The Morgans Go European : Tracing the Morgan roots in Pontypridd, Wales

Friday, April 20, 2018

We made it down to Pontypridd in Wales to try and determine more information about Thomas Morgan, our ancestor, who immigrated into the US. We knew his name, but not birthdate. We guessed he was born around 1880 came over around 1900, based on the fact that Crad Morgan (Rod’s Grandfather) was born in 1906 in the US. We also knew the road name….Fairfield Avenue. There is a small museum in town and the curator was very helpful with general information about Pontypridd. Pontypridd is an old area within a much larger county of Glamorgan in South West Wales….needless to say Morgans are everywhere! She pulled up the commercial version of ancestry.com and did a search for Thomas Morgan, born in Pontypridd within the years 1875-1885…..see the picture below…over 100,000 births! Ack! In order to see the birth certificate, we needed to know what month and what year, so more research is needed! ~Rod~

Morgan Street

See "Morgan Street" behind us?

The museum was organizing a display on emigration from south Wales and had a number of posters advertising how to cross to the US (Cardiff is a short distance away)…the yellow poster would have been a few years before Thomas went, but the idea was the same….the cost would have been about 1 month’s wage to cross. They had many ledgers that list people who crossed (it is cross referenced in ancestry.com, that is why the birthdate was so important) with reasons such as “holiday”….people would just head to the US and stay…forever…Wales didn’t care if they stayed or left, economic times were hard and the coal industry was drying up. They went through Ellis Island and even had to stay in quarantine, just like we have seen so many times on TV documentaries and movies.

We spent some time in town and the area, which reminded me very much of West Virginia…rural and hilly! We also visited the Fairfield area, but there was no Avenue…just a Lane and Close (alley); the curator said the area was re-developed in between the World Wars and Fairfield Ave might have been eliminated. Needless to say, we (kids too) enjoyed looking into this glimpse of our past…it sparked good discussions on how life would have been different if Thomas Morgan stayed in Wales….and what conditions must have been for him to move across the world!