternal grandparents had not had their roots in Myddfai, has to be the discovery of a book written by David B. James called “Myddfai, its Land and its Peoples.” David B. James was born and raised in Myddfai and  has done, not only the community of Myddfai, but also the whole of Wales, a service by producing this wonderful history of the Parish. Now sadly out of print, it contains much valuable information, not only specific to Myddfai, but also more than that, an insight into the way that the people of this rural parish lived. David James in his introduction says in better words than I can muster something of what it is that is so interesting about the past.

"In moments of reflection it is not uncommon for one to speculate on what a place or locality was like in past ages. How did its inhabitants view moments of joy, tribulation and the daily round and was their attitude in essence any different from that of present-day inhabitants? Such speculations are of perennial interest and are possibly of greater poignancy today than they have been in the past since most people now seem to have an awareness of immense changes having taken place in their environment and society. In today's seemingly more mobile and less settled communities, the past seems to be of increasing rather than diminishing interest. Many it seems feel the need to know something of the rock of which they were hewn and more interestingly perhaps those who are new to a locality can feel a greater sense of identity and participation in the local community when they know more of its past. This book represents an attempt to meet some of these aspirations with respect to the community of peoples having an interest in the parish of Myddfai. There is nothing that obviously and uniquely distinguishes the parish of Myddfai from the many other rural parishes in what was recognised as the county of Carmarthenshire. The casual visitor will find that its topography and landscape are in general indistinguishable from that of the many other parishes of the region where farming has been the principal and traditional occupation of the majority of its inhabitants."

(David B. James Myddfai its Land and People Ch. 1 "By Way of Introduction")

In my humble opinion, Mr James has achieved his objective and his attempt has succeeded - it's a book to savour and enjoy giving valuable insights into life in a rural community particularly in the 19th century. Those who want to get a flavour of the book can do so via the internet where on www.genuki.org.uk Mr. Gareth Hicks has made extracts from the book available with Mr James' permission. You can find it here

Incidentally for those privileged to own a copy of this book, I recently discovered one for sale for £1066.

Where and how did they live

My maternal ancestors lived in what seems to my modern eye a beautiful and idyllic environment - the Prices originating in the parish of Myddfai in Carmarthshire and the Joneses just over the county boundary in the parishes of Llywel, Cray and Senny in Breconshire. Both pairs of my mother’s grandparents ended their days in the Senny Valley.

Senny Valley looking towards Fan Nedd from Tyleglas

Today, travelling around the districts in which they worked and farmed I can be literally staggered with the glorious countryside and hills that surround me. What would it have meant to them? That is a difficult question to answer when you consider that many of them were comparatively poor and worked outdoors the whole year around in bad conditions as well as good. But if the experience of my father and uncles and others I have known and spoken to, who lived and worked on the land, is anything to go by, they appreciated it too. It may have been their workplace, but it was also their playground and the places and the characters that inhabited that landscape became very dear to them.

The village of Myddfai from the top of Mynydd Bach

I have read with interest books, often just booklets, which have been written by local people about the people and the localities in which they lived. These memoirs recall characters and a way of life which has almost disappeared. It can often seem that in general we pay more attention to the ancient past than we do to the recent past. It is worth while investigating it now while we have the opportunity. Local knowledge can vanish in a very short time.

Why Bother?

I suppose that interest in the history of your family is an age related thing. I certainly had no interest in it when I was younger. But there's something else too. As I grow older and the modern world grows further and further away from the ethos and environment of my youth, I find myself recalling those days more clearly than I thought possible. That was particularly true when I first found myself retired because when one is engaged in a full time job there isn’t that much time for reflection. 

In a very small measure I can relate to what it was like to live in rural Wales in the past because I experienced a little of it when I was young - something that is very hard to convey to my children today. But even my experience of that lost world pales into insignificance compared with that of others of my generation and that of my parents - and to enter the world of rural Wales in the 18^th and 19^th centuries is almost beyond imagination for me but it is growing even further beyond the imagination of my children.

My maternal grandmother Anne Jones (nee Price)who had been widowed in 1951 (I was 5) lived in a small house in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Brynhyfryd had no running water, no electricity, and no flush toilet - not a shop for miles. Just an expanse of wild mountain moorland (Waundwr) exposed to the worse of the weather. The name of the house was most appropriate during the summer months (Brynhyfryd means fair or pleasant hill) but it was a complete misnomer when the wind whistled and howled and bent the pine trees that partially surrounded the house and the rain came in sheets from the West. Winter snow meant that the house was almost inevitably marooned with deep drifts filling the lane that led up to the house past the Brychgoed Chapel. I stayed at Brynhyfryd many times during my school summer holidays and visited my grandmother often and for me this was a different but fascinating world! Visiting her meant a bus trip on the South Wales Transport Brecon to Swansea double-decker, getting off at the "holly bush" stop near Beilygwern on the road between Defynock and Cray and then a walk of a about a mile and a half in total, mostly uphill through the fields above Coedhowell farm.

 But even my grandmother’s life was comparatively 'modern' compared to that of her parents. Certainly later in life she was able to travel further than many of them had been able to. Trains and buses and much later cars formed a part of her experience. I can be pretty certain that her mother had never ridden in a car!

Then again, I can relate in a small way to older farming methods - horsepower and haymaking and harvesting by hand I can personally recall. My father and mother both had first-hand experience of farming, my father being a farm worker from the age of 14 for some 20 years and my mother being in service mainly on farms from the same age until the start of the Second World War. My father recalled the days when as young man he had stood with many others at the top of Ship St. in the town of Brecon at one of the two annual "hiring" fairs held in May and November and wait in line for a farmer to hire his labour for the following six months. The contract would be sealed by the farmer handing over a shilling. My uncles and aunts on both sides of the family had similar experiences during their younger days. But even so, apart from my mother's recollections of the rigours of her schooldays, I can scarcely imagine what rural life was like in the nineteenth century and even less so in the 18th!

However, tracing the family back through the generations has had its rewards and although some generations are comparatively faceless - just names in censuses or parish records, yet there is the odd surprise when out of the shadowy past emerges a character whose life is brought to life through other records and information.

Initiative

I guess that this is the third attempt that I've made to chronicle some of my family history research and make it available to the rest of my family and whoever else may be interested. I have vacillated between building a website or writing a pdf document and having made some progress with each of them but not really getting either finished, it occurred to me that a blog might be a better idea. Combining shorter and hopefully regular blogs and photographs will, I hope, be a more efficient way of documenting what I know.


I began researching my maternal family tree in October 2004 at the request of my uncle who was 80 and terminally ill. He asked me if I could discover where his grandparents were buried. I did find out and this encouraged me to go further back. It was he who provided the initial impetus for researching my family history and I dedicate this blog to his memory.


I discovered that it is not unusual to find that my mother's generation knew very little about their ancestors. Although I did ask my mother about her grandparents she knew very little about them or where they were from although a few hints that she gave me did prove helpful. She was born in 1915 and could remember her maternal grandmother but knew little about her.


I have to acknowledge that I had some amazingly good help as I set out to discover more. A second cousin who I became acquainted with at my uncle's funeral was a great source of information and she was kind enough to pass on a great deal of her knowledge and expertise to me. She also introduced me to a (very) distant relative whose knowledge of the area and its past was extensive and who has published his own invaluable and detailed guides to the memorials of the main graveyards in the parishes in which I was interested. I had the pleasure of corresponding with him over the period of a few years (we still keep in touch) and also collaborating with him on the collation of a set of parish records. He also was generous enough to pass on much information from his own extensive research. So all in all I have been extremely fortunate to have such input.


In addition I did a lot of personal research at the Powys and Carmarthenshire Record Offices and through the relevant registry offices. The censuses from 1841 on also proved an invaluable source of information. I will try to give details of sources as I go along. I will also list some of the books and articles that I have read and also provide links to some online material which I found to be of interest.

I called the blog The Pantyffordd Prices because it was here that most of my maternal grandmother's siblings grew up although she herself was not born there. The farm still remains in the Price family having been farmed by my grandmother's younger brother, Evan Tom Price.

Initial blogs will give some further background and will I hope set the scene both historically and geographically for the family history that follows.