THE FOUR SIBLINGS OF BEAVER COUNTY AND THEIR COUSIN
By Ronald D. Dennis –
26 July 2009
On 1 July 1822 in the little village of Llanarth in the county of Cardiganshire, Wales, Evan Griffiths married Eleanor Jones. Four of
their approximately ten children would eventually gather in the Rocky Mountains because of their conversion to Mormonism. More precisely, they settled in Beaver County, located about 180 miles to the south of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Here are the four children of Evan and Eleanor Jones Griffiths
who converted to Mormonism and eventually became Utahns, living in little towns
such as Beaver, Adamsville, and Greenville:
1.
Catherine (born 1825) married Evan John Jones (1820), son of John and Lucretia
Jenkins Jones
2.
Rees (born 1830) married Catherine Prosser (1833)
3.
John Evan (born 1833) married Margaret Jones, daughter of John and Margaret
Thomas Jones
4.
Sarah (born 1835) married John J. Jones (1836), son of John and Margaret Thomas
Jones
The marriage of Catherine to Evan John Jones took place in
1843 in Dowlais, a town about two miles to the north of Merthyr Tydfil in the county of Glamorganshire. It is highly unlikely that young Catherine would have gone from
Llanarth to Dowlais on her own, and thus one would conclude that the entire
family relocated in this industrialized area in South Wales in the early 1840s.
The attraction was most likely a job in the iron industry, a job that would
allow the breadwinner Evan to make three or four times the amount he was able
to earn in Llanarth – and even a bit more if he were to take his young sons
down in the mines with him, a fairly common practice in those days. It appears
that they all lived in Pengarnddu, a village adjacent to Dowlais in the greater
Merthyr Tydfil area.
When Evan Griffiths died in 1858 he left a widow (Eleanor)
and four married children:
1.
Catherine, age 33, married to Evan John Jones, with 8 children and one on the
way
2.
Rees, age 28, married to Catherine Prosser, with one child
3.
John, age 25, married to Margaret Jones, with one child
4.
Sarah, age 23, married to John J. Jones, with one child and one on the way
It is not clear at what point Catherine, Rees, John, Sarah
and their spouses converted to Mormonism. Whether their parents converted is
not known. That their mother Eleanor elected to remain in Wales until her death in 1878 in Dowlais suggests that either she did not convert or that she was
not physically able to bear the journey to America. Or perhaps she had other
children who elected not to emigrate with whom she could stay. Whatever her
reasons for staying behind, it must have been very difficult for her to bid
farewell to four of her children, their spouses, and 21 of her grandchildren
during the period from about 1862 to 1866. Such farewells were generally
considered permanent, causing untold emotional anguish for those leaving and
those left behind.
On 30 April 1866 the John Bright left Liverpool with
747 Mormon emigrants on board headed for New York. Among that number were
Catherine Griffiths Jones with her husband and their 11 children, John
Griffiths with his wife and their 3 children, and Sarah Griffiths Jones with her
husband and their 4 children.
Nearly three years earlier on 4 June 1863 Catherine Prosser
Griffiths, wife of Rees Griffiths, had left from London on board the Amazon along
with 894 other Mormon emigrants. Traveling with her were her three children: Jane,
age 7, Mary Ann, age 2, and baby Evan.
It appears that Rees Griffiths did not come to America on the Amazon with his wife and children in 1863, since his name does not
appear on the shipping list. Nor does it appear on the lists for any other
ships contracted by the LDS Church between 1862 and 1865. Rees could not have
come earlier than 1862 since his infant son Evan was on the 4 June 1863
crossing of the Amazon and since another child was born to him and his
wife on 20 December 1865 at Greenville, Beaver County, Utah.
It was not uncommon for a man to travel to America on an earlier crossing to
make preparations for his wife and children in the new country. And in Rees’s
case he may have come on a ship that did not carry Mormon emigrants, thus making
it the more difficult to identify his ship.
Yet another Griffiths family was in Beaver County during the late 1860s and early 1870s – the family of John Jenkin and Eleanor Lloyd
Griffiths. John Jenkin Griffiths was born in 1837 in Aberaeron, a seaside
village just four miles northeast of Llanarth. He also resided with his wife
and children in Pengarnddu for a time. On 21 May 1864 John put his wife and two
children on board the General McClellan in Liverpool. Just under one
year later on 29 April 1865 John left the Liverpool harbor on the Belle Wood.
He met his wife and children in Adamsville, Utah. Their next child was born on
23 July 1866 in Greenville, Beaver County, Utah.
The father of John Jenkin Griffiths is Jenkin Griffiths,
whose brother is Evan Griffiths, the father of the four siblings – Catherine,
Rees, John Evan, and Sarah. Consequently, John Jenkin Griffiths is a first
cousin to the four siblings. This relationship explains their moves at similar
times from Cardiganshire to Dowlais and then to Beaver County. And the ties
between the family of John Jenkin Griffiths and the family of his cousin Sarah
Griffiths Jones would grow even stronger when three children of the former
married three children of the latter. Here are the unions:
Griffiths, John Jenkin and Eleanor Lloyd (Parents)
Griffiths, Mary Ann (1860)
married Jones, John G. (1856) in 1877
Griffiths, James Lloyd (1863)
married Jones, Sarah Ellen (1867) in 1886
Griffiths, Catherine Hannah
(1873) married Jones, Evan D. (1860) in 1891
Jones, John J. and Sarah Griffiths (Parents)
Jones, John G. (1856) married
Griffiths, Mary Ann (1860) in 1877
Jones, Sarah Ellen (1867)
married Griffiths, James Lloyd (1863) in 1886
Jones, Evan D. (1860) married
Griffiths, Catherine Hannah (1873) in 1891
The practice of siblings marrying siblings had been
established one generation earlier when Sarah Griffiths Jones, the mother of
the three Jones siblings, and her brother John Evan Griffiths both married into
the John Jones family. Here are the unions:
Griffiths, Evan and Eleanor Jones (Parents)
Griffiths, John Evan (1833)
married Jones, Margaret (1834) in 1853
Griffiths, Sarah (1835)
married Jones, John J. (1836) in 1855
Jones, John and Margaret Thomas (Parents)
Jones, Margaret (1834)
married Griffiths, John Evan (1833)
Jones, John J. (1836) married Griffiths, Sarah (1835) in 1855
Knowing which Griffiths belonged to which Jones posed no
small challenge to the people of Beaver County – especially in light of the
ongoing recycling of first names for which the Welsh are famous. Using family
names down through the generations is certainly a way of honoring our
forebears, but the occasional use of names such as Tiffany, Stacie, Brock, and
Todd makes things much less challenging for the struggling family historian.
