Following last year's research windfall on W.T. Owens paternal lines, we felt we had exhausted currently available record sources on those lines and began working on his maternal lines. As Margaret Evans family came from southern Glamorganshire along the seacoast, record research in this area was followed until we came to a curious scarcity of Evans names in the area. Rather than pursue further research where it was showing lack of results, we proceeded onward to her maternal Jones/Lloyd lines.
    The Jones/Lloyd lines offered us a potential for double the results with half the effort, as W.T. and his first wife, Margaret Jones were first cousins one generation removed. This makes the bottom line on both their pedigrees the same.
    In starting new research on any line, we have made a practice of going back to the early church records generated at the time the first convert on that line joined the L.D.S. Church and checking out all records left by that convert/immigrant during their lifetime. As a result, you are going to find some of the event and ordinance dates in the current family record slightly different from the information that has been handed down through family sources. Upon checking with the original LDS Branch records in Glamorgan and Brecon, Wales, it would appear that their memories were not precisely accurate once they immigrated to Utah and were reporting those event dates orally.
    We also found several alternative names for Cecilia Jones Evans Thomas's mother on existing ancestral file and family records. As it turned out, Cecilia knew her mother's correct name and had passed that on to the family while she lived in Utah. Search of parishes around Merthyr Tydfil showed that the family lived in Cefn Coed y Cymmer in the Vaynor Parish of adjoining Brecon rather than in Merthyr Tydfil itself. Unfortunately, the 1810-1815 records are missing for most of southern Wales and this is the time period when they would have married.
    As we encountered these difficulties, we employed the services of Mrs. Dianne Foster, a native Welsh researcher who works at the National Library of Wales, to check on other records we currently can't access from the Salt Lake City library. She did find Cecilia's second husband, Edward Thomas, their two children and his parents, so we have added that information to her file.
    These records did direct us to Cardiganshire and records of her father, Daniel Jones and his father's family in the Gartheli area. The records in this part of Wales currently only go back to 1774, so we again ran out of sources to search in the critical time periods.
    Daniel Jones' wife, Mary Lloyd continues to be an interesting problem. A map showed that the village of Abermeurig where Daniel Jones lived currently consists of only two houses and a Methodist chapel. Living nearby at a farm called Tancoed in 1841 was a Mr. William Lloyd, who turned out to be the brother of our ancestress, Mary Lloyd. Daniel and Mary appear to have lived within 3 miles of each other, she being the daughter of Daniel Lloyd of Bettws Leiki (Saint Lucia in Welsh) who later moved to Tancoed in Gartheli. However, we again run into the "dead zone" of records when it comes to her parents’ marriage and her mother's name. The surname "Lloyd", one of the few early surnames in Wales, was originally granted as an honorific title for some outstanding service performed, so most of those with that name are carefully documented. There is a wealth of information available on Lloyd families in this part of Wales once we can break through the current record gap. Mrs. Foster is currently researching other possibilities in this area for us.
    One surprising development on the previously discussed Evans line occurred at this point in our research. While searching for Lloyd probates in St. David's Archdiocese, a will for William Evans of Bishopston, Glamorganshire was discovered [included in research packet]. It was dated from a time period where we had not been able to find any more Evans names. When we went back to the Bishop's Transcripts for the parish, we found the burial for this William recorded as William Cornelius, not William Evans. Since there were absolutely crowds of people in the area with the Cornelius surname, we went back for another look - and noticed what we had missed before. For some strange reason, the earlier Evans ancestors used the surname of Cornelius, not Evans in the parish register. So with the help of this will, we were able to extend that line back four more generations and actually beyond the beginnings of that parish register.
    There is a minor problem in this. William had three grandsons, all about the same age, all living in the Bishopston area and all named John. We are descended from one of them, but it is not presently clear just which one. Until we can straighten this out, we have selected the youngest of the three, as most likely candidate for our pedigree, but will do all the temple work for the entire group. This keeps the basic paternal pedigree intact and we can be sure that eventually things will be sorted out properly.
    When research gets sticky in one area, we have decided to proceed on to the next line on our agenda, namely W.T's wives. Since W.T. and Margaret were cousins, that takes care of her maternal line without any extra effort. Margaret and Mary Emily were half-sisters, sharing a paternal line, so we went right to work on Mary Emily Jones's lines. The paternal line of their father, William Edward Jones, has shown no forward progress at this time past his grandfather. We do know that his father, Jenkin Jones, was the flour miller at the Brynmair Mill in Brecon in 1851 and his wife took in boarders, so their home was probably a little larger than the average. By 1861 he appears to have retired from the milling business and was listed as the parish clerk. We know the names of Jenkin's parents, but since they came from somewhere else and we don't yet know where that is, we are at a standstill. However, his maternal line is moving forward nicely, having resulted in two (possibly three) more generations.

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