Just wanted to share this personal story about some family research I did a few years ago. I have a lot of information on the Polsoms of Treorchy. The day I went to Treorchy. In January 2011 on a really beautiful winter’s morning I decided to drive to Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley. The reason for this was simple; I was probably only going to visit Treorchy once in my lifetime, and four generations of my family had lived there with many of them buried in the local cemetery. I phoned my wife at work to let her know that I would be late home. She gave a sigh which I recognised as the ‘’here we go again sigh’’. A couple of days earlier I had driven to Woolwich Barracks in order to read the war diary of the 11th Siege Battery RGA. My Great Uncle Willie Polsom was a Bombardier and was killed in action on 13th Oct 1915. The war diary gave a detailed account of what happened on that dreadful day when Willie went Over the top with the infantry in order to set up a forward observation post. I was allowed to photocopy several pages of the diary and drove home to Plymouth feeling really sad, and with a very personal sense of loss. The next day however I was in for a real shock when on a whim I phoned Treorchy library to see if they had any information on my relatives. The staff were incredibly helpful. I received by email the grave references of all of my ancestors who were interred in the local cemetery, but more than that I received dozens of newspaper articles from the archives of the ’Rhondda Leader’ newspaper. It turns out that Willie and his brothers and sisters were a heroic bunch, (His older sister Hannah was my Great Gran). I decided that in order to close the loop on my research I should place a bunch of flowers on Plot A56 in the cemetery, where lay the remains of my Great Great Grandparents and two of my Great Uncles, one being Police Seargent John Polsom, an incredibly brave local bobby, whose obituary reads like a boys own story. I left Plymouth without a clue of what to expect when I got to my destination but it was a pleasant and relatively short three hour journey. When I arrived I decided to park in Windsor Street, home to my family who had lived at number 32. The rows and rows of miner’s cottages were unlike anything I’d seen before. I wondered where the nearest florist was located so that I could buy some flowers, but before I walked into the village my curiosity got the better of me and I walked over to number 32 to see who lived there now. I knocked at the door and a polite young gentleman answered wearing plasterer’s coveralls. ‘’Sorry to bother you, and I know this sounds daft but I’ve just driven up from Plymouth to visit the local cemetery, and my ancestors used to live in your house in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s’’. ‘’Well well well’’ said he….’’why don’t we walk across the street to Elwyn Jones’ house, he lives at number 3, and he is ninety three…..he was born in that house’’. Elwyn Jones looked as though he’d seen a ghost. ‘’Granny Polsom ! You’d better come in and I’ll make you a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you what I know of your ancestor’’ I hadn’t been out of my car for two minutes, and yet there I was sat in a Welsh miner’s cottage in the company of a man who knew my Great Great Grandmother Elizabeth Polsom, born in 1849 ! My most vivid memory of the day was Elwyn stood at the sink with a teapot, pouring away the tea and saying ‘’let me know when it’s the right colour for you’’ (in a lovely Welsh accent) This is what he said about my Gran. (I took notes, which thankfully I kept) ‘’She was a big woman who always wore black clothes, and a long black shawl. The kids were frightened of her because you didn’t see many elderly people in those days. She lived and slept in the front room of the cottage, as I do now. She rented the rest of the cottage out to Mr Shaw and his family, they were Irish. Mr Shaw had a big bushy moustache, they were lovely people. I don’t remember your Gran dying, but I would’ve been about eight……sorry I can’t remember anything else’’ In that Cottage over a cup of tea we held 162 years of living memory. I Still have Elwyns phone number. Elwyn is a Burma Star Veteran. After leaving the company of Mr Jones I headed for the cemetery which I naively thought was a small local affair, however it covers the whole side of the valley, and I fruitlessly searched for plot A56. As I walked back into town, a white transit van pulled up, and four young Welsh lads asked me if I’d been to the cemetery, they were grave diggers and saw the bunch of flowers still in my hand. To cut a long story short, they gave up their own time and took me to the family plot. Fish and Chips…..drive home. Brilliant…………Thank you Wales.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 09:46:24 +0000
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