William Jones in Australia

The following text is reproduced by kind permission of Gwynedd Archives Service, and is taken from the book Australians From Wales by Lewis Lloyd, published in 1988 by Gwynedd Archives and Museums Service, Gwynedd County Council, Caernarfon.

Various diaries and other documents, which recorded the experiences of William Jones in Australia, were deposited in the U.C.N.W. Archives at Bangor in the 1930s by Dr. Leslie Jones of Hafod, Llanfair P.G., Anglesey, a grandson. As part of the General Collection of MSS. they were catalogued 3571-3589 by Dr. Thomas Richards. Unfortunately, the collection was withdrawn from the Archives, but the catalogue compiled by Dr. Richards and his brief article on William Jones in his Rhwng y Silffoedd allow a brief case study of this Anglesey digger.

William Jones was born in about 1814. He became a hard-working farmer though his early diaries indicate that he was no teetotaller. He enjoyed travelling to Liverpool. Dublin and the Isle of Man (he made four trips to the Isle of Man between 1845 and 1847). In August 1852, when he was about 38, he boarded the Earl of Derby at Liverpool and sailed for Melbourne. One of the passengers was Seth Evans, who was probably from Jones’ own neighbourhood and another he simply referred to as ‘Morton’. After some time in Melbourne the trio, with the son of the landlord of the King’s Head, Bethesda, took a steamer to Geelong and walked, with their tents and provisions, to Ballarat in four days. There William Jones gained new partners, one from Llanrwst and the other from London. He met the son of Ysgubor Fawr by Tŷ’nygongl, the captain and crew of a Holyhead vessel, and two daughters of Garnan Goch who were taking lodgers and doing some sewing work. By June 1853, many more Welshmen had arrived at Ballarat. They included the son of Tŷ Canol and the grandson of Cornelius Rhoswén — in his letters home he mentioned people only from his own part of Anglesey. He had yet to encounter the ‘Llanerchymedd boys’ who must have been referred to in a letter from home. The cold weather that winter at Ballarat strengthened his resolve to return home about Christmas but his departure was to be delayed by a few years. In a letter of June 12 1853 he said that if he had 100 pairs of Llanerchymedd boots he would clear £150 profit. In Ballarat, a pair of high boots for working in wet diggings had cost him £7 and a pair of shoes £2 10s. There were just two other items in the collection relating to his time at Ballarat. His Gold Licence or Miners Right, dated September 20 1854, which was valid for three months, cost him £2. Eight regulations were listed and one related to the due and proper observance of Sundays. The collection also included some refiners’ certificates. Messrs. Browne & Wingrove certified that William Jones had produced before them ‘Bar Gold’ to the value of, minus the cost of milling and assaying, £1,413 16s. 1d. (to September 19 1855), so his efforts at Ballarat were by no means unrewarded.

William Jones was back home by January 1857 where he received a letter from William Selkirk, a general dealer, of 84 Collins Street West, Melbourne. The letter, incidentally, was carried by the Royal Charter. Selkirk clearly expected that Jones would return to Australia, but he did not. He made some money, a small fortune to most of his contemporaries in Anglesey, and quit the diggings and Australia as soon as he could. If he had been younger, he might have stayed longer. One hopes that his interesting papers have been safely preserved since they were withdrawn from the U.C.N.W. Archives at Bangor.