The above is taken from some family history as related by Robert
L. Coon, Sr. Sophie Overton - Wife of David Peter Ruesel
Sophie Overton, wife of David Peter Ruesel worked for George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak Company located in Rochester NY. She, among other responsibilities, was in charge of proper placement of the silverware in the dinning room. George was a very meticulous man and demanded everything be prepared just so. Sophie had to have been special to have worked for such a man.
David Peter Ruesel was employed by George Eastman at Kodak and looked forward to George saying "Good Morning Pete" each morning as he walk through the building to his office. See David Peter Ruesel for more info.
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The above is taken from some family history as related by Robert
L. Coon, Sr.
The picture below is of George Eastman in his sitting room at the Mansion. The photographer of this 1930 photograph is unknown.
Is it possible that Sophie actually took the photograph herself?
George Eastman
George Eastman House
The following is for those who wish to trace the name of Sophie Overton.
Note: She and her sister were adopted and brought up by a poor family in Wales.
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One of
the first Welsh settlers was Howell Powell who left Brecon for Virginia
in 1642. In 1660 Charles II was restored to the English throne and
religious intolerance increased. The Court of Great Sessions in Bala,
north Wales had threatened Quakers with burning. Welsh Quakers bought
40,000 acres in Pennsylvania and left for America in 1682. (Phew!)
In 1683 Baptists from Mid and West Wales settled on the outskirts of Philadelphia and soon bought 30,000 acres further down the Delaware river. Llanbrynmair became a noted source of emigrants to America as a result of the enthusiasm of a local cleric. 19th century emigration was largely from the industrialised South of Wales (see South Wales and Monmouthshire). The arrows on the map do not, of course, signify actual routes taken. The bulk of emigrants to America left via the English ports of Bristol and Liverpool. |
The Welsh Bible and family history.
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Ja(me)s
Jones. Mason. Carved in 1876 on a corner stone at |
In days of old, Welsh people would often keep a record of important family events by writing on the flyleaf of the family bible. The old Welsh bibles were published in a large format and provided a secure repository for details of marriages, births and other important data.
An American visitor asked us to comment on a translation of such personal data from the bible of an ancestor, James Jones, who had emigrated from Wales in 1852. The present writer has reproduced the translation below (in the right hand column) and added notes and maps in an attempt to identify the place names mentioned there. This exercise highlights some of the problems facing researchers when confronted with Welsh place names in old documents. Spelling often presents difficulties for those copying old handwriting, especially if they are not familiar with the Welsh language. Welsh place names rely very much on landscape features and the names of saints - both Celtic and those made popular by the Normans after 1066. There is much duplication and even the combination of a village name and its county cannot always guarantee the correct identification.
 Llanllwni apparently means "the Church of St. Luke" and is the name of a small village which thrives today. It is around 15 miles south west of the town of Lampeter. |
James Jones was born in Clawddcoch
(his house - Red Bank), Llanllwni, Carmarthenshire, 23 March, 1826.
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| There is a place called Peniel around 10 miles from Llanllwni but this does not appear on modern maps and is not to be confused with the better known Peniel in north Wales. | Accepted into church in Peniel near Carmarthen in 1846. | ||||
| Although there are several Welsh place names which begin with Capel (Chapel) this does not appear to be one of them. This entry seems to indicate a change in allegiance and a new place of worship, presumably a chapel named for Non, the mother of St. David. | Went from there to Capelnoni, the place where my mother and father were members. | ||||
 This appears to be the village of Cwmllynfell, just a few miles from Brynamman. |
Lived in Cwmllyfell, Glamorganshire in 1847 ... | ||||
 This would seem to be Troedyrhiw, just south of Merthyr Tydfil. "Sanon" should be "Saron", the name of a chapel which once existed there. See pictures from Troedyrhiw ... |
... and in Sanon Trodrhin, Merthyr
for eight months in 1850 and 1851.
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 "Denlwyn" should be Penllyn or Penllwyn. Although there are places with these names in other parts of Wales, modern maps do not reveal one near Llandysul so perhaps this represents a house name. Although they married in America, in 1855, the couple were from the same area of Wales and may well have known each other from childhood. Llandysul is just ten miles or so from Llanllwni, James' birthplace. |
Emigrated to U.S. last day of
August, 1852.
Married Jane Davis of Denlwyn, Cardiganshire in
the parish of Llandysul. She was born 18 February, 1835.
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outlined above, what does this tell us about James Jones and his family?
First of all, his original home Llanllwni was (and is) in a part of
Wales devoted to farming. It would be reasonable to suppose that he was
the son of a small farmer or a farm worker. Born in 1826, he was 21
years old when he moved to Glamorgan. At this time farmers were in
despair. Poor crops and prices combined with social injustice to cause
much unrest in Wales. The country did not suffer the recurrent famine
conditions of Ireland but Irish immigration added to the problems caused
by the economic recession which followed the end of the war against
Napoleon and France. The small farms of Wales became uneconomic and
taxes, tithes and tolls became more burdensome. The Hosts of
Rebecca burned the hated toll gates by night and in 1839 thousands of
Chartists marched on Newport in Monmouthshire in a prelude to the
"hungry forties".
It is significant that the Glamorgan destinations mentioned were both close to burgeoning industrial centres. The iron industry had only suffered a temporary regression and by 1840 there were twice as many blast furnaces as there had been in 1815. Cwmllynfell is just a few miles from the town of Brynamman and Troedyrhiw just a few miles from Merthyr, the industrial heart of Wales at this time. James Jones had become part of the great movement away from the land which was to hugely inflate the populations of the southern counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire in the 19th. century. Both commercial agents and non-conformist ministers promoted the concept of emigration in the industrial towns and James Jones may well have left Wales in the company of a small party encouraged by a vision of greater opportunity and religious toleration in America. (At the time he left Wales, worship in a chapel rather than a church of the Anglican denomination could still be a bar to progress in certain fields).
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This map shows the pre-1974 counties
but for reasons of space I have omitted the "shire"
suffixes*.The numbered squares show the approximate locations of 1.
Llanllwni, 2. Cwmllynfell, 3. Troedyrhiw and 4. Llandysul.
Note: The roadmap thumbnails were produced by Microsoft's handy AutoRoute 2002. The county map is copyright of Data Wales. * The names of these counties were generally formed from the names of the most populous market towns in the relevant areas, with the addition of the English "shire" (from the Anglo Saxon "scir" or "scire", a province).
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The
pedigree of Sir William Morgan of Tredegar |
The Data Wales website contains many references to the Morgans of Monmouthshire in south Wales. The family, whose members were often known as the Morgans of Tredegar after their primary residence on the outskirts of the town of Newport, is well documented and its study illuminates many aspects of the history of Wales. The Morgans survived the depredations of the Norman French knights, the consequences of their support for Owain Glyndwr's revolt against the English crown and the upheavals of the English Civil War. They retained a degree of influence over the ages and achieved a final flowering in the 19th. century when their great wealth and land ownership allowed them to take a prominent part in the industrialisation of south Wales.
In 2001 we were contacted by a descendent of a branch of the family which had long ago removed to France. Servane de Morgan was kind enough to send me copies of sections of a 1612 pedigree and we publish these illustrations by express permission. (The scans which accompany this note are copyright of Data Wales and must not be published elsewhere.)
The pedigree takes the form of a roll and
when extended measures around ten metres in length. The roll format has
fortunately protected the contents and the skillfully painted crests retain
their original bright colours. (The present illustrations suffer from being
heavily compressed in order to allow a relatively fast download of this page.)
The pedigree commences with the marriage of Brutus, a legendary King of Britain
supposed to to have descended from "Priamus, King of Troy". This
invocation of figures from classical antiquity was quite common in the old Welsh
pedigrees and seems to demonstrate a lingering memory of the days when Britain
enjoyed the comparative security of Roman rule and its first exposure to
classical culture.
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A significant marriage.
Around 1334 Llewelyn ap Ifor, Lord of St. Clere, married Angharad,
daughter and heiress of Sir Morgan ap Maredudd (Meredith), Lord of
Tredegar. According to the pedigree, their son Morgan ap Llewelyn, was
responsible for the adoption of Morgan as a fixed surname.
In 1337 Edward III of England claimed the throne of France and the subsequent "100 Years War" gave the Morgans much opportunity for advancement through military action overseas. |
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Rowland Morgan of Machen marries Blanche
(described here as the only daughter, by his first wife, of Will.
Jenkin, but elsewhere described as the daughter of Thomas Jones of
Treowen).
Rowland was Sheriff of the county in 1558. Like many Welsh families, the Morgans had prospered through their support of the victor at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. A gold "sovereign" coin of King Henry VII shows him seated on a throne with a Welsh dragon atop one of its side pillars in acknowledgment of his Welsh roots. |
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The pedigree ends with this painting, the
heraldic "achievement" of Sir William Morgan. One year after
the preparation of this pedigree in 1612, Sir William became Sheriff
of the county and in 1628 was a Member of Parliament. He died in 1653.
The English Civil Wars started in 1642 and the period from then until the restoration of Charles II in 1660 was one of uncertainties and divided loyalties. Some of the Morgans looked overseas for relief from the religious and constitutional squabbles. Henry Morgan set sail for the West Indies and a glorious career as a buccaneer (or perhaps more properly as a privateer).
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Nothing is known of Lewis Morris, the compiler of this pedigree. He writes that he has "collected and gathered" the genealogical information but does not specifically claim the illustrations. These are very intricate and demanded much skill. The shield above is only four inches wide in the original but contains thirty different crests, all carefully drawn.
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See Data
Wales Index for more Welsh information
Back to - Descendants of David Peter Ruesel
