Rhydwilym Baptist Chapel: The West Wales Church That Influenced America

When we think of important historic sites in West Wales, St Davids Cathedral, Pembroke Castle, Carreg Cennen, Strata Florida and Pentre Ifan may spring to mind. Yet a small Baptist chapel near Efailwen in north Pembrokeshire also belongs to a remarkable international story.

Rhydwilym Baptist Chapel stands off the beaten track near the Cleddau Ddu. The building has been reconstructed over the centuries, but the congregation’s history reaches back to the 17th century. Its members would later carry their faith across the Atlantic, creating links between West Wales and Baptist communities in America.

The accepted history of Rhydwilym states that Baptist gatherings were held in caves, private houses and in the open air as early as 1667. This was in a time when followers of Nonconformist beliefs – such as those held by Baptists – were persecuted by the Crown and the state-sponsored Church of England, and so gatherings of any kind were acts both of devotion and defiance to the powers-that-be. Despite the threat to life and liberty that such gatherings incurred, the congregation of Rhydwilym is said to have included members from all across Pembrokeshire, western Carmarthenshire and southern Ceredigion. Members of its congregation who emigrated carried this religious tradition beyond Wales.

A chapel with global influence

In June 1701, a delegation from Rhydwilym made up of sixteen members likely walked to Milford Haven from where they boarded a ship named either the James and Mary or the John and Mary (sources differ) and sailed to America. The group – Minister Thomas Griffith, Griffith Nicholas, Evan Edmond, John Edward, Elizeus Thomas, Enoch Morgan, Richard David, Elizabeth Griffith, Lewis Edmond, Mary John, Mary Thomas, Elizabeth Griffith, Sioned David, Margaret Matheas, Sioned Morris and James David – arrived in Pennsylvania in early September, joining another Baptist congregation on the Pennepek River near Philadelphia.

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography identifies Thomas Griffiths as the leader of the emigrating group. It records their initial settlement at Penepek in Pennsylvania in 1701 and their move to Welsh Tract in 1703. Delaware’s official historical marker independently records the congregation’s organisation in Wales in 1701 and settlement in Delaware in 1703.

A dispute over interpretations of Baptist rites saw the Rhydwilym congregation leave Pennepek in 1703, setting off to form their own community roughly 35 miles to the southwest in a section of a thirty-thousand-acre block of New Castle County assigned specifically for Welsh settlers. The area in which they founded their new home would become known as the Pencader Hundred. This Welsh Tract Baptist Church would welcome scores more arrivals from Rhydwilym, West Wales and beyond over the following decades. It has been estimated that as many as 170 members of the Rhydwilym congregation would ultimately emigrate to New Castle County. However, this was merely the beginning. By 1711, members of the Pencader congregation had founded a second church. The Great Valley Baptist Church of Philadelphia was formed just fifteen or so miles from the Pennepek church that had welcomed arrivals from Wales just a decade earlier.

From Pembrokeshire to America

Over the course of the next two decades, members of the Pencader congregation founded chapels in the Cape Fear River region of North Carolina and on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. From North Carolina, they spread deeper into the colony’s interior and on into what would eventually become Tennessee and Kentucky; similarly, descendants of the Welsh settlers in South Carolina moved into Georgia and beyond.

The original March/April 2026 feature considered how these Welsh connections may have influenced later Baptist communities across the southern United States. That wider influence is an interpretation, rather than evidence that Rhydwilym founded every later Baptist denomination. The directly documented connection is between members of the Welsh congregation, Thomas Griffiths and the Welsh Tract settlement.

Historical sources checked 2 November 2026: Cadw records a Baptist presence at Rhydwilym from the 1660s, a chapel from 1701 and rebuilding in 1763, 1841 and 1875. The congregation’s earlier history should not be confused with the age of the present building. The original magazine provenance is retained; the sources below support the chapel chronology and transatlantic connection.