Chapter 1: Introduction

This is the story of my family: the story of the Joneses who came from North Wales and of the Wilsons and the Pearsons of North Yorkshire and Teesside.

It is a story into which I made few enquiries before 1970 when my mother died (my father had died in the previous year). At that date I knew relatively little of my father's side of the family history and not a great deal about the Wilsons. Most of my knowledge consisted of family anecdotes concerning the Pearsons, which my mother's mother retailed to me during my early years. But history was a subject that had always interested me, and family history offered a personal interest which made it particularly attractive. In 1970, therefore, I armed myself with Camp's excellent little book on "Tracing your Ancestors"; and having already made one or two holiday visits to North Wales I started out on my task. Collection of the main documents supporting this history, in the shape of copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns, and so forth, had been virtually completed by about 1974, and since then I have concentrated at more leisure on matters of detail.

The plan I have followed has been to describe what I know of the families of my paternal grandfather and grandmother (both of whom were born Jones) and then to set out the story of my maternal grandparents and their ancestors on similar lines. The account of the childhood years of each generation has been included (where known) with that of the parents. As my intention has been to prepare a history and not an autobigraphy I have not included an account of my own life and family save in outline: but I have concluded the story with a separate section of personal reminiscences of my early life on Teesside and the people and scenes that formed part of it. An introductory family table has been included to help in showing the main lines of descent and details of some of the more distant sidebranches have been set out in appendices.

In compiling this story I have consulted extensively the census returns and records of births, marriages and deaths held in the Public Record Office as well as the copies of wills which are available centrally in that Office (up to 1858) and the Probate Office (1858 onwards). Other records examined in London have included the medical library in the Wellcome Institute and the records of the old St Thomas's Hospital. Locally, the main sources of information have been the parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, supplemented by civil and ecclesiastical records such as poor rate accounts, vestry minutes and churchwardens' accounts.

My researches have also produced some invaluable family records in the form of old diaries, accounts and family trees, but much of the detailed information about my ancestors as persons has come to me in the shape of "oral evidence" from other members of the family. Information passed on orally lends itself all too easily to embroidery and. innocent distortion, the more so as time passes; and in using it for the purposes of the present story I have done my best to examine it dispassionately in the light of other evidence and try to reach my own conclusions wherever possible.

The" family historian" on my mother's side of the family was my maternal grandmother Elizabeth Ann Wilson (nee Pearson), who prior to her death in 1952 passed on to me a wealth of anecdotes about her own and her parents' lives in North Yorkshire and on Teesside during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. Most of these were based on first-hand knowledge and because they concerned people and places I knew, her stories remained very clear in my memory. From my father I learned very little of the early history of the Welsh side of the family - not because he was not interested in history (far from it) but because he himself had only lived briefly in Wales as a young boy and was but 21 when his own father died. Moreover, he did not have ready access to public records or family papers. I heard from him references to places such as "Nannerch", "Ysceifiog" and "Gwyddelwern" and people named "Dr Jones" and "Miss Gresley"; but they meant little to me at the time and I suspect that they did not mean a great deal more to him. It was only later, after I had visited these places during visits to Wales and met other members of the family that the various pieces of the puzzle began to fall into shape. In particular, I enjoyed some interesting talks with two descendants of my great-grandfather's first marriage, and thus my second cousins, and one of his second: these were Arthur Nigel Gresley Jones and Edward Morgan Jones, who still live at Prestatyn and Dyserth respectively, and Philip Gresley-Jones who Iived in Rhyl until his recent death. They were not only able to provide me with very useful background information from their own experience, but were able to pass on information they themselves had received years ago from Jane Elizabeth Jones, the second daughter of my great-grandfather's second marriage. "Aunt Jane" was a person of strong views and prejudices and information coming from her needed to be considered very carefully. But she had a wealth of information about the Jones family which went back to the middle of the nineteenth century and, of course, a personal contact with my great-grandfather which put her at an advantage over later generations. My meetings with Edward Jones also produced my great-grandfather's diary for the first half of 1839, as well as his personal accounts covering a period of about fifteen years to 1850: the former I copied, and the latter are now in my own possession. They proved invaluable for the light they threw on the lives and affairs of the family at that distant period.

My enquiries into the history of the various branches of my family have been of absorbing interest and have given me a great deal of pleasure. I did not undertake them in the hope of discovering evidence of noble birth or vast possessions, and in that respect my expectations have been fulfilled. For the most part the story that has unfolded has been of ordinary folk living in the towns and countryside of what has become a different age. To the extent that it has brought back to life - if only temporarily - distant members of the family who had already faded from the memory, it has served a useful purpose. But although it has served to throw light once again on the main characters in the story, that has not been the only reward. The minor supporting characters, too, have their place. And if this history has helped to rescue from oblivion poor David the Dumb Man working in the family home at Holywell, Ned Hughes cutting his gorse on the estate at Bodlondeb, and the children who died so tragically at Borrowby in the spring of 1860, the work that has gone into its preparation has in my opinion been all the more worthwhile.

Next: The early Joneses of the Holywell area