Just after the first snow of the year came to Salt Lake, I decided that it was too cold for cycling so I went for a walk cutting through the streets at the back of the house and into the Salt Lake City Cemetery. I ducked under a chained gate which is different from the entrance that I usually use, and began to climb up slowly. The cemetery, which dates back to pioneer times, is the oldest in the city and divided into different into sections for different faiths.
Graves in the Salt Lake City Cemetery
I thought I was quite familiar with all of it but I was wrong. Not far in front of me I saw what looked like a couple of classical columns with a cross bar. Then, on the nearest gravestone I saw the name Evan Williams and decided to investigate. I’ve known quite a few Evan Williamses in my life. It was quite a familiar name in Swansea where I was brought up and my father worked for a steel construction company called Evans and Williams based in Llanelli. For some years we racketed around in an old Bedford van with a three speed stem gear shifter and loved it.
But this was a different Evan Williams. It wasn’t easy to decipher the carving on the gravestone, but I could see that he was born in 1807 in Carmarthenshire and had been married to Sarah Evans Jeremy. Two things immediately caught my attention: first, he had been born in a village called Llanfihangel something or other. I was immediately excited as one of my favorite villages in Wales is called Llanfihangel Ar Arth and is just above the river Teifi on the borders between Camarthenshire and Ceredigion. There’s a wonderful winding road and then a steep decline and a hump-backed bridge over the meadow which forms the flood plain.
I couldn’t quite make out the faded lettering so I decided that I’d have to check him out when I got back or see if I could get a clear phone signal a bit higher up. Meantime, I would have to wait to see if Sarah Evans Jeremy, later Williams, was related to Thomas Evans Jeremy who was one of the major Welsh figures in early Mormonism and someone with whom I was relatively familiar.
Years ago, while I was researching my play Change, which was later broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and which is loosely based on the experiences of my wife’s great grandmother who emigrated from South Wales to Utah, I came across Thomas Evans Jeremy who was sent back to Wales several times by Brigham Young and whose son founded Jeremy Ranch not far from Salt Lake City.
So I felt I kind of familiar with Thomas Evans Jeremy. After all, I’d looked through his diary which is in the archives in Salt Lake City and was probably the only person for a long time who could read it in Welsh. But back to Sarah. Higher up in the cemetery I stopped under a tree. Standing under a scattered carpet of pine needles, I got enough of a signal to do a preliminary check. Both Sarah and Thomas Jeremy had been born in the same village, Llanegwad, in South Wales, so they were obviously related.
I kept this in mind as I went up through the rest of the cemetery to 11th Avenue which runs across the top. I looked back and down across the city which partially obscured by big snow flakes. I had a new connection. It was not exactly one of those moments of Jungian synchronicity which I tend to try and play down since I overdosed on them in the late seventies. But it was significant nevertheless.
When I got back home I confirmed the identity of both Evan Williams and Sarah. Yes, she was the sister of Thomas Evans Jeremy, and both were among the earliest of Mormon converts in South West Wales. They were converted by the preacher Captain Dan Jones who was a major figure in the period. And Evan came not from Llanfihangel Ar Arth but Llanfihangel Rhos Y Corn, a small and remote village in Carmarthenshire not far from the Llanybdder area where my wife’s family are from.
So here I am, some six thousand miles away from where I was brought up, making connections in the snow. Or having connections made for me. Thinking about heritage and language and religion all rolled together. And at the same time, noticing how the Williams family graves are spread around the major monument and the names become more American sounding with each generation.
And next time I am going to talk more about Welsh place names.
