My mother's father's family

It's over a year since I wrote anything in my blog! At the beginning I said I'd be writing about my family, but I seem to have been writing more about my childhood than anything else. So it's about time I came up with some family history. And I'd be really glad if anyone has any info or comment on this.

I've mentioned my great grandfather, Robert Isaac Jones before. He's the one who relocated his joinery and cabinet-making business to the Strand in Station Square, Pwllheli just after it was built in 1907. His brother, Richard Albert, married a daughter of the Liverpool House family and was the father of the famous poet and archdruid Cynan, who was knighted by Prince Charles on his investiture at Caernarfon Castle in the 1960s. I have a photo of Cynan receiving Princess Elizabeth into the Gorsedd of the Druids in 1946, an occasion which apparently few people now remember. Otherwise no one would have made a fuss about our present Archbishop of Canterbury being a member of it! The Queen is the head of the Church of England after all, and if it's OK for her to be a member, it must be OK for him.

Robert Isaac's father was Robert Abraham Jones (born 1811), who later shortened his middle name to Braham. Some of his belongings are engraved with the initials RBJ. He was a well-known local character as he was the town clerk of Pwllheli for many years and there are several extant official documents in his handwriting, not to mention the diaries he kept for most of his life and his business day-books. Before becoming town clerk he was clerk to a local solicitor, but although well-educated his parents could not afford to send him to university and he never qualified as a solicitor. But for most of his working life he ran a little business from home (Penlon in Stryd Penlon) in his spare time, doing accounts, writing letters and simple legal documents such as wills for poor people for small payments of a few shillings and often pence. At that time everything official had to be done in English and a great many people on the Llyn Peninsula could not speak, read or write it. After retiring from the post of town clerk he continued this little business into old age.

His parents lived at the old manor house of Castellmarch near Abersoch and he was their fourth son. When I first discovered this I wondered why, as this manor had a large, prosperous estate at that time, my family always maintained his parents had very little money and could not send RBJ to university. So I did some research on this.