Powell01x.htm

At Ty Draw, Pyle, in April 1861, three members of the family who had moved there from Groeswen were missing at the time of the census. Rees' wife, Mary (#17) had died the previous June, aged 59, leaving Rees, four sons and four daughters, all unmarried and aged between 14 and 29, living together at Ty Draw. Two months after Mary's death, eldest son Rees (#13), my great grandfather, married Margaret Jones (#143), daughter of Thomas Jones (#271) of Ballas. Immediately after the marriage, Rees and Margaret left for America - for the small town of Elton in Cattaraugus County, New York State - where they lived for at least a year, probably three, as we know that their son Thomas (#144) was born there in October 1861. There is also evidence (in the Family Bible) to suggest that a second child, Mary, was born in 1863, but no official records have yet come to light. So Rees was not in the 1861 census of Pyle, but neither was his brother Thomas (#170) and it is possible that he was in Elton with Rees and Margaret. More research is required here - it seems likely, in the light of other evidence, that a member of the Powell family of a previous generation had emigrated to New York State and was farming there, possibly providing a reason for this being Rees' - and maybe also Thomas' - choice of Elton in 1861. By 1864, however, Rees and Margaret had returned to Pyle, possibly because Margaret had become seriously ill, because she died there in July 1864, aged just 30, and was buried in the Jones family grave at Tythegston St.Tydwg's.

It would appear that Margaret's nieces - the daughters of Griffith David (#174), publican and grocer of New House Inn, Pyle, who had died a year earlier - provided help and support to widower Rees and his young son Thomas. One of them, Catherine, became more than just a helping friend to Rees - in 1868 she became the second Mrs. Rees Powell. Rees and Catherine were married at St.James' Church, Pyle on 27 June 1868. Many of those present at the marriage would have been back at St.James' less than three weeks later for a much sadder event - the burial of James Loveluck (#183), Catherine's brother-in-law, husband of Mary David (#182). James' untimely death, at the age of 39, left Mary widowed at 34 with five young children, the eldest only nine years old. Amongst the wedding guests and mourners would have been the young man who, a few years later, would become Mary's second husband and step-father for these five children - neighbouring farmer and brother-in-law Edward Powell (#22), Rees' brother. But before their marriage in 1876, yet another couple in the same congregation would join the Powell and David families in marriage - Rees' and Edward's brother, Thomas (#170) and Catherine's and Mary's sister, Margaret (#179) - making Three Brides for Three Brothers! See more on the David Family. The New House Inn, still there (I had the pleasure of visiting it in 2002), provides a link betweeen the David, Powell and Loveluck families. Griffith David was the publican there in 1851; James Loveluck in 1861; Mary David, James' widow, running it alone in 1871; and, by 1880, Rees Powell and Catherine David were there. But before that, Rees and Catherine had lived for more than seven years at the other end of Glamorgan, and we shall follow them there now. Before doing so, let us check on the status of the other Powells in Pyle:

In North Cornelly, a short walk from both Ty Draw and the New House Inn, lived another Powell family - that of William Powell (#2045), youngest son of Jehoshaphat, and his wife Jane, née Cuthbertson. By 1851, there were eight children in this family - but no sign of their father at the time of the census. Not unreasonable, you may think, given his profession - that of a Customs Officer; there were several customs officers in the family and we know that they were moved around quite a lot. However, William's movements were hardly customary. It appears that he accepted a transfer from Newton, near his home, to Boscastle, near Padstow in Cornwall, hardly within commuting distance! And it seems that his employers knew nothing of his wife and eight children in Pyle, because in 1857 he was transferred even further afield - to Orford in Sussex, where the Customs Headquarters records show him as a single man! By 1871 he was no longer "single", however - the 1871 census records him as married, living in Sussex with a new "wife" named Sarah, by which time Customs records show that he had been dismissed for financial irregularities. By 1881, Jane, still living in Pyle, must have lost contact totally with William and assumed that he was dead because she is recorded as a widow in the 1881 census. Probably unknown to her, William had by then returned to South Wales; the 1881 census records him as a widower, living as an inmate pauper in Bridgend workhouse, where he died in 1887. By this time William and Jane's son William (#2049) had emigrated to Australia (in 1863), married (in 1874) and produced nine young Australian Powells.