Travel to Wales

This morning my travel plans started to unravel. One of the least expensive options for places to stay is on a university campus. In the past I have stayed at Cwrt Mawr at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and Rosebury Hall, London School of Economics in London. Both facilities are worth return visits. Today I am paying some stupid tax for not making reservations earlier. Cwrt Mawr is filled during the four days I plan to research at Aberystwyth. This really is the best and least expensive place I have found for a research trip to the National Library of Wales. Rooms are normally available when school is not in session. Try to book more than ten days in advance.

Finding lists of bed and breakfasts (B&B) is not difficult in the internet age. Finding a B&B in Wales that has more than a phone number and street address on the internet is a minor miracle. I am suprised to find that when you do call that the phone doesn't get answered. So after two overseas long distance phone calls I finally went to option three where they do answer the phone. They sounded very nice and I'm looking forward to staying at a different place. Most B&Bs in Aberystwyth are about a ten minute walk from the National Library of Wales.

Where are the Welsh research tools?

I've been looking at records available at the Gwent County Archives to determine exactly what is available from FamilySearch and what is not. There are some nonconformist chapel records which are not listed in other resources. There seems to be no single place to go for a complete list of chapel records. The particular chapel I was investigating has some records deposited but the most used reference book, Nonconformist Registers of Wales does not list the available records. Since that book was published nearly fourteen years ago it could just be too far out of date. Tomorrow I will dig into it a little more and see if this particular chapel is just an odd ball or a good example of how to hunt and find Welsh chapel records.

Welsh Research Helps on FamilySearch Wiki

Development of a research advice wiki by volunteers and employees at FamilySearch is progressing so well that I struggle to keep up with the new additions. Naturally my first area of interest is Wales. Other parts of the British Isles have my attention but not to the same degree. A few wiki volunteers have taken me by surprise.

This morning I found a whole lot of information had been added over the past week for north Wales. If you go directly to the Portal:Wales page at https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Portal:Wales you find links to various topics and items of potential interest. I use the country page for Wales as my web browser home page so that when I open the internet I'm taken directly to the Portal:Wales page. Recent changes included similar pages for each county. I was pleased to learn this morning that several interesting items have been added for counties in the north of Wales.

I expect these county pages may become the focal point for research helps in the very near future. If you have research in North Wales there are already some great resources for you to tap into. Visit https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Portal:Denbighshire for a taste of things to come.