Just ordered A History of Wales, 1660-1815 by ED Evans. It was referred to at the end of the chapter on primary sources in The People of Seion and figured it was in the sweet spot for my continued research into the family tree. One of the primary sources referred to was The Religious Census of 1851 which coincidentally I took delivery of just before Christmas. Happy days.
THG mentioned the ED Evans was v niche but I replied that it wasn’t nearly as niche as The Welsh Methodist Society: The Early Societies in South-west Wales 1737-1750 which as you can imagine was an interesting read.
Being of Baptist extraction I’m not specifically interested in the Methodists. Just with the general dissatisfaction in the way the established church was run and how it led to the formation of dissenting alternatives, which is where I come in.
Had a couple of breakthroughs yesterday in the ole research. I’ve been trying to trace the footsteps of various ancestors using the Census but google provides no data on some of the places they lived. The answer is old OS maps. In the nineteenth century they specifically named farms and mills. After some poring over different maps and correlating what I’ve found with the names of surrounding properties in the census I’ve been able to identify some of the places. Even got modern street view images of the name of the place at the farm gate. Before registering the usefulness of old maps I was virtually “walking” the roads in areas hoping to find clues as to place names.
I found one former mill that is in the census as Glandwr but on the map as Lan Dwr. A streetview zoom showed a stone embedded in the otherwise whitewashed wall with LD1776 on it. Glandwr and LD1776 are without doubt the same place.
Some places still remain hidden, I suspect no longer there, as might be the case with the “woollen factory” building in the map shown. I think places like this will involve actual visits and walking the ground which will have to wait until after the hip op. Still, it’s progress. I’m planning to spend a week touring all these locations sometime in 2025.
Anyway enough of this talk about old things. Today is New Year’s Eve and will involve looking ahead to new things. Hope you have a good one.