There are very few people who can trace their family back 29 generations. Elfed Owen, a member of Chelmsford and District Welsh Society, is one of them and he was the guest speaker at the February meeting, with the subject Hel Achau Cymraeg, Ail Ran (Tracing Welsh Ancestors,Part 2.) He was introduced by the President, Cynthia Styles, who welcomed the audience of about 70. During Elfed's first presentation about 3 years ago he had described the difficulties caused by the patronymic naming system used in Wales before the introduction of surnames, and when he agreed to delivering his second presentation he was still struggling to go beyond his x4 grandfather. In the meantime he discovered that many members of the family at that time were Quakers, and thus denied the right to be married, christened or buried in the Anglican Church, so that they did not appear in parish records. Several had emigrated to Pennsylvania on the invitation of William Penn (descended from an Anglesey family,) and this turned out to be a stroke of luck for Eifion. Armed with this knowledge he visited the Quaker Museum at Dolgellau where he discovered a document, the Welsh Founders of Pennsylvania. This, together with information on the Mormon web site, and two ancestral wills lodged at the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth, allowed him to trace his ancestry back to the year 887 and the Welsh prince Hywel Dda! Amazingly, Elfed's x7 grandfather was Abraham Lincoln's x4 grandfather, and his x20 grandfather was the x6 grandfather of Owain Glyndwr who fought the Norman rulers of England between 1400 and 1410, and convened a Welsh parliament in Machynlleth. The audience was enthralled. Elfed had put all this information on a very professionally produced DVD, and he was congratulated and thanked by the President. The charity table organised by Liz Armishaw and Shirley Moody raised �68 for the Childhood Eye Cancer Charity. Two other fund raising events for the charity were held during the month: young Sarah Dunlevey completed a sponsored swim of 300 lengths in two and a half hours, raising more than �1000; and a cheese and wine evening hosted by Liz and Jim Armishaw raised a further �180.
Jim Armishaw |
