Place:Capel Colman, Pembrokeshire, Wales

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Capel Colman is a parish in northeast Pembrokeshire, now in the community of Boncath. Formerly in the Hundred of Cilgerran, Capel Colman is a small, rural parish of some 750 acres (300 hectares) surrounded by the larger parishes of Cilgerran, Maenordeifi, Clydai, Penrhydd and Llanfihangel Penbedw. The parish is in the Manordeifi group in the Church in Wales Diocese of St David's.

The parish is named in some historical sources as Llangolman, but there is also a village of Llangolman a few miles to the south of Capel Colman.

History

The recorded history of Capel Colman can be traced back at least to the 14th century, when it was a chapelry in the parish of Manordeifi. In 1594 it was a Crown property which was subsequently abandoned until it was re-endowed by the Anglican Church in the 18th century.

There was a parish school in Capel Colman: David Jones is listed as schoolmaster in 1737. The population of the parish in 1801 was 71, the majority of whom worked in agriculture.

In Liber ecclesiasticus, an 1835 report on the state of the established church, Capel Colman is described as a parish with a population of 130, valued at £72, patron Morgan Jones Esq.

In the mid-19th century about 60 acres (24 ha) of the parish were woodland with the rest split between arable land and pasture. Corn, butter and cheese were the principal produce. The Lord of the Manor in 1849 was Pryse Pryse.

Wilson's Gazeteer of 1872 described Capel Colman as a parish of 770 acres with a population of 157 living in 30 houses with Miss Jones of Cilwendeg the patron. By 1961 the population of the parish had risen to 171.

Cilwendeg House

Cilwendeg House, described as one of the most important mansions in Pembrokeshire, dates from the late 18th century and was built on the site of a former property dating back to the 1500s. It is a listed building, along with other structures associated with it. The earliest recorded incumbents in the early 16th century were named Llewelyn, and in the early 17th century it was acquired by lawyer Jacob Morgan. In the 18th century it passed by marriage to the Jones family. In 1780 the house was rebuilt by Morgan Jones senior.

Research Tips

• A 1900 Ordnance Survey map of the historic county of Pembrokeshire is available on the A Vision of Britain through Time website. This shows all the old parishes within their urban and rural districts. Large farms and estates are also marked. On the Cemais Rural District page there is a sketchmap indicating the civil parishes of Cemais Rural District as of 1935. Cemais was a rural district formed in 1934 from the earlier Llanfyrnach and St. Dogmells Rural Districts.
• Pembrokeshire Archives has a website with a list of their holdings, as well as historical notes on places in Pembrokeshire. Its address is Prendergast, Haverfordwest, SA61 2PE; Tel No: 01437 775456 or (+44)1437 775456 (out of UK), E-mail: record.office@pembrokeshire.gov.uk
• GENUKI has a page on each of the old counties of Wales and, under these counties, pages for each of the ecclesiastical parishes within the county. Information is gathered under a number of headings and the amount of information varies from parish to parish. Parish descriptions are based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and thus the emphasis is on ecclesiastical parishes. (Civil parishes were not yet established.) The submitter is very firm about his copyright. This should not stop anyone from reading the material.
• The GENUKI Pembrokeshire pages include, under Description and Travel close to the bottom of the page, a link "parish map" to a map website showing boundaries and settlements before 1850. On the linked page will be maps of several parishes located close to each other.
• GENUKI also provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area, but there is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date for every county.
• FreeBMD provides a link to a list of the civil registration districts for each Welsh county from 1837 to 1996. Civil registration districts changed with varying densities of population and improvements in communication. Most counties and unitary authorities now have only one district. The list helps with providing names for the registration districts listed in the FreeBMD index and also as a guide for where to look for census entries.
• The FamilySearch Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI and these have been prepared at a later date. The Wiki may look like Wikipedia but the information has been provided for family historians. There are tables of links between the parishes in the historic counties of Wales and their post-1996 counterparts. This is the only genealogical website found that provides this information universally; others are not as thorough.
• Some words in Welsh come up time and time again and you may want to know what they mean or how to pronounce them. For example,
  "Eglwys" is a church and the prefix "Llan" is a parish.
  "w" and "y" are used as vowels in Welsh.
  "Ll" is pronounced either "cl" or "hl" or somewhere in between. "dd" sounds like "th".
  The single letter "Y" is "the" and "Yn" means "in".
  "uwch" means "above"; "isod" is "below" or "under";
  "gwch" is "great", "ychydig" is "little";
  "cwm" is a "valley".

In both Welsh and English all these words are commonly used in place names in the UK. Place names are often hyphenated, or two words are combined into one. Entering your problem phrase into Google Search, including the term "meaning in Welsh", will lead you to Google's quick translation guide. I'm no authority; these are just things I have picked up while building up this gazetteer for WeRelate.