Thomas Yea of Yea born ca 1510 & his descendants by David Yaw Introduction As a small boy growing up in a Derbyshire mining village, one of my early memories is of my adored grandfather James (Jim) Yaw speaking of his own childhood spent on farms at a far-away place called Wiveliscombe in Somerset. To my child’s imagination, it seemed an idyllic place – I pictured rolling green countryside bathed in warm sunshine where fat cattle and sheep roamed. When I first visited a few summers ago, I was pleased to find the imagery of my childhood pretty well confirmed. About four years ago I came across the Yeo Society site with its wealth of fascinating family history. By chance, I noticed on the resources link a list of individuals with interests in specific branches or areas. I was pleased to find Wiveliscombe was included – with the e-mail address for Mike Darch. Mike responded to my initial contact and generously shared with me the results of his ten years of research. He had validated, updated and further developed the website’s details of a family branch leading back to the marriage of William Yaw & Betty Galsworthy in Tiverton in 1786 and their subsequent move to Cheriton Fitzpaine. View over Wiveliscombe Over the last four years we have exchanged literally thousands of e-mails as we researched our respective branches of the Yea/Yaw/Yeaw family taking in South Wales, Wiveliscombe, Brompton Ralph, Clayhanger, Bampton, Washfield, Templeton and Sampford Peverell along the way. We have established a continuous documentary link from my grandfather who died in 1956 back through John & Sarah Yaw in Bampton in the 1841 census to John Yaw & Elizabeth Richards married in Washfield in 1784. From the Templeton parish records, we have proved John who married Elizabeth and William who married Betty were brothers born in the 1750’s, and have traced their common ancestry to David Yeaw and his parents Thomas & Mary Yea in Templeton in the early 1680’s. It is highly probable these ancestors in Templeton came from nearby Sampford Peverell, where parish records show a Thomas Yea married Mary Locke in 1679, and their son David was baptised there in 1680. The absence of those parish records before 1675 preclude us from fully documenting still earlier ancestry. But circumstantial evidence suggests Thomas was the son of David Yeaw who died in 1692 in Sampford Peverell. Records of contemporary land transactions, court cases and wills link this David through his father Thomas to his grandfather John Yea of Yea near Wiveliscombe who died there in 1619, and to John’s father Thomas Yea of Yea, who we estimate was born around 1510. Mike’s extensive research into his own family line also published on this site suggests that several branches of the Yea/Yaw/Yeaw family in Somerset & Devon probably stem from a common root. Records of 16th & 17th century land deeds clearly show a series of transactions from 1597 onwards between John Yea of Yea and David Yea of Oakhampton near Wiveliscombe and their respective heirs – although we have so far been unable to document a direct family relationship between them. The main stages of our research which reach back around 500 years and span some 12 generations are summarised on the following pages. I hope these notes will be of interest to the general reader, and will also help other researchers in their quest in the same way I have benefitted from previous contributors to this site. From South Wales ca 1911 to Derbyshire ca 1956/2014 Probably like many people, my family history research began with my childhood memories - what I could remember about my grandfather Jim Yaw and his two sons - my father Les and uncle Fred. As my father served in the RAF and was sometimes posted abroad, my mother and I lived with my grandparents at the family home in Hodthorpe near Worksop on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border. From there I collated various birth, marriage and death certificates; notes added to a family bible; clippings of obituaries from the local newspaper, and other personal papers. I found Jim’s birth certificate showing he was born in Maerdy, near Pontypridd, Glamorgan on 27 May 1886, the son of George Yaw and Sarah nee Dunn. His father’s occupation is shown as colliery boiler man, presumably a stoker at Maerdy coal mine. From his obituary, I learned Jim and his family came from South Wales to Derbyshire in about 1922, probably in search of better work opportunities. Initially, they lived in the village of Creswell before moving to nearby Hodthorpe in about 1926. At first they lived in a rented single room at 29 King Street, in one of the village’s two rows of terraced houses, before buying the family home Glenroy in 1936. My grandfather was a coal miner with the Shireoaks Colliery Company at Whitwell Colliery – these were the days before nationalisation of the coal mining industry. I found the certificates authorising him to undertake testing for gas and fire explosives below ground – and the records over a ten year period of three accidents of increasing severity which led to him being assigned initially to light duties above ground and eventually to redundancy. His luck improved in December 1938 when he won a significant sum of money on the football pools, providing him with a more comfortable retirement than his disability pension allowed. But he carried the miner’s curse of dust in his lungs, a factor in his death at the family home in 1956. Jim Yaw at Glenroy ca 1949 The 1911 census shows Jim as a bachelor living in Maerdy, lodging with the Price family, his occupation shown as “Repairer below ground” – probably at Maerdy coal mine. He married later that year. The family bible was evidently a prized possession of my grandparents – I still have it today. The family register on the frontispiece records Jim’s marriage to my grandmother Alma Elizabeth Worgan at Bream, Forest of Dean on Christmas Day 1911. Jim evidently took his new bride straight off to Maerdy, where their first children, twins William James and Alma Lilian, were born in September 1912. Sadly Alma Lilian died within days and William James a month later. Their next child, my uncle Frederick Thomas George Yaw was born there in 1914. My father Leslie Trevor Worgan Yaw was born in 1926 after they moved to Derbyshire. A distant relative Val Warne sent me a note on the Yaw family prepared by Audrey Smart. I was surprised to learn that Jim was one of eight children. Val is the grand-daughter of Jane and Audrey was the daughter of Emma, two of my grandfather's five sisters. Audrey’s note also referred to my great grandfather George Yaw originally from Devon, who she remembered from her childhood in South Wales. I knew next to nothing of George and the people mentioned in Audrey’s note, and was determined to find out more about them and this family link to Somerset, Devon and South Wales. Bampton ca 1841 to South Wales ca 1911 It proved relatively straightforward to find my grandfather Jim Yaw in the censuses. In.1891 his parents, Jim and his siblings were all living at Brompton Ralph. By 1901, Jim had left the family home and was working as a farm-hand on Withycombe Farm, a mile or so to the west of Wiveliscombe. From the censuses, we can identify his parents George and Sarah and his seven siblings and their birthplaces – Caroline, John and Isabella in Clatworthy; Elizabeth and Jim in Glamorgan; Emma and Jane in Brompton Ralph; and George in Wiveliscombe Tracing his parents, we find George married Sarah Dunn in Clayhanger in 1878. In the 1881 census they were living at Forches Cross Cottage, Clatworthy with their first child Caroline. From the children’s birthplaces, we can infer George took his family to South Wales in the early 1880’s, where he presumably went in search of better employment opportunities. But they stayed just five years or so. By 1891 they were back just two miles from Clatworthy, living at Leigh Cottage, Brompton Ralph where George was probably employed on the adjacent Westcott Farm. A second family of five lived in the other half of Leigh Cottage – which the current owner kindly allowed me to visit in 2012 and has converted into a lovely single family home. By 1901, Caroline had sadly died from TB. Jim’s parents and younger siblings had moved to Langley Marsh to the north of Wiveliscombe, and by 1911 were back in Brompton Ralph. Like Jim, most of the family returned to South Wales after 1911, where his siblings married and established families of their own, and where Sarah died aged 53 in 1916 and George aged 81 in 1938. They are buried together at Ferndale near Maerdy George Yaw ca 93’s George’s birth certificate shows he was born in Clayhanger in December 1856 to Elizabeth Yawe – a single mother. In the 1861 census, George was living with his grand-parents John and Sarah at Wold Hayes Farm, Petton near Bampton. In 1871, it appears George had left the family home and aged just 14 was working as a farm-hand with the Morse Family at Gambling Farm, Skilgate near Dulverton. The 1861 census shows George’s mother Elizabeth was employed as a housemaid on the farm of James Mason in North Molton, where Henry Chapple was also living. Elizabeth married Henry the following year, and they moved away to Bexhill, Sussex where they raised a family, and where she died and is buried.