Bible Students in Wales

In 2014 the book The Religious History of Wales was published. It reviewed the different religions in Wales. One chapter, by Russell Grigg, covered Jehovah’s Witnesses (Bible Students). Quite independently of this, I had written a series of articles about Bible Students in Wales some years ago. These were later rewritten into one composite whole. Initially I thought I would have to revise the whole work on coming across Russell Grigg’s work but this is not necessary.

His chapter on Jehovah’s Witnesses covers from early days up until recent years in just eight pages (plus end notes). It is well written and well annotated, but the early history is obviously only a small part of it. Additionally the book focusses on South Wales for Bible Students’ origins. Due to geographic barriers within the country, informants in South Wales would not necessarily know about fellow believers elsewhere. So the story goes that the first Welsh congregation formed was in Clydach in South Wales. This is a familiar tale, often told and firmly believed by those who tell it. It is what I was told when I first came to live in South Wales, actually by the same informants who provided Grigg with his material. But it is an urban myth. Clydach congregation did indeed start in 1911. This is well documented in the book and was mentioned in my article. But what is missing is that the message reached people in other parts of Wales at least by 1891; that there were regular meetings in Wales at least by 1906, shortly followed by another regular gathering in 1907. All this information comes from the pages of Zion’s Watch Tower. Welsh newspapers from 1910 have J F Rutherford, later to be Society president, touring and speaking in Wales. Welsh language publications were being published from 1911. So there are a lot of things missing in The Religious History of Wales which the following article, just concentrating on the CTR era, will endeavour to address.

The United Kingdom is made up of four countries, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. When the Bible Student message came to the United Kingdom and groups of those interested formed, it appears that Wales was the last to be reached in any meaningful way.

The first mention of Wales in the pages of Zion’s Watch Tower (hereafter abbreviated to ZWT) was in 1891. Charles Taze Russell visited the UK and spoke in London and Liverpool, to an audience of about 150 at both places. The report in the November 1891 ZWT mentioned the Liverpool audience included some from Wales. Geographically that would probably be individuals from North Wales. (Before communications increased, North and South Wales were almost like different countries, with a different dialect, and even today, to travel from one to the other, it can sometimes be quicker to go through England.)

In 1900 the British Branch was established, and as reported in ZWT for May 15, 1900 this was the benefit of the friends from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The December 15, 1904 report from the UK, written by Jesse Hemery, gave some specific information about progress in the UK including Wales. Hemery wrote that congregations in England, Scotland and Ireland had increased over the last seven years from four to forty. By his estimate that would mean there were only four established congregations in 1897, but now forty in 1904. None of these were in Wales, but Hemery wrote:  “You will be glad to know that Wales is now getting its share of the harvest blessing: several colporteurs have been working in South Wales”.

There was a great religious revival in Wales in 1904-1905, the results of which were felt for many years thereafter. How much this affected initial interest in the Bible Student message is an interesting question.

In 1906 American Benjamin Barton made a Pilgrim visit to Britain. He visited all the congregations and groups he could in Britain, and for the first time, a group in Wales was mentioned. Cardiff received a visit in the August. This then was the first documented congregation in Wales.

The 1906 report, written as usual by Hemery (in ZWT January 1, 1907), states that “considerable work has been done in Wales and Ireland, in both of which there is now a considerable and growing interest.”

In 1907 A E Williamson made a similar Pilgrim visit and his itinerary (found in ZWT for June 15, 1907) included Cardiff, and also Bangor in the north of Wales.

In 1909 (WT November 15, 1909) a letter in support of the Vow was published from “we the undersigned members of the ‘Ecclesia’ in Cardiff”. It is signed by fifteen.

In 1910 Pilgrim Joseph F Rutherford visited a number of places in South Wales. (He would later become president of the Watch Tower Society). Several newspapers advertised his visits to groups. One such was in Swansea in June 1910. The cutting below is from the South Wales Daily Post for June 30, 1910.

The next year after Rutherford’s visit, the Welsh field (in the south at least) had a real boost with a visit from CTR in 1911. He visited South Wales twice, speaking at venues in Newport, Cardiff, Swansea and Llanelli. For this to happen there would have to be existing groups of Bible Students or at least committed individuals already in place in these areas to pave the way and organize events and publicity. So with Rutherford’s visits in 1910 and CTR’s visits in 1911, we can assume that along the South Wales industrial areas there were now several regular gatherings in place. (One of these would be the fledgling Clydach congregation that The Religious History of Wales mentions). Fifteen hundred attended a meeting in Cardiff at the Park Hall Theatre. Russell would later comment in the December 15, 1911 Watch Tower “the truth is making good progress in Wales.”

In conjunction with his visits in 1911, a South Wales newspaper, The Weekly Mail started printing Russell’s sermons each week, and this would extend the outreach of the message up the Welsh valleys, supported by the colporteurs.

So as far as South Wales is concerned, by World War 1 there is evidence that there were established congregations in places such as Newport, Cardiff, Pontypridd, Abersychan (Pontypool), Merthyr Tydfil, Beaufort (Ebbw Vale), Clydach (Swansea) and Fishguard. In Clydach for example, mentioned above, the minutes of the inaugural meeting of the Clydach and District Branch of the International Bible Students Association have survived. They are dated February 12, 1911, and there were seven founding members.

What about literature in the Welsh language?

The first documented evidence of Welsh language literature is in the Watch Tower for November 15, 1911, which mentions free literature being available in 23 languages, including Welsh. This would be copies of what is normally known today as Bible Students Monthly (although see later).

Some of this Welsh literature may well have been produced for an American audience as well as for Wales.  According to the Wales-Pennsylvania project, at one point one-third of the population of Pennsylvania was Welsh - people who left Wales to take their skills in coal mining, slate quarrying and iron working to industrial centres like Pittsburgh in the 19^th century. Even today there are 200,000 people of Welsh ancestry in the State. The American Bible Society deemed it necessary to publish the complete Bible in Welsh (NT in 1855 and complete Bible in 1858) for its immigrant population. So there would be Welsh Bible Students in America from very early on, and no doubt some of these then sowed seeds with relatives back in the old country. For one particularly example there is an interview in the New Era Enterprise newspaper at the time of the Cedar Point, Ohio, convention in 1922 with one William Hickey. Hickey originally came from Tredegar, South Wales, and was attending meetings with CTR way back in the mid-1870s. He was still an active Bible Student in 1922. Hickey came back to Wales for a time because at least one of his children was born in Wales.

However, it may well be that quite a few of those who became adherents in South Wales weren’t actually Welsh speakers, because genetically they were not Welsh. Vast numbers of English from Somerset, Gloucestershire and the Midlands flocked into South Wales during the Industrial Revolution, and as the iron ran low in places like Merthyr, Spanish iron and Spanish workers were imported along with it. In WT May 15, 1911, CTR even commented, “Cardiff has largely an English population. The proportion of Welsh faces, both at the public address and the address to the friends, was comparatively small.”

So in 1911 the Watch Tower advertised tracts in Welsh. When the Watch Tower Society first started publishing a new monthly tract series from Brooklyn in 1909, they hit upon two titles, People’s Pulpit and Everybody’s Paper. (They had the same basic contents, but Everybody’s Paper was re-set to allow part of the back page to be used to advertise a public lecture). These tracts soon came to be known as Bible Students’ Monthly, and ultimately most early issues were reprinted under that masthead.

So when it was decided to publish tracts in Welsh (as advertised in Watch Tower November 15, 1911) they had several choices of name. They apparently settled on Papyr Pawb, which literally means the paper for all - e.g. Everybody’s Paper.

We know this because someone complained. There was already a Papyr Pawb being published in Wales, using the variant spelling of Papur. As a result The International Bible Students Association (a related corporation in Britain to the American Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society) issued an official apology.

Announcement in Yr Herald Cymraeg (Welsh Herald) for April 21, 1914

The original Papur Pawb was a Welsh language humorous magazine that started in 1893, and published weekly from Carnarfon in North Wales. One would hardly think this could be confused with a religious tract posing such questions as Where Are the Dead? But that was the perception in Wales; hence the above legal announcement.

Below is an example of what the Bible Students were NOT using in their ministry.

By 1914 when they had to change the overall title of their Welsh tracts, they had also produced one bound book in Welsh. This was Tabernacle Shadows.

The front and rear covers and the title pages are reproduced below.

The title page clearly shows the publisher to be Watch Tower, with an address in Eversholt Street, London. This dates the book to before 1914, when IBSA became the publisher’s imprint from Craven Terrace, London. The printers were Hazel, Watson and Viney, a well-known British company that also printed British editions of Studies. The copy pictured comes from an American collector who originally purchased it on eBay from the UK.

The National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth has a copy. Their index states that it is translated into Welsh from English, and they give an estimated date of 1913, which is when it first appeared on their shelves and in their catalogue. Quaintly they ascribe the authorship to one Charles Theodore Russell.

Later the Millions booklet would be translated into Welsh c. 1921, but that falls outside the scope of this article.

The Photodrama of Creation

A huge boost was given to the work by the showing of the Photodrama of Creation. After its premiere in London in the summer of 1914, this eight hour epic (shown in four parts) went on tour throughout the British Isles. It was shown at various venues in South Wales in the fall of 1915 and early 1916. (But see the comment trail for an important update).

It was shown at Merthyr in October 1915 and the photograph below shows the Merthyr group as it existed at that time.

Later that month the programme was shown at Neath and the Herald of Wales newspaper in its Neath edition, carried an advertisement on the front page.

The Barry Dock News for December 31, 1915 announced that it would be shown at the King’s Hall, Barry, in the first week of January.

Also early in 1916 it was shown in Cardiff at Cory Hall. It is interesting from today’s perspective that it was shown in Merthyr before it was shown in Cardiff. Although Cardiff was growing rapidly, for a long stretch of its history Merthyr was the largest place in Wales, with its huge iron works. Cardiff was the port at the end of the canal, and later the railway, to export the riches of the valleys.