BEFORE THERE WAS ME THERE WERE FAMILIES: 1-- MEREDITHS

You don’t pick your ancestors. They don’t pick you either. You sort of happen to them and they’re kind of stuck with you and you with them. They give a little something of themselves to you called genes. You take these scraps and build upon them, add to them and come up with a new creature called you. Some of that start up material you may like, some not so much. You may have great, great grandmother Sarah’s eyes and granduncle Elmer’s hair or lack of. Perhaps you got a cute button nose from mother or a big honking honker from father.

Maybe some special talent flowed through family blood to your veins, an artistic bent or ability to lead. Weaknesses may twirl down the spiral of DNA as well. There may be a history of drink, of temper, of shyness or you may always be too skinny or too fat because that’s just the way the family mutated.

Whatever your families sowed through the centuries of being is in the seeds of your existence. Hopefully you make the best of the good and the least of the bad inherent within you. It doesn’t matter what your family was; you are a new beginning. Still it can be interesting knowing whether the tree you dropped off of was Golden Delicious or Crabapple.

I don’t know of a white apple, but according to my DNA Test I am about as white as one can get. If I was any more pale I’d be invisible or at least transparent.My ethnicity is 52% British, 22% Irish, Scot and Welsh, 18% Western European and 6% Finish and Northern Russian. The other 2% is undeterminable, which probably means I have bloodlines on other planets who immigrated here in UFOs and most likely illegally.

These are briefly my family roots.

I

MEREDITHS

Families can be a royal pain, quite literally. There are red-blooded Americans and Blue Bloods and sometimes we find our blood stained by a bit of ancient royal purple.

My surname went through some evolution of spelling from Maredudd to Meredydd to the modern Meredith. The original Old Welsh was Morgetiud. Apparently the first half of the name means pomp or splendor and the second half means “lord”. I have also heard claims the name meant “protector of the Sea”, more likely “Sea Lord”. Similar words as “mere” and “mare” translate to sea or lake in various languages including Latin, Old High German, Old Norse, etc. (according to the Free dictionary.com).  Mer also means sea in French, mare means sea in Italian and mar is sea in Spanish. Dudd or Dydd in Old Welsh means “lord”. The double dd in Welsh is pronounced like the English th, kind of a lisp sound. The proper way of saying my surname is Ma-Red-Dith, not Mare-Dith.

The name first appeared in Northeast Wales in the ancient historic county of Denbighshire, a place that goes well back before William, Duke of Normandy invaded and defeated the British at the battle of Hastings in 1066.

The Meredith motto was “Heb Dwuw her ddim, a Duw a digon”, which means truly, “Without God there is nothing”.

This is the Legend of Meredith.

 In the fifth and sixth centuries AD, many tribal chiefs and

princes ruled the country of Cymry, what we know today as Wales. Each and all were in constant struggle to dominate. Maelgwn (pictured left) one of the stronger princes was attempting to bring some order and unite the varied warlords under one chief, hopefully himself. He gathered all the most powerful princes together. This council made a proposal. Each prince would sit upon a seaside chair. The king would be he who sat the longest as high tide covered the shore.

Maelgwn visited Maeldav the Old. A number of scholars, who spend their lives worrying  about such things, believe Maeldav was the same wizard known as Merlin in the King Arthurian Myths. (Pictured right, and indeed, there are those who propose Maelgwn

as the model of King Arthur.) Maeldav the Old prepared a chair constructed from waxed bird wings. Maelgwn sat upon his chair the longest since it rose and floated above the tide. Because of this deception, the people declared him Chief Prince and bestowed the title Maredudd upon him. The exact meaning of this word is not certain, but may mean Protector of the Sea.¹

The title Maredudd eventually became a surname and the spelling evolved through Maredydd to become Meredith. The proper pronunciation is Ma-Red-ith, not Mare-Dith. My family used Ma-Red-ith when I was a child, but at some point my father surrendered to the more common use of Mare-Dith.

“I got tired ev’ry time I gave my name they said, ‘Spell it’. I spelled it and they’d say, ‘Oh, Mare-Dith,’ I jus’ got tired of spellin’ it.” 

I discovered as a young man, despite how I might announce myself, everybody still asked me to spell my last name, except in Dallas where Don Meredith , former Cowboy quarterback and Monday Night Football commentator was a hero.

Maelgwn, who is an actual historic figure (c.497 - c.560 AD), was my 43-Great Grandfather (pictured on left). He had at least two children (and probably many more not recorded), a son named Rhun and a daughter Gwawr.  In case  you wonder, that was pronounced either as Go-AAR (heavy on the AAR like a pirate ) or Goo-aar (a bit more feminine, I suppose). It was probably considered a pretty name for a girl within her native tongue since gwawr means “dawn”.

To just give equal time to both these offspring, Rhun is pronounced as Rheen and means charm and mystery, also mighty.

Gwawr may not be what you would name your daughter and I certainly didn’t name either of my daughters that; nonetheless Gwawr was my 42-Great Grandmother married to one Eliylt Llydanwyn ap Meirchion. This was a period long before surnames came into existence. The little word “ap” means “son of”; therefore, Eliylt was the son of Meirchion.

Eliylt and Gwawr begat Llywarch Hen ap Elidir (note the slight change in the spelling of Elitlt). Llywarch allegedly had 42 children. His wives are not noted. (It is an assumption on my part that with 42 children he probably had more than one woman in his life.)

As one can begin to see, my family tree is a web of odd relationships, because Rhun is also my 43-Great Grandfather, indicating he and his sister Gwawr began two separate lines of my father’s ancestors. (It also indicates Rhun shared a wife with his father, but the less said about such things the better. This is not the last of such entanglements and confusion couplings, but we will get to some more of that a bit later and in a more recent period.) 

Meanwhile, Rhun begat Beli and so forth and after many

permutations we reach my  32-Great Grandfather Rhodri “Mawr” (“Mawr” meaning “the Great”) ap Merfyn, King of Wales, from 855 toAD-878 AD  (pictured left). From there we continued through a number of kings and princes until Gruffydd ap Cynan, Prince of Gwunedd in 1081. Gruffydd (pronounced Griffith) had a son named Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd, who was my 24-Great Grandfather and another son named Owain ap Gruffudd, King of Gwynedd (pronounced Gwenith), 1137 AD-1179 AD. 

(By the way, note that I refuse to change to the use of C.E. and B.C.E. [Current Era and Before Current Era]. Just because the cynics of the world fear God so much they want to eliminate any reference to his Deity doesn’t mean I’ll go along.)

Owain was my 24-Great Grand Uncle and his grandson, my second cousin, was Llywelyn Fawr ap Iowerth. (Fawr is not a given name, but a descriptive add-on, and just like “Mawr”, means  “The Great”.) 

Llywelyn Fawr was great enough in his day that he took as a wife the illegitimate daughter of John Lackland, known as Joan of England (pictured left). John Lackland was the King of England at the time and is best known for signing the Magna Carta. As a result of this union I am a 24^th cousin to Queen Elizabeth II. I suppose if enough people were to die and her grandchildren would stop having babies, I would have a claim to the British crown.  

All this is ancient history having little to do with who I am

today. It is interesting to discover one has a bit of Royal DNA, but it doesn’t buy me any castles or put a farthing in my pocket. Yet there is an interesting tidbit, a coincidence of time, in this past.

Llywelyn Fawr had a son named Gruffydd who had a son also named Llywelyn (pictured right). This was Llywelyn the Last, the final REAL Prince of Wales. He was also my 4^th Cousin. Cousin Llywelyn the Last died at  Buellt (Bu-lith) on December 11, 1282 during King Edward I of England’s conquest of Wales. As Fate often does just to have a giggle, the soldier who killed my cousin Llywelyn, was an ancestor of my friend, Ronald Tipton.

Of course much of history is full of uncertainty and it is disputed exactly who killed Llywelyn the Last and in what manner. According to legend, he was accidentally chanced upon (which is basically true) at the Battle of Orewin by forces of Edmund Mortimer and Hugh Le Strange. Attempting to flee back to his own forces he was pursued and and killed by a lone lancer, a soldier completely unaware of whom he was. Sir Robert Brody was the alleged soldier named in contemporary ballads of the time.

Other accounts claim while the captured Llywelyn was kneeling in prayer Stephen Frankton of Ellesmere came behind and struck off his head. It is a fact Llywellyn’s head was carried to King Edward, displayed in th city pillory of London with ian vy crown and then carried to the Tower of London where it was set over the gate for the next 15 years..²

King Edward then had the audacity to proclaim his own son, Edward II. the Prince of Wales and ever since there remains an English pretender using that title. Quite frankly, I have more claims to that title then Prince Charles.

Footnotes:

 

1. Owen M(organ) Edwards (right)

Hanes Cymru (History of Wales)

Company Publishers Cywreig

Wales

1901

Referenced by Charles Hoffman Thomas in a letter dated August 5, 1905 to my Great Uncle Benjamin Franklin Meredith II. 

2. Paul M. Remfry (right)

The Final Campaign of Prince Llywelyn

Castles of Wales

1998

Also genealogy research by this author and Ronald W. Tipton. (Below)