Tuesday, 28 October 2008

How do you find a Jones in Wales

How do you find a Jones in Wales? This was my task when I first started to look at the family of my Great Grandmother. My great grandmother was born in England, about 3 streets away from where I live now, in 1883. Though we can't find her birth anywhere in the official records, we do know she exists.
I went with my aunt to a nearby town, which was last known address of my great grandmother's parents. I didn't have any names but Jones and I thought there can't be that many. Well there was, and we spent a soggy afternoon going from grave to grave to see if anything inspired us. It didn't. We knocked at the vicarage and asked about parish records, but they sent us to a main town to the library.
I did find the marriage of my great grandmother and great grandfather in 1901 and found a name Uriah Jones. This was our start. Uriah Jones is an unusual name I thought we shouldn't have any problem. For a while I had other things to do, but this name remained in my mind and I knew I had to find out all about Uriah and his family.
One night I had a breakthrough - on another project, I was researching on the commonwealth war graves website and I thought, out of interest, lets see if I can find this relative of ours killed in World War Two. So I typed in F Jones, and what I found led me to get as far as I have in my quest to find the Jones's side of the family.
Frederick Uriah Cook Jones, was listed as killed, age 21 in 1942 - this was too uncanny I thought Uriah mmm let's look further, there it was son of William and Sarah Jane Jones and their town. That's him I said!! Later that week on our local town history website I saw there was a census for 1881 for my local town, so I thought here goes lets see if there are any Jones's. There were Jones's none I recognised - the a name hit me Uriah Jones, it can't be, can it?
I had indeed found Uriah, my great, great grandfather. Also on the census in the same street was Abel Jones - at the time no alert bells rang - but Abel is one of our family names. And in the space of one night I had found my great, great grandfather and a great, great, great grandfather (two different families).
Abel Jones was the father of Uriah's wife Sarah. From research into Uriah I have gone back two more generations and found the link. A village in Wales, not far from Ruabon and Wrexham, Rhosllanerchwrugog. It is there that I found most of our Welsh Jones's.
I knew I had made the right connection - my nan had spoken of her mother's connection to Ruabon, and I often wondered why my great, grandmother spoke and sang in both Welsh and English, despite being born in England. I now know, her father Uriah was born in Ruabon in 1843, his father John was born in Rhosllanerchwrugog in 1812 and his father Thomas also born in Rhosllanerchwrugog in the 1700's.
I also made another uncanny discovery - Uriah and Sarah, who married in 1874, were married in the same church that I married in, in 1986. Sarah died in 1908 and Uriah died the same month in 1910 that my nan, his granddaughter was born.
So, now I know you can find Jones's in Wales - two years ago we didn't know the names of any of our Welsh or English Jones's the family of my great, grandmother Emily. Now I feel I know them so well. I still need to find which one of them was known as Jones the Music as he performed to Her Majesty Queen Victoria - the piece of music he wrote is still played today.

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