editor
hiraethified
I knew there was a strong connection between Wales and Pennsylvania, but I didn't know of this place:
It was also the scene of a terrible mining disaster
www.walesonline.co.uk
The newly elected President of the United States of America was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania – known as the Welsh capital of America.
The town's Welsh history is etched in stone across 39 acres at the Washburn Cemetery, known locally as the Welsh cemetery, and the final resting place of hundreds of Welsh immigrants.
More than 60 were victims of the Avondale Colliery disaster of 1869 – a catastrophe which made headlines in Wales such was the standing of Scranton as a home from home for thousands of immigrants from the motherland.
In the late 19th century the city was known as Athen Cymru America or the Welsh Athens of America because of the richness of its Welsh cultural life.
Even today the chapels built by the Welsh settlers stand as monument to their lives.
In the 20th century the town's Welsh community had retained their link to their roots enough to call for the investiture of the Prince of Wales to take place in their town rather than Cardiff or Caernarfon such had been the strong Welsh identity of the town.
It is unlikely a young Joe Biden, himself from Irish ancestry, would not have heard of the tales of Scranton's founders.
Many such founders made the long and perilous voyage from Powys.
Most had sought a new life free from religious persecution which had swept Britain in the 17th century.
A group of Quakers, led by John Roberts purchased land from William Penn, who gave his name to the new state, in 1684 with the aim of establishing a Welsh speaking community.
Penn had been supportive having originally sought to call his new lands New Wales though would eventually opt to call it Pennsylvania, meaning Penn's Wood.
Among the first settlers had been Meifod born brothers Charles and Thomas Lloyd and Welshpool's Richard Davies who had been imprisoned in Welshpool for their religious beliefs in the 1660s.
Carno's Evan Evans had also been among the first wave of missionaries who made the voyage and settled in the new world and baptizing more than 800 settlers and whose grandson, Owen, became the first American to build a steam engine.
Among those who made the voyage was Cadwaladr Evans who journeyed from Llanfor in Meironnydd and died in the new Welsh settlement in 1745 and his great-great-grandson, Abraham Lincoln would become a future American president.
There is also the tale of John Goodwin who had sought to join the Quakers of Pennsylvania in 1710 though had relented and remained in Trefeglwys after his parishioners had refused to allow him to leave the area.
Such had been the success of the Welsh colonization of Pennsylvania that a second wave of immigration followed in the late 18th century.
Many would be prominent in American life as the country continued to industrialise.
John Llewellyn Lewis, the son of Llangurig born immigrants would go on to become one of the most powerful industrialists of the age.
The area is now part of Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties. Many towns in the area still bear Welsh names. Some, such as North Wales, Lower Gwynedd, Lower Merion, Upper Merion, Narberth, Bala Cynwyd, Radnor, Berwyn, and Haverford Township, are named after places in Wales.
New American president born in town founded by Welsh settlers
JOE Biden is a man who needs no introduction to Wales.www.countytimes.co.uk
It was also the scene of a terrible mining disaster
Welsh History Month: Washburn Cemetery, Scranton, Pennsylvania
It could so easily be a cemetery in Wales. Thirty-nine acres full of Welsh history, the final resting place of people who created what was once one of the most distinctive Welsh communities that has ever existed.
