The Non-Bloodline Families
For
the most part, our ancestors' families were large; typically they
consisted of seven, eight, nine or even more children. At a time when
little migration took place, most of these children grew up, married,
and had families of their own in the area of their birth. The role of
siblings and aunts and uncles in the daily life of a family, and their
consequent influence on children's development and education, and
indeed, on the stability and well-being of the family as a whole,
was very much greater than is the case today. It would be a serious
omission, then, in trying to understand the lives of our ancestors to
restrict our research to the bloodline families. And so, wherever it
has been possible to do so, I have attempted to include details of the
families of those whom brothers and sisters of our ancestors married,
We
also see many cases within the family history of the premature death of
one partner - a typical example being the death in childbirth of a
young mother - and the other partner re-marrying. Although the new
step-parent had no blood relationship with the young children that he
or she inherited, their role and influence on the children was as
important as that of a natural parent, so again I have tried to include
details of second - and subsequent - marriages wherever possible.
Very
often we find amongst our ancestors - particularly amongst the farming
families of Glamorgan - multiple connections between the same families:
For example two or more brothers marrying two or more sisters from the
same two families, so some of the families listed below have multiple
links into our bloodline families, making it even more important that
they should be included in our family history.
Equally,
there are many cases where the same family name connects to our
ancestral line several times, but from completely different,
probably unconnected, origins - such is the problem of common Welsh
surnames - so we find several different Morgan, Evans, Llewellyn and
Thomas families, for example.
