How Did Welsh Emigrants To America See Themselves In The C19?

Evidence from ; Welsh Land Commission a Digest of its Report by D. Lleuter Thomas, 1896
The stream of emigration from Wales to America has never wholly ceased, though it appears to have slackened during the past twenty years.( c 1896)

The number of persons born in Wales (excluding Monmouthshire), and enumerated in the United States at the time of the last Census (June, 1890), was returned as 100,079, but the total number of Welsh settlers, including first descendants, has been - 'with some exaggeration perhaps,' estimated by an American
Report to be close as a million and a quarter.

Politically they are almost wholly Republican, the percentage of the Welsh Republican vote being, according to the same writer, 39½ per cent. In Pennsylvania (which is still prominently the chief home of the Welsh emigrants), 15 per. cent in Ohio, 11 per. cent in New York, and 9 per. cent in Wisconsin.

'There is a very extensive Welsh ~ American literature; several magazines are published in the Welsh language, and Eisteddfodau are in many districts as popular as in the mother country. The religious denominations of Wales are represented in the States by flourishing churches, in which services are exclusively in Welsh, and by organisations that are in frequent communication with those of the Principality.'
'One great deterrent to emigration with Welsh- speaking persons has always been the prospect that either they themselves or at all events their near descendants would inevitably lose their distinctive nationality, and become emerged in that dominant race of the district or country of their adoption.

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