The following was submitted by Steven Thornton-Jones. Loughborough, Leicestershire.
I am interested to read your history of Crane & Sons, Regent Street, Wrexham. You mention that R Thornton Jones was the manager of the shop by the end of August 1893 and that the last mention you can find of him is April 1897. You may be interested to see the attached copy of an envelope addressed to Thornton Jones at Crane & Sons, postmarked 1894. The address on the envelope reads as follows:
“Please postman take this letter to a thriving town in Wales
‘Tis Wrexham that I mean my man – noted for Fairs & Tales
And there in Regent Street you’ll find Pianos by the score
At Crane & Sons the well-known shop – I think it’s number four
You cannot fail to find the place – there is not such another
The manager is Thornton Jones – this letter’s for his mother”
The manager’s first name was Robert and he is my great grandfather. He was born in 1866, the oldest child of Henry Richmond Jones and Elizabeth (nee Crane) whose families were pawnbrokers and master pilots in Liverpool. Some of the pawnbrokers moved into the musical instrument business. In 1892 Robert married Agnes Rankin in Liverpool and the couple moved to Wrexham. Their daughter Agnes was born in 1894 and their son Gilbert (my grandfather) was born the following year. They may have moved back to Liverpool in 1897 for family support, because in February 1898 Agnes died there of a brain tumour. In 1899, at the age of 33, Robert re-married and went on to father three further children. However, there was more sadness in 1906 when Robert died of Tubercular Meningitis at the age of 40 with his brother Thomas Russell Jones at his bedside.
Read more of the history of Crane and Sons here.
Source: Steven Thornton-Jones
