John Ystumllyn

The sitter in this anonymous portait, inscribed with his name and the date 11 May 1754, was a servant in the Wynne household at Ystumllyn, near Criccieth in north Wales. The date and manner of his arrival are obscure.   One account of his origins, seemingly from his own, states that he was hunting waterfowl in a woodland stream when white men seized him and took him to their ship.  Which would imply a West Africa birthplace, transport to Caribbean enslavement and thence to Britain as a boy.   He could be about 12 in the portait?  so a posible birth date in early 1840s?

In Wales he became an outdoor servant, gardener, adept and skilled woodworker.  He learnt Welsh and English and was baptised and inevitably re-named.  John was the generic name given to male servants (presumably to save employers having to recall others) and Ystumllyn that of the estate, where he was also known as Jac Dhu or 'Black Jack'. Local anecdotes tell of his popularity with female servants and of various employments in the area.  

Ystumllyn house 1794

In April 1768 he married Margaret Gruffydd in Dolgellau, with whom he had seven children, only five of whom survived into adulthood.  One of the latter was named Richard Jones.  John and Margaret were employed as stewards at nearby Ynysgain (where the landowners were Joneses)  then later the couple worked at another Wynne property where a cottage called Y Nhyra Isaf 'was given to John together with a small field by Ellis Wynne Esq in recognition for his service. 

He died in 1786, in his forties and was buried at a now-remote churchyard at Ynyscynhaeren, inland between Criccieth and Portmadoc.  Some years later a gravestone was installed, with an inscription by Dafydd Sion Siams, bard from Penrhyndeudraeth which translates as 'Born in the Indies, to Wales I came to be baptised. On this spot, a grey slate marks my cold resting place'. 

Then in 1888  a brief biogaphy was written by Alltud Eifion, a bard from Tremadoc, whose grandfather had been the doctor who attended John at the end of his life.  Translated, the title reads 'John Ystummllyn or Jack Black, the history of his life and traditions about him since his capture in the wilds of Africa until his death; his descendants etc, etc, together with a picture of him in the year 1754'.  The illustration is a woodcut of the oil portrait that now hangs in Ynyscynhaeren church.