Home

MISINFORMATION

It cannot be said strongly enough that the history of Ann Rosser and her family is littered with misinformation which seriously hindered my own researches until I contacted Gwent Archives.

Prior to my involvement with Gwent Archives no researcher appears to have consulted the Shirenewton Registers and it is these registers that contain the relevant information.

How do I know this? The “Tiplin” family has been holding hand written information about Ann Rosser and her family since the mid 20th century, and the handwritten information is sympathetic with the Shirenewton Register entries. I believe the problems stemmed from the fact that in the “early” days of family history this information was not available on the major websites, particularly the IGI, leading researchers to make selections from incomplete data.

The above image, which is the plaque on Devauden Green is a victim of this misinformation. It relates that Ann Rosser was present at John Wesley’s first sermon in Wales at Devauden Green on the 15th October 1739. This cannot be true as Ann was not born until 1747.

However, examining the proposition that Ann Rosser was converted by hearing John Wesley preach we can see from his diaries that he did preach several times in the Chepstow area. But one time stands out and that is 25th August 1769 when John Wesley preached in Chepstow. Ann would have been 22 years of age at this point. We know from the obituary published by the Methodist Church in 1832, elsewhere on this site, that she had been a member for 62 years at the time of her death. Thus she would have been 22 years of age when she joined the Society – and this brings us to the time of the sermon in August 1769.

This date therefore remains the most probable one for a conversion to have taken place at a sermon of John Wesley.

Further MISINFORMATION

The image on the right is the cover of the booklet published for the 200th Anniversary of the building of the chapel, in 1991.

This booklet was published at a time when the “family” of Ann Rosser had been incorrectly researched.

Early researchers not only had to overcome the fact that the Shirenewton Registers did not seem to be on the web, but also, save for one particular researcher, that they did not have the hand written family tree to help them make a correct choice of the tree, going backwards in time. And the tree they produced is at variance with the family papers.

The one researcher who did have sight of a hand written document was Sidney John Lippett, but he had only a shortened form of the family document.

So there is no relationship between Ann Rosser and a James Lewis whom the early researchers decided was Ann’s first husband as is indicated in the 200th Anniversary Booklet.

Indeed, the name of her first husband was Thomas Lewis.