Historical collections relating to Gwynedd : a township of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, settled 1698, by Welsh immigrants, with some data referring to the adjoining township of Montgomery, also a Welsh settlement / by Howard M. Jenkins.

  • Howard Malcolm Jenkins
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Historical collections relating to Gwynedd : a township of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, settled 1698, by Welsh immigrants, with some data referring to the adjoining township of Montgomery, also a Welsh settlement / by Howard M. Jenkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    such as comes from those features of human experience which are common to man everywhere, — his birth, his struggle for existence, his defeats and triumphs, despairs and rejoicings, sickness and health, death and burial; the character he pre- sents in life, the name he leaves behind him. With such materials the present volume must be content chiefly to deal, making its pages justify themselves, if possible, by merits of sincerity and precision,—contributing thus to the great records of the time a leaf -of small dimensions, but careful and trustworthy so far as it extends. To that historical method which begins by the patient accumulation of facts, and which draws no conclusion until the facts are faithfully studied, the highest respect is due, and it therefore is fair to suppose that the glimpse which we obtain of a people’s life, by the study of the experiences of a single community, has a substantial value in history. To cut down through the strata at a single place may disclose the formation underlying a wide district. Analyzing the township’s history, it might be said that in a large way, and having reference partly to its exterior rela- tions, it has had these five periods: 1. That of the Settlement: 1698-1720. 2. That of Growth: 1720-1775. 3. That of the Revolutionary War: 1775-1783. 4. That of the Changes, social, industrial, and political, which followed the Revolution: 1783-1820. 5. That of Development and Culture, since 1820. But an outline, less general, and more distinctly drawn from the place, may be presented. The township’s own experiences it may be said, have been these: I. That of the first settlement, its conditions new and strange to the Welsh husbandmen; the marked characteristics ot the little colony; its distinctly Welsh features: the unity of nearly every member in a single family, by ties of blood or marriage, the friendly habit of mutual help, the simplicity] of