From Rural Denbighshire to Wrexham
Francis Owens was born on 30 August 1873 at Tyn y Ffrith, Llansannan, Denbighshire, the illegitimate son of Anne Owens. He grew up in rural north Wales, in an agricultural landscape of farms, scattered cottages and small villages beneath the Denbighshire hills.
By 1881 he was living in Bodfari with his mother and her husband Thomas Hughes. The census recorded him as "Francis O Hughes, son", although he was in fact Thomas's step-son. Later records show that Francis adopted the Hughes surname himself, marrying in 1901 as Francis Owens Hughes and naming Thomas Hughes as his father.
Mary Elizabeth Roberts was born on 23 February 1878 at Wenallt Cottage, Mynydd Llech, Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch, the illegitimate daughter of Sarah Roberts. She was baptised on 25 March 1878, recorded as the daughter of Sarah Roberts of Wenallt, Mynydd Llech.
By 1891, aged seventeen, Francis was working as a farm servant at Glan Clwyd Farm, Waen, Bodfari. Agricultural work shaped much of rural Denbighshire life, but Wales was changing. Growing towns offered wider job opportunities than rural areas, while industry, trade and expanding businesses created busier lives and different prospects. In places such as Wrexham, large houses were being built for factory owners, managers and prosperous businessmen, alongside the terraces of working families.
In 1891, thirteen-year-old Mary was living in the area known as Y Big, Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch, with her mother Sarah and stepfather David Roberts.
At some point during the following decade, both Francis and Mary left rural Denbighshire and moved to Wrexham as young single adults.
In March 1901, twenty-five-year-old Francis was boarding at 12 Nelson Street, Wrexham, working as a general carter. Mary, aged twenty-three, was living at 5 Belmont Road, Wrexham, employed as a domestic servant.
Both now described themselves as speaking Welsh and English.
There is a small family coincidence here that I particularly like. Francis's eldest daughter, my Nain, would spend her later years living in the same street as her father had done in 1901, beginning his working life in Wrexham.
On 21 December 1901, Francis and Mary married at Wrexham Registry Office.
After their marriage, they made their home in Wrexham, where they would spend the rest of their lives.
By 1911, they were living at 7 Acton Terrace, Rhosnessney, Wrexham. Francis, aged thirty-seven, was working as a farm labourer, while Mary was caring for their growing family.
Rhosnessney, now more commonly written Rhosnesni, was then a small hamlet on the edge of Wrexham rather than the joined-up suburb it has since become.
The couple would have eight children: Francis Owen, Elizabeth Jane, David Thomas “Tom”, Hugh, Sarah Ann “Annie”, Glyn, Mary and Emlyn.
During these years, the world around them was changing rapidly. Francis and Mary had both been born into rural, largely Welsh-speaking communities where horses still dominated transport and farming shaped everyday life. By the early twentieth century, Wrexham was an expanding industrial town of collieries, railways, breweries, shops and growing suburbs.
The First World War years fell during the middle of their married life. Francis was forty-one when war broke out in 1914 and continued in civilian work during this period.
Like many families, they experienced loss as well as happier times. Their son Glyn died in 1919 aged just three years, his death recorded as whooping cough and bronchopneumonia.
By 1921, the family were still living at 7 Acton Terrace. Francis's working life had changed direction again, and he was now employed as a colliery byeman at the Wrexham and Acton Colliery, Rhosddu. Mary was recorded as engaged in household duties.
Coal mining shaped the lives of more than one generation of the family.
By 1921, Francis and Mary's eldest son, Frank, was working at Gresford Colliery. Then in 1923, he travelled to Canada, where he worked in the logging camps. His brother Tom joined him in March 1929, at Ridge View, Nipawin, Saskatchewan.
Nipawin was still a relatively new settlement at the time. The first permanent settlement of Nipawin occurred in 1910 with the establishment of a trading post. In 1924 a branch-line of the Canadian Pacific Railway passed nearby, crossing the North Saskatchewan River over the Crooked Bridge, and the settlement was moved, building by building, to its current location alongside the railway line.
At some point after 1921, Francis himself also went to work at Gresford Colliery.
On the morning of 22 September 1934, disaster struck. At 2:08 a.m. an explosion tore through the Dennis section of the pit. 266 men and boys died in what became one of Britain's worst mining disasters.
Francis was among them.
Like so many of the victims, his body was never recovered.
The disaster devastated families across North Wales. For Mary, it meant the loss of her husband of almost thirty-three years and for the children, the loss of their father.
Frank and Tom were still in Canada at the time of the disaster. During a visit to town for supplies, they learned of the recent Gresford Pit Disaster. They then travelled on to find passage home to support their mother and family. The long journey took many weeks. Neither returned to Canada. According to family recollection, Tom did not have his passport with him when the news reached them. The distance back to retrieve it was too great, and another passport had to be arranged.
Francis was known to take his pocket watch down the pit with him. Yet on the night of the disaster, he was not originally meant to be working, and for reasons now unknown, he did not take the watch with him.
Why he left it behind we will never know. Perhaps, after what should have been his last shift before a day off, he had taken his weekly bath to wash away the coal dust, only to be unexpectedly called back to work and leave without it.
Whatever the reason, the watch survived.
I have it here today, sitting on my desk in front of me.
Mary survived Francis by more than twenty years. In later life she lived at 15 Yale Grove, and she died on 22 February 1956 at 128 Cefn Road, the home of her daughter Elizabeth. She was buried in Wrexham Cemetery.
Most of their children lived long lives. Glyn died tragically young aged three, Tom died aged fifty-four and Hugh at fifty-eight, but the remaining siblings lived into their sixties, seventies and eighties. They also remained close. I knew most of them well as a child.
The lives of Francis and Mary contain striking parallels. Both were born illegitimate in rural Denbighshire, only around 12 miles apart. Both grew up in stepfamilies, both adopted their stepfathers’ surnames on their marriage records, both were Welsh-speaking in childhood, and both moved independently to Wrexham as young adults.
Whether they first met in the Bodfari / Llanrhaeadr area, or later in Wrexham, may never be known.
There may yet be more to uncover about both sides of this story. Through DNA research, I am close to identifying Mary Elizabeth Roberts’s biological father, a story for another day. Perhaps, in time, the same methods may help me reveal the identity of Francis's own father too.
Francis Owens and Mary Elizabeth Roberts were my Hen Daid a Hen Nain, on my Dad's side of the family.
Linda
