Welsh Settlement of Pennsylvania; by Charles H. Browning; Paper; 631 pp.; Published: 1912, Reprinted: 2007; ISBN: 9780806300580; Item # CF740D

The work at hand is an important companion volume to two titles by Thomas Allen Glenn treating the Welsh Quaker settlement west of the city of Philadelphia which commenced in 1682 (Welsh Founders of Pennsylvania, CF2230 and Merion in the Welsh Tract, CF2225). Whereas the Glenn books feature lengthy genealogies of founding Cymric Quaker families (many of them tracing the family in Wales into the sixteenth century), the Browning work follows hundreds of Welsh pioneers into Pennsylvania via the records of the various land companies who re-settled William Penn's famous grant of land along the Schuylkill River. Thus, while Browning's book does not disdain pedigrees and full-blown genealogies, it utilizes lists of settlers, land patents, plat maps, and biographical sketches to flesh out the process of settlement in Merion and the adjacent towns of Haverford and Radnor.

Still other important features are a study of the sometimes strained affairs between Welsh Tract settlers and William Penn, various personal accounts by the settlers, and a history of the Quaker meetings founded within the Welsh Tract. Complete with a name index of 5,000 entries and a separate subject index,Welsh Settlement of Pennsylvania is one work that Pennsylvania genealogists will be glad to see back in print.