“My Relations Are Part of a Rich Tapestry of Welsh Heritage”: My Feature in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine

I was delighted to see my family-history research featured in the November 2025 issue of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine.

Written by Claire Vaughan, the article follows my long journey into the history of the Davies family of Caeadda, Llanwrin, and the wider network of relatives whose lives carried the family far beyond the Montgomeryshire uplands.

The feature appeared under a title that captures what I came to understand through more than two decades of research:

“My relations are part of a rich tapestry of Welsh heritage.”

That tapestry includes farmers, ministers, engineers, musicians and sportsmen. Some achieved public distinction. Others lived quietly and survive only through scattered records, family testimony and the places with which they were associated.

Bringing those different lives together has become one of the central purposes of my work.

Where the Story Began

My interest began at Caeadda, the upland farm in the parish of Llanwrin with which generations of the Davies family were associated.

At first, the research was genealogical. I wanted to establish names, dates and relationships, and to understand how the people remembered within the family fitted together. But the deeper I went, the clearer it became that a family tree alone could not contain the story.

Each discovery opened another path.

A census entry led to a chapel record. A photograph raised questions about a person’s education or occupation. A newspaper notice recovered a reputation that had otherwise vanished. One branch remained close to the land, while another led towards Oxford, the railway, international music or Edwardian sport.

As I told the magazine:

“It wasn’t until I began researching that I realised just how rich and varied our family history was.”

What began as an enquiry into one rural family became a much wider exploration of Welsh social, religious and cultural history.

Crossing the Historical Threshold

For me, family history has never been simply a matter of collecting ancestors.

The most important moment comes when a name ceases to be an entry in a register and begins to emerge as a person. That transformation may depend upon something very small, a letter, an obituary, a school record, a remembered expression or an annotation in a family Bible.

People from rural and working families were often recorded only in fragments. Their voices rarely survive continuously. The historian must therefore work with incomplete evidence, bringing records together without pretending to know more than they reveal.

To cross that threshold into another person’s world is a privilege. It is also a responsibility.

Family affection must not become an excuse for exaggeration. Tradition should be preserved, but distinguished from documentary proof. Public achievement should be recognised without allowing prominent relatives to eclipse those whose work was domestic, agricultural or otherwise less visible.

The aim is not to manufacture distinction. It is to restore context.

The Reverend Trevor Owen Davies

Among those included in the feature is the Reverend Trevor Owen Davies, who lived from 1895 until 1966.

Born at Caeadda, he progressed from the village school and Machynlleth County School to University College, Aberystwyth, where he studied classics, and then to Christ Church, Oxford. At Oxford he completed an honours degree in theology and a B.Litt. thesis on the Augustinian doctrine of grace and free will.

He became a Presbyterian, or Calvinistic Methodist, minister and spent most of his career at Trefeca College. Appointed as an assistant lecturer in 1926, he subsequently served as principal until his retirement in 1964.

His life reveals the educational ambition found within Welsh Nonconformity. The journey from an upland Montgomeryshire farm to Oxford and the leadership of a theological college was remarkable, but it was not detached from his origins. Chapel, education and intellectual discipline belonged to the same cultural world.

He also participated in public life in Brecknockshire, serving in educational administration and becoming a justice of the peace. His career joined scholarship, ministry and civic responsibility.

Charles Shorto and the Discipline of Engineering

Charles Shorto, who lived from 1906 until 1997, represents a different branch of the family story.

Educated at Rugby School, he entered railway employment at sixteen and worked as an engineer for more than forty years. He lived quietly in East Budleigh, Devon, and attracted national attention only after his death, when it emerged that he had left an estate valued at approximately £5 million to charitable causes.

Among the beneficiaries was the National Railway Museum, which reportedly received £500,000.

The contrast between his modest personal life and the scale of his charitable estate makes his story particularly striking. It is also a reminder that wealth does not always announce itself through conspicuous living.

Charles’s life was shaped by precision, restraint and professional discipline. His eventual philanthropy extended that sense of responsibility beyond his lifetime.

Arthur Owen Jones, England Captain

Arthur Owen Jones, who lived from 1872 until 1914, carried the family story into the highest levels of Edwardian sport.

An outstanding all-round sportsman, he played first-class cricket for Cambridge University, Nottinghamshire and London County. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1900 and led Nottinghamshire to the County Championship in 1907.

Jones captained the England touring party in Australia during 1907–08 and led England in two Test matches. Illness restricted his participation, and Frederick Fane assumed the captaincy during the remaining Tests in which Jones could not play.

He also distinguished himself in rugby union, playing for and captaining Leicester.

Arthur’s achievements brought public recognition far beyond the family’s Welsh roots. Yet his life was short. He died from tuberculosis in 1914 at the age of forty-two, just as the world in which he had achieved distinction was being overtaken by war.

His story connects family history with the sporting culture, social expectations and physical vulnerabilities of Edwardian Britain.

Elinor Bennett OBE

The feature also includes my cousin Elinor Bennett OBE, one of Wales’s most distinguished harpists.

Born at Llanidloes in 1943 and later raised near Bala, Elinor initially studied law at Aberystwyth before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. There she studied with the celebrated harpist Osian Ellis.

Her career has encompassed international performance, recording and musical education. She played with leading British orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia and the English Chamber Orchestra. She has given recitals and masterclasses internationally and has played an important part in developing new generations of Welsh harpists.

Her contribution extends beyond performance. She founded Coleg Telyn Cymru, helped establish Canolfan Gerdd William Mathias and played a leading role in the Wales International Harp Festival. Her pupils have included some of the most accomplished harpists of subsequent generations.

Elinor’s career demonstrates the continuing vitality of Welsh musical culture. It also brings the family story into the present, showing that heritage is not simply inherited. It is interpreted, performed and handed on.

One Family, Many Histories

These four lives appear very different.

Trevor Owen Davies belonged to the intellectual and religious world of Welsh Nonconformity. Charles Shorto built a disciplined professional life within the railway industry. Arthur Owen Jones achieved international recognition through cricket. Elinor Bennett carried Welsh musical traditions onto major stages while educating those who would follow her.

Yet they emerge from a connected family history.

Their experiences demonstrate why genealogy matters when it is placed within social context. A family can provide a route through the history of education, religion, engineering, sport, music, migration and philanthropy. It can show how people moved between rural Wales and institutions extending far beyond it.

The celebrated figures are only part of that story. Behind them stand generations of farmers, wives, widows, labourers and chapel members whose work created the conditions from which later achievements became possible.

A family tree records descent. A family history should also recover dependence.

Recognition for Rural Welsh History

I am grateful to Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine and to Claire Vaughan for treating this history with care.

The magazine is widely read by people who understand that genealogy is not a minor or purely private pursuit. At its best, family history reconnects individuals with the economic, religious and social structures of the past. It allows national history to be approached from below, through the experience of households and communities.

The feature also gave me an opportunity to present rural Montgomeryshire as a place of historical consequence.

The uplands were never merely a picturesque background. They produced ministers, migrants, professionals, musicians and sportsmen. Their farms and chapels belonged to networks reaching into English cities, universities, imperial institutions and international cultural life.

Caeadda provides the starting point, but the story does not remain there.

Why the Feature Matters to Me

Publication in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine represented more than personal recognition.

It affirmed the value of a form of history I have pursued for many years, a history grounded in family papers, official records, oral testimony and close attention to place. It showed that a story beginning with one Montgomeryshire farm could speak to readers with no connection to the family or district.

That is because its underlying questions are universal.

What do we inherit?

What is lost between generations?

How do families remember?

What can the lives of our ancestors tell us about the institutions and communities that shaped them?

The answers will differ from family to family. The responsibility to preserve the evidence is shared.

I remain grateful for the opportunity to bring these relatives together within the pages of a national family-history magazine, and to celebrate the range and endurance of Welsh family life.

Read the Feature

The article, “Antony David Davies: Has Rich Welsh Family History”, appeared in issue 236, the November 2025 edition of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine.

The issue is now available digitally as a back issue:

View the November 2025 back issue

Visit Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine

Sources and Related Reading

1. Claire Vaughan, “Reader Story, Antony David Davies: Has Rich Welsh Family History”, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, issue 236, November 2025.
2. Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine index, issue 236
3. Dictionary of Welsh Biography, Trevor Owen Davies
4. The Independent, “Railwayman Leaves £5m”
5. Arthur Owen Jones, cricket career summary
6. Elinor Bennett, official biography