Guide

Tracing a Powys Family

Patronymics, a handful of surnames shared by half the county, and records split between church and chapel. Welsh genealogy has particular obstacles and particular sources.

Welsh family history is harder than English family history for two specific reasons, and easier in one respect that people rarely expect.

The surname problem

Before roughly 1700, and considerably later in the uplands, Wales used patronymics rather than fixed surnames. A man was John ap Rhys — John son of Rhys — and his son was David ap John. The name changed every generation.

Fixed surnames came in gradually, under English legal and administrative pressure, and they came in by freezing a patronymic. That is why so much of Wales is called Jones, Davies, Williams, Evans, Roberts, Hughes, Owen, Morgan, Lewis and Price.

The consequence in a Powys parish is that you may have four unrelated John Davieses of similar age in one community, and distinguishing them is the whole job.

What helps: farm names. Welsh rural society identified people by their holding — John Davies, Cefn Coch — and that usage appears in registers, wills, chapel records and on gravestones. The farm is frequently the only reliable identifier you will get, and it is often more stable than the surname.

The church and chapel problem

By 1851 roughly three-quarters of Welsh worshippers were nonconformist. Anglican parish registers therefore record a minority of the population for baptisms and marriages.

Burials are less affected, because chapels often lacked their own burial ground and used the parish churchyard, and because civil registration from 1837 catches everybody.

What this means in practice: if a family disappears from the parish register after about 1780, they have probably not moved. They have gone to chapel. Look for the relevant denomination's records, which are split between Powys Archives, the National Library, and in some cases still with the chapel or its successor.

Nonconformist registers surrendered to the Registrar General in 1837 and 1857 are held at The National Archives and are digitised.

The order to work in

Civil registration from 1837. Births, marriages and deaths. Indexes are online; certificates cost.

Census 1841 to 1921. The single most useful source. It gives household composition, ages, birthplaces and occupations every ten years. In Powys it also gives the farm name, which is your identifier.

Parish registers and bishop's transcripts. The transcripts are annual copies sent to the diocese and frequently survive where the original register does not. For Powys they are at the National Library.

Nonconformist registers, as above.

Wills and probate. Before 1858 Welsh probate went through the consistory courts and the records are at the National Library. They are underused and they name relationships, holdings and possessions in detail.

The sources people forget

Settlement examinations. Under the poor law, a person seeking relief had to establish which parish was liable for them, which meant giving a sworn statement of their working life — where they were born, apprenticed, hired, married, and where they had lived and for how long.

For a poor family these are frequently the richest single document in existence, and most Powys unions' records are at Powys Archives. Very little is digitised.

Workhouse admission and creed registers, same repository.

Tithe apportionments of the 1840s. Every field in the parish with its owner and occupier named. It puts your family on a specific piece of ground.

School log books and admission registers, which name children, parents and addresses.

Gravestones. See reading a churchyard. They record relationships, occupations, emigrations and, in Powys, the language your family used.

Welsh Newspapers Online. Pre-1919, free, searchable, in both languages. Obituaries, court reports, sales, accidents and chapel notices.

If they emigrated

Powys sent people to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Patagonia and Australia in numbers, particularly from the upland parishes and especially from Llanbrynmair and its neighbours.

Chapel records frequently note departures, and the letters sent home were sometimes printed in Welsh-language periodicals. Those periodicals are searchable through Welsh Journals Online.

Where to go

Powys Archives, Llandrindod Wells, for anything county-level: poor law, quarter sessions, school, estate.

The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, for parish, probate, tithe, manuscripts and estate collections.

Both have staff who deal with this daily and will save you hours. Go with a specific parish, a specific surname and a specific decade rather than with a family tree and a hope.