Kelsall - A Quaker Family.

DICTIONARY OF WELSH BIOGRAPHY TO 1940
pub Blackwell, Oxford, 1959

KELSALL,  JOHN  (fl.  1683 - 1743), Quaker diarist; b. in London in 1683. He
came to Wales in 1702, and kept school (he was a man of good  education)  at
Dolobran,  Mont.,  while also acting as clerk in the iron-works belonging to
the Lloyd family of Dolobran (q.v.). He was in the Lloyds' service  till  c.
1743, being dispatched here and there in their industrial interests; e.g. he
supervised  their  furnaces near Dolgellau in 1714-20 and again at intervals
between 1729 and  1736.  Later  on,  he  fell  into  adversity,  and  after
wandering to Bristol and to Ireland, is last heard of at Chester. He appears
in  the  present  work  in  virtue  of  his  very detailed diaries, now kept
(together with a volume of verse written by him between 1702  and  1743)  at
the  Friends' House in London. They are wanting for the years 1699-1712 (yet
there is an index to these missing years), but are complete from then on  to
May  1743.  They  are  an invaluable source for the chequered history of the
Lloyd fortunes, for that of the North Wales iron industry, and for  that  of
Quakerism  in  Wales  during  that  period.  Edward  Griffith (q.v.) printed
excerpts in Wales (O.M.E.), ii-see also Trans.  Caerns.  Hist.  Soc.,  1940,
75-6. Kelsall published a book, The Faithful Monitor, 1726. When he died has
not been discovered.

- letter from Dr. David J. Kelsall of St. Albans dated 18th Feb. 1989.