The
Jones, Jenkins and Evans families, whose members intermarried with our
main ancestral lines, seemed numerous enough, but their numbers pale
into insignificance when compared with the army of Thomases who appear
in the database! Once again, I have rarely included more
than the names of the parents of each Thomas who married into the
Davies, Powell, or other closely related family lines, so it is
probable that there are more relationships in earlier generations, but
until further research uncovers these connections, we are obliged to
assume that most of these Thomases are members of separate, unrelated
families.
So where to start
with the several hundred Thomases?! Let us start in the Rhondda
Valleys, where a family named Thomas farmed, like our Davies
ancestors, in both Llanwonno and Ystradyfodwg parishes
during the eighteenth century. In May 1770, a certain Morgan Thomas,
yeoman farmer of the parish of Ystradyfodwg, and William Davies
alias Hopkin, our great great great grandfather, signed a marriage bond
and obtained a licence for William to marry Morgan's daughter, Ann Thomas
" ... a minor under the age of 21 ..". In fact, Ann was 19 years of age
when she married. She was the youngest of four children of Morgan
Thomas and his wife Jane, all born and baptised in Llanwonno before
Morgan and Jane and family moved to Ystradyfodwg. Immediately after
their marriage William and Ann moved back to Llanwonno, where they
farmed Fanhalog. Several of their children and their children's
children, married people by the name of Thomas from farming families in
Llanwonno and Ystradyfodwg, and although we have yet to firmly
establish connections, it seems very likely that many of the
Thomases who married into the families of our ancestors in these two
parishes - which, we should remember, were sparsely
populated parishes at that time - were descendants of this same
Thomas family.
But another
Llanwonno Thomas family, who were also farmers, were not - at least
not directly - related to this Thomas family, but were descendants
of another prominent farming family in the parish - the Evans family.
The youngest son of Thomas Evans of Blaenllechau, Robert
Evans, married Anne Davies, daughter of William Davies alias
Hopkin and Ann Thomas, see Evans Family Connections,
but Thomas Evan's eldest son was baptised with his father's Christian
name, Thomas, as his family name, and his father's surname as his
Christian name, thus he became Evan Thomas. This patronymic naming convention
had been common practice in Glamorgan for centuries, but by the
second half of the eighteenth century it was dying out. Evan was one of
the last generation to be named in this way and he did not
continue the tradition for his children, who all carried the family
name Thomas, as did their descendants, thereby providing another source
of Thomas brides and grooms!
Moving out of the
Rhondda into the Ogmore Valleys and the parishes of Llandyfodwg,
Llangeinor and Bettws, we find two more prominent farming families
named Thomas whose paths crossed, and joined several times, with
our ancestors. One of these was the Thomas dynasty of Braich Y Cymmer,
a substantial freehold farm in the parish of Bettws. There would appear
to have been Thomases there for as long as parish
records existed, and the freeholder in each generation
was named Edward Thomas. The one born in 1791, Edward Thomas (#2923) married Catherine Thomas of Blaengarw, Llangeinor; she was the sister of our great great grandmother Mary Thomas.
Mary and Catherine were members of yet another Thomas family - but,
once again, one which had only recently emerged as a result of
patronymics a generation earlier; their father Gwillim Thomas, and his
elder brother James, were both baptised with their father's Christian
name, Thomas, as their family name, whereas their sisters both carried
their father's surname, James. See the family of Thomas James and Catherine Robert.
The other principle
Thomas farming family in the parish of Bettws, which also spread
into neighbouring Llandyfodwg and Llangeinor was that of Solomon Thomas and Ann Philip,
about whom I have so far been able to discover very little except for
the fact that they had two sons, named Evan and Henry, whose
descendants intermarried with our ancestors. Evan Thomas married Margaret David
and their daughter Jennet married Thomas Bevan of Llandyfodwg. Three of
their daughters married three different Davies boys, and in so doing
provided the link between our family tree and those of two
fellow-researchers, Jill Muir and Robert Wilkins - see Bevan Family Connections. The other son of Solomon and Ann, Henry Thomas, married Mary Jenkin,
and their daughter Gwenllian married Rees Maddock of Drisiog Farm,
Margam, one of the Maddock family which intermarried several times with
our ancestral lines - see Maddock Family Connections.
Rees Maddock's brother William married Margaret Thomas - another of the
Bettws Thomases, and their son William married Ann Thomas, one of the
Farteg Fawr, Margam, Thomases, whose sister Sarah married Evan Maddock.
William Maddock and Ann Thomas
had a son, William, who married Gwenllian Davies of Merthyr Mawr,
daughter of our great grandfather's brother Rees Davies.
The Farteg Fawr
Thomas family and the Margam Maddock family were both connected by
marriage to another Thomas farming family in the parish of Margam
- the Thomases of Ty Du Farm, Philip Thomas and his wife Ann Maddock.
Indeed, it is entirely possible that these two Thomas families were
related a couple of generations further back but I have been unable to
establish that connection to date. Phillip and Ann's eldest son David Thomas married Anne Loveluck Sanders,
daughter of Edmund Sanders and Anne Loveluck of Hall Farm, Pyle, but
not before both of them had emigrated to Australia! Three of Anne
Loveluck Sanders' sisters also travelled to Australia; one of them,
Mary Isod Sanders, was the great grandmother of fellow researcher Trish Davey,
who has kindly provided me with a good deal of the information in the
database on this branch of the family. That name Isod tells us that
there was yet another Thomas family in the pedigree of these three
Sanders sisters; their grandparents were William Loveluck and Isod Thomas
of Pyle, several of whose descendants intermarried with our ancestral
lines, notably their son William, who married Ann Powell,
daughter of Jehoshaphat, and son James who married Mary David, sister
of our great grandmother Catherine David. See also Loveluck Family Connections.
There are many more, but perhaps that's quite enough!
