Wales part three

I could see before I even did anything that there was no way I was going to get to everything my mom had laid out for me to do Monday. I was supposed to drive north 30 miles to Merthyr Tidfill, which is where the bulk of my Welsh ancestors had lived, died, married, etc. At 10am I was supposed to be at the graveyard to meet with the foreman and have him show me some of my family's graves. Then, I had a TON of various houses, shops, churches, etc to find, film, and photograph.

I left Cardiff at 9am, but still managed to not get to the cemetary until 10:30, mostly because Merthyr proved even harder to navigate than Cardiff. I get the idea that it's a small enough town, that they just assume that everyone knows the streets, because there were maybe a half dozen street signs TOTAL anywhere in the town. Rediculous. And, trying to find a particular number once you are on the right street is just as hard, because nobody bothers to number their door.

Anyhow, we had five graves to find at the graveyard, which took a bit of research since my mom hadn't given all the proper information. The foreman had to call into the city Burials Department to a lady named Debbie that my mom had been in contact with for weeks, and have her look up the proper sections at the graveyard.

He took me around to the five different sites. Only one of the had a headstone, as the others had been to poor. He said it was quite common to not even had a headstone if you were poor. They would just dig a hole, and drop you in.

At the last site, I pointed out a rock sticking up out of the ground, and the foreman dug in with his hands and pulled it out. It turned out to have been the old marker that they had put at the head of the grave, and at one point probably had something written on it. 200 years had erased whatever it was.

After the graveyard, I had no idea where to go. I was supposed to go to St Tidfill's church in town, but it turns out there are several old churchs in town, and the foreman had no idea which was St Tidfill's. I was also supposed to go up to some area above town that had been an old farmstead WAY back, but there's supposedly nothing up there now, so nobody knew where I needed to go.

After driving around randomly in town, I got out and walked around a bit to get my bearings. I found a very old gentleman waiting at the bus stop, and asked him about the church. He gave me perfect directions, and I was on my way. After finding the church, I parked and took some video of it. After that, I was completely lost. I was supposed to look for several old buildings that family had lived in and had shops, and they were all along High Street. As it turns out, there are several sections to High Street, all through town. The cemetary was even on High Street, out on the edge of town. I wandered around and wasted well over an hour. I was getting mad that I couldn't find anything, and very frustrated by the sheer volume of paperwork and maps my mom had sent with me. There was so much, that I could hardly digest it and make any sense. I spent most of the time wandering around Lower High Street, which is right in front of the church, and is now a major shopping area.

Some old man took pity on me, wandering around very confused, looking at maps. He made some remark about an old building, and so I asked if he knew the area. He said he had spent the entire 84 years of his life in that town, so he knew it very well. I told him I was looking for some family history sights, and he pointed me up a street to the City Hall, or a bit farther to the Mormon Church. I also asked him about the Thomastown cemetary (Thomastown is just on the other side of the canyon, maybe a half mile away), which he had never heard of. He said there was a cemetary up the hill a ways, but had never heard of anything called the thomastown cemetary.

Being mormon, my first instinct was to go to the church for help. I was just passing the City Hall when I realized the burials office must be in there, and at the burials office was Debbie, who had been VERY nice and helpful to my mom over the previous several weeks. I went inside only to find she was out at lunch for an hour. So, I went and wandered about some more. I made my way up to the cemetary the man had talked about. The signs and plaque there called it the Cholera Cemetary, though it was just a part now, with grass and a paved path. My mom had told me the cemetary I was looking for had had all the headstones ground up and grassed over, but for some reason it didn't click that this was it. I think mainly because none of my relatives that were burried there had died of Cholera.

After wandering around, I managed to meet Debbie. She was very busy, but still took some time to point me where I needed to go, and get me directions there. After talking to her, I was much more confident. The maps and things were starting to click. The high street area that I was looking for was the area right in front of the church, and the cemetary was the Cholera Cemetary.

I bought a phonecard from the post office, and called my mom back home to get a bit more enlightenment on the layout of things. After this, I went back to the cemetary and filmed and took a bunch of pictures. I then went back down to high street and found the area that had once been a relative's shop. I also managed to find two exact spots that had been my ancestors little houses for years. One was now a hip clothing shop (but was still the original building!), while the other was now a vitamin store (though, this looked like a new building). Very exciting stuff. I then drove down another street that had one been a neighborhood that a bunch of my family had grown up on back in the 1800s. After talking to my mom on the phone, I managed to find another as well. I'm not much of a family history nut, but I must admit that it was quite exciting.

After that, I had 45 minutes to get the car back to Cardiff in time for me to catch my train in time to checkin at my hostell. Unfortunately, I didn't count on the rush hour traffic coming into Cardiff. All I can say is that whoever decided it was a good idea to put roundabouts out on the freeway is a certifiable retard.

I got back to the car place about 20 minutes after they closed, but luckily there was still someone there. They took the car from me, and even gave me a ride back to the train station, saving me the cab fare. I was too late to catch the first train I had been shooting for, but I got on the next one, and a call ahead to my hostell had me checked in. Disaster averted!