By Robert Humphries, Director, and Huw Webber, Board Member, Great Plains Welsh Heritage Centre, Wymore, Nebraska.
Given the renewed interest in celebrating and teaching Welsh history for its own sake and the imminent 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is timely to talk about Cymru’s early ties with the United States. While sometimes overstated, they are significant nonetheless, binding both countries together through the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment. The Cymry at home and the two million or so Americans of Welsh descent [1] would do well to reflect on this legacy and work to share the products of Welsh culture. No other country would let such a strong legacy go to waste.
It is often claimed that 16 or more signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Welsh descent. However, only one of the 56 signatories, Francis Lewis, was born in Wales, and a more reasonable estimation of the number is five. Even Thomas Jefferson may have asserted his own Welsh ancestry in error. The understandable impulse by Welsh immigrants to assert an exceptional contribution to their new country is behind these sometimes spurious claims, promoted by Alexander Jones’s The Cymry of ’76, published in New York in 1855. [2]
On the other hand, there was indeed a Welsh ethnic community in the colony of Pennsylvania, beginning with the migration of Welsh Quakers seeking religious freedom in the 1680s. By the time of the American Revolution, their descendants and more recent arrivals had maintained their Welsh identity—if not always their language—as the still-thriving Welsh Society of Philadelphia established in 1729 attests. In fact, numerous members were involved in the politics of the revolution or took up arms for independence. One example was Samuel Meredith, son of a Radnorshire-born Quaker, who served as a general in the Continental Army and was the first president of the reconstituted society in 1798.[3]
Elsewhere in the colonies, numerous others of Welsh birth or close ancestry fought on the American side. For example: Brigadier Francis Nash was born to Welsh parents, and Thomas Cadwalader, a physician to the Continental Army, had a Welsh father. Evan Shelby, born in Tregaron, was a leader of the North Carolina militia.However, while descent should not be discounted, Welsh ideas [4] were as important to the American revolution as the presence of Welsh historical figures. As examples, consider the liberty of conscience cherished by the Pennsylvania Welsh, or the life and ideas of the Llangeinor-born philosopher and polymath Dr Richard Price.
According to his biographer, Paul Frame, Dr Richard Price was likely bilingual [9] and educated in the Welsh radical tradition. Although he lived in London after his teenage years, Price visited Wales annually and mixed with the London Welsh. His fundamental contribution, apart from supporting American prisoners of war, was to provide the justification for the revolution: no taxation without representation.
Frame says: “Price’s Observations certainly helped give to the political nature of the American Revolution an ethical and moral foundation. This was an invaluable contribution to a fledgling nation seeking to develop a new system of government and to justify it before the court of world opinion.” [6]
According to Frame, such was Price’s fame, popularity and reputation that Yale offered its first honorary doctorates to Price and Washington in 1781. And this is without considering the main part of Price’s career in terms of philosophy, finance, statistics, and writings on non-conformist religion and the French Revolution. [7]
The point is, these transatlantic connections should be more widely taught and celebrated in both nations. Certainly, Cymru celebrates its connection with Patagonia and its small population of Welsh speakers. Why can it not celebrate its American diaspora which is as large as Wales’s current population? Furthermore, why does not Wales celebrate its most accomplished Enlightenment-era philosopher? Representation matters in history, and Cymru contributed to the Enlightenment and American independence: any notion to the contrary betrays an ideological “chuckle.” [8]
Learn more about The Great Plains Welsh Heritage Centre in Wymore, Nebraska.
[1] At least 2 million Americans. “Detailed Races and Ethnicities in the United States and Puerto Rico: 2020 Census,” US Census Bureau, 09/21/2023, accessed 06/05/2026, https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/detailed-race-ethnicities-2020-census.html. Arguably, the figure is significantly higher – see Vivienne Sanders, Wales, the Welsh and the Making of America, Kindle Edition, p. 16.
[2] Alexander Jones, The Cymry of ’76, or Welshmen and Their Descendants of the American Revolution (New York, 1855), p. 11. This book was reprinted and distributed by the Welsh-American newspaper Y Drych in 1894.
[3] Richard C. Allen, “The Origins and Development of Welsh Associational Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 2008, p. 105-126; 117.
[4] Or possibly, the Welsh version of British ideas. See Rhys Kaminski-Jones, Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819: True Britons and Celtic Empires (Studies in the Eighteenth Century Book 17), Kindle Edition, p. 39. Dr Kaminski-Jones notes that Welsh notions of Britishness were distinct and in conflict with English notions: “Cambro-British loyalists, the British state had a natural duty towards speakers of the ‘British tongue’ that sometimes went unfulfilled; for revivalist Ancient British radicals, the post-1707 state’s anglocentricity in these matters could be interpreted as a fundamental failure to be truly British.” (Ibid)
[5] “Certainly he is likely to have first had the Bible in that language, and his library in later life contained a number of Welsh language bibles.8 We also know that his sister Sarah spoke the language fluently; as did at least one of her sons (William Morgan) who was so fluent he could transpose a Welsh song into English on the spur of the moment.9 In such a linguistic environment it seems likely that Price was bilingual.” Paul Frame, Liberty’s Apostle: Richard Price, his Life and Times, University of Wales Press, 2015, p. 28.
[6] Ibid, p.147.
[7] Ibid, p. 116., p. 185.
[8] Philip J Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places, University Press of Kansas, 2004. This is an oblique reference to Baron Bedwellty’s view of Welsh history.