JONES, OWEN (1787 - 1828), pioneer in Sunday school work

Born 16 February 1787 at Towyn Meironnydd, son of John Jones of Crynllwyn; his mother (from Aberllefenni) had a brother, Owen Jones, vicar of Llandecwyn Meironnydd, after whom the boy was named. Apprenticed to a saddler at Aberystwyth, he and his cousin Robert Davies (1790 - 1841) engaged in Sunday school work; on removal to Llanidloes he continued this work. He then spent some time in London, reading the proofs of the Bible Society's first Welsh Bible. In 1806 or 1807 he removed to Shrewsbury, where again he promoted Sunday schools. Requested in 1808 to oversee the Sunday schools of Montgomeryshire; he became a Calvinistic Methodist preacher (he was ordained in 1819), married, and settled in his wife's house, Gelli, Llanfair Caereinion. He died at Gelli, 4 December 1828. He published, in 1820, a catechism, Arweinydd i Wybodaeth. It has been said of him that no one but Thomas Charles did more than he to promote Sunday schools in North Wales. Lewis Edwards (then only a lad of 19) published an elegy upon him in Goleuad Cymru (1829, 311), and John Hughes (1775 - 1854) of Pontrobert in 1830 published a memoir of him, with an elegy.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• Cymru (O.M.E.), xxxi, 117-9
• R. Williams, Montgomeryshire Worthies (1894)

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q20734082

Published date: 1959

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