In the 1851 census a John Davis and his wife Elizabeth, both born in Carmarthenshire, can be seen living in George Town. John’s occupation is given as Printer (employing 1 man). This was John Sylvanus Davis, who had served his apprenticeship in Carmarthenshire and then moved on to work for the Rev. John Jones, printer and minister in Rhydybont. This employment would change the course of his life.
It was while working for the Rev. Jones that John encountered the writings of ‘Mormon’ missionary Dan Jones – brother to the Reverend Jones. As he set the type, he was struck by Jones’ ideas and teachings to such an extent that he soon requested baptism, to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Under Dan Jones’ influence, he also moved to Merthyr Tydfil and set up a printing office in Nantygwenith Street. There, from the time when Dan Jones returned to America in February 1849 until Jones returned for a second mission to Wales in December 1852, Davis’ writing and printing output was impressive.
He produced Welsh language record books and other forms for the Welsh Latter Day Saint congregations.
Assisted by his wife and Mary Deer, another convert from Carmarthenshire, he translated into Welsh the Latter Day Saint scriptures The Doctrine and Covenants (Athrawiaeth a Chyfammodau) and the Book of Mormon (Llyfr Mormon) – a total of more than 800 pages in the modern English versions. These were published and distributed as ‘signatures’ (sections) at intervals of about two weeks, so that members could acquire the books gradually and have them bound according to their means. Athrawiaeth a Chyfammodau was completed in August 1851, Llyfr Mormon in April 1852.
He published a collection of more than 500 Welsh Latter Day Saint hymns, many of which he wrote the lyrics for.
He printed a number of Latter Day Saint tracts and pamphlets.
During this time Davis was also editing and printing issues of Udgorn Seion, the Welsh-language publication begun by Dan Jones. Some of the content was original material from Davis or other leaders of the LDS Church, some he translated from writings previously produced in English. Davis also increased the size and frequency of Udgorn Seion: from 4 to 16 sides, and from monthly to bi-weekly. In the 29th November 1851 issue, he did admit to being somewhat overwhelmed by all these responsibilities, but reassured readers that Udgorn was not being neglected because of his other work.
In 1854 John and Elizabeth emigrated to Utah Territory, where he continued to work as a printer. But for the Welsh converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, John Davis’ three years as a printer in Georgetown was a gift, as it enabled them to access the full range of scripture and news of the church in their native language.
In 1834 a disagreement occurred at Ebenezer Chapel, Plymouth Street and 54 members of the congregation left, some going to Zion, Twynyrodyn and some to Carmel Chapel in Aberdare.
Because of the distance they had to travel, the worshippers who had gone to Aberdare decided that they should start their own cause in Merthyr, and so began worshipping in a room near St Tydfil’s Church. In 1836 they bought an unfinished chapel in Bryant’s Field, Brecon Road for £25 and completed it at a cost of £350.
By 1842, it was obvious that the chapel was too small, so a new chapel was built on the site of the old building at a cost of £2,200. When it was completed the new chapel was the largest chapel in Wales.
An 1877 photo showing the old Tabernacle Chapel just to right of centre at the top of the photo
By the 1890’s a movement was set in motion by Mrs Davies, wife of Alderman David Davies to provide more comfortable chapel. When Mrs Davies died, Alderman Davies took up the movement and the building of the chapel was begun.
The new chapel was designed by George Morgan of Carmarthen and would eventually cost over £5000 to build – a £1000 of which was raised by the congregation. The new chapel was opened in 1897, and is still holding services today.
Chapter XII. Henry recounts the difficulties of reforming and the injustice of the ‘separate system’ of imprisonment where prisoners are not permitted to talk to each other.
The Dark Side of Convict Life (Being the Account of the Career of Harry Williams, a Merthyr Man). Merthyr Express, 16th April 1910, page 9.
Chapter XII
Small encouragement is given to a man, even to take his first step towards reforming, when he is treated in such a way as already described. A convict is sent to prison to reform, but the question is, does he reform? No doubt, many of them make a daring attempt to do so, but they all fall back again into their old course, and to prove this I will just show how impossible it is and how difficult it is for a convict to make a real and true determination to amend his ways. In the year 1902 I passed a convict at Portland Prison by the name McCarty. He was undergoing a term of four years for no very great crime, for, according to his statement, he got it for sleeping on duty during active service at the time of the late South African War. He was next cell to me at Portland in the corrugated iron cells mentioned in a previous chapter, and every night just about bedtime, or what is commonly called in prison “turning in” time, I heard him muttering something to himself. Thinking the man to be a bit weak in his intellect I decided to listen to what he was saying every night. One night I was listening when I distinctly heard the man uttering fragments of the Holy Catechism. Then I came to the conclusion at once that he was a Roman Catholic, and that he was praying to the Virgin Mary. One night while I was lying down on my hammock, I could hear this poor fellow engaged in deep communion with his God. When suddenly, I heard a loud rapping at his cell door, and an officer said, “I’ve caught you at last, I’ll stop that talking for you tomorrow.” “I’m not talking sir,” answered the poor chap, I am saying my prayers.” “Saying your prayers, are you,” said the officer, “can you say them to the Governor in the morning; perhaps he would like to hear them.”
Then coming to my cell, he said, “Look here, Williams, was not that man talking to you?” “No, certainly not,” I answered, “the man is talking to his God, and not to me.” “Oh,” says he, “you’re a bit funny, too, I think, and I will wipe the pair of you up tomorrow.” So, losing my temper, and knowing he would act in accordance with his threats, I shouted out, “If you take a liberty with me, mind, I will wipe you across the lug with the stone pick as soon as I get you out in the quarry, “for I had already been punished for assaulting one of the officers for a similar liberty that had been taken with me before. I said no more, so the following day I and this poor fellow were brought before the Governor, and he was awarded one day bread and water, and to forfeit seven days remission. “They were talking so talking so loud,” said the officer, “that one could hear them from their cells to the breakwater.” Then the Governor put the same mater of form to me, “What have you got to say?” I acknowledged the threats I had used but played on the case that the officer had committed himself by threatening me and making a false accusation against me. Whereupon, the Governor said, “I must believe the officer; he would not tell a lie.” “No, sir,” I said, “there is none of them can tell a lie,” “That will do,” says he, “three days bread and water, and forfeit eleven days remission.”
Now this man who was reported with me was a devout Christian, for anyone could see that by the continual visits he received from the priest that it was no sham. Convicts do not sham in this matter. The day after he came off punishment, he sent for the priest, and told him of the liberty the officer had taken with him, and the only thing the priest said was, “Never mind, McCarty, those who suffer unjustly in this world will be rewarded in the next.” This was poor consolation for the poor fellow, who was trying hard, and God knows as hard as ever he could try to do what was right. It is utterly useless for a man to send for the chaplain or the priest for what is said to the doctors of divinity they will certainly bring out a passage of Scripture as a means of consoling one. Still, I can justly say the only true and real friend is the prison chaplain, but he does not like to interfere with the discipline side of the prison, no matter how he would wish to. I can well remember a certain chaplain speaking to me in confidence of what he had seen with his own eyes. It was the case of a poor chap being kicked by officials. “But, you know, Williams,” says he, “if I were to interfere, I would very soon be told to mind my own business. I have had complaints and complaints from you men as to the way you are treated, but I never believed it until I actually saw it with my own eyes.” But he went on to say, “You know, I am powerless how to act.” I side a great deal with prison chaplains in this matter, because I know from experience they are thorough good men, and I have even known chaplains to throw a hint or two from the pulpit and they have put it in such words that the Governor himself could make nothing of it.
It is a great mistake for anyone to believe that a man is sent to prison to reform, for he is not given a chance to do so in spite of the chaplains’ attempts to bring him nearer to God. There are officials who make it their business by the way they beat them to make the man a brute himself, in order to gain their own end.
In January, I published an article regarding the Prince of Saxony’s visit to Dowlais (https://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=8138). Here is a transcription of another German visit from “Dawlais Works, die Eisen- und Schienen-Walzwerke des Hauses John Guest, in London, 1844” by Carl Klocke.
Anticipation mounts and, finally, at the end of the valley, where the mountains close in, lie the Dowlais works, and to the left and across the top of the peak is the hamlet Dowlais with a few protruding small churches and chapels. As we approach the place, our coachman identifies one of them as Sir John’s chapel, for it was Sir John Guest himself who had it built, then there is Sir John’s market hall and his estate situated directly above the works; next, the garden for Sir John’s horses and the three horsemen on an outing who are passing us, are none other than Sir John’s surgeons. Our omnibus terminates in front of a small, neat guesthouse on the High Street of Dowlais and we are finally at the end of our journey. One can hear the steam engines at work and the roar of the bellows; from the windows on the upper storey one can see the flickering flames of the blast furnaces which, like a nearby fire storm, then illuminate the bedrooms at night and it takes some adjustment in order to fall peacefully asleep. …
Yet, one would not have seen Dowlais properly without having gone for a walk over the surrounding heights during the late evening hours. At Dowlais, Sir John can offer his guests illuminations and fireworks every evening. By comparison, the famous fireworks of the Surrey Gardens in London (where they fabulously depict the Great Fire of London in the year 1666) are but child’s play. The blast furnaces resemble a burning city, whereas further below, the fires and forges, together with the illuminated tall chimney stacks of the steam engines, looks like a city which has just recently burnt down. In the evening light, the not quite extinguished slags gleam like glowing lava; raised up to towering heaps, here and there on the outermost edge of tall mountains, they flow to the valley like burning streams of lava. … However, to witness one such sight, one must never come to Dowlais on a Saturday or Sunday, because Sir John Guest not only quotes Nelson in saying ‘that he expects every man to do his duty’, but he also adds ‘that he likes to see every man enjoy his Sunday’.
It is for that reason that – except for the blast furnaces which, naturally, cannot suffer any disruption – at a fairly early hour each Saturday afternoon, all other fires and steam engines cease their groaning, and the workers and drawn carts swarm from the near and far factories towards town.
Following on from the recent article about Gwaunfarren House (https://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=8282), here is a pictorial look at just ten of the magnificent ‘grand’ houses that we once had in Merthyr, but have been swept away by ‘progress’.
Firstly, the aforementioned Gwaunfarren House…
The home of the Guest family – Dowlais House…
The home of the Homfray family, Penydarren House….
The home of the Crawshay family (pre-Cyfarthfa Castle), Gwaelodygarth House….
Gwaelodygarth Fach…
Sandbrook House, Thomastown…
Gwernllwyn House, Dowlais…
Vaynor House…
Ynysowen House, Merthyr Vale…
Bargoed House, Treharris…
All photos courtesy of the Alan George Archive.
If anyone has any more information or any memories of any of these houses, please get in touch. Also, if anyone has any photos of other lost houses or landmarks in Merthyr, please let me know.
The Society ‘continued to flourish for some considerable time’. Members met in the Dynevor Arms in Georgetown, and listened to and debated lectures on all kinds of scientific and technological subjects, with a decided emphasis on astronomy. Owen Evans lectured on ‘the use of the globe’, while John Jones spoke on astronomy; both were Unitarian ministers.
Dynevor Arms. Courtesy of the Alan George Archive
But the Cyfarthfa Philosophical Society was far from being a usual collection of establishment figures and technocrats absorbed only by science. It was also a crucible of radical political and heterodox theological thinking. Its presiding figure was Rhys Hywel Rhys of Vaynor. He was a stonemason, self-taught astronomer and poet, and also a Jacobin, who subscribed to the radical newspaper The Cambridge Intelligencer. His atheism was overt. When he died in 1817 an englyn was carved on his gravestone that conveys his atomistic philosophy:
‘Rol ing a gwewyr angau I ddryllio fy mhriddelau Rhwng awyr, daear, dwr a than, Mi ymrana’n fân ronynau.
After the pains and pangs of death Will have shattered my earthly tenement Between earth, air, fire, and water, I shall separate into minute particles
Charles Wilkins, who as the son of a Chartist was sympathetic to radical causes, writes this about Rhys Hywel Rhys:
He devoted himself with great energy to the collection of a fund by which most valuable instruments were bought, such as were far beyond the individual means of any one of the members. Then, when these were bought, the members named Rhys as their president, and many an evening was passed in the endeavour to solve the most difficult questions with which their favourite sciences abounded. On the formation of the Society, it was wisely decided to confine the meetings solely to scientific matters, excluding political and religious subjects. This was rendered all the more necessary as the members were great readers of controversial works, and disposed to form opinions of their own, instead of having them formed for them. But it is not to be expected that a Society of thoughtful minds would assemble without occasionally diving below the current, and endeavour to solve to their own satisfaction certain points of science and the Bible, which, in their day, were believed to be sternly conflicting, and in discordance with each other. And this they did at friendly meetings, even if they were rigid enough to exclude the subject at their Society. We can readily believe that such discussion, with gleanings from “Tom Payne,” Mirabeau, Volney, and the Rational School, had a tendency to awaken doubt, and the failure to reconcile the God of the Hebrews with the God of Nature to confirm those doubts, and warp some of them from sect and creed to Deism. A few, we understand, became Unitarians, and some remained Orthodox. We should not be surprised at this, for the ranks of the French doubters were composed of men of high reputation, and the sallies of Gibbon and of Hume against the citadel of the faith had been keen and well sustained. The very intellectual atmosphere, so to speak, was one of doubt, and all this was in natural sequence.
Elsewhere Wilkins outlines the advanced thinking of the Philosophers gathered around Rhys Hywel Rhys:
In the days of its infancy, the members were exposed to considerable sarcasm by the ingenious efforts of Rhys, who, in order to exercise himself in mechanical ingenuity, constructed a duck ‘that did everything but quack.’ Good, but foolish people, inferred from this that the society aimed at rivalling the deity, and condemned them; while others made it a theme for constant raillery. The members were deep thinkers—astute politicians and though debarred from discussing any polemics in their society hours, yet they were only too happy to tread the debateable tracks of religious politics and philosophy; and some even indulged in opinions which led the Cyfarthfa school of philosophers to become rather unjustly associated with positive Atheism. Paine and Voltaire had their admirers; and when it was a punishable offence to read the works of the former, a few, who thought highly of his Rights of man and Age of reason, would assemble in secret places on the mountains, and, taking the works from concealed places under a large boulder or so, read them with great unction. But if Paine had admirers he had also enemies, for at the same time religious men had the nails in their boots arranged to form T. P., that then they might figuratively tread Tom Paine underfoot.
Hen-Dy-Cwrdd Chapel, Cefn Coed
The Society was just one of many institutions in Merthyr that nurtured a spirit of questioning, dissent and protest. The Calvinists were relatively weak in the town, whereas Unitarians and other less rigid, free-thinking churches had many adherents: many of the Society’s early members belonged to the Unitarian chapel in Merthyr or the Hen Dy Cwrdd chapel in Cefn-Coed-y-Cymer. Many ‘friendly societies’ – the precursors of trade unions – were set up in the town around the time of the Society’s beginning. Together these and other local institutions helped to build an autonomous political culture of confident radicalism that would make Merthyr a natural centre for industrial strikes, Chartist reform, trade unions and other workers’ movements later in the nineteenth century.
Wilkins is vague about the subsequent history of the Cyfarthfa Philosophical Society. After the deaths or removals of many founders the Society almost collapsed. It was resuscitated for a while, with a new subscription and set of rules. Further scientific instruments were acquired, and books added to a library. But ‘a few years ago’ the Society was dissolved and it became amalgamated with the Merthyr Subscription Library. Charles Wilkins himself became Librarian of the Library when it was established in 1846; its co-founder and Secretary was Thomas Stephens, the literary historian, reformer and Unitarian.
In the 1851 census a John Davis and his wife Elizabeth, both born in Carmarthenshire, can be seen living in George Town. John’s occupation is given as Printer (employing 1 man). This was John Sylvanus Davis, who had served his apprenticeship in Carmarthenshire and then moved on to work for the Rev. John Jones, printer and minister in Rhydybont. This employment would change the course of his life.
