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An incomplete story about some people from Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales.

This is the story of two people who were born in Penrhyndeudraeth but who now lie buried in the cemetery of the far western mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia. If anyone reading this can provide further insight or detail, I should be delighted to hear. I have posted a few fragments of this before, but I now have a more coherent account.
I shall start with a girl called ‘Margaret Davies’. Margaret was born in Penrhyndeudraeth in 1870, the daughter of Owen Davies (b 1836, Penrhyndeudraeth) and his wife, Catherine (nee Jones, b 1836, Penrhyndeudraeth). Owen worked as a slate quarryman. Catherine had worked as a domestic servant at the Griffin Inn in Penrhyn. They married at the Llanfihangel-y-Traethau parish church in 1855. Theirs was a fruitful marriage and Margaret was the last of seven children born to the relationship. Sadly, just after Margaret entered the world, Catherine died of dropsy, at the age of just 33 (2 October 1870). Owen soon remarried. His new wife was a widow, also called ‘Catherine’ (Catherine Parry, b 1838, Maetwrog) and she bore him a further five children.
In 1888, at the age of 18, Margaret, unmarried, found herself pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named ‘William Griffith’. The birth took place in the Llanfihangel-y-Traethau workhouse (which later became Bron-y-Garth hospital). I do not know why the birth took place in the workhouse, but I am sure times were very hard in the village in the 1880s and I wonder whether Owen and his new wife, with a large and expanding family would have been able to support the teenage Margaret and her new baby. However, the census records indicate that Margaret was back living with her parents in 1891, though William is hard to locate in that census. The family lived at Penlan Terrace, Penrhyndeudraeth, from the 1890s.
I know nothing of how William Griffith Davies was raised but the 1911 census finds him boarding in the village of Senghenydd, south Wales, working as a coal miner. In 1913, aged 24, he boarded the ship Benalla, bound for Australia. (He may have been very fortunate in leaving Senghenydd then, as in October 1913, a massive mine disaster hit Senghenydd, killing 400 miners underground, affecting almost every house and family in the village.)
William arrived in Australia on 6 April 1913. He went to live in the town of Broken Hill, in western New South Wales. Broken Hill was then and remains primarily a mining town. But at that time it was the second largest settlement in New South Wales, after Sydney.
Now, we go back to Penrhyndeudraeth for the second thread of our story.
Margaret Davies had an older sister called ‘Catherine’ (b 1856, Penrhyndeudraeth), probably named after their mother, Owen Davies’ first wife. Catherine married Edward Williams, a slate quarryman (born 1853, Llandrillo area) whom I speculate was drawn to the Penrhyndeudraeth area with the work available in the local slate quarries. They had seven children between 1880 and 1898, among whom was my grandmother, Mary. They lived at Penlan Isaf, Penrhyndeudraeth.
In 1914, something inspired Mary, with her sister, yet another Catherine (known as ‘Kate’), to set off to see the world. This was likely a courageous move by single young women in 1914. They did so in company with another girl from the village, one Elizabeth Ellen Jones, known as ‘Nellie’. Nellie was 25, Mary was 30 and Kate was 34. I have been told that the whole village was concerned about these three girls setting off on an international adventure with a war just starting. But they did, aboard the Royal Mail Steamer ‘Osterley’ (of the Orient line), heading for Australia. They sailed from London a few weeks after the Great War had begun, on 28 August 1914.
The Osterley proceeded through the Mediterranean and the Suez canal. When the ship was crossing the Indian Ocean, the German raider, the SMS Emden, was setting about its destructive work, sinking British shipping it encountered across the Indian Ocean. Captain Jenks of the Osterley gave an account when he got to Sydney of how he had managed to evade the Emden, particularly when leaving Colombo, in Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known). My own research shows that the Emden never got near the Osterley, but I have no doubt that the fear was real.
Now that the Great War had commenced, the three girls ceased their travels and stopped in Sydney. Mary met a Welshman, one William Thomas (of Tre’r ddôl, Ceredigion), who had emigrated in 1912. They met in the Welsh church in Sydney and they married in August 1918. They settled in Sydney and had three children, Jack, Catherine and Shan.
Back in Broken Hill, William Griffith Davies decided, in January 1916, to join up, which he did in Adelaide, South Australia (a city much closer than Sydney is to Broken Hill). There was no conscription in Australia during the Great War, but he must have decided to do his bit at this time. His attestation papers show his next-of-kin as ‘Mrs Maggie Jones’ of Betws-y-coed. Margaret must have married at some point and was now living in Betws-y-Coed. (I have no further record of her.)
William joined the 11th Field Ambulance, a unit of the Australian Army Medical Corps, which was officially formed at Mitcham, South Australia on 1 March 1916 and became an integral part of the Third Australian Division of the Australian Imperial Force. He described himself as a miner, 28 years and one month old and 5 feet 3 and ¾ inches tall. He set off for the war aboard the ship Suevic.
When they got to England, the 11th Field Ambulance did some training on Salisbury plain but, in November 1916, went to France. It was involved in the conflict in the Somme, Ypres (Passchendaele) and Villers-Bretonneux. Fortunately, William survived and returned to Australia in August 1919 aboard the Konig Friedrich. He returned to Broken Hill and later received a couple of medals, though these were of the general issue kind (British War Medal and Victory Medal) rather than for any conspicuous action on his part. In both 1925 and 1928 the electoral roll records him as being a miner, living at 27 Bonanza Street, Broken Hill.
The next significant event occurs in third quarter of 1928: Nellie and William Griffith Davies are wed. Interestingly, it seems that the marriage took place back in Penrhyndeudraeth! This raises a host of questions: they were nearly the same age so surely they knew each other before William left Penrhyn in 1913. Was there a long-distance romantic story here? Did Nellie go in 1914 hoping to catch up with him? What did they do between the war and their marriage?
The couple returned to Broken Hill where they lived at 123 Patton Street (William remained there for the rest of his life) but tragedy soon struck. Nellie died in 1929, aged 40. She was buried in Broken Hill cemetery. There is a notice in the Broken Hill newspaper advising ‘Mr and Mrs W Thomas of Sydney’ (that is, my grandparents) of the funeral details. I can only speculate that they may have attended. The railway from Sydney to Broken Hill was completed in 1927 so that travel would have been practicable. This also indicates that Nellie and my grandmother must have kept in touch after arriving in Australia in 1914. I am not aware of any issue from the relationship between William and Nellie.
In 1930, my grandfather, William Thomas, decided to take his wife, Mary, and their three children back to Wales. My grandparents took back some of Nellie’s possessions with them to return to Nellie’s family in Penrhyndeudraeth.
In Broken Hill, William eventually remarried, but not until 1945. His new wife was one Olive Myrtle Mills, a widow with several grown daughters. Olive is quaintly referred to as ‘Mrs W G Davies’ in the newspaper records of the time, as was the practice. These newspaper records are usually about her daughters’ marriages. Both William and Olive are recorded as being at 123 Patton Street in 1947. William died in May 1960 and is buried in Broken Hill. He died intestate. The inscription on his gravestone indicates that he is remembered affectionately by his whole new family. An account in the local newspaper shows that he had worked at the South Mine in Broken Hill before retirement and had also been a registered bookmaker; another article (in the Government Gazette) refers to him as a retired clerk.
In August 2022 I was able to visit Broken Hill for the first time. There, I found both Nellie’s and William’s graves. The flower remnants on William’s grave are not new, and I think were of artificial blooms, but I do not think they could have been there since 1960. Now I am wondering who put them there. These stories always have more questions than answers.
I thank Gwyn Evans (UK) and Stephan Delaney (Canberra) who, at various times have provided me with essential detail for this account.

David Rowlands
CALWELL, ACT