My Anglesey History web site had its beginnings in 1995 as a single page on my main business site for Kovach Computing Services. Five years later I hived it off to a separate web site, Anglesey-History.co.uk, and started expanding it with various new major sections. In 2008 I added a completely new section on the Windmills of Anglesey.

The inspiration for the section was the excellent book Windmills of Anglesey by Barry Guise and George Lees. It was published in 1992 and the first print run sold out quickly. It was highly sought after, not least by me (I made the mistake of not buying it as soon as I saw it!), and prices of second-hand copies on eBay were reaching £100. In 2010 a revised edition was published, which is still in print and available on Amazon and other outlets, such as the Oriel Môn shop.

Over the Christmas 2020 holiday I began revising the windmill section of the web site. This was mainly because many of the links to other websites that I had added in 2008 were no longer functional. The sites had either disappeared or had moved the pages to new addresses. I also started revisiting the actual descriptions of each windmill.

In developing the windmills section of the website I relied heavily on the research that Guise and Lees had published, as well as information from my own research and other sites, such as the millsarchive.org. But in the years since, many new sources of historical information have become more easily accessible over the internet. These include the Wales censuses from 1841-1911 (on Ancestry.co.uk or FamilySearch.org), the Anglesey parish records (again on Ancestry.co.uk or FamilySearch.org), the 1840 Tithe Maps and many archives of scanned and indexed newspapers from around the country (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and the National Library of Wales). The scrollable version of the early Ordnance Survey maps at the National Library of Scotland is also very useful. I started delving deeper into the history of a couple of the mills and discovered there was much more that I could add, to expand on what Guise and Lees had published, to clarify some points that were uncertain, and to correct some mistakes.

The censuses are particularly useful. These give the names, ages, birthplaces and occupations of every person living on the island. In a land where just a few surnames and given names predominate, these are vital for determining which William Jones, for instance, is being mentioned in other records. The birthplaces of children can also be useful for tracking the career of a miller who may have moved around to work at different places. Milling often ran in families, with sons and brothers found working at various mills around the island. I’ve started building family trees of the millers and their families I’ve encountered in the censuses so far, using genealogical software, to help in making connections between the people found working around the island.

As an example of how these approaches can work, lets look at Mona Mill. Also known as Melin y Borth, it overlooks Amlwch harbour and is the tallest on Anglesey, as well as the only brick-built one. Guise and Lees point out that it was built and owned by the Paynter family, and was run by various members of the Jones family through the decade, first Owen Jones, then Robert Jones, and then William Jones, who they say was probably Robert’s son. However, investigating the censuses for Amlwch has shown that, not only was William not Robert’s son, but there were actually three different unrelated William Jones that ran the mill through the years. The second William, who was running it in 1871, had previously been working at mills in Llechylched and Llandrygarn, and later went to run Melin Adda on the other side of Amlwch.

As this blog is published I have only revised the histories of just a few of the mills (the three mills near Amlwch, Melin Adda, Melin y Borth and Melin y Pant, two in Llandrygarn, Melin Manaw and Melin Newydd and Melin Orsedd in Rhoscefnhir) . But the process is ongoing and I hope to have all the pages updated in the near future.

Warren Kovach is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

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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.

The post Happiness and Tragedy – Exploring Anglesey Parish Records on Ancestry.co.uk appeared first on Anglesey History.

Increasingly my first stop when exploring the history of some place is the Historic Wales Web Portal. Maintained and coordinated by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW), in conjunction with the National Museum Wales and Cadw, this map-based database brings together the historical records of all these organizations as well as those of the various Archaeological Trusts around the country. It makes a mind-boggling amount of historic information easily accessible, and, for anyone interested in both maps and history, can lead to hours of fun and lost productivity.

When you first go to the web site you are presented with a map of the whole of Wales. Once you zoom in on your area of interest the various options on the right side become available. Here you can choose which data set you wish to use, resulting in dots being placed on the map for each feature of historical interest. Clicking on these dots gives you a brief description, with a link to more information.

The National Monuments Record for Wales option displays all the sites recorded by the RCAHMW, with links going to their Coflein online database. This contains details of many thousands of archaeological sites, monuments, buildings and maritime sites around the country, together with millions of photographs, plans and drawings, historic maps, surveys and reports, many of which can now be viewed online. The Welsh Archaeological Trusts’ Historic Environment Records option maps the equally large databases of the four Archaeological Trusts in Wales, with links to their joint online database, Archwilio.

There are two options to view sites in Cadw’s databases, the Listed Buildings and the Scheduled Ancient Monuments, with links to full details in the Cadw web site. Finally, the sites where the more than 140,000 items in the National Museum of Wales archaeology collection were found can be mapped with the National Museum Archaeology Collection option.

One particularly useful option is the ability to turn on an overlay of the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map. This allows you to see what your area of interest looked like in the late 19th century. The basic background map for the site is also the Ordnance Survey map, but the very latest version. As you zoom in it switches to the larger scale maps, through the equivalents of the Landranger and Explorer maps, up to the very detailed 1:2500 map. The easy access to the OS maps alone makes this site well worth frequenting.

Overall, this site is invaluable to anyone with an interest in historical places in Wales, providing easy access to a wealth of information from all the major sources. My one complaint is it is strictly designed for larger screens on desktop or laptop computers. It is just about usable on the higher resolution tablet computers, but attempts to use it on a mobile phone when I’m out and about have been frustrated by the small screen.

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