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    Not surprisingly, there are several Jones families - almost certainly unconnected - which are linked to our family tree by marriage. I have attempted here to identify the principle ones. If you believe I have missed one that is important to you, please let me know.

    The Jones Family of Ballas Farm
      
    I deal with this one first because we are connected in multiple ways to the Jones family of Ballas Farm, Pyle. This line starts with Thomas Jones, born in Ewenny in 1772. Thomas married Mary Jane Lewis, daughter of Pyle blacksmith, George Lewis.  Thomas Jones and Mary Jane Lewis raised a family of nine children at Ballas farm, several of whom became entwined with our family tree. Son George Jones married Mary Powell, daughter of Jehoshaphat Powell of Llanmihangel Mill. Daughter Margaret Jones married Griffith David of New House Inn and Pyle Shop (our great great grandfather). Daughter Catherine Jones married David Emmanual Marendaz of Ty Draw Farm, Margam, whose first wife had been Catherine Powell, daughter of William Powell of Eglwys Nynydd. Son Thomas Jones married Margaret Howell, daughter of John Howell of Stormy Farm and their daughter Margaret Jones married Rees Powell, our great grandfather. Later generations also intermarried, creating sometimes quite complicated relationships; for example, Margaret Jones and Rees Powell's son Thomas Powell married Elizabeth Lougher Powell, who was his first cousin (daughter of Rees' brother Gwillim Powell and Catherine Llewellyn Morgan) but was also the grandaughter of Robert Lougher Morgan, and the great niece of Margaret Jones, who had by this time married - following the death of Robert's first wife, Anne David, and Margaret's first husband, Anne's brother, Griffith David). I hope you are following this!!
     
    It actually gets even more complicated than this, as the descendants of the Jones, David and Powell families intermarried several times, but I shall spare you further convolutions. Suffice it to say that the Jones Family of Ballas were inextricably linked to the families of our Powell and David ancestors. We may even imagine an audible sigh of relief in 1840 when a new farming family arrived at Candleston, Merthyr Mawr, from the Rhondda, by way of Llandyfodwg - our ancestors Richard and Gwenllian Davies, with their six young sons; new blood in the area with which to intermarry, perhaps. Certainly it was to work that way for Thomas Jones and Margaret Howell, by then at Redhill Farm, Tythegston, whose daughter Catherine Jones married Rees Davies, and for William Powell and Catherine Lewis of Home Farm, Merthyr Mawr, whose daughter Anne Powell married David Davies, and for Lewis Jones and Gwenllian Lewis of Stormy (not yet clear whether this Jones family was connected to their neighbours at Ballas), whose daughter Catherine Jones married Richard Davies. So, by the 1860's our Davies ancestors were already connected by marriage to the Jones and Powell families. But although his brothers chose local girls, our great grandfather Jenkin Davies, married a young lady from Wiltshire who was working as a housemaid in Merthyr Mawr, and he was to soon move away from the area to farm in Berkshire - but that story is covered elsewhere. However, a generation later, his son, William, our grandfather, born in Berkshire, was to return to Pyle to marry a granddaughter of Margaret Jones and Griffith David, so that Jones family attraction was certainly powerful!
     
    The John/Jones Family of Aberavon , Baglan & Michaelston

    Prior to the nineteenth century, most members of this family, including Elizabeth John who married Rees Powell, our 4x great grandfather, in 1757, were known by the family name JOHN, but some were recorded under the family name JONES. The same individual sometimes appeared in some records as JOHN and other records as JONES. Eventually, it seems, the family settled on JONES and from the early nineteenth century onwards, all members of the family were known by the family name JONES. Thanks to research by Allen Blethyn of Aberavon, we know that Elizabeth John had a sister Jennet JOHN, and brothers Thomas JONES, Jehoshaphat JOHN and David JOHN, whose wife Mary JONES was a pioneer amongst the early Calvinistc Methodists of Glamorgan. David and Mary appear to have produced no children, and in their Wills, David and Mary left their estate to their nephews and nieces, and handsome donations to the Duffryn and Carmel Chapels. Those nephews and nieces included not only Rees and Elizabeth Powell's sons, William, Rees and Jehoshaphat, and daughters Mary and Elizabeth, but also Catherine Jones, daughter of Thomas JONES of Baglan Hall, thereby establishing clearly that this Thomas JONES was, indeed, the brother of 'our' Elizabeth JOHN. When Catherine's parents died, she became the proprietor of Baglan Hall and it was through her marriage to Griffith LLEWELLYN in 1794 that the LLEWELLYN Family came to be the proprietors of this estate.
     
    The Jones Families of the Rhondda Fawr

    These are the principle Jones Families for fellow-researchers Robert Wilkins and Jill Muir, whose family trees both connect to ours via the family of Thomas Bevan and Jennet Thomas. One of their daughters, Sarah, married one of our Cwmsaerbren Davies family, William Davies, another daughter, Elizabeth, married Thomas Davies, Jill Muir's great great grandfather, and a third daughter, Margaret, married David Davies, Robert Wilkins' great great grandfather. Elizabeth and Thomas' daughter Friswyth Elizabeth Davies married William Jones and Margaret and David's daughter Elvira Davies married Thomas Jones. William and Thomas Jones appear to be unrelated. William's roots were in the Cil-y-bebyll/Cadoxton area of West Glamorgan; a stone mason, William appears to have arrived in the Rhondda in about 1870, and lodged initially at the Dunraven Arms in Tonypandy. By 1873, he had met Friswyth Davies; the couple married in August 1873 and moved to Trealaw, where they raised a family of five children, the youngest of whom, David, was Jill Muir's grandfather. Thomas' father Evan Jones was not of Glamorgan stock but had arrived in Swansea, where he ran several inns in the 1850's - 1880's, from Pembrokeshire. Thomas, like William, trained as a stone-mason and moved to the Rhondda, where he married Elvira Davies in 1872. They raised a family of ten children in Llwynypia, including Robert's grandmother, Myra Jones.