Allen Family History

Research Report:

Davies2006Oct/0346 20 October 2006

Objectives

Determine if Elizabeth (Williams) Davies (1812-1888) crossed the plains in the famed Willie & Martin Handcart Company. Verify birth and death info for William Davies.

Results

At website “Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868,” under Church History at www.lds.org, which contains a complete listing of handcart companies and participants, clarified statements in article “A History of William John Lewis and Jane Davis,” found at www.welshmormonhistory.org.

Elizabeth (Williams) Davies (1812-1888), crossed the plains in the Edward Martin Company (1856), according to her obituary in The Daily Enquirer [document 1]. This company departed on 28 July 1856 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on 30 November 1856 [document 2]. It was one-half of the well-known Willie & Martin Handcart Company according to the Wikipedia article “Mormon handcart pioneers,” available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_handcart_pioneers#1856:__Willie_and_Martin_handcart_companies.

Printed a complete list of members of the Edward Martin Company (1856) [document 3]. Additional biographical information and sources are available for each participant in this incident. To access this material, please visit the website sited above. There is also an extensive bibliography about the company available online at that site.

William John Lewis, age 24, and his wife Jane (Davies) Lewis, age 21, appear in the Edward Bunker Company (1856) [documents 4-5]. Included is a brief description of that company [document 6]. The participants in this handcart company and sources regarding them are available online.

Initial attempts to verify birth info for William Davies through LDS Branch Records in Wales frustrated by fact that chapel register for Denbigh, Denbighshire, in North Wales, does not survive. Denbigh was the closest meetinghouse for Latter-day Saints who lived in Gwytherin and Llansannan according to the Wales-LDS Maps & Registers finding aid at the Family History Library.

It appears that the article at Welsh Mormon History is factually accurate, except, as you pointed out, it should have stated that William Davies was 44 when he died, not 41. A closer reading also indicated that it did not identify the company in which William’s widow traveled. In attempts to verify the date of death, we checked his widow’s obituary (he died before newspaper began publishing obituaries) available online at the University of Utah’s Utah Digital Newspapers database http://www.lib.utah.edu/digital/unews/ [document 7]. Her husband’s date of death is not specified. There were probably few contemporary records made of William’s death in Iowa City, unless an LDS pioneer recorded his passing in his or her journal.

The Family History Library has acquired published transcripts of the parish registers of Gwytherin, Denbighshire, Wales. There is indeed a christening recorded for Wm. Davis s/o Robt & Eleanor Davis of Pentre dated 10 Oct 1810, with the annotation that he was born on 3 Oct. Curiously, there is also record of a Wm. Davis s/o Robt & Eleanor Davis of Pentre dated 23 Jan 1810 (born 10 Jan). There is no burial for this individual in 1810 on record in that parish. The first entry matches the data we have from secondary sources; however, additional research would need to be conducted in order to verify that this source applies to the LDS pioneer.