RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: AndrewJE on Wednesday 01 February 17 21:17 GMT (UK)
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Watched the programme tonight
Wanted to know if William Owen already married when Greg's ancestor born and that was why he was paying maintenance
Frustratingly the program didn't show the how long married column in 1911 census of William and Martha Owen or indeed their marriage certificate. So I looked them up on FindMyPast.
1911 census says married for 3 years , but we saw first child born in 1907, indicating married April - Dec 1907.
However can find no marriage between a William Owen and Martha Williams.
Suspect they were never married and fled to South Wales and just told everyone they were married...
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I think Greg was a bit harsh about William, especially when he said he connected more with William's father. Looking at it from William's viewpoint, he is born, his mother dies 9 days later and he is farmed off to his grandparents. After a couple of years his father re-marries and starts another family but William doesn't appear to be living with his father and new family - no wonder he went off the rails a bit. To him it must seem that his father, perhaps, blamed him for the death of his first wife, then when he re-married he didn't want him in his family.
Like you, I thought William and Martha probably didn't marry, I guess Martha was just more persuasive in getting William to stand up to his responsiblities ::) although if his ancestor (the one in S Wales, can't remember was she is g.granddaughter?) was to be believed he was not a good husband and Martha didn't want her daughters to marry if they were to suffer as she had. Meanwhile, Greg's g.grandmother married someone else who took in William's children and seemed to be happy, so perhaps she was the winner after all.
ps. Wouldn't it be good if we could all find the fathers of our illegitimate ancestors so easily?
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I'd have liked to see the final column of that 1911 census, just to see if William and his wife were heading for where she had come from - so often if there's been a failing in one area people seem to move to where the other partner originated from, where they may well have had family to support them.
There seem to be quite a lot of marriages "missing from records" in Wales, if my OH's lot are anything to go by. Someone suggested to me that many were "married" in chapels, not recognised as legal??
Overall, though, this series is a good 'un. Pity broken up again - not one next week, got to wait a fortnight for the next one. Drat!
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Enjoyed this one.
It was easy to watch.
Still thinking about his reactions to information!
Kooky
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I'd have liked to see the final column of that 1911 census, just to see if William and his wife were heading for where she had come from
She was also born in Carnarvon in a place called Dolbenman (correct spelling is Dolbenmaen). The census also shows married 3 years, 4 children born, 2 alive, 2 died. I assume the two who were born and died were after the youngest who was only 2 in 1911. Interestingly he too was born in Carnarvon, so William and his family must have moved after his birth in 1909.
Unfortunately, there are far too many Owens with mother's maiden name Williams to work out which are their children. I thought the child on the birth cert they showed us of William and Martha born 1907 was called Elizabeth, which is interesting in itself because there is no Elizabeth Owen born 1907 to a mother with maiden name Williams, only 1905 and 1908 - at least on the GRO site. I assume the little girl called Bessie on the 1911 census was really Elizabeth. Also there are 2 Robert Owens (the son named on the 1911 census) born in Carnarvon to an Owen, maiden name Williams, one in 1906 and one in 1910.
I can only think that many of the Welsh records are not on the main GRO website.
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I think Greg was a bit harsh about William, especially when he said he connected more with William's father. Looking at it from William's viewpoint, he is born, his mother dies 9 days later and he is farmed off to his grandparents. After a couple of years his father re-marries and starts another family but William doesn't appear to be living with his father and new family - no wonder he went off the rails a bit. To him it must seem that his father, perhaps, blamed him for the death of his first wife, then when he re-married he didn't want him in his family.
Like you, I thought William and Martha probably didn't marry, I guess Martha was just more persuasive in getting William to stand up to his responsiblities ::) although if his ancestor (the one in S Wales, can't remember was she is g.granddaughter?) was to be believed he was not a good husband and Martha didn't want her daughters to marry if they were to suffer as she had. Meanwhile, Greg's g.grandmother married someone else who took in William's children and seemed to be happy, so perhaps she was the winner after all.
ps. Wouldn't it be good if we could all find the fathers of our illegitimate ancestors so easily?
I really enjoyed this programme.
I loved the obvious affection for his late father which encouraged the search.
He did seem to acknowledge the difficulties that William had caused both at the time and now in the revelations about him.
I think he identified with Evan because of his father's traits.
The lady in South Wales was William's daughter so had both first hand knowledge of him plus her mother's words about him.
A good watch!
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I loved the bit at the end when everyone in the pub raised their hand to the question about being descended from Owain Glyndwr. I'd love to know if this was Greg's idea or if the production team have actually come to realise just how ridiculous all these claims to be descended from royalty are!! Either way, I chuckled!! ;D
I enjoyed this one - nothing spectaclar but good honest family history like most of us discover.
I agree that this series is a definite improvement on recent ones - mind you, I'm discounting the first episode, which belonged in the Carry On series....
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I loved the bit at the end when everyone in the pub raised their hand to the question about being descended from Owain Glyndwr. I'd love to know if this was Greg's idea or if the production team have actually come to realise just how ridiculous all these claims to be descended from royalty are!! Either way, I chuckled!! ;D
;D ;D ;D
Yes I also enjoyed it and the affection he had for his late father ...Nice meeting up with his relative didn't she look well
Rosie
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I loved the bit at the end when everyone in the pub raised their hand to the question about being descended from Owain Glyndwr. I'd love to know if this was Greg's idea or if the production team have actually come to realise just how ridiculous all these claims to be descended from royalty are!! Either way, I chuckled!! ;D
I enjoyed this one - nothing spectaclar but good honest family history like most of us discover.
I agree that this series is a definite improvement on recent ones - mind you, I'm discounting the first episode, which belonged in the Carry On series....
The wrong Owain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Gwynedd ;D
Owain ap Gruffudd (c. 1100 – 23 or 28 November 1170) was King of Gwynedd, North Wales, from 1137 until his death in 1170, succeeding his father Gruffudd ap Cynan. He was called "Owain the Great" (Welsh: Owain Mawr) [1] and the first to be styled "Prince of Wales".[2] He is considered to be the most successful of all the North Welsh princes prior to his grandson, Llywelyn the Great. He became known as Owain Gwynedd (Middle Welsh: Owain Gwyned, "Owain of Gwynedd") to distinguish him from the contemporary king of Powys Wenwynwyn, Owain ap Gruffydd ap Maredudd, who became known as Owain Cyfeiliog.[3]
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One of those cases where someone was able to identify the father of an illegitimate child, and the illegitimacy being as recent as Greg's grandmother. Good episode.
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I thought the most important message was to show that a missing father's details on a birth certificate is not always a brick wall and other records can often provide the information to name him quite easily.
My wife has family roots in the same area of North Wales so that made it more interesting, and like Greg she also had a relative who moved down to the Rhondda valley to work in the mines at about the same time (which was a common thing).
A good one..
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Really enjoyed this episode! Greg seemed really interested in his family's past so it was easy to watch. Although he could have done more research himself other than the 1911 census. I also enjoyed the part at the end where it seemed that everyone was descended from Owen - I reckon that was part of Greg's humour.
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I thought the most important message was to show that a missing father's details on a birth certificate is not always a brick wall and other records can often provide the information to name him quite easily.
My wife has family roots in the same area of North Wales so that made it more interesting, and like Greg she also had a relative who moved down to the Rhondda valley to work in the mines at about the same time (which was a common thing).
A good one..
Yes very true. Baptism records, maintenance records, etc. And before 1834, bastardy bonds or even newspaper records.
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I also felt that the bit at the end was a good response to the "Danny Dyer" programme at the start of the series - put it in perspective, and made the DD chap look even sillier.
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Yes
I would love to find the necessary info for one of mine that seemingly had 4 children without a father.
Anyway apart from that I did enjoy it... He is a better person than I imagined and had a great sense of 'family' ... well close family :)
Lovely to see that wonderful lady - she was a lovely character.
Yep all in all great, with some fantastic scenery thrown in
xin
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Halfway through this one, I did think to myself "I'm really enjoying this". I reckon each episode in this series has been pretty rich in stimulating content and told interesting stories.
It's a tough hand to be dealt when your mother dies giving birth to you and I couldn't help speculate that that might be a factor in the Evan / William relationship and William's apparently flawed character.
The ease with which folk discussed the illegitimacies interested me as I have found in one case in my family the stigma continues through the generations for some reason and it's off limits to talk about it with that branch of the family and even frowned upon to be known to be actively digging for research.
It's an unusual case where I know the father but not the mother...
As has been mentioned already, the pub scene came across as an amusing callback to the Danny Dyer episode, almost self referential by the production team.
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I haven't seen this episode yet, but it sounds right up my street so I'll definitely catch it later. I've got an illegitimate ancestor and had given up on finding his father, but recently I've wondered if it isn't impossible after all. Sometimes I think WDYTYA doesn't go into enough detail for my liking, e.g. what records are available and where to find them, they just magically fall into the celebrity's hands. Hopefully they'll show enough for me to pick up some tips.
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Sometimes I think WDYTYA doesn't go into enough detail for my liking, e.g. what records are available and where to find them, they just magically fall into the celebrity's hands.
I agree with you there as the way they make it come across is that all of this information is easy to find. What they dont state is how many researchers they have behind the scenes ploughing through all of this information and where they are looking.
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I found the Greg Davies episode really refreshing, he met each new revelation head on without allowing preconceived ideas to colour his thoughts.
I enjoyed the program and was glad that he did not resort to the over played sentimentality we often see on WDYTYA.
I did find the jumping back and forth between the generations slightly confusing but that could have been due to the conditions here when I watched the program rather than the program itself.
Cheers
Guy
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I was very taken by him saying at the end of the program that he was going to go back and find out more. I felt he clearly meant it. He also acknowledged on a number of occasions the hard work that others had done on his behalf.
It maintained the standard of what for me has been a very strong series. I liked the fact that it raised questions to do with illegitimacy and children of a first marriage, both of which I have encountered many times in my own research.
William
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ps. Wouldn't it be good if we could all find the fathers of our illegitimate ancestors so easily?
Not so easy - apparently it was the result of a huge amount of research at the local archives where they found the bastardy bond in the petty court records; which then lead them to the newspaper records.....luckily (!) William was a bit of a lad so had a presence in the papers.
She was also born in Carnarvon in a place called Dolbenman (correct spelling is Dolbenmaen). The census also shows married 3 years, 4 children born, 2 alive, 2 died. I assume the two who were born and died were after the youngest who was only 2 in 1911. Interestingly he too was born in Carnarvon, so William and his family must have moved after his birth in 1909
Its Caernarvonshire - the parish of Dolbenmaen is the next one to Porthmadog where William Owen was brought up so all very local. Interesting that the two children living were Elizabeth (Bessie) and Robert Jones Owen who I believe were the names of his maternal grandparents who brought him up.
There seem to be quite a lot of marriages "missing from records" in Wales, if my OH's lot are anything to go by. Someone suggested to me that many were "married" in chapels, not recognised as legal??
I can only think that many of the Welsh records are not on the main GRO website
If you married in chapel you had to have a registrar present hence it was legal; all the GRO records for wales are online. We have very few parish records online but more and more welsh couples married at the Chapel or at the Registrar's during that time hence not so easy to find...considering our most common names.....they were also a little bit lax about getting married before the first baby was born.
As the William and Martha's marriage - I think that they were married but perhaps not that quickly. Here is the GRO entry for their son Robert Jones.
OWEN, ROBERT JONES MMN WILLIAMS
GRO Reference: 1908 S Quarter in FESTINIOG Volume 11B Page 368
I must confess to some local knowledge here - Porthmadog where they were living has moved back and to between Merionethshire and Caernarfonshire over the years as regards Registration district and so I didn't search for a Dolbenmaen birth I looked for a Ffestiniog registration - this could well be the issue with the marriage as well.
One of the comments William's daughter made was that her mother didn't know about the other daughters but he was brought from South Wales and jailed up here whilst he was married to Martha so yes I think she did know.
I think it is very sad that a family who had farmed the same land for so long had to leave because the landlord sold the land !
Very enjoyable programme - not just for the fact that I live in the area but also it was a fascinating story.... don't think I'm related to Owen Gwynedd but you never know my roots are deep in this area !
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There is some extra footage on the WDYTYA magazine website where Greg's mother shows him a photograph of her mother's grandfather but at that point they have no idea of a name.
William
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I found the Greg Davies episode really refreshing, he met each new revelation head on without allowing preconceived ideas to colour his thoughts.
I enjoyed the program and was glad that he did not resort to the over played sentimentality we often see on WDYTYA.
I did find the jumping back and forth between the generations slightly confusing but that could have been due to the conditions here when I watched the program rather than the program itself.
Cheers
Guy
I agree. I can't remember the last time a WDYTYA featured any Welsh ancestry, so this was a refreshing change, and the scenery is stunning.
It was amusing when he asked in the pub who were descendants of Owain Gwynedd and almost everyone was - puts it into perspective which is good. (unlike Danny Dyer's episode).
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I think he should have strode into the pub announcing he was the King of Wales. Then various people at each table stand up and say No, I'm the King of Wales. Then after, say, a six yr old girl has just said it, Danny Dyer walks in and says that he's the King of Wales.
Unseen footage on the WDYTYA site shows them having a scrap in the car park sorting it out.
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'I'm Spartacus!' ;D
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The only Welsh surname I have in my tree is Roberts, and they came from Surrey/Kent, one of the furthest areas of the UK away from Wales but my parents lived in Wales for 4 years so I can relate to Greg Davies WDYTYA in a way.
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"I'm the King of Wales and so's my wife!" ;D
My lot were South Wales so my claim to Princehood is probably somewhat watered down...
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Being the cynic when Greg was said to be descended from a king I did also think "so are millions of people", they did actually mention that he will have many descendants.