Sydney Clyde Smith, grandson of Thomas Maddock

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Just a snippet to add to GVHS archives. Sydney Clyde Smith whose maternal grandfather Thomas Maddock was baptised in Llangeinor 1831 and whose mother Elizabeth nee Thomas was born circa 1809 at Gelliron Farm, Pontycymmer. Sydney was born Perth, Western Australia, 1898; was killed in action on 21/07/1917 at Polygon Wood, which was part of…

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The Mining Explosion

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Having already looked into the population of Blaengarw from the 1841-1911 censuses inclusive, I have attempted to carry out a similar approach for the other Garw mining communities. However, I have restricted my research to the population immediately before housing development, and immediately afterwards. Due to size of the project which I did not fully anticipate, I…

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The Spanish Flu

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One Hundred Years ago it was the Spanish flu. 2020 will go down in history as the year of the Coronavirus, a reminder that it was 100 years ago that the last great pandemic ended, in December of 1920. That one, known as the Spanish flu, infected, it is estimated, around 500 million people, a quarter of the world’s population, and killed an estimated 50…

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