About

This journey – and a journey it has become – began by chance one lazy afternoon in the late summer of 2023 while I was aimlessly surfing the internet.

I had developed an interest in North Carolina – a state that had previously held little attraction for me, but which had – over the course of that summer – begun to draw my attention more and more.

While skimming through an article on the history of the Tarheel state, I saw mention of a short-lived and seemingly insignificant skirmish between US Patriot militiamen and those Loyal to the British crown during the early stages of the Revolutionary War.

Just two or three clicks of my mouse later, I found myself reading about the three-minute Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. Halfway through the article, two words struck me like a lightning bolt.

Within the continental Patriot force, the article said, were “eleven Welshmen”.

My curiosity fizzed and the cogs of my imagination began to turn. The first step on this eye-opening journey had been taken.

Over the following days my thoughts returned again and again to that article and those eleven Welshmen. Who were they, I asked myself, and what had driven them to take up arms against a Britain that they had – I assumed – left only relatively recently?

I confess that at that time, my knowledge of the US Revolutionary War – or War of Independence – was limited to just a few names, places and a date – 1776, Yorktown, George Washington, Paul Revere and not a great deal else. What I had most certainly never considered was the role that Welsh settlers had played in a war that would ultimately shape the world.

Standing alongside the eleven Welshmen, that article told me, were another 39 first generation Welsh-Americans. Given those numbers, it seemed possible that up to a fifth of the entire 1,000-strong Patriot militia force gathered at Moore’s Creek Bridge were either Welsh or the sons or grandsons of Welsh arrivals in the new world. That figure took my breath away.

If so many of those present at this one minor engagement at the start of the war were either Welsh or of immediate Welsh descent, I wondered, how many had fought for American independence during the rest of the war, not only in North Carolina but more broadly across the rest of the thirteen colonies.

And so I began to research: I read books and articles, and spent hundreds of hours scouring websites online. Each nugget of information gleaned only served to fuel my frustration more and more. There appeared to be little or nothing that acknowledged the role of the Welsh in the creation of the new America. Time and again I found Welsh individuals listed as English, and Welsh ports and places labelled as being in England. The Welsh had been all but erased from this crucial moment in history and from the founding of what would become the United States of America.

However, what I came to realise was that Welsh settlers had played a hugely significant role in the fight for American independence – in many ways far outweighing their numbers when compared to settlers from other nations.  

With the thirst for genealogy and family history research – particularly in US – as insatiable as ever, it seemed all the more important to me that this historical oversight be corrected while also celebrating the role of the Welsh in the forging of the new nation and the shaping of history.

This blog is my attempt to address that oversight. I hope it will provide a platform where I can share my ongoing research and offer others an opportunity to share their interest, insight and knowledge on the role of the Welsh in the US Revolutionary War.

To begin, at least, Welsh Revolutionaries focuses primarily on the Welsh settlers of North Carolina, and especially those involved in the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge. It is my intention however to widen the net further into South Carolina and the other colonies.