Hugh Bellis d.1695 Clynnog

[climbingthewalls]

Hi

I think I got myself through a research brickwall, but now hit another!
I have the will of this man and seen the burial record, so he is definitely transcribed as a BELLIS. I have seen that all his offspring use Hughes, and one of them (William Hughes d.1731) definitely lived in Brynhafod, Clynnog. Which ties in with the specific area many strands of my family came from. However how does Bellis work with the patronymic naming system. I have read that it is from an anglicized version of "son of ellis". However I've not seen any connection with anyone using the Bellis name - just Ellis in my family tree. Would there be a reason why this happened?
A witness to his will is an Ellis Ellis. The only one that appears in that same time frame, is an Ellis Ellis (d.1719) from Ystumllyn.  I am thinking maybe he is Hugh Bellis' brother?
However I have just seen the Griffiths Pedigree for this family (with Ellis Ellis in it) and a Hugh Bellis does not feature. However, Griffith Ellis (Ellis Ellis & potentially Hugh Bellis' father) - marries into a family which lives in the area of where all my Clynnog strands seem to evolve from, namely Pryscyni (Bryscyni), Foel. Which makes things interesting. My question is how accurate are the Griffiths Pedigrees? and could this Hugh Bellis somehow be part of this Ellis family - or alternatively would Hugh Bellis me more likely to have come from somewhere else? There seems to be lots of Bellis names in the Mold, Flintshire area (but no link to this Hugh Bellis) as far as I can see.  Annoyingly not a single google result comes back on the google search Hugh Bellis Clynnog. Any views/pointers are most welcome.

Oh his wife was Lowry Roberts!
Diolch, Andrew                     

[collwyn ap tangno]

Hi again,
Yes, Bellis is ‘ab ellis’. You don’t see that spelling now, Baylis is one version in use now.

There’s no guarantee that Bellis was used by them, it could be a scribe’s interpretation. Because second names meant different things to different people you need to be careful. The only guarantee is the name of the father, in this case Ellis.

Griffith’s pedigrees copied from Lewys Dwnn pedigrees, then added to it. There’s 300 years between them, so there are mistakes.  The same is true of T Ceiri Griffiths.

The most common mistake is to miss a generation.


Dwnn also made mistakes, such was his influence that family heraldry took his assumptions and set it stone, literarily!

[collwyn ap tangno]

I should mention that my wife’s tree links to this family.

Her paternal great great grandmother, Jane Hughes daughter of John morris hughes game keeper from Clynnog. He in turn, was the son of Morris Hughes 1794-1866, son of Hugh Morris, son of Morris Jones son of John Ellis….then to ystymllyn as you said.

She hasn’t done a Dna test.

[collwyn ap tangno]

There’s also another possibility: Hugh Bellis could be a illegitimate half brother. He then wouldn’t appear in the pedigree and adopted a different version of the second name to differentiate.

I’ve seen examples of this.

[climbingthewalls]

Many thanks for replying. I guess Hugh being an illegitimate sibling may answer the question,as the (his/my) line goes into a long list of shoemakers rather than potentially more "well to do" ancestors that the Ellis line of Ystumllyn seems to follow!

I am getting completely baffled by what appears to be multiple people with the same name being born at the same time and living in the same vicinity which seems to make deciphering things out pretty hard. But I think you will know this anyway!!

I thought I had cracked it when I came across a couple of wills, but I can't just place certain individuals at the the right place at the right time - to sign off on it (yet)!!

[climbingthewalls]

I have just had a look at the Morus (Morris/Maurice) Jones b.1711-1763 you mentioned. He seemed to have a few children spanning over 1745-1755, in a place called Tyn Y Coed (or variation thereon). My relative Ellis Jones (b.1722 - 1801) was also having children at the same place at the same time. So this does make the link look credible - in the fact they are related.

[collwyn ap tangno]

There’s logic there!

You’re probably in good company in assuming that one Ellis was related to another in the same parish. I can imagine that J E Griffith also made similar leaps of faith. Evidence is sparse!

If I can convince my wife to do a dna test, or even her father, it would perhaps group this tribe together. The problem I have is that the tree I’ve created takes a different turn at the daughter of the game keeper. This would create a false grouping.