Mary Hannah Jones was born in Carmarthenshire, Wales, on the 29th December 1894, the daughter of John and Hannah Jones (née James). She was one of the eldest children in a large family, and her father was a blacksmith.
On finishing her formal schooling, Mary worked as a weaver in a cotton mill.
In the summer of 1903, she married Ernest Thomas in Bridgend, Glamorganshire, and in the summer of 1904, their only child, a daughter named Kaziah Ann, was born. Unfortunately, Kaziah died in early 1905.
On the 10th May 1907, the coupled boarded the Victorian at Liverpool, disembarking in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on the 17th May. They settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where siblings of both Ernest and Mary Thomas had settled.
Although her husband continued to work as a bricklayer, the couple also ran a boarding house, or temperance hotel, at 318. Notre Dame Street, from 1910 until August 1914. They then moved in with a sister of Mary Thomas at 473. Notre Dame Street.
In the spring of 1915, they decided to return to Wales for a holiday and consequently booked second cabin passage on the Lusitania, from New York to Liverpool, joining the liner at Pier 54 in New York harbour, on the morning of 1st May, in time for her last
ever sailing out of the port, just after mid-day.
When the ship was sunk, exactly six days later, both of them were killed. Only Ernest's body was recovered and identified afterwards, however, hers never was.
He is buried in a private grave in The Old Cemetery, Cobh, County Cork, Ireland, and she is also commemorated there on the white marble headstone.
The inscription is picked out in lead letters, most of which have disappeared. It states: -
IN
MEMORY OF ERNEST THOMAS
SON OF
DAVID AND ANN THOMAS
ST. JOHN, ST. WHITLAND
S. WALES
ALSO
MARY HIS WIFE
WHOSE BODY WAS NOT FOUND
BOTH WERE VICTIMS OF THE
ILL-FATED LUSITANIA
MAY 7TH 1915
Mary Thomas was aged 40 years at the time she was killed.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Western Mail, Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg Tribune, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/380, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Elaine Davies, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.