Now
what's a name like Cuthbertson doing in South Wales? A good question
which I should like to be able to answer, but am not yet in a position
to do so! There were very few people of this name outside Scotland in
the eighteenth century, apart from two pockets in North-East England
and in Cumberland, and when a certain Alexander Cuthbertson married
Mary Tyler in Neath in 1761, he was undoubtedly the only Cuthbertson in
Glamorgan. He appears to have arrived in Neath by sea, by means of his
own boat - an asset that appears to have been jointly owned with a
fellow mariner by the name of John Munden. That is as far as my
research has taken me to date.
Alexander
and Mary had only one child - John - born in 1862, and both Mary and
John had died by the time Alexander Cuthbertson sat down to write his
will in 1803. By this time, Alexander was an Alderman of Neath, and a
man of not insignificant means, and the sole beneficiary of the will,
apart from his maid servant, was Alexander's "reputed natural son, Alexander Cuthbertson, aged nine".
Clearly,
the young Alexander was born long after the death of his father's wife,
and there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that his father's
maidservant, Ann Thomas, may have been the
boy's mother. Part of this evidence is provided by the indecent haste
with which young Alexander is married, by
licence, at the age of 17 (as soon as possible after his father's
death, we may surmise) to a certain Mary Thomas (a relation of
Ann's?) and the fact that the terms of the will give young Alexander
access to his father's fortune "at the age of 21 or the date of his marriage if this is sooner". A further part of the evidence is the
fact that a few years after their marriage both young Allexander and
his "wife" Mary, re-marry. Divorce at that time could only be obtained
by personal act of parliament and there is no evidence of such a
divorce having been granted. This being the case, it seems highly
likely that the marriage was declared void as a result of the
revelation of a blood relationship between the couple, which would have
prohibited them marrying under the consanguinity provisions of the Marriage Act 1537. This did not prevent the young couple from producing a child, however, and it is when this child, Jane Cuthbertson married William Powell,
son of Jehoshaphat Powell of Llanmihangel Mill (the brother of Rees
Powell, our great great great grandfather) that we discover our family
connection and the reason for my interest in this fascinating story.
In
fact the story continues to hold a good deal of fascination as it
unrolls forward in time, William Powell being a rather special
character, but all that is detailed in the database so I won't
attempt to repeat it here. Much of the detail that I have recorded on
William and Jane and their family is the result of research by Howard Lewis of Swansea,a descendant of this couple so a not-so-distant cousin of mine.
One of the children of William and Jane - William Powell, born in 1840 in Pyle, was the great great grandfather of another cousin, Malcolm Powell of Tasmania, whose wife Dianne Powell is also a keen genealogist and has provided much of the data on William's descendants.
