Rev. Edmund Leigh Biography

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Reverend Edmund Leigh (1736-1819)

With the Reverend Edmund Leigh, we are reaching the period when it becomes possible to learn more details of our ancestors' lives, personalities, and destinies. Some seem to become real individuals as we reconstruct them. Interestingly, we can learn more about our family's religious history than their economic history. It is hard to get detailed economic information from guild records, tax payments, and wills, but religious records are more revealing. The Church of England kept good records of its clergymen as well as its members, and at least eleven of our family made their career within the Church. Another may have become a Methodist minister, and four or five others emigrated to America from religious motives. In fact, it appears that religion played a large role among the Leighs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The third of our clergymen relatives, Reverend Edmund Leigh, was christened on 21 April 1736 in Caldicott, Monmouthshire (Film no.104854), where his father Rev. Richard Nash Leigh was curate until his early death in 1739. We were happy to find this data on Edmund's birth because it was previously unknown. His father's body was returned to Carmarthen for burial, and Edmund must have lived with his mother until her death (date uncertain), possibly in the house of his grandfather John, who was a clothier or cloth manufacturer. John was a substantial citizen in Carmarthen, and became mayor and alderman, but he too died when Edmund was about ten years old. Edmund's sister Letitia apparently died young, but his elder brother David was alive in 1750 when Mrs Anne Leigh (presumably John's widow and the boys' grandmother) was made guardian of the minor boys. Later, however, we found nothing more of David, Grandmother Anne was buried in 1754 when Edmund was 18 years old, and he seems to have entered adulthood alone.

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography (p. 542) summarizes Edmund's modest clerical career. We don't know where he attended school and studied to become a clergyman. He was a schoolteacher in Penrydd in Pembrokeshire in 1760, at the time he was ordained deacon and licensed as curate of Henllan Amgoed, Carms., but the church registers for those two parishes and the relevant years are not extant or give no information on Edmund (Films no.105200 and 105144). Though he was an orphan he had an extended family, and three clergymen relatives in the counties of Carmarthen, Cardigan, and Pembroke testified to the Bishop of St David's about his "religious sober and Industrious Life," according to the research of Edmund's descendant Derek Williams. In the next year Edmund was ordained a priest and appointed curate of Llandybie, but from 1762 on he was curate of Llanedi (both parishes in Carmarthenshire). From 1769 he was also curate of Llandeilo-Talybont (nearby but in Glamorganshire), and he remained at these two parishes for the remainder of his long and fruitful life.
 
What kind of a pastor was Edmund? He was conscientious and orderly according to the registers he kept of both Llanedi and Llandeilo-Talybont parishes in clear, full, rounded handwriting. The clarity of his records (which endears him to genealogists) changed only in 1801-4 when he apparently became ill and his handwriting looked shaky. There are no extant Llanedi Bishop's Transcripts for the year 1801 and no such Llandeilo records in 1804, but he recovered his health. His handwriting again became somewhat shaky by age 72 though it was still even and clear when he made out his will, dated 13 July 1808.

Rev. Edmund Leigh's Will

Click for a larger view

He must have been a direct and practical person, because he wrote out the will himself, in a single page without legalese leaving "all my chattels goods & effects" to "my beloved wife Anne Leigh" and making her Sole Executrix without qualifications or trustees (Film no.105263). His estate was not large or complicated, and its inventory showed mainly household goods (besides three cows and an old mare). Much was sold at auction, But Edmund's wife Anne kept the mare--I wonder if she was still able to ride? She also kept "six pictures, a desk and bookcase and a small collection of old books" (NLW SD/1820/124 W). It would be wonderful if we could see the pictures and read the books, but apparently all such family treasures have been passed down, spread around, and are now unknown. Rev. Edmund's Reputation and Historical Place Fortunately, we can learn about Rev. Edmund from his contemporaries who wrote of him and praised him very highly. Their anecdotes, documents of his activity, his known letters, and finally a long poem about him after his death draw the picture of an energetic, conscientious, broad-minded, and much beloved pastor and father. As a result we can feel that we know him more personally than any other figure in our ancestry.
 
Several anecdotes were preserved and published in Welsh in Transactions of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society, XXIII (1938). We have the following information as translated by Derek Williams. Rev. Edmund was called by Roberts a "man of great common sense, of unshakable purpose, having a great wit and a godliness which attracted men." These qualities are illustrated in several anecdotes Roberts compiled from people who knew Edmund.
 
He was "short, stocky and sturdy." There was a tavern near the Parsonage in Llanedi, and when things got out of hand, the tavern keeper would call on the curate to eject the drunks. Edmund would do this handsomely, because apart from his godliness he was also physically strong.
 
His ready wit appears in his response to a parishioner who was unhappy with his marriage. The man had married a rather unseemly wife, and he came to the old minister who had joined them in the Llanedi church. "Is there any means of undoing what you did to me in the church?" the man asked. It so happened that the old priest was chopping wood at the time. "Yes," he answered between chops, "Put your head down on the block." The man went away without another word, remembering his vow "Till death do us part,"
 
In Rev. Edmund's time, grade school education was still unavailable to most children of the working and farming classes, especially in rural Wales. A network of circulating schools was begun and Rev. Edmund operated one of the schools in Llanedi in 1765-66, when it was supported by a wealthy woman. She provided in her will for the schools, but her trustees contested the will and the case stayed in the Court of Chancery for thirty years. Rev. Edmund gave evidence in support of her will at Carmarthen in 1786, but by the time the case was settled the circulating schools had collapsed for lack of money. We can believe that Rev. Edmund sincerely worked to provide schools in his parish, because his own children were literate. Even his granddaughters were able to sign their names in the marriage register at a time when no more than half of the English people as well as the Welsh people were literate.
 
Exactly at the time of Rev. Edmund's first decades as a clergyman, the religious movement of Methodism was spreading across Wales. In part, Methodist successes were fostered by apathy and need for reform in the Church of England. Begun by the Englishman John Wesley, Methodism emphasized personal feeling both of sin and guilt and of forgiveness by God's grace. Preaching and singing were most important in Methodist services, and many great Welsh hymns were composed under Methodist inspiration. Opposition by Church of England officials was severe at times, and Methodist prayer services often had to be held outside in the churchyard or in private houses. Strikingly the situation reminds us of later periods, when Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and main-line liturgical churches disagreed and were intolerant of each other.
 
Apparently Rev. Edmund appreciated the enthusiasm and energy of Methodist preaching for his own parishes, as he gave visiting preachers a pulpit and, more personally, he held prayer meetings in private houses and preached outside the church building himself. Another difference of the Methodists was their adherence to the sole authority of the Bible, while the Church of England emphasized use of the Book of Common Prayer. An anecdote in Gomer Roberts' article portrays Rev. Edmund as confronting the Bishop of St David's over the Bible, but this story seems exaggerated or apocryphal. Regardless, however, for at least the year 1778 he attended meetings of the Methodist Association, and in Welsh religious history he is known as the only Church of England clergyman in Carmarthenshire said to have "flirted" with Methodism (Lloyd Carmarthenshire, 2,198). The Dictionary of Welsh Biography identifies him as a "Methodist cleric," but this is misleading and the same DWB article concludes that he "used to attend their Associations in the last quarter of the century, but it is probable that, later on, he kept away from them." Certainly he remained an Anglican cleric, and he must have inspired the Episcopal faith in most of his sons and grandsons since so many of them took the cloth.

One of the pressing deficiencies in the Church of England at the time affected Rev. Edmund personally, i.e. absentee clergy. His large family were not needy, but certainly not wealthy because most of the revenues of both of Rev. Edmund's parishes were sent to the absentee rector, though as the curate living there Edmund did all the parish work. A personal letter reveals his effort to obtain a financial Donation through the influence of the chief patron of the Methodists, Lady Huntingdon. The postscript also shows his effort to place his young clerical assistant in a Methodist college. Dated 21 September 1771, the letter was addressed to Howel Harris, the chief Welsh advocate of Methodism and an extremely popular preacher:

Honored Sir,
I lately received a Letter from the Revd. Mr Owens wherein I was informed that you have been so good as to secure pious Lady Huntingdon's Interest to procure me Brucer's Donation -- You'll humbly give me leave to tell you that there must be no time lost; that the Principal is almost exhausted & that [if] I have not a Printed Certificate from one Hale, Lions Inn London, it's but lost labour--Therefore (good sir) as you have been my only friend in this affair I hope you'll succeed so far with her Ladyship as to influence Mr. Hale to send me a certificate which shall be signed by a proper Magistrate.
Please to give my humble respects to the Honourable Lady, tho' unknown yet whom I greatly Love & heartily believe that great will be her reward in Heaven. I once more beseech you for the Sake of our Lord Jesus Christ to come to this part of the country, for I am sure you still (blessed be God) carry the Heavenly Ax, and it wants now as much as ever to be laid to the root of the Trees, & may the Lord Jesus strengthen your Arm in every Vineyard you visit.

I am, Sir,
Your most obedient Servant & Unworthy Brother,
Edmund Leigh

P.S. I have a young Man under my Tuition who tells me is to be received into Trevecka Colledge in a twelve-months time. Poor boy, he behaves & learns well but is low in circumstances & I fear cannot subsist so long. I hope I shall Qualify him in half a year's time if her Ladyship will receive him, by name Jacob Jones of Llanfihangel.

Rev. Edmund's invitation to Howel Harris to come to his "part of the country" and his imagery of Harris with the Heavenly Ax that prunes the dead wood and dead vines in the Vineyard of God, show how fervently he appreciated the need for reform in the Church. He stayed within the Church of England/Wales, but he didn't close his eyes to needed changes.

The most interesting evidence of the high regard his contemporaries had for Rev. Edmund is a 28-stanza funeral poem or elegy written in Welsh and turned into English ("imitated") by Edmund's fourth son, Samuel Leigh, who also became a Church of England clergyman. Written by John David, a parishioner of Llandeilo-Talybont, it first was printed on large cards at the time of Edmund's death. Such elegies or memorial poems were often written to honor family members, dear friends, or patrons, and copies were sold in fairs on market days when the subject of the poem was well-known. Over a century later, in 1938 it was reprinted in the English version (made by Edmund's son Rev. Samuel) in Gomer Roberts' book Methodistiaeth fy mro (i.e. Methodism in my Region).
 
Highly laudatory, the poem calls Edmund this pious man, Physician of the human race, A conscientious, faithful man, the pious LEIGH, the reverend guide. Through his talents so renowned and vast, he fed the weakest sheep, and he preached the joyful sound. For sixty years he faithful fed, The food for which the Saviour bled, From whence all mercies flow. Two prominent Methodist clerics are mentioned as Edmund's friends and admirers, a founder Daniel Rowlands and the admired hymn-writer William Williams, yet the poem also emphasizes the soundness of the doctrine he announced, The truth he clearly taught,... Without reserve of thought.
 
The next four stanzas seem to summarize his life and career:

The house he built defied the storm,
It mocked the thunder's awful form,
The flood's tremendous shock:
Nor powers of earth, nor pow'rs of hell;
Could such a strong foundation fell,
'Twas founded on a rock.

A conscientious, faithful man,
His godly, patient course he ran,
Without hypocrisy:
Truth he esteemed too high a prize,
To wealth or pow'r to sacrifice,
From partial [prejudiced] judgment free.

Both high and low, both rich and poor,
Would ever open wide the door,
And hail the pious LEIGH;
Yes, all would hail the reverend guide,
And think him worthy to preside
In every company.

When misery press'd or hardships sore
Upon the needy Christian bore,
His hand was open wide;
In either parish not an eye
Thro' all their wide extent was dry,
When LEIGH, their friend, had died.

Then the poem refers to the funeral service by Morris, presumably Rev. Ebenezer Morris, who became curate in Llanedi after Edmund retired in 1813. By 1818 he was pastor at Llanon church (Film no.105162) but returned for Edmund's funeral:

Morris, whose elocution flows
Soft as the flakes of falling snows
On Salmon's hill descend.
From kind affectionate regard,
The pious obsequies discharged
For his endearing friend.

The reverend champion preached aloud,
The vast assembled mourning crowd
With solemn awe attend;
Mortals, he cried, awake, arise
By faith triumphant, to the skies On heavenly wings ascend.

Also "the pious Thomas ... with fervour pray'd" (presumably John Thomas, who had just become the Llanedi curate in 1818 (Film no.105162).

The poem concludes with an image of the aged Rev. Edmund being hailed by Jesus Christ in the "joys sublime" of Heaven:

LEIGH was fourscore years and four,
When He, who all our miseries bore,
The awful, the Incarnate Word,
Hailed him to realms of endless joy,
To joys sublime that never cloy,
The joys of Israel's God.

It is a pleasure to have such a poetic religious monument to our ancestor. Like all elegies, this one too is perhaps exaggerated in praising Edmund's virtues. yet the esteem he enjoyed in his lifetime seems accurately revealed.

Rev. Edmund's Children and Grandchildren

Most interesting for our genealogy are the three stanzas about Edmund's children, whose minds "with pious care, he Trained and enriched ... In admonition kind." The poet starts with Daniel and asks his "mild benignant soul" to keep his passions under control. To Samuel, who had once been "unstaple" (which probably means unstable or uncertain), he advises a "patient will." He calls Edmund's only daughter the "kind endearing Ann" and his youngest son the "favourite William." These two with John should learn the depth of divine love, and the other sons should rely on Christ:

May Daniel's mild benignant soul
With passions subject to control,
The Saviour's goodness sing;
Let Sam, unstaple once, but now
With patient will, submissive bow
To Heaven's Almighty King.

Let John, and kind endearing Ann
And favourite William, learn to scan
The depths of love divine.
View the Redeemer's lovely face,
Enjoy the riches of His grace
And in His favour shine.

May Edmund, Ely, Nat, rely
On Him who left His throne on high,
His glory vast resign'd.

The reference to "Edmund" seems to be an error by the poet, since the only known son named Edmund had died as a fourteen-year-old boy in 1808.

 The earliest child of Rev Edmund was not included in the poem, and this part of his life casts him in a more human and less idealized light. Besides the ten children of Edmund and his wife Anne Pugh, Edmund fathered a son by a woman he did not marry. According to the Utah journal of Edmund's grandson Samuel Leigh (p.4), before Edmund was married to Anne Pugh, he had a son David "born about 1770" in Alltygraban near Pontarddulais, in the parish of Llandeilo-Talybont where Reverend Edmund was curate. Samuel seemed to know no more of him, but clearly David's name and relation were known and accepted by the other Leigh offspring. In the Bishop's Transcripts of the parish (Film no.104472), we found this David Leigh having children during the 1790s, and he and his own son David were always listed as "farmers" not "labourers," showing that they owned or had hereditary leases on farm land. We did not find David's mother's name, nor the last name of his own wife Mary, and we followed his family in the Llandeilo-Talybont parish records only to 1848, which showed three generations.

Without the great good fortune of the Internet we should have known no more, but in May, 1999 Derek Williams began a net correspondence and informed us of his ancestor Elizabeth William, the mother of David Leigh, and her many descendants now living in Wales and in Derek's home in Gloucestershire, England. An excellent genealogist, Derek had collected several documents about David as well as oral testimony from aged family members. We do not know why Edmund did not marry Elizabeth (and waited four years before marrying Anne Pugh), but in any event he tried to be both generous to his illegitimate son and discreet for the sake of his own position. The parish records around 1769 are now missing, so we don't know how he registered David's christening. He was discreet at the end of the year when he transcribed the records for the bishop, and there he gave David as the son of John William, who was actually the baby's grandfather (Film no.104472). This ruse apparently prevented any trouble from the bishop, and David could grow up with the Leigh name. Whatever Edmund's motives or Elizabeth William's feelings, he remained the William family's pastor. For example, he wrote out and witnessed her father's will in 1783. The will does not mention any family relation, but the first bequest was "I give my Mare and Saddle to David Leigh" (NLW SD/1783/101 W). He also officiated at David Leigh's marriage to Mary Robert in 1796 and the christenings of their children in Llandeilo-Talybont.

Even more touching is the oral evidence that in two ways David had the status of the eldest son. Derek Williams found tape recordings from David's descendants, and one described the speaker's visit (between 1905 and 1911) to her three great aunts who were David Leigh's granddaughters. The three aunts were "very knowledgeable about family matters, and their tiny cottage was crammed with antique furniture, pewter platters, lustre jugs, and china tea sets handed down from an earlier age." They showed the young girl a silver medal or coin from the reign of King Charles I which an earlier Leigh had given to each of his sons, and which had been given to David. This must be the same kind of medal which William Leigh of Carmarthen willed to his eldest son Jonathan (see Leigh Descendary Chart). Edmund must have received it from his father or grandfather John (or perhaps from his uncle Charles as the eldest son of Oakley. Richard Leigh mercer and his wife Dorothy Oakley gave these coins or medals in memory of King Charles I (executed in 1649 during the English Civil War) to their two sons Richard and Oakley. The other memento from Edmund that was treasured in David Leigh's family was his license as a cleric in the Church of England, dated 1760.

Little or nothing remains of the contents of the crammed cottage of the three great aunts, because all that "richness was claimed after they had all died by a relative from Pontardawe and more or less sold off to dealers." Many of David's descendants who were substantial farmers still live in the same area. Though the Leigh name died out in the male line, the female descendants still represent Welsh rural life, and one of their large ancient farmhouses at Llanelen in Glamorganshire has been recommended for historic preservation, according to Derek Williams.

This distinctively Welsh farm life was familiar also to Rev. Edmund's wife, Anne Pugh of Caer Coryn, a hillside farm near Llanedi. By local standards her family were considered rich farmers, and her father and uncle were literate by 1744 when they first signed as churchwardens. Anne's father Morgan Pugh left her money, not crops and livestock, in his will in 1792. Yet the rural life seems to disappear as we turn to their children, and we see instead town life. None became farmers like their mother's Pugh family.

Of these ten children we know the adult lives of seven. Ebenezer disappears probably having died as a baby, John was buried when four days old, and Edmund junior died as a fourteen-year-old boy. The remaining offspring can be loosely grouped into three categories. The master carpenter Daniel and the draper/tailor John Huntington took up trades, Nathaniel became a schoolmaster, and Samuel and William became clergymen like their father, while Eliezer followed his father's interest in church reform and possibly became a Methodist clergyman in England. The only daughter Anne somewhat bridged the categories, as her husband David Morgan probably followed a trade, but their eldest son became a Church of England clergyman, Rev. William Leigh Morgan.

Eliezer's modern descendants in the English Midlands are researching his career and his full family. We are only now starting to search for the family of Rev. Samuel Leigh (II). He was curate for his father in Llanedi in 1804, and he translated the Welsh verses into English after his father's funeral in 1819. Then he moved to the parish of Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.

For John Huntington we found an illegitimate son named Dafydd in 1822 in Llandeilo-Talybont, though Samuel Leigh's Utah journal gave him a different son, Edward Huntington Leigh. Nathaniel's one known child, a daughter Ann, was christened in Carmarthen in 1826. We do not yet know if any of these children have living descendants.

Daniel perhaps needed the poetic admonition in his father's funeral poem, to keep his "passions subject to control," as he had an illegitimate son named Evan, who died at age eight. Rev. Edmund recorded Daniel as the father in the christening record, but did not include him in the Bishop's Transcripts. After Daniel married Mary Rees, he led an orderly life as a builder. A plaque on the church in Llandeilo-Talybont once marked the new slate roof built in 1810 by four carpenters and masons, one of them being Daniel Leigh, according to Derek Williams. We do not know if the plaque will be returned to the church when it is reconstructed in the Folk Museum where it was moved. Daniel's large family of eleven children was apparently robust, as only two died in infancy.

Daniel's nine adult children can be divided into the two who stayed in Wales, the daughter Mary who moved to NY in 1831 and then to Canada, and the six who became Mormons and moved to Utah or Idaho in 1849-53.  Edmund apparently became a Mormon, but his wife Jane Morgan did not, and he was buried at the parish church in 1848. His only son John died as a baby, and his daughters were later visited by a cousin from Utah.

 Rebecca died in 1847 after giving birth to James Leigh Edwards, her husband James Edwards being a farmer of Ty-yn-y-park.

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We have not followed this Edwards boy. Of the remaining six Mormon families, questions remain about Anne, Lydia, and Hannah, but the families of Sarah, Daniel, and Samuel are well-documented and have numerous living descendants pursuing their own lines. They will be given fully on the web site for Modern Leighs from Wales.

Rev. Edmund's remaining son William was called his "favourite" in the funeral poem, perhaps because he followed his father's career. Of Vicar William Leigh's thirteen children, only one died as an infant, though three died as unmarried adults. Mary Ann, Richard Nash IV, and Letitia were buried near William and his wife Mary in the Eglwysilan churchyard, where he served for over twenty-six years. Two daughters married brothers, and one married the schoolmaster at Eglwysilan, their son being named William George Leigh Thomas. We know that son Samuel married and had a son, but of Vicar William's youngest son Reginald Heber we know only that he was probably a namesake of the popular hymn writer. The first son of that name died as an infant and was buried at Eglwysilan.

Three of Vicar William's sons are very well traced. The eldest became the second Rev. Edmund, and he could add M.A. Oxon. to his name after his study at Jesus College. We have numerous documents on his church appointments but know nothing of his family, as he never christened or buried any children of his own in the parish records we found. William's son Daniel also entered the clergy and was rector of the parish of Llanwonno, in the coal-mining area of Glamorganshire for over thirty years. Reading Rector Daniel's entries of christenings, marriages, and burials, one gets a picture not otherwise seen in our family. South Wales was famous (and notorious) as an industrial/mining area, and Rector Daniel's parishioners were clearly miners, puddlers, runners, etc. He must have seen child labor, women in heavy jobs, and risky work sites in their worst forms. One of Daniel's five sons also became a clergyman, studying at Oriel College, Oxford until 1885, Though he spent five years in Pontypool, a parish like his father's, the rest of his career was in English parishes. William's son John became a surgeon, and from him came the only Leigh to be found in Burke's Landed Gentry. This info belongs to the web site for modern Leighs, but in summary Dr. John's son was Dr. William Watkin Leigh, whose son was Dr. Hubert Leigh. In both World Wars Dr Hubert commanded general military hospitals, receiving the Order of the British Empire, acquiring a coat of arms, and being listed in Burke's Landed Gentry (1952 ed.) with his lineage back to Richard I Leigh in Carmarthen in Elizabethan times.

In the National Library of Wales was found a letter by Vicar William that allows us to peek into his mind, as he faces and tries to resolve his parish problems. It shows the joys and pleasures of his profession, not only the pains. This letter to an old friend (unnamed) dated 27 September 1849 from the Vicarage, Eglwysilan, is transcribed here in full. The problems referred to are not fully explained, but we can feel William's pleasure at what he has accomplished in his parish:

My Dear Old Friend,

I regret that your kind Xtian note should not have met with an earlier reply. I have been so much engaged of late with regard to Llanvabon Church, which has lately been entirely rebuilt, and now forms one of the finest little Churches in the whole Diocese. It was to be consecrated by the Bishop on Sunday last, and the sermon to be preached by the Archdeacon of Llandaff, but unfortunately from the bad state of their healths they were not able to attend, consequently the Church (being built on the old site) was opened without that imposing ceremony; & there were four excellent sermons delivered to an overcrowded congregation.

The same evening we commemorated our seventeenth anniversary harvest meeting at this church when the assembly was very large, and the preaching of a very superior order-- the flower even wet with the dew of heaven, so that without doubt it was good to be there, for God was in this place. I intend (Deo Volente [= God Willing]) to attend a similar meeting next week at Llangan, and to have the pleasure of meeting my old flock on the occasion.

It is true that with a great amount of difficulty I prevailed on the Bishop to ordain W. Davis (an independent minister, who had been most strongly recommended to me by some eminent clergymen) as my curate at Llanvabon-- when the Bishop told me in his first letter "You must by no means think of this step," and that I ought to look out for some one in orders [someone in the Church of England]. My answer to this was that not one worth entering a pulpit would come to such a place as Llanvabon, and that unless his Lordship would admit W. Davis I saw no other alternative but to die in harness, for I had to ride 20 miles every Sunday and preach three times, and I added that I was sure his Lordship would not allow me to sink under my burden, for "necessity had no law." (The Bishop in his first replies having dwelt so much upon the necessity of adhering to his rules): and the result was, that he granted this was necessity at Llanvabon, and desired me to send up his testimonials immediately.

Owing to this late hot battle I could not venture to enter the field again so soon, and that close. I think therefore the only way to succeed is by your desiring my Nephew to prevail upon the Archdeacon (as they are great cronies) to use his influence in this case, and depend upon it nothing will be lacking on my part in giving a helping hand.

With best Xtian regards, in which Mrs Leigh joins, who I am sorry to say has been a great martyr to Rheumatism for a very long time.

I remain, My Worthy old Friend,
most truly yours, 

Wm Leigh

The "nephew" referred to must be the Reverend William Leigh Morgan, son of Reverend William's eldest sister Anne Leigh and David Morgan, who did indeed have "cronies" in the Bishop of Llandaff's offices. It is interesting that in age Reverend William and his nephew were closer (18 years' difference) than William and his two clergymen sons (25 and 46 years' difference), and thus they must have felt like colleagues and fellow priests.

 
Grave Stones in Llanedi Churchyard

These children and grandchildren are like a monument to  Reverend Edmund, but he also has a distinctive stone monument in the Llanedi churchyard. Under a large spreading beech tree in the peaceful graveyard sloping down from the square tower of the old stone church, the ivy covered coffin-sized base supports a flat table-top granite stone on the grave of Reverend Edmund Leigh and his wife Anne Pugh with the following inscription:

VIA VERITAS ET VITA SACRA To the Memory of the Rev EDMUND LEIGH Late Minister of this and the adjoining parish Llandeilo-Talybont for nearly 60 YEARS He departed this life the 14th Day of Dec 1819 In the 84th Year of his Age The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance PSAL. CXII 6 Ar doethion a ddisgleiriant fel disgleirdeb y ffurfafen; ar rhai a droant lawer i gyfiawnder, a fyddant fel y ser byth yn dragywydd. Daniel 12,3 ALS0 of Ms ANN LEIGH relict of the above named Rev EDMUND LEIGH who died Dec 11 1833 Aged 81 Years [And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. Daniel 12,3 KJV]

Edmund Leigh's Grave at Llanedi Click for a larger view Edmund Leigh's Grave-top Stone Click for a larger view

When Michael Rudinsky and I found this gravestone we did not copy the well-worn Welsh inscription, but Simon Cooper answered my query on 5 October 1997 to the newsgroup soc.culture.welsh by visiting the Llanedi graveyard and transcribing most of the words. Geraint Jones recognized them as belonging to verses from Daniel, which he knew from their place in a Methodist hymn. Then Simon found a late 18th-century Welsh Bible (used in the time of Rev. Edmund, of course, and even belonging to a woman whose family had farmed in Llanedi for a long time), and he supplied the missing words for the inscription. The very last words are so worn as to be illegible, but we assume that they give the reference to Daniel.

Adjoining is the tall Pugh gravestone for the family of Henry Pugh, Anne's elder brother. It is inscribed entirely in the Welsh language, given here in translation by Beryl Evans of the National Library of Wales. We have supplied the Biblical reference in the King James version:

IN MEMORY OF
MR HENRY PUGH OF GAER-CORYN
IN THIS PARISH
WHO DIED
DECEMBER 1833
AGED 100
1 Tim. 6.7.5
For we brought nothing into this world,
just as we shall not be able to take anything out of It.
AND
ANNE PUGH HIS WIFE
WHO DIED
I AUGUST 1813
AGED 79
AND
MORGAN PUGH THEIR GRANDSON
WHO DIED
JANUARY 1818
AGED 16
ALSO
IOAN PUGH THEIR SON
WHO DIED
20 MARCH 1824
AND
MAIR PUGH THEIR GRAND DAUGHTER
WHO DIED
10 OCTOBER 1825
AGED 22

John Pugh's wife Mary David is not listed, and perhaps she was still alive in 1833 when presumably the large stone was placed on Henry's new grave.

Thus concludes the account of a remarkable and much loved man. It is a great stroke of luck to have such information about a person who lived from 1735 to 1818 and who is now the 5X-great-grandfather of his youngest descendants. How hard we still have to search to learn even half as much about their 127 other 5X-great-grandparents who existed in the same period as the Reverend Edmund Leigh!
 

By Norma Leigh Rudinsky
Revised 9 March 2001