Mary Davis: Click
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Birth:
14 Mar 1793 Llansamlet, Glamorganshire, Wales
Baptism: 16 April 1845
Death:
29 February 1876 Treboeth, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales
Burial:
William Jones: Click
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Birth:
1824 Carmarthenshire, Wales
Baptism: May 8, 1850
Death: 1875
Burial:
Conversion Story:
Although believers in Christ and the teachings of the Bible, the family did not belong actively to any church. They cared little for any kind of organized worship. In 1844, however, Joseph Davis (Son of Mary and Thomas) heard the gospel preached by his cousins, Hopkin and David Mathews. His skepticism turned to belief then to faith, and he accepted baptism into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 22 September 1844, being then 25 years of age. He was followed the next month on 23 October 1844 by Jane, the oldest of Thomas and Mary's children. The following spring Mother Mary and the youngest daughter Elizabeth were baptized, Mary on 16 April 1845 and Elizabeth on 29 April 1845. Dan was baptized several years later, 22 February 1848. Father Thomas never did join the church nor did the majority of his children.
The family members who joined the church became very active. Joseph was ordained an elder in the priesthood in December 1844 by Elder Abel Evans and served as a local missionary. He was often called upon to administer to the sick and became the president of a large and flourishing branch of the Church in Swansea.
The Mathews remained in Treboeth although some of the children emigrated to Utah. In February 1852, Joseph Davis, his wife and son left Liverpool under the auspices of the Church’s Permanent Emigration Fund Company, traveling overland under the direction of Captain Abraham O. Smoot.
In Treboeth, the children continued to leave home and start homes of their own. The 1851 British census shows Thomas still working as a collier, but heading a much smaller family (only Thomas and Elizabeth remained at home).
Family records show that on 29 February 1876 Mary died at Treboeth Landore, apparently the area bordering the River Tawe between Treboeth and Landore. Thomas lived almost three years longer, dying at Treboeth on 7 November 1878.
And another version that ties to our ancestor Mary Mathews Jones:
Mary Mathews was born February 1, 1828, Llangyfelach, Glamorgan County, Wales, to Thomas Mathews and Mary Davis or David. She was the seventh child of eleven. Both of Mary’s parents, Thomas and Mary, were born in the same county of South Wales in 1791 and 1793 respectively. Their eleven children, four girls and seven boys, were born between 1814 and 1838.
The story of William and Mary Jones and their family seems to be tied to the Mormon missionary work in Wales. According to a history of the introduction of the gospel into Wales by Richard L. Evans, the gospel was first preached in North Wales by missionaries from Liverpool in 1840. The first branch in South Wales was established in March 1843 in a village near Merthyr Tydfil. More branches were established and a new district based in Merthyr Tydfil was organized April 6, 1844. This later became the Glamorganshire District. It was at this time that members of the Mathews family began to be baptized. The first to be baptized was Joseph, married son of Thomas and Mary Davis Mathews, born in 1819. He was baptized in September 1844, and his older married sister Jane (born 1814) followed a month later.
The legendary Dan Jones and his wife arrived in Wales in early 1845, obeying a call from Joseph Smith before his death and greatly expanding the work in Wales. At a general conference of the British Mission held in Manchester in April 1845, Elder Jones delivered a powerful testimony. “. . . [H]e would speak of a nation renowned in his¬tory, one of the most ancient nations of the earth, who had never been subdued, and to whom he hoped to be instrumental in bearing the tidings of the work of God in the last days. He enlarged on the characteristics of the Welsh people in a manner, and with eloquence, that told how ardently he loved his native tribe and his fatherland. . . . [H]e had now come in obedience to the counsel of the martyred Prophet, as a messenger to his native land, to bear testimony of the work for which his brother, the Prophet, had died, and which he had sealed with his blood.”
It was in this same month that Mary Davis Mathews and her daughter Mary Mathews became the next Mathews to join the church, being baptized on April 16, 1845. Mary Davis Mathews was baptized by William Jones according to the early Swansea Ward records, and it is possible her daughter Mary was also baptized by the same man. This is apparently not the same William Jones who later became her son-in-law, her daughter Mary’s husband, as that William Jones was not baptized until May 8, 1850. More Mathews family members to be baptized in this time period include Elizabeth (born 1833), baptized two weeks after her mother and sister on April 28, 1845, and Daniel (born 1836) who was baptized on February 22, 1848, just before he turned 12 years old. Thomas, the father, apparently did not join the Church.
