About the Archive

This archive consists of documents kept by the Jones family since the 1840s. These documents were passed down to Dr Leslie William Jones, who in the 1930s donated some of them to the University College Of North Wales, Bangor (now the University Of Wales, Bangor). Here they were catalogued by Dr Thomas Richards as items 3571-3589 as part of the General Collection of Manuscripts. The archive numbers represent the following topics:

3571      Diary and Account Book of William Jones, Glybcoed,
              Llanwenllwyfo, Anglesey, for 1843 & 1844
3572      Diary and Account Book of William Jones, Glybcoed,
              Llanwenllwyfo, Anglesey, for 1845, 1846 & 1847
3573      Letter from William Jones (Glybcoed) to his brother John, 1849
3474      Diary of William Jones’ voyage to Australia, 1852
3575      Diary of William Jones’ voyage to Australia, 1852 (a different version
              of 3474)
3576      Diary of William Jones’ voyage to Australia, 1852 (a continuation of
              3574 & 3575)
3577      Letter 1 written by William Jones from Ballarat, 1853
3578      Letter 2 written by William Jones from Ballarat, 1853
3579      Gold License to dig gold in Victoria, 1854
3580      Valuation of gold, 1855
3581      Letter from William Selkirk in Australia sent per Royal Charter, 1857
3582      Letter from William Selkirk in Australia
3583      Letter from Margaret Parry to her daughter, 19 August 1839
3584      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 30 June 1840
3585      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 15 October 1840
3586      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 28th February 1841
3587      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 18 March 1842
3588      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 29 January 1842
3589      Letter from the Hon W O Stanley, 9 October 1865
3571      Diary and Account Book of William Jones, Glybcoed,
              Llanwenllwyfo, Anglesey, for 1843 & 1844
3572      Diary and Account Book of William Jones, Glybcoed,
              Llanwenllwyfo, Anglesey, for 1845, 1846 & 1847
3573      Letter from William Jones (Glybcoed) to his brother John, 1849
3474      Diary of William Jones’ voyage to Australia, 1852
3575      Diary of William Jones’ voyage to Australia, 1852 (a different version
              of 3474)
3576      Diary of William Jones’ voyage to Australia, 1852 (a continuation of
              3574 & 3575)
3577      Letter 1 written by William Jones from Ballarat, 1853
3578      Letter 2 written by William Jones from Ballarat, 1853
3579      Gold License to dig gold in Victoria, 1854
3580      Valuation of gold, 1855
3581      Letter from William Selkirk in Australia sent per Royal Charter, 1857
3582      Letter from William Selkirk in Australia
3583      Letter from Margaret Parry to her daughter, 19 August 1839
3584      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 30 June 1840
3585      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 15 October 1840
3586      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 28th February 1841
3587      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 18 March 1842
3588      Letter from Thomas Humphreys to his sister, 29 January 1842
3589      Letter from the Hon W O Stanley, 9 October 1865

With the exception of the items relating to William Jones (Glybcoed) and his voyage to Australia, it is not clear why these documents and no others were donated to the UCNW archive. The story of William Jones is clearly the most unusual and impressive in the archive and has attracted wider interest, for example featuring in the book Australians From Wales by Lewis Lloyd. But the other documents given to the UCNW archive do not seem to have any greater general or historical significance than many others in the family collection.

The documents were withdrawn from the UCNW archive by Alwynne Humphreys Jones, on behalf of his nephew Ellis Jones, in December 1973, so that Ellis Jones could use them for a study of the family he was undertaking. Ellis Jones also inherited a large quantity of other documents, and around this time he started a long-term project to add to the information in the archive and fill in gaps about people who were mentioned or indeed who did not appear there. This involved extensive research, letter-writing, visiting churches, and going through registers and directories, particularly in Anglesey. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he organised, catalogued, transcribed and annotated hundreds of documents, often typing up old texts into edited versions in modern, corrected English, together with literal transcriptions of the originals, and displaying these alongside the original manuscripts, which are often hard to read. He made photocopies of the originals and transcriptions and gave copies of his work to his four children.

Ellis Jones died in 1994 and the archive remained in the family home, Hafod, Llanfairpwll, until his widow Mary Jones sold the house and moved to a smaller home which did not have the space to store this quantity of material. Most of the archive passed to Ellis and Mary Jones’ eldest son William, who scanned the documents in order to make them accessible to the family, who were now dispersed across England and abroad.

Their youngest son, Matthew, used the information to create a family tree, going back as far as we have records to the eighteenth century. In April 2021 William Jones created the present website as a means of sharing the archive material with the family and of making it available to a wider readership. The website is in its early stages and will probably take over a year to complete.

The following description of the archive was probably written by Dr Thomas Richards of the University College Of North Wales, Bangor: