Return to Llanidloes
The next major event in Isabel’s life, according to the records I have traced, occurred in 1868, by which time Isabel had
returned to live in Llanidloes. On 8 October 1868 Isabel gave birth to a son,
Elijah Trevethan
(he later became 'Elijah Trevethan Roberts' but he was 'Elijah Trevallon Roberts' during his WWI service). His birth certificate
states that his mother ‘Isabel Roberts formerly Owens’ was living in Bethel Street, Llanidloes
(right)
at the time and his father was named as a lead miner,
Ezekiel Osborne Trevethan.
Thus Isabel was living in Llanidloes when her mother was terminally ill late in 1868 and when she died on 1 December. We shall never know if Isabel helped to nurse her in the weeks of her final illness or if she attended her funeral; I like to think she did.
The following year Isabel’s second daughter, Isabel Ellen Roberts, left her family in Wales and went to settle in the United States; there was a mass migration of Welsh quarry workers to Pennsylvania in the nineteenth century but it is not clear what made Isabel join the exodus. Whatever the reason, she seems to have been comfortably established in Philadelphia within nine months of her arrival, which suggests someone was looking after her welfare. One can only speculate that perhaps her father, John, had settled there. What became of John Roberts and what became of John Bennett is, at present, uncertain but in 1870 Isabel Roberts (née Owen) felt free to remarry, though when she did she declared herself a spinster and her new husband was neither John Bennett nor Ezekiel Trevethan.