Tag: family history
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How an Injury Changed Me
20 July 2025 will remain a date I never forget. It was a Sunday, and I bent to lift a box from beneath a shelf, incorrectly assuming that it was light. It was not. In that moment I sustained a back injury which was diagnosed as a slipped disc. The sensation has stayed with me…
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Voices from the Uplands, why I wrote it, and why it matters now
Voices from the Uplands: The Davies Family and the Soul of Rural Wales is, in the simplest sense, a book about my own ancestors, the Davies family of Caeadda, Llanwrin. But I did not write it to produce another neatly ordered pedigree, nor to add one more family tree to the growing pile of genealogical summaries…
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My Political Heritage, Wales in My Blood, and the Quiet Lessons of Ancestry
Most people assume that political identity is something acquired, a set of opinions formed by the news cycle, public argument, and the shifting pressures of the present. In Wales, that assumption seldom survives contact with history. Welsh political culture was not born yesterday. Nor did it begin with devolution, or with the institutions of modern…
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The Scholar Priest: The Life and Legacy of John Cartwright Jones (1831–1875)
In the long arc of the Jones Glandwr family story, few figures embody the union of intellect, faith, and social ambition as completely as John Cartwright Jones. Born into London privilege yet anchored in Welsh heritage, he lived at the crossroads of Victorian transformation – a clergyman shaped by Oxford scholarship, a family patriarch whose…
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David Jenkins (1850–1891), A Quiet Life Broken by Misfortune
In the upland districts of Montgomeryshire and southern Meirionnydd, the late nineteenth century was an age that demanded toughness and restraint. Men worked long hours in all seasons, living by the hard arithmetic of livestock, rent, weather, and market prices, and measured as much by reputation as by income. Within that world, David Jenkins, eldest…
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Hugh Wynn Wilding Jones (1896–1918)
Education, Inheritance, and the Long Road to Dojran The life of Hugh Wynn Wilding Jones sits at the intersection of Edwardian inheritance, elite education, and the totalising demands of the First World War. His story is not merely that of a young officer killed in action, but of a man whose life trajectory, intellectual formation,…
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George Roberts Shorto (1836–1905)
Soldier, Civic Servant, and Architect of Municipal Exeter George Roberts Shorto occupies a distinctive place in the civic history of Exeter. Soldier, volunteer officer, solicitor, and long-serving Town Clerk, his life charts the emergence of the Victorian professional administrator, shaped by discipline, duty, and an unyielding belief in public service. Early Life and Formation Born…
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Off the Rails: Why This Book Matters
Off the Rails: The Story of Crewe Steam Train Driver Alfred Jenkins began not as a publishing project but as an act of recovery, an attempt to give structure and permanence to a life that had been lived with discipline, endurance, and quiet dignity, and then almost lost to time. Alfred Jenkins (1882–1956) was my…
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Richard Emmett, and the Value of an Ordinary Life
In the 1880s, a retired soldier sat down to write a short book for his children. He did not imagine an audience beyond his family, nor did he attempt to shape his life into a story of heroism or distinction. He wrote, instead, to explain himself. To account for absence. To leave behind a record…
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“My Relations Are Part of a Rich Tapestry of Welsh Heritage” — My Feature in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
I’m delighted to share that my family history research has been featured in the latest issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine. The article, written by Claire Vaughan, explores my decades-long journey tracing my Welsh roots — from hill farmers and Calvinist ministers to a musical icon and a self-taught solicitor — all…
Antony David Davies FRSA FRAS AFRHistS FIoL MCMI 