Ernest Harold Jones was born at Barnsley in Yorkshire, England on March 7, 1877 of Welsh parentage. He obtained his matriculation at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in 1895 and assisted in teaching writing and lettering in the School of Design. He was a prominent Egyptologist and assisted in excavations in the country. Ernest was the illustrator for the season of 1903-1904 on his first assignment with John Garstang in Egypt.
He lived in the house on Lamas St. near the English Baptist Church where the blue plaque is located.
David Charles was born at Llanfihangel Abercywyn, near St Clears in Carmarthenshire, the younger brother of the Methodist leader Thomas Charles "of Bala".
He was apprenticed to a flax-dresser and rope-maker at Carmarthen before spending three years in Bristol, then finally married and settled down at Carmarthen. Long connected with the Calvinistic Methodists, he began to preach at the age of forty-six and was one of the first lay-preachers ordained ministers in South Wales in 1811.[2]
He helped to establish the "Home Mission", but was forced to retire in 1828 after suffering a stroke. He died on 2 September 1834, and was buried in Llangunnor.[2]
His best-known hymns include "O fryniau Caersalem ceir gweled" ("From the hills of Jerusalem are seen").
George Eyre Evans (1857-1939) was a Unitarian minister and antiquarian [1]. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, the academy kept by Gwilym Thomas (Gwilym Marles) at Landysul and, also, at Liverpool University. For some years he was minister of the Church of the Saviour at Whitchurch, Salop, and later devoted many years of his life without pay to the service of the Unitarian chapel at Aberystwyth. But he was, above all, a historian and an antiquary. For eighteen years he was employed to do research for the Royal Commision on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire and for thirty years he was secretary of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society. His publications include a long list of books and articles and it is claimed that his best and most important contributions was to local history. In 1919 he was elected a member of the Court of Governors of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and two years later on to the Council of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and in 1924 on to the Council of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. His services to the town and county of Carmarthen were recognised in 1937 (two years before his death) when he was received as a Freeman of the Ancient Borough of Carmarthen.
Sir Richard Steele, (born 1672, Dublin, Ire.—died Sept. 1, 1729, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire, Wales), English essayist, dramatist, journalist, and politician, best known as principal author (with Joseph Addison) of the periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator.
Steele’s father, an ailing and somewhat ineffectual attorney, died when the son was about five, and the boy was taken under the protection of his uncle Henry Gascoigne, confidential secretary to the Duke of Ormonde, to whose bounty, as Steele later wrote, he owed “a liberal education.” He was sent to study in England at Charterhouse in 1684 and to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1689. At Charterhouse he met Joseph Addison, and thus began one of the most famous and fruitful of all literary friendships, which lasted until disagreements (mainly political) brought about a cooling and a final estrangement shortly before Addison’s death in 1719. Steele moved to Merton College in 1691 but, caught up with the excitement of King William’s campaigns against the French, left in 1692 without taking a degree to join the army. He was commissioned in 1697 and promoted to captain in 1699, but, lacking the money and connections necessary for substantial advancement, he left the army in 1705.
Meanwhile, he had embarked on a second career, as a writer. Perhaps partly because he gravely wounded a fellow officer in a duel in 1700 (an incident that inspired a lifelong detestation of dueling), partly because of sincere feelings of disgust at the “irregularity” of army life and his own dissipated existence, he published in 1701 amoralistic tract, “The Christian Hero,” of which 10 editions were sold in his lifetime. This tract led to Steele’s being accused of hypocrisy and mocked for the contrast between his austere precepts and his genially convivial practice. For many of his contemporaries, however, its polite tone served as evidence of a significant cultural change from the Restoration (most notably, it advocated respectful behaviour toward women). The tract’s moralistic tenor would be echoed in Steele’s plays. In the same year (1701) Steele wrote his first comedy, The Funeral. Performed at Drury Lane “with more than expected success,” this play made his reputation and helped to bring him to the notice of King William and the Whig leaders. Late in 1703 he followed this with his only stage failure, The Lying Lover, which ran for only six nights, being, as Steele said, “damned for its piety.” Sententious and ill-constructed, with much moralizing, it is nevertheless of some historical importance as one of the first sentimental comedies.
A third play, The Tender Husband, with which Addison helped him (1705), had some success, but Steele continued to search for advancement and for money. In the next few years he secured various minor appointments, and in 1705, apparently actuated by mercenary motives, he married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who owned considerable property in Barbados. Almost immediately the estate was entangled in his debts (he lost two actions for debt, with damages, in 1706), but, when, late in 1706, Margaret conveniently died, she left her husband with a substantial income. Steele’s second marriage, contracted within a year of Margaret’s death, was to Mary Scurlock, who was completely adored by Steele, however much he might at times neglect her. His hundreds of letters and notes to her (she is often addressed as “Dear Prue”) provide a vivid revelation of his personality during the 11 years of their marriage. Having borne him four children (of whom only the eldest, Elizabeth, long survived Richard), she died, during pregnancy, in 1718.
The Lammas Street English Baptist was built for English speaking workers who had come to Carmarthen
with the development of the railway and commerce. The church was opened on
21 June 1870. It was designed in a Greek classical style by Carmarthen architect
George Morgan of 24, King Street.The building features an attractive
portico supported on four Corinthian columns and is noted as being of
special architectural interest.
Gwilym Davies CBE (24 March 1879 – 26 January 1955) was a Welsh Baptist minister, who spent much of his life attempting to enhance international relations through supporting the work of the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations.
He began preaching as early as 1895 , and trained for the ministry at the Midland Baptist College , Nottingham , and at Rawdon College .He was minister at the Lamas St Baptist Church between 1908-15 and also in Llandrindod Wells and Abergavenny.
In 1922 he retired from the ministry to devote himself to the cause of international peace . He joined with ( Lord ) David Davies in creating the Welsh Council of the League of Nations Union with its headquarters at Aberystwyth ; he was its director between 1922-45.
He also established the Annual World Wireless Message to Children in 1922, and was the first person to broadcast in Welsh, on St David's Day 1923.
During World War II the Welsh Education Committee under his direction was asked to draft a model constitution for an international education organisation. The draft submitted by Gwilym Davies greatly influenced the creation of UNESCO.
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