David Jones (8 March 1793 – 29 March 1873), Sydney merchant and retailer founder of David Jones Limited.
Jones was born in 1793, the son of Thomas Jones, a farmer near Llandeilo, Wales, and his wife Nancy. He became an apprenticed to a grocer in Carmarthen at a young age and his business talent lead to him being offered, at the age of 18, the management of a general store in Eglwyswrw, Pembrokeshire. He later found employment with the firm of R. N. Nicholls, Wood Street, Cheapside in London, where in 1828 he married Jane Hall, the daughter of John Hall Mander of East Smithfield.[1]
He migrated with his family to Hobart in Tasmania in October 1834 on board the Thomas Harrison. He subsequently went into partnership with Charles Appleton 1835 (a merchant who had opened a store in Sydney in 1825) forming the firm 'Appleton & Jones'. The partnership was subsequently dissolved in 1838 and the David Jones Sydney retail business was from thereon a reality.[1]
David Jones had four sons and four daughters. The eldest son David Mander Jones went on in May 1853 to purchase with his brother George Hall Jones, and assisted by their father, the large 300-sq.-mile (777 km²) property, Boonara station near Kingaroy in the South Burnett. The property was at that point in time the property of Bertel Johannes Bertelsen (a brother-in-law to the late original squatter Ned or Edward Brace Hawkins, best known as the man who took up and named Beaudesert Station south of Brisbane). The second son of David Jones was Philip Sydney Jones (1836-1918), who gained eminence as a physician and was subsequently knighted. The youngest son, Edward Lloyd Jones (1844-1894), subsequently succeeded his father in the management of David Jones.[1]
David was also a frequent Redlands Sporting Club patron