EDITOR'S PREFACE
John Thomas wrote more than 100 years ago. In the 19th century stylistic and spelling conventions were less rigid than they are today. JT often spells the same word or name differently on the same page. He uses little, or inconsistent, punctuation; and he does not capitalize the first letter of the initial word of a sentence. I have attempted a verbatim transcript; but the text is subject to the following conventions:
1. Insert two spaces between sentences without periods.
2. Correct mispelled words that may cause the reader to stumble, e.g. "were" = were [where]; "his" = his [is]. Other mispelled words are left as is, if they are easy to read in context, e.g. "member of the Curch".
3. Capitalized words are more frequent than we see in modern English. They are left as is.
4. My interpretations or interpolations appear in [brackets] or footnotes. Empty brackets [] indicate a word omitted by JT. Brackets with a question mark [?] indicate a word that cannot be read.
5. JT often encloses "God", "Lord", or other names or titles in what look like commas, e.g. (reversed comma) Lord (standard comma). Because my word processor does not have reversed commas, I reproduce such names or titles using parentheses, e.g. (Lord). JT may intend such punctuation to be quotation marks, indicating some reluctance to write the name or title of diety.
6. JT spells place names in Wales in most cases similarly to modern usage. I sometimes show the modern spelling, e.g. Penrhiwciber [Penrhiwceiber].
7. In mid-volume 1 JT begins using a number sign (#) beneath the last word, usually a town, on a page. To save space I reproduce these signs: Cardiff [#].
8. JT uses the following abbreviations: Bro = Brother; Prest = President; K.K. or K.K.J.T. = his 3rd wife, Karen Kirstin Jensen Thomas ("Carrie"); & = and.
9. On some pages a numeral is written at the bottom of the page. I believe this is JT's method of tallying the number of meetings held that day. Since he totals his meetings on the last day of each month, I omit the daily numbers.
9. JT forms the possessive case by adding an "s". Where names already end in "s", this produces a double "s" (ss), e.g. "had supper at Bro Evanss".
10. British monetary units are: L = pound; S = shilling; D = penny.
