Sometime around 1840 the family split apart. This may have been the result of all four sons seeking employment in the South Wales coalfield.
In 1851 mother Elizabeth was living at 66 Charles Street, Bedwellty, Tredegar with Thomas, David and Eliza. Thomas and David were coalminers, and even nineteen-year-old Eliza was listed as a mine labourer. In the census record, Elizabeth is recorded as “wife”.However, in the same 1851 census, husband and father John Davies is recorded as a “widower” and still living in Llanarth.
It was around this time that the split in the family became even wider. Mother Elizabeth, daughter Eliza, and sons Evan, John, David and Thomas emigrated to Ohio. Father John and daughters Mary, Madlen and Margaret apparently remained in Llanarth. There is a burial record at Pencae, Llanarth for John Davies, Chandler, on July 26th 1860.
More than 50 years later, Thomas Y. Davies described his father and other family members who had remained in Wales:
“My father, John Davis, was about fifteen years older than mother and both died about the same date. He was a fair sized man, with dark hair, but his neck was unusually short, so when he was made a member of the militia during the war with Napoleon Bonaparte he could not wear a stock, such as the British soldiers wore as part of their uniform.