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My Happy Family
Ellen Jones (1839 – 1900) and Thomas Mates (1843 – 1904)
These are my happy, witty, sporting ancestors. Nearly all of the stories and remembrances of this line are fun. Not that they didn’t have hardships and sadness, rather these were more than compensated for by their quick sense of humour and strong sense of social justice and fairness. Family recollections suggest that Tom and Ellen’s children were forever joking with each other, their friends and neighbours.
These relatives and my Stokes/Roberts ancestors were all strongly committed to trade unionism, the Co-operative movement and the (old) Labour Party. An example of this was during the General Strike of 1926. My grandparents (offspring of these lines) used all their Co-op savings so that no members of their family would be forced by destitution to break the strike.
I remember my grandmother, who died when I was three, as a warm, loving, happy person. She and my Taid – very serious and forbidding – lived next door to us for the last few months of her life. I recall running around to her for comfort (and maybe protection!) because I’d done something wrong and my mother was cross. It must have been only weeks before she died. Her kitchen, with its settle and table covered with a maroon chenille cover, seemed always full of friends and family. On her mantle shelf was a huge collection of letters and many risqué postcards. Whenever I visited, these postcards were brought down for me to look at!
Her boys (she had seven sons, including triplets) and their families were very precious to her. During WW2, her diaries record her writing many letters to ‘Mr Churchill’ about two of her sons who were in the army. She was not averse to playing tricks on them though: tying door handles of the row of outside lavatories together with string and then knocking on one. A shovel full of hot coals put through at the back was also used to force them out if they had been there too long! At Christmas time it was a goose from the local farm, followed by a huge pudding cooked in her outside wash boiler: my father’s love of puddings was obviously acquired from eating these. And always a holly tree, never a fir.
She seemed to be known and loved by everyone in the small coal mining rural community in which she lived. At some stage during the early 1900s she had become the local untrained midwife and auxillary nurse and seems to have delivered most of the babies born in the rows of terraced coal miners’ houses known as Chirk Green. A WW1 photograph of the nursing staff of the local hospital shows her looking very aristocratic and beautiful wearing her hat at a jaunty angle.
She was probably the first female ‘football hooligan’. Her husband had been a very talented forward for the local side which played in the Welsh League. A local press report in 1929 described him as ‘one of the finest forwards who ever donned the jersey of the famous club’ Her brothers also played the game; in particular her brother John (Jack) who was capped for Wales on a number of occasions. Her son, my father, played professional football in the 1920s before cartilage injuries halted his career. Many of the great names of Welsh football at the time were related by kinship or marriage to these two families, including the legendary Billy Meredith who had married into the family. In such a male, football-dominated circle, it was not surprising that my grandmother followed the game and the local side. My father told of one occasion, disgruntled by the referee’s decision against one of her brothers or sons, she ran on to the pitch and hit him with her umbrella. A formidable, wonderful woman.
Gran was the youngest child and her brothers had died before I was born and I can only draw on family stories, newspaper reports and obituaries for their lives. I do have memories of their children though: now all dead and having had no offspring.
Brother Joseph (Joe) never married and, although working in the local coal mines intermittently, worked mainly at Chirk Castle, the home of the Myddleton family. It is difficult to discover in what capacity; butler or gardener being the most likely. He enjoyed his whisky and would never refuse a ‘toothful’. He died on 3rd April 1941 at my grandparents’ home. His obituary in the Oswestry Advertizer of 9th April 1941 states:
A well-known sportsman, Mr Joseph Mates, died at the home of his brother-in-law and sister…following a long illness…For a considerable number of years Mr Mates was the trainer to the Chirk F. C. and had travelled with the team when Chirk figured as Champions of the old Combination league. As well as a keen footballer, Mr Mates also took an interest in other sports in the district. He worked for a number of years at Chirk Castle under Col Myddleton and also Lord Howard de Walden.
Second brother John (Jack) was the real footballer. Many of our old football photos have him posing, somewhat arrogantly it seems, for the camera. On of the most famous is of him sitting proudly with the Welsh FA cup on his knee. My favourite is a more sad one of him as a young widower with his 2-3 year old son John. He died in November 1938, the same month as a cousin with the same name. I have not been able to find any obituary for him but, for such a well known figure, there must have been one. I have, however, a report of his retirement from the local colliery in 1937 which seems to play up a religious side I knew nothing about:
Oswestry Advertizer, 14th April 1937
Fifty-nine years a chorister at the Parish Church, Chirk, is the remarkable record held by Mr Jack Mates. Mr Mates, who was born in 1869, started school at Chirk, under the Headmaster, the late Mr. T. E. Thomas who was then also the choir master at the Parish Church. Knowing the boy possessed a good voice, Mr Thomas took him into the choir. From then, Mr Mates has been a loyal member of the church and choir. Mr Mates has served under six vicars and seven choirmasters. He is still “going strong” and possesses a fine tenor voice.
One of the best-known sportsmen in the district, Mr Mates was known in his younger days as a first-class footballer, and one of the best centre half-backs in Wales. On many occasions he was offered terms by First Division clubs, but Mr Mates refused to leave Chirk. Mr Mates has also been an excellent cricketer and is well remembered by many people over a wide area regarding his capabilities on the football and cricket fields.
During the greater part of his life Mr Mates has been employed at the Black Park, Brynkinallt and Ifton collieries. Only a few weeks ago he retired, after many years of strenuous work. Mr Mates is in good health and possesses a smile and kind word for everyone. He cherishes the old village of Chirk, and especially the Parish Church where he has attended for so many years. His many friends in the parish extend to him all good wishes in his well-earned retirement from colliery work.
I remember Jack’s son, also Jack. He would visit us at least once a week, although he had moved to his wife’s home in Froncysyllte, three miles away. He worked at the nearby Monsanto Chemical works and always had a strange chemical smell about him: just as coalminers always carry blue scars on their bodies. He was also a keen member of the local St John’s Ambulance Brigade. Apparently, he had been very bright in school and the local GP had offered to pay for him to go to medical school. Like his father, he preferred to stay in the Welsh border villages.
Although a cousin (first, once removed), he was my Uncle Jack. He had the dark red hair (definitely not carrots!) that was common in the family; my father and I also inheriting it. Uncle Jack called me ‘Tosh’ (why, I don’t know) and taught me to draw. He died suddenly from an angina attack while walking in the hills above Fron. This would have been in the mid-1950s. He was only in his 40s and the whole family was shocked. His body was laid out in his bedroom where family and friends were expected to view him and pay their respects. He was the first dead person I had seen.
The third brother, Tom Herbert, was a valet and then a butler at Chirk Castle. I have photographs of him in his uniform and one sitting in a chair. Here, he was not just handsome but angelic. He died before 1941. He had two daughters and a son. The son was my godfather. None of them married, although the eldest daughter’s fiancé lived with them after their mother died and outlived them all.
They lived in a small, claustrophobic stone cottage close to us and we called in regularly. To put it mildly, they were eccentric! They were not poor by any means but the floors always seemed to be carpeted with layers of newspapers. Books and papers were everywhere; including being used to prop up a sofa. I remember the living room being full of pewterware – on the mantelshelf, on the sideboard, jugs hanging from beams. I have one of the jugs. They called everyone in the village ‘Cuz’. Maybe we were all related for, after the last of the three died intestate, the estate was shared out between 22 cousins! This death in the early 1980s marked the end of this particular Mates line.
So what of the progenitors of this lovable, mad bunch of Mates?
Ellen JONES was the youngest daughter of Richard Jones and Sarah Lee. Both were younger children of reasonably affluent farming families on the Welsh-Shropshire borders. Their marriage allegation/bond of 24th February 1819 describes Richard as a farmer of Orseddwen (possible translation - the bard’s seat), a farm in the Llangollen Parish on the Welsh side of Offa’s Dyke, near Selattyn. Sarah’s father, Roger Lee, farmed nearby at Vron, Weston Rhyn in St. Martins Parish.
Inheritance patterns and agricultural decline must have had a great impact on Richard and Sarah’s position, for, by the time of Ellen’s birth on 17th January 1839, Richard was described as a ‘labourer’, living at Craignant, Weston Rhyn township in St Martins Parish, Shropshire. In the 1841 census, Ellen, aged 2, was living at Craignant, Weston Rhyn township, with her parents and four siblings. Ten years later (as Eleanor), she was the only child remaining with her parents. By this time they had moved to Selattyn, a few miles away. By 1861, still in Selattyn, Sarah had died and Ellen, aged 22, was left looking after her elderly father.
An account of Richard and Sarah’s ancestors is given in the Jones of Orseddwen pages.
Thomas MATES was born on the 3rd August 1843 at Black Park Wharf, Chirk, Denbighshire, the elder son of James Mates and Elizabeth Stokes2. James was a coal miner. Information from the 1851 and 1861 censuses suggests that Thomas began working in the local coal mines at some time in the mid to late 1850s. He was a scholar aged seven in 1851 and a collier, aged 17 in 1861. In both censuses he was living at home with his parents in Black Park, Chirk.
A more detailed description of Thomas’s ancestors is given in the Mates of Black Park pages.
Ellen and Thomas married on the 13th October 1866 at the Parish Church, Ruabon, Denbighshire. Their marriage certificate shows that they were both resident at Cefn Mawr at the time. Both signed. The witnesses were Thomas’s sister, Elizabeth, and her future husband, Frederick Moody. Thomas’s occupation is given as ‘miner’ but Ellen’s is left blank.
Their life experiences and movements in the five and a half years between the 1861 census and their marriage can only be speculated upon. How did they meet? When did Ellen move from Selattyn to the Chirk/Cefn Mawr area? I have yet to find a death record for her father: searching for the death of a Richard Jones between 1861 and 1871 is not easy in that area. Their marriage certificate does not say that he was deceased, but that does not always signify. Did Ellen get employment in the area as a domestic servant or did she move to live close by a sibling? Answers to these questions are yet to be discovered.
By July 1867, when their first child was born, they were living in one of the terraced houses at Chirk Green. Ellen and Thomas had the following children, who have been described above:
1867: Joseph
1869: John
1872: Tom Herbert
1875: Sarah Ellen – she lived for 6 days, dying from ‘convulsions’
1878: Mary Edith
The informant of these births was Ellen with the exception of the birth and subsequent death of Sarah Ellen, when Thomas informed.
The 1871, 1881 and 1891 censuses show them living in the same 4-roomed house at 13 Chirk Green where all their children were born. This was probably what was later called ‘the old row’. Twenty of these terraced houses were built in 1863 to house the workers at the nearby Brynkinallt and Black Park collieries. More rows were added to the steep, west facing hillside until there were 73 houses in five rows by 1893. The houses were mainly two-up, two-down, although some had three bedrooms. The lavatories and wash boilers were outside.
Over the years, Chirk Green became a very close knit community; neighbours were workmates, often related by blood or marriage. They shared each others’ sorrows and joys, minded the children and helped each other out in many ways. In this close setting, Thomas and Ellen raised their family. Their next door neighbours were the Owens and Rodgers families, all from Chirk or the Shropshire border villages where Ellen had grown up.
By 1881, Joseph, the eldest son now aged 13, was already working as a letter carrier. John, aged 12, was a coal mine labourer, probably working underground in a very junior capacity. Tom, aged 8, was in school and Mary Edith, the only surviving daughter, was just two. Ten years later, in 1891, Joseph was a coal mine labourer, junior in rank to his younger brother, John, already a coal miner.
There must have been some reason why Joseph delayed becoming a miner. Had he been sick or frail as a young boy? He was to outlive his younger brother by three years, never marrying.
Meanwhile, Tom Herbert, aged 20, had left home and was working as a footman (and later, a butler) at Chirk Castle, the home of the Myddleton-Biddulph’s. His sister, Mary Edith, was still at school in 1891 but would join him at the Castle later in the 1890s as a parlour maid.
By the 1890s, miners’ working hours had been reduced to a five and a half day week and Saturday afternoons were then taken up with sports for those who were athletic. John (Jack), was already the great sportsman of the family; playing cricket during the summer months and football all the time. During his mainly amateur career, he played at centre half for Chirk in the Welsh League, Northwich Victoria and Crewe Alexandra. He was capped for Wales on a number of occasions. On Sundays he made time to sing in the Church choir.
With two children working at the Castle, Thomas and Ellen must have taken the opportunity to move into the village of Chirk at some point in the 1890s. They moved to a stone built end-terrace house in Church Street which was owned by the Chirk Castle Estates. Ellen died there on 15th April 1900 from influenza and pneumonia, aged 61 years. By 1901, Mary Edith (Edie) was married with her first child and living back in Chirk Green, boarding with her husband’s cousin. Father Thomas and brothers Joe and Jack were in Church Street.
On the 16th February 1904, Thomas had finished his shift as a repairer at Black Park Colliery and was walking to the pit bottom when he was crushed to death by a loaded coal wagon. Two reports of his death were published in the local Oswestry Advertizer.
The first, on 17th February, the day after his death:
A week later, 24th February 1904, the same newspaper reported the inquest and funeral:
His death is also recorded in the fatal injuries database.
His death certificate records that he was ‘accidentally run over by tubs on an incline at the Black Park colliery’.
Until I discovered this death a couple of years ago, I had no knowledge of such a tragic accident in our family. No one had ever mentioned it. This, and previous deaths of ancestors and relatives in the coal mines, seem to have been taken as either part of the dangers of that way of life or never talked about to the children. My father, while happily arranging for our friends to be shown around the local coal mine, would never let his daughters see the conditions under which he worked. ©
The story of Ellen’s family continues on the Jones of Orseddwen page and Tom’s ancestors are discussed in Mates of Black Park.
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