Scholarship is not the preserve of universities and academics alone. Given the opportunity, incentive and will, we all could add to human knowledge and understanding. W. Arvon Roberts exemplifies this possibility. Retired postman become historian and writer, for over 30 years he has researched the little known story of Welsh emigrants to the United States of America and of their descendants. His indexed archive of over 1,200 biographical notes on distinguished Welsh Americans now graces the National Library of Wales (NLW) at Aberystwyth.
From this pioneering collection W. Arvon Roberts has selected 150 biographies which he considers to be of wide interest – presidents, millionaires, Hollywood stars, architects, soldiers, gangsters. There are many, many surprises. Presidents and Vice Presidents of Welsh ancestry include John Adams, Jefferson Finis Davis (Confederate States of America), James Abram Garfield, William Henry Harrison, Hubert Horatio Humphrey (Vice‐President), Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, James Monroe, Richard Millhouse Nixon. Then there is Martha Washington, and near‐miss Hilary Rodham Clinton. Plus state governors galore and five signatories of the Declaration of Independence.
The diversity is dazzling. Daniel Boone of the coonskin hat; John Brown, whose body lies mouldering in the grave. Billy De‐Wolfe, David Llewelyn Wark Griffith Birth of a Nation, Gareth Hughes, Myrna Loy (Myrna Adele Williams) of Hollywood early days. Charles Evans Hughes (US Supreme Court). Llewelyn Morris Humphreys (the gangster “Morrie the Hump”); train robber Jessie Woodson James. Mormon missionary Captain Daniel Jones. The redoubtable John Llewelyn Lewis, miners' leader, and the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). Alamo defender William Irvine Lewis. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. Betsy Ross, legendary maker of the first US flag. Six times socialist Presidential candidate Norman Thomas. Poets Walter (Walt) Whitman and John Greenleaf Whittier. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Elihu Yale, philanthropist, patron of Yale University, whose names is linked in Welsh folk memory with Iâl, the area of Northeast Wales near Plas Gronw, Wrexham, his father's home.
This impressive, intriguing list whets one's appetite for sight of the whole biographical archive at NLW Aberystwyth. Shall we find there Edmund Gwenn of Good Companions fame? The benefactor of Los Angeles's greatest park? Prince Madoc, reputed discoverer of America, and progenitor of the Mandan Indians? The Breconshire missionaries to the Cherokee nation? NLW's website catalogues will reveal all this and more. From W. Arvon Roberts's 150‐name sample, the importance of the Quaker and Mormon emigrations from Wales is clear, as is the legacy of the settlements of South Wales colliers and iron workers, and of North Wales quarrymen, in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Modestly, W. Arvon Roberts describes his labour of love as “a synthesis of the scholarship of unaccounted [sic] writers, living and dead”. He appends a Selected Bibliography (pp. 207‐8) of his main sources. Individual essays vary considerably in length and detail, but are generally highly informative and reliable points de départ for further reading and research. The quality of the biographies is good, and the occasional infelicities and errors (e.g. in the blurb “Welsh emigrates”; “their eras”; “National Museum”, for Library) are pardonable in that they do not vitiate the overwhelmingly positive value of this enterprising raising of a historical curtain. A US senator once claimed that, in proportion of their numbers, no other nation had contributed more to the development of the United States than had the Welsh. This “taster” of W. Arvon Roberts's extensive archive suggests that that view might well be sustainable.
Engrossing reading, useful stock for school and higher education libraries – and a rich mine of ideas for budding authors and lecturers.
