pope

next meeting

details coming soon..

MY TIES WITH TONYREFAIL

Readers of this newsletter might wonder what
connection this photograph (right) of William and Anna Pope. taken in a Wiltshire field in the early 1920’s is doing in a newsletter about a South Wales mining village.

The answer is a considerable amount. The
photograph shows my grandfather and grandmother William and Anna Pope of Alton Barnes, Pewsey, Wiltshire with their children and grandchildren. Of the 10 grandchildren. remarkably, seven were born in Toneyrefail. Even though most of them left Toneyrefail and many came back to Wiltshire, traces of their .

William and Anna pope with their family

Welsh accent remained with several of them all their lives The back row of the photograph shows Maurice Pope, Llewellyn Pope (my father) Fred Pope, Charles Pope, and their brothers in law Harry Ball and Jim Scott. Seating (from left to right) are Jessie :Pope nee Richards , the wife of Maurice, his sister Janey, William and Anna Pope, Louisa Ball (nee Pope and her sister Margaret Scott ( nee Pope) the wives of Harry Ball and Jim Scott respectively. The ten grandchildren are from left to right Dulcie, Ivy and Margaret Pope the children of Morris and Jessie , Lillian Alfred, Lesley and Charles Ball the children of Alfred and Louise Ball and and Madge, John and Mary the children of Margaret and Jim Scott.. All but the last three were born in Tonyrefail.

Now why should a Wiltshire family have its roots so deep in a Welsh mining village. The answer lies in the Wiltshire agricultural labourers wages rate which were the lowest in the country which drove people from rural Wiltshire to higher paid employment either in centres of industrialisation in this country or overseas for the incentive to go to South Wales for Maurice , Fred and Louise we must look a generation earlier. The 1871 census shows Edward Pontin , aged 18, born in Alton Priors lodging with the Corbett family in Hopkins Town working as a labourer. (Mary Corbett who was 28 was also from Alton Priors) Edward Pontin was Maurice, Fred and Louisa’s uncle .In 1873. He married Anna Pope’s sister Sarah (my great aunt). They had three children Martha Louisa b. 1874,William b.1875 and Edward b.1878

In 1881 Sarah died (Her death was registered as Jane Pontin) Her sister Louisa, known to everyone as Lall came to live with Edward Pontin to help bring up the small Pontin children. Also with them at various times in the 1880s was Sarah and Lall’s brothers Jacob Smith who unfortunately died about 1885 and is buried in Toneyrefail. Also the youngest brother Alfred , who eventually emigrated to the USA.(Incidentally I have just returned from a meeting of 60 or so of his descendents which is held every two years in Plattsburg Missouri)

In 1882 Lall Smith married Charles Morse, a Somerset born man listed on the census as a coal hewer. Charles Morse is something of a mystery man about whom I would like to do some research The census lists him as having a son, also named Charles. Charles (junior) appears to have been born in Bristol in 1891, 11 years after his father’s marriage to Lall. but I can as yet find no record of Lall having been his Mother. After 1901 Charles senior went to S. Africa to work in a Gold mine where he was subsequently killed in a mining
accident. To go off to South Africa at then age of 50 plus seems to me an extraordinary thing to do and what happened to the younger Charles is also a mystery so any light anybody can cast on this would be welcome.Lall Smith by now Lall Morse is listed on the 1901 census as

Maurice Pope and his wife Tessie

Martha Pontin and her brother

general shop keeper. I have been told that she had a china shop.The census shows Victoria Louise Pope who would have been her niece working as a shop assistant, Whether Louie Pope (as she was known) was the first of her generation of Popes to go to Toneyrefail I am not sure but she was joined in the early 1900’s by her brother Maurice and subsequently after the first world war in which he lost an eye by her next brother Fred. The decision of Fred to go to Toneyrefail may have been influenced by the death of Maurice Pope’s wife Jessie. She died giving birth to her daughter also called Jessie. The youngest of her daughters brought to eight the number of Pope grandchildren born in Tonyrefail. Fred lived in Toneyrefail for many years working, I believe as a postman..

Maurice’s life in Toneyrefail remains another mystery on which I would like any local information that the Society can unearth. At one stage he was a photographer and I have a number of photographs with M. Pope Toneyrefail embossed on the base. Some of them I can identify but for the identity of others I am seeking help. Several of them show a couple of boys who I presume were Morris’s Pontin cousins, William and Edward, to whom he was obviously close. Eventually Maurice left Toneyrefail and kept a shop somewhere in South Wales Where it was I have no idea and other than a curt remark from my cousin Margaret his daughter that it was a disaster. Where it was, why and where he eventually died I have no idea. 1891, 11 years after his fathers Fred stayed in South Wales but after both Margaret and Jessie Pope went to America following Jessie’s marriage to an American serviceman he returned to Alton Barnes where he eventually died..

Edward Pontin also remarried firstly in 1886 to Harriet Lawley and then after her death in 1899 to Mary Ann Lawley . His daughter Martha Louisa Pontin also married a member of the Lawley family.In September 1899 she married Henry Lawley and the 1901 census has them living at 23 Mill Street. What happened to the Pontin boys I have no idea. I and Alfred Smith’s descendents have considerable information of the rest of the Smith family but nothing on them . There is no mention of them on the 1901 but there is a record of William Pontin marrying in September 1900 to either Leah Davies or Mary Anne Wiltshire and John Pontin marrying in June 1905 to either Martha Morris or Ellen Clar

I would welcome any local information. The family circumstances changed dramatically during the 1920’s particularly exacerbated by the coal mining strike. Lall Morse had by now retired from her China shop and returned to Alton Barnes. She and my grand mother were instumental in bringing back the Ball family to the Alton area where they all settled and their descendants still remain. She also brought Gladys Lawley, Martha and Henry Lawley’s daughter, up to Wiltshire. Gladys married a Wiltshireman and lived in the nearby village of Upavon for the rest of her life. However as far as I know Martha and Henry’s other children, Emma Elizabeth, Sarah Jane, Arthur William, Charles and Ivy remained and may still have descendants living in the community

I am sure that there must be distant relatives living still in the Toneyrefail area from whom I would like to hear as indeed would the 60 plus descendants of Alfred Smith who attended the Smith Carter reunion in Plattsburg Missouri.

by Roger Pope

one of the Pontin brothers

believed to be Martha Jane Pontin

Maurice Pope and his Mother Anna

Maurice Pope and a Pontin cousin

inscribed Pontin on the back of the photo

if you can help Roger in his family history search, or have more information about any family ties with tonyrefail email:

roger.pope4 {at} btopenworld.com

change the {at} to @

done for anti spam reasons


	©2008 & 2009 the Tonyrefail History & Folklore Society created by Steve Kiff - www.tonyrefail.org