Welsh Journals

and the occasional periodical, with scarcely any reference to newspapers. As my study needed a framework I turned to that doyen of Welsh historians, the late Professor David Williams and his study of Welsh immigration to the United States4 and I found there a more than adequate guide. He delineates a number of distinct phases in this particularly interesting phenomenon, the mass movement of large sections of Welsh society and the attraction of the United States. David Williams suggests that it is probable that only a handful of Welshmen were involved in the first attempt to settle in America during the initial colonisation, and he suggests further that we know very little about that group. We certainly know more about the next group of emigrants. To escape the cruel tyranny of the religious establishment in the seventeenth century, early dissenters fled from Wales, many of them finding their way to North America. David Williams notes in particular the large numbers of Baptists who fled from Swansea and Radnorshire and the flight of the Quakers from Meirionnydd and Montgomery after 1690 with the resultant drop in the numbers of the adherents of those particular sects in Wales. It is generally accepted that many of these settlers became actively involved in the government of their adopted country, exercising considerable influence in important circles. They settled in close-knit groups, adhering closely to their religious and cultural ideals, using the Welsh language as their medium of communication. As the printing 'industry' grew in North America during the eighteenth century it was almost inevitable that the Welsh harnessed that technical innovation to their own religious and cultural requirements. Seen in this context the early output of the Welsh press in the continent of North America is utterly predictable5 and very much in keeping with the demands made on the printing press by the Welsh in Wales the press in a Welsh context was seen as the handmaiden of religious movements from the outset. Ellis Pugh, a Quaker emigrant from the Dolgellau area is the author of the work generally accepted as being the first Welsh book printed in North America, Annerch ir Cymry, Iw galw oddiwrth y llawer o bethau at yr un peth angenrheidiol er mwyn cadwedigeth eu heneidiau [An Address to the Welsh, to call them 4. WILLIAMS, David 'The Contribution of Wales to the Development of the United States' in NLW Jnl. II, 3 and 4, 1942. pp. 97-108. 5. see WILLIAMS, William 'The first three Welsh books printed in America' in NLW Jnl. II, 3 and 4; 1942. pp. 109-119; 'More about the first three Welsh books printed in America' in NLW Jnl. Ill, 1 and 2, 1943. pp.19-22.