Jones, David Bevan - Biography by D. L. Davies

From a Seion of Lands to the Land of Zion

The life of David Bevan Jones, protagonist of the early Mormon mission to Wales

- by -
D.L. DAVIES.

(For the annual conference of the Mormon History Association, held at Oxford University, 6th - 10th July, 1987, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Mormon Church in Europe).

THE 19^TH CENTURY BACKGROUND: The principality of Wales during the 19th century was a land in ferment. In economic, social and religious affairs it was a century of unprecedented turmoil that vastly changed not only the nature of Welsh society but in some places transformed large tracts of the landscape itself.

The pace and direction of change was not uniform throughout the country during this hectic era. In real terms the 19th century did not get underway in some places until much later than was the case elsewhere. Thus Merthyr Tydfil, a town in the northern part of the ancient county of Glamorgan which became the focus of rapid and large-scale industrial growth, may be said to have entered the age of blut und eissen as early as 1759 when the first of the great ironworks of that district were established at Cyfarthfa on the outskirts of what had been (until then) a sleepy agricultural settlement.

Merthyr was long to remain the focal point of a new industrial society created by the iron- and coal- dominated economy of the 19th century Wales. On the other hand, more remote quarters in north and west Wales did not experience directly a great deal of the upheaval wrought by the industrial revolution at least until the 19th century was getting underway in a calendar sense - and perhaps in some areas not until the difficult years that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

These are general statements and it is always possible to quote local circumstances that gainsay the main premise: for example in contrasting early lead-mining in rural Cardiganshire of slate-quarrying in isolated Caernarfonshire with the comparatively rural southern and eastern parts of so-called industrial counties like Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. Yet the broad picture remains: that the 19th century was a period of immense change; and that this change was concentrated first and most intensely in the south-eastern part of the country in a region extending from eastern Carmarthenshire through north and central Glamorgan and into western Monmouthshire - a region of which Merthyr Tydfil was the primary focus, especially in matters of industry, politics and religion.

The industrial and political changes of the era are large themes best put aside in terms of this paper. It must suffice to conjure up something of the sea-change they caused by referring to lines written by professor Gwyn A. Williams in a recent book of his. The professor wrote:

There were something over half a million people in Wales during the middle of the 18th century when...numbers started to multiply. From the 1780s...the increase becomes cumulative. During the first half of the 19th century, it is breakneck. By 1921...there were 2.6 million people in Wales. Over little more than four generations, the population had nearly quintupled. And over little more than three generations, the human lifespan...had virtually doubled.

Before 1841 Monmouthshire and Glamorgan were already running first and third in the growth race among the counties of England and Wales. From mid-century, the industrialising south-east sucked people in from the rest of Wales and from outside until...nearly four-fifths of the people of Wales were lodged in that...region... The pace-makers were iron, coal, and tinplate...(and) the significant world power of south Wales steel and rails. By the 1870s at the latest, Wales had become an industrial society in the sense that the terrible dominion of the harvest and seasonal cycle had been broken, and it was the rhythms of industry which had become the ultimate determinants of social life.

In 1750 the population of Wales is estimated to have been about 450,000. By the time of the first decennial census in 1801 it had grown to 587,000: an increase of 137,000 in fifty years. By the census of 1851 the population had fully doubled during the same length of time to stand at 1,163,000 people, and this growth was concentrated densely in the south-eastern corner of a country which in its entirety is only a slither larger than Massachussetts. The figures of population growth for Glamorgan alone 1750, 1801 and 1851 were as follows:

1750: 55,200
1801: 70,879
1851: 231,849

Hence, by 1851, this single county contained 20% of the population of all thirteen historic Welsh counties; and this concentration was to intensify as the 19th century proceeded.

Pre-dating and also contemporaneous with this expansion of industry and population was a marked growth in religious nonconformity in Glamorgan as in the rest of Wales. This has been widely treated elsewhere and there is no time to pursue the theme here. Nevertheless, a proper appreciation of the profound impact of nonconformity on the life of Wales is crucial not just to any understanding of the history of the country but also to comprehend the reception afforded the new Mormon faith when it first reached Wales in 1840 and thereafter.

The year 1851 is a key year for outlining the importance of nonconformity in the life of 19th century Wales. A prime reason for this must be that the only religious census ever taken in Britain was conducted then. The Welsh returns of this census have been published in two convenient volumes; and among a mass of valuable details they list most if not all meetings organized by the Latter-day Saints in Wales on census-Sunday, the 30th March, 1851. The information listed usually includes the names and offices of leading members of each congregation; facts about their usual place of meeting; and some estimate of numbers attending the various services.

Altogether, this census reveals the numerical and organisational superiority achieved uniquely in Wales by religious nonconformity over the state-backed Church of England. In 1851 there were 2,769 recorded places of worship belonging to all bodies of religious dissent within the principality. The state church could muster 1,180 churches. Numerically, the preponderance achieved (or at least claimed - for caution is necessary in assessing all membership and attendance figures) was even greater than the ration of 2.3 dissenter chapels to each Anglican church indicated in the two previous sentences. It has been estimated that whereas circa 1811 nonconformists accounted for between 15 and 20% of the Welsh people, by 1851 they outnumbered Anglicans on an average basis across the country by 5 to 1. In some districts - particularly the iron and coal communities of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire - the preponderance was far greater.

In the Merthyr Tydfil district (then inclusive of the booming Aberdare valley) the total recorded population was 76,804. Of these, the census indicated that 30,168 people had attended an evening service of one Protestant church of another (including the state church). Of these evening attenders, only 1,837 were Anglicans while the dissenting churches recorded 28,331 people. Thus, of all Protestant attendances that Sunday, only 6% adhered to the state church while an amazing 94% dissented from it in one form or another.

Of these dissenters, 11,782 adhered to chapels of the Baptist persuasion. This represents an imposing 39% of all Protestant attenders; and the impression exists that some Baptist came to see the Merthyr-Aberdare nexus as rather a fiefdom of theirs. Such an outlook was probably a factor in shaping the attitude of Baptist leaders like William Robert Davies (minister of Caersalem chapel, Dowlais) and Thomas Price (minister of Carmel chapel, Aberdare) towards what must have seemed a novel and intrusive faith being preached in their midst by Latter-day Saints - whom W.R. Davies dubbed 'Latter-day Satanists' such was his dislike of them. Professor Gwyn A. Williams has written of Welsh nonconformity generally that:

In the early 19th century the sects of Dissent threatened to become as much of a 'national Church' as Catholicism had become in Ireland. A people which around 1790 was still officially Tory and Anglican, over little more than a generation became a largely Nonconformist people of increasingly radical temper. It is one of the most remarkable cultural transformations in the history of any people....

From the middle of the century onwards, most Welsh people lived their lives within the orbit of, or in reaction to, the chapels... A whole people didindeed form along this line... Everything outside (the chapels) came to seem only half-Welsh, (the nonconformists) were the real Welsh...they came to feel that they, as a Nonconformist people, were the Welsh nation.

Into this dynamic industrial and religious milieu marched Mormonism. One of its objects was to challenge the supremacy of those denominations that had come to represent not just popular religion but also a powerful political Liberalism and even the nation itself.

The first Mormon missionaries to Wales were James Burnham and Henry Royle at Overton in Flintshire, north Wales, as early as 1840; and John Needham in Monmouthshire also in 1840. Their impact upon the Welsh people was marginal in location and effect; and the first mission into the heart of Wales was that of William Henshaw at Pen-y-darren, Merthyr, in 1843. This was closely followed by the arrival of Captain Dan Jones in north Wales from January, 1845, and at Merthyr from December that year. It is from the advent of Henshaw and Jones at Merthyr that the anni mirabile of the early Mormon mission to Wales come about.

Indicative of their impact - particularly that of Dan Jones - is the extent of the Mormon presence at Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare discernable between 1843 and 1851.

It was reported to a church conference at Manchester in December, 1845 that Henshaw had founded 'in the Merthyr distric' meetings with a membership of 493. By January, 1849 it was reported to the Glamorgan association conference of the Latter-day Saints that membership of their congregations at Merthyr and Aberdare stood at 1,430. Over half of these (823) were members at Methyr itself; a further 209 belonged to the Dowlais meeting (in the village where W.R. Davis was Baptist minister); and 277 were recorded at Aberdare (where Thomas Price was the Baptist leader).

Even if one allows for positive propaganda in the membership reports of an embattled minority such as the Mormons at Methyr in 1851, it is striking indeed to note that in the returns of the religious census of that year the Latter-day Saints reported an afternoon attendance at their meetings of 1,190 in the wider Merthyr district; and that this was only 647 fewer than the maximum attendance claimed by the state church on the evening of the same Sunday.

Merthyr, the oldest and biggest centre of that new industrial society which had nonconformity at its heart, was the focus of missionary work by the Saints in Wales. What of the other centre of economic growth in the district - Aberdare and its surroundings villages?

During the early 19th century it had also seen a steady urbanisation based on the iron industry but not on the scale witnessed at Merthyr. Yet the population of the historic parish of Aberdare had risen from 6,471 in 1841 to 14,999 in 1851, and was to more than double again in the next ten years to stand at 32,299 in 1861. In just twenty years its population quintupled. Nonconformity grew dramatically alongside industry. Between 1751 and 1811 there had been but one purpose-built chapel in the parish. From 1810 to 1819, two new chapels were built; from 1820 to 1829, five more; from 1830 to 1839, a further one; form 1840 to 1849, seven more; and between 1850 and 1853 nine new chapels were added to this impressive pattern of expansion. By 1853 there were 25 purpose-built dissenter chapels in the locality (not including meetings held in private houses or other public buildings) as opposed to one tiny medieval place of worship belonging to the state church. At the centre of this expansion stood the formidable figure of Thomas Price (1820 - 1888), the local Baptist luminary.

The cause of rapid industrial growth and of growth in religious provision in the area was the systematic exploitation from 1837 of probably the best steam-coal reserves to be found in the highly-valued south Wales coalfield. The industrial base of the Aberdare district was transformed from iron to coal; and its subsequent development was to outstrip even that of Merthyr. The mid-19th century was a time of great economic and cultural confidence at Aberdare, and of a jealous rivalry with neighbouring Merthyr Tydfil. Professor Ieuan Gwynedd Jones has summarized it thus:

...as early as 1851 it had become evident that Merthyr was losing its numerical superiority and with it its influence over its lesser neighbour. For between 1851 and 1871 Aberdare added 26,000 to its population, while Merthyr added only 8,000. By 1868 it was Aberdare which was providing the main initiatives...and this was expressive of the self-conscious aggressiveness of a valley community which felt itself to be overtaking its older neighbour in both numbers and wealth.

In this teeming and turbulent mining town where life was hard; where few people had deep roots; where Welsh was very much the lingua franca and English largely an alien tongue; where various shades of nonconformity were vying with each other in a 'race of pews', the Church of England itself had difficulty in maintaining its credibility as the church of the state. Despite bold efforts to keep up with nonconformity the local vicar, John Griffith, was moved to say of his parish that 'There is no place like it, unless it be San Francisco'.

A WELSH SAN FRANCISCO:

No Quakers or Presbyterians: but Independents, Baptists, Methodists, Latter-day Saints, Plymouth Brethren etc. without number! I can't tell the names of all their preachers; there are so many...

Into this bruising environment between December, 1845, when Dan Jones settled at Merthyr, and 12th July, 1846, when minutes of the Welsh Saints; conference held at Merthyr recorded the existence of 34 branches in Wales, the Mormon faith appears to have made its formal entry into the Aberdare district. One of these 34 branches was at Hirwaun, about three miles north of Aberdare.

It is likely that individual Mormons had visited or settled in this locality at any time since the faith was established at Merthyr in 1843; but the reference to July, 1846 is perhaps the earliest clear mention of an official branch of Latter-day Saints in the wider Aberdare area. It is not suprising that the Saints should surface early at Hirwaun for it is the nearest part of the Aberdare district to Merthyr; and between 1818 and 1858 the Hirwaun ironworks were owned and operated by the Crawshay family which also owned the great Cyfarthfa works at Methyr. It may well have been among the workforce of this family that the first Mormon missionaries in the Aberdare area had their initial contacts and conversions. A further sign of their significant presence at Hirwaun is the observation that they were strong enough by 1849 to attempt election to the governing body of the local British (i.e. nonconformist) School. Fortunately, the writer implies, this bid was repulsed.

There is an implicit reference to a branch of the Saints at Aberdare as early as 1844; and when the Welsh Saints met in conference in Monmouthshire on 3rd October, 1847 mention was made of the Aberdare branch as one that was 'scraping the moss from off itself' since it was expected 'to bloom again like a green branch in summer'.

It is clear, therefore, that by the end of 1847 there was a settled presence of Latter-day Saints at Aberdare. In a report of January, 1848 a branch of 30 members was recorded there; one of 22 members at Hirwaun; and of 33 at neighbouring Cwmbach. The presidents of each branch respectively were J. Davies, Daniel Davies, and John Price. The same branches figure in a further report to the Glamorgan association conference a year later (January, 1849), but with substantially increased memberships: 150 at Aberdare; 59 at Hirwaun; and 68 at Cwmbach. The presidents then were Joseph Davies at Aberdare (probably the same as 'J. Davies; a year before); Daniel Evans at Hirwaun; and John Price at Cwmbach (as previously).

One reason for this increase in membership from 85 in January, 1848 to 277 twelve months later was the conversion to Mormonism on the 2nd November, 1847 of William Howells (1816 - 1851). He had been a lay-preacher attached to the congregation of Thomas Price at Carmel chapel, Aberdare. His dynamism and courage are revealed in his subsequent career as the proto Mormon missionary to France, making the first of four journeys in July, 1849; and completing the series in September, 1850. Before his initial visit to Britanny, Howells wrote on the 19th March, 1849 of his success in converting to the Saints many of those who heard him preach at Aberdare. He informed the editor of the Millennial Star that:

I have in the course of the last twelve months baptized about one hundred, which I consider a fair commencement.

Through the labor of Howells and others, Aberdare became a town which rivaled Llanelli as the Mormons' second centre in Wales. This evangelism accounted for the presence of converts from the Aberdare valley on board the Buena Vista, a ship which sailed from Liverpool on 26th February, 1849 with a party of 249 converts bound for America under the guidance of Captain Dan Jones. This was the first ever contingent of Welsh Saints to cross the Atlantic in pursuit of Zion.

The increasingly secure Mormon presence in Wales is evidenced in those Anglican church records concerned with registering Protestant dissenter meetinghouses; and this is as true of the Aberdare and Merthyr district as of anywhere. Under the Toleration Act of 1688 (1 William & Mary, c.18), Protestant dissenters were allowed to worship in their own meetinghouses as long as these were registered with the local bishop or with the clerk to the local quarter sessions. This requirement was rescinded in 1851, but the practice lingered in some rural areas into 1852 and 1853. These records detail most of the formally-constituted meetings of the Mormon Church during its pioneer years in Britain between 1837 and 1851; and they are an invaluable source for the intra-mural history of the Church.

The first registration of a Saints' meeting in Glamorgan occurs on the 27th March, 1846 at 'a hall called the Cymreigyddion Hall being over the White Lion Inn' in Merthyr Tydfil. It was registered in the name of Dan Jones. During the final six years of registration the following pattern emerges to illustrate the presence of the Saints in the county:

At Aberdare in particular two registrations figure: one for the town itself, dated 4th October, 1848; and one at Hirwaun, dated 15th January, 1850. That for Aberdare was handwritten and submitted by William Howells. It registered the meeting at 'a house called Welsh Harp Public House, residence of Phillip Rees, situated in Commercial St'. The Welsh Harp inn was located at 5, Commercial St., and was licensed between 1835 and 1916. A branch of Woolworths now stands on the site. At Hirwaun, the registration was made on a form printed by John Davis, the dynamic Mormon printer at Georgetown, Merthyr. It was submitted in the name of Daniel Evans who had been local president in January, 1849. He stated that the meeting was based at 'a room adjoining the Patriot public-house'. This inn stood at 66, High St., Hirwaun, and functioned as licensed premises until its closure in 1928.

It is important to bear in mind that these registrations do not reveal the full picture of any dissenting denomination's presence in a given area. Many ministers and deacons were, it seems, reluctant to register their premises with the Episcopal authority by the 1840s: either having little wish to acknowledge its role in such matters or because they simply forgot or didn't get around to doing it in good time. Allowance has also to be made for the likelihood that not all deposited registrations have survived in the bishop's archive. These provisos apply to Latter-day Saints as to other dissenting bodies. For example, reference has been made to the existence of a branch of the Mormon Church at Cwmbach near Aberdare in January, 1848; yet no registration of this meeting exists among the records deposited at the National Library of Wales today. This is also true of another branch of the Church in the Aberdare valley central to the remainder of this paper: that at Aberaman, of which David Bevan Jones would have been the leading member.

Before considering the Aberaman scene and David Bevan Jones' role in it, cognizance should be taken of some other sources pertaining to Mormonism in the district. These include particulars of the religious census of 1851; a couple of early histories of the surrounding area; the unpublished correspondence of emigrants (see Appendix A); and a number of newspaper articles and notes.

In the 1851 census an elder named William Sims reported on behalf of the town-centre congregation at Aberdare. It appears to have been meeting still at the Welsh Harp Inn (though this is not specified). William Howells was no longer in a position to represent it since census day was the 30th March and on 4th March Howells and his family had sailed on board the Olympus from Liverpool, bound for the Zion of the Saints in what was still being loosely called 'California'.

Sims stated that the congregation's meeting place was not one used exclusively for public worship - the usual 'code' for an inn. He added that no charges were levied for seating and further described the premises in these words:

This is a spacious room adjoining another Building, but not used exclusively as a place of Worship but on Sundays and Week Evenings, and will not contain more than 200 seated.

He estimated attendance at meeting in respect of census Sunday itself and also on an average over the preceding twelve months. He declared that on 30th March, 110 persons plus 65 scholars (presumably children & young people) had been present at the morning service; 178 had attended in the afternoon; and 186 had frequented the evening service. During the previous year he estimated morning, afternoon and evening average attendances of 100 (+ 40 scholars); 150 and 160 respectively.

No return exists within the religious census for the Hirwaun branch of the Church although it is known to have been active at the time. Compensation for this loss comes in the form of a return for a branch of which we have no other knowledge save that in the census: that of Penderyn, a scattered agricultural community slightly to the north of Hirwaun. Though not the same as the Hirwaun assembly, it was probably spawned by it.

This unexpected return was submitted in the names of three officers: Morgan Evans; George Roberts (representing English-medium members) and John Davis (representing the Welsh-speaking membership). They also met in a building not used exclusively for religious worship; but they had followed the usual nonconformist custom in Wales and given their premises a Biblical designation - Tabernacle. The building in which it was housed had been erected in 1838 and had free space for 500 people with additional room for 50 standing. They too submitted estimates of actual and average attendances at English - and Welsh - medium meetings which show the Welsh assembly to have been the dominant force in the life of the congregation. The figures are as follows:

Strangely, even the competent historian of Penderyn parish, David Davies ('Dewi Cynon') fails to mention this Saints' meeting in his Hanes Plwyf Penderyn, published in 1905; and the location of this little Tabernacle must remain a matter of speculation.

There is some interesting information concerning the Mormon presence in the Aberdare district to be found in two 19th century histories of the locality. In the mid-century volume Gardd Aberdâr there is a brief statement listing four branches of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints functioning in the area in 1853. The passage reads:

MORMONIAID:

Yn Ymgynull mewn ystafelloedd tafarnau neu aneddai, yn y Cwmbach, Aberamman, pentref Aberdar, a Hirwaun; meddylir fod eu nifer yn 250.

Assembling at inn-rooms or dwelling-houses, in Cwmbach, Aberamman, Aberdare village, and Hirwaun; it is thought they number 250.

In view of the Church's conference reports of January, 1848 and 1849 and the details of the 1851 census, there seems little reason to question the level of this membership assessment - unless it be to view it as somewhat conservative.

The other 19th century history to contain allusions to Mormonism in the area bordering on Aberdare is that written by an Anglican clergyman, the Revd. William Thomas ('Glanffrwd') in the form of recollections of his boyhood in Llanwynno parish during the 1840s and 1850s. This is a charming work reminiscent of the Diary of Francis Kilvert, and has been published in three Welsh editions and one English. His observations are more anecdotal than factual; but focus nonetheless on two themes central to a Mormon presence everywhere during the mid-19th century: evangelism and emigration.

Thomas writes of the Morgan family of Pwll-hywel farm, Llanwynno, who emigrated to 'California' with their 80-year-old mother, Shwan. She set out for Zion, he said, 'in strong confidence of meeting there her husband Dafyyd Pwll-hywel in the Salt Valley, although he had died in the year that cholera had visited the Llanwynno district' (i.e., probably in 1849). There is an echo in this reference to old Shwan Morgan's confident hope of an accusation sometimes leveled against the Saints: that they allegedly deluded simple-minded people into emigrating to Zion in America by holding out to them the prospect of meeting there their departed loved ones. It was an accusation which Dan Jones in particular was always at pains to refute.

Unusually for the mild William Thomas, he is firmly condemnatory of the Saints and of the way in which it is claimed they set Welshmen against their own country:

Crefydd wael yw hono sydd yn peri i ddyn lwyr anghofio ei wlad a chyfeillion boreu oes! Nis gall fod yn grefydd: hono sydd yn lladd gwladgarwch... Ond wele, mae Seintiolaeth ac amlwreiciaeth wedi torri min gwladgarwch, wedi lladd cyfeillgarwch, a pheri i'r...fro enedigol ymadael o'r cof fel breuddwyd...Heblaw meibion Pwllhywel, cymerodd Seintiolaeth afael yn William Davies o Benwal; aeth yntau gyda'r fintai drosodd i'r Jerusalem newydd... Mae ef wedi marw yn lled ddiweddar, ac wedi cael bedd yn mhell o wlad ei dadau yn naear... a gysegrwyd gan draed yr Indiaid, a chableddus honiadau blaenoriaid Seintiau y dyddiau diweddaf.

It is a poor religion that causes a man to utterly forget his country and the friends of his first days! It cannot be a religion: that which kills patriotism... Yet behold, Saintism and polygamy have blunted the edge of patriotism, have slain friendship, and caused the... native heath to flee the memory like a dream... Apart from the sons of Pwllhywell, Saintism also gripped William Davies of Penwal; he too went with that number to the new Jerusalem... He has died fairly recently, and had a grave far from the land of his fathers in earth consecrated by the feet of the Indians, and the blasphemous claims of leading Latter-day Saints.

Thomas then relates anecdotes and rhymes (probably of interest to folklorists) recalled from his juvenile encounters with the Saints, and the air of these is quite light-hearted. Yet they show the depreciation early Mormon evangelists faced when they held open-air meetings and baptisms. However, the young William did not escape scot-free from his exploits in teasing and imitating the Saints. He tells how he and a friend, William Rhyd-y-gwreiddyn, went to play at baptizing and how they both fell into the river. So, he adds, 'cefais chwipsi am wlychu yn gystal ag am ffoi i gyfarfod y Seintiau' ('I had a hiding for getting wet as well as for running away to the Saints' meeting').

Emigration took a very heavy toll of converts to the Mormon faith in the Aberdare district as elsewhere in Wales and Britain. This is evidenced in Specific emigration reports published in the Welsh Mormon journal Udgorn Seion (Zion's Trumpet) and in published membership figures for the Welsh Mission which show a decline in numbers as the 1850s proceeded. In January, 1862 for example the Mission had 1,900 members as compared to 5,205 declared in 1852. By February, 1868 membership stood at 652 belonging to 13 branches; by 1878 it had fallen further to 457 although only 83 had emigrated that year. In 1890 there were only 162 members in Wales; and by 1900 a very slight revival had raised the number to 263 spread between just five branches - those at Cardiff, Merthyr, Abersychan, Abertillery and Ystrad Rhondda.

Other factors also served to lessen the impact of the Mission in Wales. These included news of hardship in Utah itself; the outbreak of the American Civil War, which did not enhance the image of a Zion in the West; widespread disavowal of the practice of plural marriage; the loss of Welsh language journals after the cessation of Udgorn Seion in 1862; the death of the inspirer of the Welsh Mission, Dan Jones, in January, 1861; and, no doubt, the cyclical loss of momentum which all but the most ardent experience from time to time.

An awareness of disagreement between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Reorganized Church of L.D.S. reached Wales after 1863. Aberdare was an area where the Reorganized Church made some impact after establishing itself in Wales in 1863-64; and its short-lived periodical, Yr Adferydd (The Restorer), was first published there.

At a conference of the Reorganized Church at Llanelli on 15th May, 1864 a branch at Aberdare was represented. At another such conference at Merthyr on 30th April, 1865 branches from Hirwaun, Cwmbach and Aberaman were present. The Reorganized Church seems then to have become dormant in the area and there is no evidence to associate them with those few signs of activity by 'mainstream' Mormons at Aberdare after 1865. Yet the Reorganized Church remained active elsewhere in south Wales; and Joseph Smith III, its President, visited Ystrad Rhondda whilst on a preaching tour of Britain in 1903. It will be interesting to learn in future whether he spoke elsewhere in the region.

There is some slight evidence of continued official Mormon activity at Aberdare during the late 1850s and thereafter. From a list of Latter-day Saint places of worship on the cover of a pamphlet by Orson Pratt, translated by David Bevan Jones in 1857, it emerges there were meetinghouses locally at Cwmbach and Aberaman. In the former place, the congregation met at the Lifeboat Inn licensed premises until 1907. In the latter place, the congregation met at the Lifeboat Inn situated at 2, Canal Terrace, Cwmbach, and long since demolished. It served as licensed premises until 1907. In the latter place, Saints met at the Oddfellows Hall, Aberaman; but oral and written enquiries have not succeeded to date in locating this venue. Details are also emerging in private correspondence of individual members at Cwmbach between 1857 and circa 1867, by which time some emigrated to Utah; and the Millennial Star of 1880 reveals there was still a branch of the Church at Cwmbach in that year - apparently the only one left in the district, and one of only 16 branches remaining in Wales.

Although no places of worship were included in the 1857 pamphlet list for either Aberdare itself or Hirwaun, valuable testimony to the continued missionary activity of Latter-day Saints in the area survives in a note by the historian T.H. Lewis of a conversation he had sometime before January, 1952 with Mr Ifano Jones, M.A., (1865 - 1955). In this, Lewis noted how Jones had witnessed Saints evangelising at Aberdare during the 1870s and thereafter. Jones had been born in 1865, so his memories were those of a child and young man.

Jones declared his memory of the Saints to be clear. They held meetings during the winter in various long-rooms of local public houses; during the summer they preached on the 'comin bach' ('little common') where the Aberdare Old Boys' Grammar School stands today. Their meetings were held after services in three neighbouring chapels had ended. They were few in number - about 20 - and most were 'ordinary workmen'. They did not mention plural marriage and Brigham Young in their sermons, Jones said, but spoke a lot about heaven and emigrating. Lewis concluded his note by adding that when a missionary from Utah came to Aberdare in 1890, Jones (then aged 25) met him and saw that the cause at Aberdare was fading fast - if it had not indeed vanished already.

A few years before this conversation of 1890, David Lewis, President of the Welsh Conference, was moved to compare the reduced numbers of the Church at that time with what he had known prior to his emigration from Wales in 1856. At Merthyr in 1883 Lewis spoke where the Apostle John Taylor had spoken a generation before, and said:

What a great difference in the size of the congregation now and then. When President Taylor spoke... the people gathered from all parts to listen until the Square and streets were packed with people, while now only a few would stop and listen... The 34 years' preaching of the Elders since President Taylor was here has left very few who will endure sound doctrine.

In effect, Mormonism remained in the doldrums in Wales despite regular missionary effort until circa 1930, when membership stood at a total of 200 in only three branches. Then, on 10th January, 1932, the first baptisms into the Mormon faith at Merthyr Tydfil for many years took place. Four new converts were admitted to the Church, and this proved to be the start of slow but steady growth. In 1952 there were five formally constituted branches of the Church in Wales. By the early 1960s missionaries were again active for the faith at Aberdare, holding meetings at Aberaman - scene of perhaps the most dramatic of many confrontations between Mormonism and nonconformity in 19th century Wales. This was a battle in which the antagonists were Thomas Price, Baptist minister of Carmel chapel, Aberdare, and David Bevan Jones, ex-Baptist minister of Gwawr chapel, Aberaman. Consideration will now be given to the background and events of this cause celebre.

FROM A SEION OF LANDS:

'A Seion y gwledydd yw hi'

David Bevan Jones, or 'Dewi Elfed' according to the poetic nom-de-plume he adopted and by which he came to be widely known, was born in 1807 in the parish of Llandysul, Cardiganshire, in the diocese of St David's. He was given the name 'David' at his christening, and seems to have appended the name 'Bevan' later. There may also have been some uncertainty about the surname to be used by the family on a permanent basis: for Llandysul in the early 19th century was a virtually monoglot Welsh-speaking area in which the patronymic system traditionally favoured by the Welsh must have taken longer to die than in most other places.

He was christened on the 30th June, 1807 by the vicar of Llandysul, the Revd. H. Bowen, in the local parish church. It should, perhaps, be emphasized that this was the date of his christening and not of his birth.

It is difficult to discern whether or not he had brothers or sisters. For one thing, there are deficiencies between the ecclesiastical years 1799/1800 and 1811/12 in the bishop's transcripts of the parish from which the above entry is taken. These deficiencies make it hazardous to try and identify the parents of a family at the time of their marriage and on each subsequent occasion when a child may have been born to them.

Fortunately, the relevance of the entry pertaining to Dewi Elfed is certain because it agrees fully in both time and place with what is indicated in the census of 1851 about his personal background. The transcript of 1807 also concurs with what is stated of his background in the published history of Llandysul parish: that Dewi Elfed was born the son of 'John and Hannah Jones, Penstar'.

Since the name 'John' was sometimes used as a variant for 'Jones', especially during that time when surnames had not settled into their hereditable form in Wales, it may be that these transcripts record the christening of two older brothers of Dewi Elfed. On the 11th October, 1802 and the 25th January, 1805, the rite is recorded in respect of a boy named Abraham and a boy named Isaac (respectively). Both were sons of John and Hannah John (sic). Unfortunately, there are no other such indicative entries for these early years of the 19th century.

The first thirty or so years of Dewi Elfed's life are something of a mystery, and the little biographical order one has been able to impose upon the void has been a painstaking endeavour with only patchy results. However, it is possible to reconstruct something of his earliest years if only in general terms.

To begin with, his christening into the state church in 1807 suggests that his parents, like most Welsh people until that time, retained at least a token allegiance to that church. Yet, as in the case of the majority of the Welsh nation, it is likely they felt increasingly drawn towards one or another of the nonconformist denominations. The period 1800 to 1830 was one of considerable growth in the following these churches commanded; and their expansion was further fuelled by the final secession from the Church of England in 1811 of the powerful Methodist tendency in Wales. Yet at the time of his birth Dewi Elfed's family appear to have remained nominally Anglican.

It would seem that this did not long remain the case, for Dewi himself indicated in a statement made years later that he had entered the Baptist faith at the age of 15 or so - i.e., in about 1822. In a spirited account of his rift with the Baptist denomination, Dewi included the following retrospective view:

Dyna i chwi...dipyn o ddechreu hanes fy helynt a'r Bedyddwyr, yn mhlith pa rai y bum yn gweinidogaethu am flynyddau, ac yn eu cyfundeb am wyth-ar-hugain o flynyddau, a hyny yn ddidor o'm mebyd.

There you have...a little of the beginning of my turmoil with the Baptists, amongst whom I ministered for years, and of whose communion I was a member for twenty-eight years without interruption from the days of my youth.

In this passage he was writing of events that had happened in 1850: of his and his congregation at Gwawr chapel, Aberaman, being disavowed by the quarterly meeting of the Glamorgan Baptist Asociation in session at Aberdare on the 6th November that year. Since he had been born in 1807, was writing of 1850, and was quoting a membership of the Baptist fraternity that had lasted twenty-eight years until that time, it follows he converted to the Baptists at the time and age indicated earlier.

There used to be two Baptist chapels in the Llandysul neighbourhood: Capel Pen-y-bont established in 1774/76, and Capel Ebeneser established in 1833. Since 1923 the two have been united at Pen-y-bont. It follows that the cause into which Dewi Elfed was baptized circa 1822 was that of Pen-y-bont since the other had not yet been constituted. In 1833, however, a division occurred within the Pen-y-bont congregation which led to the establishment of a separate cause at Ebeneser. From the evidence of a Pen-y-bont register book which the minister and dissentients took with them to their new home it appears that Dewi Elfed's family were among those who made the move to Ebeneser.

This register book throws only a dim light upon Dewi Elfed's family, but enough to illustrate their continued link with the Baptists at Llandysul between at least 1837 and 1864 (i.e., long after Dewi himself had withdrawn from the denomination).

Although a member at Ebeneser presumably since its foundation in 1833, the register book of the chapel does not give full details of Dewi's own immediate family as one would have wished. For these details one has to turn to the 1851 census at Aberdare. There we learn that Dewi was then aged 43; was married to his wife, Anna, who was aged 45; was living in the 'Abergwawr' neighbourhood; and that the couple had five children. Their particulars were recorded thus:

Like Dewi, all these were recorded as having been born in the parish of Llandysul; and according to their ages above they would have been born in the following order: Anna - 1833; Aneurin - 1837; Mary - 1840; Daniel - 1844; Ellen - 1846. Given that these ages are correct, the two youngest would probably have been born in neighbouring Llanwenog parish, where Dewi Elfed was to be Baptist minister from 1841 to 1846; and the Latter-day Saints' Llanelli branch records actually specify that the youngest of all, Ellen was born at Llanwenog on the 29th July, 1844 (sic).

The birth of only one of these children is recorded with certainty in the Ebeneser register book: that of the second child, Aneurin (on the later numbered 36). The entry reads:

Aneurin - The son of David Jones and Hanna (sic) his wife in the village of Llandyssul county of Cardigan was born the 26th day of January in the 1837 (sic). Registered by John Jones.

Immediate points to emerge from this record are: (i) that the Mrs Anna Jones of 1851 is here referred to as 'Hanna'; (ii) that in January, 1837 the family was resident at Llandysul; and (iii) that the entry was made by John Jones who, from the history of Llandysul parish, is known to have been the minister of Ebeneser chapel at the time.

There are no references to the three youngest children in this register book; but there are two other births which may be of some interest in trying to establish details of Dewi Elfed's close family and a date for his marriage to Anna/Hanna Jones. These two births appear on a page later numbered 33. They concern:(i) Anne, daughter of 'David Jno. Daniel and Hannah his wife', born in Llandysul village on the 27th October, 1830; and (ii) Hannah, also the daughter of 'David Jno. Daniel and Hannah his wife', and born in Llandysul village on the 19th February, 1833.

These girls were clearly sisters; but it may be that they were also linked to Dewi Elfed and his family. One does not want to sift minutely through every grain of possible association; yet one should note that the names of the girls' parents are compatible with the names of Dewi and his wife; that Dewi and Anna Jones are recorded in 1851 as having a daughter Anna who would have been born in 1833; that the elements 'Jno.' (i.e. John) and 'Daniel' in the girls' names are related both to Dewi's own surname 'Jones' and to the name he gave his fourth child - Daniel (as if there were some family association with the name). Moreover, in a list of members at Ebeneser in 1856 contained in the register book of the chapel there appears the name 'Mary John Daniel, Penstare'. This quotes the full surname of the two girls with the property at which Dewi Elfed had been born in 1807, Dewi Elfed's third child was also named Mary. The fact that there is no clean and simple alignment of surnames between the two girls on one hand and David Bevan Jones on the other need not preclude a close association between them: even a parental relationship. Welsh surnames were sometimes still in flux during the early 19th century, not just between generations but occasionally in relation to one individual; and there is sufficient alignment of detail between the two parties to presume some kinship among them.

From all this, it is possible to summarize what is known of Dewi Elfed's family in the following terms:

1. he had at least five children as stated in the census of 1851;
2. the birth of one of them (Aneurin) is recorded in the Ebeneser register book, and that of another (Ellen) figures in the Saints' Llanelli branch records;
3. there are two other births entered in the chapel register which probably relate in some way to Dewi Elfed's known family;
4. that if the first of these two other births represents the first-born child of Dewi's marriage then he would have been wed during or before 1830;
5. in any event, Dewi Elfed had married his wife, Anna/Hanna, by the time their certain daughter was born in 1833.

It is hardly possible to be more precise than this in relation to the marriage. There are two marriages between a David Jones and an 'Anne' recorded in the Llandysul transcripts in 1831, but none during 1830 or 1832/33. It is unlikely that either of these 1831 matches bears a relationship to Dewi Elfed. Both the 1831 Annes were natives of Llandysul parish whereas Dewi's wife according to the 1851 census was not. Unfortunately, the parish of Mrs Jones' birth is not clearly written in the census returns. It is abbreviated indecipherably to something like 'Llangend.'; and is stated to have been in Carmarthenshire rather than in Cardiganshire where Llandysul is located. However, no matter where it was located, the prevalent custom was for a marriage to take place in the native parish of the bride rather than in that of the groom so that one should probably not bother to try and identify the wedding at Llandysul at all. Since the 1851 note is so unclear one does not really know where to begin to look for the bride's place of birth.

Before leaving the business of establishing the details of Dewi Elfed's family background one should note that the Ebeneser register book contains a few other references to people who were almost certainly relatives of his. The 'Mary John Daniel, Penstare' of that 1856 membership list has already been mentioned. In addition to her, the following individuals may also be identified:

1892
1838
54 Hana Penstare Baptized - one of Ten
(see rear endpaper)

ii) John Penstar; Hanna Penstar; Anne Jones Penstar
(see Ebeneser membership list, 1850, pp.115/6)

iii) Nany Penstare; Hannah daughter of John Penstar
(see Ebeneser membership list, 1856, pp.94 & 108)

These are obviously members of Dewi Elfed's extended family; and there are some brief notes on the state of their membership at Ebeneser attached to their names in most cases; but there is no time to pursue these details now. In any event, they are marginal to the main thrust of this paper.

EARLY LITERARY INTERESTS:

It was in the field of literature - hymns, poems, of salutation, translated tracts and satirical, lampooning songs aimed at leaders of the so-called 'sectaries' - that Dewi Elfed made one of his most important contributions to defending and projecting early Mormonism in Wales. These works, and his lengthy articles in Udgorn Seion giving his side of the story regarding the breach with the Baptists in 1850-51, reveal a considerable gift in handling literary form, ideas and polemical argument.

Prior to his conversion, Dewi Elfed was likewise active in a literary direction: as an aspiring lyricist (insofar as we can judge), and as a competent litterateur serving denominational ends in a Baptist context. There are instances of his verses and essays in the Baptist journal Seren Gomer (Star of Gomer) from 1841 on; though even at this early stage he was prone to attract a controversial response as the following passage, written in reply to one of his articles, illustrates:

Beth yw yr ymgecru a thaflu gwenwyn sydd arno yn barhaus pan nad oedd neb yn gwneuthur dim iddo yn y lleiaf... Os dywedwn y gwir, yr ydym yn gweled Dewi dipyn yn rhy fychan (nid o gorff yn unig ond o enaid hefyd) i godi arf yn ei erbyn. Gwir yw ei fod ef wedi magu rhyw feddyliau anfesurol amdano ei hun.

What is this constant backbiting and throwing of vitriol when no-one was doing anything at all to provoke him... To tell the truth, we see Dewi as rather too small (not only of body but also of spirit) to bother to engage him in battle. The truth is that he has nurtured some immeasurable ideas about himself.

Since no representation of Dewi is likely to have survived it is interesting to note the implication here that he was short of stature. It must be admitted that, whilst religious acrimony was frequently directed by nonconformists and Anglicans at each other, and by both at Roman Catholicism, it is very unusual for one Baptist writer to publicly refer to another of his denomination - and he an ordained minister - in terms such as the above.

Be that as it may, it is appropriate now to consider what one can of Dewi Elfed's non-denominational and pre-Mormon literary works.

Little evidence for these has survived. In an obviously inaccurate entry for Dewi Elfed in the bibliography of his home county between 1600 and 1964, three such early and 'secular' titles are mentioned:

i Eos Dyssul (Rhan 1): a 24pp booklet containing 'a little of the poetical work of David Jones, Llandysul, (Dewi Elfed)'; printed by William Jones at Newcastle Emlyn in 1838;

ii Can Newydd yn dangos Niweidiau Meddwdod ynghyd a'r budd a'r Lles sydd o lwyrymwrthod a hwynt: a song in favour of teetotalism and against the evils of alcohol; printed by W. Jones at Newcastle Emlyn, n.d., 4pp;

iii Serch Gerdd a gyfansoddwyd ar daer Dymuniad y sawl y perthynai iddynt ac un neillduawl y Claf o gariad: a lengthy ballad over 4pp to a lovelorn girl; no imprint, n.d.

The source for these entries is an essay by John Davies (1860 - 1939) of Llandysul entitled Llenorion a Llenyddiaeth Ceredigion ('The Writers and Literature of Caradiganshire'); but since the bibliography merely repeats the essay the original source does not take us further.

Despite extensive searching personally and on one's behalf, one has been able to locate a copy only of the third item in the list: the song to a lovelorn girl. There is an original copy of this undated ballad in the pamphlet collection of the library of St David's University College, Lampeter, and a 1905 reprint in the Goodwin Collection of 19th century Welsh verse at the library of the University College of North Wales, Bangor.

Apart from material in the journals, it seems that this is the sum of the literary remains of Dewi Elfed in Wales. There may be something more in American repositories. A striking instance of this, albeit in a Mormon context, is the unique survival in a bound copy of Udgorn Seion volume VI (July, 1853 to December, 1853) and now at Harvard University Library of a 14-verse Annerchiad ('Greeeting') poem. This was written by Dewi Elfed to wish 'God Speed' to William Phillips, President of the Welsh Mission, and John Davis, the Mormon printer, upon their emigration to Zion in January, 1854. It had been Phillips that had baptized Dewi into the Mormon faith at Aberaman on 27 April, 1851.

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY

The Ebeneser register book confirmed Dewi Elfed's residence at Llandysul at the time his son Aneurin was born there in 1837. It is not known by what means Dewi made a living at this stage in his life; but by June, 1841 he had become an ordained Baptist minister.

There is no evidence that Dewi Elfed took formal ministerial training at a denominational college. The more likely course by which he entered the full-time ministry was by serving an apprenticeship as an accredited lay-preacher for some years. This would mean his being sponsored by his home congregation and journeying around the Baptist chapels of the district on as wide a basis as possible in order to make his mark. Having achieved this he might receive a 'galwad' ('a call') from a particular congregation to minister to them; but recognition of his propriety so to serve would also be required of the relevant district authority within the denomination. This was usually the county association.

There is every indication that this is what occurred in Dewi Elfed's case: for it is said directly that he was 'reared to be a preacher' by the congregation meeting at Ebeneser, Llandysul. His first pastoral charge was at Seion Baptist church, Cwrtnewydd, in the parish of Llanwenog, Cardiganshire. This chapel stood only seven or eight miles from Llandysul and had been constituted in 1829. Unfortunately, the records of the chapel do not commence until 1869, so that no detailed account of his period there survives today. Yet it is known he was inducted as minister at Cwrtnewydd on the 17th and 18th June, 1841; and that he remained there until the autumn of 1846.

This latter date is available because of an entry in the Baptist journal Seren Gomer for November, 1846 which records the transference of 'the Revd D.B. Jones (Dewi Elfed)' from Cwrtnewydd to take charge of the Baptist church 'gathered at Jerusalem (chapel), Rumni'.

This new pastorate was in the north-west corner of industrial Monmouthshire, in one of the iron and coal towns of south Wales, and a very different environment to rural south Cardiganshire. There was as yet no hint of the furor which later engulfed Dewi Elfed. Indeed, the correspondent who lodged the report looked forward to a successful future at Jerusalem chapel, and said:

...y mae arddangosiad boddhaol ar ddechreu ei lafur yn y lle newydd, fel pe byddai yr Arglwydd yn foddlawn i'r symudiad. Llwyddiant iddo.

...there is a pleasing aspect to the commencement of his labour at the new place, as if the Lord were content at the move. All success to him.

Nevertheless, his stay at Rhymney was short-lived and not without trial. It is only fair to note that none of the relevant commentaries suggest Dewi Elfed was in any way responsible for the difficulties which he and the congregation soon faced.

The problem was that during 1847 the local economy was in a depressed state, 'on account of which many were in low circumstances and the church was unable not only to pay any of the debt, but even to pay any of the interest'. Towards the end of 1847 the mortgager of the chapel premises, who was owed nearly £1,000, became restive. Dewi Elfed as minister advised the congregation there was no choice but to surrender the chapel to the mortgager - who would seek to recoup his money by an auction of the premises. Events dragged on until November, 1848 when a special conference of ministers in the Monmouthshire Baptist Association reluctantly agreed to surrender the building. This was done;' and at an auction on the 19th December, 1848, Baptists form outside Rhymney rallied to rescue the chapel for the denomination.

Before the crisis was so resolved it is clear that for whatever reason Dewi Elfed had left Rhymney. One source says he had left 'since early in the autumn of 1848. He was suspected of being favourable to Unitarianism; after his resignation, however, he joined the Latter-day Saints'.

This source was wrong in quoting the starting-time of Dewi's ministry at Rhymney as being 'the spring of 1847'. So, it is not beyond possibility that it is wrong vis-a-vis the date of his departure. For Dewi did not arrive at his next pastoral charge at Gwawr, Aberaman, until late 1848 or early 1849; and was not formally recognized as the minister of that cause until June, 1849.

Whenever it was he left, whether in the early autumn of 1848 or at the end of that year after the decision to surrender Jerusalem chapel had been taken in November, it seems he resigned his pastorate voluntarily. Yet there were already suggestions of his holding unorthodox views in the direction of Unitarianism. A similar charge is leveled elsewhere, where it is said of his days at Rhymney that:

...gwanhau oedd yr achos yn barhaus, ac nidd rhyfedd felly hyny, canys gwelwyd fod D. Elfed yn Socin, ac yn fuan wedi hyn aeth at Saint y Dyddiau Diweddaf.

...the cause was waning continually, and not surprisingly either, since it was seen that D. Elfed was a Socinian, and soon after this he joined the Latter-day Saints.

Little store need be placed on such a pejorative view, however, coming as it does from a Baptist source soon after the battle which raged at Aberaman between Dewi Elfed on the one hand and Thomas Price on the other.

...SWEET SPRING...AND THE SUN OF RESURGENCE

When Thomas Price arrived at Aberdare in 1845 to take up his duties as minister of Carmel (subsequently Calfaria) chapel, the Baptist denomination had five churches in the area. It is difficult to assess their collective membership at that time because totals in the religious census of 1851 reflect an already much-changed situation. A cautious estimate of their total baptized membership in 1846 would be 340; and there is no doubt their cause had seen a slow but steady growth in its local following since its origins among individuals in the late 18th century. Most of this growth had occurred since 1825.

Price's chapel was the senior of the five. Three of the remaining four had been founded out of that congregation. Thus, the pattern of future expansion was set; but it was Price who energized the Baptists in proselytizing and organizing to meet the challenge of a new industrial era. His achievement was impressive. So much so that 120 years later the memory of it was (and is) far from dead, and was described thus in 1964:

Felly y Dechreuodd y weinidogaeth fwyaf lliwgar, amlochrog a dylanwadol a fu yn hanes unrhyw achos crefyddol yng Nghwm Aberdar. Parhaodd am ddwy flynedd a deugain, hyd farwolaeth Dr Thomas Price ym Mawrth, 1888.

Thus began the most colourful, many-sided and influential ministry there has been in the history of any religious cause in the Aberdare Valley. It continued for 42 years, until the death of Dr Thomas Price in March, 1888.

Between 1845 and 1865 Price spurred on an expansion programme that renewed and extended each of the five already-founded chapels; saw the establishment of a further six large congregations directly out of his own; and enabled another five congregations to emerge from branches his own church had already sprouted. These new chapels did not include any of those outside the Aberdare area that also grew indirectly from his church.

It was a considerable achievement and a testimony in stone to the commitment of the man and his associates. He presided over a growth in Baptist numbers from an estimated total of 340 in 1846 to a claimed total of 3,121 members in 1867. These figures do not include any of that large number of 'hearers' who frequented these chapels without having undergone adult baptism to attain formal membership. The figures remain impressive if one allows for the vague nature of membership statistics emanating from some chapels; and if one also considers that stimulus to religion which all denominations conceded was a lantern to their efforts: the dreaded cholera morbis which swept the district in 1849.

It might be seen as Dewi Elfed's misfortune to break with the Baptists and attempt to carry his chapel to the Saints when a foe as redoubtable as Thomas Price was at hand to hold the fort against such an attempt. This is not to infer that Dewi or any other Saint was in awe of Price. They were not. Yet it remained unprecedented conversion as that of an ordained Baptist minister like Dewi Elfed; and one reason for this was almost certainly the impact of Thomas Price upon his co-religionists and upon the public life of the district. There were clearly other factors; but the dramatic events of 1851 at Aberaman seem to be a good example of irresistible force meeting immovable object.

There was probably something in Dewi Elfed's view of Thomas Price: namely that he was generously endowed in egotism; and that he did not take kindly to opinions other than his own. There is such an air about his work - for example in his account of the first fifty years of his church; and also in some of his early comments upon Dewi Elfed. Moreover, if the tone of his first and so far only biographer is anything to go by, then Price's effect upon the susceptible was formidable indeed. This biography has more than a fair dose of Victorian sychophancy and seems to have been written not so much with ink as with the literary equivalent of embalming fluid.

BEHOLD THE DAWN:

The Welsh word 'Gwawr' means 'Dawn'; and Gwawr chapel was one of the sixteen churches renewed or founded between 1845 and 1865 in direct or indirect association with Thomas Price.

In the case of Gwawr the association was direct. Since 1846 Baptists living in Aberaman (some two miles south of Aberdare town) had been holding services in each others' homes and in the 'long room' of the King William inn at 285, Cardiff Rd - which closed as licenced premises in 1871. In 1848, Price and his colleagues were involved in a proposal to lease at Aberaman land for the construction of a new chapel to meet the spiritual needs of the fastest-growing quarter of a burgeoning industrial district. A lease had been prepared with a view to construction starting in early 1849 when an unexpected request from Aberaman Baptists was received at Aberdare.

This asked that the new church at Gwawr be constituted separately and independently of the mother-church at Carmel from the outset, whereas the usual practice was to sustain a close formal relationship between the two for some years after the 'daughter church' had been founded.

The request was acceded to; and on the 14th June, 1848 the church at Gwawr was formally incorporated in a service at which Thomas Price among others officiated. In all, 121 members of Carmel were released to constitute an independent congregation at Gwawr with effect from that date. Shortly thereafter, the new church was accepted into the Glamorgan Baptist Association at its meeting at Hirwaun on the 21st and 22nd June, 1848.

There is no indication that Dewi Elfed was involved in these arrangements, although the exact time of his resigning at Rhymney is not known. All that can be said is that he departed Rhymney and arrived at Aberaman sometime between the early autumn of 1848 and the spring of 1849: for he was acknowledged as minister of Gwawr at a meeting of the Glamorgan Baptist Association in June, 1849, so that he was clearly in post a while before then.

This timetable is affirmed in a note by the present writer's great-grandfather, David George (1859 - 1939). He had been raised as a child to attend Gwawr and continued to do so until his family moved to neighbouring Cwmaman in 1874 and took out membership of Seion Baptist chapel there. In his penciled note David George wrote of how his mother Lettice George (1816 - 1911) and then his father John George (1815 - 1872) were initiated into the Baptist church at Gwawr. He wrote thus:

Bedyddiwyd fy Mham gan Dewi Elfed yn Afon Dar ger llaw’r Pwll y Plough pan oedd Sarah yn 10 mis oed & Bedyddiwyd nhad men (sic) mis wedyn.  Cynhaliwyd yr achos ar y pryd yn long room King William.

 

My mother was baptized by Dewi Elfed in the River Dare beside the Plough Pit when Sarah was 10 months old & my father was baptized a month later. The cause was gathered at the time in the long room of the King William.

 

Although David George said his parents were baptized in the river Dare besides the Plough Pit, if this were true it would place the site of baptism for members at Gwawr some two to three miles distant from the chapel - in the vicinity of Cwmdare village. There was another local colliery known by the tag ‘Plough Pit’ (but properly the Abergwawr Colliery), and the river which ran alongside this was the river Cynon. This location was only about 500 yards from the original site of Gwawr chapel in Regent St., Aberaman; and it is likely David George meant to write ‘Cynon’ rather than ‘Dare’ in his note.

 

One pursues the point only to establish where the earliest members of Gwawr were likely to be baptized into membership of their church. Material to the story of Dewi Elfed is that David George said his parents had been baptized when their firstborn was aged 10 months. From another note^l05 it is known this child had been born on 7th August, 1848. Ten months on from that would mean June, 1849. This, then, was when Lettice George had been baptized in the river by Dewi; and John, her husband, was likewise baptized in July, 1849. Thus there is testimony of Dewi Elfed performing his duties as Baptist minister at Aberaman by the middle of that year. It should also be noted that according to David George the congregation was still meeting at the King William in June-July, 1849, so that although a lease had been prepared since 1848 no chapel building had yet become available to the members.

 

Edward Thomas, Gwawr’s centennary historian, took the story further by recounting how, after Dewi Elfed’s arrival at Aberaman, the task of completing the construction of the chapel was taken out of the hands of the church at Carmel. In order to ensure this, the names of Thomas Price and John Davies were removed from the lease and those of Dewi Elfed and one David Richards inserted in their place. Thomas declares the change was made ‘by stealth’¹⁰⁶ but this view is merely a repitition of Thomas Price’s earlier statement that the change of names had been done by Dewi Elfed:

...yn ddiddadl...mewn rhagolygaeth am y drygau a gyflawnodd yn ol llaw.

 

...without doubt...in preparation for the evils he later committed.

 

This may or may not have been the case; but Dewi Elfed did not refer to the point and Thomas Price was not going to give him the benefit of any doubt. However, Price himself is not beyond question in his version of how the Gwawr controversy developed.

 

His account of the supposedly premature establishment of Gwawr as an independent cause is inaccurate and misleading in one important regard. Price twice maintained that the request for separation and the subsequent incorporation of the Gwawr assembly occurred in June, 1849.¹⁰⁷  Yet it is evident from such anti-Mormon publications as Y Bedyddiwr, Seren Gomer and the Annual Letter of the Glamorgan Baptist Association that these developments occurred in June, 1848 - prior to any suggestion of Dewi Elfed’s having settled in the area.

Price, so punctilious in other regards, should surely have been aware of the date of Gwawr’s incorporation: not simply because of the controversy later surrounding the chapel but because he himself had preached at the service of incorporation.  His repeated inaccuracy regarding its date must lead one to ask whether it was a genuine error on the part of Price or an attempt to infer (by saying the separation took place a year later than was the case) that the arrival of Dewi Elfed by June, 1849 had a bearing upon the withdrawal of the Gwawr members; and that it was part of a plot to disengage Gwawr from the Baptist connection conceived from the start of Dewi Elfed’s ministry there.

Were such an inference to have been part of Price’s design it was clearly not grounded in fact. At the time of Gwawr’s incorporation in June, 1848, Dewi Elfed by all objective accounts was still minister at Jerusalem, Rhymney.

The only likely way in which Dewi might have had a direct bearing on the move away from the mother-church at Carmel was by virtue of having made contact with Aberaman Baptists prior to being invited to join them as minister in the autumn of 1848 or spring of 1849. Such informal contact was feasible in that all ordained ministers accepted invitations to preach at neighbouring chapels on an occasional basis; and since Jerusalem, Rhymney, was apparently soon to be lost to a creditor, there can be little doubt that Dewi Elfed was busy exploring other prospects in the region. Aberaman may have been one of these.

This, of course, is an assumption. What cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged is Thomas Price’s inference (whether intended or not) that the move to separate Gwawr from its parent-church occurred only after Dewi Elfed had arrived on the scene. That was simply not so. Price had assented to the move before Dewi is known to have settled at Aberaman.

By the time dust had settled on the issue of who instigated the separation of Gwawr from Carmel and how the names on the lease came to be altered, it was at last possible to discuss the matter with dispassion. By 1933 the deceit of which Dewi Elfed had been accused in 1850-51 had been commutted to the view that ‘someone’ had succeeded in changing some of the names on the lease.^l08 It is not clear what this vague statement is meant to mean. It may signify only a desire to avoid offending anybody by direct accusation; but one must ask, in view of the intense dislike Price and Dewi Elfed took to each other, and the bitter rivalry existent between Mormons and Baptists, whether it is safe to rely upon the testimony of one side as to the integrity of the other.

One might assume that Dewi Elfed, as recognised minister of the church concerned, felt he had the right to alter or amend legal documents directly on behalf of his congregation. One could also say that such a view would be ingenuous in an able man such as he. This would be a fair comment; but naivete and a preconceived deceit such as that assumed by Price are two quite different charges.

In any event, there was more to this lease business than the single-minded Thomas Price himself let on.

Following the expulsion of Dewi and his church from the Glamorgan Baptist Association in November, 1850 (to which reference is made below), Dewi gradually approached an open avowal of Mormonism. When this avowal came about in March, 1851 he was visited by William Phillips, then President of the Mormons’ Welsh Mission. Phillips wrote a report of his initial meeting with Dewi Elfed and sent it to Franklin Richards, President of the Church in Britain. This was then published in the Millenial Star. In it Phillips told how Dewi Elfed had been expelled from the Baptist fraternity the previous year for having preached Mormon doctrine to his flock. Writing on the 11th March, 1851, Phillips declared:

Last week the minister sent for me, and I went to him. He wanted us to take the chapel as it was his, or rather he had a lease of it. I found therein a clause stating that the Baptist doctrines were to be preached in it during the course of every year. We went to the landlord and talked with him about the clause; he said he would take his pen and strike that clause out, put Latter-day Saints doctrine in its stead, or renew the lease. Today we are going to ask a counsel’s advice, and if we can purchase it with safety we will do so. I expect, after settling about the chapel, to baptize the minister and his flock, they number about 50 or 60.¹⁰⁹

This is a fuller and calmer account of how it was envisaged the chapel premises should be transferred to the Mormon interest. It has an air of due process about it - apparrently as Phillips’ behest.

It is suggested that Dewi Elfed wanted to proceed quickly - perhaps too quickly; and there is every indication that he considered the chapel his as minister there - or at least more his than anyone else’s. In holding such a view he was in error according to the Baptist teaching in which he had lived for twenty-eight years.¹¹⁰  Yet might not he (and William Phillips in his subsequent actions) have been confirmed in this error by the nonchalant approach of the landlord to the whole question of which doctrine the lease endowed?

The landlord was Dr James Lewis Roberts, a surgeon descended of an old agricultural family in the district that had acquired a number of local properties during the last years of the 18th century. One of these was Abergwawr: the farm upon whose land the original Gwawr chapel was built in 1849-51.¹¹¹

If the landlord had no qualms about amending the lease by striking out Baptist doctrines in favour of the Saints and of doing so ‘at the stroke of a pen’ did this not perhaps strengthen in Dewi Elfed’s mind his apparent belief that he could anticipate events by assuming the title was in effect already his? This is as plausible a scenario as the deliberate deceit assumed by Baptist leaders.

This more charitable view does not overlook Dewi’s rashness. It serves rather to emphasize it. Yet it does present a picture of him other than that of the calculating thief perpetuated by nonconformist adversaries of the day and until quite recently.¹¹²  It also presents a picture of William Phillips proposing to take legal counsel: a perfectly proper course. Yet there is no mention of any of this in Thomas Price’s accounts of the affair: despite the fact that Phillips’ remarks about the landlord’s willingness to amend the lease, about seeking legal advice, and about purchasing the premises properly had all been published openly for Price & others to read in the Millenial Star.

It would appear that Price chose to ignore what he must have known was William Phillips’ wish to proceed with propriety in the matter. To have acknowledged any inclination in the direction of due process would have been to concede at least a measure of reason in the Mormon approach; and this was not to be.

Whether verbally or via a copy of the Millenial Star,¹¹³ Price in early March, 1851 would have learned of several things likely to alarm him concerning the future of Gwawr chapel: (a) that the minister there was about to defect to the reviled Latter-day Saints; (b) that he appeared to have about 50 members of the congregation with him in that intent; and (c) that the landlord was seemingly compliant towards a change of use in the Mormon interest concerning the lease by which the chapel was held.

No-one can doubt that Price knew of these dangers. Everybody else seemed to have heard of what was in the offing. That is why on Sunday 27th April 1851, when Dewi Elfed and four others were baptized into the Mormon faith, the rite was witnessed by a crowd of about 2,000 onlookers.¹¹⁴ Once aware of what was about to happen at Gwawr one cannot imagine Thomas Price deciding to do nothing. It can be safely assumed that Price moved heaven and earth during the time between Dewi’s approach to the Saints in early March and his baptism in April to forestall an obvious disaster from the Baptist point of view.

Pressure was no doubt brought to bear upon members of the congregation, particularly officers and deacons; yet ordinary members cannot have avoided competing claims upon their loyalty by minister on the one hand and acclaimed leader on the other. There must have been much turmoil within the church, and this may have been why the sizeable party Phillips anticipated would be baptized alongside Dewi Elfed (‘about 50 or 60’) turned out, seven weeks later, to have been Dewi and four others with a prospect of ‘about twenty more to follow’.¹¹⁵ Such pressure by Baptist loyalists may have been what the reporter ‘R.M.’ had in mind when he wrote in Udgorn Seion that there had been ‘some circumstance to hinder them’ when referring to the twenty people who had not turned up for baptism at the same time as Dewi Elfed.

Influence was probably exercised also on Dr Roberts, the landlord. Like Price, Roberts was a public figure and they no doubt knew each other. Thomas Price in 1851 was already respected beyond the bounds of his large congregation at Carmel,¹¹⁶ and was seen as a moderating influence on the restless colliers of the area.¹¹⁷  He had real standing in the district, and was not one whose views could be lightly ignored.

It seems unthinkable that Price would not have pressed Roberts to preempt a Mormon coup at Gwawr.  All that Price needed to obstruct the legal basis of a Mormon claim to the chapel was to persuade the doctor to do nothing to the lease as it was first drawn up. It would seem that he was successful. The chapel premises fell into the physical possession of the Saints for some months; but when the rival claims went to the assize court, judgement was given in favour of that section of the Gwawr congregation that had remained within the Baptist fold.

This loyalist element was represented at the assizes by another of the¹¹⁸ present writer’s antecedents: a three-greats-grandfather named Llewelyn Howells (1806 - 1857). He had been a deacon - or elder - at Gwawr since its foundation and before that at Abernant-y-groes chapel, Cwmbach.¹²¹  He was something of a Baptist stalwart¹¹⁹ having converted around 1837 from the Unitarianism of his youth and married a daughter of the first Baptist from Aberdare whose name is known and who later became a Baptist minister.¹²⁰  After Llewelyn Howells’ death, his widow sustained the family tradition and was prominent in founding the Baptist chapel at Seion, Cwmaman. Although Price nowhere mentioned Howells as one of the key figures in defeating Dewi Elfed it is unlikely Price could have found a stauncher ally within the Gwawr congregation.

For all sorts of reasons, including the belief that he was doing the Lord’s work in containing the growth of a heresy that threatened to spread far and wide, Price felt he had to exert all his power to prevent the Mormons gaining permanent possession of Gwawr. No doubt he was sincere in holding this view; but the same sincerity should be ascribed to Dewi Elfed. Price has had it all his own way in the propaganda war for the past 135 years. Yet Dewi took a course that required not a little courage, and maintained that course despite some awkward moments until the end of his life. If he did not at first realise how much his decision to join the Saints would cost him he soon had it pointed out by William Phillips at an afternoon service in Gwawr chapel during which Phillips ordained him a priest of the Mormon faith:

...it was...passed unanimously that...David Jones and David Rees be ordained priests, so we ordained them in the large pew... Afterwards I...told them that what the world called priests are generally more respected than ministers, but that they both must not expect even half as much reverence as ministers now from the world.¹²²

This was certainly the case - not least in regard to Dewi Elfed. Yet why should the reaction of the nonconformist denominations have been so bitter and so hostile? One reason was probably the novelty of much Mormon teaching. It was too different to be easily accommodated. Moreover, Mormonism did not particularly want to be accommodated by church polities which it regarded at best as lapsed and at worst as corrupt. From its beginnings it was a pugnacious missionary endeavour. It didn’t ask for mercy and it didn’t get much.

In a refreshingly candid passage in a volume published in 1933 to mark the centennary of the Glamorgan Baptist Association, the Revd W.R. Jones of Barry wrote as follows of ‘The Coming of the Mormons’:

...daeth Mormoniaeth yn allu mawr ym Morgannwg.  Yn ol tystiolaeth y Cpt. Dan Jones yn ei ragymadrodd i...Y Farw Yn Fyw...nid oedd namyn dyrnaid o Formoniaid yn y sir yn 1845, ond yn 1852, yn Nwyrain Morgannwg yn unig, yr oedd ganddynt 32 o ganghennau; ac er yr ymfudo mawr, a’u cyfundrefn ymfudol oedd un o elfennau cryfaf eu llwyddiant, yr oedd ganddynt 2,258 o aelodau (erbyn) Rhagfyr 31, 1852. Ymunai y Methodistiaid, yr Annibynwyr a’r Wesleaid a’r Saint; one y mae gennym le i gasglu mai y Bedyddwyr a gollodd fwyaf. Yn 1850, yn herwydd sel danllyd y Mormoniaid dros yr Ordinhad o Fedydd, bu ychwanegiad o 3,036 at eglwysi Bedyddwyr y Gymanfa hon a 1,250 trwy adferiad; ond o 1851 hyd 1854, yr oedd y diarddeliadau yn rhifo mwy na’r bedyddiadau, a’r Bedyddwyr yn ymosod yn ddiarbed ar Seintiau y Dyddiau Diweddaf.¹²³

...Mormonism became a great force in Glamorgan.  According to the testimony of Cpt Dan Jones in his foreword to The Dead Alive...there were only a handful of Mormons in the county in 1845, but in 1852, in East Glamorgan alone, they had 32 branches; and despite the extensive emigration, and their emigration schemes were one of the strongest reasons for their success, they had 2,258 members (by) 31st December, 1852.  Methodists, Independents and Wesleyans joined the Saints; but we have reason to believe that the Baptists lost most. In 1850, in the wake of the Mormons’ fiery zeal for the Sacrament of Baptism, there was an increase of 3,036 members among the Baptist churches of this Association and 1,250 were restored; but from 1851 to 1854, the expulsions numbered more than the baptisms, and the Baptists were unremitting in their attacks upon the Latter Day Saints.

This is a telling point. All the nonconformist denominations saw some members join the Saints, but none more so than the:  Baptists. This, coupled with doctrinal differences, was sufficient cause for the bitterness Baptists in particular seem to have felt towards Mormonism. What made the loss of members more difficult to accept was the special stress the Saints placed on Believer’s Baptism - the very hallmark of their own persuasion. It must have seemed like a clear instance of adding insult to injury that Baptist churches should have lost members in this of all ways.

In an apt sequel to his previous remarks, W.R. Jones maintained that there were:

...ymraniadau difrifol ac anghydfod poenus yn eglwysi y Bedyddwyr yng nghylch Aberdar ac yn Merthyr. Am fod y Mormoniaid yn arfer Arddodiad Dwylaw yn gyson, digiodd Bedyddwyr Morgannwg wrth yr arfer, a diflannodd, mwy na heb, o’n heglwysi.

...serious divisions and painful disagreements among the Baptists at Aberdare and Merthyr. Because the Mormons regularly practiced the Laying On Of Hands, the Glamorgan Baptists turned against the practice, and it disappeared, more or less, from our churches.

This is the voice of reason. Yet eighty years were to pass before such matters could be discussed in a calm manner. In 1850, things were very different.

(8)  ‘...A LINK HAS BEEN BROKEN...’:¹²⁴

Prior to Dewi Elfed’s meeting with William Phillips, he and his congregation had been expelled from membership of the Glamorgan Baptist Association. Eventually, rather than go back on those points which had led to his expulsion, Dewi Elfed moved to join the Latter-day Saints. The most contentious issue in the disagreement seems to have been that of ‘The Laying On Of Hands’.

For a layman this is a difficult area, but one of importance in any discussion of Mormon-Baptist relations at the time. Essentially, the issue turned on whether the rite whereby an ordained priest or minister blessed those of lower rank by the laying on of hands did so in order to symbolically invest the recipient or whether the act was spiritually significant in itself.

The laying on of hands was widely practiced in the Baptist churches of Wales in the early 19th century. In a succinct discussion of this fact, professor John Griffiths, M.A., B.D., sometime principal of Cardiff Baptist College, went as far as to say that:

Yr arferiad yn ddieithriad y pryd hwnnw oedd gosod dwylaw...ar...ddiaconiaid wrth eu neilltuo i’w swyddau yn ol, fel y credid, trefn y Testament Newydd.¹²⁵

The custom without exception at that time was the laying on of hands when inducting deacons to their office, in accordance, it was believed, with New Testament practice.

Professor Jones then discussed in detail two ordination services at Baptist chapels in Cwmafon and Maesteg, Glamorgan, circa 1851 which show that the practice did not go unchallenged by those who thought it smacked of what George Fox called ‘priest-craft’.¹²⁶  Some Baptist saw the practice as a symbolic but valid action confirming the views of (the) gathered church; others saw it as subversive of sound Protestant church polity.

Dewi Elfed employed the rite with enthusiasm. William Phillips said as much when he wrote of Dewi that:

There is a Baptist minister...who has been excommunicated for preaching our principles to his flock until they all believed them. Every one he baptized he baptized for remission of sins and laid hands on them, telling them to pray for the Holy Ghost, and taught inasmuch as the gift of the Holy Ghost followed in the days of the apostles, why not now? and inasmuch as they were blessed with revelations anciently, why not now? and inasmuch as angels administered then, why not now? and all other blessings as well. This flock have been praying day and night for the above blessings, until at length the Baptist association called a council and cut him and his flock off from their church.¹²⁷

There is little doubt that Thomas Price (with others) was behind the quarterly conference of ministers in the Glamorgan Baptist Association that met at Aberdare (probably in Price’s chapel) in November, 1850 to consider charges of unorthodoxy against Dewi Elfed. These charges included that of conducting sacerdotal ceremonies not in keeping with the office of a Baptist clergyman serving a congregation for whom the only vital sacrament was that of the Word. In view of suspicions at Rhymney about his supposed leanings towards Unitarianism it may be significant that according to Dewi Elfed’s account of this conference it was also attended by ministers from the Monmouthshire Association.

Dewi long maintained he had not been given a fair hearing by this meeting. He said he had been refused a copy of the charges against him at the time and that they had never been made public subsequently - despite his repeated requests that they be published.¹²⁸  Indeed, a conscious decision seems to have been taken by the conference to make no statement other than that announcing the expulsion of Dewi and his congregation from the Glamorgan association. This notice

129 duly appeared in the denominational journal, Y Bedyddiwr.¹²⁹

By his own admission, trouble had been brewing between Dewi and his ministerial colleagues since the beginning of 1850. Some of them, he said, had tried to obstruct the completion of Gwawr chapel despite his efforts at raising sufficient money for the job. He declared his achievement of having raised the then considerable sum of £340 towards off-setting these costs in less than eight months by preaching throughout Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. Yet such endeavours counted for little with ‘the reverends’ because it was to his doctrine they objected.

Dewi continued his account of events by saying that the Baptist clergy of the district were outraged not just at his teaching - particularly concerning the laying on of hands - but by the demand for it among his congregation and theirs. That is why, he claimed, various underhanded schemes were devised to ‘put a stop to such things’. In this context he wrote of:

Man Gommittees a gynnelid...yn ddirgel; ...delegates neu yspiwyr...i wrandaw a chraffu pa beth a lefarwn ac a bregethwn; ...cynllwynion ...llythyrau yn myned allan yma a thraw, a phob un yn ffurfio ei gynllun er rhoddi taw arnaf.

Minor Committee held...secretly; ...delegates or spies...to listen and to disect those things lid utter or preach; ...plots...letters going out here and there, and everyone laying his own scheme in order to silence me.

It is true he had been given very short notice of the investigative conference being held. He was visited by a spokesman for the enquiry and invited to attend it only the evening before it began its deliberations on the 6th November.  He wrote a letter by return accepting the invitation and insisting there was nothing out of order with regard to the affairs of his congregation at Gwawr. He implied in this response that the conference had no right to involve itself in those affairs unless invited by him. A final dig was some unsolicited advice to the other ministers that they improve their current condition by casting out their old leaven ‘that you may as new dough’.

Dewi then listed from memory eighteen charges of unorthodox conduct which had been read out to him at the quarterly conference. They were mostly based upon the nature of sacraments. He admitted some but not all of them; and was told that admitting one would have been sufficient grounds for his expulsion (see Appendix B).

There followed according to Dewi’s version acrimonious outbursts aimed at him and those officers of his church who had accompanied him to the hearing.¹³⁰  They were refused an opportunity to speak in defence of the charges levelled. He recounted how Y Parchedig o Aberdar (‘The Reverend from Aberdare’) - Thomas Price - had told him he would rather be under the Devil’s nails than under Dewi’s. Yet Dewi Elfed was not amiss himself to throwing a few verbal bombs among the assembled ministers. He told them they were Parchedigion y boliau gorddiog a rhodresgar (‘pot-bellied and pompous Reverends’), which was hardly calculated to have a calming effect.

It must be remembered this account is that of Dewi alone, and he was obviously bitter at the affair although writing of it two years on.¹³¹ It was not composed in a mild manner, but formed part of that stream of pro-Mormon propaganda in poetry and prose then flowing from his pen into the columns of Udgorn Seion and the Saints’ new Welsh hymnal of 1852. Nor were these the only media he employed: for like other protagonists of the Mormon faith he was out and about preaching ‘across the country hither and thither’.¹³²

Dewi had been well-trained in the Baptist church to know his Bible intimately. Hence, on the evening of his expulsion, he returned to Gwawr chapel and preached a sermon taking Isaiah chapter 29, vv.l3-l6 as his text. These verses were well-chosen and well-aimed; and Thomas Price’s collar must have been steaming that night as, two miles away, Dewi Elfed preached declaring:

Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: tor the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.

(9)  ‘. . . AND I SHALL PREACH EVEN BEFORE THE DOORS OF YOUR HOUSES’:¹³³

Although expelled from the county Baptist association since November, 1850, Dewi Elfed and his keenest supporters did not immediately adopt the Mormon faith. Between Dewi’s approach to William Phillips (which the latter reported to Franklin Richards by letter dated 11th March, 1851) and his subsequent baptism, the religious census of 1851 was taken. Whether because he was still uncertain about departing the Baptist fold or because he was simply observing the letter of propriety as things stood, Dewi submitted a return to the census as minister at Gwawr and defined it as a chapel serving the Baptist cause. The full details of his submission are as follows:

GWAWR CHAPEL. ABERGWAWR.  BAPISTS.

Erected: 1849

Space: unfinished

 

Present: morning 100 + 30 scholars

  afternoon 60 scholars

  evening 450

 

Average: morning 250 + 40 scholars

(12           afternoon 80 scholars

months)  evening 450

DEWI BEVAN JONES. MINISTER.

ABERAMMAN.¹³⁴

The return indicates a substantial drop in attendance during the morning of census Sunday (30th March) as compared to Dewi’s estimate of average attendance during the previous twelve months. There is also a less marked drop in the number of ‘scholars’ in morning and afternoon attendance. This may or may not be a significant facet. In relation to evening services there appears to have been no diminution at all, although the constant figure of 450 is suspiciously ‘round’ - as are so many other statistics in this census.

The role of Llewelyn Howells, a deacon at Gwawr, in later representing Baptists loyalists at court is evidence of opposition to Dewi Elfed from within the congregation. Further such evidence is provided by the high profile afforded to one John Morris, a lay-preacher there. He was given prominence as a participant in the public sessions of the county Baptist association at the time of Dewi’s expulsion. Indeed, he was a preacher at a service on the very evening of Dewi’s dismissal from the fraternity.¹³⁵  It is therefore rational to deduce that some of the Baptist faithful were keeping their distance now that their minister’s impending defection had been announced in the Mormon press.

It is likely Dewi’s dispute with the county Baptist authorities and his imminent defection to the Latter-day Saints were topics which created much public interest in him: some serious, some not. This is evident from the fact that about 2,000 people turned up to see his baptism; and also by the fact that news of this event, once it had occurred, spread rapidly to north Wales where it was alluded to in the Amserau (‘Times’) newspaper a fortnight later.¹³⁶

Thus, if the figure of 450 evening attenders is taken to signify ‘a large crowd,’ (perhaps filling the chapel), it may be that in general terms such a throng continued to frequent Gwawr during this tense interim period in its history and that of its pastor. As to their motives let alone their sympathies that is another question.

In any event, the tension was not to remain unresolved for long. On Sunday, 27th April, 1851, in a crossing of the theological Rubicon, Dewi Elfed finally broke with the Baptist cause. At the age of 43, within sight of Gwawr chapel and where he had previously baptized others into the Baptist faith, David Bevan Jones underwent baptism as a Latter-day Saint. It was a step that was to change his world quite literally.

 (10)  ‘DOUBTLESS THERE WILL BE MUCH JOY AMONG THE SAINTS...’:¹³⁷

It was on this exhultant note that a correspondent identifying himself as ‘R.M.’ reported the baptism of Dewi and four others that April morning. This report and another submitted by President William Phillips to Franklin Richards¹³⁸ are the only eyewitness accounts available that describe the colourful scene in some detail. They are obviously committed interpretations, but they are none the less interesting and evocative of the occasion for that.

There had been preliminary skirmishing between Dewi Elfed and Thomas Price prior to the former’s baptism as a Mormon. In a heated exchange of letters to the Amserau newspaper, Price accused Dewi of having surreptitiously shut the doors of Gwawr against his allegedly few remaining followers a week before the baptism took place; and of having re-opened the chapel mid-week i grug o seintiau (‘a swarm of saints’).¹³⁹  Dewi replied that he had taken steps to secure the chapel to himself only because Price and a ministerial colleague, John Daniel Williams of Cwmbach, ‘in conjunction with their brothers’, had earlier broken the lock of the chapel door without authority to do so.¹⁴⁰ Dewi intimated in the same response that he had already denounced Price and his colleagues either generally or by name from the pulpit of Gwawr as caring mwy am y gwlan nag am fywyd y praidd (‘more for the wool than for the life of the flock’).

William Phillips, in his account of the baptism, also mentioned the mid-week meeting of Saints and others in Gwawr held at the invitation of the minister, and said that:

we entered the chapel last Wednesday evening, at seven o’clock. I took the minister’s chair under the pulpit and we held a Saints’, or rather a preaching meeting; the chapel was crowded with Saints, Baptists and others, and we had an excellent meeting, and confirmed one member. Two Baptist ministers and some of the flock promised they would be baptized on the following Sunday.¹⁴¹

The ‘two Baptist ministers’ were Dewi Elfed and David Rees. Dewi was an ordained minister; it is likely Rees was not. He was probably a recognised lay preacher within the congregation at Gwawr; and this is the likely meaning of Dewi’s

reference to him as gweinidog urddedig...cynnorthwyol i mi (‘an accredited minister who assisted me’).¹⁴² Phillips continued his story thus:

Sunday came, and I went through to Treaman, the village where they live...and I put on my black gown and walked through the village to the river; and when the meeting was opened by singing and praying, I called upon Mr David Rees, one of the ministers, to preach a little; he stood up and spoke... Afterwards, I called upon Mr David Jones, the other minister, (and) he spoke... Then I preached a little after them... I had a great influence over the congregation... There were about 2,000 people present; there were a great many ready to raise a riot, but most of them were on my side. Then I baptized the two ministers and three of their members: there were about twenty who arranged to be baptized together, but circumstances would not permit them last Sunday, but they are coming and many more with them, so they say.

At two o’clock that afternoon, Phillips and his company of Saints returned to Gwawr chapel which Dewi Elfed made available yn ol yr hawl a feddai (‘according to his right’), as ‘R.M.’ put it. There they held a service in which Phillips took the minister’s chair and confirmed the five newly-baptized converts. This was done ‘in the large seat under the pulpit’ - that is, in what the Welsh know as the ‘Set Fawr’.

Phillips proposed, and it was seconded and passed without dissent, that Dewi Elfed and David Rees be ordained priests of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This ceremony having been performed, Phillips addressed them on the duties and responsibilities of that priesthood. ‘R.M.’ stated that the chapel, with its still unfurnished interior, was packed for the occasion; and added that the consecration of the ministers by Phillips was assisted by John Davis, the Mormon printer. Phillips addressed the meeting in Welsh and Davis in English. It was, said Phillips, ‘an excellent meeting’.

It was followed by another service at 6 p.m. in which Phillips preached ‘very effectively’. The President of the Welsh Mission was pleased that the chapel was again ‘very full of people’ and that ‘a great many believed’. He confided to Franklin Richards that ‘I expect many will be baptized in that neighbourhood this week’. It was a triumphant occasion for the Mormons. Yet it may be thought surprising that only five were baptized that day whereas Phillips had first forseen ‘about 50 or 60’ entering the Mormon faith at the same time as Dewi Elfed.¹⁴³

In the propaganda war that followed these baptisms, both Dewi and Thomas Price adopted positions one would fully expect of them. In his initial comment Dewi referred to his followers at Gwawr as ‘a host of members’ and as ‘many other Baptists’; though elsewhere in that response to Thomas Price, Dewi suggested more moderately that Price should allude not to the immersion of himself and four others but to the baptism ‘of foursomes’.¹⁴⁴

Likewise, Thomas Price was not going to yield any unnecessary ground.  The Amserau newspaper, based at Denbigh in north Wales, had carried a short report of the baptisms in which it referred to ‘the minister and congregation’ of a Baptist chapel at Aberdare regrettably going over to the Saints, and to ‘the baptism of them all in the river Cynon’.¹⁴⁵  In a spirited reply that included an energetic attack upon Dewi Elfed and his followers, Price sought to kill any impression of a mass defection to the Latter-day Saints at Aberdare. He sought to pass off the affair as an aberration effected by a few ‘nondescripts’.¹⁴⁶  He referred to ‘the few that were with’ Dewi Elfed, and to his ‘few followers’. Price asserted that most of those connected with Gwawr had deserted Dewi since his expulsion from the county association to become once more regular members at nearby Baptist churches.

There was probably some truth in both claims: that a significant impact had been made by the Latter-day Saints at Aberaman and Aberdare, though not the mass defection suggested by the Amserau. Dewi Elfed probably overstated his

support. On the other hand, Thomas Price wrongly minimized it and came close to admitting as much twelve years later when he reflected on the episode. In 1863 he wrote of the events surrounding Dewi Elfed in the following vein:

...cafodd ei bleidio gan rai Bedyddwyr, a thrwy gael ei bleidio gan ychydig deuluoedd camsyniol, gallodd ef...blannu chwyn gwenwynllyd ag sydd wedi gadael eu heffeithiau yn Aberaman hyd y dydd heddyw ...twyllodd rai o’r aelodau i fyned gydag ef. Felly, fe lwyr ddinistriwyd yr eglwys yn Aberaman, ac ni achubwyd o’r drygfyd hyn ond ychydig a ddychwelodd yn ol atom ni... (Roedd Dewi Elfed) yn flaidd mewn croen dafad, yn cael ei gynnorthwyo gan ychydig o deuluoedd gyda’r Bedyddwyr, rhai o’r rhai hyn yn hen aelodau, yn ddigon hen i wybod gwell...cawsom bob gwrthwynebiad gan yr ychydig Fedyddwyr oedd a llaw yn y mater...yn wir nid yw yr effeithiau wedi llwyr ymadael hyd y dydd hwn. "¹⁴⁷

...he was supported by some Baptists, and in being abetted by a few mistaken families, he was able to ...plant poisionous weeds that have left their effect upon Aberaman to the present day...he deceived some of the members into accompanying him. So, the church at Aberaman was entirely destroyed, and none were rescued from this badness except a few who returned to us... (Dewi Elfed was) a wolf in sheep’s clothing, being helped by a few Baptist families, some of these being old members, old enough to know better...we had every obstruction from the few Baptists who had a hand in the matter...indeed the effects have not entirely passed even today.

In this passage, the ‘few followers’ Price referred to in the Amserau of 1851 have become a ‘few families’ in 1863 - some of them ‘old members’; and though Price still uses the word ‘few’, he was writing twelve years on to say that Dewi Elfed’s influence was still current in the district. Dewi would have regarded this as an unintended compliment. Especially interesting is Price’s contradiction in 1863 of his statement in 1851 that most Gwawr members had returned to other Baptist churches rather than associate with Dewi Elfed. In the above passage, Price actually laments that this was not so, and that only ‘a few...returned to us’ to be ‘rescued’. If this was indeed the case, it was hardly an effect wrought by a few ‘nondescripts’.

Price’s allusions to a continued Mormon influence at Aberaman are most intriguing; but without baptismal or other records from the Aberaman and Aberdare branches of the Mormon Church one must discern what one can of this influence via the columns of Udgorn Seion and occasionally elsewhere.

From 1851 there appear in that journal details of moneys received from or owed by the Aberaman and surrounding branches in respect of literature published to promulgate the faith. There are religious poems by members at Aberaman and, from time to time, reports of religious works in the locality.¹⁴⁸ From such entries it is possible to identify some of the earliest members of the Church in the district, some of whom may have been among those who followed Dewi Elfed into Mormon adherence: people such as John Edmonds; Daniel Birch; Samuel Davies; a young boy named William Phillips whose leg was said to have been healed once annointed with oil; Thomas Phillips, and John Llewelyn.

Others are known because of their direct involvement in the breach with the Baptists - Dewi Elfed’s family among them. Then there was David Rees who was baptized alongside Dewi (and who was busy preaching the Mormon faith in 1856 at Aberafan in Glamorgan); and also the three others who took baptism at the same time. Although not named in reports of that occasion, it is likely they were the same three as those who had accompanied Dewi to the expulsion hearing of November, 1850:  namely David Richards, Josuah Evans and John Johns.¹⁴⁹  It is virtually certain Richards was one of the three as he is said to have been Dewi Elfed’s companion in altering the names attached to the original Gwawr lease.¹⁵⁰

These were among the Saints whose joy the correspondent ‘M.R.’ had evoked when he reported Dewi Elfed’s baptism. This joy, understandably, was not shared by Thomas Price or by Baptist loyalists at Gwawr such as Llewelyn Howells

and John Morris. It was Price who vented their sadness and anger in an untypically clumsy verbal assault on Dewi Elfed and all Latter-day Saints in the columns of the Amserau. Price wrote of the Saints that they were:

dyhirod didduw, diegwyddor, digymeriad, diddysg, diddawn, celwyddog, cableddus, rhyfygus, maleisus, a dieflig...yn awr yn ymffrostgar a chwyddedig...¹⁵¹

godless, unprincipled, characterless, ignorant, untalented, deceitful, blasphemous, insolent, malicious and devilish scoundrels...now boastful and inflated...

Like Dewi Elfed, Thomas Price had been trained to know his Bible well.  Hence he concluded his attack upon Dewi and Saints with an invocation of II Timothy, chapter 3, vv.6-9, in which condemnation is made of:

...this sort...which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth...so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men...

Sensing by the ferocity of this onslaught that he had indeed stung Price, Dewi relished a lengthy reply in Udgorn Seion which enabled him to cast doubt upon Price’s probity and language. In his response¹⁵² Dewi wrote of:

...ei hunan mawr a’i blaid...yn wynias wyllt, yn malu ewyn, a byttheiriaw rhegfeydd yn erbyn y Saint nes yw ei barchedig gorpws ar dori a myned yn llaprau. Diau ar fyr y bydd ei lestr mor llawn o falais i’r Saint fel yr a yn ganddryll ysgymun, a’ i ddarnau ffiaidd yn yfflon man. Wela, hai, ynte!  ni effeithia chwythiad ei gelanedd fwy ar y Saint na chyfarthiad ci ar y lleuad.

... the mighty self and his party...in a whitehot rage, foaming, and belching curses against the Saints until his reverend corpus is almost bursting into tatters. No doubt his vessel will soon be so full of malice towards the Saints that the accursed thing will shatter, and its vile pieces become as tiny bits. So what indeed! his slaughtering bluster will no more affect the Saints than the barking of a dog at the moon.

Dewi pressed home his attack by saying that the Baptist leader had been seen to:

Gollwng cronfa regyddawl ei galon ar ol y Saint, a thrwy hyny yn dangos ei fod yn holt a chyfarwydd a iaith a chyfrinach ei dad, a’i fod yn wastad, fel un o’i agents penaf, yn derbyn o’i ddiabolical influences...

Release upon the Saints his heart’s reservoir of curses, and in so doing had shown his fondness for and familiarity with the language and the secrets of his devilish father, and that he, as one of the latter’s chief agents, received constantly of diabolical influences...

As if not content, Dewi drew his remarks to a close with a patronising request that Price reply to him; but offered the advice:

Wrth ateb, treiwch fod mor good boy ag y galloch, a pheidiwch regu maes o anadl fel y gwnaethoch...

In answering, try to be as good a boy as you can, and don’t swear yourself out-of-breath as you did...

Although the tone of this exchange was not a becoming one for two clergymen to (disagree), both were writing to (protect) their own positions in outright adversarial circumstances. The contempt between the two men - and possibly between the two faiths - was never again expressed in so acrimonious a manner.

Thomas Price was an able debater; but that quality which combines ridicule and disdain was used well in Dewi’s reply to him. Price probably knew he had made a mistake when he gave Dewi Elfed grounds to attack him so sweepingly in the Mormon press. Price had not really been helped by the refusal of the Amserau to publish Dewi’s riposte¹⁵³ while his opponent had recorse to Udgorn Seion. It was an error Price never committed again despite repeated challenges from Dewi Elfed. Price realiased he had more to lose, and Dewi more to gain, by feeding the issue between them with publicity.

(11)  ‘...AN AGITATION AMONG THE PEOPLE...’¹⁵⁴

Dewi Elfed’s ability with words and his standing as a converted nonconformist minister were busily used by the Latter-day Saints in furtherance of their mission. Within a fortnight of the publication in Udgorn Seion of the report on his baptism the first of Dewi’s many hymns and prose translations to figure in that journal appeared there.¹⁵⁵  It was a song about escaping Babylon in pursuit of the Saints’ Zion. There also rapidly appeared in that title indications of Dewi’s contribution to the missionary effort by way of itinerant preaching engagements.  Among these are observations in an imaginary dialogue that he, as a Mormon protagonist, spent much of his time and energy preaching:

ar draws y wlad yma a thraw, ac mewn erlid ac anmharch o fan i fan; mewn dyoddefiadau ac mewn anghen yn fynych.¹⁵⁶

hither and thither across the countryside, in persecution and disrespect from place to place; frequently in suffering and in need.

A particular example of field-missionary work by Dewi Elfed and David Rees (previously colleagues at Gwawr) relates to neighbouring Monmouthshire. Thomas Giles wrote from Tredegar on the 6th June, 1851 of the Saints’ success in that area in opening new places of worship. Three (halls) had recently been opened, one of them at the Belle Vue Inn between Victoria and Ebbw Vale. Here, Dewi Elfed and David Rees bore witness to hundreds of people. The hall was so full in the morning that many could not gain entry. In the afternoon the crowd was so large it was decided to preach from the window to satisfy a tumult both inside and outside which numbered between 1,000 and 1,500 people. In the evening the crowd was even bigger; and Giles recounted how the testimony of Dewi Elfed and his companion ‘caused an agitation among the people’.

Giles anticipated the opening of another three premises in the near future; and expressed on behalf of the Saints and (it is said) ‘several Baptists’ the hope that Dewi Elfed in particular would be present to address them at one of these occasions on June 15th. There must have been many other such visits of which no record survives; for it can be taken as read that every effort will have been made to maximize the impact of converting to Mormonism a minister of the denomination most fiercely opposed to the Saints.

Although Dewi Elfed had been baptized in April, 1851 the battle for final possession of Gwawr was not yet resolved. In its initial mention of events at Aberdare the Amserau had predicted the issue of legal title to the chapel would be settled only in court.¹⁵⁷ This proved to be correct. Regrettably, none of the case papers and no newspaper reports of the proceedings seem to have survived. This is surprising since the wrangle over Gwawr had already attracted public attention; and the eventual triumph of the Baptist interest was to be recounted proudly for the next 110 years in Baptist circles as the justified come-uppance of the Mormons.¹⁵⁸

That the Mormon press would not be particularly keen to draw attention to a defeat in court is understandable. That the Baptist press should make nothing more of it than one or two oblique references is most strange - as is a similar omission on the part of a secular press normally very ready to relate tales of sensation concerning Latter-day Saints. All Thomas Price and his biographer Benjamin Evans have to say on the issue is that Price and the church at Carmel, Aberdare, took the matter in hand; and that at the summer session of the Glamorgan Assizes in 1851 judgement for re-possession of Gwawr was given to the Baptists. Both Price and Evans state that recourse to law cost ‘tens of pounds’ in expenses. Evans also tells how Dewi Elfed’s lawyer tried unsuccessfully to have Price pay his own costs despite an award that Dewi should meet them.¹⁵⁹

Fortunately, Edward Thomas in his centennial history of Gwawr has a little more detail about the proceedings as such. He relates how the property was conveyed by the court from the custody of the sheriff of Glamorgan to the care of Llewelyn Howells, farmer, who had attended court on behalf of the Baptist remnant at Gwawr.¹⁶⁰ Shortly thereafter, Howells issued a document entitled Assignment of Chapel from Llewelyn Howells to Thomas Price and Others. These ‘others’ were a group of sixteen trustees hand-picked by the Baptists to secure future title to the premises against repetition of past events. They were headed firstly by Thomas Price, secondly by Howells, thirdly by John Daniel Williams of Cwmbach. In all, there were five ministers among the sixteen, along with leading laymen of substance or reputation. These latter included Philip John and Bethuel Williams, both deacons at Carmel; and Thomas Joseph, coal owner and industrial developer in the district.  Edward Thomas’ sources for this invaluable information were, he says, the deeds of Gwawr chapel then in the church safe. It is a matter of immense regret that these documents are said to have disappeared since Thomas used them in 1948.

In his biography of Price, Benjamin Evans provided the potentially useful information that counsel for the Baptist interest at court had been Frank James of Merthyr; while counsel for the Saints had been John Gwynne Herbert Owen of Cardiff and Newport.¹⁶¹  Both were well-known firms in their day; but no deposit of their company papers seems to have been made at any Welsh repository.

Periodicals and daily or weekly newspapers in the 19th century normally made extensive allusion to cases heard at the various county assizes; but a search of this material has produced no substantial gain about the Gwawr case.¹⁶² The only additional information gleaned has been the names of the judges involved and the dates at which the sessions took place. They began at Cardiff on the 12th July, and were presided over by Sir William Wightman and Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd.¹⁶³ This is the sum total of what can be gleaned of the case by today. It is a disappointing harvest: sufficiently so to make one ask whether the case was actually heard at court or perhaps made the subject of an out-of-court settlement; and also whether (given that it reached court) the case was heard in some other session of the 1851 assizes?

While these are valid questions a number of reasons mitigate against entertaining them seriously for long. Such reasons are:

i  Thomas Price in 1863 is plain in stating the issue was settled at the summer assizes in 1851; and despite  some inaccuracies in Price’s dates elsewhere, this was clearly not an unofficial arrangement as it involved the county sheriff in effecting the decision of the court; likewise Benjamin Evans, no mere summarist writing 40 years on, but a participant in the events, repeated with clarity the points made by Price.

ii  Edward Thomas used deeds emanating from the case itself to assert a similar view, and declared that ‘despite every opposition, in the Summer Assize, 1851, the entire property was transferred...to...Howells...the man who went to court to respond...’; this is an explicit confirmation based on primary sources of a full legal settlement.

iii There is Benjamin Evans’ information about the awarding of costs, which might be thought the most likely aspect of any out-of-court settlement; yet since J.G.H. Owen for Dewi Elfed attempted to have Price meet the Baptists’ own costs other than have Dewi face them, clearly no such settlement had been made.

iv The journals and newspapers of the day provide a few oblique allusions to the resolution of the case in mid-1851; the Amserau of 14th May predicted recourse to law; Y Bedyddiwr of June reported a decision of the Glamorgan Baptist Association in May that the deeds of all chapels in the county be the object of close consideration at its next annual meeting;¹⁶⁴ there is even an obscure signal in Udgorn Seion of 15th November (to which further reference is made below) that the question of title had been forcefully resolved by then;¹⁶⁵ the clearest signal in any journal that matters had been settled to Baptist satisfaction appeared in Seren Cymru for January, 1852, in which the following paragraph was printed:

 

ABERAMAN, ABERDAR:

Y mae yn hysbys...fod yr addoldy perthynol i’r Bedyddwyr yn y lle hwn wedi bod am gryn amser ym meddiant y sect hono a elwir yn Seintiau y Dyddiau Diweddaf, a hyny oherwydd i’r gweinidog, D. Jones (Dewi Elfed), ac ychydig nifer o’i ganlynwyr droi yn Seintiau; ond yn awr, y mae y ty hwn wedi dyfod yn ol i feddiant y Bedyddwyr...¹⁶⁶

It is known...that the place of worship belonging to the Baptists in this place has been for some time in the possession of that sect called Latter Day Saints, and that because the minister, D. Jones (Dewi Elfed), and a few of his followers joined (the) Saints; but now, this house has returned into the possession of the Baptists.

Probably the most emphatic evidence for the resolution of the case in Price’s direction is the account of how physical re-possession of the chapel was won by the Baptists in November, 1851. With this episode contention for control of the premises was terminated in Price’s victory.

(12) ANGELS IN FLIGHT:

Just as the only sources for an account of Dewi Elfed’s baptism and the Mormon triumph at Gwawr in April, 1851 were to be found in Mormon titles, so the only sources regarding the dramatic events of November whereby the Baptist regained their loss are the recollections of Thomas Price himself and some additions to them by Benjamin Evans.¹⁶⁷

On the 4th November, a crowd of about 2,000 set out behind Thomas Price to claim physical re-possession of Gwawr chapel. The sheriff of the county of Glamorgan was also at hand.

Despite the verdict of the court, Dewi Elfed and an unnamed supporter had entered the building and locked themselves in before the rejoicing Baptists arrived at the scene. It is not clear what they hoped to achieve by this, and in the long run they probably only made Price’s triumph seem the greater. Nevertheless, to secure their positions, Dewi and his friend bolted the door and fastened down all windows to that access was made impossible without breaking an entrance. It may be that this is what Dewi wanted to happen in the hope that Price would appear in a bad light because of it.

This was the situation when the crowd of marchers reached the site. The sheriff gave Price to understand that he had no authority to break an entry into a place of worship. For a moment no-one knew what to do next. Benjamin Evans related that the crowd then began to get restive and voices were raised at those inside the chapel. At this, Price strode forward: ‘wild in appearance, walking quickly and looking purposefully, with his every gesture declaring that Gwawr was shortly to be a chapel for the Baptists and not the Saints’.

In the midst of the tumult he tried the bolted door to no effect. He then shouted ‘in an authoritative manner’ to one of his deacons, Philip John, and to David Grier, a mason who had with him the tools of his trade. Price shouted ‘wildly’ at Grier and told him to prize open one of the windows so that he, Price, could get in at ‘the devils’. Grier complied. Price was helped in through the window by Philip John and by Grier, both of whom followed him into the building.

By the time these two caught up with Price it is said the latter was off chasing Dewi Elfed and his companion about the chapel: up into the pulpit and down again; and after coursing about two or three times Price is said to have come to grips with the fugitives in the chapel lobby. It was certainly a very different occasion to the only other known instance of Dewi Elfed and Thomas Price sharing a pulpit - at the induction of the minister of the English-language Baptist cause in that neighbourhood the previous year.¹⁶⁸

Once caught in the lobby, Price (single-handed be it noted) is said to have grasped the two ‘with the grip of a giant’. He told John and Grier to open the main door. This was done with difficulty by both of them acting jointly. At this, Benjamin Evans told how Price ‘literally booted both rascals one after the other out of the chapel until they descended distantly amidst the congratulations of the large crowd’.  Price had clearly reserved his best line till then, for he proclaimed the incident ‘a pretty good example of the casting out of devils in the 19th century’. Having been so routed, it is said the two Saints ‘ran for their lives’.  Later that day the chapel was placed securely in trust for the Baptists once more. Price’s victory was total, and his sun shone brightly indeed.

Yet it seems he had not quite finished with Dewi Elfed. Benjamin Evans went on to relate the business of Dewi’s defeat in the matter of costs. He also added a tale clearly derived of conversation with Price. This told how Dewi, following his physical ejection from Gwawr, issued a summons for assault against Price in which he sought compensation for the kick he had received at the time. Price is said to have responded by inviting Dewi to continue the case; but warning him that he would be required in court to submit the injured part to scrutiny in order to assess the extent of the wound. With satisfaction Evans noted that nothing more was heard of the intended summons.

The next Sunday, November the 9th, 1851, Price recorded that Gwawr was re-opened to the Baptists in a service under the auspices of the churches at Aberdare and Cwmbach. Thereafter, the meeting was placed under the guidance of Price’s most trusted lieutenant, J.D. Williams, Cwmbach. Price observed that ‘the battle was terminated in this way’; but he paid Dewi an unintentional compliment by saying that the latter’s influence was still perceptible in Aberaman twelve years later in 1863. At the quarterly meeting of the county association at Swansea on the 5th and 6th November (the two days immediately following re-possession) six ministers were appointed to investigate the circumstances of the cause at Gwawr. Their decision was to oppose any move to re-create a separate church there during the forseeable future. Rather, Baptists at Aberaman were to become members of the Cwmbach church while having the facility to meet or worship in their own locality.¹⁶⁹

Dewi’s parting shot at his Baptist adversaries was to have published in Udgorn Seion a lengthy poem lampooning his favourite target: the nonconformist ‘reverends’. He worked this song into an assertion of Mormon truth, and sent it to the editor of the Udgorn signed ‘Dewi Elfed, Capel Gwawr, Aberaman’.¹⁷⁰

In the same issue of the journal he also had printed a single englyn (or stanza) which contains an oblique reference to events on the 4th November. This verse had one purpose: to reassure Dewi’s audience among the Saints, who cannot but have heard of how things had gone for him at Gwawr, that despite the triumph of his opponents he and his colleague had escaped in good spirits. The verse read:

Er rhwyfiant y fall a’i rhyfel - hyllwedd Mewn ellyllig annel; Diangodd ein dau angel; A hwylus y’nt - ‘All is well’.

 

Despite a coup by evil - through coarse war In a cursed quarrel; In freedom flies each angel, They’re of good cheer - ‘All is well’.

It was a spirited gesture of defiance; but by the time it had appeared in print Dewi Elfed had literally been turned out onto the road.

(13)  ‘...IN OPRESSION S LAND I DWELL..’:¹⁷¹

Apart from Thomas Price’s testimony to continued Mormon activity at Aberaman and the note of two places of worship used by Saints in those environs in 1857,¹⁷² the most intriguing inference of sustained missionary effort there occurs in an issue of Yr Adferydd/The Restorer.¹⁷³ This was the publication of the Welsh arm of the Reorganised Church of Latter-day Saints. It lasted from March, 1864 till December, 1869.

In November, 1869 Yr Adferydd reported on the ‘semi-Annual Conference’ of that Church in south Wales, held in the long-room of the White Lion inn, Merthyr, on October 31st. Six small branches submitted reports; three were recorded as having failed to do so. One of the reporting branches was that at Aberaman. It was said to be composed of 11 elders; 6 priests; 1 teacher; 11 members; and 5 recent converts: thus attaining a total membership of 34. Of particular interest is the name of the branch president: one James Grear.¹⁷⁴  This was the surname of the mason upon whom Price had shouted as he issued the summons to prize open one of the sealed windows of Gwawr chapel in November, 1851. It is ironic that a related Mormon endeavour at Aberaman in 1869 was headed by a relative - probably a son or nephew - of the man who had enabled Price to gain access to Gwawr eighteen years earlier. This may have been one of the things in Price’s mind as he wrote that Dewi Elfed’s effect was still perceptible long after the man had left the locality.

Yet Dewi himself remained at Aberaman only until January, 1853 - 14 months after his ejection from Gwawr. To pursue his life story into this period and beyond is sometimes a difficult matter for there are only a few dim lanterns to light the way. One of these lanterns is a hymnal published by John Davis in November, 1852.¹⁷⁵ It is one of three produced to serve the early Welsh Mission and contained 575 hymns (all in Welsh). Of these, 57 (or 107%) were by Dewi Elfed. Collectively, they display his zeal and energy in propagating his new faith; though it must be noted their themes and images are not so different from what one would expect of any nonconformist hymnist of the day in Wales (a half-dozen specifically Mormon espousals excepted). Regrettably, there are no indications as to where any of the hymns were written; but most were probably composed at Aberaman - particularly no. 462, which is a paean for his conversion.

The major illumination of Dewi’s life during the decade after his conversion is Udgorn Seion. While it appeared regularly between January, 1849 and April, 1862 complete issues exist in Wales only for the years 1849 - 1854 and for 1856.  In the United States, the last complete volume is that for 1857. Thereafter, only 16 isolated numbers have been located¹⁷⁶ (see Appendix C).

Until the autumn of 1852 Dewi does not seem to have held any specific post of responsibility among the Saints although he was certainly busy as an itinerant missionary. Then in October, 1852 the Welsh Mission held a representative conference at Merthyr at which it was resolved to publish the fortnightly Udgorn as a weekly with effect from January, 1853.  Also agreed was that Dewi Elfed should acquire a knowledge of accountancy, maintain the financial records of the Mission, and make them available to its component parts.¹⁷⁷

Following this, Dewi seems to have moved rapidly to a wider role. In April, 1852 the Carmarthenshire area conference had been split into two as a result of growth in that region. The new districts were those of Carmarthen itself and Llanelli. One Abednego Jones had been made president of the latter area.¹⁷⁸  By October, 1852 it was reported that Abednego Jones would be emigrating to Zion in the new year,¹⁷⁹ and at a meeting of the General Council of the Welsh Mission at the Cymreigyddion Hall, Merthyr on 3rd January, 1853 it was decided that Dewi Elfed be appointed the new area president at Llanelli with effect from 17th January.¹⁸⁰  Upon taking up this post Dewi established an address in the town care of Mr John Lewis, Saddler, Thomas Street.¹⁸¹

In a membership report covering the whole of Britain to 31st December, 1852, it was said there were 4,872 baptized adherents within the Welsh Mission, distributed between 14 area conferences. By far the largest of these was that in East Glamorgan which had 2,258 members. The Llanelli conference was accorded 398 and was fourth largest in Wales.¹⁸²

Six months later the effect of continuous emigration and of a gradual slackening in the pace of conversions are discernable. In a parallel membership report to the 30th June, 1853 the Welsh Mission included a total of 4,397 adherents: a reducation of 475 on the previous figure. The reduction was general in most of the south Wales conferences, and especially so in East Glamorgan (which had 1,841 members). The Llanelli conference, by now under Dewi Elfed’s presidency, saw a loss of 52 members and a new membership total of 346.¹⁸³ No particular significance should be read into this loss: it was in the nature of things at the time. It is interesting to observe, however, that the Llanelli area secretary then was Dewi’s son Aneurin L. Jones; and there is evidence that the son continued to serve in this capacity after Dewi was transferred to Swansea to become area president in West Glamorgan.

Also of interest concerning his family’s relationship with the Saints are some unexceptional verses in praise of Zion (contributed) by Aneurin Jones to Udgorn Seion;¹⁸⁴ and also a verse by Dewi himself in praise of the virtuous wife in which he wrote that his own was such.¹⁸⁵ This is only one of his contributions in poetry and prose to the Udgorn during 1853 and 1854; but since Mrs Anna Jones has left no statement of her own - despite sharing circumstances that must often have been difficult to bear - it may be appropriate to quote it in full:

Gwraig deg, fywiog, nid rhy bwyllog,

Lanwedd, serchog, rywiog, rydd,

Fwyn, lygadlon, lawen-galon,

Loew fron, mor Ian a’r dydd;

Hedd yn chwarae ar ei gruddiau,

Gwir ar fin ei gwefus hi;

Addurn gwr, yn llawn rhinweddau;

B’le mae hono ? Genyf fi.

Good wife, lively, not too pensive,

Pretty, loving, hale and free,

Sweet, bright-eyed and happy-hearted,

Clean of aspect, pure is she;

Peace rejoicing in her features,

Lips for truth that vessels be;

Man’s reward, and full of virtue;

Where is she found? Why, with me.

This together with Aneurin Jones’ secretarial and literary endeavours provides limited testimony to the support Dewi Elfed received from his family in pursuing what at first at least had been his conviction, not necessarily theirs.

Meanwhile the work of the Welsh Mission continued. At a representative conference in the Cymreigyddion Hall, Merthyr between the 12th and 14th November, 1853, Dewi and other leaders of the Saints in Wales gathered to hear Samuel Richards, President of the Church in Britain (and brother of his predecessor, Franklin Richards).¹⁸⁶ The thrust of this address was the authority of Mormon priesthood and the duty of believers to submit to it, subject to safeguards against abuse. The implication is clearly that some members were reluctant to accept the strongly centrifugal authority structure of the Mormon Church. This may have been a particular problem for converts from denominations of Old Dissent in Wales amongst whom congregational autonomy was the quintessence of church government.

A significant moment in Dewi Elfed’s life came in December, 1853 when William Phillips, President of the Church in Wales who had baptized him into the faith, prepared to emigrate to Zion in the company of John Davis and others.¹⁸⁷  Dewi Elfed composed a l4-verse Address on the occasion of their departure from Liverpool to New Orleans aboard the Golconda on the 27th January, 1854. Yet only one copy of the Address seems to have survived, bound with Harvard University Library’s copy of Udgorn Seion for July to December, 1853.¹⁸⁸

Naturally, the tone of this address is friendly. Outside the Saints’ ranks things were a lot less friendly, as some of Dewi’s other experiences were to prove. In a letter dated 12th June, 1854 he wrote to Dan Jones, editor of Udgorn Seion in succession to John Davis, reporting difficulties faced by the mission in his Llanelli area.  He related the attitude of some local authorities in the following terms:

Croesewir ni weithiau gan rai police...Cymerir ein henwau ganddynt...Tools ydynt y pryd hyny yn nwylo Parchedigion, stiwardiaid, societies a Lordiaid y Sectau.¹⁸⁹

We are occasionally welcomed by some policemen...Our names are taken by them...At such times they are tools in the hands of the Reverends, stewards, societies and Lords of the Sects.

He also noted a preaching meeting held by the Saints in the ‘chief hostelry’ at Porth-y-Rhyd, near Llanwrda in the parish of Llanddarog, Carmarthenshire. Here, the landlord had shown kindness towards the Saints, so that the Sectau

assembled legions of Sunday School scholars, drew them up in regimental order, and then, when the Saints began their next service, drowned the Mormons with:

...swn magnelau catechismau yn saethu bwledi traddodiadol yn erbyn y Saint.¹⁹⁰

...the noise of catechismic guns firing traditional bullets against the Saints.

The records of the Llanelli branch show that Dewi and his family took up residence there at the start of his presidency on the 17th January, 1853; and that on the 2nd August, 1854 the family transferred its membership to Swansea, centre of the West Glamorgan area conference.¹⁹¹ Dewi had recently been appointed president there. The move coincided with Dan Jones’ decision to transfer the headquarters of the Welsh Mission from Merthyr to Swansea in September, 1854.¹⁹² From that time on, Udgorn Seion and the office of the Church in Wales were both Swansea-based. This proximity of Dan Jones and Dewi Elfed was not a happy one for Dewi in the long run. Prior to considering this matter in some detail it should perhaps be noted that the Llanelli records make no mention of Dewi’s oldest daughter Anna accompanying the rest of the family to either Llanelli or Swansea. The census of 1851 at Aberdare is the last heard of her.

Dewi’s period as president on west Glamorgan had a happy as well as a distressing aspect. Soon after settling there, he organised an eisteddfod, or competitive literary festival, within the church in tune with a practice rapidly gaining in popularity at the time. This was a unique departure in which topics were restricted to those concerning the endeavours of the Saints in West Glamorgan.¹⁹³ Yet his presidency came to a most unhappy end by July, 1855 when he was publicly denounced and excommunicated for financial misdemeanours.

(14) ‘...UNWORTHY AS I AM’:¹⁹⁴

Having quarrelled with his previous co-religionists on principle, Dewi Elfed displayed a severe lack of judgement by quarrelling in 1855-56 with his subsequent co-religionists on grounds of money. It was a miserable episode that left him isolated outside the ranks of the Saints and from which his reputation barely recovered.

It seems there had been financial impropriety and also animus between Dewi and Dan Jones since the beginning of 1855.  Matters became public in July with a denunciation of Dewi Elfed in Udgorn Seion by Daniel Daniels, an elder of the Church and superviser of three area conferences in west Wales who was to follow Dan Jones as editor of the Udgorn and President of the Welsh Mission. Daniels and Jones had been close colleagues ever since they had returned to Wales in each other’s company in 1853 to undertake missionary work in their homeland. Daniels’ denunciation was endorsed by Dewi’s own counsellors, and upheld by Franklin Richards (recently re-appointed President of the Church in Britain).¹⁹⁵

Daniels wrote that Dewi complained of being unjustly excommunicated from the Church because of Jones’ alleged ill-will towards him; that the justification for this step (abuse of financial trust) was invalid; and that money discrepancies were in reality of only a few pounds. Daniels noted that Dewi had written similarly to other figures in the Church in Wales and beyond; and that one of his letters had reached Richards himself.

Daniels replied to these defences fiercely. He warned believers not to heed Dewi’s criticisms of Dan Jones nor the apparently complimentary remarks Dewi was making about Daniels. He said:

Ystyriaf ganmoliaeth y fath ddyn a Dewi Elfed Jones yn sarhad ar fy nghymmeriad. Tystiaf mai anwireddau yw yr holl gyhuddi adau a ysgrifena yn erbyn y Llywydd Jones hyd y gwelais, a’i fod yn ymladd a’i gyfaill gorau; ...ddarfod i’r Llywydd Jones ddangos mwy o drugaredd...ato...nag a ofyna cyfiawnder iddo wneuthur. Bu’m fy hun drosto, a gwn am ereill a fuont ar ei gais, yn ymbil ar Dewi Elfed Jones lawer gwaith er ys maith i ddiwygio...yr hwn a addawai wneuthur...eithr y mae efe wedi myned i’r fath dywyllwch...nes mau ei bleser yw diraddio...y dyn a wnaeth fwyaf o ddaioni iddo, a’r mwyaf dieuog o’r hyn y cyhudda o neb yn y wlad...Prawf hyn...ei fod ef o ysbryd dialgar, ac wedi teilyngu y cerydd a gafodd.  Argoel ddrwg yw gweled ‘ci yn cnoi y wialen’.

I consider the praise of a man such as Dewi Elfed Jones to be an insult to my character. I testify that all the accusations he has made against President Jones are untrue as far as I can see, and that he is contending with his best friend;...President Jones has shown him more mercy...than justice ever required. I and others on his behalf have implored Dewi Elfed Jones frequently for months past to mend his ways...which he has promised to do...but he has gone into such darkness...that his delight lies in diminishing the man who has done him most good, and the most innocent of all he is accused of...This proves...he is of a vengeful spirit, and deserving of the rebuke he has received. It is a poor sign to see ‘a dog gnarling at the stick’.

Daniels then spelled out details of Dewi’s alleged transgressions (and the emphases are Daniels’ own):

Gadewch i mi hysbysu y Saint fy mod yn deall, ar ol edrych yn fanwl dros yr holl gyfrifon sydd ar gael, fod yn ddyledus arno i’r Swyddfaau dros ugain punt yn ol cyfrifon a gadwodd ei lab ei hun, yr hwn oedd yn cael yr enw o Ddosparthwr, eithr yn ol ei ddywediad ei hun, ac ereill, ni chaffai afael yn yr arian gan y llogellai ei dad y cyfan. Heblaw hyn...deallaf fod dros ugain punt arall o arian y Gynnadledd yn ei law yn ol y cyfrifon a gadwodd ei fab, yr hwn oedd ei ysgrifenydd ei hun. Mae ei lyfrau...yn dangos ei fod ef wedi derbyn dros hanner cant o bunnau, heblaw dros ddeugain punt at ei gynnal ef a’i deulu, a thua deg punt at ddillad, mewn llai na blwyddyn...heblaw yr holl elw a ddeuai oddi-wrth y Dosparthu llyfrau Cymraeg a Saesnig. O’r swm uchod y mae tua deg punt yn sefyll yn ei ddwylaw ef o gyfraniadau y Gynnadledd at adeiladu Teml yr Arglwydd. Mae efe wedi gwadu hyn...

Let me inform the Saints that I understand, after closely examining all the available accounts that he owes to the Offices more than twenty pounds according to accounts kept by his own son, who was Accountant in name, but who by his own statement and those of others, would never receive the money since his father pocketed the lot. Apart from this...I understand that more than another twenty pounds of Conference money is in his hands according to accounts kept by his own son who was his secretary. His books...show that he has received more than fifty pounds, without counting more than forty pounds towards supporting himself and his family, and about ten pounds for clothes, in less than a year...not including all the profit that arose from distributing books in Welsh and English. Of the above sum he still has in his hands about ten pounds in contributions towards building the Temple of the Lord. He has denied this...

It is apparent that trouble had been brewing since early 1855 for Daniels observed:

...gwn fod y Lywydd Jones wedi cael digon o achosion i ysgymuno Dewi Elfed Jones er ys mwy na hanner blwyddyn oni buasai ei awydd i’w adferyd...

I know that President Jones has had more than sufficient cause to excommunicate Dewi Elfed Jones for above half a year had his wish not been to improve him...

Daniels suggested money from various branches within the area conference had also gone astray; and invited those who might otherwise have doubted the truth of what had been asserted to view Dewi Elfed’s account books at the Udgorn Seion office. It was a pretty damning indictement, verified in a coda by those appointed to advise Dewi Elfed in his presidency and, it seems, by the admissions of Aneurin L. Jones, Dewi’s son. Every bit as damning as assertions about money were those which focused upon Dewi’s supposed ill-will towards the then Welsh President, Dan Jones. He was a revered figure, widely regarded as father of the faith in Wales.¹⁹⁶

This affair marks the nadir of Dewi Elfed’s personal standing. President Richards highlighted Dewi’s isolation when he upheld Daniels’ denunciation in the following sentences addressed to Dan Jones:

Dymunaf arnoch ymddwyn yn ddiduedd a didderbynwyneb yn mhob achos o’r fath...Nis gallaf oddef y fath drafodaeth yn yr Eglwys, yn cael ei chyflawni tan fantell gweniaith ragrithiol o fod yn ‘wir Formoniad ffyddlon’ fel y dywed (Dewi Elfed) ...nis gallaf...ei gredu ef lIe y dywed ‘yr wyf yn barod i ddyoddef un peth er mwyn yr achos hwn’ hyd oni ddychwelo y swm sydd wedi ei gadw a’i ddefnyddio yn anghyfreithlawn ganddo... Na ddisgwylied efe yr adennilla fy ymddiried a’m cymdeithas i byth, nac y gofynaf i un dyn cyfiawn arall i ymddiried ynddo neu i gymdeithasu ag ef hyd oni ad-dalo bob ffyrling... Gwell fyddai i’r fath (ddiffygiwyr) werthu yr oll a feddant, ymrwymo eu hunain a’u teuluoedd yn gaeth-weision ...mewn gwasanaeth hyd oni ad-dalont y ffyrling eithaf gyda llog, a rhoddi i’r Eglwys drwy hyny un prawf o’u bod yn onest, nag ymgyndynu a’r awdurdodau am le nac enw o fod yn fyw tra maent yn farw i gyfiawnder.

I require you to act without favour or indulgence in every case of this sort...I cannot tolerate such accommodations within the Church, being effected under the cloak of hypocritical claims to be a ’true and faithful Mormon’ as (Dewi Elfed) says...I cannot...believe him when he says ‘I am ready to suffer anything for this cause’ until such time as he returns that sum kept and used by him illegally... Let him not expect ever to regain either my trust or my company, or that I will ask any righteous man to trust or associate with him until he repays every mite. It would be better were such (deficients) to sell all they possess, bind themselves and their families as slaves...in service until they repay the last mite with interest, and thereby give the Church proof of their honesty, than have them contend with the authorities for a place and a name among the faithful whilst they are dead to justice.

Elsewhere in the same issue of Udgorn Seion Dewi Elfed was compared by inference to Judas Iscariot in the magnitude of his transgression. These testimonies against him are extreme but damning. Nevertheless, it is right to remember that only one side of the case is presented here. Dewi has left no statement in defence or mitigation; and seems to have been firm in his denial of guilt. This may have been only an instinctive denial; and that no action was brought against him in court may only reflect unwillingness on the part of Saints to seek redress in the eye of an often hostile public. On the other hand, Dewi witheld from any confession of wrongdoing for almost a year; and during this time - in what must have been a very lonely period - he maintained profession of the Mormon faith. When the moment came for his re-admittance, this was fully mentioned by Daniels in order to justify reconciliation. Within ten or eleven months he was reinstated to membership of the Mormon Church; though he never again held formal office in its government or administration.¹⁹⁷

The reconciliation was reported in Udgorn Seion.¹⁹⁸ On April 19th, Dan Jones emigrated to America for the second time aboard the Saunders Curling from Liverpool with 707 converts. Prior to his departure, peace was made between him and Dewi Elfed. This was witnessed by Daniels (Jones’ successor as Welsh President) and by Thomas Harries (Dewi’s successor as president in West Glamorgan). Dewi expressed his joy at this facility. In submitting to Daniels’ authority, Dewi conceded guilt but only in the most guarded of ways. He declared:

...nad oes lonyddwch nac esmwyth-tra i fy ysbryd yn nos na dydd tu allan i Eglwys Iesu Grist o herwydd fy mod yn gwybod mae (sic) yn yr Eglwys hon yn unig y gallaf weithio allan fy iachawdwriaeth. Gydag edifeirwch diffuant y cydnabyddaf fy ffaeleddau lawer, a’m troseddiadau erchyllion, o ddywedyd na gwneuthur yr un dim lleiaf yn erbyn y Llywydd Jones ac...yn...erbyn...awdurdodau yr Eglwys yn Nghymru. Am yr hyn...eiddunais...faddeuant, yr hon ffafr a fwynheais. Gyda rhwyddineb y gallaf ddywedyd fy mod allan o’r eglwys (sic) yn unol a chyfiawnder... Mae genyf ysbryd rhydd a chalon lan at bawb o’r Saint yn Nghynnadledd Gorllewin Morganwg, a phawb ereill, a hyderaf y caf hwythau ...yn...garuaidd a maddeugar, ac y caf ran helaethach nag erioed yn eu gweddiau aml drosof. Mae genyf hyder ar Dduw, adnabyddwr fy nghalon o’r dechreuad, y bydd iddo fy mendithio yn y fath fodd...ac y dysgwyf yn berffaith i barchu a gwerthfawrogi holl gynghorion... ei weision, yn nghyd ag ufyddhau yn drylwyr i’r Offeiriadaeth dragwyddol yn yr oll a ofyna genyf.

...there is neither peace nor ease for my spirit night or day outside the Church of Jesus Christ because I know that only within that Church am I able to work out my salvation. With sincere repentance I acknowledge my many failings, and my awful offences of saying or doing the least thing in detriment of President Jones and...against... the authorities of the Church in Wales. Therefore I requested forgiveness, which favour I have enjoyed. Freely I can say that I was outside the church in accordance with justice... I have a free spirit and a pure heart towards all Saints in the West Glamorgan Conference, and all others, and I trust I shall find them... loving and forgiving, and that I shall have a larger share than ever of their frequent prayers on my behalf. I have confidence that God, the perceiver of my heart from the beginning, will bless me so that I shall learn perfectly to respect and appreciate all the advice of his servants, and to be thoroughly obeidient to the eternal Priesthood in all that it asks of me.

This is a fulsome statement; but Dewi did not refer to his alleged monetary transgressions when using phrases such as ‘many failings’ and ‘awful offences’. Rather, these words were used to purge himself of ill-will towards Dan Jones. The only possible allusion to the correctness of financial charges against him occurs in the ambiguous half-sentence ‘Freely I can say that I was outside the church in accordance with justice...’ There is no overt reference to money.

He concluded his recantation with an eight-verse poem entitled Emyn y Profiad (‘Hymn of Tribulation’), in which he sought to ‘sing away a little of my burden’. It is an accomplished and finely-tuned piece; and there are striking images and allusions in it as when Dewi wrote of the effect upon him of being excluded from the communion of the Latter-day Saints:

Dorau cau ar lwybrau bywyd!

Argae lem ar gyrch y gwawl!

Rhaiadr oer ar gariad tanllyd!

Galar lIe y dyrchais fawl!

Doors shut fast on all life’s pathways!

Darkly dammed were sunny rays!

A freezing shower on burning love!

Grief where once I uterred praise!

 

Or again when he stated the constancy of his Mormon faith even whilst outside the Church:

Trwy holl drablith fy helyntion

Tystiolaethais ‘nol fy nerth

Am wirionedd egwyddorion

Pur efengyl - mawr ei gwerth...

 Through the trials of my turmoil

My strong witness had its birth,

Speaking truly of the tenets

In that gospel of great worth...

Dewi ended the poem with a couplet that contained the coup-de-grace of rapprochement. It might also be taken to carry a further oblique reference to his alleged financial impropriety. He wrote that:

Methodd byd a’i demtasiwnau

Ladd fy nghariad at fy Nuw.

The world and all its tempting ways

Failed to kill my love of God.

Dewi Elfed’s letter of contrition and of submission to Daniels’ authority had been written on the 3rd May, 1856 at Swansea. It was acknowledged by area president Thomas Harries and by Daniels himself. Their responses were also published in Udgorn Seion; and Harries stated that he knew more than most of Dewi’s case. He said he had spoken confidentially with Dewi and witnessed an examination of the errant by the presidency of the Church in Europe (Richards) and by the presidency in Wales (Daniels). Harries declared himself satisfied as to Dewi’s humility and repentance, and proclaimed himself ready to receive the penitent as a bosom brother. In an important gesture towards rehabilitation, Harries lauded Dewi’s courage in first aligning himself with the Saints at no small cost to himself. Harries also expressed the hope that:

Yr Arglwydd, yr hwn a’i cynnorthwyodd i fod mor wrol a dewr i ryfela o blaid egwyddorion gwirionedd ar ei ddyfodiad i’r eglwys gynt, a’i galluogo ef etto i fod yn ffyddlon a defnyddiol ynddi o hyn allan hyd byth.

The Lord, who helped him be so courageous and brave as to fight on behalf of the principles of truth when he first came to the church, enable him again to be faithful and useful on her behalf now and for ever more.

Daniels’ acknowledgement was couched in warmer terms again. It spoke of the Welsh President’s ‘great pleasure’; ‘warm avowal’; ‘not slight satisfaction’ and ‘joy (of) heart’ at seeing Dewi Elfed’s ‘sincere repentance’ and ‘worthiness’. Daniels seconded all that Harries had written; and said Dewi had concurred readily in what had been asked of him. This may be code to signify that whatever the penitent said or did not say in his letter, Dewi had made sufficient recompence to the Church to permit his restoration to the faith in accordance with Franklin Richards’ observations on the matter.

To stress Dewi’s restored credibility as a future representative of the faith, Daniels emphasized the virtue of his loyalty to Mormonism even whilst cast out of its communion. In glancing back at the experience, Daniels said of the returnee:

...daeth allan fel dyn yn hyn, a phrofodd i mi ac i bawb yn bresennol mai ei ddyben penaf a’i brif gysur yw adeiladu teyrnas Dduw. Teilwng yw hysbysu fod yn dda genyf gael arddeall iddo barhau i goleddu ac amddiffyn gydag egni egwyddorion y grefydd hon cyhyd ag y bu allan; mae amser yn dyfod pan y caiff deimlo y bydd hyny yn fwy o les iddo nag a feddyliodd ei galon. Y mae wedi dysgu gwers o brofiad iddo ei hun fwy nas gall brynu am aur nac arian...

...he has emerged from this like a man, and has proved to me and to all present that his chief purpose and his first delight is the building of God’s kingdom. It is right to declare my understanding that he continued to maintain and defend with vigour the principles of this religion the whole time he was on the outside; and a time is coming when he shall feel that this will be of greater benefit to him than his heart ever imagined. He has taught himself a lesson of experience of greater value than ever gold or silver could buy...

Daniels went on to make an outright commendation of Dewi to the faithful of the Church. He who had dismissed Dewi with such contempt less than a year before declared now:

Yr wyf o’m calon yn ei gymeradwyo i sylw, ewyllys da ac ymddiried y Saint, gan weddio drosto a chladdu yr hyn a fu heb son am dano, fel y byddom o un galon yn gweddio...ar iddo gael ei nerthu i ddyblu ei ddiwydrwydd nes llanw y golled a wnaed yn yr amser a gollwyd.

I recommend him from my heart to the attention, good-will and trust of the Saints, and pray for him while burying all that was without further mention of it, so that we may be of one heart in supplicating... that he shall have the strength to redouble his industry until the gap caused during the time we have lost is fully made up.

There is an intimation here of what the church authorities had in mind for Dewi during the forseeable future. He was to go forth into the world with ‘redoubled industry’ to spread the Mormon gospel among those who dwelt ‘in Babylon’. In thus charging Dewi Elfed, the leaders of the mission in Wales were surely crediting him with a particular gift for reaching the hearts and minds of men as a preacher. It would also seem to be a vote of confidence in an orthodoxy of his which made him a suitable standard-bearer at a time when mass-breakthroughs were increasingly difficult to achieve.

From the patchy evidence that survives from the time of his final years of service to the mission in Wales, one gets the impression of Dewi Elfed being employed as a rallier of the baptized and as a front-line soldier in an attempt to take the Mormon faith forward. If this were the case, it is likely Dewi was sustained in his labour by seeing it as a redemptive period in his life. It is unlikely he would have objected to his years in a ‘front-line’ posting during the difficult time between 1856 and 1861. For in his letter of submission he had stated a belief that God (would) bless him to show ‘perfect respect’ and ‘thorough obeidience’ to the ‘eternal Priesthood in all it requires’.

(15) ‘...FAITHFUL IN THE VINEYARD OF CHRIST...’:¹⁹⁹

It was not long after his reinstatement that Dewi Elfed was out and about in south Wales preaching the gospel and visiting branches of the Church in order to strengthen them in faith. In September, 1856 he sent to Daniels ‘in accordance with my duty’ a report written at Swansea recounting some of his recent missionary work.²⁰⁰ He declared his spirits to be high, and those members of the Church upon whom he had called to be for the most part of good cheer and determined faith. Officers of (congregations) were, he said, diligent; though he appears to have struck a hopeful note by stating that during open-air meetings held twice or three times each Sunday there were:

...cannoedd yn dyfod i wrandaw, ie, miloedd weithiau; a gwrandawiad rhagorol yn mhob man. Ymddengys fod lluoedd ar gael eu bedyddio. Mae rhyw gyffro newydd yn mhlith y bobl fel pe byddent mewn gwewyr parhaus - yn aflonydd eu teimladau...yn ymholi yn ddystaw a gweision Iesu...

...hundred coming to listen, yes, thousands sometimes; and an excellent reception everywhere. It appears hosts of people are ready to be baptized. There is some new stirring amongst the people as if they were in a state of constant excitement - restless in their feelings...enquiring quietly of Jesus’ servants...

He remarked that during his own open-air meetings he had experienced virtually no obstruction to his work, although he had met several people full of wrath, bitterness, jealousy and enmity towards the Saints. Such types were usually under the influence of the nonconformist churches, he declaimed. As in the days of his clashes with Thomas Price, Dewi reserved a special vitriol for the ‘reverends’ who headed these denominations, and was in bold form when he wrote:

Ha, ha, mae sectariaeth yn y bendro fawr - y ddawn bregethwrawl wedi myned yn chwiblawg a diflas - dyddiau y bwystfil wedi eu llyncu yn fyw - ac adeg eu dymchweliad yn dynesu yn awr cwymp a syrthiad Babylon Fawr, mam putteiniaid a ffieidd-dra y ddaear.

Ha, ha, the sects are in a giddy spin - the talent of preaching has become something of a boring whistle - the days of the beast having swallowed them alive - and the time of their downfall nearing in the hour when Mighty Babylon will fall and collapse, she being the mother of prostitution and earthly accursedness.

Having said he had experienced little opposition whilst preaching, it is a bit inconsistent to refer to ‘bitter’ and ‘jealous’ opposition emanating from the dissenting churches. Likewise to refer to that furore in Wales as elsewhere concerning plural marriage among Mormons in America. Dewi loyally defended it as a proper aspect of the patriarchal order that bestowed blessings. Yet he had to concede that ‘Hardly anything is heard anywhere...except a barking against the plural marriage of the Mormons’.

Disdain or Mormonism often focused upon this issue and can hardly have made for an easy reception in most places.²⁰¹ Having defended the practice in his report, Dewi produced in translation a detailed defence of the custom delivered by Parley Pratt to the Utah legislature on 31st December, 1855. This pamphlet, printed and published at Swansea by Daniel Daniels in September, 1856, bore the title Priodas A Moesau Yn Utah (‘Marriage And Morals In Utah’).²⁰² It was an appendage to eight other pamphlets prepared by Dewi Elfed in 1856-57, all meant to convey to the Welsh observations by Orson Pratt upon the Mormon faith. Published at Swansea, they represent a further substantial contribution by Dewi Elfed to the mission work of the Latter-day Saints in Wales (see Appendix D).²⁰³

After 1857, details of Dewi’s activities on behalf of the Church are even more difficult to establish than before. There is a curiously dated report by him in Udgorn Seion for April, 1857 which suggests he may have returned at least temporarily to Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare.²⁰⁴ In this report, Dewi informed Daniels that work was continuing in those two areas and elsewhere in preaching the Mormon faith to ‘the world’; but also that he was seeking a revival of faith among the Saints themselves. The greater part of the report is taken up with this latter aspect. He identified several groups in need of re-invigoration: the lethargic; the meddlesome; those who disregarded dietary rules; those who held back from full commitment to the faith; those who begrudged tithe; and those who moved frequently from place to place thereby loosening their roots in the Church until overpowered by the spirit of ‘the world’. This latter group, he maintained, was especially noticeable at Merthyr and Aberdare.

Whatever the correct date of this report, its author was still serving in the front-line missionary effort at a time when the going had become increasingly difficult. Dewi gave no sign of being other than content to pursue this charge with vigour. He set out his position clearly by writing:

...ymdrech(af) wneud fy ngoreu i bregethu i’r byd, ymweled a’r Saint, eu haddysgu a’u hyfforddi, ac adeiladu yr Eglwys yn mhob dull galluadwy i mi. Yr wyf yn benderfynol pregethu a thystiolaethu yn mhob tref, pentref, cilfach a chongl lle bum yn  pregethu, a lIe na bum os deuaf i wybod am dano yn rhyw le yn maes fy llafur.

...(1) try to do my best to preach to the world, to visit the Saints, to teach and train them, and to build up the Church in every way I can. I am determined to preach and bear witness in every town, village, valley and corner I have already spoken in, and also where I have not yet been if I come to know of them somewhere in the domain of my labour.

 

Reckless and rash he may have been; but this is the voice and endeavour of a devoted servant of that faith he had embraced in a maelstrom of antagonisms at Aberaman six years before. These lines are a testimony to Dewi Elfed’s convictions as he continued to propound the faith of the Latter-day Saints in south and east Wales in the years after 1856: labouring faithfully in the vineyard but not, as yet, called forth to Zion.

His opportunity to emigrate did eventually come; but Dewi’s last years in Wales are shrouded in comparative silence. The last discernable reference to him occurs in the Millenial Star in 1859, with the following brief announcement:

RE-APPOINTMENTS:

David Davies, George Rowley and Dewi E. Jones

to travel in the Welsh Mission.²⁰⁵

Thus, he was still in harness as an itinerant preacher in January that year. There is no further mention of Dewi until he and his wife and two of their children surface in the emigration and immigration records of Liverpool and New York. One reason for this lack of information is undoubtedly the defective survival of Udgorn Seion from these years. Possibly the slow contraction into which the Welsh Mission slipped during the late 1850s and the increasing emphasis of the Church in Britain on using the English language may have had a bearing in reducing the perceived role of Welsh language missionaries such as Dewi Elfed.²⁰⁶

Ultimately, permission was given for Dewi and those members of his family still sharing his life to emigrate to Zion. He had waited long for the moment. His swansong to Wales may be heard in the concluding verse of his Address to William Phillips and John Davis at the time of their emigration in 1854:

Os wyf i fod am dymmor bach

I weithio’n lew ym Mabilon,

Mae dydd yn d’od caf ganu’n iach,

A bod yn rhydd o ormes hon;

I Seion draw eich gyrfa sydd,

Eich dedwydd awr a ddaeth yn ddel;

Rwyf innau’n disgwyl am y dydd -

o frodyr cu, ffarwel! ffarwel!²⁰⁷

If I am for some passing time

To boldly strive in Babylon,

There’ll come a day when I’ll be free

And its opression will have gone;

To distant Zion your road leads,

Oh, joyful hour there to dwell;

I too look forward to that day-

Dear brothers now, farewell! farewell!

(16) ‘...IN HASTE OUT OF BABYLON...’:²⁰⁸

The recollection of Dewi Elfed’s later years in Wales was sufficiently vague thirty or forty years on for the author of the history of his native parish to have written no more than:

Trodd (Dewi Elfed) yn un o ‘Seintiau’r dyddiau diweddaf’. Dechreuodd ei daith i Lyn Halen, a bu farw yn Nghalifornia. Efe oedd awdur ‘Caneuon Tyssul’.²⁰⁹

 

(Dewi Elfed) became one of the ‘latter day Saints’. He began his journey to Salt Lake, and died in California. He was the author of ‘Songs of Tyssul’.

The first source to cast a significant light on Dewi’s later life is the journal of William Ajax, a leading Mormon in Wales involved in the production of the final issues of Udgorn Seion at Liverpool in 1861-62 prior to his own emigration.²¹⁰ In an entry dated 27th June, 1862 Ajax wrote of his journey across America to the Salt Valley and said that, ‘Our number amounted somewhere to 900 - 799 of the Tapscott company, 36 of our company, and several from New York, Bro. Dewi Elfed Jones and wife being among them’.²¹¹

The ‘Tapscott company’ to which he referred was that company of Saints who had sailed aboard the Boston-based rig William Tapscott²¹² from Liverpool on 14th May, 1862, with 808 persons in a party under the guidance of William Gibson.

They were New York bound.²¹³ The ‘our company’ to which Ajax referred was the greater part of the 38 Saints who had left Liverpool a few days later, on 18th May, 1862 under the leadership of W.C. Moody aboard the New York-based rig Antarctic, also bound for that city.

The inference in Ajax’s journal is that while Dewi and his wife joined the 900 or so Saints in their trek to Zion beginning late June, 1862, the couple had not been among the two parties above which had recently landed at New York. It is implied the family had resided at New York a while before they joined the Ajax journey. This supposition was confirmed on investigating shipping and passenger lists for sailings between Liverpool and New York between 1859 and 1862.²¹⁴ In particular, a sailing of the William Tapscott from Liverpool on 11th May, 1860 was examined. This was a voyage by 731 Saints under the leadership of Asa Calkin; and the passenger list did indeed include Dewi Elfed, his wife and their two youngest children - Daniel and ‘Eleanor’ (recorded in 1851 as ‘Ellen’).²¹⁵

At the time of sailing ‘Dewi E. Jones’ was said to be aged 51. This is two years less than his actual age according to the record of his christening and the 1851 census. His wife’s name is quoted as Hannah (Anna in 1851), and she is said to have been aged 56. According to the census, she was aged 54. Daniel’s age is given as sixteen (in agreement with the census); while ‘Eleanor’ is said to have been aged twelve (fourteen according to the census). Their address is given merely as ‘B. Evans, Swansea’. This signifies Benjamin P. Evans, President of the Welsh Mission between 1858 and 1861 in succession to Daniel Daniels. The Swansea element represents the office of the Welsh Mission there.²¹⁶

From entries on the printed form containing this passenger list it appears that Dewi and his family were given confirmation of their places in the emigrating company on April 30th: twelve days before sailing. Under the heading ‘Description of Emigrant’ there is the inappropriate entry ‘Hand Cart’ with ‘ditto’ against each of the three succeeding names - no doubt a description of their baggage.

There is also an indication that Dewi and his family travelled in the steerage compartment, which is not terribly surprising. What is unexpected is the remark ‘Not going’ which first appears apparently against all four names and again, this time against three names, in another column. If the remark is taken to apply to all four individuals then it may be that between confirmation of acceptance on the 30th April and sailing on the 11th May the family as a whole had second thoughts about leaving for America. It may or may not be material that whereas other emigrants in the list have sums of money entered against their names under such headings as ‘Deposit’. ‘Balance’ and ‘Total’ no such details are entered viz-a-viz Dewi and his family. Moreover, in the sequence of ticket numbers allocated to the irregularly sized groups of emigrants, there is an apparent omission in respect of Dewi and his companions in that they are listed between those allotted the numbers ‘31’ & ‘32’. If ‘Not going’ is taken to apply only to three members of the family (Mrs Jones and the two children) then it may be indicative of division within their ranks about emigrating to Utah. It may be there had already been some such division for only two of the couple’s five children remained with them in journeying to Zion.

Confirmation of the family’s arrival in America is found in the record of their landing at New York on 16th June, 1860. Their voyage across the Atlantic had taken a month and five days. Their ages upon arrival were noted as at Liverpool except that Daniel was said to be eighteen. It was observed that they had travelled on the ‘Lower Deck’. Their names were nearer the versions found in the 1851 census: David E. Jones; wife, Anna; Daniel; and daughter Ellen. Their stated occupations seem most questionable. Dewi was described as a labourer (‘Labr.’), while his son Daniel was recorded as a miner. Mrs Jones and Ellen were designated Wife & Child.

Thus it was that David Bevan Jones, alias Dewi Elfed, son of the remote parish of Llandysul; ordained minister of Gwawr chapel turned scourge of Baptist and nonconformist clergy; enthusiast of the Mormon mission to his people; lapsed and restored servant of the Latter-day Saints, finally set foot in America at the end of the first part of his journey to Zion.

How he and his family sustained themselves at New York between 16th June, 1860 and late June, 1862 is a matter upon which no clear light can as yet be cast. The final part of Dewi Elfed’s story now beckons: an uncertain and parlous migration across the American interior by which all Latter-day Saints hoped to enter that promised land in which the kingdom of their God might be anticipated.

(17) ‘...ACROSS THE PLAINS TO ZION...’:²¹⁷

There is not yet available this side of the Atlantic a first-hand account of Dewi Elfed’s passage across the plains although the journal of William Ajax no doubt contains many relevant entries. However there are a good number of descriptions in migrants’ letters home of both the ocean crossing and the long land-haul that lay ahead once port had been reached. Some of these were published after receipt in Welsh district newspapers (especially in the Aberdare-based Gwladgarwr, or ‘Patriot’); while others pertaining to special interest groups such as the Saints were printed in an appropriate quarter like Udgorn Seion.²¹⁸

Until 1855 British emigrants bound for the Great Salt Valley sailed mostly from Liverpool to New Orleans, and thereafter up the Mississippi-Missouri system to St Louis, Illinois. From there they continued by boat to Council Bluffs, Iowa, which bordered on the plains country.

The distances involved were immense: 5,100 miles from Liverpool to New Orleans; 1,200 from there to St. Louis; 900 miles from St Louis to Council Bluffs; and finally 1,000 or so miles across the open plains from the Bluffs to the Valley which the Saints sought. It amounted to some 8,200 miles in all for a people, in the case of the Welsh, whose own homeland extended only 200 miles between its northernmost and its southernmost tips. According to weather and seasonability, the trudge could take anything between 45 and 90 days.

In 1849, the Permanent Emigration Fund had been set up to assist the passage of poor converts on the strict agreement that they repayed their costs once settled in Utah; and the President of the Church in Britain (Franklin Richards) laid down strict rules governing the acceptance of applicants into emigration party.²¹⁹

Early in 1855 it was announced that future British migrants should proceed to St Louis through Philadelphia and (Cincinnati) rather than via New Orleans; and from 1358 New York also became a favourite port of entry. This meant about a fortnight’s reduction in the duration of the journey from shore to valley.²²⁰ In 1849 the cost of the ocean crossing had been approximately £3.12.6d. (inclusive of food) for Saints over the age of fourteen, while the cost of the inland journey by riverboat as far as Council Bluffs brought the total to an estimated £6 or £7 per adult.^22l By 1855 and the re-arrangements of that year, the minimum cost of passage had risen to about £15 per person.²²²

The journey across the plains could be smooth or hazardous. Among the difficulties to be overcome were severe rain or snowstorms; wild animals; food shortages; drought; cholera, tuberculosis and, not least, red indians.²²³ The indians must have been the most exotic and intimidating of sights to European crossers of the mid-West whether they came from villages in Jutland, mills in Manchester or mines in Glamorgan. What settlers from places such as Merthyr, Aberdare and Tredegar must have made of the indians can hardly be imagined. There is a real note of apprehension in a letter sent to Wales by William Morgan, leader of a party of Welsh Saints in September, 1852, when he wrote thus of the journey from Council Bluffs across the plains:

Teithiasom 1,130 o filltiroedd heb ddyn gwaraidd yn meddiannu cwys o’r tir ond mewn dau fan, sef yn Fort Laramie a Fort Bridger. Yr oedd yr oll... dan lywodraeth y gwahanol lwythau Indiaidd, a’r buffaloes, filoedd  honynt... Mae yr Indiaid yn .. bobl gariadus os ymddygir yn gariadus tuag atynt hwy. Un diwrnod, dygwyddodd i mi yn ddiarwybod ddyfod i blith oddeutu tri neu bedwar cant o honynt, sef y Soix (sic); yn ol fy arfer, yr oeddwn yn marchogaeth o flaen y gwersyll i edrych ar yr heol ac am le cysurus i giniawa; ac wedi blaenu y gwersyll am tua dwy filltir, gwelwn ddau o  honynt yn dyfod nerth traed eu ceffylau i’m cyfarfod; am a wn i nad oeddwn yn debyg i’r brenin Harri (sic), yn barod i ddweyd ‘Kingdom’ nid ‘for a horse’. . . ond ‘for being back in camp’. Yr oedd yn rhy ddiweddar i droi yn fy ol, yn mlaen oedd oreu myned, ac nid hir y bu eu mawrhydi Indiaidd a minnau cyn cyfarfod a’n gilydd, gan fy nghyfarch ‘How do, Mormon good’. Meddyliais erbyn hyn nad oeddynt cynddrwg ag oeddwn yn credu...²²⁴

We travelled 1,130 miles without a civilized man occupying as much as a furrow of the land except at two spots, namely Fort Laramie and Fort Bridger. Everything...was under the rule of the different Indian tribes, and the buffaloes, thousands of them... The Indians are an affectionate people if you behave affectionately towards them. One day, I unwittingly came across about three or four hundred of them, namely Soix (sic); according to my custom, I was riding in front of the camp to scout the road and find a convenient spot for a meal; having gone about two miles beyond the camp, I saw two galloping at full speed towards me;  as far as I can make out I was like king Henry (sic), ready to declare ‘Kingdom’ not ‘for a horse’...but ‘for being back in camp’. It was too late to turn back, forward was the only course open to me, and it was not long before their Indian majesties and I met each other, and they greeted me with ‘How do, Mormon good’. I thought by then that they were not as bad as I had feared...

Every aspect of human life might be experienced during one of these thousand-mile journeys across the interior. That was precisely the experience of David Rees, his wife Jane and their family: converts to the Saints since their days of residence at Cwmbach, Aberdare. In a letter home to his parents dated 23rd January, 1852, Rees wrote that:

...we are all alive and well, and one more in Family. We have a fine daughter since the 11th October last; her name is Ann, for my Mother’s sake... Now I shall give a little account of our Journey across the Plains to Zion... There is thousands of Wild Buffalos...plenty of Antelopes, elks, wild sheep, a few bears, thousands of Wolves... there was a Man’s skull found on this plain with a golden tooth.²²⁵

Between the extremes of life represented here by the birth on the prairie of a baby and the discovery of a gold-dentured skull there must have been much tribulation and much cameraderie. Letters home by some - not all - members of Welsh emigrant parties indicate as much: as in the following example from William Morgan to John Davis and William Phillips at home in Wales. Morgan wrote of Welsh Saints gathered around their campfires at night to sing in respite of their newly started trek across the plains:

As we sang the first part of the verse...we saw the English and the Norwegians and everyone I would think with their heads out of their wagons. With the second part the wagons were empty in an instant and their inhabitants running towards us as if they were charmed... Some asked me where they had learned and who was their teacher? I said that the hills of Wales were the schoolhouse, and the Spirit of God was the teacher. Their response was, ‘Well, indeed, it is wonderful; we never heard such good singing before’.²²⁶

Thus although there is not available a direct account of Dewi Elfed’s journey ‘across the Plains to Zion’ it is possible to infer from other sources something of its character. It can hardly have been very different from those of William Morgan, Sarah Jeremy, John Davis and a host of others, described by them in their messages home.

Fortunately, a note is available of the termination of Dewi Elfed’s own journey. He and his family arrived at ‘Great Salt Lake City’ on the 17th October, 1862 as part of a Captain Henry W. Miller’s ox-train.²²⁷ It would seem they had taken slightly under four months to reach their destination - perhaps a little longer than the average while. For Dewi Elfed, however, there was not to be much time during which the reward of Zion might be savoured.

(18) ‘WHEN...THE PITCHER BE BROKEN AT THE FOUNTAIN’:²²⁸

It must again be said that no testimony survives about how Dewi Elfed, his wife and children sustained themselves once they had reached the ‘promised land’ of the Saints. General suppositions may be drawn from statements about other Welsh Mormons who settled in Utah at more or less the same time.

The words of John Davis, erstwhile printer to the faith at Merthyr who had emigrated in February, 1854(²²⁹) illustrate how settlement in Utah was meant to mark a new life for the Saints in constructing God’s kingdom on earth. In writing to Udgorn Seion in early 1853, Davis spoke of:

...y siopwr newydd ddod i mewn wrth ei fodd yn cloddio ffos, y cyfreithiwr yn ymofyn coed o’r ‘kanyon’, y meddyg yn trafod cymrwd, yr ysgrifennydd yn tynnu pytatws, a’r pregethwr huawdl yn tewi a son. Mae llawer un, er hynny, fel fy hunan yn cael dilyn ei gelfyddyd ei hun, heb achos dysgu un newydd. Mae gofyn i ddyn fodloni i bob peth yma, a gwneud ei orau i adeiladu teyrnas Dduw. Os daw rhywun yma gyda diben arall byddai’n well iddo aros yn nhref, a gwasanaethu Mamon.²³⁰

...the newly-arrived shopkeeper in his element digging a ditch, the lawyer fetching wood from the kanyon, the doctor handling mortar, the secretary harvesting potatos, and the eloquent preacher espousing silence. Despite this, many like myself are allowed to follow their own craft, without learning a new one. A man is required here to be content in any work, and to do his best to build God’s kingdom. Should anyone come here with any other purpose it would be better for him to stay at home, and serve Mamon.

That Davis flourished in his new environment seems evident from remarks made about him in 1881 by the Revd William Davies Evans during a tour of the United States when the latter called upon Davis at his ‘very fine house’ in Salt Lake City.²³¹ Both Davies Evans and another Welsh visitor to centres of Mormon settlement praised the hard work Saints had put into building their Zion. Writing in 1893, the journalist William D. Davies of Scranton, Pa., spoke with admiration of their attainments; and invited those who doubted any good could derive of Mormonism to ‘Come and see, without the spectacles of prejudice upon your eyes’.²³² Yet Dewi Elfed was not to have much of a share in building this success: for in August, 1863, in Wales and in America, his death was reported.

The first report appeared in the Welsh-American newspaper Y Drych (‘The Mirror’), which is still extant, and took the form of the following short announcement:

BU FARW: Mai 18, yn swydd Logan, Caehe (sic), Utah, o’r darfodedigaeth, Dewi Elfed Jones, gynt o Ddeheubarth Cymru, yn 54 mlwydd a 7  mis oed. Gadawodd wraig a phlant i alaru ar ei ol.²³³

 

DECEASED: May 18, in Logan county, Caehe (sic), Utah, of tuberculosis, Dewi Elfed Jones, lately of south Wales, aged 54 years and 7 months. He left a wife and children to mourn his loss.

This was picked up shortly afterwards in Wales by the Baptist publication Seren Cymru, in which the following terse announcement was printed:

Mehefin 18, 1863, o’r ddarfodedigaeth, yn Logan, Coche (sic) County, Utah Territory, yn 54 mlwydd oed, Mr D.B. Jones (Dewi Elfed).  Gadawodd weddw a phump o blant i alaru ar ei ol.²³⁴

 

June 18, 1863, of tuberculosis, in Logan, Coche (sic) County, Utah Territory, aged 54 years, Mr D.B. Jones (Dewi Elfed). He left a widow and five children to mourn his loss.

This paragraph was certainly seen by Dewi’s old adversary, Thomas Price. While the summer of 1863 represented the end of Dewi’s earthly days in distant America, it represented a peak in Price’s career at home. He was elected that year chairman of the Glamorgan Baptist Association from which Dewi had been expelled thirteen years before; and was awarded the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. by Leipzig university.²³⁵

From the statements in Y Drych and Seren Cymru it seems that even in death Dewi Elfed was the subject of controversy. The Welsh-American paper recorded that he had died on the 18th May, 1863 while the Welsh publication maintained it had been on the 18th June. At least they agreed on the cause of his decease - tuberculosis. They likewise agreed he had settled at Logan, Cache County, Utah, several hundred miles to the north of Salt Lake City. Both also quoted his age as being 54; but in that he had been christened between the 14th June and 30th September, 1807, this is an underestimate of some two years.

Evidently, Anna Jones outlived her husband. Y Drych referred only to a wife and children left to mourn him; but Seren Cymru specified a widow and five children, while only two of their offspring had accompanied them to America, this may indicate that the other three were alive in 1863 but resident in Wales. Obviously, one cannot be too certain about this.

Happily, the last opinion published about Dewi Elfed during or shortly after his lifetime is a positive one. It comes in three memorial englynion (stanzas) written by a Welsh-American named William Lewis who also used the nom-de-plume

‘Gwilym Ddu’. From the sentiment of the final verse, it would appear that Lewis was also a Latter-day Saint; and that, like Dewi, he shared a degree of accomplishment in traditional Welsh metrics. These memorial verses are well-written and convey a genuine admiration and sense of regret at the passing of their subject. It is best if, after an interval of nearly 125 years, these verses speak for themselves as they did in Y Drych in August, 1863:

Dewi Elfed dieilfydd - y parod

A’r peraidd ganiedydd;

Ow! newydd du - darfu dydd

Ein henwog brwdiog brydydd.

 

Un pur goeth mal pregethydd - ydoedd ef

A dyddan gynghorydd,

Gwych lenor, ffraeth areithydd,

Prif-fardd llawn o ddawn i’w ddydd.

 

Er i ddaiar i Ddewi – geinwiw

‘N gynar gael ei roddi,

Caiff heb haint mewn braint a bri

Gyda’r holl saint ad’godi.

 

Because of the pattern of assonance and rhyme demanded by the rules of cynghanedd (in which these verses are set) it is virtually impossible to reproduce in English the sentiment and technique of these lines in the co-existence which obtains between them in Welsh. A free translation would be:

Unrivalled Dewi Elfed - fleet of song,

Fluent and inspired;

Oh, sad news, his muse is dead, His art by earth is fettered.

Impressive as a preacher - an agile,

Engaging adviser;

A witty, bold orator,

Choice singer this chosen hour.

Though laid in earth is Dewi - the gifted

There given to tarry,

With hosts of saints most worthy

From that bond he’ll be set free.

It is a pity that Udgorn Seion ceased publication in April, 1862, about a year before Dewi Elfed’s death. Otherwise, there would almost certainly have been a retrospective assessment there of his life. Equally regrettable is that Yr Adferydd/The Restorer did not commence its brief life at Aberdare until March, 1864: for although of the Re-organized Church it might well have mentioned the passing of the man who had so dramatically brought Mormonism to the centre of public life in the district in 1851.

Dewi seems also to have missed out on acquiring a known individual grave in distant Cache County. The present burial authorities of Logan city advise that their current public cemetery was started in 1865. Burials before that time were made ‘in another cemetery located within the city’; but then a decision was taken to start again in a more suitable location.

Burials made before 1865 can now be identified only with difficulty the authorities explain. The received wisdom is that as the new cemetery was developed and individual families bought plots there, so burials made at the old location were transferred to such plots as they became (available). This procedure is thought to have taken place on a step-by-step basis between 1865 and 1882, and to have been finalised by then. When this process had been completed, there remained at the old cemetery 42 burials that no family then resident at Logan had been able to identify as their own. These were then transferred to the new cemetery and re-interred at a spot thereafter known as the ‘pioneer plot’.

Had either of Dewi’s children, Daniel and Ellen, been living at Logan in 1882 they would surely have been able to identify and relocate their father’s grave at the new site. No such grave exists in the post-1865 cemetery in respect of Dewi Elfed or his wife. Indeed, there is no trace of either Daniel or Ellen Jones having been buried there at any time between 1865 and 1932. The inference is that Dewi Elfed’s family did not remain at Logan long after his decease in May/June, 1863; and that his final resting-place was to be the pioneer plot of Logan new cemetery.²³⁶

(19) ‘IN EARTHEN VESSELS’:

Such considerations bring the story of David Bevan Jones, alias Dewi Elfed, to a humble end: far-removed from that comparitive security and esteem upon which he could have reclined in Wales had he not ‘crossed the floor’ from the Baptist church to the Latter-day Saints.

He did not shy away from boldly confronting Thomas Price in the latter’s own ‘sphere of influence’; and his memory and motives were to suffer a century and more of vilification for having done so. He was a minor poet of competence and, occasionally, of real ability. He was skilled in the art of popular polemics. His letters and essays, although sometimes self-righteous and repetitive, frequently smack of a talented turn for vivid phrases and cutting humour. There is a quick- silver-like edge to his writing well-suited to the battle in which Saints were locked with nonconformist denominations in the Wales of the day. This may be one reason why Price, Benjamin Evans and a host of ministerial colleagues so despised him: he was one of their number who had not only abandoned the faith of his youth for another, but set about projecting that new faith with such verve and energy.

His contribution to the Saints’ Welsh Mission as a hymnist, essayist, debater, itinerant preacher and propagandist must be considered substantial, and especially so in the context of the age in which he lived. He was clearly highly thought of for his ability as a preacher from the beginning of his association with the Saints until its very end. Yet was there not in this quicksilver a mercurial indiscipline?

For Dewi seems to have had rather an awkward ability to get on the wrong side of too many too easily. In relation to sometimes bitter theological opponents this was probably par for the course: he gave Price and others no more and no less than he received. His propensity to fallout with his colleagues, however, was a most regrettable trait. Likewise his tendency to act rashly in response to short-term difficulty: born no doubt of a vibrant but intemperate nature. His quarrels with Dan Jones, Daniel Daniels, Thomas Harries and others did his standing among Latter-day Saints in Wales no good at all; and the financial ill repute in which he landed himself must be seen as a sorry example of someone with immense potential undermining his own achievements.

The real plus-factor that remained with him during his entire alignment with the Saints was the constancy with which he continued to espouse the Mormon creed even in adversity. This much was most readily conceded by those who had previously reviled him publicly in forceful terms.

 It bears repeating that no matter what personal shortcomings he was accused or found guilty of (and they are not the same), there was never an inference that he disavowed the essential tenets of the creed he had affirmed when baptized in the river Cynon by William Phillips in April, 1851.

His personal behaviour was subject to great positivism and also to sorry lapses. Yet he may be seen as a man who perceived in his heart ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’; and as St Paul reminded his readers, all those who believe thereby:

...have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not foresaken; cast down, but not destroyed.²³⁷

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