Yesterday we were talking about The Royal Charter disaster of 1859. Most of the victims were buried in the churchyards near the wreck site at Moelfre (as described in my blog about the local parish records), but we knew a few had been buried in Pentraeth. After lunch we took a stroll up to the church to explore.

We soon found the graves; six simple anonymous stones, plus a larger one added later to commemorate the victims. A later search of the Pentraeth parish records shows they were buried in mid-November, about two weeks after the wreck.

Close to these graves was another one I’d wanted to find. When asked about famous women of Pentraeth the first to pop into my mind was Mary Owen. Newspaper reports in 1911 trumpeted her as being “King George’s oldest subject” at the age of 108. She lived at Fron-oleu, a small cottage on the slopes of Mynydd Llwydiarth overlooking Traeth Coch. The story goes that two strangers tracked her down and arrived at the cottage with a camera. She was asleep when they first arrived, but they photographed her both asleep and awake. The photos were made into postcards, celebrating her longevity. She died just a few months later, in December 1911, an event that was reported in newspapers ranging from the Dundee Evening Telegraph and the Cheshire Observer to Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper of London.

As usual, I wanted to find out more about her, so I first turned to the censuses. The 1911 census page for Fron-oleu shows it occupied by Mary and her nephew Owen, with two visitors on the day, Mary Owens and John Glyn Owen (a shoemaker). Oddly, Mary is listed in 1911 as being 105, rather than 108. She is also listed as single. I had assumed the John Owen, who is also listed on her gravestone, was her husband, but apparently not. He died in 1898, aged 80, so I checked the 1891 census for Fron-oleu, where they are listed as brother and sister. Nephew Owen was there again, as well as another nephew John.

John and Mary were the inhabitants of Fron-oleu all the way back to 1861, with their occupations variously listed as “farmer”, “labourer”, “housekeeper” or “living on own means”. Owen also lived there as far back as 1871, when the 15-year-old was listed as a “scholar”, presumably going to school at one of the two recently founded schools in Pentraeth. John had lost his wife early, as he was widowed in all these census years. His 10-year-old son John was a schoolboy in the house in 1861.

Step back another 10 years to 1851 and Mary is still living in Fron-oleu, but this time with her parents Richard (a labourer) and Ellen. Going further back to 1841 finds Fron-oleu a very full house, with Richard and Ellen there with sons John, Richard and David, and a daughter Elizabeth. John was the one who later occupied the house with his sister, and Richard is listed as a shoemaker. But where was Mary? She was an adult, the oldest of the family, so must have been living somewhere else. In fact, a Mary Owen of the right age was one of two young women working as servants in Marian, a large and old house between Pentraeth and Talwrn. I suspect this is her. Most other Mary Owens in the area were living with either parents or spouses.

Looking through all these censuses raised some questions about her story of being the oldest subject in 1911. First, the postcard and news reports all state she was born in Trefriw, which is best known as a village in the Conwy valley near Llanrwst, but is also the name of a place in the south of the island in Llangadwaladr. But all the censuses say that she and her brother were born in Pentraeth. Maybe there was a nearby house by that name, but nothing like it shows up in the Pentraeth censuses.

Of more concern is the age. Although she was supposed to be 108 in 1911, the census that year actually shows her as 105 years old, which would make her birth year 1806 rather than the 1803 usually cited. Ten years before, she gave her age as 89, making her birth year 1812. Going back another 10 years to 1891 she reports an age of 65, which would make her birth year 1826!

In the earlier censuses her reported ages stabilize to the usual interval of ten years. So, it looks like Mary was actually born around 1816-1818. Turning my eye to the baptism and marriage records, I found that her parents Richard Owen and Ellen Thomas were married in Pentraeth church on 25 May 1815. Scanning through the baptism records for Pentraeth (which only cover the baptisms at the established church, St. Mary) I can find no children of Richard and Ellen until youngest child in the 1841 census, David, was baptised in 1825. But searching another online database, the Wales Births and Baptisms, 1541-1907 at Familysearch.org, turns up a Mary Owen, daughter of Richard and Ellen, christened on 11 January 1818 in the nearby village of Llanbedrgoch. Some of her siblings also appear in that database, baptised in Pentraeth. Perhaps they were nonconformists and were baptised in chapels rather than the established church.

Mary had her five minutes of fame for being the oldest British subject, but the truth is she died at the respectable, but unremarkable, age of 94. How she became known as the oldest is not recorded, but this goes to show that we can’t always rely on stories like this without looking into the actual records.

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I’ve been an enthusiastic genealogist for many years and use Ancestry regularly. However, as an American transplanted to Anglesey, I don’t actually have any Anglesey ancestors who would appear in these records (although I can claim descent from the Princes of Gwynedd and a connection to the Tudors of Penmynydd). But these can also be a great resource for general historical research. So I decided to have a dig around in the records to see what I could find of interest. What I found were stories of the happiness of birth and marriage, but also of tragedy.

If you are interested in searching these records, but do not have an Ancestry.co.uk subscription, you can access it for free at most libraries.

Who’s Who?

I started by searching for some famous names. First up was the artist Kyffin Williams, who was the subject of the ‘K’ chapter in my new book A-Z of the Isle of Anglesey. He was in the Llangefni register, with his parents the unusually named Henry Inglis Wynne Williams and Essyllt Mary Williams.

His parents were married in Pentraeth in 1915…

… and his grandfather Owen was born in 1829.

Owen’s father James was the rector of Llanfairynghornwy (where Kyffin was buried), and he and his wife Francis were instrumental in establishing the Anglesey Association for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (a forerunner of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution) after witnessing a fatal shipwreck off the northwest coast of Anglesey.

Kyffin’s great-great uncle Thomas Williams, who was involved in the development of the Parys Mountain copper mine and was one of the richest men in Wales in the late 18th century, can be found in the Llanidan burial records

I branched out to other prominent Anglesey names , starting with the Bulkeleys (the subjects of the ‘B’ chapter of A-Z of the Isle of Anglesey). I found the burials of a trio of Richard Williams-Bulkeleys, the 10th, 11th and 12th Baronets of Baron Hill, Beaumaris.

A distant relative of theirs, William Bulkeley of Brynddu, was baptised in Llanfechell in 1691:

He went on the inherit the Brynddu estate, but more famously kept meticulous diaries that documented life on Anglesey in the 18th century. They can be read online at bulkeleydiaries.bangor.ac.uk.

Of course far more people in these records weren’t the rich or famous. But there are still stories behind their entries. In 1850 a William Jewett married Hannah Hughes. He was a boilermaker working on the construction of the Britannia Bridge (and probably living in the workers’ accommodation on site). His name sounds English rather than local, so I guessed he came here for work and married a local lass.

A quick search through the census records on Ancestry shows that in 1871 a William Jewett and his wife Hannah (she was born in North Wales, he in Manchester) were living in Portsea, Hampshire with their seven children, where he was building ships. The birthplaces of the children show they moved around a lot: Plymouth, Newton Abbott, Southampton. In 1881 they were living in Southcoates, Yorkshire, where he was still building ships.

Other bridge-connected records were of the sons of Henry Fisher, who was the first keeper of the Menai Suspension Bridge after its completion in 1826. They would have been born in the Bridge House at the Gwynedd end of the bridge. Here is Henry Jr’s baptism record:

The Royal Charter

Alongside the happiness of baptisms and marriages, there is also the sadness of the burials. But some of these reflect a much wider tragedy than the individual losses. I specifically went looking for what the records could tell us about the Royal Charter sinking.

On 26 October 1859 the steam clipper Royal Charter, returning from Australia, sank in a storm on the rocks near Moelfre, with the loss of over 400 lives. You can read more about this on my web site.

The closest church, at Llanallgo, bore the brunt of dealing with the dead, so I found the pages from their parish records. I was stunned to see just a single entry for many of the dead, with the actual number repeatedly scratched out and revised:

I was also surprised to see a familiar name further down the page. Isaac Lewis was a Moelfre-born lad who went to sea and was a crewmember on the Royal Charter. He died in the sinking, within sight of his boyhood home. He reportedly cried out ‘Oh, my father, I’ve come home to die.’ A song was written about him; you can hear it through the YouTube link at the bottom of my web page about the wreck.

Although the initial burials were unnamed, over the next couple of months more victims of the wreck were buried after having been identified. The ones in the record below were from Liverpool and Melbourne.

The task of dealing with the dead fell to the rector of Llanallgo, Stephen Roose Hughes. The burden of attempting to identify the victims, organizing the burials, and writing hundreds of letters to the grieving relatives took a terrible toll on him. The next page in the records show that he died two years later at the early age of 47.

Although most of the victims were buried in Llanallgo, bodies were washed up on the shores of neighbouring parishes, as far away as Pentraeth, and they were buried in those local churchyards. Many were interred in the parish of Penthos Lligwy, whose rector was Hugh Robert Hughes, the brother of Stephen Roose Hughes. Many of the burials in his parish were unidentified. But he attempted to add possibly identifying features, such as initials on crucifixes around their necks. One victim was noted to be “apparently an African”.

Overall, this is a fantastic collection that gives lots of insight to the people of Anglesey. I think I’ll be using this resource a lot in my future historical research.

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St. Baglan’s Church stands in an isolated position, overlooking the mouth of the Menai Strait, just south-west of Caernarfon. Finding it requires driving down a narrow coastal road, passing Caernarfon Castle across the Afon Seiont on the way, then walking across a field of barley to the church nestled within a grove of trees in an oval-shaped church enclosure wall.

Like most medieval churches in Wales, this one, dating to the 13th century, is a small and fairly simple church. However, unlike most, it wasn’t renovated by the Victorians, so retains its medieval character and the 18th century benches and box pews, many inscribed with names or initials and dates from the 1700s. As a result it was given a Grade I historic building listing in 1968, indicating it is of exceptional interest. It became redundant and in 1991 was taken over by the Friends of Friendless Churches.

Inside the church are numerous 18th and 19th century memorial plaques and gravestones, and the churchyard surrounding it contains many more 19th century and recent gravestones. However, the window-sill of the porch consists of a reused gravestone that is probably from the 13th century. It depicts a ship as well as a cross, and may have been the tombstone of a mariner.

The most famous internment at this church is a recent one. In January this year the burial took place here of Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones. He is better known as Lord Snowdon, well known photographer as well as former husband of Princess Margaret and brother-in-law of the Queen. The Armstrong-Jones family hailed from this part of Wales and he spent much time at the family home of Plas Dinas, Bontnewydd. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother married the Earl of Rosse from Birr Castle in Co. Offaly, Ireland (a favourite place of mine to visit during my regular visits to the Irish midlands), where he also spent much of his youth.

On such a beautiful day there was a steady stream of visitors to this remote church. Some were coming with curiosity like us, others came carrying flowers for their loved ones. Whatever your purpose, this church is well worth a visit. You can find it with this Google Map.

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This map is mainly based on Edward Greenly’s pioneering work on the geology of Anglesey. His two volume 1919 work The Geology of Anglesey, followed by the geological map of 1920, are considered classics in the field. The geology of Anglesey is fiercely complex, and his 25 years of surveying the rocks of the island, with the latest geological theories in mind, unravelled its mysteries.

In looking into accounts of his life, most said that Greenly and his wife Annie were buried in Llangristiolus parish churchyard, under “a fine headstone of red ‘Balmoral’ granite.” I distinctly remember visiting a grave of a prominent geologist with an unusual headstone, a large boulder inscribed with the details, many years ago, but this was in Llansadwrn, not Llangristiolus. Which was correct? After another cup of coffee we hopped into the car and headed off on a circular route to both churches.

When we got to the church we spotted the unusual grave stone, a boulder of Carboniferous limestone, before we even got out of the car. We crossed the graveyard and turned to face the headstone, only to discover that this was the grave of another very well known geologist with Anglesey connections. Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay was a Scottish geologist who published The Geology of North Wales in 1881, as well as many other earlier important works. He rose to become the president of the Geological Society of London and director-general of the Geological Survey. He retired to Beaumaris, where he died in 1892.

The inscription on his gravestone explains his Anglesey connection. His wife, Mary Louisa Williams, was the daughter of Rev. James Williams of Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy and granddaughter of John Williams of Treffos, in Llansadwrn. Her brother Owen was the grandfather of the famous Anglesey artist Kyffin Williams, thus making her his great aunt. In his autobiography Across the Straits, Kyffin Williams talks about playing with the Ramsay children when he was young.

So, I guess Greenly was really at Llangristiolus. Back in the car to head towards Llangristiolus. We decided to take the narrow lanes from Llansadwrn through Rhoscefnhir and Ceint, which once formed the major post road from Beaumaris to Holyhead (more in this in another blog soon).

After a bit of a wander around Llangristiolus churchyard I spotted a grave of distinctive red stone that stood out against the grey slate and black marble of most of the surrounding ones. Here was Edward Greenly and his wife Annie, “reunited”, as the inscription said.

Edward was born in 1861 and died in 1951, having been widowed since 1927 when his beloved Annie died. They first met when he was just 14, when she and her parents visited his family home. She was 11 years his elder, but their similar intellectual and scientific interests soon blossomed into a close friendship, then love. But after four years their parents, worried about such a relationship between one so young and one so much older, forced them apart. Eleven years later they met up again, and this time married in 1891.

Their’s was a close scientific working relationship as well as a loving marriage. Annie also had a keen interest in science from a young age. During his years surveying the geology of Anglesey (and before that in the Highlands of Scotland) she was usually at his side. Although Edward’s name is solely on the publications, he always readily admitted she was instrumental in developing ideas and in organising the publications. She died just days after they jointly finished a short geological textbook called The Earth. To mark her contributions Edward set up an Annie Greenly Fund through the Geological Society of London to support detailed geological mapping.

On the way home we stopped at Oriel Ynys Môn for a bite to eat and a look around the galleries. Who should we run across there but our new-found friend Edward Greenly, in a display in the history gallery, with a copy of his map alongside his portrait and biography.

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This single standing stone is just beside the road between Pentraeth and Talwrn, close to the Llanddyfnan parish church and its neighbouring Ty’n Llan farmhouse. The Stone Science museum is across the road. I got some nice photos of a well-lit monument, plus some of a herd of curious cattle who ran over to the fence, either to see what I was up to, or to see if I was bringing their feed. I then went over to the church, which I had photographed before, but several years ago.

After a few shots of the church I began wandering around the graveyard, mindful that some of the people I mentioned in my recent blog about the abandoned house, Ynys, at Cors Bodeilio might be here. Sure enough, two prominent slabs near the church door were for the Thomas family of the Bodeilio estate, including Evan Rice Thomas, who died 20 August 1875. Back by the wall was the grave of William Williams, the last recorded resident of Ynys, who died in 1906, and his wife Ann, who died the next year.

A few other interesting stones were spotted, including a Commonwealth War Grave stone for Corporal H. Jones of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who died in November 1940, aged 28. I stood by his grave for a moment in advance of the minute silence later in the morning for Armistice Day.

But the real surprises were to be found in the newer section of the cemetery. I spotted a grave with a number of plants and flowers around it, and a familiar name. Ann Benwell was a prominent local historian, a retired university lecturer, devoted member of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society and trustee of Menai Heritage, of which I am also a trustee. She died suddenly in 2013. I was surprised to find her here in Llanddyfnan, as she had lived in Menai Bridge, and I didn’t know of any connection to the parish. I’ve since learned she grew up near Talwrn.

I was further surprised when I looked at the grave next to Ann’s. This was for Eirian Llwyd, a well known local artist and wife of former Anglesey MP, AM and Plaid Cymru party leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones. She died after a short battle with cancer in 2014. I met her a couple of times a few years ago when I bought two of her prints, which hang proudly in my house. One of these prints is of a raven, so I was touched to see her gravestone also features a raven, a bird that appears in a number of her artworks. It must have had special significance to her, perhaps because of the association with the figure from the Mabinogion, the giant Welsh king Brân the Blessed, brother of Branwen.

As I mentioned in my last blog, The Irishman in Church Island Cemetery, every graveyard has several interesting stories to tell, if you just look closely.

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A more puzzling grave can be found hidden behind St. Tysilio’s church on Church Island in Menai Bridge. I spend a lot of time in Ireland, so I stopped in my tracks when I spotted the grave of Thomas Fane Uniacke “of Lynnbury, Co. Westmeath, Ireland”. How did someone who lived in Ireland wind up buried in Menai Bridge?

He was also blessed with a rather unusual name, which made tracking down information about him relatively easy. I first turned to Ancestry.co.uk, where I found several family trees that have him listed. Most of them gave the same death date as on this grave, March 2 1857, but there seems to be uncertainty about the circumstances of his death, as two different death places are given. Some say he died in Co. Cork, Ireland, whereas others say he died in Rifle Township in North Dakota, USA. Many give no death place at all. None say anything about Menai Bridge or Anglesey.

I contacted some of the people who had posted these family trees, but none was able to tell me much about him, other than the basic facts in the trees. He was a side branch of all their families, rather than a direct ancestor.

The basic facts are these: Thomas Fane Uniacke was born in 1792, son of Redmond Uniacke Esq. and Elizabeth Fleming, of Carrig, Co. Cork. He and his family are listed in Burke’s Landed Gentry Of Ireland, and were prominent landowners with their seat at Mount Uniacke, near Youghal, Co. Cork. His grandfather, James FitzGerald Uniacke, was a commander in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, who apparently gave up his horse to King William when the king’s horse was shot in the battle.

The family is full of military men, and Thomas was an officer in the Rifle Brigade. His two brothers were also military men, with Capt. John Uniacke being killed in the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain, in 1812, and his four sisters all married officers.  His two sons were officers in the Highland Light Infantry and his daughter married an officer.

Thomas somehow made the move from Cork to Co. Westmeath, perhaps through an arranged marriage to Elizabeth Rochfort, daughter of Gustavus H. Rochfort, Esq, M.P. for Westmeath and grandson of the first Earl of Belvedere. Thomas owned land in the county and was a land agent and a magistrate. His name crops up regularly in newspapers related to court cases and other legal matters, and even as a steward at the races in Mullingar.

The most interesting newspaper article I found about Thomas was one from the Dublin Evening Mail in 1840, headlined “Conspiracy to Murder a Magistrate”. Police in Westmeath got wind that four brothers named Kelly had stockpiled arms and ammunition, apparently intending to assassinate Thomas Uniacke, who was the agent for their landlord. The Kellys were insolvent and not paying their rent, but also refusing to vacate the properties. The article praises Thomas, saying “As an agent, we believe there is no man in the country, filling the same office, more kind-hearted and indulgent – indulgent, perhaps, to a fault – to the tenantry under his charge.”

The last record I find of Thomas Uniacke himself before his death is related to a court case in 1853. What happened to him after that, and why did he wind up dying in Menai Bridge? One clue is the death notice of his wife Elizabeth, just a year before his own death. Curiously, she died at Glenavon, Haverfordwest, in South Wales. Did they have some connection to Wales?

Their daughter Frances, who married Capt. Seton Lionel Smith, settled in Laugharne, about 25 miles from Haverfordwest, after he retired from active military service, probably sometime in the 1850s-1860s. Perhaps Elizabeth had been travelling to visit her when she took ill? Perhaps her husband had also been travelling there a year later when he died? It’s still a mystery, but I’m still looking for clues.

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