spending a couple of days in Wales - stayed overnight at the Lawns Farm B&B in Grosmont again... nice and relaxing...

initial research for this trip was the Newport Reference Library, home of many records for Monmouthshire. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make use of the microfiche or computers - apparently they need to booked and, naturally enough, none were available when I turned up... bummer... I did find out that they can be booked over the 'phone, so I just need to plan a bit better next time. I did, however, manage to look at a few other things - the most interesting of which was an 1861 map of Newbridge. Newbridge is a couple miles north of Abercarn and the place where Dan & Amelia were married. Managed to find the location of the Baptist Chapel - just need to translate this to a modern day map.

spent a morning at the library at the SoG.

Wooo Hooo!! Found the marriage entry for James Jukes and Ellen Margaret Bradley - December quarter of 1899. Just need to fill in the form and lodge it with the Family Records Office next time I'm there...

still unable to find, with confidence, the birth records for Mary or Lavinia Rowland (Amelia's younger sisters). I've found a possibility for Mary - a Mary Hannah born in Swansea but the census record indicates that our Mary was born in Abercarn... might be able to find a more accurate indication from parish records

joined the Society of Genealogists (SoG) - this gives me unlimited access to a lot of microfiche records; Indexes to Births, Marriages, Deaths; the SoG Library

the certificates from last weekend turned up...

Fanny's wedding certificate wasn't as completely helpful as I'd hoped. With Fanny being a widow and Richard apparently a widower, the entry in the 'Age' box was - 'Full' - damn!!. One thing that has come out of it - Fanny's father was still alive at the time and listed as Thomas HAYTER, a farmer.

Robert Thomas Rowland's birth certificate was also in the envelope and it bore more fruit - and I wasn't really expecting it to. By the look of it Mary Anne (his Mum) wasn't a James as previously thought - she's a Jones! that'll make for an easier investigation?!? A trip on the weekend back to the FRO (Family Research Office) is on the cards - hopefully a more successful search for Mary Anne and Williams marriage...

I had worked up a theory that as Amelia's presumed uncle (Joseph James) was a tailor in Abercarn, Dan Davis may have work for or with him and met a married his niece. Damn and blast when I find that the James tree isn't attached to ours at this point. Back to the census transcript and lo and behold - there's a Daniel Jones who was a tailor - so the theory may still hold to be true. It turns out that there are 6 tailors listed for Abercarn at the time but only Daniel Jones has a listing indicating a shop location - Market Square, so it could be that he was the big cheese. It will interesting to find out if the requirement for so many tailors was due to the close-by Prince of Wales Colliery or may be the citizen's of Abercarn were really into fashion...

Spent about 3 hours in the Family Records Office searching for various things. The successes were the birth certificate for Robert Thomas Rowland (Amelia's elder brother) and Fanny XX's marriage certificate. I'll slowly add the birth certs for all of Amelia's siblings just for completeness but they (the certs) should only offer confirmation of birth dates and some extra background information - address at birth, parent's occupation at birth - useful but not immediately necessary for growing the tree. Fanny's marriage certificate, as mentioned before, should give us her age, as well as her parents names. She was apparently a widow at this point in time so I'm not sure if that will change the data recorded on the cert... Both certificates should arrive in the second post on Friday.

It took about 30 minutes to get these references - the next two and half hours were spent trying to find the wedding certificate for William and Mary Anne (Amelia's Mum and Dad). Started off with Robert's birth year (1867) and worked backwards. Went back as far as 1865 but couldn't find any corresponding entries for both parties. I think that on my next trip in, I just look at any likely Mary Anne JONES entries - possibly easier to identify than William Rowland and try my luck... getting Amelia and Dan's certificate was based wholly on finding the entry for her...