20 Jun 2025

This week we visited Risca and the Gwent Archives to search for more clues about the origins of Joseph Ximenes and to give us an opportunity to get more familiar with the local area.

On Monday we drove down to Risca and spent the afternoon exploring. First we visited the site of Full Moon cottages, a row of small houses where Bridget Dineen and her daughters, including my great grandmother, Louisa Hemmings, lived in the 1890s. There are no traces of the buildings now and the light railway that ran in front of the cottages now forms a walking path called the Sirhowy Valley Country Park.

This photograph was taken at the Full Moon junction looking east. The cottages would have been at the base of the hill to the right just beyond the small building. The Full Moon Inn was opposite, on the left of the picture. The path on the left leads down, quite steeply, to the Sirhowy river across from which would have been the North Risca Colliery where Joseph lost his life. The river is close enough that it can be heard constantly at this location, although it can’t be seen due to the overgrown vegetation. The colliery would have been close enough to see from the cottages and certainly close enough to hear and feel the explosion that night.

After lunch we visited Waunfawr Park in Crosskeys where a plaque was erected commemorating the four large mining accidents that struck the village. The plaque is a couple of hundred metres west of the bandstand on the ground in a small well tended garden.

We then made our way to Risca Old Cemetery to see if we could locate the grave of Louisa’s older brother Frank Hemmings. We knew it was there because it has been catalogued as part of the Find-a-Grave project.

After a while we found it adjacent to the central path that runs through the cemetery. The cemetery rises there giving a brilliant view of the surrounding mountains. The gravestone has developed a list and the writing is beginning to fade. It’s a memorial to Frank and his widow Emily who died 41 years after him in 1957. A second, smaller, memorial stone to Frank is installed below the main headstone.

After the cemetery we walked down to the war memorial which is further down the road. Beyond that lies the church of St. Mary the Virgin which is where Joseph, along with thirty nine other miners, was buried after the mine disaster. As far as we know there is no memorial to the miners there and we didn’t have time to visit.

We had planned to spend Tuesday and Wednesday at Gwent Archives at Ebbw Vale. We managed to make excellent progress on Tuesday and looked at all the records we had planned. We decided to take Wednesday off to look around the area some more. In the event we had to cut our trip short and return home as we got a call from our neighbour to tell us our house alarm had been triggered.

Catholic Registers

We examined the register of baptisms for St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church on Stow Hill in Newport. We hoped to find entries for Bridget and Joseph’s four children that might contain clues as to other possible friends or relatives of Joseph. We searched the entirety of the last register which covers the period we were interested in 1872-1880 ¹

Unfortunately we didn’t find any baptism entries of the Hemmings children. We had assumed they would be there because Bridget herself was baptised there and married three times at the church, including in 1872 to Joseph.

However we did find the baptisms there of Bridget’s earlier children John Bryan and Jane Palmer.

John was baptised on the 30 Oct 1865 under the name John O’Brien. As with all the entries in the register the priest wrote the main entry in Latin and the side entry in English. John’s parents were recorded as Patricii OBrien and Birgitta OBrien formerly Dineen. His godparents were Gulielmus Dineen and Julia Murray. These are both new names and Gulielmus (William) Dineen could be a new relative to investigate.

Jane was baptised on 11 Oct 1868 under the name Mary Jane Palmer. Her parents were Danielis and Birgitta Palmer formerly Dineen. Unusually only one godparent is given: Anna Probert.

A catholic chapel was consecrated in 1967 so I asked where the registers would be. Risca falls under Pontypool, a single set of registers which appear to cover about 20 local chapels. I imagine there was one priest who would officiate baptisms at the various chapels as needed.

In those registers we found the baptism of Frank Hemmings². He was baptised as Francis Hemmings on 15 Jun 1873 in Risca, just over a month after he was born. His parents were given as Josephi Hemmings and Birgitta Hemmings formerly Deneane. The godparents were Dionysius Deneane and Maria Mansell. Dionysius is most likely Bridget’s brother Dennis and Maria her sister Mary who married Edward Mansell in 1872.

We also found the baptism of Helena², noted as Ellen Hemmings, baptised on 25 Jul 1880, just seven days old and only ten days after her father, Joseph, was killed. Her parents were recorded as Josephi and Birgitta Hemmings, formerly Dineen. The godparents were Jeremias Deneen and Joanna Townly. Jeremias is probably Bridget’s brother Jeremiah. I don’t know who Joanna Townly is but the name seems familiar.

We did not find the baptisms of Louisa or Rosearia despite searching carefully twice over the period 1872 to 1880 and also looking beyond to about 1887. Either Louisa was baptised later, as an adult, or there is another chapel or register that we did not find. Louisa and Rosearia were both born in Newtown, Mynyddyslwyn which is probably to the north and west of Risca along the Sirhowy river (the precise location of Newtown has not been identified, but Full Moon is often stated as being in Newtown too). There is a chapel at Usk that has baptisms from 1876 which could be looked at next time, or Tredegar which is at the northern end of the valley in which Risca is situated. All these Catholic registers are in the process of being digitised so hopefully they will be online soon.

We found the marriage of Joseph and Bridget in 1872 and got a better photograph of it. We also found Bridget’s marriages to Patrick Bryan and Daniel Palmer. We already have civil registration copies of these so there is no new information but it was interesting to see the original register entry too.

First, her marriage to Patrick Bryan³:

Then her marriage to Daniel Palmer³:

Newport Workhouse Records

I had ordered the Newport Board of Guardians workhouse minute books⁴,⁵ to search for references to Bridget and her family. Many years ago I had found a Bridget Palmer in the Workhouse in 1871 but I wasn’t fully convinced that it was my ancestor. I felt that the name wasn’t that unusual and had seen another Bridget Palmer. The census entry stated that the Bridget Palmer was aged 32, married and a needlewoman, born in Ireland.⁶

In the event I didn’t find anything of interest or relevant to Bridget and her family. We requested the Admission and Discharge books for Oct 1869-Sep 1871 and found the Bridget Palmer from the census entering the Workhouse⁷.

She was admitted on the 11 Feb 1871 with two children John and George. She was the wife of Samuel Palmer a sailor and was born in 1835. This is more than enough to be able to say that this Bridget was not Bridget Dineen.

This leaves a mystery: where was Bridget Dineen in 1871. Her son John Bryant was resident as a foster-child with Sidney and Charity Smith in Radstock, Somerset (there appears to be no family link that I can find). Her daughter (Mary) Jane Palmer was living with Bridget’s mother Mary Nihan and two of her brothers: Jeremiah and John Dineen.

Crew Lists

The other main set of records we examined were crew lists for ships bound to or from ports in Portugal or the Americas, hoping to find a mention of Joseph. The problem with these records is that there are hundreds of possible ships to check and each ship would lodge three or four lists per year. We also don’t actually know when Joseph arrived, just that he married Bridget in October 1872. Finally, all this is compounded by the fact that only 10% of the relevant crew lists are present at the record office. A further 10% are at the National Archives, 10% at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the remainder are at the Maritime History Archive in Newfoundland. This distribution was made to cater for the vast number of records. Gwent Archives seems to mostly have records from the years ending with a 9, in our case the most relevant ones were 1869.

We weren’t sure what to expect but now we have reviewed some they are quite short documents, usually 2-3 large pages listing the crew, including their places of birth. If we found Joseph in one of these records then it would be invaluable. In the event we did not find any trace of Joseph. We also thought it would be good to find Patricio Herrera, a Chilean national who was living in Risca in 1871. We know he arrived on the the Forest King from Spain in 1868 and there’s a very small chance that he and Joseph arrived together. Unfortunately Gwent does not hold the crew lists for that ship at all.

The Forest King was one of a fleet of ships owned by Nelson Hewertson, a timber merchant who had established himself as a successful merchant (he was later to become Mayor of Newport). Some of the the ships, including the Forest Prince, Forest Princess, Forest Queen and Forest King were plying route including Lisbon, Pomaron (Pomarão) in Portugal and Madeira. Pomaron was the nearest navigable point on the Guadiana River, upstream of which was the São Domingos Mine, an English-run copper mine.^{8 9}

We examined the following crew lists:

• D907 Newport 56525 - Forest Prince - 163 tons 1869-1879
  • D907/1/13 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
  • D907/1/14 Offical log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
  • D907/1/15 Account of voyages and crew, home. 1869
  • D907/1/16 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1868
  • D907/1/30 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
• D907 Newport 56535 - Forest Princess - 171 tons 1869-1879
  • D907/2/22 Official log book, crew agreement and release, foreign. 1869
  • D907/2/23 Official log book, crew agreement and release, foreign. 1869
  • D907/2/24 Official log book, crew agreement and release, foreign. 1869
  • D907/2/25 Official log book, crew agreement and release, foreign. 1869
• D907 Newport 16938 - Forest Queen - 139 ton 1869-1879
  • D907/1/6 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
  • D907/1/7 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
  • D907/1/8 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
  • D907/1/9 Account of voyages and crew, home. 1869
  • D907/1/10 Official log book and crew agreement, foreign. 1869
• D907 Chepstow 16349 - Eliza - 51 tons 1870-1879
  • D907/10/27 Account of voyages and crew, local. 1870
  • D907/10/28 Account of voyages and crew, local. 1870

There are many more (over 100) ships with crew lists in the Gwent Archives, but these are the only ones we have identified made trips to Portuguese or American ports.

As I mentioned before, there was no trace of Joseph. In general the crews were around 8-10 people and typically English. We saw a few crew members from Sweden, Denmark and Russia. There was one trip that included a Portuguese sailor Miguel de la Ruez who joined the Forest Princes from Lisbon in Feb 1869. The crews seemed to change quite a bit from voyage to voyage.