New from Y Lolfa "The amazing adventures of Margaret Jones (1842-1902), a lady from Rhosllannerchrugog, north Wales, who became famous in the nineteenth century as "The Welsh Lady from Canaan". She traveled extensively and spent time living in Paris, Jerusalem, Morocco, the United States and Australia. She published two books of her observations, "Llythyrau Cymraes o Wlad Canaan [The Letters of a Welsh Lady from Canaan] (1869) and "Morocco, a'r hyn a welais yno" [Morocco, and what I saw there] (1883). Her letters appear here alongside an account of her life and travels." Buy it HERE
Author Eirian Jones with Bronwen Hall, the great-niece of Margaret Jones, the Welsh Lady from Canaan. Also in the photograph are Bronwen’s children, David and Susan. They are looking at the Australian diary of Margaret Jones which is kept at the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland in Brisbane.
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AmeriCymru: Hi Eirian and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. When did you first become aware of Margaret Jones and what made you decide to record her life and adventures?
I was browsing through the Cydymaith i Lenyddiaeth Cymru [Companion to Welsh Literature] one day looking for some information about poets born in Ceredigion, when I came across a couple of paragraphs about this Margaret Jones who had written a few books, but, more interestingly, had lived in Paris, Jerusalem, Morocco and traveled around the United States before spending the last ten years of her life in Australia. She’d done all this in the second half of the nineteenth century which I thought was remarkable. A few months later I visited Margaret’s home village of Rhosllannerchrugog in north-east Wales and went into the library to see if they had any more information about her. They’d never heard of her! So that was it – I was hooked by her life story and wanted to find out more. Since I’m also an author and love travelling, I had quite an affinity with the story of Margaret Jones.AmeriCymru: Margaret was an exceptionally lucky and above all courageous woman. What in particular strikes you about her bravery and dedication?She was extraordinarily brave and courageous at a time when women were only expected to raise a family and weren’t supposed to do much else. Margaret was born in 1842, in poor and unfortunate circumstances and she only received three weeks of formal schooling. There were no ambitious female role models to follow in her home village of Rhos, so her expectations in life must have been pretty low. But, her lucky break in taking a position as a maid with a family in Llangollen and then being asked to work as a maid for another member of the same family in Birmingham (a missionary with the London Jews Society) opened up wonderful opportunities for global travel to her. Margaret was evidently an outgoing personality from her upbringing in Rhos. When she lived in Paris and Jerusalem she could have just worked as a maid and kept herself very much to herself. But no, she wanted to fully experience living in these places: she learnt the languages, visited the important sites and related all her findings back to her parents in letters. In Jerusalem she told her parents about cholera outbreaks, plagues of locusts descending on the city, death threats to Christians from the Sultan etc. And in Jerusalem also, her time was particularly difficult personally, because she suffered from a badly twisted knee. She’d hoped to stay in Jerusalem for ten years, and it was only after being hospitalized due to the condition of her knee that she was persuaded to return home to Wales to receive treatment. So she showed particularly brave and dedicated attributes to her character at this time.AmeriCymru: In Part IV ('The Length And Breadth of Wales') of the book we are treated to a fascinating account of the chapel lecture circuit in late 19th century Wales.. How much prejudice existed against women lecturers and how difficult was it for them to gain acceptance?It was very difficult. According to the vast majority of people in those days a woman’s place was in the home and certainly not speaking publically from the pulpit! To some extent Margaret agreed with this, but she also argued that she had a very good reason to travel the land lecturing from pulpits about Canaan, because she was trying to raise money for the Palestine Missionary Fund so that ‘enlightened information’ could be given to the people living there. Some commentators in newspapers and magazines were very rude about the handful of traveling female lecturers, saying that the world had come to an end when they saw a female lecturer in the pulpit, or that these ladies didn’t belong to one gender or the other! These commentators were largely ignored and, to be honest, these lady lecturers were so very popular (in particular with female audiences), that it was a case of men being envious of their success rather than anything else.AmeriCymru: Again in Part IV we are introduced to another female lecturer, Cranogwen. Can you tell us a little more about her?Cranogwen was a fascinating lady too, and spent time traveling around the United States also. She was raised in the old county of Cardiganshire and during her lifetime she was a sea captain, a poet, a musician, a preacher, a temperance movement leader, a school mistress and the editor of a Welsh women’s magazine. She’d been sent away by her mother at the age of fifteen to learn to be a seamstress. She hated the work so much that she ran away to sea, and enjoyed life as a sailor for two years. In time she would gain her master of the seas certificate. At 21 years of age, she decided to live on dry land for a while. She took charge of the school in her local village, Pontgarreg, near Llangrannog. She was headmistress for six years, before succumbing to itchy feet once more. She was a promising public speaker, and so she joined the expanding popular lecture circuit and started visiting chapels around Wales. She traveled the land for three years, lecturing and preaching on subjects such as ‘Wales, her religion and education’, ‘Money and Time’, ‘The Home’, ‘Things that go wrong’ and the female Welsh hymnist ‘Ann Griffiths’. Cranogwen became more and more well known the length and breadth of the country, and one rather envious poet quipped that she was the ‘two sovereign, difficult Goddess’. Cranogwen was paid two sovereigns for each of her lectures. It seems that the male poet wished to ridicule her popularity. She was yet to turn 30 years of age. And to celebrate that birthday, she went on a voyage to the United States in 1869. There she spent several months lecturing to Welsh audiences in states bordering New York City. She then ventured west to the Rocky Mountains. This was not an easy journey to undertake; it would have been even more fraught for a foreign single lady traveling on her own.AmeriCymru: There is some speculation in the book about the reasons for Margaret's failure to record her experiences in America in the mid 1880s. Any further thoughts on that?It saddens me a great deal that I haven’t been able to find more information about Margaret’s two-year stay in the United States. Several papers record her arrival in New York City in 1883 and the fact she spoke at several Welsh chapels in the city before moving on to Utica. But after that initial piece of information, there’s nothing recorded in newspapers at all. For a lady who wrote so many letters and kept a detailed diary, it’s very strange that there is no more information about her time in the US. It makes me then wonder if her trip to the US actually lasted as long as two years. After all, she was largely on her own there; she didn’t have any constant company with her and if she was moving from place to place, it could have been quite lonely for this gregarious lady. Perhaps, after a few months, she decided to go home.AmeriCymru: Is it possible to obtain copies of Margaret's books?I used copies held at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth during my research. Margaret’s two books Llythyrau Cymraes o Wlad Canaan and Morocco a’r hyn a welais yno are both digitalized as Google eBooks.AmeriCymru: What's next for Eirian Jones?In conjunction with Blaenpennal History Society I’m writing and editing a bilingual book about the history of Mynydd Bach in the old county of Cardiganshire (where I was raised) and hopefully this will be published either late this year or early 2013. The book may be of interest to Welsh descendants who live in the Gallia and Jackson areas of Ohio, as nearly three-quarters of the residents of Mynydd Bach emigrated to Ohio in the 1860s.
Author Eirian Jones at the grave of Margaret Jones,
The Welsh Lady from Canaan,
in Ipswich, Queensland.
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Interview by Ceri Shaw