Welsh Religious Nonconformity Explained
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- Have you ever wondered about your British ancestors’ religion? This video covers the basics of religious nonconformity (Baptist, Methodist, Independent/Congregationalist denominations). Nonconformity played an important role in Welsh history and the lives of our ancestors. While this video focusses on Wales in the 1800s and earlier, these Christian denominations, as well as many other forms of religious worship beyond Christianity, continue to play an important part of everyday life. Please forgive the generalising/simplistic video title, it's for the algorithm.
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Public Domain Images
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Protestant Reformation Translating the Bible
• wellcomecollec...
The Nonconformist, Caricature
• hdl.handle.net/...
Caeronen Chapel 1915
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Harris, Howell Reverend
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Rowland, Daniel Revered
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Bevan, Bridget Methodism
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Calvin, John
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Wesley, John 1820
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Evans, Christmas student of Dafis Castellhywel
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Welsh Flag
• commons.wikime...
Parish Meeting, Llandrinio
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Jones, David Missionary Madagascar 2
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Welsh Bible 1588
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Farm Scene
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Smithy 1880
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Nobility Dolaucothi 1870
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English Dictionary
• archive.org/de...
Other Licences:
Llandyssul, Rhydowen Chapel (Llwynrhydowen)
• www.geograph.o...
• David Purchase, 2018
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Llandyssul Map 1851
• hdl.handle.net/..., p. 185
• www.llgc.org.uk...
Llandyssul, St. Tyssul’s Church
• m.geograph.org...
• Peter Wood, 2013
• creativecommon...
Llandyssul, Capel Pantydefaid
• m.geograph.org...
• Humphrey Bolton, 2007
• creativecommon...
Llandyssul, Capel Seion
• m.geograph.org...
• Marion Phillips, 2008
• creativecommon...
Llandybïe, Former Sion Chapel
• www.geograph.o...
• Jaggery, 2015
• creativecommon...
Llangybi, Maesyffynnon Welsh CM Chapel
• www.geograph.o...
• Roger Kidd, 2011
• creativecommon...
Merthyr Tydfil, Synagogue
• www.geograph.o...
• Eirian Evans, 2019
• creativecommon...
Henfynyw, Neuaddlwyd Chapel
• m.geograph.org...
• Oliver Strange, 2013
• creativecommon...
Swansea (Modern)
• commons.wikime...
• Wiccasha, 2008
Middletown, Powys
• www.geograph.o...
• Rod Trevaskus, The Welsh/English Border by Middletown, 2008
• creativecommons...
Cellan, Capel Yr Erw
• www.geograph.o...
• Roger Kidd, 2010
• creativecommon...
Davis, David Castellhywel 1818 Cry of the Prisoners
• archive.org/de...
• Special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University
• creativecommon...
Ancestry Images: For use as necessary for professional family history research.
All other images copyright to Davina Davies and GenealCymru.
"If you are thinking about complaining go to Patreon instead" love it. Great video!
Haha Glad you enjoyed. And yeah, I just think people should invest in the kind of educational/entertainment content that they want to see in the world. I wanted to see Welsh genealogy & modern history on RUclips so I made it happen. They can do the same haha.
Diolch, thank you for that explanation love your video, and your pronunciation of Cymraeg is very good
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. My pronunciation has got a ways to go, but I'm very proud of where I'm at. Thanks for the encouragement!
Interesting video, helped frame the religious life of the Welsh a bit. One of my ancestors is Azariah Shadrach, who preached mostly in the north and at a chapel in Aber.
Don't sweat about the pronunciation, I live in Cardiff and a lot of people can't (or can't be bothered to) pronounce Welsh names properly here :D
Diolch for the great video!
Thanks for the support :) Glad you enjoyed!
@@GenealCymru I did! Have you ever seen the documentary series "The Dragon has Two Tongues"?
Probably the best documentary series on Wales ever :)
I haven't, but I'll look into it. Thanks!
I was just going to say, I'm in Cardiff too. Born n bred valleys, so not a Welsh speaker myself..... but the pronunciation is 1000% better than you generally hear from our British Isles neighbours 🙈.
You seem to have gotten your tongue around the pronunciation generally. Couple of tweaks (which a lot Welsh need sometimes too) n you'll be grand!
Great overview! My friend's Welsh family left in 1701 as Baptists, and settled in Pennsylvania -- in the Welsh Tracts, where they were allowed to continue speaking Cymraeg. Apparently in Pembrokeshire, they would come as far as a whole day's travel just to meet other Baptists at Rhydwilym.
Glad you enjoyed it! Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I've had quite a few ancestors go to Pennsylvania as well, but none that I know of so early.
Pennsylvania is my favorite state in America. I used to work on Market Street in Philly. Every culture has a place in the city, and Philly is a mini-NYC to me. I love the German history in the state, even though I'm Welsh.
Very interesting - it's a subject that's long intrigued me not least since I discovered my great grandparents attended different chapels. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for sharing!
Really interesting and informative. Thank you from Herefordshire.
Glad you enjoyed! :D
Great vid! Just wanted to point out to people who may not know, but the area you focus on in the video uses an Anglicised name in ‘Cardiganshire’, whereas the original Welsh name is ‘Ceredigion’
Thanks for adding that :) There's a video coming on things like borders, counties, and parishes one day. In my videos I generally use the county names that are most relevant to doing genealogy research in the 19th Century. And in that time period, they're just about all in English, except some of the newspapers and journals.
Your pronunciation is far better than many who live just across the border in England.
You’re knowledge of Wales is better than most of those IN Wales itself.
Da iawn chi
Diolch yn fawr. I appreciate it :). For me it's all about the willingness and effort to learn. And when you learn stuff you just have to accept that you are where you're at in the process and that's how you get better :)
Very interesting, I think I attended all of them in my childhood. I admire your pronunciations, sadly it is much better than many other peoples attempts. Diolch yn fawr.
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed. Yeah everyone's just doing their best with pronunciations. There's remarkably little material online to help with it. Whenever I look up a placename, I end up having to scroll through like people's 2010 vacation videos hoping they happen to say the place that they're visiting. Welsh classes being as expensive as they are also doesn't help. It's a shame really.
Very informative and your pronunciation is excellent!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. The pronunciation has got a ways to go, but I'm very proud of where I'm at. Thanks for the encouragement!
Very interesting and helpful. Thank you.
Glad to help :)
I would love to know pre-Christian era religious customs.
That's a bit outside the scope of my channel. Genealogy can't take you back to the Roman and pre-Roman period because there just aren't enough records that survived. But there's a lot of belief systems adjacent to Christianity that existed up into the modern period, like sorcerers, holy wells, etc., that have a distinctly Welsh character. There will be a video eventually about some of that stuff :)
Excellent video. In about 1930 Aneurin Bevan described the Welsh Chapels as "extinct volcanoes" A bow to their previous effectiveness at improving the lot of the Welsh people.
Ohh that's a really interesting metaphor. Thanks for sharing!
My great-great grandmother Elizabeth Jane Morris attended Carmel Chapel in the late 1800s. I have a copy of a watercolour she painted of the chapel in 1895.
Oo what a lovely keepsake to have!
My Welsh ancestors were Baptist. Primative Baptist Church.
Interesting! I've got some Baptists in the early 1700s. I find them a bit tricky to research, except I've found a lot of information in the book "History of the Baptists in Wales" by Rev. Joshua Thomas from the late 1700s.
Your pronunciation was pretty good! Da lawn :) Ignore the pendants and haters. They think they’re being original, when they’re not.
I'm interested in the Welsh Baptists for a few reasons. A Handful of Welsh Churches in South Wales were the churches of origin of a number of key people in the early origins of the Baptists in the US. These Churches also seem to have been in fellowship with the Midland Association Baptists. And then particularly the Olchon church has bene the subject of speculation that the Welsh Baptists have an independent origin form other Baptists and that there might have in these remote semi-isolated parts of Wales Credo Baptists Congregations that go back to before the Anglo-Saxons.
Yeah, I encounter them a lot in my research. Some of my ancestors were early Baptist ministers in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. I mostly study Coedgleision, Aberduar, and a bit of Rhydwilym Chapels. I think the last was one of the earliest in that region. Some of them sent groups of their congregations off to the US and I've even got some Welsh baptist ministers who went to the US themselves.
@@GenealCymru Awesome
This is a very helpful overview. Thanks for taking the time. At 5:16 you cite the Rev William Williams as a source of a quote about what drew people to the Calvanistic movement. Which Rev W Williams was that, please?
Glad you found the video helpful! That section would have come from the 1884 book, "Welsh Calvinistic Methodism: A Historical Sketch of the Presbyterian Church of Wales," by Rev. William Williams of Swansea. You can get a full copy off of Google Books. I didn't recrod the page number (oops) but it's from the section about the rise of the Rev. Daniel Rowlands of Llangeitho.
@@GenealCymru Interesting. The William Williams (family) I'm interested in are from the North, Denbigh, as was. There are so many Rev William Williams :)
Thanks so much for coming back to me.
No worries! Yeah my 4x Grampie was named William Williams too haha. From Cardiganshire though. When I saw your comment I was like hmmm was it Rev. William Williams Pantycelyn? Cause he's another one I come across a lot and was a big part of the Methodist Movement.
@@GenealCymru Rather than family connections I'm researching a couple of villages in the Vale of Clwyd, where I lived as a child and in which the Williams family played a big part in the late-19c. They were conformists but there was a Calvanist Chapel a mile or so away and consequently some competition for geting pupils into the associated schoolrooms!
Do you know of a Baptist Church Allt- Goch ( Red forest) in Cardiganshire Supposedly one of my great grandfather John Griffith was a Deacon and preacher of that church in the late 1670s to 1680s and later settled at the Welch Tract in Delaware in 1710.
Very cool. I haven't come across an Allt-Goch. It might be in the parts of Cardiganshrie I'm not very familiar with yet. I do know that Aberduar and Bwlchrhiw chapels in Carmarthenshire (they had a lot of connections to the Lampeter area of Cardiganshire though) sent a lot of people to the Welsh Tract. If you haven't looked at it yet, there's an old book on Google Books by Rev. Joshua Thomas, called A History of the Baptist Association in Wales, that might help. I've foudn a lot of helpful information in it regarding my family.
@@GenealCymru Thank you that book does have a lot of info and of three generations of my family, maybe a referance to my 7th great grandfathers brother Howell Griffith as well and a church Craig-yr-Allt and a couple others as well, so thanks again.
That's great. I'm glad it was helpful!
Usually, allt means hillside/slope. Coch (goch, when mutated) does mean red. There could be a forest on the allt, of course.
Do you think not preaching in Welsh was a major factor in the abandonment of the Anglican church?
Also what do you mean with liberalism vs. conservatism during that time? Do you refer to policies of classically liberal parties in that era? That's interesting because it runs counter to my expectations.
The fact that the nonconformists largely preached in Welsh was one of the things that drew a lot of people to the chapels. Many were heavily involved in early education as well. In terms of political affiliation, it was normally along party lines: Nonconformist ministers tended to support liberal candidates and so too did their congregations. You can see it really clearly in the voting history of Cardiganshire starting in the 1860s when the nonconformist movement was really investing in their political power.
Cardiganshire had a Liberal MP returned in Every election till 1966. Then Labour won the sear until they Liberals won in back in 1974, which they held till 1992. So a very lo g Liberal tradition there.
May I just point out that your people to chapel ratio may be incorrect. Is your population figure for Llandysul or a wider area? Many of the chapels you list are in the country surrounding Llandysul not in the town itself and served other, rural, communities.
Yes, I'm using the parish boundaries as they were understood in the 1850s. I've noticed, while looking at Google maps, that the parish of Llandyssul as it was known in the mid-1800s is different from how people understand that area now.
And I think your comment is a really important reminder of how maps and administrative boundaries change over time. Thanks! :)
Yes, a few of these are right on the edges of the parish boundary and their members would have come from neighbouring parishes. Chapel graveyards bear this out, often headstones say "of this parish" and frequently just as often "of the parish of" and give a place nearby.
@@kathrynwilson6749 Do either of you know howhow common this was? I’ve been a little surprised at the distance of the various chapels my great great grandfather sang at, went to or was married at. I’m still trying to untangle if there was a “home” chapel or what the criteria was at various times.
Is there a way to determine denomination by name? Some are clear-ish but some-Sion, Libanus, Sardis-seem to be somewhat common as a name but I don’t know if each name was affiliated with a given sect, or if these names weren’t particularly associated with a particular denomination. Thank you in advance!
On pages 54-55 in the book Second Stages in Researching Welsh Ancestry (by Rowlands & Rowlands, 1999), which you can access on Google Books, has a small section about names as indicators of nonconformist ancestors. I haven't come across any other places where this is explained in more detail. Hope that helps! :)
The chapel name gives no indication of the denomination sorry.
You are not able to distinguish Welsh denominations based off their chapel names, the names you have just mentioned, Libanus, Sardis are places referenced in the Old & New Testament… same for ‘Sion/Seion’ which is Zion in the English translation of the bible. So the theme for Welsh chapel names derive from places in the Bible. However, as a rule of thumb you could distinguish Welsh Protestant denominations based off their Chapel architecture. Calvinistic methodists, Baptists and Independents preferred a Lombardic or Sub-classical style time, built with Welsh material of course ( Slate and stone ). And then the Wesleyans were more likely to build a gothic style chapel, which there denomination was more closely related with the Anglican church out of all Welsh denominations, and of course the Anglican Church had a preference for Gothic buildings, many having spires.
Maybe you would like to check this link out for more info:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_of_Wales
This link has a sector with Welsh Church/chapel common names and their meanings.
As a side note a lot of the Chapels now are either empty, derelict, sold and converted to houses or community centres. Ah yes some Welsh words can be tongue twisters. Have you done any research into why the Welsh language almost died out? Talking about the Welsh knot.
Yeah my ancestors are so intertwined with the nonconformist movement, so I've researched so many chapels and always end up finding webpages talking about how the chapels are used now. It's nice when I see that they're still used as community spaces. Not sure how I feel when I see them up for sale to be converted into homes... You'd probably be interested in one of my early shorts called "Speak Bad Welsh Shamelessly," which is a poem about the welsh language, how my family lost it, and how it feels to start learning it again after 2 generations of monolingual English speakers.
on my mothers side way back they where bethel chapel
Very cool
Pardon my ignorance. Is welsh language similar to Icelandic ? It sounds almost identical to me. Is there any similarities?
No worries :) The two aren't linguistically related in any significant way. Icelandic is a Germanic language as is English, while Welsh is a Celtic language. I don't know any Icelandic to give specific examples, but any similarities would have developed independently or come down from them both deriving from proto-Indo-European, which is theorized to have been spoken across Europe and Western Asia about 4500 to 6500 years ago.
@@GenealCymru thank you! That been said: Is there any example of any Celtic language today other than Welsh ? I do find African , from South Africa very similar to German. Just the phonetic….. I think you are telling me that Celtic is different than English which come from Germanic roots. Are Celtic considered Briton ???
The surviving Celtic languages are: Welsh, Irish, Manx, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic, and Breton. They all originated from the language of the original populations that inhabited Britain and Ireland before 2000 years ago. Then the Romans came with Latin and there was some linguistic exchange. Example: all the days of the week in Welsh come from Latin. Then Germanic people arrived and their languages ended up becoming English. Then there were the Normans who brought French (French developed out of Latin also thanks to the Romans). I think French had more influence on English than Welsh, but I may be wrong there. Interesting stuff. Also if you mean Afrikaans, then you have a good ear, because it's derived from Dutch, so is also a Germanic language like English.