Beyond red dragons on street signs: cultural expression among the Welsh in the nineteenth-century slate quarry community of Delta, Pennsylvania

Abstract

This thesis explores the nature of cultural expression within a Welsh slate quarrying community in nineteenth-century York County, Pennsylvania. It takes a material culture approach, assuming that physical objects are invested with meaning by the people who make or use them, and seeks the material manifestations of Welsh identity in Delta, Pennsylvania, and the areas that constitute the Peach Bottom quarry community. ☐ The work is the product of original archival research into wills, probate inventories, and vendue lists in York County; field work documenting architecture and gravestones in the Peach Bottom community and North Wales; translation of Welsh language gravestones for one Delta cemetery; and analysis of oral histories taken in the Peach Bottom community in 1976. ☐ The study concludes that slate gravestones were the primary material expression of Welsh ethnicity because they encompassed key cultural values of language arts, religious belief, and skill at working with slate.