A practical guide to tracing a Welsh Latter-day Saint ancestor — where to start, what the records mean, and how to add what you know to the archive.
Welsh surnames are shared by many unrelated families, so pair the name with anything else you know — a parish, a county, a year, an American town.
Search the archive →If family tradition names a chapel, farm or parish, begin at the place page — every pioneer connected to it is listed there.
Browse places →American family records often preserve a ship’s name or an arrival year. Each ship page lists every Welsh pioneer known to have been aboard.
Browse ships →Every claim on this site is checked against primary or reputable historical records before publication — and each page cites its sources. These are the kinds of records behind the archive.
Family tradition is where most stories begin — but the archive separates tradition from verified fact. Dates, passenger numbers, baptisms and quotations are checked against primary records; anything still awaiting confirmation is marked to be confirmed on the page.
Dates and places are checked against the Church History Biographical Database, Saints by Sea, Pioneer Overland Travel, the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, parish registers and censuses. Where those sources disagree with the family account, the archive shows both and says so.
Spellings of names and places follow the historic record, with Welsh forms given alongside — and the Church’s name is written in full as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Letters, journals, photographs, certificates, family trees — if your family kept anything from the crossing, it belongs in the story. We verify, digitise, credit and return.