A Ghost in the Machine

So I've been using AI (mainly Google Gemini) to help me organize my research. It does...OK. Tends to have a bad memory and fixate on some very particular things. For example, it really thinks that the keys to the universe are hidden in marriage witnesses. Now, sometimes you'll get an interesting little tidbit from those. Let's look at one that my favorite A1 sauce believed could blow through my brick wall:

Not sure how well it comes across here, but we're looking at the St. Bride's Minor marriage register from 1828. St Bride's got its name after St. Bridget, an Irish saint for which an ancient church down the Ogmore River was named. It appears that there were two of these said churches, and the parish belonging to this one covered a smaller area--thus, the "Minor" designation. Anyway...

Lord Hardwicke required these forms be filled out for all marriages up until 1837, and in an Anglican church. After that date the UK had a civil registration system, that was duplicated by the Anglican church. So in 1828, this was how things were done in the UK, including Wales. 

Now when most people got married, they would issue "banns." This basically meant that the couple's intent to wed would be announced on three consecutive Sundays by the local parish church, or, if the bride and groom were from two different parishes, in both. The intent was to provide ample time for any...problems...to be resolved in that time, ranging from bigamy, incest, or other objections (like the in-law just plain didn't like the pairing).

The other method was by "license." A few reasons--if your home parish was far away, it would be inconvenient to have to verify the reading of the banns. Also, you would typically have to stay put in one place for a month before you could get married with banns, versus the license granting you almost an immediate wedding date. But there was a fee involved, the equivalent to a few weeks working wages. Before 1823, it also required putting up a hefty bond in case you turned out to be a lying liar (this requirement was removed in 1823).

So with that preamble, John Griffiths of Narberth (ish...more on that later?) wanted to marry Anne Lawrence in St. Bride's Minor. He decided to get a license to get married. Maybe he hadn't been in the area long? It's unclear, but he was an agricultural laborer for his whole life. Anne Lawrence was the daughter of a 'cordwainer,' or more understandably, a shoemaker. A bit of a more respectable class than perhaps John was from. Perhaps he went this path as a sign of respect to the shoemaker.

So, in the bottom left of that image, we see John Griffiths of this Parish Bachelor and Anne Lawrence of the same Parish Spinster were married in this Church by License. I suppose no consent was required of anyone since it was by license...though other marriages did not appear to include consent. They were married on the fifteenth Day of May in the Year One thousand eight hundred and twenty Eight by me John Richards Rector. Interestingly, John Griffith(s) signed his own name, indicating literacy. Anne made a mark for her signature. The witnesses were John Martyn and Ann Jenkins. It looks like maybe John Martyn started to write on the wrong line and it had to get crossed out. As best as I can tell, these were simply neighbors or friends.

Where, in Narberth of Pembrokeshire, is John Griffiths parents and original family? A good question that I am still trying to study out...

Revisiting Prior Assumptions

 I've sort of fallen off blogging for a while. Mainly because I really didn't have an audience beyond a very tight circle. But, if for nothing else, it's a good way to organize thoughts. Today's AI tools give you a ghost of this effort, but nothing is better than committing your own thoughts to your own text. Anyway, a major digression from the topic of this blog.

I had been playing with genetic genealogy a bit. I'm far from an expert, but I've learned some interesting things along the way. As a result of my LDS heritage, I've got thousands of DNA matches for relatives near and far. The great thing about DNA is that it doesn't make mistakes in the same way that our patchwork of genealogical makes. Even better, if you can get DNA to confirm a paper trail, you have pretty convincing evidence that your lineage is correctly traced.

As such, I've been on a quest to confirm my ancestors with DNA evidence. The simplest way to do this is to link DNA matches (I primarily use Ancestry) to common ancestors. For example, if I can trace a DNA match to a common 3rd great grandfather, I can be confident that he was truly my ancestor since I match a descendant from a great great aunt or uncle. Now because of the vagaries of genetic inheritance, it gets difficult to hone in on a little segment of DNA over generations...and more difficult still if you have a "bottleneck" in your family tree. By that I mean if you have an ancestor that only had one child, which is the case for Lewis Griffiths.

Lewis Griffiths was born in the agricultural hamlet of St Brides Minor, in the county of Glamorgan, Wales, in the 1830s. Inconveniently, before civil birth registration started in 1837. Fortunately we had located him thanks to his somewhat unique name (not many people had the given name of Lewis then) in the 1841 Census.

Lots of useful stuff can be learned from the census, although the 1841 Wales Census didn't have as much useful data as subsequent collections. Still, having names, ages, and residence listed are helpful. We see Lewis's siblings, parents, and the residence of "Angeltown." I learned that this was a relatively large farm in the town of Newcastle, owned by the Powell family, who we see on the census below the Griffiths. John Griffiths was likely a tenant farmer. Now, folks before me continued to trace this family in subsequent censuses. But not until recently, when I was looking at this 1841 census entry, did I notice a critical mark in the right column. John Griffiths was NOT born in the county of Glamorgan. Frustratingly it doesn't say where he was born, just from outside the county. Our family had missed this detail.

Instead, they tracked John and Ann Griffiths, which are unfortunately somewhat common names, and placed them in Neath, a small nearby city, in 1851. They had some of the kids of similar ages, and there they were reported as natives of Neath. But... Ann's age didn't match the 1841 census. Adult ages in the 1841 census tended to be rounded so that's not uncommon, but the 1851 Neath Ann Griffiths was listed as older than that John. When I finally recognized this discrepancy, I realized we had the wrong John and Ann.

I believe this is the correct 1851 Census entry for my John and Ann Griffiths. We knew that Ann was Ann Lawrence, and her parents lived in Newcastle. We knew they were married in St Brides Minor and lived there for a time before moving to the Angeltown farm. We didn't know that John Griffiths was born in Narberth, Pembrokeshire. We had traced his doppelganger in Neath to Cadoxton juxta Neath.

Unfortunately, this is where records become difficult. We have an approximate location and year of John Griffiths' birth, but baptism records earlier than 1800 are increasingly more difficult to find. I haven't yet located a satisfying origin for the man from Narberth.

Now you may be asking, where was Lewis and all those other kids that we saw in the 1841 census...none were with John and Ann by 1851.

Scattered to the winds, I'm afraid. John and Ann had Henry, their last born as far as I can tell. The other children were working on different farms. John Jr and Lewis were in the Powell residence in 1851, working on their farm. The location works nicely, so we are fairly confident we have the right Griffiths here.

In 1861 above, the name of the farm is different (Tongwin) but it's still the Powell family that Lewis Griffiths is working for. He's now a carter, one who drives the farm carts pulled by horses. There are some nearby Griffiths, which is interesting...maybe there's a relationship, but it may just be coincidence.

In 1863, Lewis marries Cecilia Howe. We have journal entries from the Mormon missionary John D Rees that says they lived on a farm near Court Colman. Lewis and Cecilia had twins who died in infancy. Then Lewis died in 1867 of English cholera. Cecilia gives birth to Lorenzo Lewis Griffiths several months later, in 1868. The timing is most unfortunate...it even opened up the possibility that she had a child by a different man, but I have found no DNA matches that would support this theory.

Lorenzo is my 2nd great grandfather. A bottleneck, genetically. He and Cecilia moved to Utah in 1870, and I can only presume had no further contact with the Griffiths family. He took on his step father's last name. I've been able to trace DNA matches to the Howe family, earlier than Cecilia. I've been able to trace DNA matches to the Lawrence family, Lorenzo's grandmothers family. But I've come up empty on the Griffiths.

My father took a YDNA test, which is a very powerful method of tracing patriarchal lines, as the Y chromosome doesn't get mixed nearly as much as it passes father to son. The rub is that we don't have any Griffiths matches on that test, or none that bear the name. Things get complicated for Welsh naming the farther back you go, as they had a patronymic naming system, so surnames didn't always exist as we understand them in the modern Anglophone world. Still, it has been disappointing. There may be some additional insight gained from upgrading my father's test to test more Y markers. Another path may be to triangulate on the orphaned Griffiths line with my DNA matches via subtraction...though that might require tools beyond what Ancestry offers.

The point of this post is always something to poke at in genealogical research. Always check records as completely as you can, because a single discrepancy can open a whole new avenue of research!