JONES, MORDECAI (1813 - 1880), promoter of British Schools, colliery proprietor, etc.

Born 2 May 1813 at Brecon, son of Richard Jones, boat-builder on the Brecon Canal, a nephew of Robert Jones, Rhos-lan. He was educated at the expense of a coal-merchant at Brecon, and later succeeded his patron as the proprietor, trading in coal and lime from Lanelli, Brecknock, to Brecon by means of boats on the canal. He owned a brewery at Brecon (1841), purchased the Abergavenny Gas Works, and was chairman of the Brecon Gas Works from its beginning until his death. He was also successful in his colliery enterprises, sinking the Nantmelyn Colliery, Cwm-dare, in the Aberdare Valley, in 1866, and the Mardy Colliery in the Rhondda Fach Valley in 1876. He sent the first load of coal from the latter to Brecon on the day he took office as high sheriff of Brecknock. He was mayor of Brecon in 1854 and a deputy lieutenant for Brecknock, and chairman of the Brecon School Board from its formation up to 1879. He was an ardent Calvinistic Methodist from his youth, and did much in promoting the establishment of Welsh and English Calvinistic Methodist churches; he granted freely freehold sites for all denominations on his Mardy estate.

He was one of the chief promoters of the British and Foreign School Society in South Wales, and a contributor to the Normal School, Brecon (1846). He incurred the wrath of the editor of The Principality, Ieuan Gwynedd by supporting the efforts of David Charles III, Trevecka, in the face of the strong opposition of the Independents and Baptists, to combine Government aid with voluntary charity. He agreed with the policy of the North Wales Calvinistic Methodist Association in supporting the ' Cambrian Education Society ' [see Owen, Sir Hugh ] to establish schools and obtain Government grants. He was secretary to the group of Calvinistic Methodist ministers and elders in Brecknock who sent a Memorial to J. P. Kay Shuttleworth of the Committee of Council on Education, urging that H.M. Inspectors of Schools should have a knowledge of Welsh (June 1848). At a conference held at Merthyr Tydfil, Nonconformist ministers from Monmouthshire, Glamorgan, and Brecknock decided to accept Government aid, and the ' South Wales British Schools Association ' was formed, with Mordecai Jones as Treasurer and Sir Benjamin Hall as president (Y Diwygiwr, Ionawr 1855, 36). He died 30 August 1880.

Author

• Watkin William Price, (1873 - 1967)

Sources

• Theophilus Jones, Edwin Davies, Joseph Russell Bailey, History of the County of Brecknock (1909-1930), iv, 257, 297, 309
• The Principality, 8 June and 8 September 1848
• Y Diwygiwr, May 1846, January 1855
• letter in the Brecon Museum, 12 March 1841
• The Weekly Mail, 4 September 1880
• Elizabeth Phillips, A history of the pioneers of the Welsh coalfield (1925), 205-7, 249
• personal knowledge

Further Reading

• J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions, 1964
• Wikipedia Article: Mordecai Jones

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q6909612

Published date: 1959

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