You might remember that I said I would begin the research into the life of our famous relative, Mai Jones. We all know, through the Welsh Dictionary of Biographies that she was Born in 1899, went to school in Newport and played the organ at the Methodist Church on Stow Hill. She gained a scholarship to the College of Music in Cardiff and, it is said, she then went to the Royal College of Music in London.
I was idly surfing this here intarwebby and put the RCM into the search engine. I looked at the website and there was a little thing that said "contact us". So I did. I Explained that I was researching my family tree and that one of my father's cousins had been a student at RCM. I gave the probable dates, her name and her year of birth. Several days later I received an email telling me that the very kind lady had searched the registers from the opening of the RCM until today and there was no entry for Glady May Jones or May Jones.
There is a list of External students who just take the exams but don't actually attend the college. On this list there is a Gladys M. Jones in July 1941. It says she gained an ARCM Diploma in Piano Performing.
The very kind lady suggested that I try the Royal Academy of Music as the two places are very often confused. I thanked her.
I had already tried the Royal Academy of Music a couple of years ago and she is not on their registers as a student or anything else there.
My father once remarked that we would probably discover that she had gone to the RCM to visit once and ever after she allowed people to believe she had studied there when all she actually said was "I went to the Royal College of Music in London". A fellow researcher once told me that his mother used to travel on the same train to London as Mai, when they were "going back to college" I have added the emails to the information on the family tree. I wonder if anyone has a picture of her. I only have a couple of poor photocopies from the BBC archives.
Mai or May, is the daughter of Thomas JONES, station master at Pontypool Road Station, and Beatrice May GIBBON daughter of James GIBBON and Mary FRANCIS. I still haven't narrowed down which is the correct birth. I have bought a couple of certificates but they were the wrong ones I will have to go to the register office and ask them to search. OH and here's a spooky thing. Cousin Andy GIBBON and his lovely wife Jayne spotted a delightful house in New Inn and decided to buy it because it was so quirky and old. They told Andy's Dad, Fred GIBBON and he said "The Station Master's house? that's where Uncle Tom and Aunty Beat lived - it's where Mai Jones lived for years"
So now Andy and Jayne live in Uncle Tom's house. Isn't that weird?
