|
|
|
Chapter 3: Margaret Davies
|
|
The Davies story, as remembered by Margaret Davies' grandaughter, Margaret Withers (nee Williams), was written down by her as follows:
| |
'Thomas Davies was born in Wales and sailed to America where he married. His wife's name is not remembered, but she was possibly a Swedish or Nordic immigrant. They lived in Jamaica, sugar growing or similar. They possibly had three daughters. When Thomas Davies died, his widow and two daughters returned to America. Margaret Davies sailed to Avonmouth on a banana boat to try and find her father's family. She needed work and was employed as a sewing woman at Ashton Court, a large country estate just outside Bristol on the Somerset side of the Avon just across the Clifton suspension bridge. She looked after the sewing needs of a large and probably rich country household.' (Margaret Withers)
|
|
|
|
Margaret Davies with grandchild, 1930
|
|
|
|
|
Railway Terrace , Aberbeeg ( South Wales ), where the Barry family lived from 1881 to 1905
|
|
|
Through research into census, birth, marriage and death records this story can be padded out further. Margaret Davies was born in Jamaica, roughly in 1855, as all of her census records show. Her marriage certificate, from a Catholic ceremony, informs that her father was a sugar planter, and was already dead by this time (1882). The 1871 census shows that Margaret was already back from Jamaica and had had at least 2 living sisters: Sarah, a year or two younger, also born in Jamaica; and Miriam, a few years older than Margaret, and already married to George Sainsbury.
| |
Unfortunately Miriam Sainsbury (Margaret's sister) died from TB at the age of 29 years in 1880, leaving a paralysed husband and 2 small children. Margaret Davies moved to Aberbeeg to help George and the children. It was here that she married David Barry, and together they had 8 children. Margaret Davies died during WW2 at the age of 84 and is buried at Leominster Cemetery.
|
|
|
|
|
