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Looking for a suitable link conjured by my local village name, I came across a fascinating account of a migratory passage to Australia in 1860, by a young woman born in my village. edit: ooooops, WRONG! Another Welsh village of the same name, by the looks of further reading. But still quite poignant. Since the original chat is above the Ewquator, I post it again here for your possible interest: http://home.mweb.co.za/sa/salbu/aHistory/DiaryWalesToAdelaide.html"... some woman came on board with Apples and Lemons to sell. I received a letter with a Post Office order Of one Pound from my dear Mother. I pray God to bless me that I may pay it back a hundred fold..."
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She died just 4 weeks after arrival? How sad! On an interesting coincidence sort of note, Adelaide is known as "the city of churches", for the high number of them there.
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N0s dda y chivi fy Mham.A Bendith Dduw fod gyda chivi. Yn cadw chivi bob amser.
What does this say Mav?
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Adelaide is known as "the city of churches", for the high number of them there.
so is Brooklyn NY- when real estate developers were 'building communities' in brooklyn, they would often set aside some land for a church. then they would go to an over crowded church or synagoge in lower manhattan, and promise the land to the congregation if X number of members bought houses. so whole congregations moved from manhattan to the relative country of brooklyn, and build a new church on 'free land'. the churches are characterized by total lack of interesting architecture, the builder would often 'build the church/temple' as part of the deal.
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journeyman
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Probably _chivi_ is a mistranscription of _chwi_ 'you'. Then:
Nos dda y chwi fy Fam [= Mham]. A bendith Dduw fod gyda chwi. Yn cadw chwi bob amser.
Night good the you my Mother. And blessing God be with you. In save you every time.
Good night to (?) you my Mother. And God's blessing be with you. Saving (?) you always.
_Cadw_ = 'Save' is the Welsh national heritage organisation, but I wonder if it's 'remember' here. The verb doesn't have a subject -- _yn cadw_ = '(in) keeping' or something.
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In reply to:
Adelaide is known as "the city of churches", for the high number of them there.
so is Brooklyn NY-
Actualyl, I was making a cross-thread reference to somethin Mav himself had said elsewhere, that "Eglwys" means "church" in Welsh, so the lady in question moved from a town named after a church to one famed for them. It was a word-related post.
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Jenet's gloss is good. Cadw is quite an interesting word, with numerous connotations in different contexts ~ keep, preserve, save, conserve, guard, hold, detain, retain, observe... Cadw is observe when you keep a tradition, and is retain when you keep what you have, which is why the heritage body chose it for its name I guess.
I think in this context it's an imperative kind of form: "Preserve you always". But I have only sketchy Welsh, so would need to check with a more fluent speaker to be sure.
Of additional interest for me is to realise on a more careful review that my original supposition may be correct, in that the young woman may have been born in my local village. I had surmised this originally because I thought the village name unique in Wales, discarded it on seeing that she came from the Valleys near Merthyr, but now realise that may have only been the living of her father in her twenties. She may have moved there at some point after being born here. I shall investigate further.
And yes Max, I too thought it really poignant to realise she was dead so soon after arriving, one of the many casualties of the mass migrations of all those decades, particularly in the light of her prayer to pay back her mother "a hundred fold".
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Thanks for the translation Jenet. It is a very touching sentiment from this young woman to her mother. She was on her own so early - leaving home and family to go to a country so far away. Very brave.
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I'm so glad you brought this link here Mav. Her journal stirs the imagination. You can smell the salt water and hear the bickering. It also opens a window into the past, where a dirty shirt could get you reduced rations, women had to be contained and babies didn't always live that long.
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Here in McDowell County NC, we have a population of about 40,000 people (in 440 square miles). The phone book lists about 30 retaurants and 87 churches. And there are a bunch of churches that don't have phones, so they aren't listed. The congregations are usually so small that they cannot afford to pay a pastor full time. In some cases five or six churches will support one minister, but in others the minister has a full time job. My neighbor two houses up is a house painter during the week and runs a service on Sundays. (And yes, he knows the story about "repaint and thin no more.")
He had originally lived in Florida, where he had worked in an orange grove. His job was to pick out the very finest oranges, which were then hand-squeezed to provide orange juice for the White House. He told me that one of his parishioners walked into the sorting shed and noticed him, "Pastor Jim, why are you not out doing the Lord's work," he was asked. Jim replied that this was certainly the Lord's work, "After all, many are culled but few are squozen."
TEd
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Grrroannn. TEd , s'about time you come on back. 
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Pooh-Bah
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Dragging this thread back to within a bull's roar of the original topic ("Repaint and thin no more", indeed!), I was quite sad that the diary ended where it did. I don't think she was that remarkable a young lady (although she could read and write, which certainly makes her unusual). But she recorded the mundane and gives an insight into what it was like on those migrant ships. Of course, it was also sad that she popped her clogs so soon after arrival, but that was normal in those days.
I have often wondered how anyone could bear the tedium of a three or four-month one-way voyage to a completely unknown and non-understood destination. When I immigrated to Britain from the Zild in 2001, (a) I had been here before, and (b) it could have taken two days, although, as most of you know, we dragged it out to nearly three months from choice. As a matter of fact, the other day I found a photo of Sandra and me standing by the statue of Glenn Frey on "The Corner" in Winslow, Arizona during that trip. Not quite the same thing at all.
But I have often wondered how my great-great grandparents felt after, say, a month at sea. Bad food, deteriorating water, clothing inadequate in any climatic extreme at all, heavy seas making them sick and getting them wet for days on end - and no definite day to look forward to when it would all be over. Ketura Davies brings it all to rather revolting life.
Since my antecedents also came to New Zealand via Australia in 1860, it is entirely possible that they may have been on the same ship as young Ketura. Now THAT would be unusual and remarkable. I've emailed the Hocken Library in Dunedin to find out if they have any records, since such information was kept, quite meticulously, in both the Strine and Zild. My oldfers came out on to Australia on the same ship, but apparently they didn't actually know each other before they boarded it. There has been some suggestion that their marriage was contrived without benefit of clergy and that they just hopped the boat to New Zealand from Australia without bothering much with the usual formalities.
I'll let you know!
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Fascinating, Pfranz - look forward to hearing ifn you find out anything more! And yes, it was indeed the sheer ordinariness of her account that quite appealed to me in a strange sort of way.
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That's quite wonderful - thank you Jackie!
Did you see this note at the end of the accompanying text:
Permission to use Keturah's diary as an archive has been granted by:
Mrs Donne Dunn, 6 Torvill and Dean Lane, Cashmere, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Mrs Dunn is a great granddaughter of Jane Davies and a granddaughter of Elizabeth Carter.
Extraordinary to think there are still such direct and well-documented connections available... I am tempted to ask amongst the local Davies in the village about how much they are already aware of this stuff - it's prolly old hat to them but.
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Just as a note : The first immigrant through Ellis Island was Annie Moore.
(In case you ever get the question in a game.)
She survived the trip, was met by family, went to Texas where she raised a family. Some stories do have happy endings.
Thank you for that link.
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>And yes, it was indeed the sheer ordinariness of her account that quite appealed to me in a strange sort of way.
I wonder what the mortality rate was on those trips. Some of my ancestors made the trip from Ireland to Zild in the 1850s, while others had travelled here from Blighty in the 1840s, so reading her account makes me think I'm lucky to be alive at all.
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Pooh-Bah
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Here's a link to a diary by one Margaret Mathieson that I found while following some links that Jackie sent me. Our Maggie was a good Presbyterian and fairly bloody sanctimonious with it, although she gets much less churchy as the voyage goes on. Since the Captain was a drunk and the mate was argumentative, it must have been a lively voyage! http://www.geocities.com/nz_morrison/math_diary.htm
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Gee-minently--on some tiny, no doubt smelly, ship from Feb. 27th. to the 6th. of August! Paying passengers? So what?
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