The Welsh Backgrounds

            Tracing the progenitors of Richard and Mary Lloyd-Jones is complicated because many connections apparently were known so well at the time that they were not written down, because the names themselves were re-used through generations or were altered to suit local custom and convenience, because documents were lost or destroyed, and because memories recorded in America may have been distorted by the distance from Wales.

Before there were the Lloyd-Joneses of Wisconsin, there were the Joneses of the Teifi Valley and elsewhere in Wales.  Entries in Mary’s Y Bible, but in Richard’s handwriting (according to his daughter Jane), suggest that the Ll (signifying Lloyd) was added after the family crossed the Atlantic.  The family in Wales remained “Jones.”  That raises the question of why the name itself is important and how it relates to “Jones”.  Close behind are the questions of why the family left Wales at all and what baggage of Welsh identity came with them to America.

John Enoch

            “Jones” is the gift of Richard’s father—John Enoch.  One traditional naming system of Wales was patronymic.  Thus John’s children were John’s, that is, Jones.  The father’s given name became the identifying name of the children.  The English used surnames, as we do. Welsh people who for one reason or another wished to identify with English customs adopted that system after the Act of Union during the reign of the early Tudors, and by the middle of the 19^th century (thanks to the census takers) most adopted the English system.  John Enoch’s children thus were Joneses under the old system, and by the census of 1841 John Enoch too had become John Jones, apparently preferring the option for himself as well.  Some people chose new names altogether (Richard’s sister Jane married a man named “Davies” but because of confusion with another man in a pay line decided to become “Rees”), some changed the spelling of old names (“correct” spelling did not become a fetish until the late 19^th century), some preferred to use the occupation or farm names as a means of identification, and a few given names were used over and over in different generations.  One must be imaginative in trying trace connections.  For me Mary (Spring Green) Lloyd-Jones’ elaborate Family Tree has been an immense help in sorting the generations.

Thanks to Ifan James (a cousin by way of Mary’s family) and John Jenkins (no relative we can trace, although all Welsh people seem to be cousins) we know more about John Enoch than our parents did. His American grandchildren seemed unaware of him, or didn’t write of him, and indeed did not realize that Jones (John’s) in our name came from his given name.  There was a tradition that the immigrants’ youngest son, Enos, had been named for Enoch, Richard’s youngest brother, but that the name was altered when there was a dispute with the brother at the time of the death of Margaret (John Enoch’s wife and Richard’s mother), or perhaps after Enoch Jones came to Ixonia, Wisconsin. There may have been such a dispute, but there are no marks in Mary’s Y Bible to confirm such a change in names.  We are told that Enoch Jones inherited or acquired Richard’s Ixonian farm, and we know that he is buried there along with his brother Jenkin, and possibly his sister Rachel (or more likely his wife) is in the next grave.  There may have been other disputes after Margaret’s death.  Furthermore, we might guess (with Ifan James) that John Enoch became John Jones in part to separate himself from his father’s reputation as being a bit free with sexual favors, and that could have affected his choice of names at the outset. Ifan James also suggests that Jones might simply have been a more popular name. 

Whatever the reason, Richard’s father may have died as John Jones.  At least the Rev’d Thomas Thomas, a half-nephew of Richard’s mother, Margaret, refers to him as John Jones and names him a co-executor of his own will, which was probated in 1812. (The Rev’d Thomas Thomas is the son of Thomas Thomas and Jane, who was the daughter of the Rev’d David Lloyd and Jane Jones, his first wife.) The younger Thomas Thomas also created a trust for Margaret and John Jones that supplied them with money after his death in 1818 through the time of Margaret’s death and then passed to their daughters.  As late as August of 1856 Margaret was demanding payment of annuity.  Nonetheless, the Rev’d John Thomas  (son of the younger Thomas Thomas), who frequently attended John Enoch (Jones) as he lay dying from 1848 until mid-1850, used the original name.  Although John Thomas looked after the trust created for “John and Margaret Jones”, in his own diary and in the funeral sermon (Deuteronomy 13:4) he preached on May 13, 1850, he consistently refers to him as John Enoch.  The death certificate and the gravestone both say “John Enoch.” John Thomas’s diary entry for June 7, 1858 merely reports that “Mrs Jones” is to be buried at Llanwenog, but the death certificate says she is the “wife of farmer David Jones.” (Even death certificates may contain errors.)  Ifan James was not able to find the grave, and the parish records for those years are missing.  (I trust it is clear why one might find the names confusing.)

            John Enoch (Jones) was the son of Enoch Jacob, who was the son of Jacob John.  Jacob John was born about 1700 in Llandysul and died after 1732.  With an unnamed wife he had a daughter, Rachel, born August 28, 1727, another daughter Rachel born August 20, 1732 (one presumes the first Rachel died), and a son, Enoch, born at Dolfor in 1730.   Enoch Jacob married Elinor Griffth on June 5, 1762  and died at Pantstreimon farm in 1794 (Pant  is a valley).    Their son, John Enoch (Jones), was born around 1763 at Pantstreimon, so one assumes that the family was the “occupier” at Pantstreimon until John Enoch (Jones) moved to Felinewydd (new mill) on the Alltrodyn (lime kiln hill) estate sometime around 1814.   Enoch John and Elinor Griffith had at least four children—Jacob Enoch, John Enoch, Hannah, and Rachel.  “Rachel” is a name for several women who are not fully identified. 

           Enoch John lived at Panstreimon until about 1794; in that year Elinor John is listed as the occupier and David E. L. Lloyd as the owner, so we presume Enoch John had died.  His son, John Enoch, married Margaret Lloyd in Llandysul on November 24, 1797 with John Lloyd and John Thomas as witnesses, and by 1798 John Enoch is listed as the occupier at Panstreimon. That is true through 1814; in 1815 Ebenezer Davies is listed as the occupier.  Jane Jones was born to John and Margaret on October 21 at Rhydyceir (rhyd is a stream), a farm owned by David Lloyd of Alltrodyn, so we can infer that the family had moved by then. They were still living at Pantstreimon in 1812, when Lettice Lloyd, Margaret’s mother, died.  (D.E.L. Lloyd was descended from the Lloyds of Maerdref to Tewdwr, not from the male line of Cadifor ap Dinawal, but are related by marriage to the Lloyds of Alltrodyn, so John Enoch had acquired a different cousin as his  landlord when he moved to Rhydyceir.)  Sometime before 1826 the family had moved to Felinewydd on the Alltrodyn estate, for they held Hannah’s wedding feast there.  The census of 1841 shows John and Margaret Enock (sic), farmers, aged 65, living there with their son Enock, a shoemaker, aged 20. 

Margaret Lloyd

The third and fourth generations of the American family may be interested in the story of John Enoch because the grandchildren of Richard and Mary (Mallie) seemed to know so little about it, but the family identity has more to do with “Lloyd” than with “John’s”.   Although “Jones” was the heritage from John Enoch, clearly the emigrants identified more with the family of his wife, Margaret Lloyd. 

The Lloyds have a notable pedigree. They can be traced to Cunedda, who came in the early fifth century with eleven sons from the north of what is now England to drive out the Irish Celts.   Ceredig, one of his sons, is memorialized in the modern county name of the area he was given and where our family lived.  Uther Pendragon, known to many of us from the King Arthur stories, Cadwaladr Vendigraid, the last British King, Hywel Dda, the prince who codified Welsh law, Rhys ap Tewdur, the kings of Gwynedd, all are listed as ancestors in what is a fairly standard historical record of British interconnections.   Essylt, who was the heir of Gwynedd in the 9^th century, married Mervyn Vrych, who was the King of Man and the Prince of Wales.  Their son was Rhodri Mawr, who inherited all these titles in 843, and then married Angharad, who inherited the titles for Ceredigion and Dyfed, as well as Dehueauparth.  Through his grandmother he also inherited Powys. He ruled Wales for 34 years, and that is enough reason for him to be thought of as Roderick the Great. Many Welsh people like to claim to be sprigs of that family tree.  The tradition has been elaborated in Davies’ history, but it is enough here to suggest that Margaret’s family was among those eager to claim descent from the giants of the Welsh when Wales was clearly a separate nation—or an ever-shifting combination of kingdoms sometimes gathered into a nation. The Lloyds were freemen and much more.

            These traditions of Welsh generic history lead in many directions, so perhaps almost all modern Welsh people can at least claim a trace of such ancestry, but the Lloyds apparently had legitimate reason to cite their particular connections.  Some medieval events tie more clearly the story of our immigrants into the general story.  Cadifor, the five-greats grandson of Rhodri, married Catrin, the daughter of Rhys ap Gruffudd (The Great Lord Rhys, who was the chief connection of Henry II in Wales as well as a noble lord in his own right.   Some claim he too should have been titled Prince of Wales.  My own interest in him is enhanced by the fact that in honor of successful efforts against England he supported the founding in 1164 of the Cistercian Abbey at Strata Florida, where Daffyd ap Gwillym reputedly is buried.  Daffyd was perhaps the finest European lyric poet of the 14^th century, although some might claim the title for Petrarch.) Cadifor’s military service to his cousin the Great Lord Rhys earned him in 1164 the Welsh title of Lord of Castell Hywel and Panstreimon. 

Castell Hywel is a family base that eventually became a Unitarian school and more recently a vacation site.  The original castle was Norman built around 1110, and it was captured by followers of Owain Gwynedd in 1135.  Owain gave it to his son Hywel, who was a fine poet and mediocre warrior.  He lost it to three Welsh brothers, one of whom was the Great Lord Rhys. The brothers lost it to Henry II, but in the end Rhys won control by diplomacy and battle.  A late effort in the series of battles was to take Cardigan Castle; in that effort Rhys was aided by Cadifor, who was first over the ramparts.  Allegedly the three scaling ladders in the Lloyd crest symbolize that event.

Cadifor’s great grandson, Rhys Voel, is the first person identified in the Family Pedigree with Panstreimon, which may be where Richard’s grandmother Letitia died and where Margaret moved after she married John Enoch, who grew up there.  Letitia may have moved there after John and Margaret married, but probably she stayed at Brynllefrith (milky hill) after her husband David died.  Margaret would have grown up at Brynllefrith, a farm nearby.  Assuredly, like Castell Hywel and Allt yr Rodin, Pantstreimon is a primary base for parts of the Lloyd family.

            Much of the medieval lore was the basis of a “Coming of Age” address for Arthur Lloyd Davies delivered at Alltyrodyn Arms on Epiphany in 1848 by one David Davies of Rhydowen, about the same time Richard and Mallie and the children were struggling through a winter at Ixonia.  As it happens cousin Arthur had inherited the Alltyrodyn estates from his father, John Lloyd Davies, but Arthur died four years later, so he has but a small place in our story.  The address makes it clear, however, that the Lloyds knew who they were and were proud of royal connections.

            The period from the rise of the Tudors in England to the beginning of the 19^th century is even more striking in suggesting the eminence of the Lloyds.   After the Acts of Union various family members were substantial landowners, sometimes defined by their support of churches.  Most of the Lloyds were supporters of the monarchy and the Church, Anglican or Roman.  Liewelyn Llwyd’s (Castell Hywel) son David Llwyd was a member of parliament in 1544, perhaps the first Welshman, or perhaps the third, to serve in that body. (Ten other Lloyds followed into Parliament in the next two centuries, but this kind of counting is open to challenge.  For example, in 1413 or 1414 Lewis John entered parliament. He was a vintner living in London, but when Henry IV ruled that Welshmen could not own property in London, he was affected and threw his lot with Henry’s son, who probably liked his father even less than Shakespeare implies. Henry V (and Owain Glyndwr) probably owed more affection to Richard II than to Henry IV, and Owain led the Welsh rebellion against Henry IV.  Lewis John went back to being loyal subject when Henry V became king, but he still might be counted as Welsh.  If one narrows David Llwyd’s claim to representing Cardigan while actually living there, then he may have been third by a few months in 1544.).  David Lloyd’s son, Rhys Lloyd, built Alltrodyn, the 17^th/18^th century house that dominated the lives of our part of the family.  About 40 Lloyds were sheriffs.  In 1577 Hugh ap Llewelyn Lloid bequeathed 2750 acres “and appurtenances” to various people, mostly to his wife. Griffith Lloyd, who was Principal of Christ’s College (Oxford) and died in 1585, bequeathed a substantial amount of land and a huge number of books to various people in Wales.  Other 16^th century wills show that they were not the only prosperous Lloyds. Despite a period of legal troubles for some of the Lloyds during the Commonwealth period (some Lloyds stayed loyal to the Stuarts, and one was a member of the Long Parliament) later 17^th and 18^th century wills show that they had regained or retained much property.

Such people represent the change from medieval monarchs to modern squires, who did well by cautiously riding the Tudor coattails.  To be sure, they gave up royal Welsh titles and did not acquire English ones, but they accepted English surnames and political roles that suggest they were either co-opted by the English or were representatives of Welsh needs to the English.  Certainly some of them had impressive properties to hand down to their children. Their souls they left to God, some money they left to the Cathedral at St David’s, some more to a local parish, some minor obligations they left to tenants or servants or friends, but mostly they left farms and houses and livestock to spouses or children—a large number of whom were named David, or Jenkin, or John, or Llewellyn, or Charles, or William, or Rees, or Margaret, or Lettice, or Jane, or Mary, or Ellen. They recycled names, although they sometimes varied the spelling.  It is especially noteworthy that the men seemed quite comfortable willing property to wives.  That is important because, as Richard Thomas says, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries wealthy Welsh widows were very attractive to impecunious English men, and that had a caroming effect on the customs of tenancy.  The English preferred short leases on farms and thus exposed the renters to greater financial risks in bad crop years.

            We can focus our interest on a line emerging from Alltyrodyn (also spelled in various ways).  Built by Rhys Lloyd sometime in the late 17^th century (parts may be much older), it was the birthplace of his son David and his grandson Ieuan and dominated the valley. Ieuan married Maud Lewis of Caio and took up residence there.  Their eldest son, David, took over Alltrodyn, and their second son, Richard, whose will was proved in November of 1701, stayed at Caio and married “well beloved” Margaret Johns.  In his will written when he was “sick in body butt sound in mind of whole and pfect memory” he reserved his substantial holdings to her “during the term of her natural life.” Richard of Caio also specified that at her death the property should go to his grandson Richard (born at Brynllefrith). If grandson Richard were to die too soon, the property was to go the elder Richard’s second son “now living”, John.  A more modest grant was made to the third son, Henry, and to sons-in-law. A missing link, the eldest son, is never named or even alluded to (except by implication in the “now living”), but I presume he died before or soon after his son was born but shortly before Richard of Caio died.  No mother is mentioned, and the grandson Richard is subsequently identified with Coedlannau (quiet woods).

            Richard Lloyd of Coedlannau is the great grandfather of Richard, our immigrant.  Born c. 1700, he married Hester (also born c. 1700), the daughter of John Jenkins, also spelled Shon Shiencyn.  (His son, Siencyn Sicons, i.e., Jenkin Jones, is memorialized at the new Llwynrhydown chapel.) John Jenkins was a blacksmith at the little forge (efail fach) at nearby Wernhir on the Alltrodyn estate in the parish of Llanwenog.  He was said to be a miser, reliable, hard working, and austere in his living style; he became comparatively rich, possibly because he married the daughter of Thomas David Rees of Noddyn, a man of substantial fortune.  The description of his personality may or may not be fair, for I see it in only one source.

Richard Coedlannau and Hester had three sons—David, John, and Postumus (all Lloyds).  David and John, at least, were born at Coedlannau, and John continued to live there. Richard’s will specifies that David and his mother Hester (also recorded as Esther) are to administer the estate—unless she remarries—and substantial education is to be provided for David, at least until the age of 15, and for John, at least until the age of 16.  He also made provision for a male child (if born alive, for he recognized that Hester was pregnant) to receive somewhat less money than John but still given an education.  If the child were a girl, the money would be even less.  Postumus, as the name implies, was born in 1729 after Richard’s death, perhaps in Llandysul, but in due course David sternly managed to advise and teach both of his younger brothers. Hester lived until 1756.  David was only five years old when his father died, but Richard of Coedlannau had also directed that his brother-in-law, Jenkin Jones, be tutor and guardian to the infant children, so David had help with his brothers. This is the Jenkin Jones who founded Llwynrhydowen Chapel.

            Jenkin Jones, the son of the “miserly” blacksmith, attended the Carmarthen Academy as “an exhibitioner of the Presbyterian Board” for about 15 months beginning in 1720 in anticipation of becoming a clergyman.  The academy was created by Presbyterians partly to ensure that Welshmen would be able to read the Bible, partly to make use of educated dissenting clergy, and partly to help those in need.  The school was never well financed, and even spent some time away from the town.  Perhaps it is worth remembering that up to the 19^th century—and indeed, during it—most education was tutorial.  Even in schools classes were so small that students could be individually accommodated.  Lucy Threakston emphasizes that at the Academy Jenkin studied with Mr Parrot, who led him away from the Calvinism of James Lewis, who had been Jenkin Jones’ pastor at Pantycrouddyn.  By the 18^th century even the famous universities on occasion had degenerated into places where the sons of the rich could sow wild oats and do little else.  That is, most learning was acquired separately from schools.  Still, the Academy was an advance for Wales; in this instance its leaders really acted as serious tutors to the young men who came there.

            Jenkin Jones was born at Trafle around 1700 and died in 1742, a relatively young man.  His father didn’t die until 1759, and his  sister Hester (or Esther, David Lloyd’s mother) lived until 1756.  When Jenkin completed his work at Carmarthen, he returned in 1724 to Pantycrouddyn as an associate of James Lewis, his former mentor, and although he is described as being a young man of “engaging disposition and capable parts, with a decided talent for preaching” his sentiments were too Arminian for his colleague and some of the congregation, so he was soon excluded from the pulpit.  He seems to have established the first Welsh society of Arminians, followers of the 16^th century Dutch theologian.  He was apparently ordained in April of 1726 and then held services in his own home at Wernhir, the site of his father’s little forge, but by1733 the congregation had grown so large that he needed a chapel.  He chose to build one on his property at Llwynrhyhowen, mostly at his own expense.  Apparently some accounts suggest that it was his wife’s property and money, but he was not married until 1734, perhaps in Llandysul to one Mary Thomas, daughter of Thomas David (Camnant and Pantydefaid), a descendant of the Lloyds of Alltyrodyn.  If his father had been “comparatively rich”, that prosperity may have provided enough money for building a chapel.  In due course this chapel was replaced by Llwynrhydowen Hen.

Whatever the case, several young Baptist (Calvinist) preachers declared themselves in favor of his views and he gained followers.  At issue seems to be a pamphlet published in 1729 (perhaps a version of an earlier sermon) giving “A Correct Account of Original Sin.”  James Lewis wrote a rebuttal.  Both papers were in Welsh .  By 1742 the congregation had grown enough to start an additional chapel at Alltyplaca.  Perhaps the beliefs honored by the members were not much different from the later views of John Wesley, and Jenkin Jones is identified in an adjunct to the Lloyd Letters by “W.J.E.” at his death as a Trinitarian. Nonethelesss, he had founded an Arminian society and is usually identified that way. (W.J.E., is idenitified by Ifan James as Walter Jenkins Evans, 1856-1927, Principal of Carmarthen College, 1888-1926). Perhaps he is merely noting that Jenkin Jones, who is buried in the churchyard at Llandysul, was not far from the mainstream.  Even so the chapels were known as rebellious and were left in the hands of his nephew and student, David Lloyd, a man later described as an Arian.  (“Llan” is a holy ground, very likely originally a sacred site for Druids.  It usually is at a transition point in the terrain—bottom of hill, edge of woods, along a stream.  Christian monks adopted such spaces, and sometimes added a dwelling or a church as well as a burial ground. The churches are usually dedicated to a saint.  “Llwyn” is a grove, so Llwynrhydowen is the “grove at Owen’s ford.”   It is perhaps no wonder that the Lloyd-Joneses in the Helena Valley had “Grove meetings” before they built Unity Chapel as a place of worship.)

            David, born in 1724 and subsequently identified with Brynllefrith, brought a different kind of luster to the Lloyd name. (When Ruth and Hugh Leader visited the area in the 1970s Brynllefrith had been demoted to a shed and was in bad disrepair, but at the earlier time it was a substantial house.) His power as a clergyman brought together neighbors into a community that would later become Unitarian and would be called “the black spot of Wales” (Y smoten ddu) by nearby Methodists.  Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen and a Unitarian, referred to David as the most learned man he knew.  He was fluent in Welsh, English, French, and Italian and wrote in Latin and Greek and read Hebrew.  He memorized much of the Greek epics, he played the violin, he was “dexterous at most manly exercises,” and he wrote Welsh and Greek poetry. In 25 years he increased the communicants in his churches from 80 to 800, and there were many more “hearers.”  In his later years his son Charles says that he sometimes had so many come to hear him that he preached outside to as many as 3000 people in a sparsely populated rural area. One source claims that he could be heard for two miles, but we may be pardoned for doubting that.  Charles merely claims that his funeral cortege from Castell Hywell, where he died, to Llanwenog, where he is buried, was two miles long.  Even recent studies of Welsh religion devote considerable space to his achievements. Letitia, his wife, died at Pantstreimon in 1812 and is also buried at Llanwenog. 

            David Lloyd, under the supervision of his mother and uncle, was well prepared.  At Llanwenog he studied with John Evans, and at Carmarthen Academy he received a fine classical education with Samuel Thomas.  He was so promising a man and his religious views so attractive to “radicals” that Jenkin’s congregation chose him to succeed his uncle even though he was only 18 at the time and not yet ordained. Clearly the chapel had taken the authority to choose its own clergy.  For two years he ministered to the congregation while he continued his studies.  According to his son Charles he was not immediately ordained because more established clergy did not want to associate with a radical chapel, although one might speculate that his young age contributed to the delay.  Nonetheless he was ordained in 1745 with at least sixteen ministers present, most of them Arians. These followers of the first century Arius affirmed the pre-existence of Christ but insisted that He had been created by the Father, as had all other beings.  David is buried in the parish churchyard at Llanwenog and is honored there, radical or not.

He had a good maternal example, too.  When a sympathetic clergyman was delayed from arriving at Llwynrydowen to preach after Jenkin’s death, Hester Jones rose to the occasion “uttering words of elevated prayer and praise.”  This was not an era generally to welcome women preachers. 

Among those at David’s ordination was Margaret Lloyd (grandmother of the Margaret who married John Enoch) of a more prosperous and conventionally Anglican line of the family. She liked Hester and David even though she did not like his theology, but she could little have imagined that her daughter Letitia would become David’s second wife. Since this Margaret Lloyd (wife of Charles Lloyd of Llanfechan,) is thus the great grandmother of our Richard, I note that she spent large portions of her estate in helping the poor survive, a precedent David and Letitia would follow and perhaps became embedded in family values.          

            David immediately drew followers and established more parallel chapels in the area at the same time he kept up academic studies, taught some students, and more-or-less farmed. He was judged an indifferent farmer who didn’t know his own cows and who paid more attention to Greek literature than to grains.  One of his pupils was brother Postumus. When in June of 1756 he persuaded followers to let him hire an assistant with the various chapels, he hired Postumus, partly as a way of encouraging his brother, by then married for two years, to return to clerical studies.  In due course his brother moved on to other churches.  David married his cousin Jane, the daughter of Jenkin Jones, in 1852, and they had a daughter, also named Jane, and perhaps a second child.  After his wife died, David was apparently betrothed to a Miss Bowen of Waunifor in 1758, but she died before a marriage was completed.  He then married his cousin Letitia Lloyd in 1759. She had been raised in a wealthy household loyal to the Stuarts, but she heard David preach and became one of his flock.  Her sister Sage, who later married a clergyman of traditional beliefs, was alarmed and reported to their brother, “Lettice has become a Presbyterian.”  The brother, being a man of the world, replied, “Is it not better that our sister should have a sense of any religion than have no religion at all?”  (More than two centuries later Jenkin Lloyd Jones of Chicago would convene a Congress of Religions in which the dominant sentiment seems very much like that of the brother.)

            The first son of David and Letitia, Richard, was born in 1760. He became the minister at Llwynrhydowen after his father died, and he died in 1797. The second son, John, was a mercer and became a schoolmaster in Llandysul.  (His son David was the Principal of the PresbyterianCollege in Carmarthen and his granddaughter Lucy collected many of the Lloyd papers that serve us here.)  The third son, David, died in his tenth year.  The fourth son, Charles, born in 1766, is sometimes listed as the first true Unitarian in Wales, and certainly was a founder of the Chapel at Pantydefaid and the recorder of much of what we know about David.  When Charles was awarded an LL.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1809 he was described as “dissenting minister, schoolmaster, and for some time a farmer.” Actually, he seems to have farmed for two or three years with disastrous results, and then gave a twenty-one year lease on the land at Coedlannau.  He moved to London, but returned to Wales frequently.

Like his father David, Charles looms in any account of religious history. He was 12 years old when David died, but his uncle John of Coedlannau “in an unusual moment of generosity” saw to his education with notable David Davis of the dissenting school then occupying Castell Hywel; Davis was also David Lloyd’s co-minister at Llwynrhydowen.   In 1784 John “abandoned” Charles, who then went to the Presyterian (i.e. Carmarthen) Academy, at that time located in Swansea.  The Rev’d Solomon Harries was his landlord and the Rev’d David Peter was his tutor; the latter he apparently disliked.  Although he was there for two or three years, he had little good to say of his fellow students.

 Almost by accident he fell into serving a congregation at Evesham and then faced the question of ordination.  He did not want to be ordained conventionally, but he wanted to minister.  He consulted Joseph Priestley, who urged him to accept ordination.    Throughout his life he seems to have been known as given to bouts of anger.  For example, he seems to have been exceedingly angry that aforesaid David Davis (Castell Hywel) had been buried too close to David Lloyd, so there would not later be room for Charles next to his father.   He told Timothy Davis, the son, that he would have the grave moved. ”The old pig shall not stink near to me.”  He promised to build a great monument to his father at Llanwenog (he didn’t, that was Lucy Threakston’s gift) but he is memorialized inside of the church, although he was an avowed Unitarian.  One observes that religious divisions among dissenters are not always as sharp as they seem.

As a practical matter Charles had various church appointments with what seem to be various sectarian allegiances, but he especially wanted to have a co-appointment with David Davis at Llwynrhydowen.  The place was given to Davis’ son Timothy, however.  Charles fell out with parts of the congregation and formed the new Unitarian chapel at Pantydefaid.  It may have been that he had moved too far toward Unitarianism or it may have been something of a family split.  One of Mallie’s uncles, David James, and John Enoch were among the supporters of the new chapel.  He also quarreled bitterly with his brother Richard—for a time would not even call him “brother’’—and yet later much praised him, perhaps in recognition that he inherited the estate at Coedlannau from his brother.  He seems to have been one of those people who enjoys verbal fencing, but he also earned a major place in church history.  He died when our Richard was thirty, but he would have been a major figure in Richard’s life.

            The youngest child and only daughter, Margaret, Richard’s mother, was born in 1770, and she was only nine when her father died.  Her mother lived until 1812. David had never been paid more than twenty pounds a year, so he had little to bequeath, but both David and Letitia were noted for their charity and good works, and other relatives contributed to the support of Margaret.

            Margaret and John were married November 27, 1797 in Llandysul and the couple lived at Pantstreimon.   Margaret was sometimes thereafter known as “Pegi Pantstreimon”. They had eleven children, five of whom stayed in the United Kingdom.  David (born in 1798) was a blacksmith near Aberaeron.  John (born around 1801) was a drover (drove herds of farm animals cross country to Smithfield near London) and in due course settled in London.  An answer to his letter in 1851 prompted Margaret to write with current information about each member of the family.  Her letter was saved by John and eventually discovered by Ruth Leader, his great great granddaughter.  We own much of our later discoveries to this fortunate relic and Ruth’s persistent searches.  Lettice (born in 1809) married Thomas Gower and lived in Carmarthen.  Anna (or Hannah, born in 1803) married John Evans, “the son of Dolebach” (little meadows) and apparently prospered party by virtue of an inheritance from her husband.  Margaret’s letter does not mention Thomas (born in 1807), who married Mary Rees and lived at Blossom Lodge.

The other children turned up in the United States. Jenkin (born in 1807) and Rachel (born in 1812) went to the Wisconsin in 1840. Jenkin built a house and prepared for the arrival in Wisconsin in 1845 of Richard (born December 8, 1799) and Mallie (born in 1807).  Jenkin died the next year and was buried on his own land, but he willed the house to Richard.  Rachel and her husband (Rees Beynon) built two houses on the land by 1851, but may have then moved to Watertown

Nell (Eleanor, born in 1809) with her husband, “the son of Oernant” (probably a farm near a cold stream) came to Wisconsin a little later.  The “son” was John G. Thomas (1812-1885) the son of Griffith Thomas, descended from Sir William ap Thomas of Raglan Castle, from whom comes the present royal family. They and their ten children moved near to Rachel and later to Spring Green, where Richard’s daughter Jane refers to her as the “beloved Aunt Nell.” 

Jane (born 1814, the youngest daughter of Margaret and John) married Thomas Davies (who later chose to become a Rees) and moved to Given in southern Iowa near Oskaloosa.  Elinor Lloyd Jones (Aunt Nell of Hillside) in a handwritten addition in Jane Lloyd Jones’ Memorial Book (Aunt Jenny of Hillside) records an undated visit from Richard’s sister “Anna” on her way to Iowa.  This is surely Jane, but Aunt Nell has the name wrong.  It is a recollection of an elderly woman about an event of her very early teens. The same note mentions the existence of Rachel Beynon and includes a notation that Mallie’s family was short-lived (60-65), but Richard’s family lived long.   I have no indication of whether these families kept up correspondence beyond Aunt Jenny’s praise of Nell Thomas, but that doesn’t prove they didn’t.  Aunt Jenny also had some mixed up names; she said David Lloyd and Betsy Lloyd were the grandparents of Richard, but David’s wife was Letitia, or Lettuce, or Letty.  One is truly grateful for the Memorial Book, but it is not perfect.

John Enoch died in 1850 at the age of 90, and Margaret and Enoch Jones (born in 1816), the only child still at home, moved to Blaencwmarch in a cottage across from Pantydefaid Chapel.  The census lists Enoch as a shoemaker and single.  Some time before December 7, 1852, he married.  After Margaret’s death in 1856, Enoch moved to Ixonia, Wisconsin.  He had two children: Margaret, who was born in 1855 and died in 1858, and Sarah, who was born about 1857.  Enoch died on September 5, 1873, and his wife (perhaps another Rachel) lived until 1889.  I infer that Enoch arrived in Ixonia shortly after Richard and Mallie left for Spring Green. Certainly there are three graves there: Jenkin, Enoch, and Rachel.  I know nothing more about Sarah.

One surmises that Margaret’s children were lesser cousins among the Lloyds. She apparently was fluent in spoken and written Welsh and English, and her mother was able to provide well for her education.  Her older brothers did well and were well educated –Charles might even have been called famous—and her other connections by blood were notable.  Some were wealthy, several held positions of considerable status, a rather large number were educated clergy, and most seemed engaged in matters of religion.  Six of her children left Wales, though, apparently not finding a place in the home country for them.

Mallie’s Family

            On July 14, 1829, at Llandysul Richard Jones and Mary Thomas were married.  Mary’s elder brother James was one witness. He, David Jones (Richard’s elder brother, a blacksmith of Llyffanog, near Aberaeron), and Richard Jones all signed their names. Mary was represented by her mark. That raises the questions of her literacy.  On one hand she memorized poems her Uncle David had taught her.  She was surely exposed to all sorts of Welsh lore and myth.  She had a Bible, although apparently her husband wrote the entries of birth in it.  That is, she might have been able to read and still not given to writing. In our century we take writing for granted. We forget that reading and writing were for a long time the skills of the clergy and a few scribes.  In the 13^th century all governmental writing in English was the work of 250 men (who in effect standardized English.) Courtiers like Chaucer in the 14^th century were exceedingly literate, but written records were so scarce that it was still possible for an archbishop to alter history by forcing monks to restrict their records to data favorable to bishops or the crown. Somewhat later sciveners provided ordinary people with wills and other legal texts.  By the 18^th century a new middle class needed to write in order to carry on business, but those people often depended on model letter books to copy out messages. In rural Britain face to face contact was such that writing was not really needed.  In short, although Mary perhaps could not write when she was 20, she was not necessarily ignorant or hostile to education.  So, too, like other immigrants in America, she may have preferred Welsh for conversation and yet have been able to understand English.

The Thomases were a solid farming family, although not one sporting lordly titles.  Mary’s grandfather, James Griffith of Penwern, (the fifth child of Griffith Rees Lewis) was reputed by Jane Lloyd Jones in the Memorial Book to be a poet who died in 1800.  He is buried at Llanwenog and has the last verse of the 17^th psalm on his headstone.  Ifan James thinks it more likely that the poet was James Griffiths, the youngest son of James Griffith and a drug dispenser, a doctor, an inn keeper, and  a schoolmaster at various times. James Griffith and his wife had eight children, the eldest of whom was Thomas James born in 1765, Mallie’s father. The second son, David James, was one of the founders of Pantydefaid Chapel, and after the death of Thomas, he became the guardian and mentor for Mary.  Thomas James of Penwern had seven children, one of whom was Mary Thomas, our Mallie, born in May of 1807.  Mary’s mother (“the widow of the late Thomas of Penwern”) was buried at Pantydefaid on February 12, 1856.  Penwern is just down the hill from Pantstreimon, where John Enoch lived until 1813 and where Richard was until he was13 years old.  Since John and Margaret were married in 1797 and John is listed as the “occupier” until 1813, one observes that their son Richard had ample opportunity to become acquainted with Mallie, the child of Thomas James of Penwern, the next farm.

            .  Richard Jones and Mary Thomas had eleven children. The birthplaces of the Welsh born children were Dolvor,  Blaencathol or Blaen-yr-allt-ddu; Mary’s Bible identifies the first two children with Dolvor.  Nany and Jenkin were born at Blaen-yr-Allt-Ddu.  All of these farms are near Pantstreimon, and at least one source suggests all were born at Pantstreimon. (Aunt Jenny of Hillside wrote that they were born at Blaenstrimon, but no one has able to find such a place. Doubtless the memory of what a child heard blended two names.)

Economic Pressures

            In spite of being part of a large and respected family, Richard and Mallie chose to go with seven children across perilous waters to an unknown land.  Why?  They leased about 38 (or 23) acres of land and a stone cottage at Blaen-yr-allt-du from a cousin, Charles Lloyd of Waunifor, and had seven children there, and a plaque on the cottage asserts that it is the birthplace of Jenkin. Another source suggests that they built the cottage themselves under a custom that said if you built a dwelling in a day so that smoke would come out the chimney, the place was yours.  (It was possible to do a lot of rebuilding in later days, so the original house might have been rather minimal.) Hugh Leader points out that although the houses and other buildings may retain the outward appearances of the 18^th or 19^th century, the interiors have been much improved, and additions may merely blend in with the older parts of the exteriors.  In fact, living conditions would have been hard even by the severe poverty standards of today.

The couple would have four more children in Wisconsin. Supporting such a family on few acres would have been a challenge in good times, and these were exceptionally hard times.  Richard also made the stiff peaked moleskin hats to sell to women at fairs to make more money, but that was not enough to prosper on. It did, however, supply a mythic story for the family.  If a potential customer thought the hat insubstantial, Richard (large for a Welshman of his time) would stand on it to prove it was strong and well built. It may have happened once, or never, but the story suggests an insistent rectitude that later generations cherished.

            Farming in Britain has often been a chancy business, although large landholders could do very well. Wealth was generally accounted in land up to the Industrial Revolution, which created new sources of great prosperity.  Enclosure of public lands in the 18^th century constrained small farmers, and low prices hit everybody. Some Englishmen suffering from hard times found it prudent to marry Welsh widows who had inherited land from husbands or parents, but sometimes they became unsympathetic absentee landlords who made Welsh hard times even harder.  In the 19^th century even some of the great estates were kept afloat only by marriage into the wealth of the industrial classes. The coal mines and their attendant steel mills of south Wales, often our modern picture of 19^th century Wales, were essentially the property of absentee English owners and actually represented a kind of colonialism. Even when they were owned by Welsh people or sympathizers, they didn’t help the farmers of mid-Wales.  (The first steel mills were Welsh. Lady Charlotte Guest, a translator of the Mabinogion, was an owner by inheritance and Taliesin Williams, son of Iolo Morganwg and a Unitarian, was another.  For all that, the latent distrust of things English flourished throughout Wales, and English landlords sometimes acted like colonial tyrants.)

As part of their struggle for solvency, Welsh farmers in the 1830s had mounted attacks on the toll roads, which raised the cost of getting crops to market. Roads were essentially the private property of the titled classes in the middle ages, and were maintained by property owners for public good, often through service required of tenants. As feudal structures faded away, the roads became the responsibility of governments. Roads were increasingly important to modern commerce, but money had to be obtained to care for them—hence, tolls.  The railroad revolution of transportation was still two decades away, and canals or rivers often could not serve. These attacks on toll houses—the “Rebecca Riots”-- heralded a tumultuous decade leading to the Great Charter of 1849, a populist movement that put London under siege. This was a culmination of the age of rick burning and Luddism. One of the early riots in 1837 was near Lampeter, just a few miles away from Blaen-yr-allt-du.  Family members may or may not have been involved, but they could hardly have avoided knowing about it.

The troubles were general throughout Europe and led to various revolutions, but in the British Isles they led to gradual reform.  The first efforts in the 1830s to legislate the use of children in the mines seem ludicrously inadequate today, but they provided a wedge to open the way for later laws.  By 1832 mild reformation of parliament shifted some power from landowners to factory owners, but real reform came much later.  One could not ignore the desperate state of the economy; even though there was a brief spate of optimism in the 1850s, troubles persisted throughout the century.  The decade of the 40s is identified in the United States for bringing huge numbers of Irish to America because of what they called the “starvation”, but essentially it was a response to the economic dislocations of the industrial revolution and affected most of Europe.  This was the world described by Dickens in “Hard Times, by Elizabeth Gaskell in “Mary Barton”, and by Benjamin Disraeli in “Sybil”.   It is no wonder that several of the children of John and Margaret would go to some promised land.

Religion was probably not an issue for these emigrants even though some 20^th century observers have thought so.  They were more than ordinarily religious people, but they seemed to thrive on disagreement despite laws that restricted dissent.  Their doctrinal differences are highly intellectualized, and their social differences quite personal.  In Wales generally sects seemed to flourish, and although they argued, they didn’t really fight, and individuals seemed willing to make suitable gestures to religious convention.  At the same time the Church of England also was filled with disputes about high, low, and broad church, not mention such notions as muscular Christianity. Perhaps hard times and foreign colonizing used up all of the British energy for major revolutions, but whatever the reason, England avoided major riots and seemed to accommodate religious variation with a few snide remarks, hazing, and casual snobbery.  Maybe the 16^th and 17^th century religious bloodbaths and property seizures had put a damper on real warfare.  They managed to accept a Jewish prime minister with a mere wink at his background, and the Oxford movement sired Catholics like John Henry Newman.  I suspect that in American mythology religious persecution is a recurring theme to explain immigration, so American writers want to believe that it always an issue. We like our history to be filled with exciting conflict, and mere economic hunger is pedestrian.  Even now we prefer political fugitives to folks who want to eat.  But in the 19^th century America wanted to settle the West, so we let almost anyone who would pioneer.

At the personal level Jenkin and Rachel had already gone to Wisconsin.  They were single, but they set a precedent and created the possibility of a welcoming committee.  They gave Richard’s family time to adjust to the idea of moving.  In a sense, the lost tribes of Israel were on the move.

What They Brought With Them

            In terms of possessions they had little to carry with them—a few chests and a dough trough as crib for baby Jenkin.  They brought their religion, their dedication to education, their skills as farmers (and some flower seeds from Wales), an abiding desire to do good and help one’s fellow creatures, a wild Romanticism, and a rather full mythology of Welsh lore and custom.  They expected to work hard, to endure hardship, and eventually to prosper—an optimistic view of the world.

            The fine points of religious doctrine I leave to Thomas Graham and Richard Thomas, but I note here that in all of the branches of Pedigree, there are several clergymen of many stripes. Richard and his family were some variety of Unitarian, but there were cousins of many Christian sects—and given their love of Nature, I’d not be startled to discover a surviving Druid or at least some animistic rituals. The lay members of the family took their religious exercises very seriously.  It is worth remembering that Unity Chapel is the home of a Liberal Christian Society and although one year it received some help from Unitarians, and various Unitarians visited and preached there, the Chapel was explicitly not connected to any national movement.  They cited New Testament books as well as the old, they read John Donne as well as Emerson.  If Jesus was not literally the third aspect of God, He was still a prophet to be especially honored, and He represented the human aspects of the godhead.  Like many of the Romantics they seemed to have a mystical communion with Nature; certainly they cultivated seeds to create beauty as well as food, and they decorated their world with wild flowers.

            In the interests of making full disclosure I note that I think of religious alliances in three categories as defined by religious acts, procedures and prohibitions, by religious feelings, and by theology. My assessments may merely reflect my biases, for one sees the world through one’s own eyes.  Sects as I understand them are mostly shaped in the first grouping. Whether to stand or kneel, how to account for charitable acts, whether to wear vestments, what foods are forbidden, whether to speak in archaic language forms, how to hire a minister, what social class dominates, and similar distinctions unify and divide religious communities. Clergy may worry about heresy, but congregants think about comfortable and comforting practices. Ritual acts stabilize life in an overwhelming world.

Still, religious feelings are important—a sense of awe, of enthusiasm, of brotherhood, of faith hold people together.  When that is established among the lay people, the specialists can indulge that branch of philosophy called theology to discover great designs and crucial connections.  The best of them use their discoveries to justify the practices that comfort people and explain and exalt the faith that sustains them.  Pace, Tom and Dick, I mean no disrespect. Still, theology operates in the world of high abstraction and the suggestive metaphor.  Abstractions in natural language have a way of shifting their meanings with the times and the persons; metaphors by their nature assert that which cannot be true in order to startle the mind into awareness of some special quality and to transfer emotional commitment.

I suspect that the Lloyds and the Lloyd-Joneses, clearly religious people, were dominated by the first category--practice.  Good works, prohibition of alcohol, lay participation, community, hard labor.  In addition they had a Romantic awe of life itself, but their theology seems tacked on.  Pace, Georgia Snoke.  They may have bickered incessantly about theology in slogans, at least, but the disputes have the aura of rural or village alliances.

            A corollary to the churchly calling is that they were uncommonly well educated for the time, if not burdened with degrees.  Perhaps ten percent of rural Britons of this time could even sign their own name, and yet here are multi-lingual people writing poetry and essays as well as letters and diaries. A fair number were school teachers. Those who went to Carmarthen Academy in any of its forms received a sound classical and theological education.  These were intellectual adventurers no matter what the occupation. Richard and Mallie are not obviously educated, but they clearly thought the arrival of a book in Ixonia was major event, and Richard seemed regularly to read Y Drych as well as the Bible, the American transcendentalists as well as the newspapers.  The younger children were educated to the highest standards of the Welsh tradition; three had degrees, and the other two served as Regents of the University of Wisconsin.

Their skills as farmers are harder to evaluate because the times were so unpromising. Their first stop in Wisconsin near Ixonia required lumbering to clear the land. Once they acquired financial stability they moved near to an area as much like Wales as they could imagine, and they made that river farm work. By the time of the Civil War son Thomas led the way across the Wisconsin River to the Valley, and the others soon followed to adjacent farms.  Enos was last, buying an established farm, and he later served as manager of Hillside Home School.  John had both a farm and a mill. James and Enos took leadership in developing the College at Agriculture at the University and paid serious attention to genetics in breeding cattle and other farm animals, and Enos had the first silo in the area, so one judges they were serious innovators.

 Each branch of the Welsh family is reported to have helped their neighbors as well as each other. Comment on service seems to be a part of wills, eulogies, and casual reminiscences for almost everyone.  Perhaps that is expected in the clerical tradition, but Richard and Mallie’s children seemed to place an especially high value on “lending a hand.”  They may even have been a little self-righteous about it and perhaps included temperance advice or other instruction about right thinking.  Cousin Maginel Wright Barney, who wrote The Valley of the God Almighty Joneses, suggests an attitude in her title.  In some respects they remained a medieval tribe, moving en masse, fussing among themselves about various opinions, but holding firm against outsiders while honoring hospitality.  They brought a sense of Welsh family and community.

The family has claimed “Truth Against the World” as a family motto brought with them from Wales, and usually it has been used as evidence of self-righteousness, of the “honest arrogance” cousin Frank Lloyd Wright favored. The Welsh phrase and the accompanying runes—three slash marks—are in fact the product of another Unitarian in Wales.  Edward Williams, a wandering stone mason and antiquarian, created them. He also re-created the Eisteddfod (the great song fest of Wales), created the Gorsedd (the battle of the bards), collected many ancient manuscripts and created some of them as well, wrote poetry in his own poetic name (Iolo Morgannwg) and in the name of long dead poets, and generally promoted a sense of Welsh culture.  He spent time in London among the great Romantic poets and encouraged them to write on Welsh themes. (Several of them liked medieval and exotic materials; Wales was a place of mystery.  Robert Southey in particular honored “old Iolo.”)

He was a true eccentric as well as a Unitarian.  As a mason he traveled a good bit; he had a horse but would not ride it because that would affront the dignity of a fellow creature. He was in on the founding Pantydefaid Chapel. The motto he created, Y Gwir yn erbyn y Byd  (Truth Against the World), or the three runic marks which he claimed represented the motto, is enshrined on various of the thrones made for chief Bard at the Gorsedd.  The immigrants in the United States simply borrowed it and translated it.  In light of the Romantic preference for Plato, as the Romantics understood the Greek philosophers, Williams was probably praising Platonic Idealism against Aristotelian categorizing.  We see a similar sentiment from John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”  For Williams Truth was greater than Fact, and that is probably related to his mythologizing of history.  Where he didn’t have data, he made it up to fit his notions. The Lloyd-Joneses seem often to prefer the good story.

One of the more traditional myths was the story of Taliesin the magician, not the heroic court poet of the 6^th century.  Although cousin Frank Lloyd Wright casually explained the name of his house by referring to “an old Welsh poet”, he more likely heard the story of Taliesin the magician from his grandfather or his mother.  As Williams told it, a witch bore an extremely ugly son. She wished to compensate for his appearance by endowing him with great wisdom, so she began to brew a powerful elixir. Since it took a year of boiling myriad ingredients over a fire, she hired Gwydion (young William) to stir the pot while she went out to search for the proper materials. Just as the brew was done, the impish boy stuck his finger in to taste it, or perhaps it simply spilled on him, but in an instant he became exceedingly wise and perceived that the witch would be angry. He changed his shape into various other creatures, and the witch matched each change by becoming the predator that would destroy him. He at last became a seed of grain, and she became a chicken and ate him. 

Oddly, in nine months the witch bore another son, a marvelously handsome child with a shining brow. She hated his history but could not bear to destroy such a beautiful baby, so she wrapped him like Moses and dumped him in the sea.  An Irish sea captain saw the shining brow of the child floating, and called out, “Taliesin bid?” (are you shining brow?), and the babe admitted as much. The captain brought him to shore and he was raised to become the great mystic counselor of princes, perhaps somewhat more poetic than Merlin of similar fame among the Bretons.  It is not hard to imagine Richard’s children and grandchildren hearing such stories as the frontier family entertained itself.  They heard the Welsh myths, the Greek and Roman myths, and Norse myths (perhaps these came later through Longfellow), and most assuredly they liked story telling as well as oratory.

Perhaps the last word on their heritage is exemplified in travel from New Quay to Milwaukee, mostly as reported by Chester Lloyd-Jones, doubtless depending on his father’s memory of what was told in the family circle.  Two parents and seven children walked and rode with cousins and a wagon the dozen miles to New Quay to board a small sailing ship, probably a coastal packet that would take them to Liverpool. There they boarded another small ship, The Remittance (now identified by Mary Jane Hamilton). After two weeks at sea the main mast was lost in a storm and the ship had to return to Liverpool.  The passengers waited on board for another two weeks for repairs, their tickets being non-refundable.  On the second try after six more weeks they made it to New York on Saturday, December 7, 1844, instead of late September as they had intended. They record the 8^th in memory, and possibly since that was Sunday, they actually landed on Monday  the 9th, but the ship arrived on the 7^th.

The traditional story of their arrival is dramatic, but not wholly plausible.  The first version I have seen comes from a eulogist who perhaps blended in a generic story of immigration hardships.  Chester and others seem to have accepted that version because it is a good story.  Richard is said to have landed knowing no English and needing help.  In 1916 daughter Jane claims as much.  There was little baggage, but they needed help in unloading it.  A Welsh speaking “runner” offered to provide a wagon and lead weary travelers to an immigrants’ boarding house, and when Richard had nothing but English money, the runner offered to take a coin for exchange and bring back change.   Richard wanted to go with him, so at dusk they out to find a money changer.  Somehow they avoided shops that were open and went to a private dwelling where the runner made a false transaction leaving Richard with miscellaneous foreign coins.  He was thus abandoned away from the family and short of money, and took some two hours to find his way back to the boarding house because he didn’t know enough English to ask directions.

 Although it is true many Welsh people could speak no English, and Mallie may have strongly preferred Welsh (Jane say that her “converse” was in Welsh, and at her death she recited from memory the Welsh translation of Grey’s “Elegy” that she had learned from her Uncle David James.  Ifan James notes that it was probably a translation made by David Davis of Castel Hywel, the schoolmaster and minister at Llwynrhydowen and printed in a collection of poems, Telyn Dewi, David’s Harp.)  Nevertheless it is hard to believe that a man growing up in a literate family where many had excellent command of the language did not pick up at least a working knowledge.  After all for some years he had known he might go to America and he had the model of a brother and sister already there.  Welsh was doubtless his first language, but I think it more likely that he was merely confused by the fatigue of the trip, the unfamiliar places, and the stress of moment.  New York at that time was a tangle of new immigrants, and the bustling trade of a wildly expanding economy was enough to be bewildering to anyone.  Contact with any person speaking Welsh would have been welcome to a newcomer disposed to be trusting, so Richard may indeed have been cheated.  Clearly, though, the family chose to remember the sense of the darkest hours before the dawn.

Winter was upon the newcomers, so they hurried to get through the Erie Canal before it froze over.  That took them back to the pier to board a steam driven river boat, itself a novelty.  After ten hours traveling the Hudson with its well established farms on each side to reassure them, they reached Albany. Then they shifted to a railroad to travel sixteen miles in less than an hour, another new experience.  And then they boarded a canal boat.  By the time they reached Utica, the canal had frozen and part of it was being repaired, so they had to put up for the winter.  So many people were passing that way that customary local support was available to travelers.  Welsh folks found them temporary housing, Richard had minimal work, and the children had some schooling. 

As early as possible the family set out by wagon to Rome, where they could again use the canal.  After they left Utica en route Nanny became ill with diptheria and died. They buried her in a shallow grave along the road and went on to Rome, back to the canal, and on to Buffalo. Georgia Snoke found a 1964 account by Clinton Lee Scott that implies several children had the disease and it was near Stueben, NY, that Nany died. Still, John Lloyd Jones’ obituary specifies Utica. A problem with this story is that the death date given for Nanny in the Chapel yard is December 25 and that is the date John remembered, and he was apparently quite partial to Nany. Even allowing that they sought an early boat on the Great Lakes, the dates don’t work out well.  The story as told by Chester is embellished by a detail: acquaintances from Utica passed them as they were digging the grave and joshed at them for not moving on before they realized there was a dead child to be buried. The pathos appeals to a story teller as does the irony of a Christmas death, but it is hard to make the dates fit.

After scouting around the harbor in Buffalo the family found a boat that seemed actually ready to leave for Milwaukee.  It was a wood burner that stopped along the way for fuel and freight.  They found Cleveland lovely, the fort at Detroit dilapidated, the flats at Mackinaw dull, but Milwaukee in April was a real mess.  In five years it had grown from 1700 to 8000 people and in the rain was a quagmire.  But brother Jenkin was there to meet them, and it was America. Perhaps it is here that the Welsh backgrounds dissolve into the American foreground.

*            *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *         

This document is simply a gathering from various sources primarily to provide family background for descendents of Richard and Mary.  Although I have tried to make a fairly coherent story, I have also included some minute details for those wanting to solve some difficult problems of relationships.  The main source of information is the Pedigree of the Lloyds along with related documents gathered by Lucy Threakston and John Davies in 1908.  The whole family tree can be found in Mary Lloyd-Jones’ later diagram of family relationships.  Ruth and Hugh Leader, Pearl and Ralph Chalk, Aubrey Martin, Ifan James and John Jenkins provided much additional documentary information, especially on the Enoch and Thomas families.  It would be hard to overstate the contributions of Ifan James and the late John Jenkins.  Memoirs, biographies, and incidental notes by Chester Lloyd-Jones, Maginel Wright Barney, Jane Lloyd-Jones, Jenkin Lloyd-Jones (especially as sorted out by Thomas Graham), Enos Lloyd-Jones, Ralph and Helen Lloyd-Jones, Frank Jeffrey, Jane Wood, Georgia Snoke (an indefatigable researcher and a strong source of encouragement), Mary Jane Hamilton, Mary Frederickson Joiner, Richard Thomas, Florence (Bisser) Barnet, and Heidi Kiser have filled out the story.  Where I have tried to relate the material to the general flow of Welsh history I have depended heavily on John Davies’ History of Wales or on personal comments by Gwyn Jones, poet, short story writer, and elegant translator of the Mabinogion.

Since I have found the various sources do not always agree, I have tried to note issues in doubt. Often what the children in America learned from their parents is clearly wrong or at least truncated.  Stories probably told in the evening at bedtime have a way of getting mixed with general immigration myths. I have tried to avoid compounding such errors with my own, but I accept the likelihood of my misunderstanding.  I have deliberately included some side tidbits just because I found them entertaining.  Several of the people named above have checked for errors, but in the end the story is told from my point of view.  My own contribution is not based on original research; rather I bring together material from various sources so that the work of others can be found in a relatively brief compendium.  My duty is more nearly analogous to the role of the speaker at a Coming of Age ritual.

Richard ap Ralph ap Enos, July 1,2005

AKA       Richard "Jix" Lloyd-Jones