Professions, Trades and Beliefs

When David Owen moved in with the Jones family, he was making what we would call today a career move. In today’s world, he would have been going to college and acquiring certificates and diplomas in order to acquire a formal qualification to practice. In those days, life was both simpler – and more complicated. Then, it was not just individuals who acquired a skill – but entire families.

The family of Jane Jones took the art of printing, bookbinding and compositing and made it their own. David followed them from Llanrwst to Bala and under the guidance of his future brother-in-law, Griffith Jones, learned and even perfected his craft, just as numerous other Jones relatives were doing. Thus did family ties overlap with professional ties in the formation of the tight-knit communities of the day, and lead not only to the acquisition of skills, but of wives and families.

This was all very well and good, but the family-community was then seriously reliant on market demand for the products and services at their disposal. Whether menagerists, mariners, bakers, or printers, no-one was immune to the changing world, and all had to respond in one way or another to the circumstances of the day, either by changing trade or changing location.

In the case of David Owen and Jane Jones once they had married in Bala in 1853, they moved to St. Asaph, Denbigh, where they remained for a number of years. Coincidentally, they were living there at just the right time to have bumped into a restless and indigent Denbigh youth, known as John Rowlands. In 1859, this John was to emigrate to the USA and adopt the new name of Henry Morton Stanley. Twelve years later, in 1871, and having built a breathtakingly successful if controversial career, he was on hand in Tanzania to utter the immortal (even if retrospectively self-coined) words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ Coming from Denbigh, one imagines that Stanley would also have been well-attuned to the way of thinking and convictions of a dedicated missionary like Livingstone.

The future African explorer and legendary opportunist, Stanley, was not however the the only Denbigh citizen considering his future moves in the eighteen fifties. The Owen family too were considering a radical decision, one that would admittedly not involve traversing Africa, but would rather relocate them to deepest, darkest Hackney in London.

It is not clear who made the first move in this regard. It may indeed have been David’s father, for the first Owen record, we have from London is of the death of a David Owen in 1857. He was interred in Abney Park cemetery in Stoke Newington. Meanwhile, two of the three children of the younger David Owen and Jane Jones were to be born in Bala: Edward Samuel Owen, and Winifred Ann Owen. Their third child, Joseph was to be born in London.

Winifred Ann Owen. From the Ancestry.com pages of ‘Bethany1321’

These Owens, who arrived in North London, would of course have brought with them their Calvinist-Methodist mindset, which was predicated on an experiential and personal relationship with their God, in which redemption was no automatic right, but rather reserved for the God-fearing elite. Their chapel life would have centered around passionate, fire and brimstone sermons, and whole-hearted hymn singing. Their Bible and catechisms would have been daily reference points, and weekly life and events reflected upon in the light of their journey towards the next world. They would also have been more than proud of the fact that the Calvinist-Methodist tradition was genuinely Welsh, and as a natural concomitant, would have been committed to the Welsh language, speaking it at home, and ensuring that their children grew up as Welsh speakers.