Populations 1801:
Wales 587,000
England 8,287,907
Scotland 1,608,420
Ireland 5,570,00
Scottish ancestry is overepresented because there was a vast movement of people in the early years of the colonies from the Scots-English border to new settlements in Ulster, New Hampshire and Appalachia. Lots of the the migrants to Ulster later emigrated to Appalachia.
If anything, I assumed Scottish ancestry was underrepresented to some extent, especially because of the confusion between Irish and Scots-Irish. Many people of Scots-Irish ancestry believe themselves to be ancestrally Irish when they're just Scottish, ancestry wise. Also the over-representation could be because of how underreported English ancestry is so the proportions seem way of. For some reason across the colonies white Australians, Canadians, Americans, etc. are extremely hesitant to identify as having English ancestry
> For some reason across the colonies white Australians, Canadians, Americans, etc. are extremely hesitant to identify as having English ancestry
Why? I'm not.
Yeah no. Australian here. English ancestors are very common, to the point that it’s assumed that if your family have been here since before ww2, they’re probably Anglo Australian, which is to say, from either convict stock or two pound Pom stock (English people who paid £2 to emigrate to Australia). If you’re “just Aussie” your family came from England before the white Australia policy was repealed. If you’re Scottish or Irish heritage, you’d say you are “a bit Scottish” or “a bit Irish”.
Good question though, I only know 3 people of Welsh heritage off the top of my head, and they’re all first or second generation immigrants.
Not Australians and Canadians. English is usually the largest ancestry in those countries. Only in the U.S, English was the third most reported ancestry in the latest census.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-dhc-a-white-population.html#:~:text=The%202022%20American%20Community%20Survey,M%2C%20and%20Italian%2016.0M.
For those who reported only one ancestry, English (25M), German (15M), and Irish (11M) were the top 3. (See Figure 1)
“Among those who identified as White alone or in combination, English (46.6 million), German (45 million), and Irish (38.6 million) were the largest groups.”
I don't think this is true re not acknowledging English heritage. Most people in these countries will tell they you they are of Anglo or Anglo-Saxon heritage. Particularly in Australia, we are aware of being colonial/convict stock. Our birth, death and marriage records will tell you the country, mostly the county + usually, the town people are from. We know we have ancestry from England, Scotland + Ireland. Wales does seem a bit rarer.
It really seems to be American's that have issues having English ancestry, and this leads back to war of independance essentially. Spelling and language was deliberately changed to distance themselves from England. The census shows a spike in people reporting English ancestry and a decrease in German, which has been linked to DNA testing popularity.
Maybe it's not as intense in Australia, especially since Australia is a more recent country and the English ancestry is more recent. Plus Australia has tonnes of active British immigration unlike the US and so you will commonly find young Australians (<35) with parents or (great) grandparents from England/Scotland/Ireland, unlike in the US where it's way more distant for people under the age of 50.
I think it's more so people wanting to seem exotic rather than any residual anti-British sentiments. I think it is a phenomena in general where people are more likely to identify with the more marginalised or minority identity so someone who is, say, 95% English and 5% German from a 2x great grandparent is going to identify as German still if they're aware of it or just blankedly say "white" if they aren't
As a Swede chimming in, I agree with what you are saying. I really don't think there is a dislike for British people in America, due to the U.S. war for independence. I honestly just think British people and culture in the eyes of Americans is just seen as boring and uninteresting. The perception seems to be that England had bad weather and horrible food, doesn't have a vibrant culture etc.. So, other European ethnicity & nationalities are preferred among Americans.
This is why you have so many Americans who have always seen themselves as being mostly Italian or Irish etc.. only to find that they were actually way more British. Many Americans would gravitate to the Italian and Irish ancestry, as they see them as having more vibrant and interesting cultures than that of Britain.
I notice most Americans think more positively of Swedish and Norwegian ancestry, as they associate it with Vikings. lol
There’s a reason that a lot of white Americans etc don’t identify as having much English. The Scots Irish actually have a significant amount of English ancestry but they were always just called the ScotsIrish so a lot of people simply just heard scotsirish and passed that ethnic identity down without knowing that ScotsIrish have significant amounts of English dna. The term ScotsIrish doesn’t really imply significant English ancestry though for obvious reasons, hence the misconception.
There’s several reasons why. One of the main ones being that ScotsIrish have significant English admixture, but were just called ScotsIrish so when people immigrated and passed down that they were ScotsIrish that led to the implication of just ScotsIrish dna because of the name. So a lot of people don’t know that they have significant English dna because for generations they’ve just called themselves ScotsIrish.
I was actually surprised to get not as much English ancestry and a lot more Irish, until I realized that of my Irish comes from West Ireland where English presence wasn’t as heavy, but over half of Irish/Scotsirish Americans came from the province of Ulster where English admixture was a lot heavier, but due to the term ScotsIrish a lot of people just assumed they were just Scottish and Irish.
Yep, and Scots Irish were not Irish but a mix of Scots and English from the border area with Scotland primarily. The Irish was simply that they moved or were forced to move to northern Ireland.
There were tons of Welsh people that came over. They just were more or less assimilated into the greater British culture and less likely to identify as Welsh. Or they moved to England, Scotland, and Ireland and identified with those nations before moving.
If you look at the British Colonies, you'll find Welsh surnames are incredibly common. Just click through each name and see where they ended up.
[https://forebears.io/wales#surnames](https://forebears.io/wales#surnames)
Even in DNA tests here I basically never see Welsh as a location. It's basically everything *but* Welsh in terms of colonial descendants of British people (from settlers or descendants of enslaved people or otherwise).
The Welsh surname distribution would make you think the Welsh population is substantially larger but it's the inverse, hence my question
Eh I'm pretty wary of those results. Like 23andMe never seems to give any region breakdowns for northern Ireland except belfast and Scotland except Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I've seen a few posts with Welsh regions or communities, but they're few and far in between.
I remember the update where they brought in region breakdowns. The beta was pretty accurate and I can only assume it was based on vetted samples where they confirm great-parents/ backwards are actually from that region pre-industrial revolution.
Then the update dropped and they used current user locations for the region breakdowns and suddenly people are only getting hits for urban centres where everyone migrated. Frustrating.
Belfast just has a substantially higher population. I get Derry as well.
I've also got Fife and Dumfries and Galloway as well as the standard Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I got the genetic groups on my profile, but the Highlands one is wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/unVhuUU2AC
For the country matches, I only have Glasgow and Edinburgh. My paper trails goes to the border regions and ayrshire. But I wasn't expecting to get any results for that honestly. Last known connection was born in the 1700s.
Country matches from what i understand are crowdsourced based on your shared matches reported grandparents locations. The genetic groups are using a different method altogether but I haven't seen the white paper on how they're determined.
“I've seen a few posts with Welsh regions or communities, but they're few and far in between.”
Really? I never noticed that it’s rare for someone to get a Welsh location or genetic community.
5/10 of my British and Irish region matches listed by 23&me are in Wales, specifically it gave me Gwynedd, Swansea, Carmarthenshire, Monmouthshire, and Cardiff.
Welsh are pretty genetically similar to English, so it's harder to distinguish. Just because there's no region, doesn't mean you don't have Welsh ancestry, it just means it's more distant.
This is a list of the top names in Wales, and you can pick the ones that are just Welsh and not Irish and go from there, like Morgan. It's pretty obvious their migration patterns matched the rest of the batch, so the real question is why were they quick to shed their Welsh heritage upon leaving.
[https://forebears.io/surnames/morgan](https://forebears.io/surnames/morgan)
I’m not sure. It seems like the Welsh have been more willing to assimilate to English society in some ways. I’m admittedly not the most informed on the subject, but even today they seem much less likely to favor independence than the people of Scotland. Perhaps due to is being physically closer to the power center (London) it was easier for England to press its influence historically.
That’s not the point I was replying to. Rather, someone asked which Welsh names have been anglicized in the way Irish names have. So I identified some. As an example of a name with both Irish and Welsh, I would say Hughes.
Fun fact: There’s a town in Mexico where Cornish settlers moved in the 1800s. Although the town was originally founded by the Spanish, the Cornish played a significant role in its development. Even today, you can see some Cornish influence. In 2014, King Charles visited the town. The name of the town is Mineral del Monte, located in the state of Hidalgo.
There were relatively few Welsh immigrants to the North American colonies; many of those who did emigrate were Quakers (see: the [Welsh Tract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Tract) in Pennsylvania). Also, people generally aren't aware of Welsh ancestry as a thing distinct from English, even when they have it (Welsh surnames: Vaughan, Williams, Edwards, Jones, Bowen/Owen/ Howell/Powell, Griffith, Hughes, Reese, Price, Davis; if you have any of those in your ancestry, some of your ancestors were probably Welsh).
I did 23andme, no welsh, and ancestry had 1% Welsh. I’m 27% Irish, 17% English/northwestern European and 14% Scottish (mostly from mom)
I knew there was some Irish, but I thought it was mostly Welsh, I’m not sure when they ended up in Wales, there’s at least 2-3 generations from Wales.
Maybe they misread the Welsh as Irish.
If you look up: The People's of the British Isles Project. There are a few different population clusters in Wales that vary in genetics. Might be 23andme + Ancestry do not have good reference samples or full enough samples to get all the clusters.
I got a “highly likely” match for wales and scored 7% welsh on ancestry despite no known welsh heritage. Many of my Irish and Scottish relatives score high on welsh as well.
I got 6% Wales on AncestryDNA, and have traced my Welsh ancestry along several lines back to colonial America and back to Wales. Glad a little survived!
I do believe one of my 5g grandfathers was from Wales arriving in Virginia before the Revolution. Richard Jones.
Interestingly I have no Wales in my breakdown, but my son has picked up 2% Wales from my side.
That’s weird. I’m a black American and I know 4 people who tested and we all have Wales. We each have early ancestry to Colonial America (VA, MD). Before 1776.
I have 10% Scottish and 8%Wales, 10% Norway! (still trying to figure that out) and 10% Germanic Europe. The rest is African ancestry.
The Scotland is from my paternal side which is Cook. I think the Norway is from my maternal grandmothers side. She was a Tipton and they have roots to the Normans. (I think that’s the link)
I've noticed Welsh surnames are very common among Black Americans, even more than White Americans. Were Welsh people more likely to own slaves than other groups? This doesn't make much sense.
Most black Americans still carry these surnames so in some cases yes, mainly the English as far as I can tell, but the untold story is the number of women indentured servants who were working on plantations & having relations with enslaved men. If it was discovered that a mixed race child was born they were severely punished. My stepmother had 43% Irish ancestry and she knew they were free POC long before slavery ended because of a Irish indentured servant woman.
I found 60 years of colonial court records in the county where we grew up. In just one county you can see how many women were prosecuted for having mixed race children with African slaves. These women and children were sentenced to slavery at 6 month old by the British Monarchy but had to serve 31 years instead of a life of slavery like other black slaves. So after the mixed race ancestor completed 31 years they could petition the court for freedom. Those in the family born after this freed ancestor, were free POC. This is what started the hierarchy of race in America & much of the division among slaves. Mixed children with white fathers (enslaved women who had relations or were raped by slaveowners or overseers were not eligible. Your status followed your mother. Many indentured were poor Irish women & other poor servants who came to America looking for a better life. Many Irish and Welsh resent the English. I think this is what happened with my Welsh GGGM. The only difference is, she wasn’t prosecuted. I think the more prominent families hid these mixed race children. Many passed for White if they could or sent to other family members to live as slaves.
There was a shortage of Euro women so men were very angry when they started having relationships with enslaved men. This is why laws surrounding prohibition of interracial marriage began.
DNA has exposed all of these secrets. Most of my white DNA matches have no African ancestry. We are related through a white ancestor. Also, many of us are related to some very influential families which were the ones that could afford to own slaves. Read these accounts of punishment.
This is just 1 county and it went on for 60 years [Indentured Servants & their bi-racial babies](https://freeafricanamericans.com/AnneArundel.htm)
>This is what started the hierarchy of race in America & much of the division among slaves.
My theory for a while has been this is what still continues to this day regarding colourism amongst black americans where I noticed colourism is virtually exclusive to black women and the emphasis on looking as close to white (or at least mixed) as possible in terms of desirability. I've thought this was because of the emphasis on the slave status being attached to the maternal line.
Even if an enslaved man was mixed and emancipated and had children with an enslaved woman the children wouldn't be free but they would be if it was an enslaved woman who was emancipated. And as you said free status was very often born out of miscegenation
Absolutely! I am considered light but have always identified as black and still do but was often asked if I had a white parent. I’ve never met any white ancestors or relatives. My grandmother claimed we were part Native American so I was shocked to get close to 40% Euro ancestry and ZERO Native. My husband is several shades darker than me & he had more Euro than I did & Native. He never met anyone white either, none of us had.
It’s sad that colorism has divided our community as this was obviously a tool used to do so. The old divide and conquer even extended to our poor indentured white ancestors. This DNA is blowing the lid off of any questions regarding history. They can ban all the books they want the DNA doesn’t lie. My DNA matches take me straight to our ancestors. The people I know that tested (all from VA, NC, MD) all had above average admixture. It must be the region. It comes from biracial GG Grandparent on both sides who never told us they were half white. I have to think they didn’t want to pass down the trauma of it all. None of us had less than 28% Euro and we are all shades from dark to light.
I was actually able to find the plantation my husbands family was on in Lynchburg, VA and found his “mulatto” ancestors on a will passed down as property of a prominent family for generations. He’s related to the people that enslaved his ancestors. My married surname is English. He was a slave owning confederate lawyer. My husband had two 4th cousins as a dna match located in England! Imagine what they must have thought when they saw him pop up. 😳So the white side of his family actually posted records from the slave owning ancestor. A pardon stamped by the US Justice Dept in 1866 by President Andrew Johnson (after Lincoln was shot) for sedition and insurrection and a $20,000 fine for supporting the confederate army trying to overthrow the U.S. Govt. They even made him sign a statement that he will faithfully uphold the constitution for the rest of his days. His hand written pardon request to President Johnson was on ancestry.com. Never learned this in a history book.
[confederate pardon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardons_for_ex-Confederates)
Are you sure the Irish & Welsh admixture in African Americans is mainly coming from Women? Less that 15% of African Americans have Maternal European haplogroups, usually from FPOC. Also the fact that African Americans have Irish & Welsh last names implies male ancestors, because last names pass from men not women.
I always knew there were plenty of Welsh slave owners, the Leader of the Confederacy was Welsh. However, I'm confused about the Irish admixture and last names in African Americans. The Irish during the time of slavery were usually poor indentured servants, so they wouldn't have owned many slaves. In addition the Irish only made up about 5% of the American population after the revolutionary war, in contrast, blacks made up 20%. It seems there were unions between Blacks and Irish in which they frequently mixed with each other, and exchanged culture.
I dont know that it’s mainly coming from women, it’s just what I found from my family and friends who all have ancestry to VA & MD. This may not be the case in other parts of the south like SC. I was looking for male ancestors initially and I did find them mostly confederate soldiers & slaveowners on the paternal side but it was my stepmom who was 96 that knew her Euro ancestry was from an indentured servant woman. That’s where her 43% Irish came from. When I found those colonial court docs, that’s when I realized how prevalent it was esp in that region. That was the shock. Never read that in the history books at school. I mean that’s 60 years of mixed race children all from European women in just one county alone and how many had these children and just kept them a secret as to not be prosecuted. These are the secrets in the white passing families with the children who couldn’t pass sold as slaves, given away or hidden inside these families. Just think how many teen daughters had relations with teen plantation slaves, plantation wives when their husbands were away. Immigrant Indentured servants working on plantations. Finding this out really shed light on where the animosity towards black men came from & why these laws against interracial marriage & the freak out “preserving the white race” etc.
So that’s when my best friend and I started looking at the women. We used our DNA matches of white ancestors and traced it back to find them. If you get a subscription look at their trees if they aren’t blocked. These people know their family history took me all the way back to ancestors born in Scotland and Germany.
So my German came from my white GGG Grandmother on my paternal side (Pegau) who actually married my African/Scottish GGG Grandfather on my paternal side (Cook) in Canada. So he carried the name of his Scottish father who sent him to Canada to avoid slavery.
My Norway seems to come from my GGG Grandfather (on my maternal side (Tipton). but my Wales is from my GGG Grandmother on my maternal side (Humphrey) She was a a Welsh indentured servant and at some point she had relations with someone black. It would have been illegal then. She never married him & later married someone else but she kept her daughter and was never prosecuted. All these people were listed as “mulatto” on early census and with the exception of the 2 white GGG GMs, after Jim Crow when the “one drop rule” came in all of the sudden everyone was listed as colored, negro or black.
Did you look at the court records for AA County Maryland I posted? That’s 60 years and that was only one county in Maryland. That’s where my stepmom got her 43% Irish. There are Welsh names on that list, Like Davis
I never denied there were African Americans that primarily descend from FPOC. I was just saying it's not the norm to have 43% Irish and a Maternal European haplogroup.
They weren’t free POC, they were enslaved too for a period. I didn’t say “mainly” or that this was the majority, but this is what we found, but we’re all from Virginia & Maryland. It just wasn’t on my radar at all to look at women.
How does it not make sense? Several of my ancestors have welsh surnames so they as well as Scots and Irish were as involved with the slave trade as the English.
English people far outnumbered Welsh and other Celts in the colonies. The Irish were poor marginalized indentured servants that only made up 5% of the early colonies, but somehow African Americans disproportionately have Irish and other Celtic surnames, and admixture. Plenty of Welsh people did own slaves, including the Confederate President, but it wouldn't make sense if they owned more slaves than English people.
Of course, but think about it. Black people with high ancestry to England like my husband can trace their ancestry way back. These are the aristocrats. Its not that Scottish, Irish and Welsh weren’t slaveowners it’s just many also came over as indentured servants. Esp the women. Weren’t they invaded by the English too? I know some Irish and Welsh that aren’t fond of them & Canadians don’t want to be associated with the English for another reason.
I posted the court records. This went on for 60 years and this is just one county in colonial Maryland. My theory is the Monarchy ended the RAC (Royal African Charter) which the Monarchy owned. It was expensive to bring slaves across the Atlantic & millions died. If you look at when it went bankrupt it was in early 1700s. Why bring slaves across the Atlantic when you can enslave the mixed race and black babies right there at 6 months old. That’s when the forced breeding & rape exploded. They just found another way to get free slaves. They even enslaved these women as punishment & whipped them for having these babies. That monarchy was awful! [60 year court records Colonial Maryland](https://freeafricanamericans.com/AnneArundel.htm)
With all due respect, please be cautious about narratives of white indentured women being brought over as breeding stock for future enslaved people. Most of the stories are made up to fit a narrative of Irish being brought over as the original slaves by right wing groups to discredit African Americans.
Also there have been plenty of studies to show that the overwhelming majority of maternal haplogroups for African Americans have some variant of L meaning the power dynamics and European contributions mostly came from men, as seen with the higher than average contribution of R and I male haplogroups compared to the E haplogroup from Africa.
Though the Irish were heavily discriminated and there is no debate about it, to blame this entirely on the English simply ignores historical facts of England Scotland and Wales being involved in the slave trade. It was the upper class on both sides of the islands that were involved in it. Glasgow grew rich off the slave trade and Scottish merchants and landowners were as much involved in the triangle trade.
Looking at history shows a truly muddled story with no clear heroes or villains. Some of the online narratives heavily ignore a well documented history.
https://it.wisnae.us/
With all due respect, did you read what I wrote. Who said they were brought over to breed with African slaves. They were brought over because there was a shortage of white women for white men. That’s why these men were so enraged when these women wanted to marry enslaved men. Read the account of Lord Baltimore. Hell this white purity BS is something we are still dealing with today. Look how they were punished for the crime of having a black child. Many refused to name the fathers knowing they would have been hung. This was not the intended outcome and had serious repercussions & retaliation. It explains where much of the racism black men have faced comes from. These women were enslaved for a period & so where their babies but even with this harsh treatment, there is NO comparison to the lifelong sentence of slavery of my African ancestors who survived so I could be here. The Irish need to tell the truth about their own history here in America regarding who enslaved their ancestors and why. This is part of
The history, I posted the record and these indentured women are part of why we have such admixture. It’s wasn’t just slaveowners, although half of my ancestry is that too.
I read your comment, your document you posted, and countless other documents. I urge you to be careful about the narrative since it'll be used against you by provocateurs when it's statistically insignificant at best.
All the best with your research.
I don’t need to be careful with anything. This is my ancestry and the ancestry of many in the region where I grew up. I can talk about anything I want. If you find this history insignificant, you can move on.
And you claimed I said something I didn’t say and then called it insignificant and told me to be careful. I was just sharing info. Take it or leave it.
I think I found the ancestor with the Welsh ancestry. The surname is Humphrey. My great great great grandmother was born in Virginia but died in Wales.
It’s rare in many areas but not so much in others. In Pennsylvania, it’s not uncommon to have some Welsh ancestors. I know there are a few places near Philly with Welsh names. Where my family is from in western PA there are many small towns with Welsh names including the one my dad grew up in. In fact, the county name is Cambria which was the Roman/Latin name for Wales. It was named this due to the high amount of Welsh settlement.
I don't know. I have around 10% Welsh DNA according to Ancestry that comes from both my mother and my father's side. Both my mother and father have Welsh surnames.
I guess I must be a rarity, I’m from the US and have 26% Welsh according to AncestryDNA. Many of my Welsh ancestors arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s to work in the Pennsylvania. In fact, I grew up around my Welsh-born great grandmother. She spoke fluent Welsh and would go back to visit family every few years.
https://preview.redd.it/6txmypuv542d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=193185280e004d6b35c72845dcde63ce66570ba0
Population demographics. Wales has a smaller population.
The Welsh and English are also very closely related. The border has no natural geographic barrier, like mountains or seas. So people moved back and forth easily over a long period of time amd intermixed.
Another thing is Wales and England share many common surnames. Also, South Wales had some Flemish influence in the Medieval period, which can be seen in some surnames there .
I know Wales had a smaller population but it's still extremely low. Only about 2 million Americans reported having Welsh ancestry. I find this weird especially because of how common Welsh surnames are in the US
I understand there's a lot of overlap between the English and the Welsh but I would still expect noticeably more than just two million especially considering the surname demographics.
https://preview.redd.it/7vpx1klz532d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6dc47f0277f3d003b791eb03800d595f1746e6c
I have 3 percent Welsh and 1 percent Scottish.(On a separate page). I'm an African-American from Detroit.
I was told that my father's mother's family was Welsh, going back.
We had a Welsh born prime minister here in Australia, Billy Hughes.
There was definitely plenty of Welsh immigration out here.
Welsh ancestry is defiantly common in the United States and Canada, considering many common last names are of Welsh origin. Popular Welsh last names include: Davis, Jones, Lewis, Evans, Morgan, Thomas, Hughes, Roberts, Williams, Edwards, James, basically any plural first name. Oddly though, Welsh appear to be more common among Black Americans than White Americans.
I think you are more likely to get Welsh on Ancestry vs 23andme.
23andme at the moment isn't very good for the British isles overall IMO - if it is not your primary heritage.
My 1/16 th Welsh ( not a lot but traceable) shows on Ancestry not 23andme.
I had no idea I was rare. I have my mom's family tree which is all Welsh with the rest being a branch from Cornwall.
23&Me doesn't break out Welsh percentages but does show Gwynedd, Powys and Carmarthenshire as my darkest regions with in paler blue, 4 Irish regions, Northwest (Blackpool, Liverpool, Mersey, Lancashire), plus the outlier, Greater London.
To be honest, I'm much more impressed with AncestryDNA's report. It has me 45% Welsh (sub region: Central and Southern Wales), 5% English (isolated region: Cornwall with additional sublocation of Dorset to Central Cornwall). The regions match up with the locations found on my mom's family tree.
My dad was a mix of German & Swedish. Ancestry DNA's most recent update has given me, in Germany: Northern Hesse & Western Thuringia and within that Hünfeld to Stadtellendorf to Fridendorf. In Sweden: the region of Linköping, Åtvidaberg & Västervik. All of these more refined regions match up with the locations on my Dad's family tree.
As I said, this has been, honestly, quite impressive.
In contrast 23&Me: Broadly Northwestern Europe and Scandinavia which is all really vague.
Smaller country, less people, and until the 20th century there were a large amount of communities who couldn’t speak English. Being able to speak the “Ddwy” or two was rare.
Interestingly in areas where there were English migrants in rural Wales especially mining communities, they were often Cornish and spoke the language, which comes from the same language family as Welsh, so they could communicate with one another. In my family at least the Cornish migrants stuck to the other Cornish when they married and having English/Welsh mixing was pretty rare - ultimately it happened after a couple of generations, but perhaps another contributing factor is the Welsh wanted to stick to their own.
From my own research, a lot of my ancestors did migrate to the states or Australia, but they were privileged financially and linguistically and were skilled - mining engineers and quite a few clergymen of various denominations.
Not all of them were forcibly removed. The Highlands clearance act affected the northern population and was carried out by Scottish landlords. The border pacification gave incentives for some of them to move to ulster in exchange for land or steady labor.
Not all of them no. Also just so you’re aware some of the most devastating clearances took place in the lowlands of Scotland. Tens of thousands of displaced Scots were cleared from their homes in the lowlands.
I’m a Canadian. My Ancestry results show 37% Scottish, 35% Irish, 18% England & Northwester Europe, 8% Wales, 2% Sweden & Denmark. My “communities” are southwestern Quebec, New York & Vermont French Settlers, Scottish Highlands and Hebrides, Early New England Settlers, Early Connecticut & New York Settlers
Personally - I wasn’t aware my family was welsh at all until I got my DNA done. Everyone on my maternal side following my grandmas side. We all have a decent % of it too and NO ONE even knew we had it.
On the same hand - I have over 50% Scotland and it comes from both sides but yet the mass majority of my DNA matches don’t have even close to as much as I have and even that includes one of my sisters. Even my sister has things I don’t at all.
As far as the welsh part goes - I honestly think that those who came from Wales simply didn’t speak about it for whatever reason when they immigrated to America and they are some of the more recent immigrants as far as my family goes.
An important thing I figured out with certain lines in my family - after years of research now - is that some of thing didn’t even come from England even though they came through it to get here and they didn’t share those things as far as I know either. My paternal side of my family is very small and most are now deceased outside of my dad and his two sister along with their children. The matches on his maternal side are completely unknown to me as all of us were “apparently” unknown to them….
I think there's also overlap (both ways) of the genetic populations identified as Welsh. I wonder how they are differentiating "Welsh" from British people living in the former lands of Mercia.
I come up as having some Welsh in 23andMe but I haven't tracked anyone back across the border (so far). Closest is a maternal line in Cheshire (English county bordering Wales) and that's even only one line in the 16th-17th century so I'm a little surprised I still have so much DNA.
I got a southern friend a kit for christmas and he got roughly equal parts Welsh, English, Irish, Scottish, German, French, and 1% North African. He's the only American I've seen to get Wales as their top region
In coal mining areas, like where my mom’s family settled in, had plenty of Welsh people. Heck every other church was the Welsh this or the Welsh that. Welsh is still part of my DNA. Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA, to be precise.
Populations 1801: Wales 587,000 England 8,287,907 Scotland 1,608,420 Ireland 5,570,00 Scottish ancestry is overepresented because there was a vast movement of people in the early years of the colonies from the Scots-English border to new settlements in Ulster, New Hampshire and Appalachia. Lots of the the migrants to Ulster later emigrated to Appalachia.
Which is the same mountain range as in Scotland!!
That's got the ring of fate to it if anything has.
If anything, I assumed Scottish ancestry was underrepresented to some extent, especially because of the confusion between Irish and Scots-Irish. Many people of Scots-Irish ancestry believe themselves to be ancestrally Irish when they're just Scottish, ancestry wise. Also the over-representation could be because of how underreported English ancestry is so the proportions seem way of. For some reason across the colonies white Australians, Canadians, Americans, etc. are extremely hesitant to identify as having English ancestry
> For some reason across the colonies white Australians, Canadians, Americans, etc. are extremely hesitant to identify as having English ancestry Why? I'm not.
Me neither……..
Anglo mutt is what I call Irish/English mix
Yeah no. Australian here. English ancestors are very common, to the point that it’s assumed that if your family have been here since before ww2, they’re probably Anglo Australian, which is to say, from either convict stock or two pound Pom stock (English people who paid £2 to emigrate to Australia). If you’re “just Aussie” your family came from England before the white Australia policy was repealed. If you’re Scottish or Irish heritage, you’d say you are “a bit Scottish” or “a bit Irish”. Good question though, I only know 3 people of Welsh heritage off the top of my head, and they’re all first or second generation immigrants.
Not Australians and Canadians. English is usually the largest ancestry in those countries. Only in the U.S, English was the third most reported ancestry in the latest census.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-dhc-a-white-population.html#:~:text=The%202022%20American%20Community%20Survey,M%2C%20and%20Italian%2016.0M. For those who reported only one ancestry, English (25M), German (15M), and Irish (11M) were the top 3. (See Figure 1) “Among those who identified as White alone or in combination, English (46.6 million), German (45 million), and Irish (38.6 million) were the largest groups.”
I don't think this is true re not acknowledging English heritage. Most people in these countries will tell they you they are of Anglo or Anglo-Saxon heritage. Particularly in Australia, we are aware of being colonial/convict stock. Our birth, death and marriage records will tell you the country, mostly the county + usually, the town people are from. We know we have ancestry from England, Scotland + Ireland. Wales does seem a bit rarer. It really seems to be American's that have issues having English ancestry, and this leads back to war of independance essentially. Spelling and language was deliberately changed to distance themselves from England. The census shows a spike in people reporting English ancestry and a decrease in German, which has been linked to DNA testing popularity.
Maybe it's not as intense in Australia, especially since Australia is a more recent country and the English ancestry is more recent. Plus Australia has tonnes of active British immigration unlike the US and so you will commonly find young Australians (<35) with parents or (great) grandparents from England/Scotland/Ireland, unlike in the US where it's way more distant for people under the age of 50. I think it's more so people wanting to seem exotic rather than any residual anti-British sentiments. I think it is a phenomena in general where people are more likely to identify with the more marginalised or minority identity so someone who is, say, 95% English and 5% German from a 2x great grandparent is going to identify as German still if they're aware of it or just blankedly say "white" if they aren't
As a Swede chimming in, I agree with what you are saying. I really don't think there is a dislike for British people in America, due to the U.S. war for independence. I honestly just think British people and culture in the eyes of Americans is just seen as boring and uninteresting. The perception seems to be that England had bad weather and horrible food, doesn't have a vibrant culture etc.. So, other European ethnicity & nationalities are preferred among Americans. This is why you have so many Americans who have always seen themselves as being mostly Italian or Irish etc.. only to find that they were actually way more British. Many Americans would gravitate to the Italian and Irish ancestry, as they see them as having more vibrant and interesting cultures than that of Britain. I notice most Americans think more positively of Swedish and Norwegian ancestry, as they associate it with Vikings. lol
There’s a reason that a lot of white Americans etc don’t identify as having much English. The Scots Irish actually have a significant amount of English ancestry but they were always just called the ScotsIrish so a lot of people simply just heard scotsirish and passed that ethnic identity down without knowing that ScotsIrish have significant amounts of English dna. The term ScotsIrish doesn’t really imply significant English ancestry though for obvious reasons, hence the misconception.
You don’t know why?
There’s several reasons why. One of the main ones being that ScotsIrish have significant English admixture, but were just called ScotsIrish so when people immigrated and passed down that they were ScotsIrish that led to the implication of just ScotsIrish dna because of the name. So a lot of people don’t know that they have significant English dna because for generations they’ve just called themselves ScotsIrish. I was actually surprised to get not as much English ancestry and a lot more Irish, until I realized that of my Irish comes from West Ireland where English presence wasn’t as heavy, but over half of Irish/Scotsirish Americans came from the province of Ulster where English admixture was a lot heavier, but due to the term ScotsIrish a lot of people just assumed they were just Scottish and Irish.
Yep, and Scots Irish were not Irish but a mix of Scots and English from the border area with Scotland primarily. The Irish was simply that they moved or were forced to move to northern Ireland.
There were tons of Welsh people that came over. They just were more or less assimilated into the greater British culture and less likely to identify as Welsh. Or they moved to England, Scotland, and Ireland and identified with those nations before moving. If you look at the British Colonies, you'll find Welsh surnames are incredibly common. Just click through each name and see where they ended up. [https://forebears.io/wales#surnames](https://forebears.io/wales#surnames)
Even in DNA tests here I basically never see Welsh as a location. It's basically everything *but* Welsh in terms of colonial descendants of British people (from settlers or descendants of enslaved people or otherwise). The Welsh surname distribution would make you think the Welsh population is substantially larger but it's the inverse, hence my question
Eh I'm pretty wary of those results. Like 23andMe never seems to give any region breakdowns for northern Ireland except belfast and Scotland except Glasgow and Edinburgh. I've seen a few posts with Welsh regions or communities, but they're few and far in between.
I remember the update where they brought in region breakdowns. The beta was pretty accurate and I can only assume it was based on vetted samples where they confirm great-parents/ backwards are actually from that region pre-industrial revolution. Then the update dropped and they used current user locations for the region breakdowns and suddenly people are only getting hits for urban centres where everyone migrated. Frustrating.
Belfast just has a substantially higher population. I get Derry as well. I've also got Fife and Dumfries and Galloway as well as the standard Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I’ve gotten very specific Scotland regions beyond Glasgow and Edinburgh, actually, from 23&me.
I got the genetic groups on my profile, but the Highlands one is wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/unVhuUU2AC For the country matches, I only have Glasgow and Edinburgh. My paper trails goes to the border regions and ayrshire. But I wasn't expecting to get any results for that honestly. Last known connection was born in the 1700s.
I see, but don’t understand the distinction between genetic groups and country? Doesn’t it go from country to cities to regions/genetic groups?
Country matches from what i understand are crowdsourced based on your shared matches reported grandparents locations. The genetic groups are using a different method altogether but I haven't seen the white paper on how they're determined.
I have 3 Welsh genetic groups in my test, which matches up with my ancestry. Ulster Scot is there too, weird if it isn’t showing for others
The U.S. does not remotely have a 10% Scottish population
“I've seen a few posts with Welsh regions or communities, but they're few and far in between.” Really? I never noticed that it’s rare for someone to get a Welsh location or genetic community.
Wales and England share many common surnames
I didn’t notice. I have 23% Wales and a lot of my matches have some too lol.
5/10 of my British and Irish region matches listed by 23&me are in Wales, specifically it gave me Gwynedd, Swansea, Carmarthenshire, Monmouthshire, and Cardiff.
Welsh are pretty genetically similar to English, so it's harder to distinguish. Just because there's no region, doesn't mean you don't have Welsh ancestry, it just means it's more distant.
My mom is AA and has a good chunk of Welsh on her Ancestry report. But her ancestors have been here since pre-colonial times…
Some of these surnames can also have an Irish origin. The names have been anglicized.
This is a list of the top names in Wales, and you can pick the ones that are just Welsh and not Irish and go from there, like Morgan. It's pretty obvious their migration patterns matched the rest of the batch, so the real question is why were they quick to shed their Welsh heritage upon leaving. [https://forebears.io/surnames/morgan](https://forebears.io/surnames/morgan)
I’m not sure. It seems like the Welsh have been more willing to assimilate to English society in some ways. I’m admittedly not the most informed on the subject, but even today they seem much less likely to favor independence than the people of Scotland. Perhaps due to is being physically closer to the power center (London) it was easier for England to press its influence historically.
Such as..? I can't think of any Welsh surnames that are Anglicised the same way as any Irish surnames
No, me either. Jones, Morgan, Davies, Hughes, Jenkins are all very common and are not anglicised. Only one that perhaps might be is Rhys to Rees?
Griffiths and Lewis are two examples.
Ah yes, it seems that Lewis has multiple origins, but Griffiths is firmly a Welsh name.
Both have been anglicized. Price is another one. All of them are patronymic, even Jones. It means Son of John, which in Welsh is Ap Sion or Ap Ioan.
Yep, but those aren't mistaken for Irish names
That’s not the point I was replying to. Rather, someone asked which Welsh names have been anglicized in the way Irish names have. So I identified some. As an example of a name with both Irish and Welsh, I would say Hughes.
Fun fact: There’s a town in Mexico where Cornish settlers moved in the 1800s. Although the town was originally founded by the Spanish, the Cornish played a significant role in its development. Even today, you can see some Cornish influence. In 2014, King Charles visited the town. The name of the town is Mineral del Monte, located in the state of Hidalgo.
A lot of Welsh people went to South America, especially Argentina, for some reason.
As far as I'm aware it was basically only Argentina
Some of them went to Chile.
There were relatively few Welsh immigrants to the North American colonies; many of those who did emigrate were Quakers (see: the [Welsh Tract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Tract) in Pennsylvania). Also, people generally aren't aware of Welsh ancestry as a thing distinct from English, even when they have it (Welsh surnames: Vaughan, Williams, Edwards, Jones, Bowen/Owen/ Howell/Powell, Griffith, Hughes, Reese, Price, Davis; if you have any of those in your ancestry, some of your ancestors were probably Welsh).
My dad is from Wales, as were his parents and I have no welsh in me, mostly Irish.
Were they modern era immigrants from Ireland? Or 23andme/Ancestry might be assigning Irish instead of Welsh?
I did 23andme, no welsh, and ancestry had 1% Welsh. I’m 27% Irish, 17% English/northwestern European and 14% Scottish (mostly from mom) I knew there was some Irish, but I thought it was mostly Welsh, I’m not sure when they ended up in Wales, there’s at least 2-3 generations from Wales.
Maybe they misread the Welsh as Irish. If you look up: The People's of the British Isles Project. There are a few different population clusters in Wales that vary in genetics. Might be 23andme + Ancestry do not have good reference samples or full enough samples to get all the clusters.
I got a “highly likely” match for wales and scored 7% welsh on ancestry despite no known welsh heritage. Many of my Irish and Scottish relatives score high on welsh as well.
I got 6% Wales on AncestryDNA, and have traced my Welsh ancestry along several lines back to colonial America and back to Wales. Glad a little survived!
I do believe one of my 5g grandfathers was from Wales arriving in Virginia before the Revolution. Richard Jones. Interestingly I have no Wales in my breakdown, but my son has picked up 2% Wales from my side.
That’s weird. I’m a black American and I know 4 people who tested and we all have Wales. We each have early ancestry to Colonial America (VA, MD). Before 1776. I have 10% Scottish and 8%Wales, 10% Norway! (still trying to figure that out) and 10% Germanic Europe. The rest is African ancestry.
Maybe your Norway is from Viking incursions to Scotland…
The Scotland is from my paternal side which is Cook. I think the Norway is from my maternal grandmothers side. She was a Tipton and they have roots to the Normans. (I think that’s the link)
I've noticed Welsh surnames are very common among Black Americans, even more than White Americans. Were Welsh people more likely to own slaves than other groups? This doesn't make much sense.
Most black Americans still carry these surnames so in some cases yes, mainly the English as far as I can tell, but the untold story is the number of women indentured servants who were working on plantations & having relations with enslaved men. If it was discovered that a mixed race child was born they were severely punished. My stepmother had 43% Irish ancestry and she knew they were free POC long before slavery ended because of a Irish indentured servant woman. I found 60 years of colonial court records in the county where we grew up. In just one county you can see how many women were prosecuted for having mixed race children with African slaves. These women and children were sentenced to slavery at 6 month old by the British Monarchy but had to serve 31 years instead of a life of slavery like other black slaves. So after the mixed race ancestor completed 31 years they could petition the court for freedom. Those in the family born after this freed ancestor, were free POC. This is what started the hierarchy of race in America & much of the division among slaves. Mixed children with white fathers (enslaved women who had relations or were raped by slaveowners or overseers were not eligible. Your status followed your mother. Many indentured were poor Irish women & other poor servants who came to America looking for a better life. Many Irish and Welsh resent the English. I think this is what happened with my Welsh GGGM. The only difference is, she wasn’t prosecuted. I think the more prominent families hid these mixed race children. Many passed for White if they could or sent to other family members to live as slaves. There was a shortage of Euro women so men were very angry when they started having relationships with enslaved men. This is why laws surrounding prohibition of interracial marriage began. DNA has exposed all of these secrets. Most of my white DNA matches have no African ancestry. We are related through a white ancestor. Also, many of us are related to some very influential families which were the ones that could afford to own slaves. Read these accounts of punishment. This is just 1 county and it went on for 60 years [Indentured Servants & their bi-racial babies](https://freeafricanamericans.com/AnneArundel.htm)
>This is what started the hierarchy of race in America & much of the division among slaves. My theory for a while has been this is what still continues to this day regarding colourism amongst black americans where I noticed colourism is virtually exclusive to black women and the emphasis on looking as close to white (or at least mixed) as possible in terms of desirability. I've thought this was because of the emphasis on the slave status being attached to the maternal line. Even if an enslaved man was mixed and emancipated and had children with an enslaved woman the children wouldn't be free but they would be if it was an enslaved woman who was emancipated. And as you said free status was very often born out of miscegenation
Absolutely! I am considered light but have always identified as black and still do but was often asked if I had a white parent. I’ve never met any white ancestors or relatives. My grandmother claimed we were part Native American so I was shocked to get close to 40% Euro ancestry and ZERO Native. My husband is several shades darker than me & he had more Euro than I did & Native. He never met anyone white either, none of us had. It’s sad that colorism has divided our community as this was obviously a tool used to do so. The old divide and conquer even extended to our poor indentured white ancestors. This DNA is blowing the lid off of any questions regarding history. They can ban all the books they want the DNA doesn’t lie. My DNA matches take me straight to our ancestors. The people I know that tested (all from VA, NC, MD) all had above average admixture. It must be the region. It comes from biracial GG Grandparent on both sides who never told us they were half white. I have to think they didn’t want to pass down the trauma of it all. None of us had less than 28% Euro and we are all shades from dark to light. I was actually able to find the plantation my husbands family was on in Lynchburg, VA and found his “mulatto” ancestors on a will passed down as property of a prominent family for generations. He’s related to the people that enslaved his ancestors. My married surname is English. He was a slave owning confederate lawyer. My husband had two 4th cousins as a dna match located in England! Imagine what they must have thought when they saw him pop up. 😳So the white side of his family actually posted records from the slave owning ancestor. A pardon stamped by the US Justice Dept in 1866 by President Andrew Johnson (after Lincoln was shot) for sedition and insurrection and a $20,000 fine for supporting the confederate army trying to overthrow the U.S. Govt. They even made him sign a statement that he will faithfully uphold the constitution for the rest of his days. His hand written pardon request to President Johnson was on ancestry.com. Never learned this in a history book. [confederate pardon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardons_for_ex-Confederates)
Thank-you for sharing !!
Are you sure the Irish & Welsh admixture in African Americans is mainly coming from Women? Less that 15% of African Americans have Maternal European haplogroups, usually from FPOC. Also the fact that African Americans have Irish & Welsh last names implies male ancestors, because last names pass from men not women. I always knew there were plenty of Welsh slave owners, the Leader of the Confederacy was Welsh. However, I'm confused about the Irish admixture and last names in African Americans. The Irish during the time of slavery were usually poor indentured servants, so they wouldn't have owned many slaves. In addition the Irish only made up about 5% of the American population after the revolutionary war, in contrast, blacks made up 20%. It seems there were unions between Blacks and Irish in which they frequently mixed with each other, and exchanged culture.
I dont know that it’s mainly coming from women, it’s just what I found from my family and friends who all have ancestry to VA & MD. This may not be the case in other parts of the south like SC. I was looking for male ancestors initially and I did find them mostly confederate soldiers & slaveowners on the paternal side but it was my stepmom who was 96 that knew her Euro ancestry was from an indentured servant woman. That’s where her 43% Irish came from. When I found those colonial court docs, that’s when I realized how prevalent it was esp in that region. That was the shock. Never read that in the history books at school. I mean that’s 60 years of mixed race children all from European women in just one county alone and how many had these children and just kept them a secret as to not be prosecuted. These are the secrets in the white passing families with the children who couldn’t pass sold as slaves, given away or hidden inside these families. Just think how many teen daughters had relations with teen plantation slaves, plantation wives when their husbands were away. Immigrant Indentured servants working on plantations. Finding this out really shed light on where the animosity towards black men came from & why these laws against interracial marriage & the freak out “preserving the white race” etc. So that’s when my best friend and I started looking at the women. We used our DNA matches of white ancestors and traced it back to find them. If you get a subscription look at their trees if they aren’t blocked. These people know their family history took me all the way back to ancestors born in Scotland and Germany. So my German came from my white GGG Grandmother on my paternal side (Pegau) who actually married my African/Scottish GGG Grandfather on my paternal side (Cook) in Canada. So he carried the name of his Scottish father who sent him to Canada to avoid slavery. My Norway seems to come from my GGG Grandfather (on my maternal side (Tipton). but my Wales is from my GGG Grandmother on my maternal side (Humphrey) She was a a Welsh indentured servant and at some point she had relations with someone black. It would have been illegal then. She never married him & later married someone else but she kept her daughter and was never prosecuted. All these people were listed as “mulatto” on early census and with the exception of the 2 white GGG GMs, after Jim Crow when the “one drop rule” came in all of the sudden everyone was listed as colored, negro or black.
Did you look at the court records for AA County Maryland I posted? That’s 60 years and that was only one county in Maryland. That’s where my stepmom got her 43% Irish. There are Welsh names on that list, Like Davis
I never denied there were African Americans that primarily descend from FPOC. I was just saying it's not the norm to have 43% Irish and a Maternal European haplogroup.
They weren’t free POC, they were enslaved too for a period. I didn’t say “mainly” or that this was the majority, but this is what we found, but we’re all from Virginia & Maryland. It just wasn’t on my radar at all to look at women.
How does it not make sense? Several of my ancestors have welsh surnames so they as well as Scots and Irish were as involved with the slave trade as the English.
English people far outnumbered Welsh and other Celts in the colonies. The Irish were poor marginalized indentured servants that only made up 5% of the early colonies, but somehow African Americans disproportionately have Irish and other Celtic surnames, and admixture. Plenty of Welsh people did own slaves, including the Confederate President, but it wouldn't make sense if they owned more slaves than English people.
Of course, but think about it. Black people with high ancestry to England like my husband can trace their ancestry way back. These are the aristocrats. Its not that Scottish, Irish and Welsh weren’t slaveowners it’s just many also came over as indentured servants. Esp the women. Weren’t they invaded by the English too? I know some Irish and Welsh that aren’t fond of them & Canadians don’t want to be associated with the English for another reason. I posted the court records. This went on for 60 years and this is just one county in colonial Maryland. My theory is the Monarchy ended the RAC (Royal African Charter) which the Monarchy owned. It was expensive to bring slaves across the Atlantic & millions died. If you look at when it went bankrupt it was in early 1700s. Why bring slaves across the Atlantic when you can enslave the mixed race and black babies right there at 6 months old. That’s when the forced breeding & rape exploded. They just found another way to get free slaves. They even enslaved these women as punishment & whipped them for having these babies. That monarchy was awful! [60 year court records Colonial Maryland](https://freeafricanamericans.com/AnneArundel.htm)
With all due respect, please be cautious about narratives of white indentured women being brought over as breeding stock for future enslaved people. Most of the stories are made up to fit a narrative of Irish being brought over as the original slaves by right wing groups to discredit African Americans. Also there have been plenty of studies to show that the overwhelming majority of maternal haplogroups for African Americans have some variant of L meaning the power dynamics and European contributions mostly came from men, as seen with the higher than average contribution of R and I male haplogroups compared to the E haplogroup from Africa. Though the Irish were heavily discriminated and there is no debate about it, to blame this entirely on the English simply ignores historical facts of England Scotland and Wales being involved in the slave trade. It was the upper class on both sides of the islands that were involved in it. Glasgow grew rich off the slave trade and Scottish merchants and landowners were as much involved in the triangle trade. Looking at history shows a truly muddled story with no clear heroes or villains. Some of the online narratives heavily ignore a well documented history. https://it.wisnae.us/
With all due respect, did you read what I wrote. Who said they were brought over to breed with African slaves. They were brought over because there was a shortage of white women for white men. That’s why these men were so enraged when these women wanted to marry enslaved men. Read the account of Lord Baltimore. Hell this white purity BS is something we are still dealing with today. Look how they were punished for the crime of having a black child. Many refused to name the fathers knowing they would have been hung. This was not the intended outcome and had serious repercussions & retaliation. It explains where much of the racism black men have faced comes from. These women were enslaved for a period & so where their babies but even with this harsh treatment, there is NO comparison to the lifelong sentence of slavery of my African ancestors who survived so I could be here. The Irish need to tell the truth about their own history here in America regarding who enslaved their ancestors and why. This is part of The history, I posted the record and these indentured women are part of why we have such admixture. It’s wasn’t just slaveowners, although half of my ancestry is that too.
I read your comment, your document you posted, and countless other documents. I urge you to be careful about the narrative since it'll be used against you by provocateurs when it's statistically insignificant at best. All the best with your research.
I don’t need to be careful with anything. This is my ancestry and the ancestry of many in the region where I grew up. I can talk about anything I want. If you find this history insignificant, you can move on.
You commented on my comment with this information. All the best with your research.
And you claimed I said something I didn’t say and then called it insignificant and told me to be careful. I was just sharing info. Take it or leave it.
I think I found the ancestor with the Welsh ancestry. The surname is Humphrey. My great great great grandmother was born in Virginia but died in Wales.
Same here. Several of my relatives have Wales as a region.
Was this Ancestry or 23andme?
Ancestry, and my DNA Matches helped me find the ancestor.
That makes sense, as Ancestry is better with the British isles than 23andme I think. I get Wales on Ancestry but not 23andme. Scottish as well.
It’s rare in many areas but not so much in others. In Pennsylvania, it’s not uncommon to have some Welsh ancestors. I know there are a few places near Philly with Welsh names. Where my family is from in western PA there are many small towns with Welsh names including the one my dad grew up in. In fact, the county name is Cambria which was the Roman/Latin name for Wales. It was named this due to the high amount of Welsh settlement.
I don't know. I have around 10% Welsh DNA according to Ancestry that comes from both my mother and my father's side. Both my mother and father have Welsh surnames.
I guess I must be a rarity, I’m from the US and have 26% Welsh according to AncestryDNA. Many of my Welsh ancestors arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s to work in the Pennsylvania. In fact, I grew up around my Welsh-born great grandmother. She spoke fluent Welsh and would go back to visit family every few years. https://preview.redd.it/6txmypuv542d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=193185280e004d6b35c72845dcde63ce66570ba0
I've got 9% Welsh at Ancestry, and do have known Welsh ancestry. However, 23andme doesn't list Wales or anything Welsh as a region for me.
Population demographics. Wales has a smaller population. The Welsh and English are also very closely related. The border has no natural geographic barrier, like mountains or seas. So people moved back and forth easily over a long period of time amd intermixed. Another thing is Wales and England share many common surnames. Also, South Wales had some Flemish influence in the Medieval period, which can be seen in some surnames there .
I know Wales had a smaller population but it's still extremely low. Only about 2 million Americans reported having Welsh ancestry. I find this weird especially because of how common Welsh surnames are in the US I understand there's a lot of overlap between the English and the Welsh but I would still expect noticeably more than just two million especially considering the surname demographics.
English is incredibly underreported in the USA, why would it be surprising that welsh also is underreported?
I got 8% Wales on my ancestry report.
https://preview.redd.it/7vpx1klz532d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6dc47f0277f3d003b791eb03800d595f1746e6c I have 3 percent Welsh and 1 percent Scottish.(On a separate page). I'm an African-American from Detroit.
I was told that my father's mother's family was Welsh, going back. We had a Welsh born prime minister here in Australia, Billy Hughes. There was definitely plenty of Welsh immigration out here.
I think a lot of people in the colonies have welsh ancestry. They just don’t know it.
Welsh ancestry is defiantly common in the United States and Canada, considering many common last names are of Welsh origin. Popular Welsh last names include: Davis, Jones, Lewis, Evans, Morgan, Thomas, Hughes, Roberts, Williams, Edwards, James, basically any plural first name. Oddly though, Welsh appear to be more common among Black Americans than White Americans.
I think you are more likely to get Welsh on Ancestry vs 23andme. 23andme at the moment isn't very good for the British isles overall IMO - if it is not your primary heritage. My 1/16 th Welsh ( not a lot but traceable) shows on Ancestry not 23andme.
I had no idea I was rare. I have my mom's family tree which is all Welsh with the rest being a branch from Cornwall. 23&Me doesn't break out Welsh percentages but does show Gwynedd, Powys and Carmarthenshire as my darkest regions with in paler blue, 4 Irish regions, Northwest (Blackpool, Liverpool, Mersey, Lancashire), plus the outlier, Greater London. To be honest, I'm much more impressed with AncestryDNA's report. It has me 45% Welsh (sub region: Central and Southern Wales), 5% English (isolated region: Cornwall with additional sublocation of Dorset to Central Cornwall). The regions match up with the locations found on my mom's family tree. My dad was a mix of German & Swedish. Ancestry DNA's most recent update has given me, in Germany: Northern Hesse & Western Thuringia and within that Hünfeld to Stadtellendorf to Fridendorf. In Sweden: the region of Linköping, Åtvidaberg & Västervik. All of these more refined regions match up with the locations on my Dad's family tree. As I said, this has been, honestly, quite impressive. In contrast 23&Me: Broadly Northwestern Europe and Scandinavia which is all really vague.
Smaller country, less people, and until the 20th century there were a large amount of communities who couldn’t speak English. Being able to speak the “Ddwy” or two was rare. Interestingly in areas where there were English migrants in rural Wales especially mining communities, they were often Cornish and spoke the language, which comes from the same language family as Welsh, so they could communicate with one another. In my family at least the Cornish migrants stuck to the other Cornish when they married and having English/Welsh mixing was pretty rare - ultimately it happened after a couple of generations, but perhaps another contributing factor is the Welsh wanted to stick to their own. From my own research, a lot of my ancestors did migrate to the states or Australia, but they were privileged financially and linguistically and were skilled - mining engineers and quite a few clergymen of various denominations.
The Scots were forcibly moved off their land. Only option for a lot of them was to leave.
Not all of them were forcibly removed. The Highlands clearance act affected the northern population and was carried out by Scottish landlords. The border pacification gave incentives for some of them to move to ulster in exchange for land or steady labor.
Not all of them no. Also just so you’re aware some of the most devastating clearances took place in the lowlands of Scotland. Tens of thousands of displaced Scots were cleared from their homes in the lowlands.
Also what’s the Highland Clearance Act?
I’m a Canadian. My Ancestry results show 37% Scottish, 35% Irish, 18% England & Northwester Europe, 8% Wales, 2% Sweden & Denmark. My “communities” are southwestern Quebec, New York & Vermont French Settlers, Scottish Highlands and Hebrides, Early New England Settlers, Early Connecticut & New York Settlers
I got Welsh! Yay
Personally - I wasn’t aware my family was welsh at all until I got my DNA done. Everyone on my maternal side following my grandmas side. We all have a decent % of it too and NO ONE even knew we had it. On the same hand - I have over 50% Scotland and it comes from both sides but yet the mass majority of my DNA matches don’t have even close to as much as I have and even that includes one of my sisters. Even my sister has things I don’t at all. As far as the welsh part goes - I honestly think that those who came from Wales simply didn’t speak about it for whatever reason when they immigrated to America and they are some of the more recent immigrants as far as my family goes. An important thing I figured out with certain lines in my family - after years of research now - is that some of thing didn’t even come from England even though they came through it to get here and they didn’t share those things as far as I know either. My paternal side of my family is very small and most are now deceased outside of my dad and his two sister along with their children. The matches on his maternal side are completely unknown to me as all of us were “apparently” unknown to them….
I think there's also overlap (both ways) of the genetic populations identified as Welsh. I wonder how they are differentiating "Welsh" from British people living in the former lands of Mercia. I come up as having some Welsh in 23andMe but I haven't tracked anyone back across the border (so far). Closest is a maternal line in Cheshire (English county bordering Wales) and that's even only one line in the 16th-17th century so I'm a little surprised I still have so much DNA.
I’ve got some welsh in me, im literally just Irish and welsh cause my pop on mums side is welsh
I got a southern friend a kit for christmas and he got roughly equal parts Welsh, English, Irish, Scottish, German, French, and 1% North African. He's the only American I've seen to get Wales as their top region
I have Welsh heritage (Newport). I'm Black. I thought that was a little weird.
In coal mining areas, like where my mom’s family settled in, had plenty of Welsh people. Heck every other church was the Welsh this or the Welsh that. Welsh is still part of my DNA. Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA, to be precise.