We have seen that Thomas's son Thomas Rees Williams was brought up by his aunt Sarah, and Carol reports that at the age of 12 he
worked at the copper works for 6 months and then joined his father at a foundry in Landore, where he remained for 7 years. He
earned thirty shillings a week, judged to be a 'princely sum' at that time. On Christmas Day 1880 he married Dinah Williams from
Taibach near Port Talbot, and in 1881 he was an engine fitter at a foundry in Llansamlet, but the business took a turn for the worse,
and they went to live with her parents. They emigrated to America in 1883 by way of Liverpool, and he worked for the Bethlehem
Steel Company, including a visit to Panama in 1914 to install the machinery for the canal locks. I understand too that he became an
Independent minister. Their son, who was born in 1897, later wrote up the family. He told of his father " being raised at the foot of
Swansea Castle by his maternal grandmother who raised geese and ran a pub ", but this account is incorrect in several respects.
None of the family recollections make any reference to Sarah who brought him up, except that 'she married a collier', and the
important part that she had played had been forgotten. It is not clear whether this was deliberate or just unthinking.
Derek Williams