Another in the occasional series celebrating the bicentenary of Pembroke Dock. This time Patricia Watkins tells about the fmaily home at 25 Front Street.

Although members of my family have lived in Pembrokeshire for hundreds of years, the first one to arrive at the new Pembroke dockyard, looking for work, was William Williams. William, a shipwright, and mygrea-great-grandfather, came from Aberdovey, where his two brothers, aged 18 and 19, and out on their sloop, The Loyalty, on Saturday, March 26, 1791, drowned when she foundered off the Aberdovey Bar. Their devastated father wrote of the event in the family bible, and finished with the words: 'When this you see, pity me. John Williams, father.'

William was born the year after this disastrous family tragedy. On his way to the new dockyard, William stopped off in St. Bride's, where he married Jane Thomas, of Laugharne, then moved on to Hubberston, where he stayed until able to move into 25 Front Street in early 1823, after it was vacated by the Foreman of Shipwrights.

There, on Sunday, February 29, 1824, at 11.40 pm, William and Jane had their first child, Laura Matilda, and went on to produce eight more children there, each birth meticulously recorded in the family bible, even giving the day of the week, and the time of day.

William himself was still working at the dockyard when he was 69, and was, by this time, Superintendent of Shipwrights. When he died in 1869, his wife, Jane, continued to live at 25 Front Street until she too died in 1874.

Three of their four sons went on to work at the dockyard. The first son, William David, who never married, was, like his father, a shipwright, but died when he was only 51. Next came Edwin Alexander, who received his training at Greenwich, where he married Elizabeth Godfrey in 1855, and had several children there before returning to spend the rest of his working life at the Pembroke dockyard. The third son was Albert Henry Laughton, who married Elizabeth Dawkins, and likewise spent his working life at the dockyard.

William and Jane also had four daughters at 25 Front Street, three of whom survived. Laura Matilda, the eldest, married Charles Pulfer, who was in the Royal Navy, but sadly he died just six years after their marriage, aged just 37, and his widow moved back home to 25 Front Street, where she continued to live on her own after the death of her mother, until finally moving in with her younger sister, Jane Ann, at 11 Meyrick Street, where she died in 1893.

The dockyard community was obviously very closely-knit, with the result that many daughters married men who were employed there - perhaps there weren't many eligible men in Pembroke Dock at the time who weren't employed there, so the choice was limited.

Anyway, Jane Ann Williams, my great-grandmother who was born at 25 Front Street on Saturday, July 5, 1834, at 9.40 pm, married James Luly, who was also a shipwright at the dockyard. James was born in Neath, where his father built brigantines which sailed at least as far as the West Indies. We know this because James's relative, John Luly, sailed them, and was listed in the Cambrian News as being taken to court for trying to smuggle cigars back into the country.

Old family habits die hard, it seems, because oral family history claims that the Lulys, originally from mainland Europe, were caught back in the 17th century, trying to smuggle goods into Cornwall, where their ships were seized by the revenuers, leaving them stranded in Mevagissey.

James Luly also received his training in Greenwich, and went on to become Inspector of Shipwrights at the Pembroke dockyard.

The other surviving daughter, Mary Thomas Williams, also married a shipwright, Thomas Hill, who, like James Luly, came from Neath. Thomas started off as a ship's carpenter, and when they married, they moved into 29 Front Street, but took over 25 Front street sometime in the 1890s, probably around the time of Laura Matilda's death in 1893.

In 1901, Thomas Hill's daughter, Laura Jane, was helping her brother, William Thomas Hill, run the Navy Tavern on Pembroke Street, while their father, now a widower, was still living at 25 Front Street, along with two of his sons, Richard and Rowland. In 1911 he was still living there, this time with his daughter Laura Jane, who had obviously moved from the Navy Tavern in the meantime.

Laura, who never married, remained at 25 Front Street until her death in 1942, and it was Laura who, in 1912, lent my grandfather, William John Luly - James's son - the family bible, from which he was able to copy down all the information about the births of William and Jane's children, born at 25 Front Street.

So, from 1823 to 1942, the first house to be built in Pembroke Dock, 25 Front Street, remained in my family - nearly 125 years.

• 25 Front Street was originally number one Thomas Street occupied by Mr. Thomas, Foreman of Shipwrights, and the first house to be built in the new town of Pembroke Dock.