Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Favorite Movie

The best movie every made is Casablanca. Its got Nazis, plot twists,
mystery, romance, and a surprise ending. About the only thing missing
are some pirates.

posted by Matthew O. Smith @ 11:17 AM 0 comments

Where is Glenety?

About 20 years ago I hit a brick wall. I found a record in the IGI
listing my 2 GG father as William John Thomas and as having been born
in Glenety , Wales. I even had an approximate birth year of 1862.
Not very often you get that much information. Easy enough, just do
the standard searching for William John Thomas in Glenety.

First task, find Glenety. There are lots of resources for finding
place name so I started searching. Then I searched some more. Then I
looked elsewhere. Finally, I reached the conclusion that Glenety did
not exist. Ok, he came from a non-exist ant place. Could be worse.

Maybe I could look for William John Thomas, William Thomas, or Wm
Thomas in Wales in 1862. How many of them could there be? OK, so
the entire population of males born anywhere in Wales in 1862 was
named some variation of William John Thomas. Well maybe not all of
them, but enough to bring my research to a dead end.

Fast forward 20 years to me randomly typing William John Thomas Wales
into Google. What eventually popped up was a translation of a
missionary journal from Welsh to English of a man whose brother was
William Thomas. This William had a son who was William J Thomas who
was born in Wales in about the right time. However, he was born in
Llanelly, not Glenety.

About this time I had a neighbor who moved in from Wales. We were
talking and I asked him about Llanelly. When he repeated it back, it
didn't sound like I had expected it to. In Welsh, the double L does
not make an L sound, but its a sound not found in English. As a
matter of fact, Lanelly sounds a bit like Glenety. Sure enough, there
William John was in Llanelly just waiting for me to find him.

Matthew Smith in Utah

posted by Matthew O. Smith @ 8:09 AM 0 comments