DO you remember the time a very young Charlotte Church was introduced to the then President of the United States, George Bush?
He asked her where she was from, and she said “Wales”. To which he replied, “which State is that in?” I am sure that moment must feel very familiar to all of us who have travelled to the US. Everyone in America seems to have heard of England, Scotland, and Ireland but no one has ever heard of Wales.
At least not until the Netflix documentary series Welcome to Wrexham aired.
Despite this obscurity, it might surprise many on both sides of the Atlantic to learn quite how massive the Welsh contribution was to the founding of the USA. In ancient history, we have the claim that the 12th Century prince Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd discovered and colonised what is today Alabama 500 years before Christopher Columbus was even born.
A claim which is substantiated by Cherokee folklore.
We also have the possibility that America itself was named after a Welshman. A Bristol merchant known as Richard Amerike financed John Cabot’s expedition to Newfoundland in 1497. The name ‘America’ is deemed by many to be derived from ‘Amerike’. What’s the Welsh connection? Well, he might have been called Amerike in Bristol but he was born Richard Ap Meurig and was the son of a nobleman from Monmouthshire.
I accept these two examples are a little tenuous, so let’s turn instead to some unequivocal, historical facts. And let’s start with the ‘Founding Fathers’. The 56 signatories to the declaration of independence on 2nd August 1776. According to the Welsh Society of Philadelphia, 15 of the 56 were of Welsh ancestry. I’ll be honest, I think they’ve over egged it a bit. I make it 11. But that’s still a very large contingent for such a small country no one has ever heard of.
Some of them were even pivotal players in American history. People like William Williams who served as a congressman for 30 years, and John Penn whose family originated from near Newport. He owned vast estates both near Bath in England and in the US. In fact, they named Pennsylvania after him. Both the English village in Somerset and the State in America. And of course, there’s Thomas Jefferson, who was both a Founding Father and the third president of the United States.
He was not the only one. Of the first six Presidents of the USA, John Adams (2nd), Thomas Jefferson (3rd), James Madison (4th), James Monroe (5th), and John Quince Adams (6th president and son of the 2nd president) were all of Welsh ancestry. And two of those came from the same family of farmers from Pembrokeshire.
If you were to carry on, right the way up to the modern day and the 46th President of the United States you will find that 12 out of the 46 had Welsh ancestry. And if that’s not a big enough contribution for you, Betsy Ross, the woman who designed the American flag was also from a Pembrokeshire family.
So why don’t people in America know where Wales is?
It’s because of how the early Welsh settlers behaved when they emigrated in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Most of the families I have mentioned above were descended from wealthy, Welsh Presbyterians. When they left Wales to go to America, they had no intention of taking Wales with them. They wanted to create a new nation built on Presbyterian values. So, they sacrificed their ‘Welshness’ to become ‘Americans’.
The Irish, by way of a contrast, never had any intention of becoming American. They wished to stay Irish. When they left Ireland, it was not for any idealistic reason. It was because Ireland had become uninhabitable due to famine and tyrannical landowners. So, when they arrived in America, they wanted to stay Irish and live in Irish communities and go to Irish churches and drink in Irish pubs. That is why recognition today of these two nations is so different, and why the massive contribution made by Welsh families to the birth of the nation goes largely ignored.
- Graham Loveluck-Edwards is an historian, author, broadcaster, and public speaker. For more information or to buy books on Welsh history visit his website at www.grahamloveluckedwards.com
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