ABSTRACT
In fact, the expedition was in every way comparable to that celebrated exploration and for as long as there were Spaniards in North America, they at least remembered it. The launching of a Gwladfa, a national home for the Welsh, in western Pennsylvania, was as unexpected as it was abrupt. Its planting was the product of a conjuncture of forces stronger than the will of any individual, however dedicated. Morgan Rhees married a woman of character, charity and courage. She was to become a mighty figure in Philadelphia religion and, in widowhood, raised a large family to a rich and respected adult achievement. The rise of non-conformity was evidently a factor in this crisis. In the last half of the eighteenth century, the dissenting causes, for long stagnant, abruptly entered a phase of rapid growth; Methodism, which was itself to secede from the Anglican Church under persecution, in 1811, swept forward rapidly, particularly in the west and north.
