In 1971, Californian congressman Thomas M. Rees told the US House of Representatives that ‘very little has been written of what the Welsh have contributed in all walks of life in the shaping of American history’. This book is the first systematic attempt to both recount and evaluate the considerable yet undervalued contribution made by Welsh immigrants and their immediate descendants to the development of the United States. Their lives and achievements are set within a narrative outline of American history that emphasises the Welsh influence upon the colonists’ rejection of British rule, and upon the establishment, expansion and industrialisation of the new American nation. This book covers both the famous and the unsung who worked and fought to acquire greater prosperity and freedom for themselves and for their nation.

The Welsh in America was first published in 1961. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The Welsh formed a small but significant part of the great migration from Europe to the United States during the nineteenth century. In this volume they tell their own story in letters they wrote from America to their families and friends back home. The letters are highly readable, written, for the most part, in vivid and entertaining style which reveals the Welsh as an unusually literate people. The 197 letters are arranged chronologically and geographically, starting with letters that tell of the voyage across the Atlantic. Once in America, the immigrants described their experiences in the farming country of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and some of the other midwestern states. Later, as the frontier moved west, they wrote of their efforts to establish exclusive Welsh settlements on the Great Plains. From the industrial centers there are letters from coal miners and iron and steel workers. The fortune seekers who went to California in the gold rush or to the mines in Colorado are also represented. Still others tell of their search for salvation in the Mormon Zion of Utah. For each chapter or group of letters Mr. Conway has written an introduction giving the general background of the region or period and relating it to the Welsh settlers. Thus the events chronicled and the views expressed in the letters become significant in the history of the times. The majority of the letters were written in Welsh and they appear here in translation. Some were obtained from the files of old newspapers or denominational magazines; others came from the collections of the National Library of Wales or from individuals.

In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. A majority of them were skilled laborers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies. Readily accepted by American society, Welsh immigrants experienced a unique process of acculturation. In the first history of this exceptional community, Ronald Lewis explores how Welsh immigrants made a significant contribution to the development of the American coal industry and how their rapid and successful assimilation affected Welsh American culture. Lewis describes how Welsh immigrants brought their national churches, fraternal orders and societies, love of literature and music, and, most important, their own language. Yet unlike eastern and southern Europeans and the Irish, the Welsh--even with their "foreign" ways--encountered no apparent hostility from the Americans. Often within a single generation, Welsh cultural institutions would begin to fade and a new "Welsh American" identity developed. True to the perspective of the Welsh themselves, Lewis's analysis adopts a transnational view of immigration, examining the maintenance of Welsh coal-mining culture in the United States and in Wales. By focusing on Welsh coal miners, Welsh Americans illuminates how Americanization occurred among a distinct group of skilled immigrants and demonstrates the diversity of the labor migrations to a rapidly industrializing America.

Between the years 1860 and 1920 around 80,000 Welsh immigrants settled in the United States. This volume focuses on Scranton, the epicentre of Welsh America, and examines the wider issues of how these immigrants regarded themselves and their new home.

The Welsh comprised a distinct and highly visible ethno-linguistic group in many areas of the United States during the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. Through a consideration of settlement patterns, cultural and religious institutions, language retention, and marriage preference, this book provides a micro-study of four identifiable Welsh communities over a set period of time. The nature, strength and long-term viability of these communities is analysed and assessed, as are the ways in which they changed; a process which saw the Welsh become Welsh-Americans and, ultimately, Americans. Welsh immigrants in the USA were invariably portrayed as models of American citizenship by virtue of their perceived national characteristics and their standards of social behaviour. This book tests the assumption that the Welsh were prime illustrations of the American Dream by analysing one facet of that dream; socio-economic success as revealed by occupational mobility. To what extent did the Welsh as a group occupy a privileged position in the occupational hierarchy, and were they able to maintain and improve upon their social and economic position in a relatively short space of time?