Contact Information

Welsh Saints Project

To contact the Welsh Saints Project email welshsaints@byu.edu

Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University

1031 JFSB
(801) 422-1968
cfhgoff@byu.edu
https://cfhg.byu.edu/

About the project

Dr. Dennis inspecting a book.

During the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, converts from the British Isles played a crucial role in 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 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had great missionary success in Wales during the 1840s and 1850s, and many thousands of Welsh converts immigrated to America. They headed west with Brigham Young as part of the great Latter-day Saint Migration, which began in 1847. Today it is estimated that approximately twenty percent of the population of Utah is of Welsh descent.

As the message of the Church’s missionaries spread throughout Wales, many converts eagerly asked, "Pa bryd y cawn fyned i Seion," which means, "When may we go to Zion?" They strove to follow the counsel of their leaders to go to "Zion" (Utah).

This site seeks to preserve and share information about the early converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales. Its focus is on those individuals who converted to the Church in 19th-century Wales and chose to immigrate to America. The Welsh Saints are being researched one by one, as their lives are documented through genealogical sources.

This site began with Dr. Ronald Dennis's research into his Welsh Saint ancestry and his subsequent translation of many early Latter-day Saint publications from Welsh into English. An in-depth article about his work was published in the Fall 2002 edition of BYU Magazine.

Contributions to this site may be sent in .jpg, .png or .docx format to: welshsaints@byu.edu.

Students at Brigham Young University’s Center for Family History and Genealogy are responsible for the research, programming, and design of this site.