George F. Nagle of Pennsylvania has carried out valuable research on naming practices in his state. He writes: "Although it is true that slaves in the south did sometimes adopt the surname of the slaveholders (or were assigned that name for tax or legal purposes), they almost never did so in the north.

Prior to the 1780's, northern slaves were almost always identified only by a given name. Beginning in the 1780's, as Pennsylvania began its long process of gradual emancipation, some slaves began to be identified with surnames as well as given names. I have collected data on more than 3,000 slaves in Pennsylvania, and have found only one instance where the surname of the slave matches the surname of the slaveholder." 

First of all, is it true that Welsh surnames are over-represented among African Americans or have some famous people with Welsh names simply distorted our view? 

Most agreed that Welsh names are unusually common within this community. I am not aware of any published research in this area but none of our correspondents disputed Mr. Evans' observation. In fact, I might add another Welsh name to his list. I wonder if many people are aware that the name "Floyd" has a Welsh origin.

This was originally a descriptive element in early Welsh names, in the form "Llwyd" meaning "grey" or sometimes "brown". Medieval scribes not of Welsh origin had trouble spelling this and it was often written as "Lloyd", or in an attempt to reproduce the singular "Ll" sound of Welsh as "Floyd".
 

Does the (albeit regional) high proportion of Welsh names necessarily mean that the Welsh were especially prominent as slave holders in early America? I think that this is unlikely. Several correspondents, while tracing their family history had been uncomfortably surprised by evidence that their Welsh ancestors had kept slaves but there are several reasons to suppose that the Welsh would have been under represented in the slave holding class.

Consider the some of the so-called "waves" of emigration from Wales. The first of these, the flight of Welsh Quakers in the late 17th century, consisted of people with a philosophy somewhat opposed to slavery. (Although Priscilla S. of Phoenix has drawn my attention to the fact that some prominent early Quaker immigrants were slaveholders and that it was only in the mid to late 1700s that Quaker leaders and ministers began to actively campaign against the evil of slavery)

The industrial emigrants in the 19th century came to America to exercise their skills as furnacemen and miners, they also would have been far removed from the slave owning economy. (In this connection see a note by Ivan Hild, The Welsh and Anthracite Coal Mining in America.)

Before 1840, Welsh emigration to America had been sporadic and limited. The Welsh squire was more likely to be attracted to the plantations of Ireland. "...why tear up one's roots and cross the Atlantic to wrest a home from the primeval forest when land-hunger could be appeased across the Irish Sea without the preliminary pioneering and without the pain of permanent exile from all that was dear and familiar?" (A. H. Dodds, writing in 1953).

That many Welsh families settled in Ireland but later (perhaps in times of famine) left for America is attested by the number of American visitors to the Data Wales website who ask why they have names denoting Welsh ancestry although family records indicate emigration from Ireland. (Names like Walsh and Vaughan come to mind). 
 

1900 was in fact the peak year for Welsh immigration into the United States, with 100,000 immigrants that year.  In 1900, Pennsylvania contained a third of all Welsh stock in the United States, with over one hundred thousand of Welsh blood. 

Ohio had nearly thirty-six thousand of Welsh stock, New York State over twenty thousand.  Wisconsin and Illinois had over ten thousand each in 1900, and Iowa nearly ten thousand.  According to census figures at 1900, several other States had between one thousand and six thousand of Welsh stock, from Wyoming with just over a thousand to Utah with 6174 Welsh-Americans at that date.

The following States had over five hundred Welsh, but less than a thousand: Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia, Maine, Rhode Island.  One writer contributed the following " ... in my studies of families through out the south it has become very evident that not just the Scots settled the southern states.  Even more so the Welsh.

Welsh surnames dominate any list of community names - Owens, Evans, Bowen, Jones, Thomas, Powell, Williams, the list is endless.  And not only are these names present in the white community, they are the dominant names in the African-American families. The names are the names of founders of communities, the old names, the names that first broke the soil with a plough in the Americas."

The figures mentioned above do not support this view that Welsh settlers were especially numerous in the southern states but the letter serves to remind us that in America names could be adopted in the same way as elsewhere in the world, that is through familiarity and a desire to maintain a connection with an area associated with the family home by using the name of a local notable or township.

In this context it might be useful to look at examples of Welsh place names in some of the southern states. Alabama has counties named Morgan and Montgomery.  The city of Montgomery has a population of over 200,000. 

There is a town called Prichard and villages called Cardiff, Jones, Rehoboth and Morris. Georgia has the counties of Evans, Montgomery, Jones, Floyd, Morgan, Thomas, Glynn and Jenkins. There are smaller towns and villages named Davisboro, Evans, Jenkinsburg, Jonesboro, Morris, Morgan, Morganton, Pembroke.  (Georgia had Governors Henry Ellis in 1756-60 and Myrick Davies 1781).

Louisiana has towns and villages called Evans, Jones, Jonesboro, Jonesville , Floyd (see the derivation of this, above), Glynn, Morgan City and Montgomery. One correspondent had quizzed several African American friends about their names.

This group, in the main, did not think that their ancestors had adopted the names of slave holders. They might well have adopted place name surnames from some of the locations above. 

It is also worth bearing in mind that the Welsh were often noted for their anti-slavery stance. The Oshkosh Centennial Report of 1947, for example, "was particularly proud of the record of Oshkosh Welsh in what it calls 'the War against slavery'. 

By 1860, Oshkosh had a Welsh population of 800, of whom 52 went to fight for the North, nineteen of them losing their lives in battle." (Elwyn T. Ashton - The Welsh in the United States, 1984). Ashton also mentions: "Another famous Morris in Wyoming history ... Mrs  Esther Morris, reputedly of Welsh stock.

She was one of  the earliest pioneer women in the area, and had originally  come from Illinois ...  She came to live ... at South Pass, then a gold mining town.  She  became the first woman Justice of the Peace in the area, a  lively mining district, which kept her busy on the Bench, dealing mainly with bar room brawls.  This she did for many  years, but also spent much time in the Anti Slavery  movement.  She lived on to the age of ninety."  

It is well known that 19th. century Welsh communities in America were often led by preachers of the non-conformist tradition. One writer, commenting on the website notes about emigration from Wales said "In your mention of migrations,  you should add the migration to Wales, Genesee, Waukesha County, Wisconsin in the mid-1840's.

There were several hundred families that followed a preacher from the Teifi Valley  (Pontrhydfendigaid)  to Wisconsin.  I believe the preacher was called King Jones, and he purchased about 5000 acres in Wisconsin that formed the basis of the migration. These people formed the nucleus of most of the Welsh found today  in Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and Minnesota." 

This is just one example of a trend among the later Welsh immigrants. There are so many examples of parties being led to America by non-conformist ministers that it would be tedious to attempt to list them. It might be instructive to consider the impact these ministers made on religious life in America, however. Ashton has this to say on the subject: "An Association of Baptist churches had been established by 1706, with headquarters in Philadelphia 

In 1756 this association set up the Baptist Hopewell Academy in New Jersey.  By the end of the century the Separate Baptists had expanded vigorously throughout Virginia and both the Carolinas.  The reactions of the older 'Regular' Baptists, mainly of Welsh stock, to this new influx were somewhat mixed. 

But it was a Welshman, David Thomas, who set out on an evangelist mission that consolidated the Baptist Church in the South.  They became the strongest denomination in an area which had been mainly Anglican (D. Benedict, History of the Baptist Denomination, 1850). 

Another Welshman, Lewis Richards, was typical of the new religious enthusiasm that came with the Great Awakening.  He had originally gone to Georgia as a Baptist minister, but became well-known as an 'enthusiastic' preacher throughout the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland, also keeping constantly in touch with his religious friends and mentors in Wales. ... by 1840 there were 117 Baptist churches in the U.S.A." 

"The Congregationalists were more numerous than the Baptists, with over 228 churches at the end of the century, including churches in New York, and at Utica and Steuben in New York State, the famous church at Paddy's Run in Ohio, as well as Radnor Church, also in Ohio. The Calvinistic-Methodists (Welsh Presbyterians) were even a little more numerous than the Congregationalists, with 236 churches. 

Their earliest church had been Pencaerau at Remsen, New York (1824) with another in New York City itself shortly after (1 826); Remsen soon had another Welsh church, Penygraig (1827), and a third, Capel Ceryg, in 1831. 

Other early churches of this denomination were in Pennsylvania (four before 1834), Utica, New York, and Cincinnati, Ohio.  By 1832, John Lewis was informing his nephew that Utica was a large and fine town, "It has 8000 inhabitants, including many Welshmen, and more than forty Welsh preachers.  Many Welsh are coming over continually." 

The period 1800 to 1820 saw the Methodists breaking from the established Anglican church and this signaled the massive growth of non-conformity in Wales. From 1820 to 1900 large numbers of chapels sprung up in all areas and if we consider the Welsh experience we can imagine parallels in the African American community.

The Welsh had become disconnected from the established churches where the clergy were often Englishmen. They sought to meet to hear the word of God "addressed directly to them in their own language, often without official clergymen".

The Church of England had long been associated with the tyranny of the English crown and in the 19th century its support in Wales melted away.  Just like the Welsh, black Americans were more comfortable with preachers who shared their background and in churches which were not party to old notions of "class" and social division.

Just like the Welsh, black Americans had suffered years of oppression and exploitation before they were able to set up their own institutions and I believe that these common experiences led (in some hitherto unexplained fashion) to the sharing of names by the two communities. 

In around 1777 the slave Richard Allen experienced a religious conversion through meeting itinerant Methodists in Delaware. After obtaining his freedom he joined another recently released slave, Absalom Jones and together they founded the Free African Society of Philadelphia.

Both men also founded churches, realising that black Americans emerging from slavery required independent black churches. Absalom Jones became an important black leader and was lauded in his lifetime. His portrait appears in the excellent "History of the African American People" (Edited by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Salamander Books, London 1995).

Jones himself may well have taken the name of a Welsh slave holder or preacher and I think it more than likely that many later African Americans took their names out of respect for their early religious leaders. 

Much remains to be discussed and clarified. The Welsh certainly shared in the shame of slavery but I hope that I have shown that it is unlikely that the widespread use of their names indicates a high level of involvement in the abominable practice.