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Edward Thomas (E. T.) John was born in Pontypridd, Glamorgan, in 1857, but his family moved to Middlesborough, Durham, in 1871, where he began his career in the iron and steel industry. He became involved in politics following his retirement from the management of the Linthorpe-Dinsdale Smelting Company, Middlesbrough, in 1910. He became Liberal Member of Parliament for East Denbighshire, 1910-1918, and an advocate of Home Rule for Wales. Although defeated in the 1918 West Denbighshire election, when he ran as a Labour and Welsh Nationalist candidate, and a further three times between 1922 and 1924 as a candidate for Brecon and Radnor and Anglesey, John continued to be involved in issues of governmental reform in Wales and in Welsh culture. He became the elected head of the Union of Welsh Societies (from which the Celtic Congress later emerged), 1916-1926, and president of the Peace Society, 1924-1927. John also had interests in education and agriculture in Wales and wrote a number of articles for newspapers and periodicals including Y Beirniad and The Welsh Outlook. He died in Kent on 16 February 1931.

Thomas John Evans was born in the parish of Cellan, Cardiganshire, on 2 December 1863, the son of Evan and Jane Evans. He taught for a brief period at Cellan school before departing for London to work as a clerk in 1882. For the next fifty years he was closely associated with the Welsh life of the metropolis, and proved an assiduous patron of a great range of literary societies associated with the Welsh churches in London, and played a prominent role in the establishment of a number of social clubs and societies for London Welshmen. In 1895 T. J. Evans was the founder of The London Kelt, a bilingual weekly newspaper, and he was mainly responsible for editing it until it was forced to cease publication in 1915 by the acute paper shortage of the First World War. He became the friend and close associate of an array of prominent Welshmen of his generation, among them Thomas Edward Ellis, David Lloyd George, Ellis Jones Ellis-Griffith and W. Llewelyn Williams. He accumulated an impressive library of Welsh books and books relating to Wales, and became a highly respected authority on London Welsh societies and settlements. He also served on the Council of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. Evans formed a large number of intimate and enduring friendships, and became renowned for his untiring readiness to assist young Welsh people at London. He had married in 1891, Margaret, the daughter of Lewis Davies of Lampeter and they had two daughters. T. J. Evans died on 13 May 1932.

Benjamin Flower (1755-1829) was a writer and printer who travelled widely in Europe and spent six months in France in 1791. He was appointed editor of the influential provincial newspaper The Cambridge Intelligencer, which had liberal views. In 1799, he was summoned before the House of Lords for libelling Bishop Watson of Llandaff, whose political conduct he had censured. He was imprisoned in Newgate. He married Eliza Gould (d.1810) in 1800, and they had two daughters, Eliza (1803-1846) and Sarah (1805-1848). Later, he became a printer in Harlow.