Wales study group

In January 2008 a group of wiki users started meeting to learn ways to approach research on Welsh ancestors. The group meets every two weeks on Monday at 12 AM mountain daylight time (MDT). We started including broadcasts of the meeting via Skype over the internet. Blaine Crump has joined us from Malad Idaho on two occasions using Skype.

We will begin to make these meetings available by a different method in the near future and will add details here when ready.

Meeting Agendas
Topics planned and items discussed. Please add topics for future discussion here:


 * Census Search Strategies for Wales
 * Preparing for a trip to the National Library of Wales
 * Mining and It's Influence on Welsh Families; history of mine development; why did people jump from one mine to another; coal mines of Wales: when did they open, close, accidents; Les Davies; book And they Worked Us to Death (Jackie Crowther)

= 17 March 2008 =

Attending: Margaret Jones, Jackie Crowther, Donna Moss, Marianne Crump, Joseph Soderberg, Nancy Jones Day, Darris Williams

Wiki demo: looked at the new Portal:Wales features

New business/ discussion items:


 * Ron Dennis is taking one last tour to Wales this year. Tom Taylor will be going with him and operating the tour in the future.
 * The Mormon History Association conference in Sacramento California this year will include a lecture about Wales by Ron Dennis.
 * The Utah Welsh Society was mentioned and should be described in the wiki.
 * When calling overseas you can use pennytalk.com to cut costs.
 * Joseph Soderberg asked about statistical probability as a tool in tracing Welsh ancestors. This topic really could be covered in a full article in the wiki. The bare minimum for a researcher is to know the population of the parish where you are researching for before, during and after the time of your search. Topographical dictionaries and gazetteers are an excellent source. Be sure to include details from The Topographical Dictionary of Wales by Samuel Lewis and Topographical Dictionary of the Dominion of Wales by Nicholas Carlisle. Online Historical Population Reports may have some useful information.
 * Susan Woods mentioned in an email recently that a teacher from the University of Cardiff is visiting Provo to help Tom Taylor with the Welsh language course at Brigham Young University (BYU).
 * Strategies for alternate census searches on Ancestry was a hot topic. Marianne raised the issue based on a class she is preparing to teach. Several ideas were shared by the group.


 * 1) Search by the name of the parish where your ancestor lived leaving the person's name out of the search
 * 2) Search using only the birthplace as a search term. This may give you the chance to find people who migrated away. Remember that the place names can be spelled with lots of creativity.
 * 3) Use the browse by page option. This gives you the chance to look at each page similar to searching a book or microfilm. Never trust an index to be 100% complete.

Action items: information should be added for the Utah Welsh Society, Mormon History Association conference, and the bug causing the right side portal boxes to drop when viewed in Internet Explorer 6 needs to be fixed. Statistics need to be fleshed out. The Dan Jones emigration guide was mentioned. Apparently Ron Dennis published a facsimile copy. The information from this emigration guide may be good content for the wiki.

= 31 March 2008 =

Attending: Margaret Jones, Darris Williams

Wiki demo: Useful websites box on the Portal:Wales page.

Old business:

New business/ discussion items: Prepare for a trip to the National Library of Wales

Action items:

= 14 April 2008 =

Attending: Jackie Crowther, Donna Moss, Marianne Crump, Joseph Soderberg, Susan Woods, Daniel Bunford-Jones, Lowri Jones, Darris Williams

Wiki demo: looked at the new Portal:Wales features, explained the new page for the Welsh Families Project

New business/ discussion items:


 * Darris showed how to use de.li.cious as an online website marking tool.
 * Marianne brought a facsimile copy of an emigrant's guide written by Dan Jones and translated by Ron Dennis. We hope to add a transcript to the wiki but need to build a page or two that will lead to it and we also need to get permission to reproduce it from Dr. Dennis.
 * Lowri explained some of the differences between the various Welsh language courses available. She teaches at the University of Cardiff where they do not use commercial products such as Rosetta Stone. Marianne will bring a demo disc for Welsh which she obtained from Rosetta Stone. She says it is better to check Ebay for the language course rather than pay the full price for a new program.
 * Joe brought several posters related to emigrant ships' which he has been able to scan and then print onto heavy poster paper.

Action items: Susan pointed out that we should have something pointing to the Welsh Mormon History website developed by Ron Dennis. Jackie took two assignments to insure that additional articles are created for the wiki. Darris will add notes from Tamara Compton about preparing for a research trip.

= 19 May 2008 =

We had a small group of five new participants and two former attendees. The format of the meeting was a little different. We spent most of our time talking about things to do with specific research questions. One family is researching in Montgomeryshire and the other in Glamorgan. Two other individuals at today's meeting are also researching in the same parish which led to some excited discussion.

One of the topics discussed was the need to understand the history of a nonconformist chapel and the association between various chapels. Knowing which chapel was formed from another is critical. A page titled Chapel Pedigree was created to illustrate the relationships between various chapels in the Merthyr Tydfil area.

= 2 June 2008 =

Please list topics you might like to discuss.

= 23 June 2008 = no report

= 7 July 2008 = Few people will be able to attend in the near future due to holidays and other fun stuff but the decision was made to meet anyway and to focus on the research of those that are able to attend.

=14 July 2008 = Only two people attended today but enabled us to focus in on the research of two in the group that are researching in the same parish. Some Ordnance Survey six inch to one mile maps were brought in and used to locate residences and the nonconformist chapels nearby. The session was recorded so that the detailed process for looking for relevant nonconformist records can be captured and written in the wiki.

One significant topic discussed was the problem researchers have learning about the different church and government jurisdictions that impact research. There are things like the parish that are pretty basic but when hamlet and township, hundred and diocese are thrown in that really causes confusion.

=21 July 08 = We will test the steps for finding nonconformist ancestors with those who missed the last meeting.

Please list other topics you might like to discuss.

Return to the Wales Portal page