Family-History Pilgrimage: Day 9

Wednesday, June 14, 6:30 a.m.

Not a bad morning view from the cottage outside Dolgellau.

I’m sitting outside our cottage near Dolgellau, in mid-Wales, with the summer sun already well up. Had I realized just how peaceful and beautiful this place would be, I might have spent a week in Wales, not just a couple of nights.

Yesterday was almost all about driving. It’s quite a haul from Glasgow to Wales anyway, and the cumulative hour and a half to charge the car made a long day even longer. But I’m tremendously grateful we found charging stations in unfamiliar locations that would take my credit card, navigated the British highway system with no problems, and actually made our way out of one roadside stop that we had to circumnavigate twice before finding the exit.

I'm glad I wasn't wearing this wool coat. 

The drive itself (other than the traffic around Manchester – and thank God we weren’t driving there the day before, when the Man City footballers were having their championship parade) deserves a mention just because the Scottish, English, and Welsh countryside is so beautiful. The grazing sheep separated by stone fences certainly add to the charm. I felt badly for the sheep, languishing in wool coats in the 80-degree sun and lining up along the stone walls to find a bit of cool shade. But once we came to Wales, beautiful gave way to breathtaking. Today, we’ll take a train much of the way up Mt. Snowden, or Yr Wyddfa, as well as seeing the historic castle at Caernarfon, and the forecast is more beautiful sunshine (sorry, sheep).

A Spencer stone at Bury St. Mary, 
part of what paves the church courtyard.

Along the way yesterday, we stopped briefly at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Bury St. Mary, now a suburb northwest of Manchester. James Spencer – another immigrant ancestor on my mother’s father’s side – was baptized there in 1730. He married at some point, though the record on Ancestry.com isn’t clear. They came to the American colonies and had children in Turkeyfoot, Pennsylvania. Apparently, James served in the Talbot County, Maryland, militia before and during the Revolution; and he died in Somerset, Pennsylvania, in 1825. In St. Mary’s churchyard, I didn’t find his mother or father, but I did find other Spencers, likely relations. More noteworthy are the markers themselves, which at St. Mary’s are used as paving stones to create a plaza all around the church – hundreds of them laid side by side, like large bricks. Where the tombstone paving stops, the current churchyard begins, still used as the parish cemetery.

The former Dolgellau Prison, now a cute restaurant.

But our family-history surprise yesterday awaited us in Dolgellau. We’ve come here following some of Ann’s immigrant ancestors, Robert Owen and Jane Vaughan Owen. Their story is tied directly to English political and religious history. They were Puritans (or at least they sided with the Puritan Parliamentarians) in the English Civil War of 1642 to 1649. Once Parliament executed King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell was ruling as dictator, Robert served as a local justice of the peace and then governor near Dolgellau. But when the political tide turned, so did Robert and Jane’s fortunes. With the failure of military dictatorship in England, the royal house of Stuart was restored to power in 1660, as was the Church of England. The victorious Cavalier politicians and Anglican churchmen took the opportunity to squelch other religious expression, seeing worship by Presbyterians, Baptists, Puritans, Quakers, etc., as potential revolutionary meetings. Taking part in those gatherings could land you in jail … especially if you were either nonconforming clergy or part of the old revolutionary guard. And so it was that Robert Owen, and several other former commissioners, were jailed at Caernarfon (a royal stronghold on the coast) in 1660. He was released but joined the Quakers; and in 1661, he was among several imprisoned in Dolgellau for attending Quaker meetings and refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. They were released 15 months later, after taking a loyalty oath. But in 1674, after more clandestine worship (often in the woods), Robert Owen was locked up in the Dolgellau jail for another five and a half years.

Dining where Ann's ancestor was imprisoned
for more than 5 years

Here was last night’s surprising connection to Robert Owen’s story: The Dolgellau jail is now a wonderful little restaurant, Y Sospan (Welsh for “the saucepan”), and we were blessed to enjoy a much better dinner there than the prison chow Robert ate for five and a half years. The setting has been preserved much as it was back in the 1600s, with Tudor timbers, the original fireplace and paving stones, and the prison door, now moved inside.

We’ll try to follow a few more of Robert Owens’ steps today at Caernarfon if we can find the jail, and I’ll share more of his story tomorrow.

The old prison door.