Gravestones and what they tell you

A few weeks ago, I e-mailed the Glamorgan Local History Society to ask whether there was a Roman Catholic cemetery in Barry, South Wales. My Great Grandmother Jane Gibson came to Barry from Cork around the turn of the last century, and I know that she died in the 1940s when she was in her 70s, but I hadn't been able to identify the record on the death index.

On a private visit to Barry Cemetery, Gwyn kindly took this photograph

A really helpful man called Gwyn Davies got back to me really quickly to say that there was only one cemetery in Barry and that he had a copy of the plots register. He had identified one grave of a Jane Gibson, and that three other people were also buried there, a son James Charles, and his wife Phyllis, and a 29 year old woman called Elizabeth Bright who died in September 1922, aged 29.  I knew then that this was the right grave. I never knew the married name of the great aunt who had died in her 20s,  so I have added her (along with the husband and child I was then able to identify through the index of births, marriages and deaths) to the tree.

I think it solved another mystery too. My Grandad had moved the New York in 1918 and there are no records of his coming back to Barry until the spring of 1922. I think he probably came back because his sister was gravely ill. The shipping records show that he stayed in Wales for about two months, and that when he returned to New York he was not alone. In that short time  had met and married my grandmother, and her record is on the Ellis Island website.