Migrant Culture Maintenance: The Welsh in Granville, Washington County, New York, 1880–1930

Abstract

Migrant Culture Maintenance:The Welsh in Granville, Washington County, New York, 1880–1930 Robert Llewellyn Tyler (bio) Any study of nineteenth-century emigration from Wales must first acknowledge that Welsh emigrants were relatively few in number. This was due not only to the small size of the Welsh population, which did not register as more than one million until the 1841 UK census, but also to the rate of emigration from Wales, which was significantly lower than that in either England, Scotland, or Ireland.1 Nevertheless, in recent years the Welsh in the United States have received increasing attention from historians and, quite understandably, these historians have focused on the areas that attracted the greatest concentrations of Welsh people, the mining and metallurgical districts of Pennsylvania and Ohio.2 Many settlements in New York also attracted significant numbers of Welsh migrants, and studies of such settlements can provide relevant insights into Welsh-American communities and the ways in which they changed.3 One such settlement [End Page 99] was Granville, Washington County, located in the famous New York/Vermont Slate Valley. Named for John Carteret, the second Earl Granville, the town was founded in 1780.4 The earliest European settlement in the area dates back to about 1770, although the first recorded town meeting took place in 1787. What was initially an overwhelmingly agricultural settlement was rapidly transformed by the discovery of slate in about 1850 and the opening of the first quarries in 1853. As an emerging slate producing center, Granville drew migrants from across the United States and from across the Atlantic Ocean. The Irish were present in numbers from 1860 onwards, with 428 listed as Irish-born in 1870, a figure that declined thereafter to 329 in 1880, 203 in 1910, one hundred in 1920, and a mere thirty-two in 1930. Besides the Irish, only migrants from Wales maintained a long-term presence. In 1910, when the Welsh community was at its zenith, at least as indicated by the census of that year, the total Welsh-born numbered 949. These first-generation migrants from Wales, when added to the 566 US-born children with both parents Welsh, totaled 1,515 individuals and made up 23.5 percent of the town's population.5 (The only other group to register more than one hundred foreign-born at any census were those from Hungary, who reached 143 in 1900.) Click for larger view View full resolution Table I. The Welsh in Granville, Washington County, New York *Born in USA with both parents born in Wales [End Page 100] The Welsh comprised a highly visible ethno-linguistic community in Granville during the early decades of the twentieth century, with one local describing the new arrivals as "the strangest people dressed in costumes and who spoke in a very strange language."6 This study attempts to quantify the extent to which an identifiable Welsh community was established and maintained during this period, the nature of that community, and the forces for change. In so doing, this article considers cultural and religious institutions, language, economic specialization, and levels of exogamy, and provides a micro-level analysis of a Welsh community as it existed in a particular area during a specific period of time. It is hoped that this consideration of the characteristics of the community and the factors governing its long-term viability provides information of interest regarding the history of Granville and the experiences of the Welsh who found themselves living and working in the town, and contributes in some small way to a greater understanding of New York's immigration experience in general.7 Several factors facilitated the establishment and maintenance of the Welsh community in Granville. A close perusal of the census returns for 1910, when the Welsh were at their most numerous in the town, clearly indicates ethnic clustering, with Pacific, Williams, and Lawrence Streets having large concentrations of Welsh people, and Irving Avenue almost entirely inhabited by Welsh migrants and their families.8 In addition, the predominance in the area of the slate industry saw Granville drawing Welsh people from a specific part of Wales, namely the slate quarrying...