Piety, poverty and pain: Mary Jones's Bryncrug years

The story of Mary Jones's epic walk from Llanfihangel-y-Pennant to Bala to buy a Bible when she was not quite 16 is world-famous. Much less well-known is her life afterwards - especially the 40 years she lived in Bryncrug. Here, then, is a reconstruction of what happened to the girl who inspired the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society (now known as the Bible Society).

As she piled the family's belongings onto a rickety cart, Mary Jones would have felt a flicker of excitement as well as a little apprehension. At the age of 35, she was leaving her mother's home and the village in which she'd spent most of her life to move somewhere new. But she wasn't going alone: her husband Thomas and their two children, seven-year-old Lewis and two-year-old Jacob, would be making the five-mile journey with her from Cwrt, near Abergynolwyn, to Bryncrug.

A new start was just what Mary and Thomas needed. Three years earlier, in August 1817, their second-born child, Mary, had died from tuberculosis (TB) before reaching the age of two. Now newly pregnant again, Mary would have been quietly hopeful for the future.

The family's possessions were few, but what they did have was of vital importance to their livelihood - and peace of mind. Both Thomas and Mary were weavers, so their tool-in-trade, a simple spinning wheel, took priority. Mary's most precious possession was, of course, the Bible she had bought two decades previously from charismatic preacher the Rev Thomas Charles after walking 26 miles over the mountains to Bala from her childhood home in Llanfihangel-y-Pennant at the head of the Dysynni Valley. 

Bryncrug, lying between the two grand estates of Ynysmaengwyn and Peniarth, was in fact one of three small, adjacent hamlets based around Pont Fathew, the bridge over the River Fathew. Like Cwrt, it was a community largely made up of people eking out a living from agriculture and its off-shoots, mainly sheep farming and the woollen trade.

The family moved into a tiny cottage, backing on to the river, in Tyn-y-Winllan on the edge of Bryncrug. Downstairs was one L-shaped room containing a cast-iron range; upstairs were two small bedrooms. The walls were constructed mostly of mud, interspersed with stone, and the downstairs floor was dirt. Peat, dug up locally, along with wood, was used to stoke the fire. A rudimentary toilet was situated at the bottom of the garden, near a pigsty.

From an old postcard circa early 20th century

Why the Joneses moved to Bryncrug is unclear, although for Thomas it was a kind of homecoming as he had been born in the village. He was also appointed an elder of Capel Bethlehem, the Calvinistic Methodist chapel, which may have prompted their relocation.

Capel Bethlehem soon after it was built

In July 1820, a few months after their arrival, Mary gave birth to the couple's fourth child, a son called John. Almost immediately, Mary was back to work at the spinning wheel set up in the corner of the living room, contributing what she could to the family's meagre income.

Like many people in Bryncrug and surrounding villages, she and Thomas were home weavers, and Mary was also a talented dressmaker. Finished thread would be delivered to them to make into whatever was needed locally. Thomas was a weaver of flannel as well as linsey, a finely woven cloth in a plain-weave, lightweight fabric that was ideal for clothing, light blankets and top coverings for beds. 

In September 1822, Mary had another child, Ebenezer (known as Benny). Tragedy struck again, however, when the infant died a few months later, succumbing - like his sister before him - to TB. Also called "consumption", due to the rapid weight loss that appeared to consume a sufferer, this disease of the lungs was rife in the 19th century. Closely linked to overcrowding and malnutrition, it was known as a disease of the poor. Between 1851 and 1910, about four million people died from TB in England and Wales - most of them under the age of 30. 

Mary and her husband would have gone through the agony of watching their young children wasting away before their eyes - suffering fatigue, night sweats and a horrible, persistent cough that brought up thick white phlegm and even blood - and being able to do nothing about it.

Four years later, in 1826, when Mary was 41, she gave birth to her sixth and last child, a girl she named after the daughter she'd lost, Mary. Again, happiness was short-lived; little Mary also fell victim to TB and died at the age of five.

There was no time to grieve, though, as the daily grind of caring for her husband and surviving children, tending to the pig, the beehives and the vegetable patch in the back garden, as well as the weaving, took up most of Mary's time. Any moments she did have to herself were spent reading her Bible and attending chapel every Sunday. Like many people whose lives are beset by misfortune, Mary clung to her Christian faith with increasing fervour.

This religious devotion was tested yet further when Mary and Thomas's first-born child, Lewis, died 1831 at the age of 18, followed two years later by Jacob, who was 15 - both from TB. Now, only John remained. For the next decade or so, he lived with his parents, bringing them as much comfort as he could. And then came the final double blow for Mary: in 1849, at the age of 62, her husband Thomas contracted TB and died, and either just before or shortly afterwards, John left Bryncrug for America - never to return. It's probable that he went - maybe even at Mary's behest - to avoid the same fate as his father and five siblings; or he might have fled Wales due to the famine that engulfed west Merionethshire in the early 1840s, caused by a combination of the Corn Laws and a series of disastrous harvests.

Now all alone and losing her sight, Mary took in a lodger, her niece Lydia Williams. Mary lived upstairs and Lydia downstairs. 

Then in 1862, Mary's gloomy existence was given a boost by the arrival of a bright young woman of 18 called Lizzie Rowlands, who'd come south from Bala to take up the post of governess at a farm in Gwyddelfynydd, a settlement just north of Bryncrug. When Mary heard Lizzie was from the town she'd walked to all those years ago to buy a Bible, she asked to see her.

Lizzie, who kept a written record of her ensuing friendship with Mary, was taken aback when they first met. By then 78, the woman who was already well known for her legendary trek over the mountains was "small, thin, with a melancholy ungrateful expression and quite blind these many years, living in a small, miserable cottage - the poorest I have ever been in, with an earthen floor, a small table with a rush candle on it and two or three three-legged stools. She wore the old Welsh dress, a petticoat and bed gown, an apron made of linsey and a white cap with a pleat on the side of her mouth".

Her appearance was no less eye-catching when she left her cottage to walk to chapel at the other end of the village; then she wore a "Jim Crow (soft felt hat), a blue homespun cloak and a hood and carried a stick in her hand. In winter she used to carry a lantern with horn windows, not to light her way - she could not see - but so others could see her". Often when she ventured out, she was accompanied by her dog; sometimes she was seen smoking.

To young children in the village, Mary in her last years must have looked alarming. Her manner did nothing to soften her appearance. Anne Griffiths, who lived across the road from Mary (and as an adult lived in what was Mary's cottage, where her great-granddaughter Rosie lives today), remembered her as an unsympathetic character. According to Anne's 88-year-old grandson John Williams, who has lived in Bryncrug almost all his life: "Nain (Grandma) didn't have a good word to say about her."

Little wonder, though, that Mary had become embittered and often depressed. Even in an era of high child mortality, the loss of her entire family must have caused unbearable pain. When she felt especially low, she would quote the words of Job, the Old Testament figure tormented by Satan in order to test his faith in God. It's quite possible Mary believed the tragedies of her life were the result of her own sinfulness.

By the time Mary had gone completely blind, she had devoured the Bible so avidly that she knew its teachings and its stories by heart. The page margins in the book she had saved up so hard to buy were covered in handwritten notations. 

For the two or so years before she died, the high points of Mary's life were having Lizzie Rowlands reading the Bible to her several times a week. Lizzie would invariably find Mary "in the dark, praying and repeating hymns, and she was never tired of hearing them read or repeated".

By the time Lizzie left Bryncrug to return to Bala and her niece and lodger Lydia Williams had died, also from TB, Mary's health had declined to such an extent she could no longer live independently. And so, in late 1864, she was moved to a house in Gwyddelfynydd where she was looked after by several members of Capel Bethlehem, including the minister, the Rev Robert Griffith. And it was here Mary died, her beloved and battered Bible by her bedside, on December 29, a few days after her 80th birthday. She was buried in the chapel churchyard. Rev Griffith later recalled one of the elders asking Mary in her final illness: "You think you will go to heaven, don't you, Mary Jones?" To which she replied: "Yes, I believe I shall....but I don't know how on earth they'll put up with me there!"

* Footnote: A compelling version of the Mary Jones story is that she bought - or was given - two extra Bibles at the end of her marathon walk to Bala, although this is unlikely given how heavy they would have been to carry. More plausible is that Rev Charles, who travelled regularly to Bro Dysynni (Dysynni area) to preach, gave her two more at a later date. The copy Mary used throughout her life is now in the Bible Society archives at Cambridge University Library. A second one, which appears to have been given by Mary to her niece Lydia Williams, is in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. If there was a third, it may have been taken to America by Mary's son John. 

* Acknowledgements: Many thanks to the following people for providing valuable information and photographs - Rosie and Dave Stubbs, Annette and John Williams, Mary Thomas, Hywel Micah, Lowri Jones, Roger Steer, Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, Sara Eade, Pauline Hey, Irene Hale and Tim Chester.

* Main illustration: An artist's impression of Mary Jones in her later years by Amy Anderson. Copyright: Ros Dodd. 

Mary Jones's grave in Bryncrug

Mary Jones's house today

Mary Williams (centre), who inherited the cottage from her mother Anne Griffiths, with husband Richard and visitors Mr and Mrs Rees, 1972

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Convenience at last! Plans for the inside bathroom, 1953

Book of visitors to Mary Jones's house started in July 1961 by Mary Williams

Capel Bethlehem today - now a stylish home