Miracle number four occurred throughout the following year as Terry continued to do research for our family and discovered many more links in the family chain but culminated with a discovery of John Thomas, a direct descendant of Margaret Rowland and Morgan Thomas. John currently lives on Penrhiw farm which has been in the family since 1724 and he and his wife Celia were willing to meet with us. He sent us a lineage chart of all the siblings of Job who remained in Wales adding much needed information to connect our family to those who had died.
This discovery came about through another miracle, (number five), that of Terry meeting Father Powell at St. Catwg’s Episcopal Church.While looking for Edward Rowland and Ann Miles he mentioned John as a possible Thomas still living on the farm.
Miracle number six: cheap tickets to Wales even though it was at the time of the royal wedding. The window for these tickets was short and directly after we booked them the price doubled.
Miracle number seven again involved Terry Jones who had looked for one year for the marriage of Edward Rowland and Ann Miles (Job and Margaret’s grandparents). Three weeks before we arrived, he found them. When we arrived in Merthyr in 2018, the scene had already been set by those who had been directing our lives for the past year. It felt as though we were in a giant genealogical chess game over which we had no control. Terry was beginning to feel the same forces in action as well. Every morning he would present us with a list of places we would visit that day. One day he showed us his list which had two sides. He said that he created one list the night before and then this morning, for some unknown reason, he changed it and added a new place: Gadford Elm Chapel – the first Mormon church ever built. He said he didn’t know why he added it but thought it would be interesting for us to see. Of course, we acquiesced.
Miracle number eight: As we got to the church building we discovered the reason. The first ownership of the chapel was given to Wilford Woodruff by the United Brotherhood but it rested on or near a Brother Benbow’s farm. Most of the early members were baptized in Benbow’s pond. Benbow was Terry’s wife’s maiden name. Terry was stunned. He kept saying he had no idea why he had changed the itinery for the day but we all knew why.
The next day we visited St. Catwg’s church and we were met by Father Powell and his lay reader Carolynn Corbin who showed us around this very impressive 2000-year-old building. While chatting Richard discovered miracle number nine: that Carolynn was a Parry and quite likely a very close cousin of ours. We exchanged emails and discovered that we did indeed have a common ancestor. This led to a wonderful afternoon tea and the uniting of another branch of Welsh and American lines. After just a few minutes with this family we knew we had met before.
Miracle number ten. We discovered the fact that we were not in charge in other ways as we went to Terry’s home for juice and to collect a book of remembrance that he had found when cleaning out the Engine House which had been recently closed. He showed Sharon a photo of a family reunion taken in 2004 (he had been doing research for the person who sent it to him) and she recognized someone. She immediately texted that person and as a result the connection was made between that photo and the book of remembrance that Terry had asked them to take back to Logan to find its owner.
