Welsh American

Welsh Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in Wales. In the 2008 U.S. Census community survey, an estimated 1.98 million Americans had Welsh ancestry, 0.6% of the total U.S. population. This compares with a population of 3 million in Wales. However, 3.8% of Americans bear a Welsh surname. Moreover, a particularly large proportion of the African American population have Welsh names. History shows that there is little evidence that the Welsh were among the slave-owning classes at this time, as most immigrants were poor. There have been at least eight U.S. Presidents with Welsh ancestry including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Garfield and Barack Obama. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was also of Welsh extraction. The proportion of the population with a name of Welsh origin ranges from 9.5% in South Carolina to 1.1% in North Dakota. Typically names of Welsh origin are concentrated in the mid...