Welsh Americans

An 1841 poster advertising passage to America, written in English and Welsh

In the late seventeenth century, there was a large emigration of Welsh Quakers to Pennsylvania, where a Welsh Tract was established in the region immediately west of Philadelphia. By 1700, the Welsh accounted for about one-third of the colony's estimated population of twenty thousand. There are a number of Welsh place names in this area. There was a second wave of immigration in the late eighteenth century, notably a Welsh colony named Cambria established by Morgan John Rhys in what is now Cambria County, Pennsylvania.

The Welsh were especially numerous and politically active in colonial Pennsylvania, where they elected 9% of the legislature. In the 19th century, thousands of Welsh coal miners emigrated to the anthracite and bituminous mines of Pennsylvania, many becoming mine managers and executives. The miners brought organizational skills, exemplified in the United Mine Workers labour union, and its most famous leader John L. Lewis, who was born in a Welsh settlement in Iowa. Pennsylvania has the largest number of Welsh-Americans, approximately 200,000; they are primarily concentrated in the Western and Northeastern (Coal Region) regions of the state.[13]

Mass emigration from Wales to the United States got underway in the nineteenth century with Ohio cities and towns such as Canal Dover, Niles and Gloucester being particularly popular destinations.

In the early nineteenth century most of the Welsh settlers were farmers, but later on there was emigration by coal miners to the coalfields of Ohio and Pennsylvania and by slate quarrymen from North Wales to the "Slate Valley" region of Vermont and New York. There was a large concentration of Welsh people in the Appalachian section of Southeast Ohio, such as Jackson County, Ohio and was nicknamed "Little Wales". The Welsh language was commonly spoken there for generations until the 1950s when its use began to subside. As of 2010, more than 126,000 Ohioans are of Welsh descent and about 135 speak the language,[14][15] with significant concentrations still found in many communities of Ohio such as Oak Hill (13.6%), Madison (12.7%), Franklin (10.5%), Jackson (10.0%), Radnor (9.8%), and Jefferson (9.7%).[16]

Following the American Civil War, 104 Welsh immigrant families moved from the Welsh Barony in Pennsylvania to East Tennessee. These Welsh families settled in an area now known as Mechanicsville, and part of the city of Knoxville. These families were recruited by the brothers Joseph and David Richards to work in a rolling mill then co-owned by John H. Jones.

The Richards brothers co-founded the Knoxville Iron Works beside the L&N Railroad, later to be used as the site for the World's Fair 1982. Of the original buildings of the Iron Works where Welsh immigrants worked, only the structure housing the restaurant 'The Foundry' remains. In 1982 World's Fair the building was known as the Strohause.

Having first met at donated space at the Second Presbyterian Church, the immigrant Welsh built their own Congregational Church with the Reverend Thomas Thomas serving as the first pastor in 1870. However, by 1899 the church property was sold.

The Welsh immigrant families became successful and established other businesses in Knoxville, which included a company that built coal cars, several slate roofing companies, a marble company, and several furniture companies. By 1930 many Welsh dispersed into other sections of the city and neighbouring counties such as Sevier County. Today, more than 250 families in greater Knoxville can trace their ancestry directly to these original immigrants. The Welsh tradition in Knoxville is remembered with Welsh descendants celebrating St. David's Day.

In the years surrounding the turn of the Twentieth Century, the towns of Elwood, Anderson and Gas City in Grant and Madison Counties, located northeast of Indianapolis, attracted scores of Welsh Immigrants, including many large families and young industrial workers.

After 1855 Minnesota's rich farmlands became a magnet, especially Blue Earth and Le Sueur counties. By the 1880s between 2,500 and 3,000 people of Welsh background were contributing to the life of some 17 churches and 22 chapels.[19]

Some 2,000 immigrants from Wales and another nearly 6000 second-generation Welsh became farmers in Kansas, favouring areas close to the towns of Arvonia, Emporia, and Bala. Features of their historic culture survived longest when their church services retained Welsh sermons.[20]

Oneida County and Utica, New York became the cultural centre of the Welsh-American community in the 19th century. Suffering from poor harvests in 1789 and 1802 and dreaming of land ownership, the initial settlement of five Welsh families soon attracted other agricultural migrants, settling Steuben, Utica and Remsen townships. The first Welsh settlers arrived in the 1790s. By 1855, there were four thousand Welshmen in Oneida. With the Civil War, many Welshmen began moving west, especially to Michigan and Wisconsin. They operated small farms and clung to their historic traditions. The church was the centre of Welsh community life, and a vigorous Welsh-speaking press kept ethnic consciousness strong. Strongly Republican, the Welsh gradually assimilated into the larger society without totally abandoning their own ethnic cultural patterns.[21]

Five towns in northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania were constructed between 1850 and 1942 to house Welsh quarry workers producing Peach Bottom slate. During this period the towns retained a Welsh ethnic identity, although their architecture evolved from the traditional Welsh cottage form to contemporary American. Two of the towns in Harford County now form the Whiteford-Cardiff Historic District.[22]

After the Eastern European people, the Welsh people represents a significant minority there.

Los Angeles and the surrounding area, specifically Hollywood, have attracted Welsh artists and actors in various fields of the arts and entertainment industry. The following is a short list of notable Welsh artists and actors that have lived and worked in the Los Angeles area: D. W. Griffith, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Burton, Rosemarie Frankland, Michael Sheen, Glynis Johns, Ioan Gruffudd, Ivor Barry, Cate Le Bon, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Jones, Katherine Jenkins, and Terry Nation, among others.

Between 1888-2012 the Welsh Presbyterian Church was the centre of Welsh community life in Los Angeles. The church was founded by the Reverend David Hughes from Llanuwchllyn, Gwynedd at another site. In its prime the church would average 300 immigrants for Sunday service in Welsh and English.[23] Notably, the choir of the church sang in the 1941 film How Green Was My Valley.[24] The singing tradition continued with the Cor Cymraeg De Califfornia, the Welsh Choir of Southern California, a non-denominational 501(c)(3) founded in 1997 still performing across the United States.[25]

Santa Monica, California was named one of the most British towns in America due to its commerce and British migrants who came during a post World War II boom in factory production, many of whom were Welsh.[26] However, higher cost of living and stricter immigration laws have affected the town once dubbed 'Little Britain'.[27]

In 2011 the West Coast Eisteddfod: Welsh Festival of Arts, sponsored by A Raven Above Press and AmeriCymru, was the first eisteddfod in the area since 1926. In the following year, Lorin Morgan-Richards established the annual Los Angeles St. David's Day Festival which sparked a cultural resurgence in the city and the formation of the Welsh League of Southern California in 2014.[28] Celebrities of Welsh heritage Henry Thomas, Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Sheen, along with Richard Burton's and Frank Lloyd Wright's families have all publicly supported the festival.[29]

Mormon missionaries in Wales in the 1840s and 1850s proved persuasive, and many converts emigrated to Utah. By the mid-nineteenth century, Malad City, Idaho was established. It began largely as a Welsh Mormon settlement and lays claim to having more people of Welsh descent per capita than anywhere outside Wales.[30] This may be around 20%.[31] In 1951 the National Gymanfa Association of the United States and Canada sponsored a collection of Welsh books at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University.[32]^:75

Before 1890, Wales was the world's leading producer of tinplate, especially as used for canned foods. The U.S. was the primary customer. The McKinley tariff of 1890 raised the duty on tinplate that year, and in response, many entrepreneurs and skilled workers emigrated to the U.S., especially to the Pittsburgh region. They built extensive occupational networks and a transnational niche community.[35]

The American daytime soap opera One Life to Live takes place in a fictional Pennsylvania town outside of Philadelphia known as Llanview (llan is an old Welsh word for church, now encountered mainly in place names). The fictional Llanview is loosely based on the Welsh settlements located in the Welsh Barony, or Welsh Tract, located north-west of Philadelphia, PA.

While most Welsh immigrants came to the US before the 20th century or during the early 20th century, immigration has by no means stopped. Current expatriates have formed societies all across the country, including the Chicago Tafia (a play on "Mafia" and "Taffy"), AmeriCymru and New York Welsh/Cymry Efrog Newydd. This only amounts to a few social groups and some "High Profile" individuals. Currently, Welsh immigration to the United States is very low.