Ceredigion (was Cardiganshire)

'Ceredigion, after Ceredig the son of Cunedda and founding post-Roman leader. Its long seaboard on Cardigan Bay is scattered with small villages, punctuated at either end by the towns of Cardigan and Aberystwyth. Both the towns and the villages, however small and insignificant the latter may now seem, have long histories as active ports and also, in some cases, centres of shipbuilding. The significance of this is the migration to the ports from the rural hinterland which occurred in the nineteenth century. People from as many as 27 of Ceredigion's parishes have been found, for example, at the port of New Quay in 1851. If you have 'lost' an ancestor from an inland parish, it would pay to check the censuses at one of the ports. The remainder of the county was mainly agricultural, but there was an important lead-mining industry from the seventeenth until the twentieth centuries, which also attracted migrant workers.'

Record Office: Swyddfa'r Sir Archives, Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 2DE.
(01970)633697/8.
archives@ceredigion.gov.uk

Carmarthenshire

'The story of Carmarthenshire has something to interest everyone, from the Romans to the Rebecca Riots, from centuries of thriving ports to the discovery of tinplate. Carmarthen itself was called Maridunum by the Romans but in Welsh it is Caerfyrddin, which is said to suggest that this was the place of Myrddin, Merlin the magician. The town was a flourishing port from early times and there are records of trade in wool and hides from before the sixteenth century. The railway reached Carmarthen in 1852 and this meant that the people of Carmarthenshire were now able to travel to the metal and coal industries in the south east of the county around Llanelli, and further still to Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. The north east of the county attracted migrants from Breconshire, and beyond, to work in the lead mines.'

Pembrokeshire

'The most westerly county of Wales was known as Demetia, or Dyfed, in Roman times. When the counties of Wales were first formed in the sixteenth century, Pembrokeshire already existed as a county palatine, the only one in Wales. The inhabitants of a county palatine obeyed their Earl before the king himself. With its gently undulating hills and fertile valleys rising to the Preseli Hills, its sea coast is double that of its land boundary; to the north is the sea and the south west corner of Cardiganshire, to the east is Carmarthenshire and to the south and west are Bristol and St. George's Channel. Its people are an amalgam of Vikings, Normans, Flemings, English, Irish and, of course, Welsh. Many surnames found in the Registers are peculiar to Pembrokeshire. The two main industries, for generations, have been based on fishing and agriculture.'