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The Dictionary of Welsh Biography says that the Mathias family of Pembrokeshire was the original family with that name, but previously were known by the surnames Cole and Young. Its original habitat was Clastir ('church land') near Newport, Pembrokeshire. Mathias was at first merely a recurring Christian name in the family; it became established as a surname with Thomas Mathias (d. end of 1617 or early 1618), whose son was John Mathias who moved to Llwyngaren and was a county Parliamentary Commissioner during the Civil War, June 1644, and died 1681; his son was Lewis Mathias (d 1733) who was opposed to the Revolution of 1688 and got into trouble for drinking and rowdyism; his son was John Mathias (1694?-1774) who added the estate of Trefayog in St Nicholas Parish some miles north of Llwyngaren and was buried at Trefayog 21 October 1774. By his wife Margaret Thomas of Dyffryn, John had 16 children including Elizabeth (second daughter and fourth child); John (1720-1800?) a naval officer and sheriff in 1792 who died childless; Lewis (1740-1815), sheriff in 1811, whose issue predeceased him, and David Mathias (1738-1812), sixth son and 14th child. Born 27 June 1738, David was apprenticed to a shopkeeper in Havorfordwest. Member of the Moravian Society in 1759, at the end of 1761 he was the shopkeeper to the Moravian settlement at Fulneck near Leeds, where he remained to 1771. By 1768 he had been recognised as a preacher. By the summer of 1772 he had inaugurated a Moravian settlement in Nantlle Vale, Caernarfonshire, where he remained to 1776. In 1776-1780 he laboured at Devonport; in 1780-1782 at Kingswood and in 1782-1788 in the settlement at Ockbrook near Derby. He returned to Caernarfon in 1788 where he fell out with John Morgan, went to Fishguard, abandoned his mission and ceased to 'labour'. He had to be formally readmitted in 1804, and died at Fishguard in 1812. The deaths without surviving heirs of his brothers led the Llwyngaren estates falling to David Mathias' second son Charles Delamotte Mathias (1777-1851) - his second name being his mother's surname - who, with his aunt Elizabeth's money bought Lamphrey from the Owen family of Orielton in 1821. David Mathias through Charles was the ancestor of all the Mathias clan, who have included such notables as Colonel Mathias who led the Gordon Highlanders in storming the heights of Dargai in 1897, and members of the Bar.