1. John Ystumllyn learned horticulture and craftsmanship, at which he had some natural skill, in the estate garden John Ystumllyn worked as a gardener at the estate and eventually "grew into a handsome and vigorous young man", his portrait painted at around this time.
John Ystumllyn died in 1786; his wife, Margaret, outlived him by more than forty years.
John Ystumllyn was well-liked in his lifetime and met with little racial prejudice, though locals often expressed surprise at his unfamiliar appearance.
Several Black Welsh individuals are recorded as living in Wales before John Ystumllyn, mainly employed as servants and musicians to landowners and the aristocracy, following the vogue in Britain.
John Ystumllyn's life is known from three sources, "all of them remarkable", according to Green.
The work has been criticised by other Welsh sources, with the North Wales newspaper, The Daily Post, saying it is "peppered with racial stereotyping" in its biography of John Ystumllyn, citing it in an editorial as an example of the early racial prejudice against black integration in Wales.
Yasmin Begum has pointed out how the names which Ystumllyn was known by were not given to him by his birth parents.
Robert Isaac Jones begins his account of John Ystumllyn's life, admitting his uncertain origins, and tracing three narratives of his arrival in Wales.
The third account, from John Ystumllyn himself, asserted that he was captured by white men while "on the banks of a stream amid woodland attempting to catch a moorhen", and was abducted and taken to their ship to the "frightful howls" of his mother.
Green is skeptical of each of these stories, stating that, while it was "not inconceivable that Wynne was directly implicated in the slave trade", "it's much likelier that John Ystumllyn came from a slave family in the West Indies", citing the reference to an Indian origin on his gravestone.
John's arrival in Ystumllyn was marked by his knowledge of "no language other than sounds similar to the howling of a dog", in Jones' words; this was likely a West African language, unfamiliar to the Welsh locals.
John Ystumllyn was then put in the garden, where he showed a gift for crafts and horticulture, and developed a fondness for floristry.
John Ystumllyn found employment on the Ystumllyn estate as a gardener, for what Morris reported was very low pay, his upkeep being "less costly than that of a racehorse".
John Ystumllyn was initially terrified of John and ran away upon the sight of him, but over time she grew more comfortable around him, and a romance developed.
When Margaret moved to her relatives' nearby mansion, Ynysgain Bach, Criccieth, for domestic work available there, John Ystumllyn continued his courtship of her.
Jones recounts the shock of the house's master at John Ystumllyn, stumbling across John Ystumllyn in the kitchen, assured that he must be "the Black Devil" because of his dark skin.
John Ystumllyn later worked at the home of Maesyneuadd, near Talsarnau, another estate of the Wynn family.
Jones recounts that, on his deathbed, John Ystumllyn told a neighbour "his main regret was that he played the crwth on Sundays at John Ystumllyn and Masyneuoedd".
John Ystumllyn was apparently in good health up to this point, being able to "see to sew and knit up until a few months before her death", and "was a quiet and cheerful old lady".
Jones himself concurred that John Ystumllyn was, by all accounts, a "very honest man, with no malice, and was respected by the gentry and the common people alike".
In 2018, celebrating Black History Month in the United Kingdom, John Ystumllyn was included in a list of 100 Brilliant, Black and Welsh people.
In June 2020, an article about John Ystumllyn was written in HortWeek by Zehra Zaidi, a campaigner who set up We Too Built Britain to tell the stories of under-represented groups to show what we have in common.
The John Ystumllyn rose is a golden yellow hybrid tea rose.
The rose was mentioned in the House of Commons by Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for the area where John Ystumllyn lived, in a request for a debate on black history stories.