If there is such a thing as a “standard biography” of a 19th century Latter-day Saint convert from Europe, the biography of Shadrach Jones might be its model.

Born in 1832 in Beconshire, South Wales, Shadrach knew a life of labor from a very young age. While his father worked in the coal mines, Shadrach became a mason, learning to fit and mortar rocks into walls that would stand for generations. He and his brother John were converted to the gospel as teenagers, and were baptized in 1849.

Shadrach’s father, David, had already planned to take his family to America, and had gone ahead to work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania to earn money for their passage. Family lore says that they received a letter from him saying that he had nearly enough saved to bring his family to him – but then the letters stopped. It was only after several years of mystery that family learned, upon visiting their father’s last known residence, that he had been killed in a mining accident, and no one had sent word back to Wales.

Shadrach married Mary Williams in 1853. I suspect Mary was already a Latter-day Saint by then but cannot confirm her baptismal date by her record at Family Search – she was certainly a member during her lifetime (she and Shadrach were sealed in 1865), but someone performed a proxy baptism in 1976, and that unnecessary ordinance has overridden the original date of her baptism in the electronic records. (Why does Family Search do that??)

Shadrach’s biography tracks the supposedly standard Mormon biography in that he and Mary began making plans to emigrate to “Zion.” His brother John and John’s wife Mary sailed from Liverpool in 1854, and Shadrach and his own Mary sales in 1856. Both couples likely stayed in or around St. Louis as they worked to finance their continued journey; both were able to cross the Plains in 1859, although with different companies. Still later, their mother and another brother made the same passage.

Shadrach and Mary settled in Willard, Utah – like so many other European converts, they chose to live among their fellow countrymen, and Willard was the center of Welch life in Utah. Shadrach continued his work as a mason; rock buildings and rock walls were not at all an uncommon feature in and around Willard. One of Shadrach’s helpers for a season – a teenager who carried rocks and mortar up ladders to supply Shadrach with material as he built those stone walls was Evan Stephens, another convert from Wales, who, before many years passed, would become leader of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

If there is one point where Shadrach’s biography does not parallel that of most converts of the generation, it is that he and Mary did not have children of their own. They opened their home to children who needed help, though, and the names of some of the children whom they cared for are preserved in the biography written by a descendant.

And then, in 18813, Shadrach was called on a mission to his native country – and he went, just as so many other converts of his generation did. He was healthy when he left home, although he suffered seasickness during the passage to Utah. He was assigned to the Welsh Conference, of course.

“After his arrival in his field of labor,” reported the Millennial Star in July of 1883, he

displayed considerable energy in seeking to spread a knowledge of the gospel. He took cold, however, through sleeping in a damp bed, was affected with a very bad cough and soreness of the lungs, and after lingering about three weeks, during which time everything was done to relieve him that kindness could suggest, he finally succumbed to death. He did not feel as if he was going to die until near the last, and made no complaints; indeed, we did not learn of his illness until a week before his death. …

His last charge to Elder [John?] Jenkins, who waited upon him, was that no sectarian should be allowed to speak at his funeral. President [John Henry] Smith, on learning of his death, proceeded to Swnasea and made arrangem4ents of rhis burial, which took place at Forest Fach, about three miles from Swansea, on the 27th [June 1883] The funeral service was held in the Baptist chapel and remarks were made by Presidents J.H. Smith and David Lewis. There were also five other Elders present.

One of those five elders was Thomas Powell, of Cedar City, who recorded details of the funeral and burial in the diary he kept in the Welsh language.

At home in Willard, Mary Jones was not left, as her mother-in-law had been, to wonder what had become of her husband when his letters failed to arrive. Among the other notices which reached her was this letter from Shadrach’s fellow missionary, Samuel McKay:

In the Star of July 2nd there appears the death notice of Brother Shadrach Jones, one of the Elders that left Salt Lake City on the 10th of April last, which took me by surprise not knowing of his being sick until the notice of his death appeared in the Star.

When we left Salt Lake City on the10th of April, I knew very few of the brethren, never having seen Brother Jones to my knowledge, he was a stranger to me. But when we left Ogden he came into the same seat. We got to know each other, he became very much attached to me and I thought a good deal of him. On the second day out he said to me, “Brother McKay, I expect to be sick on the sea and I want you to take care of me.” I told him I would do the best I could for him. He, Brother John Cartwright, of the 8thWard Salt Lake City, and myself were in the same room in the ship. He was very sick all the time on the sea, and we did everything that we could for him that would help him.

He would tell us of his labors on the Temple as well as other works that he had done for the work of God, and in speaking of his mission to Great Britain he was proud to have the honor of being called to go to his native country to preach the Gospel and in talking of leaving his home he said his wife was very fearful that he would take sick and die, and I am very sorry her fears have been realized, and I assure you it made me very sorrowful when I read of his death, for he was a good man, as he expressed himself his heart was in the work of God. But the Lord has seen fit to take him to himself into another sphere, where he can work for the interest of the kingdom of God and do as much or more good than he could here. I hope the Lord will bless his wife and family and comfort them in their bereavement.

The location of Shadrach’s grave was not exactly a mystery in Utah. It must have been visited by missionaries from time to time, because the note that his stone was still standing in the cemetery at Forest Fach appears in Utah accounts from time to time. But the location – even the existence – of Shadrach’s grave was lost to the memory of Saints in Wales.

In 1959, even before he had joined the Church, a Swansea man named Haydn Morgan borrowed a copy of Richard L. Evans’ One Hundred Years of British Mormonism, and discovered that a Mormon missionary had died in Swansea in 1883. This local tie to 19th century Mormon history remained with him as he joined the Church, became president of the Swansea Branch, and eventually a counselor in the Merthyr Tydfil Wales Stake. His interest in Welsh Mormon history expanded when, in 1980, Haydn received a copy of a journal written by Thomas Powell – that missionary from Cedar City who had attended the funeral and burial of Shadrach Jones a hundred years earlier.

Thomas wrote of having received a message that Shadrach was ill, and hurrying to Swansea, but discovering that Shadrach had already died. He wrote that he had collected the missionary’s belongings, but that Shadrach’s landlady had refused to surrender any of the money he had left there. He also told of attending the funeral in the local Baptist chapel.

Haydn Morgan’s interest in Shadrach Jones stirred yet again, and he began to investigate. The “Forest Fach” of the missionary records must be “Fforestfach” – “little forest” – in Swansea. The Baptist chapel of 1883 must have been the Calfaria Chapel … which was less than a quarter mile from the LDS meetinghouse that Haydn had helped to build when he was Swansea branch president.

There weren’t many burial records for Calfaria, but Shadrach’s burial was among the few recorded. Shadrach must have been buried in their churchyard.

“Like so many graveyards in Wales, this one was very overgrown; covered by what is known locally as Russian Rhubarb – a most prolific cane-type vegetation that grows to over 8 feet and is very difficult to penetrate,” said Haydn Morgan in 1982. “The Young Adults of the Swansea Ward undertook the task of hacking through the jungle, and after much effort, uncovered the gravestone of Shadrach Jones. The stone is in remarkably good condition.”

The stone’s inscription:

In Memory
of
Elder S[h]adrach Jones
Missionary from Willard
City, Utah, U.S.A. Died
at Fforestfach June 24th 1883

Beautiful in good work, he died at his post.

If there is anything I fervently wish could become a part of the “standard Mormon biography,” it is that anywhere in the world where there has been a Mormon presence, the local Saints could learn about and cherish the memory of those Saints who lived or worked in their neighborhoods in earlier times. That is at least the footnote to Shadrach Jones’s biography.

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