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My grandmother came from a family that embraced the
Welsh traditions of music, religion, education and the seafaring heritage
of the Lleyn Peninsula in North Wales (read about it here).
Williams Williams
(1806-1884) was a prosperous drover and farmer who lived at Ty Newydd
in Llanystumdwy, later the home of David Lloyd George and now the National
Writers Centre for Wales. His three sons went to sea - John
Williams (1835-1893) who died in Beunos Aires, William
Williams (b 1837) and Robert
Williams (1844-1930) who served on the New Quay lifeboat in Cardiganshire.
Many of their children and grandchildren continued the family's maritime
tradition, both as merchant seaman and in the Royal Navy during the
war.
William's daughter Catherine
Williams (1838-1907) married Rev
John Jones (1831-1909), the minister at Pencaenewydd for forty years
(view pages from his family bible here).
His son Captain Owen
Jones (1871-1915) went to sea – his chest and trinket-box are at
the Maritime Museum at Nefyn – as did two of his grandsons Captain
Emrys Griffith (1903-1988) and Captain
Ioan Griffith (b.1896) who lost an ear after contracting frost bite
during the Second World War.
John and Catherine's daughter Letitia
Jones (1872-1942) married Hugh
Griffith (1862-1922) whose father and grandfather were shoemakers
in Nefyn. Hugh studied at Bangor and became headmaster of the school
at Llithfaen, where he led his own choir and “once brought an orchestra
to the slopes of the Eifl, so that his pupils and neighbours could enjoy
and appreciate the musical masters.” He was said to have inherited
his musical talent from his mother Ellen
(1832-1891) “of the same religious disposition and well-versed in
the spritual melodies and rhymes of her nation”.
 To
support the family, Letitia and Hugh lived apart - he ran the school
at Llithfaen and she ran the grocery shop and post office in Pencaenewydd.
The children would deliver messages from the post office to the “big
house” on the Glasfryn Estate, home of Clough Williams Ellis, the
architect of Portmeirion.
My grandmother Eluned said that she was given swiss chocolate there
which was “the best she had ever tasted”. It was there around
the turn of the century that Mrs Williams Ellis painted the watercolour
of a young Eluned and her elder sister Nevina shortly before Nevina’s
death at the age of eight from Diptheria.
 Two
of Hugh and Letitia's children went to Aberystwyth University. Eluned
Griffith (1898-1990) met her husband Frank
Roberts (1894-1960) and subsequently moved to Llanelli. Taliesyn
Griffith (1901-1959) returned to Pwllheli and founded the male voice
choir Glannau Erch which gave more than eighty radio broadcasts on the
BBC and “rekindled interest in songs which were popular in their grandparents'
days”. A judge at Eisteddfodau, he arranged sea songs in Welsh and some
of his manuscripts are at the Museum
of Welsh Life at St Fagans.
The Welsh language at the time was thought to be an impediment to getting
a good education, but while in other parts of Wales children were punished
with the Welsh Not, a token passed to any child heard speaking Welsh
during school, my grandmother told me that she was given a penny if
she spoke English throughout the day.
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