The Welsh have had an impact upon Pennsylvania’s society and culture since the founding of the colony in 1681. Several waves of Welsh immigrants—gentry, farmers and, later, industrial workers—came to Pennsylvania and created several dense settlements in various sections of the Commonwealth. The Welsh were especially influential from 1682 to 1730 in shaping the political, economic and social development of the colony.

The Welsh are descendants of the ancient Britons. Their homeland, Wales (in Welsh, Cymru), is located in the southwestern part of the isle of Great Britain on a peninsula of around eight thousand square miles which thrusts westward from England into the Irish Sea. Originally a separate kingdom, Wales was united with England in 1536 through a parliamentary Act of Union.

Although Wales was one of the first western nations to be heavily industrialized, its population stayed relatively small. Thus, in comparison to the larger homelands of other American ethnic groups, like Germany, Italy, and Poland, which sent massive waves of immigrants to the United States, Wales could never be the source of so great a number. Nonetheless, in Pennsylvania, particularly in the early colonial period, the Welsh were an important and influential ethnic group.

From 1682 to 1700, the Welsh were the largest group immigrating to Pennsylvania. By 1700 they accounted for approximately one-third of the colony’s estimated population of twenty thousand. After 1700, Welsh immigration remained significant, yet slowly declined; it practically ceased after 1720, resuming in sizable numbers only in the early nineteenth century.