Finally finding Mary Powell - the missing half of my surname
I've been searching for the missing roots of my surname for most of my life. This evening, I think I've finally answered one of the questions that I have been trying to resolve ever since I was a teenager. Mary Powell - married in the Swansea Valley and daughter of a blacksmith As I've explained in previous posts , my Dad had always known that our surname 'Powell-Davies' was what his father Thomas - my grandfather - had eventually decided to call himself. By the time he was twenty or so, he had chosen to be known by this 'double-barrelled' surname to reflect his twin roots - as being both a 'Powell' and a 'Davies' - and we have used that name ever since. Why Davies? The "Davies" part of the surname is easy to understand. It was the name that my grandfather was known by in his youth. That's because he was brought up in Pontypridd as one of the children of Barbara and Thomas Davies. But Thomas Davies - a local non-conformist pr...