Historic documents · the family tree
Two families, one crossing and one marriage.
A Welsh line out of Glamorganshire and an Ohio line out of Trumbull County, running in parallel for three generations and joining in Michigan in 1949.
The descent
chartDotted boxes mark people who are living. Names only — no dates or places are published for them.
The ApMadoc line
Wales to ChicagoThe oldest person in the file is John Maddock, born in Pembrokeshire in 1814. The surname appears in its Welsh form, ap Madoc — son of Madoc — from the next generation on.
William ApMadoc was born at Maesteg in Llangynwyd parish, Glamorganshire, on 19 March 1844, and came to the United States aboard the SS City of Montreal in October 1878. He died in Chicago on 12 August 1916 and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery there. He married Elizabeth Jones, and the file records four of their children: Oliver, Maurice Peris, Mary and William Tudor.
William Tudor ApMadoc Sr. was born at Utica, New York on 20 September 1873 — the first of the line born in America. He married Nelle Ina Gill on 26 September 1908, practised law in Illinois, and died on 20 January 1957; the obituary in his file was printed two days later. Their son William Tudor ApMadoc Jr. was born at Evanston, Illinois on 21 December 1919 and died on 27 October 2023, aged 103.
The Mahannah line
Ohio to MemphisHarvey Mahannah was born at Brookfield, Ohio in February 1838 and died in Trumbull County in 1918. His wife, Margret A. Moore, died at Bazetta, Ohio in August 1878; the file gives malaria as the cause.
Their son Albert Ellsworth Mahannah — born at Cortland, Ohio in February 1864 — moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he built the Mahannah Lumber Company and had a street named after him. He died there in October 1924. His wife Ida Lorena Davis had died in Memphis in 1911. His file in this archive holds the obituary cuttings, his will, and the letters he wrote from Hawaii in the year he died.
Joseph Claire Mahannah, born in Ohio in August 1890, married Fontie Gray Harris of Mississippi and died at Bloomfield, Michigan in October 1963.
Where the lines meet
1949Fontie Claire Mahannah was born at Memphis, Tennessee on 19 May 1922 and died at Brevard, North Carolina on 12 January 1999. She married William Tudor ApMadoc Jr. at Commerce, Michigan in 1949 — his second marriage, the first having been to Viviane Dove. Their three children were born at Pontiac, Michigan in 1951, 1952 and 1955.
Beyond the two main lines the file carries the families the children married into and their descendants — Harris, Hubbard, Gill, Hines, Davis, Tepe, DeKeyser and others, 153 people in all.
Corrections to the file
Three details on this page come from the family rather than from the GEDCOM, which is out of date on each. The file records no death for either William Tudor ApMadoc Sr. or Jr.; they died on 20 January 1957 and 27 October 2023. The file also places Fontie Claire Mahannah’s birth at Memphis, Michigan; it was Memphis, Tennessee, the city her grandfather had settled in. The GEDCOM itself still needs amending on all three points.
One oddity remains unresolved. Frances, wife of John Maddock, is given a birth year of 1843, one year after the birth of her son William. One of the two dates must be wrong.
Living people
The file holds birth dates for around ninety people with no death recorded, most of them living. Only names appear on this page for them, and nothing at all for anyone born after 1955. Dates, places and relationships for living people stay in the private file.