Yes, We Did!

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Friday 16th January 2026

Ah, Americans of Welsh origin. They were the quiet revolutionaries and the sneaky Founding Fathers. These are the guys and gals who basically built half the USA. Then, they vanished into the wallpaper like they owed money!

Picture this. You got these little Welsh guys. They were short, stubborn, hardy, and sang like angels on steroids. They hopped off boats in the 1600s and 1700s. Looking around at this big empty America, they said, “Yeah, this’ll do. Butt.” But first, let’s make sure the English don’t get all the credit.” And they didn’t just settle. They infiltrated.

We’re talking Thomas Jefferson. He wrote “all men are created equal.” He was probably humming a hymn in Welsh under his breath. John Adams? Welsh roots. John Quincy Adams? Same family tree. James Garfield, Calvin Coolidge, Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon. Hell, even Barack Obama has a great, great grandpa from Anglesey! That’s right, the first Black president has Welsh blood. Talk about the ultimate plot twist. “Yes, we can… and yes, we’re part sheep farmers from Eryri.

”And don’t get me started on the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Five? Ten? Some say sixteen of those bad boys had Welsh blood!  making Welsh heritage the largest ethnic group among the signers. Thomas Jefferson and Francis Lewis (born in Llandaff, Wales) and other founders, such as William Floyd, Button Gwinnett, and Robert Morris. Also; Stephen Hopkins, George Clymer, Lewis Morris, William Williams, John Morton, Francis Hopkinson, John Penn, George Read, John Hewes, James Smith, and William Hooper. They were over here yelling “Give me liberty or give me death!” but in their heads it’s “Rhyddid neu farwolaeth, boys, and pass the Felinfoel.

There have been eleven US Presidents of Welsh descent: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, William Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Calvin Coolidge and Richard Nixon.

Not many people will associate Hollywood with a Welshman. However, Griffith Jenkins Griffith, a Welsh-born American industrialist and philanthropist, built his fortune through savvy mining speculation in the 1870s and 1880s before settling in Los Angeles. In 1896, he and his wife Christina generously donated 3,015 acres to the city, creating what would become the beloved Griffith Park, one of the largest urban green spaces in the United States. Later in his will, he provided funds for the construction of the park’s iconic Greek Theatre and Griffith Observatory. Yet his legacy remains complicated by a dark chapter: in 1903, during a paranoid and alcohol-fueled episode at a Santa Monica hotel, he shot his wife in the face, permanently disfiguring her; convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, he served one year and nine months (often reported as two years) in San Quentin Prison.

Then you got the wild ones. Daniel Boone? Welsh. Jesse James, the outlaw? Welsh. Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president? Welsh! So half the Civil War was basically a family feud between cousins who couldn’t agree on the recipe for cawl.

And the inventors, the tycoons. J.P. Morgan? Welsh. Frank Lloyd Wright? Welsh-ish. Elihu Yale? The guy who funded the university that pumps out more presidents than a reality show? Straight up Welsh.

But here’s the beautiful, tragic, Carlin-level irony. There are like two million Americans claiming Welsh ancestry, 0.6 per cent of the population, but ten million walking around with Welsh surnames like Jones, Davis, Evans, Williams. That’s right, Jones is the fifth most common last name in America! You got more Joneses than Smiths in some states, yet nobody’s throwing a St. David’s Day parade with green beer and dragons. Why? Because the Welsh assimilated so hard, they disappeared into the American wallpaper.

They didn’t need parades. They didn’t need to scream about it. They just quietly took over the banks, the White House, the frontier, the Constitution, and then said, “Right, job done. Time for tea and a quiet sulk about the English.”

Meanwhile, the Irish get shamrocks on everything. The Italians got Columbus Day until they didn’t. The Scots get kilts and bagpipes. But the Welsh? We are the ultimate sleeper cell. We’re sitting next to one at Thanksgiving. You’re eating turkey. He’s thinking, “This gravy could use a bit of heart and some peas, but I won’t say anything… we’ve been running this show since 1776.

”So next time some blowhard says America was built by the English, the Germans, the Jews, the Irish, just smile. Then whisper, “Yeah… and the Welsh wrote the damn script, funded the revolution, signed the paper. Then they politely stepped into the background like the polite, passive-aggressive geniuses we are.

”Diolch yn fawr, you sneaky, world shaping, choir singing bastards. America’s got Welsh in its DNA… Most of us don’t even know we’re carrying the flag of a tiny rainy country. This country conquered the biggest empire on Earth without anyone noticing. God bless the Welsh Americans. And God help anyone who forgets it.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Welsh_Americans

Many thanks for reading.

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