Beginnings

This is the family history of my maternal grandfather David Jones who was brought up at Tyleglas in the beautiful Senny Valley in Breconshire and farmed there after his marriage to my grandmother Anne Price. My mother and all but one of her siblings were born there and spent their early years there.

I have to acknowledge that I had a good head start on some of the family history as considerable research had already been done by distant Canadian descendants of two of my grandfather's nieces who married two brothers who then emigrated to Canada.  I was grateful to be sent some of this information and was then able to confirm it and in some cases discover more. I also had a copy of my grandfather's obituary which helped to confirm some of the family connections that I was to make as I researched this history.

When I began, the earliest traceable member of the family was generally accepted to be Llewellyn Jones born in 1807 the illegitimate son of David Jones and Margaret Thomas. His baptism was recorded in the Llywel Parish Register. I began with him and worked my way forward in time.

However some time later I visited the Powys Record Office to look at the Llywel PR and to my delight this gave a little more information regarding Llewellyn's parents David Jones and Margaret Thomas. This set me to finding burial records for them and I found a memorial to them at Llywel - almost certainly erected by Llewellyn some years after his father's death - but more of this as I go on.

So I begin with David Jones, a farm labourer who worked much of his life at Cwmcynwal, Traianglas, Llywel, Breconshire.