Elizabeth Evans of the Price’s Arms married Meredith Jones in 1879 and thus linked the public house to the Jones family. However, two years earlier, another of the pub’s children, Daniel Evans (1856-1929) had married into the Morgan Coelbren House family, to Sarah Morgan (1855-1919). They wed, both aged 21, at the Pontardawe Register Office on the 7th July, 1877. Looking at these two marriages, we could now consider it the turn of the Evans family and their establishment to now be at the centre of our Jones and Morgan families. Indeed, as if to confirm this, recorded as witnesses to this wedding were the same Meredith Jones and Elizabeth Evans: not yet married, but clearly in courtship. We don’t know if the wedding breakfast was at the Price’s Arms afterwards. The inter relationships between these families is shown diagrammatically here.
Quite what Sarah’s father - stern Richard Morgan, a Rechabite who had “signed the Pledge” – would have thought of this is unknown. Perhaps he made it a condition of marriage, maybe son-in-law Daniel had looked across the bar and seen too much dissipation of time, money and morals in his parents’ pub: after that marriage, this family was to be known as “Temperance” and their home at the top of Station Road, otherwise known in Coelbren as Bryn Villa, likewise. The marriage of two young people from these apparently contrasting establishments is in fact unsurprising – the buildings stood – and still stand - opposite each other and there wasn’t yet a lot else in the village. Despite the antipathy we might assume exist between pub and chapel folk, we could, nonetheless, consider that some kind of pragmatic symbiosis existed between these differing but conceptually rather similar expressions of community spirit. People would have to needed to rub along. Let us also remember that Richard Morgan was a tradesman – and no doubt picked up a lot of tailoring business – directly or not – from the pub. Indeed, he charged Daniel Evans’ brother William £3/11 for a suit in April 1876.
Sarah Evans worked for many years as caretaker to the new primary school at Coelbren and Davies (1994) refers.
Below: extract from Richard Morgan’s account book (held in family)
The Rechabites were a Friendly Society, originally established in England in 1835, who promoted total abstinence from alcohol. Friendly Societies were the pre-cursors to modern insurance companies and the welfare state. Usually linked to shared work, social, political or religious affiliations, they provided a common financial (and often social) purpose for their members. One of the most important benefits to contributing members was the financial support provided to families in times of sickness or death.
Richard Morgan performed various official and unofficial administrative services for villagers, crucially those requiring some literacy in Welsh and English.
