I don’t know what it is about my mum, but, whenever she has a big holiday, she always seems to want a little one shortly afterwards before she settles down properly again – and her trip to America was no exception.
Within a few weeks of getting back home, she was ready for off again – this time on the annual trip to Wales with Grandpa Graham and Granny Betty to visit their friends and family there. But this time it was going to be a little bit different as, instead of spending all their time around Maesteg where Grandpa Graham originally came from, they were going to have a few days in Pembrokeshire first.
They’d been there before, but only on day trips from Maesteg, visiting Tenby, Saundersfoot, and St David’s.
But this time they were going to stay for a few days. And they weren’t just going sight-seeing – they were also going to try and find out more about the Martell family and its roots from the little bit of knowledge they’d already managed to piece together.
At this point Mum had managed to find a marriage certificate and a birth certificate for her Grandpa Martell. From these she’d found that his father’s name was John, his mother’s name was Hannah (nee Cotton) and that he was born at a place called Penmeiddyn, near Fishguard. She’d also heard two tales about the family, but didn’t know if they were true or not.
The first one was that, after his first wife Hannah died, John Martell had gone to market one day and unexpectedly come home with a new wife who was very much younger than he was. She was also told that this had so appalled his children from his first marriage – by then in their late teens – that they’d left home and moved to the Maesteg area.
And the second tale Mum had heard was that John Martell’s parents, William and Mary Martell – who were her great-great-grandparents – had died suddenly within two days of each other and had been buried together on the same day.
It wasn’t much to go on – and the reason they knew so little was that talking about Mum’s Grandpa Martell had been strictly forbidden for many many years. This was because, less than two years after he and Mum’s grandma were married, he’d suddenly walked out of the family home and gone to Canada, looking for work.
With one child just a year old and another one on the way, Mum’s grandma had refused to go with him. And, later, when he’d refused to come back to the poor pay and work conditions on the South Wales coalfield in the 1920s, she’d told everyone that he’d died.
So, with what little information they had, Mum and her parents decided to start their quest by looking for Penmeiddyn – and they were in luck. Knowing they were near to it and seeing a man standing by a farm-gate, they stopped to ask him for directions – and were told that they were actually at Penmeiddyn and that he lived there.
Better still, he invited them in for a cup of tea – along with home-baked bread and home-made blackcurrant jam – with him and his wife, whose family had moved to Penmeiddyn after the Martells had left, and they were able to tell Mum quite a bit about the family.
They showed her where Grandpa Martell had carved his name on the door-frame of one of the outbuildings. They also confirmed the story of his grandparents dying within two days of each other and put her in touch with a very old man who’d actually known them and had been to their funeral.
But the story of Grandpa Martell’s father’s second marriage turned out to be a load of nonsense. Instead of being someone he’d picked up on a visit to the market, his second wife was a very respectable young woman who worked as a governess at the big house in Manorowen, just across the fields from Penmeiddyn. And, instead of being almost a child-bride – as Mum had been led to believe – she was twenty-five years old.
Mum had to laugh when she was told about the wedding, however, as apparently her great-grandpa Martell was not a great romantic. On the morning of his wedding, he was busy building a haystack in his farmyard. He broke off from this to walk to the nearby church for the ceremony – and, as soon as he was married, he came back to the farm and finished the haystack.
And later Mum saw the record of their marriage in Manorowen church registers and found that her grandpa Martell and his sister had signed as witnesses to the wedding and so, instead of being appalled, they’d actually approved of it and had only moved away in search of work.
Mum also went to Manorowen church to have a look around and see if she could find any family gravestones that might give her some more information. She didn’t find anything, but as she was looking she became aware of a very loud buzzing noise.
There were a few bees about, but not enough to be making so much noise. Then, as she moved further away from the building, she realised what it was. The headstone on one of the old graves was in the form of a cross and suspended from one of its short arms was a whole swarm of bees, stretching all the way down to the ground.
Now Mum quite likes bees, but perhaps not so many of them at once, and so she very carefully turned around and slowly walked away, hoping that they didn’t decide to follow her – and luckily they didn’t…
And now she’s telling me that I’ve written enough for today, even though I’ve still not told you about the editor getting in touch with her about writing a children’s book on the Vikings and about some more of the lovely places she visited in Pembrokeshire.
So, as always, take care, stay safe, keep warm – and I’ll tell you more in my next post!
Follow my next blog: 129. MY MUM THE STORY- TELLER – PART TWENTY FIVE
11/02/2021
Wilf the bear-faced blogger 