Family Legends

A large percentage of us have family legends; stories which have been handed down through the generations. Most of these stories have a grain of truth to them, but many have changed beyond recognition with each retelling. One such story is the one describing the events which befell the Ellis family of Clynnog in March 1875.

The Ellis family consisted of parents William and Jane and their five children: Catherine, Jane, William, Elizabeth, and Robert. William senior was born in Llangybi but moved with his wife and eldest daughter to Clynnog in the early 1850’s. They initially lived on a farm by the name of Pentwr in Capel Uchaf, but eventually moved to nearby Foel Isaf.

The tale handed down to the present generation told of how “a brother of Robert” had killed another man in an argument over a girl and subsequently fled toAmerica. Hours of fruitless research had been unable to confirm or deny this story although William junior did indeed appear to vanish from home some time after the 1871 census was taken.

Eventually two family graves were located in Capel Uchaf; one for William and Jane, and one for their offspring William and Catherine. According to the inscription William died on the 4^th of March 1875, at the age of 18.

Armed with this date a copy of the death certificate could now be obtained, and this made interesting reading. William died at Foel Isaf, the cause of death being recorded as “Lacerations of the lungs and blood vessels from a gunshot wound. Accidental.”

Sadly the Coroner’s records have not survived, but the 1875 Easter Quarter Sessions papers contain the Coroner’s Returns of Inquests for the Pwllheli Division. These do not contain many details, but they do note the finding of the jury. In this case the verdict was “Accidentally shot himself.”

A brief report of the inquest was carried in the Herald Cymraeg on the 17^th of March and everything seems to point to an accidental death. There is no indication as to who attended the inquest, or who gave evidence, but the report states that William and his friends were in the habit of concealing a shotgun in a gorse bush in the field behind the farm. On this particular day he had grabbed the gun by its barrel and pulled it out of the bush, only for the gun to go off and shoot him in the chest. He was killed instantly. His body was found early the following morning by his father.

All well and good you might say, a tragic accident the details of which have been embellished over the years, but a closer look reveals inconsistencies in the official version of events.

The Herald Cymraeg clearly states that the related events are conjecture only, nobody knew exactly what happened. It was a version of events that the jury thought most likely to have happened. But they could not prove conclusively exactly where the shooting took place, not whether there was anybody else involved.
They came to the conclusion that William was killed instantly, yet the next day his body was found thirty feet from the gun. Did he in fact live for a short time and managed to crawl away from the scene, or did someone else deliberately shoot him and throw the gun away while fleeing the crime? Would the boy, born and bred on a farm and well-versed in the craft of hunting and shooting, be so careless as to handle a shotgun by the barrel, knowing full well that it was loaded?

Now was it a tragic accident that took the life of a popular young man, or was there an attempt to cover up the real facts? Was William in fact the victim of murder, maybe in an argument over a girl, and if so, did the killer flee to America?


The grave of William and his sister Catherine at Capel Uchaf, Clynnog.