 His parents were Richard Jones, farmer, and Jane Jones, formerly Owen.He was aged one month on the 1841 census when he is recorded with father and mother Richard and Jane, aged 35 and 30, and siblings Elinor, Richard, William and Owen, aged 15, 9, 6 and 4.At the age of fourteen Jones was apprenticed to a draper in Caernarfon and afterwards moved to Pwllheli, then to Bangor and eventually, when he was nineteen, to London.