Welsh place names: Bryn Mawr

03 September 2008

Bryn Mawr

Bryn Mawr is a census-designated place in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, just west of Philadelphia along Lancaster Avenue (US-30) and the border with Delaware County. Bryn Mawr is the home of Bryn Mawr College and as of the 2000 census, it had a population of 4,382. The name Bryn Mawr means big hill in Welsh and takes its name from an estate near Dolgellau in North Wales. This was the farm of Rowland Ellis, who emigrated to Pennsylvania from Dolgellau in 1686 to escape religious persecution.
Until 1869 and the coming of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the town was known as Humphreysville. The town was renamed by railroad agent William H. Wilson after he acquired, on behalf of the railroad, the 283 acres that now comprise Bryn Mawr.

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The Welsh were added later

The Welsh Tract, also called the Welsh Barony, was a portion of Pennsylvania settled largely by Welsh-speaking Quakers. It covers 40,000 acres to the west of Philadelphia. The original settlers, led by John Roberts, negotiated with William Penn in 1684 to constitute the Tract as a separate county whose local government would use the Welsh language, since many of the settlers spoke no English. Notwithstanding this agreement, by the 1690s the land had already been partitioned into different counties, despite appeals from the Welsh settlers, and the Tract never gained self-government.
The Roberts and other Welsh families became influential in the area, through the building of mills and the eventual introduction of the railroad. It is the railroad that gives the best-known part of the area its current name — the Main Line, referring to the main track of the now-defunct Pennsylvania Railroad.
The area is now part of Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties. Many towns in the area still bear Welsh names. Some, such as Bala Cynwyd, Radnor and Haverford Township, are named after places in Wales. Others, such as Tredyffrin or Uwchlan, have independent Welsh names. Some communities in the area that formerly comprised the Welsh Tract were subsequently given Welsh names. Among these were Gladwyne, formerly "Merion Square" (which was given its new name in 1891 in order to imitate the stylish Welsh names of adjoining towns, although the name is meaningless in Welsh), and Bryn Mawr, formerly "Humphreysville" (which was renamed in 1869). An additional Welsh settlement included Bala Cynwyd which originated as two separate towns that have grown together.
A more successful attempt at setting up a Welsh-speaking colony occurred two centuries later, in the Chubut Valley of Patagonia.

Unfortunately, the Cymry-fication of the Main Line was, for the most part, a public relations ploy by the railroad to make the area more 'quaint' and 'historic', rather than an actual naming process. True, there were many Welsh settlers in the area in the 1700s, but the entire 'Welsh Nation' gambit didn't work out like they'd hoped. Only a few of the towns had Welsh names from the beginning, like Malvern and Radnor; the rest were changed, like Athensville to Ardmore, later...

Welsh place names

03 September 2008

Bryn Mawr

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The Welsh were added later

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