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Questions in the title.
Jones, Lewis, Thomas, Williams, Evans, Lloyd, Floyd, Roberts, Hughes to name just a few. I bet you could make a list of hundreds of famous black Americans from that list of names alone.
Oddly, the Welsh weren't big on slave ownership in the US, most of them were Quakers and slave ownership would have been against their ideology.
It's cause they is Welsh isn't it see. Grace Jones often invites Venus Williams round for Bara Brith and a nice cup of tea, look you.
Davis, Davies, Jenkins, Rees...
I've read a few theories saying that following emancipation, particularly in the Northern states, newly freed blacks would take the names of American heroes and founding fathers, of which a large proportion were of Welsh descent.
And since I like that explanation, I will now go around spouting it as fact.
I also found out that William Penn, the founder of the state of Pennsylvania, originally wanted to name his state "New Wales" but was blocked from doing so by the authorities in London. **** those guys.
You may have unwhittinghamly stumbled on something here. This is a map of the state of New York south of Syracuse. The football connection is obvious 'cos a mile or two to the east is the village of Pompey.
Who cares? Get a life. There's children out there fighting for their lives due to taking a day off school and all you're worried about is Welsh surnames?
I've often wondered this too. Plenty of black people with the surname Evans and Jones. Could it be that these surnames are not exclusively Welsh? Or if they are perhaps the slave owners ancestry was Welsh but they themselves lived in England where they picked up a taste for keeping slaves.
I can't imagine any Welsh people back in the day would be slavers.
I remember reading once that after slavery was abolished a lot of slaves took the surname of the pastor of the church they attended and a lot of these pastors were Welsh. Not sure how true this is though.
Perhaps some of them came to Cardiff as freemen crews on boats, as a lot did, took a local name and then they or their children went to the US as free men, just like a lot of the Irish did during the potato famine