Boston Welsh?

[ComradeFlyer]

In the United States there are many cities and regions identified with specific nationalities, perhaps most notable is the Boston Irish community.

What would it take to have Welsh immigration high enough that there is a "Welsh" city in the United States and a strong "Welsh" community?

 

[birdy]

interesting?? the only thing i can think of right now is maybe Philadelphia or somewhere else in pennsylvania, i think many of the early quakers who founded and settled pennslyvania could be welsh (correct me if i'm worng) and maybe they encourage more welsh people to make the voyage.

I'm pretty sure there are places in Pennsylvania (i think) with welsh names as well as Welsh festivals and St Davids Day celebrations in OTL.

 

[Yellmic Wigwawa]

interesting?? the only thing i can think of right now is maybe Philadelphia or somewhere else in pennsylvania, i think many of the early quakers who founded and settled pennslyvania could be welsh (correct me if i'm worng) and maybe they encourage more welsh people to make the voyage.

I'm pretty sure there are places in Pennsylvania (i think) with welsh names as well as Welsh festivals and St Davids Day celebrations in OTL.

That is true. Scranton I think has a significant number of people of Welsh origin.

 

[Nicole]

Well I would go pretty far back... maybe make Wales like Ireland, in OTL Wales was pretty much integrated into the English (later British) state, while Ireland was a "Lordship" with English occupation areas. If Wales had a similar status, it may end up, like Ireland, resisting the Church of England, which means that the British, suspicious of Catholicism, could be more oppressive and the Welsh less supportive of England.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I always wondered about it... How come there was not much welsh immigrations to USA and Canada? Is there because Wales wa stoo close to UK and too well entrenched in assimilation?

 

[Nicole]

It might just be that there aren't that many Welsh to begin with...

 

[Tyr]

Yeah not enough 'Welsh'.
Wales itself is pretty small but the amount of those who were activly 'Welsh' and not just from part of England...

 

[Khib yusa]

Greetings,

A hell of a lot of Welsh immigrants actually went to Patagonia (South America for all of those who don't know where it is). There are more Welsh speakers in that region of the world than anywhere else. There are regions or Uraguay and Argentina where Welsh is used for resteraunts, house names, street names, etc and it is a second language in those areas.

Regards,

Khib Yusa

 

[birdy]

Its true that the numbers of welsh people wernt as high as say the english or scots but a considerable number did go the america i think a number of US presidents have been of welsh descent etc......

 

[PMN1]

A natural bug that attacked coal and sheep??

(btw I am from Wales).
​

 

[1940LaSalle]

interesting?? the only thing i can think of right now is maybe Philadelphia or somewhere else in pennsylvania, i think many of the early quakers who founded and settled pennslyvania could be welsh (correct me if i'm worng) and maybe they encourage more welsh people to make the voyage.

I'm pretty sure there are places in Pennsylvania (i think) with welsh names as well as Welsh festivals and St Davids Day celebrations in OTL.

Originally (see John Gunther in "Inside USA"), Pennsylvania was to be known as "New Wales". Further, there are quite a few Welsh place names in the Philadelphia suburbs (e.g., Bryn Mawr, Tredyffrin Township, Uwchlan Township, Radnor). I'd suggest that it would have taken a collapse of the Welsh economy in the 19th century to foster mass emigration: e.g., the much-earlier development of a higher-efficiency turbine, permitting harnessing of smaller streams for industrial water power, which would have undermined (sorry for the pun) the Welsh collieries. That, like the potato famine of roughly the same time, would have yielded mass Welsh emigration to the new world, to the point where Philadelphia's St. David's Day parade would be eclipsed only by the St. Patrick's Day parades in New York and Chicago. Indeed, the Pendragon would be now an integral part of the flag of the city of Philadelphia.

 

[Johnnyreb]

I am not sure Ubergeek is right in inferring the Welsh were simply submerged. The original settlers of the north-east corridor were British, Germans, Scots-Irish (meaning Scots coming out via Ulster) and the Dutch Padroons. If the Scots managed to stay on the surface, why not the Welsh?

Presumably some Welsh came out with the British. The point not mentioned so far is religion. All the above, and the Welsh, were presbyterian. The country that became the USA in 1780 was a protestant country. So the Welsh would have been homogenous with the others.

Nothing changed until 1830, when the first mass Irish immigration started (there was a potato famine in Ireland, not THE potato famine, another one) and this was a real change as they were catholic. There were anti-catholic riots in Boston in 1836 because there were so many immigrants.

However many, it was a drop inthe barrel. The US census shows that population growth in the USA came first and foremost from the Americans themselves. The descendants of the Welsh who came to Boston migrated westward to the Great Lakes. The trouble was, by that time they called themselves New Englanders.

Perhaps if the American Revolution had not taken place, all these national groups would have retained their own identity. Just a thought.

 

[birdy]

The welsh were mostly among the other British settlers i suspect.

 

[Pax Britannia]

Famous Welsh Americans: Fifty-six signatories of the Declaration of Independence as well as its author, Thomas Jefferson; Presidents James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge; President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis; frontiersman Daniel Boone; abolitionist Cassius M. Clay; African explorer Henry M. Stanley; financier John Pierpont Morgan; architect Frank Lloyd Wright; authors Sinclair Lewis and Jack London; poet Edgar Lee Masters; pioneer film director D. W. Griffith; actors Ray Milland and Billy De Wolfe; and William G. Fargo, founder of Wells, Fargo and Company.

 

[Yellmic Wigwawa]

Famous Welsh Americans: Fifty-six signatories of the Declaration of Independence as well as its author, Thomas Jefferson; Presidents James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge; President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis; frontiersman Daniel Boone; abolitionist Cassius M. Clay; African explorer Henry M. Stanley; financier John Pierpont Morgan; architect Frank Lloyd Wright; authors Sinclair Lewis and Jack London; poet Edgar Lee Masters; pioneer film director D. W. Griffith; actors Ray Milland and Billy De Wolfe; and William G. Fargo, founder of Wells, Fargo and Company.

Add to those Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes; Labor leader John Llewelyn Lewis; Vice President Hubert Humphrey; brewer Jack Daniels, amongst others.

 

[Satyrane]

brewer Jack Daniels, amongst others.

Another nail in the myth of Welsh teetotalism.

So in summary, we need a cultural separation of Welsh and English people, so that Welsh immigrants to the US maintain a distinct national identity; and we need some grand economic impetus to drive families from Wales to the States.

What about a Welsh nationalist labour movement in the mid-late 19th century - a movement that associates poverty in the Welsh working classes with oppression by English industrialists, and so combines a sense of Welsh identity with industrial grievances? Perhaps the movement is disastrous (striking miners are simply replaced with desperate job-lorn Englishmen) and mass emigration ensues.