Tracing Welsh Ancestry
Property Law Required a Nine Generation Genealogy
Aug 27, 2009 Rosemary E. Bachelor
Wales is a country of old annals, old customs and old families. The importance attached to genealogy almost amounts to a passion.
Welsh Property Law
The backbone of this passion is traceable to the historical mixture of law and genealogy. A provable pedigree was a necessary part of Welsh property law. By this law, a man held rank and claimed property by “kin and descent.” He had to show his lineage through nine generations to be a free Welshman and a holder of land.
Only a person past the ninth generation of descent could become the head of a new family. It stands to reason, therefore, that the greatest care would be exercised to preserve an accurate knowledge of one’s lineage. This level of accuracy in charting a family’s descendants generation by generation provides today’s family researchers a less hazardous route down the family trail.
Book of Welsh Pedigrees
In 1872, Thomas Nicholas first had his monumental work, County Families of Wales, published. It took these remarkably well-chronicled Welsh lineages and preserved them in print. Unlike other genealogy books, it combines histories of the ancient counties of Wales with the family lineages, integrating the two to show the social and genealogical evolution of the various Welsh counties.
This classic work on Welsh lineages provides a reliable record of both ancient and modern families, plus a record of all the ranks of the gentry, their lineages, appointments, armorial ensigns and residences. The ancient pedigrees include extinct families and rolls of county officials and high sheriffs.
Welsh Family Histories
Nicholas enhanced the value of his work by personally investigating county records to confirm even obscure facts. The end result is believed to be the most complete and faithful compendium of Welsh family history ever published. During more than a century, it has seen many reprints, not only in Wales, but also by United States publishers.
This work is titled Annals andAntiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales. The two volumes total more than 900 pages. The 1991 reprint by the Genealogical Publishing Co. in Baltimore is illustrated and indexed. Used copies are often available from online booksellers.
Famous Welsh Descendants
Some well known Welsh descendants in America are actress Bette Davis, actor Humphrey Bogart, explorers Daniel Boone and Meriwether Lewis, authors Sinclair Lewis and Jack London, comedian Bob Hope and U. S. presidents James Madison, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, James Monroe, Calvin Coolidge and current President Barack Obama.
Daniel Boone: Mother's Morgan Family from Wales
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