The following is the text of a speech given by Richard Lloyd-Jones to The Friends of Cedar Rock In Quasqueton, IA on October 21, 2006, at the opening of a newly restored Frank Lloyd Wright house. 

Cousin Frank

In the Lloyd-Jones family the children of the Welsh immigrants were known as Aunts and Uncles; their children and grandchildren were Cousins. Today we are still Cousins, although at times some of the older ones of us have turned into Uncles and Aunts. I mention this because I want to make clear that I am dealing with an extended family-a tribe or clan, if you will-that was cohesive in Wales, remained so in Wisconsin, and even yet shows traces of the old ties. We have a Board of Directors that meets annually and we have a big reunion every five years. Cousin Frank was fully embedded in that tribe.

Cousin Maginel in her memoir The Valley of the God Almighty Joneses observed, "More than anything other thing, Frank is a Lloyd-Jones." I cite her as an authority on her brother, but I think that anyone who has a feel for rural immigrant families in the 19th century could figure it out. We in Iowa certainly understand the appeal of Century Farms, so I don't have to explain what is my thesis today. FLlW is a unit in an extended family, and to understand him (and perhaps his work as well) you have to see him as part of a family. I think that many of his biographers in search of something exotic to give their stories zest have under-appreciated this relationship. Cousin Maginel has a few errors of fact in her book, but she is correct in its general thrust.

Frank Lincoln Wright was born in 1867 in Richland Center WI to William Carey Wright and Anna Lloyd Jones. The father was a circuit riding minister-sometimes Baptist, sometimes Unitarian-whose proper vocation might have been as a music teacher. In September of 1879 during his last sojourn in Wisconsin he did indeed officiate at my grandparent's wedding and was paid $5, but he was mostly concerned with teaching music. He was a New Englander, a widower, some 17 years older than his then current wife, perhaps a bit of a dreamer. The couple had a daughter (Jane) in McGregor in 1869 and then they were persuaded to go to New England, stayed long enough to have another daughter (Maginel) in 1877. Whether Aunt Anna was hostile toward her step-children or favored her son, I leave to others, for it was not an issue in the Valley. The next year the family returned to Madison. W. C. Wright made little money running his musical conservatory and in doing supply work for the Unitarians and in a couple of years he returned alone to New England. He had offered to stay in Wisconsin, but Aunt Anna did not suggest that he do so. The children thereafter did not see him or his original family; it was a closed chapter.

Our age is used to single parent families by divorce, and we devote lots of pages in the popular press in helping people cope; the 1870s usually had single parent families by the death of a parent, and often the surviving parent re-married. Aunt Anna did not re-marry, and the clan took care of its own. Even before the divorce Aunt Anna thought her son needed the influence of strong men, someone other than her husband. Perhaps she also needed something for Frankie to do in summers. Perhaps too she knew that on the farm more hands were always needed to do the work, so she could contribute her son's labor in return for her brothers' help to her. Mostly, though, I think she wanted her son to become fully a Lloyd-Jones, so she sent him to the Valley to work for her brother, Uncle James. That really meant for Uncle James, Uncle Enos, Uncle John and Uncle Thomas. Uncle Jenkin was already a major force in the Unitarian church in Chicago, but he had had a church in Janesville and he still had land in the Valley, and he was a regular visitor. I should also include Uncle Philip, really James Philip, the husband of Aunt Mary, for he was absorbed into the clan, but he had to become "Uncle Philip" because the name James was already taken. Still, it was usually Aunt Mary who is named as the connection.

Perhaps I should define the notion of "Valley" and clan, for it is central to my point. Richard and Mary Jones had emigrated with seven children from Wales in 1844, arrived in Milwaukee the following spring when it was a burgeoning town of 9000 people. Richard's brother Jenkin met them and they set off for Ixonia, where they cleared land and (although Jenkin had died the next year) farmed for a decade. Four more children were born (one had died along the Erie Canal), and the family of ten and two parents moved to the Spring Green area. The four older children were really adults, but they moved too. And after a couple of years of farming the sandy soil north of the Wisconsin River, they began settling on higher land just south of the river in Iowa County, land that closely resembles their part of Wales. The home farm was what is now the site of Hillside School. By the time FLlW came to spend his summers in the Valley the brothers had filled the entire space around the home farm. Uncle Thomas to the west, Uncle Philip across the road to the south, Uncle Enos east of that, then Uncle John and his mill, then Uncle James, and then Uncle Jenk. In time Aunts Nell and Jen would acquire the home farm, Aunt Anna would buy the land to the north of the home farm. Aunt Margaret would build on a corner of Uncle Enos' farm. Although each farm was average for the 19th century, collectively they made a dominating tract. The brothers and sisters continued to act as a unit, sharing labor and amusements and often money and credit. This was not corporate ownership as we might know it; it was a community of shared interests.

Cousin Frank thus was immersed in family, and for the first summer, Cousin Maginel reports, he hated it. He claims he learned to add tired to tired. That is probably true, for farmers then depended on horses and human labor. Animals permit no vacations. In subsequent years Cousin Frank became fully a part of the endeavor. That is, he bonded with his uncles and cousins. There were several cousins of his age. Aside from labor, the families provided their own amusements. They often ate together, played together, argued politics, provided good works for neighbors, pontificated on social and religious issues, and generally acted as a cohesive community. They might even in a certain kind of moral righteousness have justified the idea of the neighbors about the "God Almighty Joneses." Sundays they often gathered in a grove on Uncles James' farm for religious services and a day of partial rest. Father Richard might speak, but Uncle Jenk or his ministerial friends from Chicago often provided views on current issues. They sang Welsh hymns or Civil War songs and told stories of life in Wales and of Welsh mythology. Richard at least read Y Drych, a Welsh American newspaper, but he favored the New England transcendentalists, especially Emerson and Thoreau. That later led to Ruskin, all writers important to Cousin Frank. They may have disagreed among themselves quite sharply, but they united against outsiders. In later years some cousins reproved bits of Cousin Frank's behavior, but he was always one of the family. They were a secure community and Cousin Frank became a part of it. He was transformed from Frank Lincoln Wright to Frank Lloyd Wright.

There was a precedent for the name change and a similar reason. His grandparents. Richard and Mary (Mallie) had left Wales as Richard and Mary Jones, but Richard inserted the name "Lloyd" in all of the entries in Mary's Y Bible after they came to America. Why? In the small community in Wales everyone knew of the connection with the Lloyds so it didn't require emphasis, and anyway the Welsh used more than one naming system, so people used other techniques for remembering connections. They knew who they were because they kept elaborate genealogies, for in ancient Welsh law one was responsible for acts of blood relatives through the sixth degree, and they were small, stable, rural communities where everyone knew about everyone. In America, though, it seemed important to remind people including themselves that they were Lloyds.

To be sure, Richard Jones' father was John Enoch, whose father was Enoch Jacob, whose father was Jacob Jones. That is, the system is simply patronymic. Mary Thomas Jones was the daughter of Thomas James, who was the son of James Griffiths. These families followed an older Welsh tradition of naming, and they were simply good Welsh farmers. The English used surnames, as we do, and enforced the practice when they undertook the census in the 1840s. But even before that some Welsh used the surname in the English system because they had special status conferred by property or connections with the English. The Lloyds had it. They traced their blood to the 5th century with connections to practically all of the medieval Welsh princes. In the 14th and 15th centuries they were part of the Welsh political leadership that tied Wales to England-or perhaps protected the Welsh from the English. In the 17th and 18th centuries they were traditional squires with large holdings. They were big-time.

Our particular branch of the family was known more for religion and education than for money or political power. Richard's grandfather David Lloyd is even yet mentioned in most religious histories. He wrote in Welsh, English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. He wrote poetry in Welsh and Greek. He played the violin. He was a widely acclaimed preacher who formed eight Unitarian (or pre-Unitarian) chapels in mid-Wales. David's uncle, Jenkin Jones, had earlier given shape to the dissenting movement, and David's son, Charles Lloyd, was the first official Unitarian minister in Wales. Indeed, Richard's father and Mary's uncle were part of the group that organized the chapel Charles was to minister to. (Charles had wanted to have the chapel his great uncle and his father had, but when that was given to another, his supporters organized one for him.) These were exceptionally well-educated men of modest but decent means, and they did not leave the estates their cousins did. And Margaret (Charles' sister and Richard's mother) married beneath her station. Given extremely hard times on the farms seven of the eleven children of John and Margaret left Wales, six of them coming to the United States. Still, the emotional connection to Wales was strong, and Mother Margaret's family was a source of pride. They brought the sense of clan with them.

They also brought a motto-Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd. Truth against the World. I grew up thinking it was a family phrase, and I believe Cousin Frank did too. It seemed to represent a family attitude. Grandfather Richard eked out his living as a farmer in Wales by selling the peaked Welsh hats at fairs. If someone doubted the construction of one of the hats, it is said, he would stand on it to prove its strength. He was six feet of righteousness in that story the family loved. The runic symbols on my shirt today represent the motto and appear in some of Cousin Frank's materials. At least some of the time these folks saw themselves upholding virtue against the sleaziness of the World, as Ibsen would later represent Dr Stockmann in An Enemy of the People. They knew the Truth and could not be intimidated by the forces of convenient public policy. So, too, in another way Wright knew how you ought to live and he designed houses to make you live that way. He was just copying his uncles. God almighty.

Actually the motto was not just a family thing. The phrase had been coined in Wales by Edward Williams, a frequent visitor to Uncle Charles' chapel and a stone-mason, who was also a poet and antiquarian and Unitarian. He consorted with the great Romantic poets in London for a time and was part of their enthusiasm for Celtic mysticism. The runic marks representing the motto appear on the thrones made for the chief bard at the great song and poetry festivals designed to vivify Welsh culture. The festivals-the Eistedfodds -- were created by Williams and remain a great tourist draw to Wales even now. Williams probably had in mind "Truth" in the sense of the ideal pattern underlying surface reality, the logos, the Word in the Beginning, which was God. In that sense the "world" is the surface, the items that are nameable. Theory against Fact. Plato against Aristotle as it might be understood in the early 19th century. Actually, this meaning fits well, too. The Lloyd Joneses (including Cousin Frank) like a good story and are willing to ignore a fact now and then for the sake of a greater Truth. The Autobiography is filled with interesting inventions. Whichever way you interpret the phrase it was part of Cousin Frank's adolescence.

Some of the Welsh stories they told also came through Edward Williams. He was great story re-teller of medieval lore drawn from the manuscripts he had collected. Where he didn't have a manuscript, he made one. If he needed a poem, he wrote it. It is sometimes hard to tell what is genuine and what is counterfeited, but either way they are the stories that vivified the Welsh past for 19th century folks. I'll offer one as a sample because it ties directly to Cousin Frank's understanding of the name "Taliesin", that is, Shining Brow, and it suggests how one has to be cautious about his own recollections. As it happens Edward Williams named his son Taliesin because he was entranced by his image of a magician from the world of myth.

To be sure, there is an historical Taliesin who was a court poet in the 6th century. His main duty was to sing the praises of his liege lord, that is, he was a political shill. But he also was first in having his poems preserved in an honorable court tradition, so he is sometimes referred as Father of the Muse. Welsh, that is, and Williams (who wrote poetry under the name Iolo Morganwg) liked that. Even so, the poetry is not the kind to grasp the imagination of 19th century readers, even chauvinistic patriots. Taliesin the Court Poet is a name to be cited but not to be read.

But there also was a mystical poet/seer of the ancient mythical world revived and concocted by Williams, the antiquarian chauvinist and forger. In this world an astonishingly ugly witch gave birth to an astonishingly ugly son. She resolved to make him all wise, but that required a potion of great complexity. She had to gather every virtuous herb to boil in the Cauldron of Inspiration for a year and a day until it was reduced to three drops. That was wearisome, so she hired Gwion Bach (Gwydion, William, a little boy) to watch the pot while she napped. Gwion Bach stuck his finger in the bubbling pot and then into his mouth to ease the burning. He became all-wise and recognized that the witch would not be happy about his theft. In a classical Welsh literary process of shape-changing he became a hare; the now wakened witch became a greyhound. The boy dove in the river and became a fish; the witch became an otter. The boy became a songbird; the witch became a hawk. The boy became a seed of grain in a heap of wheat; the witch became a black hen and ate the wheat.

Oddly, in nine months she gave birth again, this time to a beautiful child with a shining brow. He was so handsome that she could not bear to destroy him, so she sewed him into a leather bag and threw him into the sea, rather like Moses. A sea captain saw the floating bag and cried out, "Tal-iesin!" Shining Brow! The precocious child responded, "Taliesin bid", Taliesin, let it be. The child grew up to be advisor to princes just as did Merlin, who was favored by the English in Arthurian tales brought up from Brittany. In the Welsh Hanes Taliesin the hero is perhaps wiser and certainly more mysterious than Merlin.

In later years Cousin Frank said the name came from an old Welsh poet and then went on to talk about how a house should be located below the brow of a hill. Other writers have suggested that he got the name from Richard Hovey's poem. Very likely in Cousin Frank's youthful mind the two basic sources for the name were conflated and Hovey's poem may be stirred an old memory, but they illustrate the degree in which the family participated in the renewed sense of Welshness pushed by Edward Williams in the early 19th century. The family was fully immersed in the economy, the politics, and the culture of the developing West and Wisconsin, but they retained a strong attachment to the Welsh extended family. Even those born in Wales confused or improved some of the details, but the bonds were strong. There are other ways that show the adult Cousin Frank was tied to the clan and the Valley.

The most obvious one is that he chose to live there. When Grandfather Richard died in December of 1886, some fifteen years after his wife Mary died, Cousin Frank was already living in Chicago. The Lloyd-Jones children had already decided to build a Chapel in tribute to their parents and in recognition of their own religious identity. Uncle Jenk had used the firm of Joseph Silsbee for work in Chicago, so he asked Silsbee to design a Chapel. As it happened Cousin Frank worked for Silsbee-and perhaps it was a coincidence-so he was assigned some of the work. We do not know how much, but we are reasonably sure it included at least interior trim. We read in a letter from one of the Uncles that "our boy architect" has delivered plans. Silsbee often used a shingled style, and family tradition says that Cousin Frank helped putting on the shingles, although probably the main builder was Uncle Thomas, and the other uncles contributed labor and money. In whatever degree the participation the family building remains his first contribution to the architecture of the Valley, and the Chapel yard is where he intended his final resting place.

At Richard's death the home farm was left to Aunts Nell and Jane. The brothers persuaded them to leave their teaching jobs to form a boarding school that would serve the children of the family and others. It would be a truly remarkable educational experiment, incidentally drawing my mother from Charles City, Iowa, to Hillside and into the extended family for six years. It is also the site of some of Cousin Frank's defining early designs. The 1887 version of the school-another shingled building-- no longer exists. The present home of the architectural firm and the Fellowship is main school building after 1902, except that the gym has now turned into an auditorium. The most famous structure is the windmill, Romeo and Juliet, also shingled. Young "Frankie" designed it, the Aunts admired it, the Uncles thought it too costly and perhaps unsafe, but the Aunts chose in indulge their nephew's vision. Quite possibly the costs created by Cousin Frank in all of his buildings were a contributing factor to school's ultimate bankruptcy.

Aunt Anna eventually acquired the north edge of the home farm so Frank could build his home. In the early years when Brother Frank had moved to Chicago, he had little money, so Sister Jane took responsibility for her mother and sister in Madison; she was an accomplished local musician and quit her own schooling to take a job teaching in a rural school. Then Aunt Anna and her two daughters moved to Oak Park, a block or so away from the site where Frank would build his house for his bride Catherine and their subsequent family. In pre-Social Security days it was customary for children-especially sons-to look after parents. Cousin Frank assumed the role of head of the family, although quite likely Aunt Anna was a force to be reckoned with and Jane may have done much of the actual supporting as a teacher in Oak Park. Some biographers' notions of Freudian obsessions can be chalked up the preoccupation of literary critics. Frank's later departure to Europe with Mrs. Cheney was not pleasing, but a son is a son, and they had to live somewhere. The daughters by that time had their own lives to lead. The Valley was home for Cousin Frank. So the first Taliesin was built on Aunt Anna's part of the tribal grounds near the family school and in sight of the family Chapel, and Aunt Anna moved from Chicago to the Valley, which was even more her home.

The Hillside Home School of Aunts Nell and Jenny was thriving in academic excellence but suffering in finances, so the Aunts needed a manager. The three or four decades before WWI were hard times on farms in the Midwest, and the family depended in part on cash money from John's mill, Enos' cheese cooperative, Jenkin's Unitarian visitors, and school tuitions. (They often bartered grain or produce for their needs.) The interconnections were complicated, and the siblings were venturesome as well as cooperative, but the accounting systems were casual. The Aunts persuaded Andrew Porter, who married Jane Wright in 1899, to leave Canada to help clear up the school's finances. Frank designed several house plans for the Porters on the school grounds at the edge of Uncle Thomas' farm and across the hills from the future site of Taliesin, but they cost too much (for Andrew cut his income to a third in coming to the Valley) and so they settled on the plan for Tan y Deri. That, the prototype of the Mason City house Bob McCoy has just described, was built in 1907 and later. The house, as well as the Chapel, Romeo and Juliet, and the first school building were all shingled. Even early on Cousin Frank saw interconnections in the design of his family estate. The 1910 version of Taliesin looked out on both Tan y Deri and the Unity Chapel. A very distant cousin, David Timothy, was the mason who used local sandstone in all of these buildings as well a lodge for Uncle Jenk's summer visitors at Tower Hill. These were family affairs.

In some ways 1910 solidified Cousin Frank's ties to the Valley, but it was an especially hard decade for the clan. In 1907 Uncle James died in a threshing accident. Given the interlocking finances of the family, his death created major money problems. Uncle John died in 1908. Andrew discovered that the school's debt was three times what the Aunt's had thought, and gave up all of his salary to help pay the debts. Still, the Aunts faced bankruptcy and the school was put up for sale. It was bought by an unknown person, perhaps acting for Uncle Jenk. The Porters' oldest son died in an accident in 1912, and in January of 1914 Aunt Margaret died. Still, the most dramatic loss was the fire at Taliesin and the death of Mamah and her two children. The scandal of her living with Cousin Frank had been noisy, but the murders brought out the press in full force. By 1915 the Aunts closed the school. By 1916 Andrew moved to Chicago for employment, Jane and the two children stayed at Tan-y-deri, Anna lived with a caretaker at Taliesin, and Frank went to Japan to work on the Imperial Hotel. By 1917 Jane had rejoined Andrew in Chicago, and thereafter they used Tan-y-deri mostly as a vacation site. During the 2nd Taliesin fire, Cousin Frank lived there. During all of these crises, the Valley was still home, and even after two fires Taliesin was rebuilt as home.

When Cousin Frank took up with Olgivanna and the tabloids went wild, the Valley was again a refuge. Enos was the only one remaining from the original family, and he provided help, but some other local people were hostile and the federal law enforcement people charged Frank under the Mann act. Uncle Enos' testimony was very important in getting the charges dismissed, and Enos and Frank kept in touch even after Enos and Eleanor went to live with their daughter Agnes in Lake Bluff, and Frank and Olgivanna went to a more benign climate in Arizona. Still, the whole Fellowship returned each summer, and Frank tried to acquire all of the farms of his uncles, either directly or through ownership by one of the Fellows. He had in mind to shape the Valley as a total environment, a living monument to his grandfather's family. He also ran up debts, so when he died much of the land was lost, but usually to people sympathetic to his vision. And now the Wyoming Township (the part of Iowa country where the properties are legally located) is aware of preservation as an economic advantage to the whole area.

The issue of debts suggests a larger point. Despite all of the national scandal mongering about Cousin Frank's marital adventures and the cult-like aspect of the Taliesin Fellowship, the chief gripe of the neighbors had to do with money. Cousin Frank always owed money and he spend profligately on luxuries and art. He always assumed someone would take care of the necessities-often by simply not paying. The family had risked much in leaving Wales in hope of economic gain, and they had struggled in the most primitive settlement at Ixonia, Wisconsin. Still, the notable moments involved a book being delivered from Milwaukee or a newspaper. They worked hard, relatively prospered, moved west again in search of still better. To cope with the deflation after the Civil War, they took risks and adventured with new farming methods. Still, the School, the Chapel, and community service were crucial to their ways of life. Aunt Anna, we are told, demanded quality even if expense limited quantity. But in an odd metaphorical way, they had both guns and butter, that is, they didn't cut back on amenities when times were tougher. Cousin Frank carried this to extremes. Budget priorities were no more his thing than they are for our present Congress. At least he left us some handsome buildings.

Perhaps I can epitomize my point about what was home for Cousin Frank with another anecdote. Cousin Frank died in Arizona in 1959. His son-in-law, Wes Peters, drove the body to Wisconsin so that Frank could be buried in the Chapel yard. The body was taken to the Chapel on a horse drawn cart for a Unitarian service. It was buried so that it might face Taliesin, but when the will was opened, they discovered that he wanted to buried looking at the Welsh Hills on Uncle James' farm-Bryn Mawr, Bryn Canol, and Bryn Bach. That was where he had worked as a boy. They re-dug the grave and re-positioned the coffin. He clearly understood his roots to be in the Valley.