It was a day like any other in the Welsh parish of Cellan, September 25th, 1765, when a small iron chest arrived at the doors of All Saints’ Anglican Church. A special delivery, the first of its kind, for the Rev. Williams. Heavy, despite its size, the chest was lugged onto a sturdy wooden pew near the chancel and opened to reveal 36 freshly-bound books. And a note:
“Kellan, Cardiganshire. The undermentioned books are a donation of the worthy Associates of the late Dr. Bray, established here as a parochial library for the use and benefit of the officiating minister of this parish, from time to time, for ever.”[1]
This rural, unassuming parish now had its first lending library.
Other such libraries were popping up in the area around this time too. The neighbouring town of Lampeter and other rural parishes like Llandyssul and Llanwnen also received their own. In fact, these chests of books weren’t just sent to Wales or even across the British Isles, they were sent all around the world to far-off places like the West Indies, Bengal, Newfoundland, and South Africa. The American colonies of Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania were home to the earliest and largest of these collections.[2]
But in Cellan, perhaps, in the eyes of Rev. Williams, his parish was in need of a good collection of books, especially those extolling, what he might call, the true religion of the Church of England. And perhaps one to match the English, Latin, and Greek collection of the Rev. Timothy Davies of the nearby Caeronen Presbyterian Chapel. The nonconformists, after all, had a stronghold in Rev. Williams’ parish and those it neighboured, many of the yeoman and gentlemen farmers having joined the movement across the preceding century. My ancestors were among these early nonconformists of what became known as the Cilgwyn Circuit. Among my known living ancestors in the neighbourhood in 1765 were my 8x great grandparents, Timothy Jacob and Elinor Thomas of Goitre Isaf farm, Llangybi, and David Davies and his “loving wife” of Tynylofft, Bettws Bledrws, as well as my 7x great grandparents, David John Morgan and Sarah of Pentre, Llanfair Clydogau, and David Thomas and Mary Davies of Olwen, Lampeter. My only known direct ancestor to have lived in Cellan was the above Elinor’s father, Thomas Rydderch, who died there a few years earlier in 1759. However, I have a strong suspicion, given the many connections between my ancestors and the old farming families of Cellan, that I’ll one day find that my own roots lead there.
The Cilgwyn Circuit, which included chapels in a number of parishes, including Cellan, fostered an educational-mindedness and Cilgwyn Chapel was upheld by some early scholars as “an educational center with the best in Wales.”[3] So many from this branch of my family tree received an uncommon degree of education in the 18th Century. For example, one of my three known 9x great grandparents, Lettice Thomas (the above David Davies of Tynylofft’s mother), a woman born some time before 1685, was able to sign her name all the way back in 1711, in what appears to be a practised, if a bit shaky, hand.[4] And my David Thomas of Olwen, later in the 18th Century, was literate to the point of being able to do the accounting for his term as the Overseer of the Poor.[5] A perusal of student lists of institutions like the Carmarthen Presbyterian Academy will show many who found their roots in the Cilgwyn circuit and some of whom, undoubtedly, would have flipped through the books from the lending library at Cellan or others in the area.
By 1904, when the antiquarian, George Eyre Evans, wrote about Cellan’s lending library, only a few of the 36 volumes remained.[6] Among them, you could find “The Christian’s Way to Heaven,” first published in 1700, and “The Original and Right of Tithes” from 1691. There was also “Instructions to the *ndians,” written in 1692. A later 18th Century writer described this book as a “plain and useful system of Christian ethics, adapted to the capacities of the most illiterate.”[7] These were books sent with the purpose of teaching Christian values to the people.
Deep in the heart of Welsh-speaking Wales though, you wouldn’t immediately think that these English-language books would be of much use. But, interestingly, the middling sort of families of this area—those who could call themselves gentlemen, yeomen, or just farmers—had a long tradition of sending their children off to get an English education. My own ancestor, David Davis, the eldest son of the Timothy and Elinor of Goitre Isaf mentioned above, in 1765 was soon to leave for far-off Leominster in England to study English under his uncle, the Rev. Joshua Thomas.[8] This back and forth from rural Cardiganshire to Herefordshire is a route that many of my ancestors took, generation after generation, until the 1870s.[9] It was also a route to proficiency in the English language that would have benefitted from a collection of English-language books.
Of course, travelling to England for school wasn’t an opportunity that was available to all—many in the area went without even a basic elementary education. But by this time, many people would have learned to read Welsh thanks to the circulating Welsh Charity Schools. Founded by the Rev. Griffith Jones and Madam Bridget Bevan, the Welsh Charity Schools had a similar goal to Bray’s Libraries: to teach people the fundamentals of Christianity. For Rev. Jones and Madam Bevan, the way to achieve this goal was to teach people to read the Welsh Bible for themselves. So the program sent teachers to wherever they were invited, to hold classes for three to four months, for anyone who chose to show up. By the end of Rev. Jones’ life in 1761, they had already taught over 158,000[10] people to read and even more were reached under Madam Bevan’s leadership over the next 18 years. The parish of Cellan received one of their schools in 1760,[11] five years before the arrival of their library, and 48 parishioners attended day classes.[12] By the 1770s, the schools arrived in the two neighbouring parishes: Lampeter in 1770, 1772, and 1775, and Llanfair Clydogau in 1773 and 1774, in which year they held three day schools and a night school, reaching 249 students.[13] Like Cellan, Llanfair Clydogau was a small, rural parish that, by 1833, only had a population of 385![14]
The thing that I take away from this small history of education in an even smaller place is how the stories we uncover as family historians often fly in the face of assumptions we make about the past. It’s long been held that people in the past generally didn’t value education—especially the rural poor. But from the establishment of Dr. Bray’s libraries all over the world, to the early school in my ancestors’ community, to the lengths some of those ancestors went to to send their children across the country to finish their schooling, and to the thousands upon thousands of people all across Wales who attended the Welsh Charity Schools, it becomes clear just how hungry people were for an education. It took over a century after the Associates of Dr. Bray delivered their books to Cellan for universal access to education to arrive in Wales. Supporting universal access to education is something small that we can all do to honour our ancestors who worked so hard to make it happen and I think it’s our duty in the present to see that universal education becomes available to everyone, everywhere.
This article was written for Project Kin’s Stories 250 project. If you want to read other stories about what the community’s ancestors were up to 250 years ago, go check them out!
[1] 1903. Philip Sidney (George Eyre Evans). “An Eighteenth Century Parochial Library.” Welsh Gazette and West Wales Advertiser. Oct. 8, 1903, p. 7. Digital Images. National Library of Wales.
[2] 1769. Associates of Dr. Bray. An Account of the Designs of the Associates of the late Dr. Bray. London.
[3] 1937. T. Eirug Davies. “Y Cofiadur Philip Pugh a’i Lafur yn y Cilgwyn.” Y Cofiadur. Issue 14:16-36, p. 18.
[4] 1711. David Thomas. Administration dated Nov. 15, 1711. Welsh Wills 1556-1858. Betws Bledrws. Diocese of St. David’s, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. http://hdl.handle.net/10107/313065.
[5] 1792. Lampeter Vestry Book, 1777-1803. Lampeter Parochial Records 1, p. 138-140/280. Digital Images. National Library of Wales. http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4836598.
[6] 1903. Philip Sidney (George Eyre Evans). “An Eighteenth Century Parochial Library.” Welsh Gazette and West Wales Advertiser. Oct. 8, 1903, p. 7. Digital Images. National Library of Wales.
[7] 1781. Anonymous. “Review of The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Thomas Wilson, D. D Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man, by C. Cruttwell.” In The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature Vol. 51: p. 39
[8] 1828. Thomas Griffiths. “Cofiant am y Parch. David Davies, gynt o Gastell-Hywel, Ceredigion.” Carmarthen: J. Evans in the offices of Seren Gomer.
[9] 1945. Dan Jenkins. “Old Herefordshire Schools: Where Cardiganshire Children Learned English.” Welsh Gazette. Dec. 2, 1945, p. 6. Digital Images. FindMyPast.
[10] 1835. A Summary of the Life and Character of the Rev. Griffith Jones. Carmarthen: W. Evans & Co.
[11] 1760. Griffith Jones. Welch Piety. Bartholomew Close: J. & W. Oliver. http://hdl.handle.net/10107/5430375.
[12] I checked every yearly report for the years between 1740–1777 (except for nine missing editions) for mentions of the parish of Cellan and its neighbourhood.
[13] 1774. Anonymous. Welch Piety. Bartholomew Close: J. & W. Oliver. http://hdl.handle.net/10107/5429796.
[14] 1834. Samuel Lewis. A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, Vol. 2. London: S. Lewis & Co.
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