Mourners and bearers: funeral reports

Funeral reports can be very useful in understanding family trees and relationships. As with other types of records, they need to be checked for accuracy. Someone named in a report as a cousin or aunt might turn out to be just a close family friend. Here below are two reports. The first is of the funeral of David Jones, the Ferryside coxswain, held in 1927; the second is of Annie Jones Fernhill at her death in 1933.

1. Carmarthen Journal 16.12.1927

2. Annie Jones of Fernhill and Mount Pleasant in The Welshman 17.02.1933. Annie's siblings, Bob and Polly, who lived in Blaencwm, are wrongly identified as "Mr and Mrs Williams". Several of those identified as "Among those present" were family members. The report has omitted Rees Davies as a bearer.