James Owen of Penrhos

and his descendants

Llewelyn I G Morgan-Owen

L I Gethin Morgan-Owen The third child of Timothy Morgan Owen and Emma, Llewelyn Isaac Gethin Morgan-Owen but known as Gethin, was born on Monday, 31 March 1879. He was educated at Arnold House, Llandulas and Shrewsbury School where, like several of the Owen family, he played in the football team. Like his father, he went to Trinity College Dublin. There he qualified as a University candidate for the Army. It must have been Gethin about whom Timothy wrote in a letter of 23 December 1901, He came out from T.C.D. 8th on the list of successful University Cs in the Army from the whole Kingdom.

Gethin was commissioned into the Carnarvon Militia (otherwise known as 4th Royal Welsh. Fusiliers) in 1899. In that same year, on 11 October, war broke out between Great Britain and the Dutch Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State (the second Anglo-Boer War). Following a series of setbacks reinforcements were sent for and 2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers, which Gethin was to join, arrived in February 1900, as part of 15th Brigade, 7th Division. He was gazetted a 2nd Lieutenant in the South Wales Borderers as a university candidate on 22 March 1900.

By the time Gethin was due to arrive in the combat area the British reinforcements under Field Marshal Baron Roberts of Kandahar had turned the tide; the Boer capital of Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, had been captured in March, 1900, Johannesburg had fallen in late May, and Pretoria had just been taken on 5 June. The 2nd Battalion were then left to garrison Johannesburg and help to administer martial law; those parts of the Orange Free State and of the South African Republic taken by the British had been placed under martial law. However, the guerrilla war continued elsewhere with Botha, De Wet and their men mounting an extremely effective ‘hit and run’ campaign.