Things I Hold Dear

I believe that to a man the retention of the family name is all important, not only because the name has been passed down from father to son, but also because every father would love to have the family name continue for time immemorial!! This is not a "macho" thing, but something that I believe is instilled into the male members of a family from father to son to ensure that the family name is carried on.
Daughters are a father's pride and joy and sometimes the heartbreak of a father when they leave home to get married. As far as the family name goes, most daughters, when they get married, take on the family name of the husband, which is traditional. Sometimes they hyphenate their own family name with the family name of the husband such as Brown-Smythe etc. Lately it has been reported that a husband actually took on the wife's family name. Now that is really gutsy!!!
Daughters always remain very close to Dads and forever bring happiness and wonderment right from birth to adulthood and sons are usually thought to be a younger version of Dad.

Our family name of Wheldon has a checkered past, to say the least!! I have researched our name and added what I have found to what has been passed down to me by word of mouth from my Grandfather, so I have put together a short family history or tree, as the "Ancestry Detectives" put it. The name Wheldon means something like "maker of wheels for coal trains".
It all started in a little Welsh town called Llandilo where there was a male Wheldon who was a Druid priest. (I cannot find his first name, but this part is from Pop.) Even as a Druid priest he must have had the normal male urges because he eloped with an Irish Nun and they had 14 kids together!!
A generation or three after this event, a young Wheldon with the name of Tamas was arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and a silk handkerchief. The story goes that he only wanted the bread but the hankie came out of the gentleman's pocket when he grabbed the bread. So, he got 7 years deportation to Van Dieman's Land.
After serving his time he was given a Ticket of Leave and set up a sawmill in the Huon Valley, south of Hobart. He married and he and his wife (name unknown) had two sons and a daughter. Apparently the wife died in childbirth with the youngest, the daughter. Tamas also died after the drive belt on the saw broke and he was severely injured by the flying saw blade.
The kids were sent to orphanages, the eldest son and the daughter to a Salvation Army orphanage and the younger son to a Catholic orphanage. This is where the spelling of our name changed. The younger son spelt his name WELDON but the elder son kept the correct spelling of WHELDON. So, if your name is spelt WELDON you are most likely Catholic and the WHELDON's are usually Protestant. I think that Tamas was my Grandfather's Grandfather but I am not too sure as Pop didn't go too deeply into that part of the history.

So there it is. Wheldon's are descended from convict stock and have proved over the years to be stoic members of the local community, hard working and honest. Poor old Tamas was just unlucky getting caught I guess. All it came down to was that he was hungry!!!