The lives and times of Montgomeryshire's first missionaries

As the empire expanded across the seas from the 1600s the British sought to establish colonies.

Missionaries had been among the first to set sail for the new world.

John Davies was the first Welsh missionary to set foot on Tahiti.

Tahiti. Picture: Wiki Commons

He was born in Llanfihangel in 1772, a few years before the American War of Independence, the first challenge to British colonialism, though with the British expanding its colonies in the Pacific.

Despite a poor upbringing John became a teacher in Llanrhaeadr and Llanwyddelan before becoming a missionary, arriving in Tahiti on July 10, 1801 having departed Britain 17 months earlier.

There he encountered inter tribal warfare and was forced to hide on a nearby island in 1808 where he remained for an entire year and did not return to Tahiti until 1811.

He would go on to learn the native language and printed a Tahitian-English dictionary.

John was blind for the last 10 years of his life though continued to correspond in Welsh in letters to friends in Pontrobert with his step daughter copying his Welsh written sentences on slate by hand to paper.

John never left Tahiti and died in 1855, aged 84.

Another early Montgomeryshire missionary was Jacob Davies who was born in Newtown in 1810 and became a Baptist minister before embarking on a new life as a missionary with his new wife Eliza in 1844.

Jacob and his wife spent five years in Ceylon, learning the native language and becoming an expert in local customs, only to die after a short illness in 1849, aged 33.

Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. Picture: Wiki Commons.

Meanwhile Thomas Jones had his heart set on a life in India despite being told he was not healthy enough to travel.

Thomas had not taken no for an answer and the Llangynyw born former wheelwright and miller would not be denied.

Thomas was born on January 24, 1810 and began preaching when he was 25 while offering himself to the London Missionary Society in 1837.

However Thomas failed a medical and was offered South Africa instead to which the Montgomeryshire man refused.

Three years later Thomas passed a medical in Glasgow and was ordained before sailing to Calcutta in 1841.

Calcutta. Picture: Wiki Commons.

He learned the Khasi tongue, and the first man to reduce it to writing.

His wife died in 1845, and he married again without the approval of the Missions Society while he had not enjoyed the company of other missionaries who had since joined him.

He died in 1849 aged 39 and was buried in Calcutta.

Our final missionary featured is David Jehu.

He had been born at Meifod’s Kings Head public house in 1812 and by the time he was a teenager he had been an active preacher, going on to be educated at the Wesleyan Theological Institution in London.

In 1839 he had been entrusted to work as a missionary and a new life in Sierra Leone but had died within six months of his arrival in Africa, dying of a fever after a long struggle on July 1, 1840.

Sierra Leone. Picture: Wiki Commons.