Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Friday, April 10, 2009

Welsh Mormon History -- "Pa bryd y cawn fyned i Seion?"

Brigham Young University's Center for Family History and Genealogy is rich in online resources both for research and for instruction. During the next few posts, I will highlight some of the resources that get little or not mention in the vast Web world.

One of the most interesting sites in the Center is that of Welsh Mormon History. To quote the site's introduction, "During the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, converts from the British Isles played a crucial role, providing much-needed strength and leadership to the fledgling church. Among these, the Welsh were prominent, with influential figures such as Dan Jones and others making significant contributions to the growth of the work."

The Website contains a searchable database of 6058 immigrants, including their birth dates and birthplaces, death date, death place, departure date, arrival date, marriage information and sources and comments when known. The list also has a lot of digitized images of the individuals. There are also 135 journals with photos, books, biographies, and other writings.

The site explains that it "is the product of Dr. Ronald Dennis' research into his Welsh Mormon ancestry and his subsequent translation of many early Mormon publications from Welsh into English. An in-depth article about his work has been published in the Fall 2002 edition of BYU Magazine. This article has been reproduced here for your convenience"

I found that the site had a number of broken links and did not appear to be actively maintained. Despite these limitations the information is interesting and useful.

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