One Day at a Time - Day 12 - Westbury On Severn

You are to help your brothers until the LORD gives them rest, as he has done for you, and until they too have taken possession of the land that the LORD your God is giving them. After that, you may go back and occupy your own land, which Moses the servant of the LORD gave you east of the Jordan toward the sunrise. 

—Joshua 1:14-15

When I was a child I grew up with the idea of  “family history”. 

My father was always talking about how historical his family was (and it is).  One of my cousins started her own DAR chapter and all us girls were given copies of our lineage that would enable us to become a part of the group (I did).  

My mother’s family was proud of their lines as well even though they were not nearly as “historical” - well, I take that back— my Mayflower connection is from my maternal grandmother side so, yeah.

My mother always enjoyed telling us about lighthearted arguments between my grandparents , him saying that his people came over on the boat and my grandmother reminded him that hers met them on the shore, alluding to her Native American heritage.

I was always interested in these stories but never thought to write them down or ask many questions when I had the opportunity.  Well, I did ask more questions of my grandmother but she had her limits of what and who she would talk about.  I didn’t think to ask much of my grandfather and he offered precious little — a few stories — and made it seem like he wasn’t too inclined to talk about his childhood.

I suspect in both their cases their childhoods weren’t idyllic and rather short-lived since both of them were in the work force at age 11.  But, I digress….

When I started doing research in earnest I decided to focus on one group rather than jump around Willy-nilly through all my family.  Since one side of my father’s family was pretty well documented (thanks cousin Naomi), I decided to focus on the one with the closest trip back to Europe.

That would be my mother’s father’s side of the family — the Davies’s if you will.  My great grandfather was James Davies (can I say needle/haystack situation?) and my great-grandmother was Dinah Sophia Webb.  It didn’t take much searching to realize that great-grandfather was going to be a bear to search for (his father’s name is John Davies —- not much better).  So, I decided to search for…

Dinah Sophia Webb.  Why?  Well, Dinah isn’t an unusual name but it is more outstanding than say Margaret or Mary or Sarah AND she had a middle name — Sophia.  So, that gave me more to go on.

And I found this…

I have also found baptismal records for her as well…

So, I have learned about her parents, most of her siblings (one brother died in a mining accident when one of those Rollie bins ran over him) and her and her siblings immigration to the US where they all settled in Pennsylvania. I have even found cousins both in Pennsylvania and the UK.

But, you know what they say— when you do family history you can answer one question and raise a half dozen more and that is what I did.

I knew that Dinah was born in England rather than Wales and that her family moved to Wales when she was about 9.  She was born, as per birth certificate, in Newnham, Westbury on Severn, Gloucester.  Now when they moved to Wales they moved to Blaina, Monmouthshire which isn’t very far when you look at a map.  Some censuses say she was a Welsh speaker but I don’t know for sure.  However, it occurred to me that I had done a lot of reading about where she lived as a child but I knew nothing of her place of birth.  So, I ordered this…

It came today and I can’t wait to get started on it.    

What can I tell you about Dinah?  She was very tiny — she could stand under my grandfather’s outstretched arm and he was 5’4”.  She was intolerant of people that didn’t live like she thought they should and was known to not allow certain people to walk in front of her house and would run them off with a broom.  My grandmother and grandfather married during WW1 and after it was over they moved back to Pennsylvania and lived with Dinah.  I don’t think she cared much for my 16 year old Southern grandmother because she literally terrorized her talking about putting “slow poison” in somebody’s tea!  Yikes! It is no wonder that my grandmother got on a train back to Texas rather quickly!  But, rumor has it that Dinah was an expert at making Welshcakes.  A few years back I got the recipe from a cousin and now I make Welshcakes.  And she went to church and she had a cottage garden and she had 12 children and lost several — two are buried somewhere in Wales.  

I wish I had known her.  I think.  I am sure she mellowed out with age.  Surely.

Dinah Sophia Webb Davies