Thomas Jones

Thomas Jones (17 July 1819 – 24 June 1882) was a Welsh Independent minister, known as "the Welsh Poet-Preacher". As a popular preacher he has been compared with William Williams of Wern (1781–1840). His reputation was made, however, by his sermons in English at Bedford Chapel in north London, in a less popular style.

Life Born at Rhayader, Radnorshire, on 17 July 1819, he was son of John Jones (died 1829), a commercial traveller. After attending the village school, he was apprenticed about 1831 to a flannel manufacturer named Winstone at Llanwrtyd; in 1837 he obtained work at Brynmawr, first as a collier and then as a check weigher; and in 1839 moved to Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. He began preaching among the Calvinistic Methodists, but in 1841 joined the Independents. He returned to Swansea, and resumed the pulpit at Walter's Road in 1881, filling it till his death on 24 June 1882.