This Pierce Welsh genealogy is based on my research and the use of Bartrum's Welsh pedigrees to explore the earlier generations. The tribe of Gwenwys is descended from Brochwel Ysgythrog, king of Powys in the sixth century. The arms attibuted to Brochwel are the three nags pictured. Some detail on the ancestry of the Gwenwys tribe is found in Landed Gentry of Great Britain (1900) in the entry for Lloyd of Stockton Manor. Lloyd Piers, first cousin of Thomas of Virginia, adopted these arms from his mother who was heiress of Griffith Lloyd. Here is a flag from a St. David's day parade that shows these arms [By Gareth James, CC BY‑SA 2.0].

Capt William Peirce and Thomas Pierce who both lived on Mulberry Island in Virginia are generally considered to be related, although exactly how is not known. I have not been able to find that they were related through the Piers family, although they could have been. More details of my reasearch are in a manuscript The Possible Welsh Ancestry of Captain William Peirce.

William Peirce's great-grandmother Margaret vch David named her sister Mally in her Welshpool will dated 1540. Reynold ap David ap Griffith and David Vichyaun ap Mathey Go’[ch] were her will executors. A chancery case of David a[p] Mathewe Gough concerning the estate of Maly ap David named as a defendant Reynold ap David ap Gryffyth. Obviously with the same names from the will of Margaret vch David, then this record is about the same family. Examination of other records indicates that David Vichyaun ap Mathey Go’[ch] and David a[p] Mathewe Gough were likely the same person, the vichan meaning junior not showing in some records. The full name would be David ap David ap Matthew Goch. The chancery case of Maly named Reynold ap David ap Griffithe and his brother Roger as her 'nyghe kynsman'. The page from Bartrum has the genealogy of Reynold and Roger of Burgedin.

The use of the 'ap' in a woman's Welsh name seems odd, but was evidently not unusual. I have found several instances that show that a Welsh patronomic name such as David ap David can be used as a surname and that surname was used by the wife, ie for Mali ap David it would show that her father-in-law was named David. From these facts we can guess that David vichan ap Matthew Goch , ie David ap David ap Matthew Goch, had been the husband of Maly ap David.

The fact that the case called Roger and Reynold Mally's kinsman and not brothers probably means that they were not her brothers. She could not have been the sister of their father David ap Griffith since her Margaret and Mally's father was named David. Probably she was related to their mother who was named Marsli, which is a dimunitve for Margaret.

The 1546 subsidy list for the hundred of Pole lists for the village of Burgedin Reynald ap David ap Gruffid, Roger ap David ap Gruffid, David ap Gruffid, which shows that the father of Reynold and Roger was still living at this time.

A possible genealogy for the Burgedin family is shown - a parsimonious tree that does not require adding any people to fit the known facts. It assumes that Margaret vch David was the aunt of Marsli vch David, hence she was the great aunt of Reynold and Roger. This matches the Bartrum genealogies, the will of Margaret that names a sister Mally and a niece Margaret, and the chancery case concerning the will of Mally that names Roger and Reynold her nigh kinsmen. The questions about this is whether the ages match the genealogy.

The rough guide to the generations in Bartrums genealogy have the parents of David Goch (and Margaret?) as David LLwyd (12, b. 1400) and Alice f. Gruffud (13, b. 1430). If Margaret vch David was 65 when she died she would have been born 1475. The guide to Bartrun is rough so the ages are possible. The only 2 people in the genealogy who we have a good idea of their age span are Roger ap David (ca. 1510-1586) and Humfrey ap Piers (ca. 1535-1598). In this genealogy they would be second cousins and lived at the same time but one was probably 20-25 years older.

This genealogy shows how Captain William Peirce and Thomas Pierce would have been distantly related through the marriage of Thomas's uncle Edward to Elizabeth Lloyd.

Further observations

The British Library has a volume of pedigrees published in 1716 by John Davies. There are some pages for the Rogers family of Burgedin (Manuscripts, ADD 9865). One page shown here has that the mother of Roger and Reynold was named Margery vz David Goch ap David LLoyd ap Evan ap Griffith. This matches the entry in Bartrum pedigrees as far as it goes. There is a note on the Gwenwys 1 page for Ieuan ap Gruddud that this person is ofter confused on some one on page 2. Gwenys 2 has the corresponding note for Ieuan ap Gruffudd ap Ieuan. Unfortunately the 1716 pedigree did not go back one further generation that would distinguish which is the correct placement for the Burgedin family.

There are at least 2 sources that place David Lloyd ap Evan ap Griffith as the nephew of Sir Griffith Vaughn. The article "An Appreciation of ..." by W.A. Griffiths in Montgomeryshire Collections v. 53, shows this David LLoyd in a record dated 1444. This article says that David Lloyd ap Evan ap Griffith married Maud Hanmer and had at least 3 children and the daughter Maud married Evan Lloyd.

The entry in Sheriffs of Montgomeryshire for Thomas Tanat 1570 also give this conflicting account for David Lloyd. It says that Maud, daughter of David Lloyd ap Ieuan ap Griffith ap Ieuan ap Madoc married Ieuan Lloyd and that the mother of this Maud was Maud daughter of Griffith Hamner.

There is agreement that David Lloyd ap Ieuan ap Griffith married a daughter of Griffith Hanmer and had a daughter Maud who married Ieuan Lloyd between the 2 articles and Bartrum. However, Bartrum places them as descendants of Gruffith ap Madog and the 2 cited references as descendants of Ieuan ap Madog.