Discovering my grandfather's parents – Part 1

Roots in the Valleys of Wales

Martha Ann Davies was born into a world of industrial turbulence on December 23, 1911, at 18 Penlan Street in Pentrebach, just south of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. She was the third child of George Adley Davies and Mary Elizabeth Rogers.

Her father, George, came from a family shaped by the coal and iron industries. His grandfather had migrated from the Swansea Valley sixty-five years earlier seeking work. George himself had laboured as a collier before becoming a bill poster and painter for Nixon's Navigation Co., one of South Wales' largest collieries. The year before Martha’s birth, the region was gripped by a bitter, ten-month miners' strike over wages, which ended in defeat and left families in severe hardship. Martha entered the world just three months after these clashes subsided.

Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Rogers, brought a different heritage to the family. Born in Aberdare in 1869, Mary was of mixed ethnic background. Her mother’s family hailed from Meidrim, Carmarthenshire, while her father, George Rogers, was of West African decent and had arrived in Aberdare from Newfoundland, Canada, in the late 1860s. Tragedy struck the Rogers family in 1880 when Mary’s younger sister, Annie, was burnt to death at home at age four. Shortly after, George Rogers left his wife and surviving children to join a travelling circus, a departure precipitated by the birth of a child that was not his own.

(South Wales Daily News 31 January 1880)

(Merthyr Express 24 April 1880)

Loss and Hardship

Martha’s childhood was marked by profound loss. In 1919, during the deadly third wave of the Spanish flu pandemic, her mother died from influenza, leaving Martha motherless at just seven years old.

The years that followed were precarious for Wales, especially its mining communities. After World War I, the coal and steel industries went into steep decline. The 1921 census finds Martha, aged nine, living in Troedyrhiw with her father and two older brothers. Both her father and younger brother are noted as Welsh speakers, while her eldest brother is already listed as a "collier boy." Critically, both he and George are recorded as out of work—a common state in this part of Wales where unemployment would soar above 25% for a decade, driving hundreds of thousands to leave,  seeking work elsewhere.

Motherhood and a Life-Changing Discovery

As a teenager, Martha sought escape from this decline and travelled to London for work, finding employment as a domestic servant. There, at nineteen, she became pregnant. She returned home to Troedyrhiw and on November 3, 1931, gave birth to a son, Dennis James Davies, my grandfather.

Facing the immense challenges of single motherhood in that era, Martha made the decision to have her son adopted. He was taken in by her neighbours, a mining family, who raised him as their own. For many years, Martha played no part in her son’s life, a separation that left me, years later, knowing almost nothing of my paternal ancestry.

My research began years after my grandfather’s death, spurred by a DNA test that revealed unexpected Irish, Welsh, and West African origins on my father’s side. For years, I knew only Martha’s first name and presumed her surname was Davies as his adopted parents surname was Bulford. I assumed the identity of my grandfather’s father would remain a mystery.

Then, a breakthrough: a discovered newspaper article revealed the answer. The father was William Johnson, a soldier serving in the Irish Guards, which neatly explained the Irish link in my DNA on my father’s side. The article disclosed that the child was conceived during a walk in Hyde Park and that William had pleaded with Martha not to terminate the pregnancy, which was then illegal. Her decision to continue with the pregnancy, made under immense pressure, is the reason three subsequent generations of our family exist today.

(Merthyr Express 6th Feb 1932)

A New Chapter: Marriage and Family

Martha returned to London, where in 1937 she married Isidore Diamond, a Jewish man born in Whitechapel in 1913. Isidore’s family were immigrants from Szczekociny, Poland (then under Russian control), who had arrived in London’s East End in the late 1860s. They settled in Whitechapel, a notorious slum plagued by extreme poverty, overcrowding, and crime. The family lived there during a rise in antisemitism, which was further inflamed by the Jack the Ripper murders and the subsequent suspicion cast upon the local Jewish community. Martha’s father in-law’s home was situated amid the geography of the killings, placing them at the heart of the resulting fear and prejudice.

The 1939 Register shows Martha working as a housekeeper for a married couple on Wentworth Street in Whitechapel, while her husband Isidore lived with his parents on Hanbury Street, working as a travelling confectioner. Later that year, Martha was back in Merthyr Tydfil, recorded as present at her father George’s death. She was in Wales again in 1941, where she gave birth to a son. It is likely she returned due to the dangers of the ongoing Blitz in London.

Later Life and Legacy

Martha and Isidore had a second child, a daughter, in 1942. They spent the next three decades in the London area, living in Brentford and later Paddington, until Isidore’s death in 1971. In her later years, Martha moved to Manchester, where she lived until her death in 1996 at the age of 85.

My research brought the family story full circle. I had met Martha once as a young child on a trip to Manchester, not understanding who she was. Decades later, by piecing together census records, certificates, and a crucial newspaper clipping, I was able to discover who she was and gain an insight into the story of her life.

To discover more than just the name of the father of Martha’s son, my grandfather, I would need another DNA break through.