My Family History

For the last morning of our trip - a blustery morning with torrential showers falling as 'Storm Debi' blew across Wales - we travelled up the Rhondda valley to Pontypridd, a town that ties together the various threads of my paternal family tree. The famous old bridge in Pontypridd William Rees from Llansaint and Margaret Williams from Llansawel A marriage certificate that I have just tracked down shows that William and Margaret (already a widow) were married in Merthyr Tydfil in 1843. Whether they had first met in Carmarthenshire, or after they had migrated over to the Valleys, isn't clear. By 1851, William the 'Cabinet Maker' and his family had moved down the Rhondda valley to live in Pontypridd, and this is where my great-grandmother Sarah Jane Rees was born in 1852.   The town was still fairly small in the 1850s but was starting to grow rapidly . In the town museum, at the end of the old bridge, we found a model of the area of the town where William, Margaret...

Today, 5th July 2023, health campaigners will be marking the 75th anniversary of the NHS, as I will be myself on a campaign stall in my town centre in Kendal. It therefore seemed an appropriate day to add a post about my father, Thomas Dillwyn Powell-Davies, to this family history blog. That’s because the ‘birthplace’ of the NHS was the Welsh town of Tredegar, and that’s also the town where my father worked from 1936-1946, work whose value was acknowledged by none other than Aneurin Bevan himself. A testimonial for my father from Nye Bevan My father’s treasured photograph album of his time in Tredegar, together with his files about his work with wartime evacuees, and his letters demanding that action be taken about housing and poverty in the town, also provide a record that may be useful to anyone with an interest in the history of Tredegar.    I have included some of them in this post, including personal correspondence with Nye Bevan. I should only add at the outset that, as ...