Welsh Journals

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THE WELSH IN THE UNITED STATES. THEIR CONTRIBUTION. by David Williams, formerly Rockefeller Memorial Fellow in the United States. THE claim was once made in the United States Senate by John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, that no nation, in proportion to its population, has contributed more to the civil, religious and industrial development of America than the Welsh." It would be difficult to estimate whether this claim is justified o- not, but the fact remains that the history of America records a surprising number of Welsh names among its distinguished men, many of whom were actually born in Wales. Industrious re- searchers have gone further and traced Welsh ancestry-grandmothers generally-to several others, such as Jefferson, Lincoln, and President Hoover. Little is known of the early Welsh settlers in Virginia or of Captain Jones, the master of the Mayflower, and it would seem that the Pilgrim Fathers owed small thanks to him. They at least suspected him of being in the pay of the Dutch, and of having increased their difficulties considerably. But Wales supplied a large quota of the religious refugees of the seventeenth cen- tury. Roger Williams may have been born in Wales, though he emigrated from London. His book, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution," is a landmark in the history of thought, for it is the first plea for universal toleration, and for the complete separation of church and state. He put his theories into practice in the new state of Rhode Island. Later in the century many hun- dreds of Welsh Quakers settled in Pennsylvania, and at one time probably more Welsh was spoken in the streets of Philadelphia than English. Even Benjamin Franklin, its greatest citizen, took an interest in the history of Welsh literature. Old maps of the state show the tremendous extent of the lands held by the Welsh, and traces of this can be seen in the names of several townships which are now fashionable suburbs of Philadel- phia. Not all the towns with Welsh names were settled by them, however, for many came into existence only with the Pennsylvania railroad, and owe their names to the patriotism of a Welsh director of that railway in the last century. American Puritanism attained perfection in the work of Jonathan Edwards. If it can be proved that he was of Welsh descent, as is maintained by present members of the same family, then Wales has certainly made its contribution to American thought. His influence was predomin- ant in America until the end of the nineteenth century, and if it is now almost negligible, the very rigidity of his system and the violence of the reaction against it account for much of the ex- treme fundamentalism and free thinking which characterise America to-day. Hardly less power- ful has been his influence on Wales itself, through the Methodist revival. He is at his best in his Freedom of the Will," reconciling the fore- knowledge of God with the existence of evil. In its way his sermon called Sinners in the hands of an angry God is a masterpiece he there combines a skilful justification of the wrath of God, as being not inconsistent with divine per- fection, with the most imaginative descriptions of the exquisite, horrible misery of hell, and with a strong emotional appeal to his hearers to flee the wrath to come. In education as in religion, Wales has made its contribution. Elihu Yale gave great assistance to the University which bears his name, and, in America itself, the reputation of Brown Univer- sitv, founded by Morgan Edwards and Samuel Jones, is hardly less wide. It was there that John D. Rockefeller, junr., was educated. Much has been made of the part played by men of Welsh descent in the struggle for independ- ence. Philadelphia was the centre of the struggle, and consequently Welsh names figure prominently. Two of the signers of the Declara- tion of Independence, Francis Lewis and Button Gwinett, were probably born in Wales. But it is difficult to see what contribution Wales made through them, except that the Welsh settlers in- herited a traditional disloyalty to England. Political consciousness had not yet dawned on Wales itself, and so it would be foolish to expect to find any Welsh ideas in the work of Jefferson and in the political philosophy which emanated from the Revolution. In the nineteenth century emigration started afresh, and the connection between Wales and America became very intimate. There were three aspects to the movement. In the first place the land question in Wales caused many thousands to emigrate, and from this grew the desire to establish a colony of Welsh people in America, with Welsh as its official language. This scheme is first heard of in the writings of Morgan John Rhys. He was forced to flee from this country in 1794 owing to his sympathies with the French Revolution, and in Pennsylvania he bought a large tract of land for Welsh settlers, which he called Cambria. He lived only ten years in America, but he was very successful, being made a judge. His great-grandson is Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Colum-