Mary Jones and her Bible

Mary [ Jacob ] Jones ( born December 16, 1784 † December 29, 1864 ) was a Welsh girl, who has helped the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society. She walked barefoot 40 km far to buy a Welsh Bible, after she had saved six years thereafter.

Your trip

Mary Jones was born into a poor family; she was the daughter of a wool weaver and lived at the foot of Cader Idris, in the village of Llanfihangel -y- pennant in Merioneth (now part of Gwynedd ), near Dolgellau. Her parents were devout Methodists, and she even known at the age of eight years to the Christian faith. After she had learned to read, they wanted to have their own Bible. The most obvious way to buy one that was in the city Bala - 40 kilometers away, but even there a Bible was not always available, then Welsh Bibles were very scarce. After Mary Jones had saved for six years, she made herself one morning in 1800 on the way to Bala. She walked barefoot to save their shoes. In Bala she turned to the Rev. Thomas Charles. According to one version of the story told her Mr. Charles, that all Bibles are sold or reserved. Mary was so distraught that Charles gave her a Bible that he had already promised to someone else. According to another version, she had two days to wait for a delivery arrived Bibles so that they for themselves and two others could get for family members a Bible. This story is Charles 've been so impressed that he requested the Council Religious Tract Society, to form a company to supply Wales with Bibles.

Mary later married a weaver from Bryn- crug named Thomas Lewis and died 82 years old. Your Bible is issued in the archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the library of the University of Cambridge. It is an edition of the Welsh Bible published in 1799, were printed from the 10,000 copies in Oxford.

Mary Jones wrote (in English) on the last page: " Mary Jones was born on December 16, 1784 I bought this book when I was in my sixteenth year. . I am the daughter of James Jones and his wife Mary Jones. The Lord be merciful to me. Amen. Mary Jones "

The very touching story is told as a founding tradition of the British and Foreign Bible Society worldwide. The first Bible society in the world was, however, founded almost one hundred years earlier in Halle ( Saale).

• Christianity in Wales
• Briton
• Welshman
• Born in 1784
• Died in 1864
• Woman