The Truth About Ada: Chasing a Family Legend Part One

Jul 19, 2025

According to family lore, my great-great-grandmother Ada Williams came from wealth in Wales. The story goes that her mother and father had money and an estate, but they died while she was still young.

A kind uncle offered to take her in, to look after her while she was still maturing. This uncle also happened to be a lawyer.

It wasn’t long before he used his crafty solicitor ways to fudge the documents and seize the estate. He kicked Ada out and she never saw a penny.

My Grandad has always wondered about this. He’s the one who told me the story, one he remembers hearing snippets of as a boy. So is there any truth to this family legend? Could I be descended from royalty (okay, maybe not that far... but then again, my great-Nana Edwards, née Kelly, Ada’s daughter, did swear up and down that we were related to Grace Kelly. An investigation for another time, perhaps).

undefined — The great Welsh Estate Plas Newydd, with the Menai Strait behind (Public Domain WikiCommons)

I recently started taking Pharos Tutors classes, and was tasked with choosing an ancestor I hadn’t done a lot of research on. I decided it was time to crack the case of Ada Williams. I hadn’t visited her in a long while, and I had come quite a way since I last tried to find the details of her past. This time around, I had an arsenal of methodology and tools at my hands.

So where do I start?

The beginning is always a good place, but I had a problem. Grandad wasn’t sure of a birth date or location. In genealogy, we have to work backwards from what we know. So I went through my notes from oral histories with him and wrote down the following:

What do I know with a fair amount of certainty?

Her name was Ada Williams
She married a man named Edward Kelly
They lived in Chester, and their children were born there.
They had 6 girls named (Phyllis, Kathleen, Elizabeth “Joan” - my great-grandmother -, Muriel, Violet & Sheila
Edward died fairly young
Edward may have been from Ireland
Sheila was killed as a toddler (knocked over by a car).

Credibility of this information:
This is oral history mainly from the recollection of my Grandad. I feel fairly confident that the information is correct. The only discrepancies could be with names, it was quite common for people to go by middle names or nicknames. But I have a good base to start working backward from.

Marriage Record

Since I didn’t have birth dates or places, I thought a good place to begin might be finding a marriage record for Edward and Ada. I already had a GRO birth registry extract for their eldest child, Phyllis, who was born in 1920 in Chester. With this date and place, I had a starting point.

I conducted a search with the following parameters:

Name: Ada Williams
Marriage date: 1919 ± 2 years (first child born 1920)
Location: Cheshire, England
Spouse surname: Kelly

I got two promising results.

The first was a civil index for Ada Williams and Edward Kelly marrying in Chester, Cheshire, 3rd quarter (Jul, Aug, Sep) 19191. A good start.

But the second record was far more interesting, a Church of England marriage banns record for Ada Williams and Edward Kelly dated 8 September 1919 at St. John the Baptist Church in Chester.2 It contained the following information:

Ada Williams:

Spinster (single woman)
23 years old (implied birth year of 1896)
Residence before marriage: 13 Leadworks Lane
Father’s Name: William Williams
Father’s Occupation: Stonemason (deceased)

Edward Kelly:

Bachelor (single man)
28 years old (implied birth year of 1891)
Occupation: Gardener
Residence before marriage: Handbridge
Father’s Name: Edward Kelly
Father’s Occupation: Gardener (deceased)

Witnesses for the marriage were George and Mary-Jane Gibson.

Nave looking east — St. John the Baptist Church 2014. WikiCommons (Public Domain)

What to do with this information?

I now had a birth year but still no birthplace for Ada. And let’s face it—Ada Williams isn’t the most unusual name in the world. So I next turned my attention to the 1921 Census. This would give me a birthplace for Ada at the very least. Plus, with the information I had gathered from the marriage records, I felt more confident in finding her.

I searched the 1921 Census on FindMyPast using:

Name: Ada Kelly
Born: 1896 ± 2 years
Residing in: Chester, Cheshire
Other household member name: Edward

One result came back.3

Ada Kelly, 25 years and 4 months old (implied d.o.b. Feb/March 1896, based on the census being completed on June 19). Her occupation was “home duties,” and she had little Phyllis Ada, just 11 months old, to care for. Edward was now 30 and working as a Foundry Labourer for Ben Roberts Brass Co Iron Moulder. They lived at 104 Buddicum Park, Chester.

But most shockingly… her place of birth: Chester, England. She had not been born in Wales.

So what the heck was going on? Had her birthplace been mixed up in the story passed down? This isn’t impossible. Chester is right on the England/Wales border. It’s conceivable that somewhere along the line, her birthplace got confused. But I’d need to do more investigating.

GRO Index

Next, I checked the GRO Index to see if I could get a maiden name for her mother. I got one hit for an Ada Williams born in Chester in 1896.4 I purchased the digital image.

We have some interesting information to glean from this.

Residence of the mother at the time of birth: Lead Works Lane, the same street Ada is listed as living on at the time of her marriage.
Father’s name discrepancy: he’s listed as William Williams on the marriage certificate, but here we see James Williams. However, his occupation matches: Journeyman Stonemason.

(A quick note: Journeyman simply meant he was qualified or had completed his apprenticeship, not that he travelled for work, as the term might suggest.)

Lastly, we now have a name for her mother: Elizabeth Davies.
And a concrete date of birth: 1st March 1896.

It’s time to find another census...

Back to FindMyPast I went, this time to the 1901 Census.

Search parameters:

Ada Williams, born 1896 ± 2 years
Residing in Chester, Cheshire
Other household member name: James

One result.5

Five-year-old Ada Williams was living at 9 Leadworks Lane, Chester with her family:

An older sister, Eva (6)
Two younger sisters, Violet (3) and Rhoda (1)
Her paternal grandmother, Hannah Williams (64, widowed)
Her father, James Williams, was working as a stonemason, born in Chester in 1864
Her mother, Elizabeth, born in 1866… in Flintshire, Wales.

So what really happened?

Had the family Chinese whispers muddled things up? Perhaps it wasn’t Ada, but her mother Elizabeth who had been orphaned and had her estate stolen? Or perhaps the tale has been embellished over time, as family stories often are.

But you know what they say: there’s usually a kernel of truth in these tales that are handed down. And I’m determined to get to the bottom of this one.

Subscribe to keep updated when Part Two of my search for the truth of the lost Welsh Estate is released.

Lex Knowlton | Knext Gen Genealogy

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