Filling in the blanks on my family tree
I’ve been trying to solve a puzzle for about 50 years. I may have finally got at least closer to an answer. I must have still been a boy when my Dad first explained to me that our surname was ‘Powell-Davies’ because his father had been adopted and raised as ‘Tom Davies’ by the Davies family. However, he had then added ‘Powell’ to his surname when he found out that the name of his actual birth mother was ‘Mary Powell’. And ‘Powell’ turns out to be the surname he was first listed under in the 1891 census record for Pontypridd: The 1891 census showing my grandfather as an 'adopted son' But who was Mary? – and who was my grandfather’s actual father? Nobody really knew. When I first started trying to find out, there was no such thing as an internet search! Instead, I went to the records office to track down a copy of my grandfather’s birth certificate – but that threw up as many questions as answers: My grandfather's birth certificate It confirmed that his mother was, indeed, ‘
