Welsh settlement in the Americas

Sir William Vaughan sent Welsh colonists to Renews, Newfoundland in 1617 to establish a permanent colony, which eventually failed.

Many Quakers from Wales emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 17th century with a promise from William Penn that they would be allowed to set up a Welsh colony there.

These families were recruited by the brothers Joseph and David Richards to work in a rolling mill then co-owned by John H. Jones.

Jackson and Gallia counties in Ohio were settled by Welsh immigrants in the 19th century, many from the Ceredigion area of West Wales.

Suffering from poor harvests in 1789 and 1802 and dreaming of land ownership, the initial settlement of five Welsh families soon attracted other agricultural migrants, settling Steuben, Utica and Remsen townships.

Numerous Welsh immigrants settled in the town of Freedom and surrounding townships in Cattaraugus County in southwestern New York during the 19th century.

Indeed Bartlett noted in his Dictionary of Americanisms that "one may travel for miles (across Oneida County) and hear nothing but the Welsh language".

Strongly Republican, the Welsh gradually assimilated into the larger society without totally abandoning their own ethnic cultural patterns.

[4] In 1852 Thomas Benbow Phillips of Tregaron established a settlement of about 100 Welsh people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

However this pledge was not ratified by the Argentine Congress, out of fear that the British government would use the presence of the settlers as an excuse to seize Patagonia.