Author: Jones, John
Biography:
JONES, John (1788-1858: ODNB)
Born in Llanasa, Flintshire, Wales, on 14 Feb. 1788, he was baptized there on 7 Dec. 1788, one of several children of farmer Edward Jones and his wife, Jane. He appears to have been largely self-educated. Commencing in 1796, he entered a seven-year apprenticeship with a cotton spinner at nearby Holywell. After he gained his freedom, in 1803, he was a merchant seaman for two years. He then enlisted or was drafted as a sailor, successively, aboard the frigate Barbadoes, the 74-gun Saturn, and the 110-gun Royal George. Along with thousands of other supernumerary men in the armed forces, following Waterloo he was discharged from service, in 1816. For four years he worked in a cotton mill in Holywell. From 1820 to the end of his life, he was an “operative spinner” at Stalybridge, Cheshire. In summer 1821, he composed a poem, published as The Cotton Mill, in which he described the British cotton industry. He dedicated his second publication, The Sovereign (1827), to Archibald Buchanan, of Catrine, Ayrshire. In 1848, he published The Welsh Cottage and other Poems (1848), dedicated to Viscount and Viscountess Fielding. In 1856, Manchester engineer and shipbuilder William Fairbairn, FRS, arranged the publication of a collected edition of Jones’s poetry. He died at his Stalybridge residence in Oxford Street on 19 June 1858 “having just completed his 71st year.” On 24 June he was buried in the grounds of the Wesleyan Chapel, Grosvenor Square, Stalybridge. His funeral was attended by thousands. A monument to his memory, paid for by subscription, was installed later that year in the Wesleyan churchyard. He is likely the John Jones of 70 Demesne Street, Stalybridge, a “labourer in [a] cotton mill,” who in 1851 was age 63. If so, his wife was Catherine (b 1790/1) and he had at least six children. It appears that they married in about 1817. (ODNB 9 Dec. 2023; ancestry.com 12 Dec. 2023; DWB 12 Dec. 2023; GM 3d ser. 5 [Aug. 1858], 202; Bury Times, 26 June 1858; Ashton Reporter, 18 Dec. 1858; C. W. Sutton, A List of Lancashire Authors [1876], 65; T. Middleton, Poets, Poems, and Rhymes of East Cheshire [1908], 45-46) JC