What is known about John Griffiths is that he was a tailor, who lived in Yorke Street, and that he married Jessie Clark in All Saints Church, Runcorn, on 17 September 1867.
John was born c. 1842 near Mold, and his father Richard was a gardener.
In 1871, records show that John and Jessie had a daughter called Jessie after her mother. This was not their first daughter – records indicate that a girl, Mabel Edith, had been born in 1869 but died aged five weeks old. Mabel Edith was buried in the Rhosddu Dissenters Burial Ground. Tragedy struck this family again, because the daughter Jessie also died. She was buried with her older sister.
In 1871, John was a tailor, living in 24 Yorke Street. In 1881, records indicate that an unknown relative, a widow named Sarah Griffiths, aged 70, also lived there.
Not much else is known about John’s first wife, Jessie. She was born in Scotland, and her father was Alexander Clark, a saw miller and joiner. Jessie Griffiths did not survive very long after her daughters’ deaths. She died on 8 June 1882, after a long illness, her headstone in Wrexham Cemetery bearing the inscription
Afflictions sore long time she bore
Physicians were in vain
Till God did please to give her ease
And free her from her pain
John remarried in 1883, to a woman called Isabella McTavish, who was born in Dundee, Fife. They married in Westminster, and moved back to Wrexham.
John retired to Talbot Road, Wrexham in 1901, where he died on 20 February 1905. He was buried in Wrexham Cemetery.
Credit for original material from which this article derives: Annette Edwards, with help from Judy Roberts of Chirk
