My grandfather Garfield Evans was a Welsh first-language speaker, tall and broad, who smoked a pipe filled with ‘baccy’.
He was very indulgent towards us grandchildren – there was always a toy waiting for us whenever we visited.
Garfield worked near Cardiff as a stonemason at St Fagans National Museum of History. There are 50 historic buildings on site, including a Victorian school, a medieval prince’s hall and a blacksmith’s forge.
In 1951, Garfield and his colleagues dismantled and rebuilt Abernodwydd Farmhouse, a timber-framed building dating back to 1678. It originally stood in Llangadfan, Powys, and was transported over 100 miles to St Fagans where the highly skilled team restored it precisely.
I’ve loved visiting St Fagans and seeing a bed inside the farmhouse that is covered in daisy-wheel carvings – these were to protect sleepers from harm at night. I’ve used this as the basis of my latest novel, Death Rites.
Garfield was born in 1909 in the village of Abergorlech in Carmarthenshire. He grew up believing that his parents were stonemason David Evans and his wife Miriam Davies. Garfield had eight ‘siblings’, including an older ‘sister’ called Mary (known as Polly) who was born in 1884. Sadly, he felt that his siblings didn’t have much time for him, although he was very close to David and Miriam.
Garfield discovered the reason behind his siblings’ coolness in 1932 when he was about to get married to Sarah Blodwen Thomas. He needed his birth certificate in order to marry, and when he received it he was shocked to discover that Polly was listed as his mother. The father’s name was left blank, and he realised that David and Miriam were actually his grandparents.
My mother Enfys loved telling me stories about her family, and this was the one we talked about most. As far as Mum was concerned, the identity of Garfield’s father would always remain an enigma.
As a crime writer, I love a good mystery and the identity of your great grandfather is a fascinating one to track down. Census records revealed that the Evans family often employed casual labourers, and I wondered if he was one of them. However, I was scrambling around in the dark.
In 2020, I took a DNA test with Ancestry. I recognised most of my immediate matches, but there was a Miss Richardson who was showing as a half second cousin on Mum’s side. This suggested that we shared one great grandparent.
She DNA-matched with my cousin Gareth, but none of Mum’s maternal relations. I was fairly sure that she must have been related to Garfield’s side.
I messaged Miss Richardson and she responded saying that she knew little about her family but she allowed me to use her tree, which was quite small.
I managed to trace her paternal grandfather Charles Richardson, who married in London in 1937 and gave his father’s name and occupation as an attendant at a Turkish baths.
The attendant – whose name is withheld here for reasons of sensitivity – could be my great grandfather. How did he end up in rural Carmarthenshire in 1908?
The trail went cold at this point, despite extensive research on my part and Gareth’s. Then, one snowy Christmas, I recalled that Welsh people often use their middle names in everyday life. So, I entered the middle name of the Turkish-bath attendant into Ancestry with the surname Richardson, and up popped a record for his birth in 1890 in St Pancras, London.
Then his First World War service record appeared, and it revealed that he’d enlisted in the Army Service Corps in Carmarthen in 1914.
I couldn’t believe it – the record stated that before joining up this man was a wagoner and lived near Brechfa, a village neighbouring Abergorlech where Garfield was born. The record also named his wife and children, including Charles Richardson – my DNA match’s grandfather.
I don’t know how my great grandfather ended up in Wales after being born in London. It seems that he and Polly must have had an affair in 1908, two years before he married.
The service record stated that my great grandfather was a “good groom, willing and intelligent”, which was encouraging. It wasn’t to last, however. By 1921, his wife was living in London having been deserted by her husband. The same year, a warrant was issued for his arrest for stealing £11 10s in Treasury notes.
Garfield followed a very different course in life, becoming a deacon at his local chapel and serving as a special constable during the Second World War. He retired after a long career as a stonemason, and passed away in Cardiff in 1982.
I think that he was better off being brought up by his lovely grandparents, even though they hid his origins from him.