English translations of the registers of Welsh speaking chapels in Merseyside England
My mother and father's immediate ancestors were from Merseyside in England.
On both sides there were male English ancestors who married either known Welsh females or ones with Welsh surnames in the Liverpool or Bootle area.
The person we believe from censuses may be my father's maternal grandmother is only identified as from Wales in the 1881 Census and she is said to be the wife of a Thomas Fyles and only identified as Jane Fyles. Later she lived in a very Welsh area of Seaforth. What we don't have is information about her marriage presumably in the West Derby registration district. Hopefully, if we did, we would obtain her maiden surname and her father's name and possibly where she was born. In my paternal grandmother's marriage certificate, she identified her father as John Fyles not Thomas Fyles. We did research on a John Fyles in the same area who had a daughter with the same name as my grandmother, but the birth certificate we found was in 1879, when the 1939 Register gave a different birth date in 1877.
We suspect Jane Fyles might have been Welsh speaking and may have gone to the Bethel Welsh Presbyterian Church North of Waterloo in Seaforth/Litherland or else the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Chapel on Stanley Road Bootle. Perhaps they got married there. I have used the FamilySearch Research Wiki Guided Research to try to find the marriage with no luck. The non-conformist records suggested don't appear to cover the situation in Merseyside during the Victorian era when a number of different Welsh Chapels existed there.
From previous experience I have found the discovery of a relative who has crossed borders, from Wales to England, from Ireland to England, from Scotland to England, and from England to North America or Australasia difficult, particularly if language barriers are crossed.
Family research in the Merseyside area of England raises all these issues which is why I'm suggesting a need for English translations of the registers of Welsh-speaking chapels in the Merseyside area as a first step.
Comments
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I can't imagine that is the sort of project FamilySearch would be willing to undertake. There is the ever-present problem of early registers being written in Latin, but it is often quite easy to get around that.
In both Welsh and Latin there will be the commonly found equivalent terms for birth, marriage, son, daughter, etc. The records of which you are speaking will likely have been (or eventlally will be) indexed in English, in any case. With the original documents, or for other advice, perhaps you should post your query at the Wales Research Group - see https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/205-wales-research.
Reading "difficult" words presents the same problem in any language - even English, of course. But, if you can see the spelling of the word(s), I'd try Google Translate for the English equivalent.
In short, if FamilySearch (or any other English language website) has indexed these records they should appear in English. If the material is not indexed, you face the same problems as, say, any non-French or non-German speaker who is researching their families in those countries.
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Do you have the names and dates of birth of any children of Jane and Thomas Fyles? If you do it might be possible to find Jane's maiden surname.
To do this log onto and/or register with the General Register Office. It's free and you only pay for copies of certificates.
Once you have registered, login you will see a page with picture icons, click on 'Search GRO indexes.' (Top right hand side).
Select 'Birth' click 'select and choose your year of birth, usually I also give myself a little leeway and click for two years either way, you can of course choose either one year or no years either side of your chosen birth year. Add all your information, given the fact that names are not unique add place of birth registration if you know it. This can be found by googling 'registration district of ...'
It might sound complicated but honestly it's not. Practice first by finding the birth record of people you have the information about, add the mother's maiden surname and see what you come up with. You might even find second or third names.
If you need anymore help please let me know.
Cedar Kedur (of the Welsh Group)
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Further to the useful remarks of @Cedar Kedar concerning identification of your relatives, I have been checking the GRO index and 1881 census records. I assume the census record you are referring to is the one found in FamilySearch at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q27L-VSNQ. If so, the children of Thomas and Jane Fyles are shown as Mary, aged 3, and Annie, aged 1. I can identify neither in the GRO birth index, although there is a Mary Fyles 1879 birth at West Derby - mother SEDDON. Neither can I find a marriage between a Thomas Fyles/ Files and a Jane - at West Derby or elsewhere.
There is also an 1891 census record for the family (less Thomas - Jane is shown as a widow) at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7Q7R-6MM.
As far as births registered in West Derby (1871-1883), this is a list:
Jane FILES 1873 - mother CALLENDER (JOHN Files m JANNET Callender 1873 Ormskirk)
Jane FYLES 1872 Margaret FYLES 1874 Sarah FYLES 1876 James Graham 1877 Hannah 1879 Martha Jamar FYLES 1881 - all mother GRAHAM
Alice Ann FYLES 1872 - mother ROBINSON
Alice Ann FYLES 1877 - Thomas Taylor 1880 James 1881 - all mother TAYLOR
Mary FYLES 1879 - mother SEDDON
In summary, no Jane Files / Fyles births in the 1877-1879 period found ANYWHERE in England or Wales and not identifiable marriage of a Thomas Files / Fyles to a JANE - so no surname clues.
I'll try to have a further look later, in case there are further surname variants, etc.
Update - The only further event I have been able to find is the1891 death of Thomas Fyles, aged 63, registered at West Derby.
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