The Pioneer of Music in Aberdare

A painting of Dafydd John: a head-and-shoulders portrait of a man, probably mid-30s, facing forwards, with a beard and hair to his ears, wearing a dark coat, light-coloured shirt and a bow tie. A modern painting of Dafydd John, based on a daguerreotype ca 1860.

Victorian Aberdare was considered a centre of Welsh culture, and music in particular. It was the home town of Griffith Rhys Jones (Caradog), leader of the Côr Mawr, and hosted the first National Eisteddfod in 1861. So for Dafydd John to be described as “the pioneer of music in Aberdare” by several local newspapers in his obituary[1] is high praise indeed. Dafydd – my 3rd great grandfather – was known originally to me by his English name of David John, which appears on the census and all of his official records, but it seems that in public life he was almost exclusively known by his Welsh name, and so that is the name I will use for him throughout this article.

Dafydd John’s musical career began in the 1840s, not in Aberdare but in Merthyr Tydfil, where he was a member of the Zoar Chapel. With up to nine hundred members at its peak, Zoar was one of the largest and most influential nonconformist churches in South Wales, and had a fine musical leader in its precentor, Rosser Beynon. An iron miner by trade, Beynon also taught music both in church and privately, and in 1845 published a new collection of hymns in the Welsh language under the title Telyn Seion (“The Harp of Zion”). Beynon’s students were involved in the distribution of the hymn books, and in 1849 this brought Dafydd John to the Ebenezer Chapel in Trecynon, Aberdare[2] .

The minister of Ebenezer at that time was Rev W Edwards, who evidently saw much potential in Dafydd John as a musician, and invited him to become the chapel’s choir conductor. He gladly accepted, and moved to Aberdare that same year, initially taking on responsibility for the choir, and soon after became the sole director of music at Ebenezer[3] .

Reformation of the Choir

Dafydd soon set to work reforming and modernizing the small choir. The first change he implemented was in the assignment of parts to the various voices: SATB singing was already established by then, but with an unusual approach of the tenors singing the melody and the sopranos singing the tenor part, perhaps based on the theological idea that the leaders, and thus the melody singers, should be male. But Dafydd was successful in arguing that the music should be sung as the composer intended, and within a short time the soprano and tenor parts were assigned to the correct voices. This was not without controversy – indeed, the older members were very angry about this change to their traditions, and much hard work was needed to finally reach an agreement.

A further dispute was related to the choir’s first concert, at Christmas of the same year. The young people proposed to hold a “chapel tea” in the afternoon before the concert – a communal tea party in which the visitors would pay a donation to the chapel’s funds. Once again the older members were opposed to this, and argued that the Chapel would likely go into debt through it. But the minister, Rev Edwards, was on the side of the young people and the event went ahead, making a total profit of over twenty pounds – about £2500 in today’s money.

Dafydd John the Eisteddfodwr

In 1851 the chapel organised its first Eisteddfod – on a small scale at first, but following its success, a much grander one followed the next year. Dafydd John’s choir were awarded the first prize, and many more victories followed, including one particularly memorable moment in 1862 when the choir competed in three separate pieces at the same Eisteddfod, and won all three. However, this eventually came to an end, when “an alleged gross act of injustice on the part of an Eisteddfod adjudicator so disgusted [Dafydd John] that he never afterwards competed at an Eisteddfod”[4] .

The “gross act of injustice” was, quite simply, when the Ebenezer choir failed to win a prize, for the first time in their fifteen years of existence. They were beaten at the 1864 Eisteddfod at Siloa, Aberdare, by the choir from the Bethania chapel. Both Dafydd and his choir believed that they had been unfairly misjudged and disgraced, and never competed again.

Dafydd, along with several members of his choir and his family, also participated in Caradog’s Côr Mawr. The “big choir” was an entirely appropriate name, as it consisted of some 460 voices from all over South Wales. The choir participated in a national competition at London’s Crystal Palace in 1872 and 1873, both times winning the first prize. The giant cup, more than one metre in height, is on display at the St Fagan’s Museum in Cardiff.

Dafydd was also a great supporter of music in other chapels throughout the Valleys, and on numerous occasions hiked with his choir over the mountains to a chapel in the next valley to perform a concert, returning the same way through the night.

Honours from Ebenezer Chapel

On more than one occasion, Dafydd was formally honoured by the Ebenezer congregation for his efforts. In 1860, he was presented with a good sum of money and a harmonium, believed to be the first ever in the Cynon valley. In 1875, he received a further testimonial, along with a piano for his home, for his “wholesome influence and his unwavering energy in the sanctuary and for music in general”[5] .

By trade Dafydd John was a shoemaker, and by all accounts a very fine one. It is said that after he moved to Aberdare, many of his Merthyr customers would make the journey to see him whenever they needed new shoes. As early as 1851 he was able to employ two assistants, and by 1871 business was thriving to the extent that he had three men working for him. But even with such success, relatively few details of his professional career were ever recorded – his musical life was always considered much more important to anyone who wrote on the subject of Dafydd John.

One of Dafydd John’s last public acts was to formally open a library at the Ebenezer Chapel in November 1893. Dafydd had dreamed of a library for many years, but it was the work of William Thomas, his successor as choirmaster, that eventually allowed the project to come to fruition.[6] He lived just long enough to see his vision become reality, and passed away on 5th January 1894 at the age of 71.[7]

Dafydd John was buried at Aberdare Cemetery. A huge number of mourners attended the funeral, which was conducted not only by Rev J Grawys Jones, pastor of Ebenezer, but also more than half a dozen other clergymen from various chapels in the district. Naturally the choir was in full force under its new director, singing a dozen hymns and anthems throughout the service and procession.[8]

In the months after Dafydd’s death, a competition was held to compose a Memorial Anthem to him. Words were written by the Chapel, and 23 entries of a musical setting were received. The winner was Mr W T Rees (Alaw Ddu) of Llanelli, who was awarded the prize of £2, and the anthem was published and first performed at Ebenezer Chapel.[9] I would very much like to find a copy of this anthem, assuming it survives somewhere – but I haven’t had any luck as of yet and would welcome any ideas or suggestions of where to look!

His Family

Dafydd John was survived by his second wife, Sarah (his first wife Mary having died in childbirth shortly after moving to Aberdare) and by four grown children: Tom, John William, Mary and Margaret. All four were highly successful school teachers; Tom in particular rose to become President of the National Union of Teachers in 1905, alongside being the editor of the Glamorgan Free Press and later the first editor of the Rhondda Leader.

Finding Dafydd’s parents proved to be a much trickier task, however. Coming from a nonconformist family, he wasn’t baptised in the Established Church, and so we have to rely on secondary sources to find out about his birthplace and parents. One journal article from after his death notes that “there was a dispute about the place of his birth, until we found the safest authority, in the evidence of one of the children, that he was born in Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire. When a young man his parents moved to Merthyr”.[10]

Any good genealogist will immediately raise a red flag at the idea of what his children thought being “the safest authority” – and with good reason, for on every census record he states that his place of birth was Merthyr Tydfil. And yet almost every article written about him says that he was born in Cilgerran – with the exception of an obituary from Y Tyst, which notes that he was born in Merthyr and that his parents, William and Margaret John, were both natives of Cilgerran but married after coming to Merthyr.[11]

Fortunately, pre-1837 marriages of nonconformists are much easier to track down than baptisms, due to the requirement that all marriages had to be solemnized in the Established Church, with the only exceptions being for Jews and Quakers. It seems therefore that his parents were William John and Margaret Evans, married 18 April 1820 at St Tydfil’s in Merthyr.[12]

Dafydd’s siblings included William, Ann and Margaret, and while his obituaries suggest the names of other siblings and brothers-in-law, I haven’t been able to find out anything much further about them. As I haven’t been able to find Dafydd on the 1841 Census, it seems likely that he was living in the part of Merthyr Tydfil for which the census records are missing, and it seems plausible to imagine that his parents were also living in that same area – and so it seems like this brick wall will stand for a long time yet!

I have a research note on the Cousins of Margaret John, who I have been able to identify but not to connect to the family. The common ancestors must be either Dafydd’s parents or his wife’s Sarah’s parents.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Evans, secretary of Ebenezer Chapel, Aberdare, for his help and for providing access to documents from the Chapel’s archives, and Heather Eason for her help in translating the many newspaper and journal articles from Welsh.

A version of this article appeared in the issue 145 (March 2022) of the Journal of the Glamorgan Family History Society.

References

The full text of most of the above sources, with translations where appropriate, can be found on the page for Dafydd John in my Public Research Database.

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