Welsh Roots

Rowena Price, one of the older residents of the Village confirmed yesterday that we are in fact related albeit by marriage! Now, I knew that my Great Grandmother Mary Jones was the only true Welsh member of our family. (She infact hailed from Twysog, which was a huge farm on the outskirts of Denbigh.) whereas my other Great grandparents hailed from Liverpool,Bristol,Ireland and Scotland!
Rowena was married to Tom Price who was a distant relation of Mary's, and reading her hand penned version of "our" family tree, that she forwarded on to me, brought back all of those stories that my Grandmother used to tell us as children.
Mary Jones married my Great Grandfather,James Fry in the late 1890s and they Lived in the city of Liverpool (which was then called the capital of Wales)
They had five children, Hughie,Alf,Lizzy, Louie and my grandfather Jim and all the family lived in close proximity to one another around the area of Everton which is just North of the City centre and overlooks the famous Liverpool docks. My Grandfather married my grandmother (above), who was also called Mary in 1924 and they had my mother Joan in 1925. The entire family remained in Liverpool until the war, and I was interested to see that Rowena's sketched family tree documented the most famous of our family stories, namely the family disaster of the May blitz of 1941. I always remember my Grandmother recalling the time she was running through the streets with my mother (who was around 16) and my Uncle Jim who was perhaps 12. The sirens had already sounded and the bombers where overhead as they debated where to run to. The options open to them, was a reinforced room in the local school or the family shelter located at my Great Grandparents (Jim and Mary's) home, both of them within running distance, and as the bombs started to fall, my Grandmother had a premonition to run to the school.
The family shelter took a direct hit soon afterwards.My great Grandfather was killed instantly and Mary, with Lizzy and Louie were buried along with many others . Fortunately they survived but over 1450 people were killed in one of the worst raids of the war
My Grandmother, Mother and Uncle had already survived a previous bombing raid, when an unexploded parachute "torpedo" (middle photo) actually crashed through the next door house and lodged under their kitchen floor while the three of them were hiding under an upturned settee in the living room!. So the May blitz, was the last straw for them, and it provided the springboard for my Grandparents to move to the safety of Wales. The village where my family first settled was in fact Gwaenysgor, which is located just a mile away from where I am sat now!
It's a small, small world, isn't it?