RICHARD JONES AND ANN PARRY AND THEIR CHILDREN
Richard Jones
was born about 1831 on the western coast of Wales in Cardiganshire. We know
nothing about his early childhood, nor what it was that brought him inland to a
little village called Newton in Monmouthshire, Wales.
Perhaps it was the lure of employment in the coal and iron works , or
maybe it was for religious purposes. He was a Calvinistic Methodist, a
non-conformist group of worshipers who followed the teachings of John Calvin
rather than the teachings of the Church of England. It was in Newtown that he married Ann Parry on 7 January 1856. Ann was born in Rassau, a
small village near Brynmawr, Breconshire. Richard and Ann made their home in nearby
Tredegar, Monmouthshire, and became the parents of 8 children.
Margaret is
listed as the eldest child. She died on 23 July 1861 at the age of 4.
Eleanor was
the second child and the one who eventually became the matriarch of the family.
It is believed that Ellen, as she came to be known, was baptized a member of
the LDS church in 1878 in Tredegar. Later that year she emigrated to
Zion with a group of Saints on the ship Wyoming.
She married David Phillips in 1879 and was the mother of 11 children. She died
in Castle Gate, Utah,
25 June 1944.
Howell Parry,
the firstborn son followed the trad of his father and became a collier (a coalminer). He married
Sarah James, and they were the parents of 5 children, 3 of whom lived to
adulthood. Howell and Sarah settled in Tylorstown, Glamorganshire.
The three children (Margaret Ann, born 1892; Reese, born 1894; and Elizabeth,
born 1895) and their mother emigrated to Utah sometime before
1917, the year of Margaret Ann’s marriage to John Melvin Renshaw in
Utah. Howell
Parry Jones remained in Wales
and died in Tylerstown, Glamorganshire, in 1928.
Rees also
became a miner and was down in the mines by the age of 8. A religious boy, he
sang and was an altar boy in the Calvinistic Methodist Church in Tredegar. In
1880, at age 16, Rees brought his two little sisters, Mary Ann (age 10) and
Elizabeth (age 8), to America
on board the Wisconsin. In Salt Lake City they were reunited with their
older sister Eleanor. Rees found work as a miner in the Bingham and Midvale
areas. He married Margaret Jane Werrett Williams,
and they became the parents of 6 children. Rees died in Midvale, Utah, on 2 September
1922.
Rachel was
born 6 August 1866 on Union Street,
Tredegar, Monmouthshire. She died on 9 January 1867 at the age of 9 months.
Thomas was
born 26 May 1868. It is believed that he died in his childhood.
Mary Ann
came with her brother Rees to America
at the age of 10, and boarded with her older sister Eleanor until she learned a
trade. Mary Ann married Thomas Reese
Williams, Jr., and they were the parents of 8 children. Mary Ann died
at the birth of her baby daughter, Irene Elizabeth, on 8 December 1905. Irene
Elizabeth died two months later.
Elizabeth Ann,
the baby of the family, was born 15 March 1872, and three days later her
mother, Ann Parry Jones, died. It is believed that Richard Jones remarried
sometime after Ann’s death to get help in caring for his young family. However,
problems arose between the stepmother and the children. These problems caused
Rees to decided to leave Wales
and to take his two young sisters to America with him. Elizabeth Ann (Lizzy) was
only 8 years old when she left her father and home in Wales. When she
arrived in Salt Lake City
she, too, stayed with her sister Eleanor until she had completed some schooling
and learned a trade. She married David
Parry, a railroad worker, and they became the parents of 5 children.
Elizabeth Ann died in Ely, Nevada, on 9 March 1952.
