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PADDY'S RUN: A WELSH COMMUNITY IN OHIO THE Welsh migration to Ohio, which began anew in sizeable numbers in the 1790s after a lapse of nearly a hundred years, was a remarkable dispersal of an almost wholly peasant population. New Welsh settlers came to many of the regions of the United States, but nowhere in greater numbers than in the backwoods of Pennsylvania and in Ohio country. The reasons for their migrations were generally straightforward. The desire to live in a free country where religious and political barriers virtually did not exist, and to farm a land where opportunity was considerably less restricted, motivated most newcomers from Wales. This quest for the promised land has been well told in recent years by Gwyn A. Williams, and his accounts give rich colour to earlier histories, some by the early settlers themselves.1 It is hard to escape the conclusion that, small in numbers though the volume of Welsh migration ultimately was, its importance was out of all proportion to its size. Wherever Welsh settlers went, they clustered together, one group frequently breaking away to form another and more isolated settlement. Such was the pattern of the founding of Paddy's Run, a small, largely Welsh settlement in Ohio. It was one of several in the area; a cluster lay a little to the north in Allen county, whilst somewhat apart was Paddy's Run, in Butler county, north-west of Cincinnati, the region's major town.2 Paddy's Run, one of the earliest founded, remained among the smallest of Welsh settlements and was, almost from the start, of less importance than nearby Oxford, where was sited from the early days of the nineteenth century, Miami University, a true Welsh college, with its stress on theology and education and, later, geography. The United States Census Reports indicate the rapid spread of population to Butler county and more specifically to Morgan township in which lay Paddy's Run.3 It was a remarkable 1 Gwyn A. Williams, Madoc, The Making of a Myth (London, 1980), and The Search for Beulah Land (London, 1980); see also his earlier 'Morgan John Rhees and his Beula', ante, vol. 3, no. 4 (December 1967); David Williams, 'John Evans's Strange Journey', American Historical Review, LIV (1948-49), and Glanmor Williams, Samuel Roberts, Llanbrynmair (Cardiff, 1950), are founders of this school of Welsh American history. Stephen Riggs Williams, The Saga of Paddy's Run (Oxford, Ohio, 1945); Bob Owen, 'Yr Ymfudo o Sir Aberteifi i Unol Daleithiau America', Ceredigion, II, no. 3 (1954), and earlier B. W. Chidlaw, The History of Paddy's Run (n.d.), and B. W. Chidlaw, Yr America (1839); R. D. Thomas, 'America 1851-2', N.L.W. MS. 9521 A, are important basic studies. See the sketch map of the region. •In the United States Census Report for 1810 Butler county alone is listed (11,150 inhabitants), but by 1830 there were 1,965 inhabitants in Morgan township; thirty years later, in 1860, there were 35,111 whites and 729 free coloureds. See The United States Census Reports or the Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the United States, published in Washington, D.C.: the Third Census of 1810 (published 1810); The Fifth Census, 1830 (published 1832); the Eighth Census, 1860 (published 1864), contain the relevant data.