From Vaynor to Cwm-earl: Assessing whether the lawyer John Gethyn fathered the presumed illegitimate John Gethyn of Tregynon

The burial register for Tregynon records on 22 November 1812 the interment of John Gethyn, a labourer, of seventy-nine years of age. This establishes that his birth was around 1733 and places him within the working men of his parish by the end of his life. Yet the man it describes had signed his name in a steady hand at his marriage in 1758, raised a family whose descendants would have farms of over 100 acres, and bore a surname that had not previously appeared in this parish. These facts, taken together, invite a deeper investigation into his origins, and an exploration of the possibility that he was the natural son of a man whose life was very different: the lawyer John Gethyn of Vaynor and Berriew.