When he was only six months old his father and two of his elder brothers were drowned when the water burst in the old Argoed Colliery in March, 1837, and thenceforward he had but a mother, and elder sister, and a brother some few years his senior to depend upon, and we have heard him speak repeatedly of the hardships which the family bore in the winter of 1846-7, just before the repeal of the Corn Laws, when only 31bs of flour could be had for a shilling, and everything else was dear in proportion.

To the end of his days, he was grateful to a family in Maesydre, because one of its members had presented his mother with a bag of potatoes, at the potato harvest that year. He had suffered much in his younger days, perhaps not so much from want of food as from the fear of want; and the family had always to exercise the strictest economy, so as, to keep the wolf from the door.