Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

SHORT NOTICES The Rev. Robert David Thomas, 'Iorthyn Gwynedd' (1817-88), was an Independent minister, originally from Llanrwst, who migrated to the United States in 1851 and served as minister for various Independent churches in New York state, Tennessee, and Ohio. He became a passionate advocate of Welsh emigration across the Atlantic, notably in his guide, Yr Ymfudwr (1854), which sold over 3,000 copies. He also wrote a Welsh-language volume, Hanes Cymry America: a History of the Welsh in America, originally published in Utica, New York, in 1872. It has now been admirably translated by Phillips G. Davies of Iowa State University (pp. xxi, 517, price$19.75 paperback, available from the University Press of America Inc., 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland, 20706, USA). The main interest of this extraordinary compendium lies in Thomas's detailed listing of the Welsh communities in over twenty American states where Welsh emigrants had settled in large numbers. There is, naturally, a heavy emphasis on Welsh chapels and their ministers, along with sketches of musicians, writers and literary celebrities. On matters of fact, Thomas is an unreliable guide. His estimate of there being 115,000 Welsh-born Americans in 1870 is clearly too high; Rowland T. Berthoff's standard work on British emigration gives a figure of 74,533 for that year. The figures on the extent of the Welsh language are mostly guesswork. The massive immigration from southern and eastern Europe from the 1880s onwards was shortly to swamp older ethnic communities like the Welsh-Americans. For all that, the distinctive impact of Welsh migrants, especially as farmers or miners in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, is well established. Particular settlements like Ebensburg, Pa., and Paddy's Run, Ohio, have already been studied in depth in the WELSH HISTORY REVIEW. Students of Welsh history and genealogy will, therefore, find instruction and entertainment in this new translation. K.O.M. A valuable production for the University of Wales Press, in its latest set of microfiches, is a Concordance to the Black Book of Carmarthen, by Jeremy Boreham and Morfydd Owen. The set includes three 48 x reduction silver-halide COM fiches, plus an enclosed booklet by Morfydd Owen. It is priced at £ 3.00 (plus VAT in United Kingdom). Another attractive issue of Ceredigion, Cyf. LX, rhif. 3 (1982), published in 1983, features an article by W. Gareth Evans on the impact of the 1881 Aberdare