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)
 * 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

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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 oprerating 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 facsimilie 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: