Richard
Seth Worthing: A Welshman Immigrates to America
According to Richard
Worthing’s obituary,
he was born in Wales. His Christening record stated it as, Llananno,
Radnorshire, Wales, which is now the Powys, or eastern Wales along the English
border. Llananno is described as
bucolic rolling hills covered with carpets of
bluebells and grazing sheep. It is next to the
Offa Dyke, the River Ithon, and the ruins of the Castle Bank, sometimes
known as Castle Llananno . It is no longer a castle but mainly just a rocky
hill sitting on a summit, the remains an ancient Castle called “TY yn y Bwlch”.
By 1840, Castle Bank was a manor where locals farmed and took care of the sheep
for the owner. Offa’s Dyke is a 50-foot wide dirt well ditch, running along the
English Welsh border, built in the 18th century by the Anglo Saxon King Offa of
Mercia to keep out the Welsh. A path runs along side it nowadays making it a
popular place to hike through the eastern countryside. Richard, his cousin or
brother, Thomas Worthing
(depending upon the source ) worked at Castle Bank as day laborers
farming.
Richard’s future wife Sarah
Ingram was a servant girl
1843 Wales
At the ages of
twenty-four and twenty-five, both young men were married. Richard married Sarah
Ingram and Thomas, Elisabeth George. I envisioned Richard and Thomas sitting by
the banks of the River Ithon. They were dusty, dirty and sweaty after a hard
days labor in the field planting or harvesting crops for the manor lord,
discussing their hopes, dreams, the politics of the day, reflecting on life, and what it would be
like to live in America. Dreamers. I think most farm laborers had visions of a
future in America where they could own their own land. Richard and Thomas, both
being illegitimate children of Mary Worthinhad little chance of owning land or careers in Wales.
”I’ve been reading the ads for farmers to emigrate to America. Sarah’s
uncle went and his letters say you can
own your own land, acres and acres of it, all yours. We wouldn’t be beholding
to the Hamers, the Merredith’s and the Pugh’s”.
Brushing his hair
back, Richard with his chiseled jawline and deep-set blazing blue eyes, wavy blond
hair glittering in the sun, stared intently at Thomas. He took a long pause before
he verbalized his feelings.
“I’d like to give Sarah and
Sarah Ann a better life. I’ve enough saved to pay our way to America. Besides I
need to talk to John ( his father-in-law) about this. He may have a few extra sovereigns
put aside for an emergency and give me some of those monies.
What about you, Thomas? “
Social Political Times in Wales
The Rebecca Riots were taking place in South and Mid Wales at this time. These were a series of
protests undertaken by local farmers and agricultural workers in response to a
perceived unfair taxation.
They were sporadic isolated outbursts in the
beginning, with the true body of rioting not beginning until the winter of
1842. These gangs became known as the Rebecca’s. They rioted and destroyed the toll gates. Members of the
mob wore white gowns and masks. Richard and Thomas were not part of the Rebecca’s.
Wales was suffering a depression
and prices for grain harvests had collapsed and farming communities were in
dire poverty. Families were forced to buy corn at famine prices and they could
not afford the high prices of butter, cattle, and sheep.“By late 1843, the riots had stopped. Although the
Rebecca Riots had failed to produce an
immediate effect on the lives of the farmers it had sought to serve, it was an
important social-political event within Wales. In the aftermath of the riots, some
rent reductions were achieved, the toll rates were improved (although destroyed
toll-houses were rebuilt) and the protests prompted several reforms, including
a Royal Commission into the question of toll road
The Marriage Certificate Reveals
According
to Richard’s marriage certificate, Richard Hamer was named as his father.
It was common in those days for land owners to father children with their maids
and servants. In England and Wales, if the father was known he was cited by the
Church and paid support for the child until the age of maturity.
We know that Richard’s mother, Mary Worthin, never married Richard Hamer.
Richard Hamer was already married and a prominent land owner in the area. In 1824 at the age of 36, Mary is married to
Edward Crowthers and Richard, Mary, and Edward are all living in the same
residence in Llananno.
Mary died in 1842. I imagine, having grown up with the stigma of
being an illegitimate child and support supplemented by the bastardy bonds and
parish chest, this influenced Richard’s dreams of immigrating to America His
lot in life in Wales would have been an agricultural day laborer who would never own land.
Richard, Thomas, and Sarah Ingram all worked at the
manor. Sarah was a day
servant or maid and the daughter of John Ingram the miller. John was a miller by
trade in Wales. We don’t know if John was the owner
or lessee of the mill.
It is likely
that he was the lessee because the Welsh records show he and his family lived
at the corn mill
from1841-1851. The Ingrams were Baptists in
Wales belonging to the Maesyrhelem Chapel in Llananno. Many farmers had mill
rights on their property. By the 1851 census the
Ingrams are gone, but John and his wife, daughters, Elisabeth, Sharlot and her
husband George Thomas, Mary and her husband, David Jones, Anne and her husband,
Thomas Black, and sons
James and Evan with their wives are all farmers and land
owners in Guernsey County, Ohio. Little is known about the Jones’, Blacks’ the Thomas’
or Evan. However, much is known about Sarah’s brother, James Ingram. He was sent to America with Richard and Sarah to
“help them get settled”. He was an adventuresome man. In Wales he was in trouble for "drinking
wine with the maids" and his sexual pursuits. Later in America, he paid
someone $600 to serve for him in the Civil War. He had four wives: Mary ?, Rose
Ann Brown Ewing, whom he married three months after Mary's death, Eleanor
Steward Miskimen, and Sarah Clark.
Richard Falls in Love with Sarah Ingram
I envisioned Richard
as a young man falling in love with Sarah while they worked at the manor. I
picture Sarah as a girl looking like my Ingram cousins, with deep, sky blue
eyes, red hair, petite carrying baskets of vegetables and wild flowers through
the farm fields, picked along the path home to the mill. There probably were
not many eligible, single women in this area for Richard to chose from. We have
no information on how Richard and Sarah met but probably while working at the
manor. Richard, age 24 and Sarah, age 19 married in 1843. They started their
family immediately with the birth of Sarah Ann, February 27, 1844, their first
of 15 children of which 9 reached adulthood.
Character Traits of Richard Worthing
I pictured Richard
as an industrious, goal oriented young man, mature beyond his years, falling in
love and asking Sarah’s father for her hand in marriage as was the custom in
that day. This evoked pictures in my mind of Richard taking Sarah’s hand in his
and asking,
“Will you marry me? I love you so much. I can give you a better life
in America. We’ll buy land, and raise our family there. After we are settled, I will send for your family and bring them to
live with us.”
These promises were fulfilled when Richard struck it rich in the
California gold rush.
To be continued…
APPENDIX:
Richard Worthing was born in the
western{Eastern} part of Wales, April 15, 1819, and died at the home of his
grandson, J. R. Patterson, December 18, 1907, aged 88 years, 8 months and 3
days. At the age of twenty-one years he was united in marriage to Sarah Ingram.
This union resulted in the birth of fifteen children, nine of whom attained the
age of maturity and reared families of their own. Of this large family only
three remain to mourn the loss of their father. They are Mrs. P. S. Custor, of
Otsego, Ohio, J. E. Worthing, of Des Moines, Iowa, and Charles E. Worthing, of
Cambridge, Ohio. In addition to the above there are thirty-six grandchildren
and thirty nine great grandchildren.
At about the age of twenty-three
with his wife he came from Wales to Coshocton county, Ohio, where they resided
until the spring of 1849 when with a party from the same county he traveled by
the overland route across the plains to the gold fields of California. After
about two and one-half years he returned and settled in Guernsey county, Ohio,
where he resided until the spring of 1880, when with his faithful wife he came
and settled in Madison county, Iowa, where he has resided until his death. On
October 24, 1888, he suffered the loss of his beloved companion with whom he
had lived happily for fifty-eight years. And when he had lain her at rest in
the silent city of the dead her resting spot had a larger place in his mind and
heart than the living community where formerly his interest and activities
centered.
How many hours of each day which
made up the little more than nine years of his sorrow and loneliness he spent
in silent communion with his God and beloved dead, no one knows. He often
expressed a desire to meet the loved ones gone before and his strong vigorous
vitality prolonged his life longer than his appearance would indicate. In his
early life he accepted Christ as his personal Savior and made a public
profession of his faith and after his return from California he united with the
Baptist church at Bridgeville, Ohio, of which he was a zelous, influential
member until he came to Iowa. Finding here no church of his choice he was
instrumental in organizing the present Ohio Baptist church in Madison county,
of which he remained a devoted member until his death.
A second Obituary gave tribute to
Richard Worthing also.
It said:
Obituary of Richard
Worthing born April 15,1819 in Llananno, Radnorshire, Wales
died December 18, 1907.
On October 24, 1898 he suffered
the loss of his beloved companion with whom he had lived happily and faithfully
with for fifty-eight years.
It is not necessary to enlarge upon the noble
qualities of this exceptional man's character. Many of you outside the
circle of his children have known him intimately for years and the universal
testimony of those who knew him is that few men lived as closely to the tenets
of the Golden Rule as he did.
