My name is Dai Davies, a professional genealogist specialising in Welsh family history. Despite what you may have heard, finding your Welsh ancestors is possible. It’s something I’ve proven time and again with my client work and in my own family tree, which stretches back to 18th C. Carmarthenshire and 17th C. Cardiganshire.
I have a Masters and BA (hons.) in Anthropology (the study of culture), which I use to explore ancestral stories with a special emphasis on identity, local history, and culture. This is key to my approach to researching a place where you regularly find tens of people with the exact same name in the smallest of villages.
The challenges of Welsh research have inspired me to develop new approaches and tools which can be used by researchers no matter where their ancestors come from. My desire to share my ancestors’ stories has also pushed me to explore new forms of storytelling and tackle challenging themes.
Areas of Expertise
- Wales & England (18th–20th Centuries)
- Welsh migration to the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. (19th–20th Centuries)
- Researching common surnames (Jones, Davies, Williams, etc.)
- Finding your ancestors in the newspapers
- Locating your ancestor’s home
- Tracing your women ancestors
- In-depth research about your ancestor’s work, religion, friends, and everyday life
- DNA match analysis
- The Next Generation (TNG) software
- Genealogical methods & ethical storytelling
If you’d like me to work on your family history, but you don’t know if your question fits any of the topics above, send me an email anyway. We can discuss and see how best I can support you!
About my Family Tree
Beyond my work as a professional genealogist, I spend a lot of time working on my own family tree. I started my research back in January, 2020, based on the research that I inherited from my Grampie. Whether consciously or not, he focussed his research on our two main surname lines: Davies (from his father) and Bellew (from his mother). It’s been my great joy to dedicate so much time to researching the rest of our ancestors and, especially, the women among them. They have led me to the most fascinating stories.
We descend from a few different kinds of people:
Among our ancestors that go back to Llandybïe and Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, are lots of tradespeople: blacksmiths and carpenters. These are the ancestors of my Grampie’s paternal grandfather.
My Grampie’s paternal grandmother’s parents met as they were migrating their way from the Welsh countryside to the industrial villages. Her mother’s family comes from tenant farmers in Cayo and Llansadwrn, Carmarthenshire. Her father’s family has deep roots in the Aeron Valley, Cardiganshire, and through his line, we descend from more farmers. This part of my family is, by far, my favourite, as many of these ancestors were also deeply involved with Welsh literary culture in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Among them are writers, bards, teachers, ministers, antiquarians—people with an insatiable appetite for knowledge. They were also early religious dissenters, who challenged the power of the Church of England and embraced many religious beliefs long before they were even legal! Rebellious nerds? Sounds like my kind of people!
Along my Grampie’s maternal line, I’ve found generations of industrial labourers. His maternal grandfather’s family is a blend of poor migrant workers from Devon, in England, and industrial labourers from Swansea. His maternal grandmother’s family come from the industrial villages around Swansea and other parts of south Wales, with one mystery line leading back to a bargeman from Llanguicke.
These are the people who I spend much of my time researching. I started my journey as a family historian doing Welsh family history. It has irreversibly shaped how I look at the records, allowing me to easily look at pages and pages of Davies’, Williams’, and Thomas’, and find my Davies’, Williams’, and Thomas’. Here’s a list of my ancestral surnames next to the list of the most common Welsh surnames:
My Family Surnames
Davies x5, Williams x4, Thomas x2, Rees x2, Morgan, Charles, Richard, Jenkins, Lloyd, Walters, James, Bellew, Rattenbury
Top 10 Welsh Surnames
Jones, Williams, Davies, Thomas, Evans, Roberts, Hughes, Lewis, Morgan, Griffiths
Out of 22 familial lines, 12 of them had a surname among the top 10 most common surnames in Wales during the 19th Century. Combined, just the surnames Williams, Davies, Thomas, and Morgan accounted for the surnames of 25% of the entire country (Rowlands & Rowlands, 1996)! Another fun fact: In the Moyddyn Hundred in Cardiganshire, where 4/5 of my Davies lines come from, 25% of the population had the surname Davies (Rowlands & Rowlands, 1996)! Despite these challenges, I’ve pushed every line of my family back to the mid-19th Century and, in many cases, back to the 18th Century. I even have a few lines back to the 1600s!
Authorship
All of my work has been written by me, Dai Davies, unless otherwise noted. I will never use Generative AI in any way because it’s theft, it’s unreliable, and its infrastructure is destroying the environment and small communities.
While writing is challenging, I believe that there is value in putting in the effort to create something beautiful. Writing is magic. There’s nothing that makes me feel more alive than when words spring forth out of the darkness of my mind. It sometimes feels less like I’m putting them together, than I’m finding full sentences and paragraphs already fully formed. Whether it’s inspiration or the awen, it’s something I love. It’s also a gift that I’ve inherited as a descendant of generations and generations of people who created things, from gardeners, to mechanics, to blacksmiths, to carpenters, to the odd poet, to clever wordsmiths.
So rest assured that everything you read here was written with my own two hands and with the support of the records and scholars who came before me.
