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Post by kenjones on Jun 29, 2007 13:22:14 GMT
I am not young anymore but was always facinated when my parents told me that we were a Welsh family!
How could we be Welsh as we live in Plymouth and I and my parents were born here - so I decided, long before it was a craze, to trace my ancestors. Now after over 30 years of trying I know that my great grandfather, a lead minera from Minera, married a Cornish girl, daughter of Cornish copper miner. They spoke to each other in Welsh and Cornish.
They lived on the Cornwall/Devon border and my grandfather and father just stayed on - so the mystery is sort of solved thanks to the kind Wrexham library staff who helped me find my Evan Jones in a sea of Jones's in the Wrexham area.
Now I can celebrate St. Davids Day with a little more feeling.
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Post by annedw on Jun 29, 2007 14:49:01 GMT
Hello Ken, In the Wern chapel registers there are a few `definately not ` Welsh names. Being curious I cross checked them in the census and found that many miners came from Corwall and Devon to work in Minera lead mines.. Many Cornish miners were nonconformist,worshipped at Wern and stayed in the area. I have a Simmons in my tree that was from Cornwall.
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Post by shedevil on Jun 30, 2007 10:23:24 GMT
One of the Owners/Agents of the Minera mines came to Minera from a mine in Cornwall after a stop off of a few decades in Staffordshire his name was John Darlington there is a possibility due to the unemployment of Cornish miners that he had advertised the need for miners to be employed in his Welsh coalmine so this could explain why we have a few Cornish miners coming to relocate to this area. an extract from the Cornwall-online website states: A major employer during the late 1860s was emerging in the form of the northern collieries, who were experiencing a period of industrial unrest, with their workforce becoming more militant in the strife for better pay and improved working conditions. After numerous disputes the employers became less "tolerant", and in many instances their solution was to sack all those on strike and replace them with unemployed Cornishmen. although this mainly refers to the coalmines of Northumberland who is to say that all of the miners who migrated were guaranteed work and therefore had to look elsewhere
taking all of that into account, Welsh miners also migrated to other collieries where they believed they would be guaranteed more gainful employment therefore explaining how welsh miners ended up in Cornwall.
another article on wikpedia explains how Welsh and Cornishmen were able to interact with each other via their own native languages which in both cases was Gaelic
The Cornish language (in Cornish: Kernowek, Kernewek, Curnoack) is one of the Brythonic group of Celtic languages (Brythonic also includes Welsh, Breton, the extinct Cumbric and perhaps the hypothetical Ivernic).
I hope this explanation can help understand the movements of miners during the 19th & 20th centuries who moved around mainly for the money aspect and not for the job security
Tracey
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Post by kenjones on Jun 30, 2007 16:22:50 GMT
Thanks for the reply and it certainly helps to explain why people from such distant places met up and married. I was told that my great grandfather only spoke Welsh and my great grandmother spoke to him in Cornish but she also spoke English. All the mines are now closed but there are quite a few "Welsh" people living in the far South West.
Ken
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Post by llosgi calch on Jul 1, 2007 15:59:07 GMT
Croeso i'r bwrdd Ken, There has been much written on the north Wales and Cornish mining connections. In particular I have read that Minera miners were taken from Minera to be employed in Cornwall, and in other publications I have read 'vice versa'. No doubt the migration of miners saw them travelling both ways at differing times, as and when the supply and demand stipulated. Again, welcome to the board Ken, always a pleasure to pull a chair forward to a visitor with strong celtic roots. To coincide with Ken joining us, members may note that our 'mystery ancestor' has something in common....
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Post by davies1974 on Feb 18, 2008 11:16:17 GMT
I also have a cornish connection in my family tree. My great great great grandparents were Stephen and Christiana Harper fron St Agnes, Cornwall. Stephen was a tin mine captain in cornwall but then first moved to Camarthen and then settled in Halkyn. Their daughter Mary married my g g Grandfather Robert Jones from Bersham (her 2nd marriage after the death of her 1st husband, Stephen Northey) and by 1871 they have settled in Nant Road and Robert is working as a lead miner. Their daughter, Sarah Ann married Richard Morris Davies and their son Fredrick Garfield Davies (my grandfather) lived and worked as a Lime Worker in Minera.
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Post by kenjones on May 3, 2008 10:24:32 GMT
Further to my original message and thanks to all the advice and help I have been given, mostly through this site I have now traced my great great Grandfather and even his father so I now know that I am a thoroughbred Welshman. My great great Grandfather was Evan, born in 1802 or 3 and his father was William born in c.1778 and was married to Mary but further than that is blank but who knows what another year will reveal.
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