WELSH HISTORY;
History of the Welsh settlements of Licking County - the characteristics of our Welsh Pioneers - their church history, with Biographical Sketches of some of our principal Welshmen.  Read at a Meeting of the Licking County Pioneer Society, held in the First Presbyterian Ch: in Newark, April 7th, 1869.

By Isaac Smucker.

Our early days! - How often back
We turn on life's bewildering track,
To where, o'er hill and valley, plays
The sunlight of our early days!

     In 1787 John H. Phillips and his two younger brothers, Thomas and Erasmus, son of Mr. Thomas Phillips, a Welshman of large fortune, were students at a college in Wales.  John H. was the reputed author of some seditious or treasonable writings, and to avoid arrest and punishment, he decided to emigrate to America.  Accordingly he sailed for Philadelphia, accompanied by his brothers, who were more or less implicated with him, arriving in the above named year.  They soon after went to live in a Welsh settlement in Chester county, in the vicinity of Philadelphia.  Here they met with Chaplain Jones, a Welsh minister, who was the subject of Pioneer Paper No. 10.  Gen. Anthony Wayne was also a resident of Chester county, and when he organized the expedition against the Indians in the North West Territory in 1794, through the influence of Chaplain Jones, appointed John H. Phillips a member of his staff.
     These sons of Mr. Thomas Phillips succeeded, after much persuasion, in obtaining the consent of their father, who was a man of wealth, to close his business affairs and follow them to America.  Mr. Theophilus Rees, a neighbor and friend of Mr. Thomas Phillips, both residents of Carmarthenshire in South Wales, who was likewise a man of liberal means, after a full consideration of the subject, also decided to try his fortunes in the New World, and forthwith proceeded to make arrangements to that end.  They accordingly closed up their business, and when that was accomplished they bade adieu to their native hills in 'Wild Walia,' and sailed in the ship Amphion, Capt. Williams, on the first day of April, 1795, (or as some accounts have it in 1796), for the United States, where they arrived safely after a passage of nine weeks.  Many of their old Welsh neighbors, by arrangement, through the kind generosity of Messrs. Phillips and Rees, came as emigrants in the same ship with them, though many of them were unable to pay their passage, but agreeing to do so upon earning the money, after their arrival here.
     In October after their arrival most of his colony removed to Big Valley in Chester county, Pennsylvania, where there was a Welsh settlement.  Mr. Theophilus Rees and Mr. Thomas Phillips lived for some time in or near Philadelphia, but both soon removed to the Welsh settlement in Chester county.  Here, however they did not remain long, but

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soon, (probably in 1797,) they, together with others of their countrymen, who had crossed the Atlantic with them, removed to Bulah, Cambria county, Pennsylvania, where they formed a portion of a considerable Welsh settlement.  In this community Mr. Phillips' son Thomas, who came over in 1787, died in 1801.  The other son, Erasmus, John H. Phillips' brother, died in New York some years later.
     In 1801, or earlier, when all our county constituted Licking township, Fairfield county, Mr. Thomas

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