Famous For: Played in iconic 1970s tv shows and is a soap star.
Biography:
As a star of the soap opera 'Emmerdale', actor Patrick Mower is no stranger to complicated family storylines. But when it came to tracing his own ancestry back to Wales, there were a few shocks in store, including tales of bigamy, false identity and murder.
Of all the celebrities tracing their Welsh roots in the 'Coming Home' television series, none have had quite as many skeletons in the closet as him and as the programme revealed at least one of those "skeletons" came from Cilycwm in Carmarthenshire.
Patrick first found popular acclaim for the role he played in the detective series 'Callan' in the early 'seventies. He went on to be in the series 'Special Branch' with George Sewell, played DS Steve Hackett in the police series 'Target', and featured in one of the last 'Carry On' films.
Since 2000 he has appeared in ITV's Emmerdale as Rodney Blackstock.
In 2006 he visited Wales as part of a programme screened on BBC Wales looking at family trees. "My father was very, very Welsh," explains Patrick, who grew up in Oxford.
"My friends couldn't understand what he was saying. I've always been very patriotically Welsh. One thing my father and I shared was a passion for rugby, and being born English I always support England. But every time we play Wales I suddenly feel this 'hwyl' swelling inside me and I have to support Wales."
When Patrick was in his 50s, he discovered the first of a number of shocking family secrets. His late father Archie - a former miner from Pontypridd with whom Patrick had had a strained relationship - also had a second family back in Wales.
"I started getting more and more letters from people saying 'I'm your cousin' or 'I'm your auntie' and I ignored them all.
"There was one person, Megan from Porth, who used to repeatedly phone my agent. Eventually I rang her back and she said 'Thank you very much for calling. I'm your sister'."
Megan was one of three sisters Patrick knew nothing about. Before meeting Patrick's mother, Archie had been married once before to Margaret Parry in Porth.
As a well-known actor Patrick didn't want the question over what he thought was his late father's bigamy to become public knowledge.
And as a son, he was conscious to tread carefully over the issue with his mother, who knew nothing about it.
"I spoke to my brother Donald about it, but we couldn't approach my mother," he says, fighting back tears. "My mother died four years ago - God bless her - and we could never ask her because it would mean her life was a lie. Because as far as we know my father never got divorced."
A visit to his father's old house in Porth, where current owner Phillip Woodliffe showed him around, plus a trip deep into a coalpit gave Patrick a better idea of his father's background.
But when the soap star travelled to Bedwas to meet long-lost third cousin Angela (who, ironically, lives in Coronation Street) he uncovered a more shocking scandal.
She and Patrick share the same great-great-grandfather, David Price, who died the owner of Price's Pit in Bedwas.
Angela - an Emmerdale fan who had the shock of her life when Patrick arrives unannounced on her doorstep - divulged that David Price was an assumed name.
He had changed it from David Samuel while on the run - for committing murder.
As a young man from Cilycwm, Carmarthenshire, David Samuel worked as a farm labourer and became involved in a love triangle which ended in a showdown with his rival Lewis Williams, a lethal stabbing and a subsequent murder hunt.
Samuel fled Carmarthenshire, heading to Bedwas where he found work and a new life in the mines - eventually owning his own pit.
He had both good luck and bad luck during his lifetime. Luckily for him, just days after his disappearance a body recovered from a nearby river was assumed to be his so the hunt was called off.
Less fortunately, 33 years later, one of the men who came to work for him at Price's Pit recognised him from his home town.
He was arrested and tried for murder at Carmarthen Magistrate's Court. In the event of a guilty verdict he would have been hanged.
But there's another twist in this extraordinary tale. At the trial in 1858 nobody in court was prepared to swear that they could identify David Samuel, because 33 years had passed, and so he was let off the hook and died in Bedwas a free man in 1879.
But back to the burning question of Archie's bigamy. What did the records show? Genealogist Cat Whiteaway uncovered the answers for Patrick, and when he heard the truth, the tears started to flow.
"I wish we'd found this out about 60 years ago," he says, wiping the tears away, as he was presented with the evidence that his father was not a bigamist, but had in fact divorced his former wife.
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Mower-Askew
I am one of Patricks cousins, my mother Lennorah was Patricks fathers sister, she moved away from Pontypridd to become a nurse in the 1930's and never went back. I did meet Patrick when he was in Stockport some years ago and we exchanged a few sentences, unfortunately not long enough. My mum is now 92 years old but still around in Gloucestershire.
Thu Feb 15 14:14:52 2007
Anne of Cardigan
I can have some sympathy with Patrick Mower as when tracing my family tree I found that one of my great great grandfathers had been arrested for theft of half a cask of porter.
His sentence was transportation but we know he was only away for ten years but we have been unable to trace where he was sent - other than he was taken to a prison ship in the Thames at Woolwich. Unfortunately, the records for the prison ship were lost in the fire at Greenwich Maritime Museum.
Tue Dec 19 12:51:14 2006
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