Brynffynon

Brynffynon was a short-lived Welsh settlement in Scott County in the mid 19th century. Founded in 1857, it was located on Nancy Creek, near where Toomey Road intersects with O&W Road today, west of Oneida.

Background

Brynffynon was founded by Rev. Samuel Roberts (1800-1885), a Congregational preacher from Llanbrynmair, Montgomeryshire in Wales. He was an influential figure in 19th century Wales, but was seen as a radical. He was educated at a dissenting academy and later helped lead the Welsh disestablishment movement, through which the Church of England was separated from Wales. He was also an early opposer of the Corn Laws, through which taxes and tariffs were placed by England on grain and other important goods.

Through the 1840s, Roberts became increasingly bitter about landlords’ treatment of farmers and frequently denounced their practices. His anger stemmed from the treatment of his own family, who were tenants of a small farm known as Diosg Farm. His father, Rev. John Roberts, had spent the equivalent of £700 (more than $30,000 in modern worth) over a seven-year period to improve the farm, only to see the rent doubled.

As his pleas fell on deaf ears, Roberts began warning in the 1850s that Welshmen were emigrating to America in the prime of their lives. And he began to formulate a plan with his brothers to do the same thing and establish a Welsh settlement in Tennessee. Former Ohio governor William Bebb and Illinois landowner Evan B. Jones were partners in Roberts’ venture. Bebb said during a visit to Wales that it was surprising that “hard working Welsh families should suffer such cruel exactions from landlords when freehold farms could be had on such low terms in America.”

Bebb and Jones eventually secured 40,000 acres of land in Scott, Anderson, Campbell and Morgan counties for Roberts to purchase. He planned to finance his venture by selling small plots to his fellow countrymen, at a cost of a half-crown per acre. Later, he purchased an additional 35,000 acres in Cumberland County.

The settlement begins

Bebb and Jones traveled to Tennessee to study the Welsh lands in the spring of 1856. On June 20 of that year, Bebb wrote Roberts to inform him that they had decided the settlement should be located “eight miles west of Huntsville in Scott County.” The area he was describing was located along Nancy’s Branch, a small tributary of Pine Creek located just east of where Toomey Road is now.

Nancy’s Branch begins at a pond on property currently owned by John Vernon and Carol Thompson along Coopertown Road, and eventually empties into Pine Creek along the O&W Road. By most estimations, the new Welsh community was established on lands that are currently owned by Tim Miller and James Marcum.

The purpose for choosing that specific site, out of all the property that the Welsh owned, was that it had open forests full of timber, it was dry but had water sources, and it had rich farmland. Bebb’s letter said that “a better place for sheep and cattle could not be imagined.”

The settlement was called Brynffynon, which means “the hill with a spring.”

The first settlers arrived at Brynffynon in September 1856. Among them was Richard Roberts, Samuel Roberts’ brother, who sailed to America and took a train to Cincinnati, Oh. Among the group was Richard Roberts’ wife, Anne, their baby daughter, Margaret, an assistant, William Griffith, his wife, Miriam, and their daughter, Betsy. A small service was held upon their arrival to dedicate the new community.

Samuel Roberts arrived at Brynffynon the following spring, along with a larger party. Among the group were William Brees and Thomas Humphreys, two Welsh-Americans from Somerset, Ky.

At its peak, Brynffynon had a store, a mill, and its own post office. The post office was established in March 1865 with Richard Roberts serving as postmaster.

The tolls of war

Samuel Roberts was an abolitionist, which was not contrary to the beliefs of Scott Countians, although Scott County was technically located in a Confederate state. There were fewer slaves owned in Scott County at the outset of the Civil War than in any other county in Tennessee, and Scott Countians voted against secession by the largest margin of any county in Tennessee, 541-19. Scott Countians later voted to secede from Tennessee, declaring themselves the “Free and Independent State of Scott.”

However, Roberts was also a pacifist, opposing war regardless of circumstances. That put him at odds with his neighbors, many of whom joined the Union army to fight against the rebellion.

Brynffynon was repeatedly raided during the war by soldiers from either side. It was located near the Monticello Road, a main travel route through the area. On one occasion, Confederate soldiers visited Brynffynon specifically to arrest Roberts for aiding Union soldiers who were passing through the area — a charge he did not deny. The soldiers were preparing to hang Roberts when one of them asked exactly where the Welsh settlers had come from. When he was told that they were British, the soldier replied, “that alters matters. If we hang Britishers there will be a hell of a row.” Fearing that angering the British would cause Great Britain to intervene in the war on the Union’s behalf, the Confederates released Roberts and left the community.

However, the war ultimately spelled doom for Brynffynon. Roberts’ journal, along with his claims to the federal government after the war, spelled out how the constant raids on the settlement had a negative impact on the settlers there.

“A good milk cow died because Union troops had taken our hay and fodder,” Roberts wrote on April 26, 1864. Two days later, he wrote: “Another valuable cow died on the same account.” Still later: “Two promising yearlings died on the same account,” and, “30 merino sheep died on the same account.” Roberts’ livestock were literally starving to death because there was nothing to feed them. All that he had owned had been taken by Union soldiers.

Roberts filed an 1871 claim with the U.S. Government, seeking relief for items that had been taken from him during the war. He was a meticulous records-keeper, and his petition to the federal government represents the clearest evidence of the atrocities committed by Union soldiers in Scott County after their arrival in 1863 as they marched on Knoxville to liberate East Tennessee from the Confederacy.

Roberts’ first record of wartime losses came in August 1861, when he said he provided dinner to eight refugees who were scouting for the Union army. Five days later, he said he provided bread, coffee and pasture to 100 Union soldiers traveling south from Kentucky. Two days after that, he provided lunch to 25 Union recruits who were headed to Kentucky. As the war progressed, his records indicate that he was becoming more strained by the frequent guests who stopped at his farm, and his hospitality eventually turned to plundering by soldiers from either side. In July 1863, a cavalry company took 24 bundles of wheat for their horses. Four days later, the same company returned for what remained of his wheat. When Burnside’s army marched through a month later, they took all of his hay. It was that winter that his livestock began to die. “Our two horses starved to death because Union soldiers had carried away our fodder,” he wrote in January 1864. “Joe died January 15, Dick died January 21.” That same month, Wolford’s Cavalry — the 1st Kentucky regiment under the command of Col. Frank Wofford — showed up at the farm and took corn and fodder for their horses. On February. 18, 1864, a Michigan cavalry regiment stopped, taking forage and fodder for 56 horses, and burning Roberts’ fence rails for their fires. On May 9, 1864, Wolford’s Cavalry returned and pastured 24 horses on Roberts’ farm. When they left, they took three bushels of wheat that Roberts had at William Rosser’s nearby mill. They were back again a week later, and Roberts noted: “Woolford’s cavalry generally treated us very roughly.”

Things got worse for Roberts as the war progressed. Soldiers carried away still more wheat in July 1864, and the next month soldiers stole his fowling gun, two rifles, two pistols, gun powder, and flasks. They also took 10 sheepskins to use for saddle covers, and other equipment, like bridles and stirrups.

The war ruined Roberts. He made request after request for reimbursement from the federal government, but they were ignored.

The end of Brynffynon

While the U.S. post office at Brynffynon was not established until 1865, after the war had ended, Brynffynon was by that time doomed as a settlement. The financial hardships created by the war and the constant plundering by Union soldiers — along with raids by Confederate soldiers — were too much for Roberts to overcome.

Meanwhile, the new arrivals from Wales had never laid eyes on the property before journeying to America. They felt Bebb had misrepresented the land or even defrauded them. They were shocked to find that it was mostly mountainous terrain, hardly as great for grazing sheep and cattle as Bebb had promised. Additionally, there were several legal challenges to their property’s boundaries, tying the land up in court cases.

One of the settlers at Brynffynon, John Jones, later wrote that he wished he had never heard of Tennessee. He returned to Cincinnati, as did his brother, William Jones, who was shocked by the surroundings in Scott County and left after less than four months at Brynffynon.

By Christmas 1867, only Samuel Roberts, Richard Roberts, and Richard Roberts’ wife and daughter remained at Brynffynon.

In addition to the hardships of the war, many of Roberts’ family from Wales had refused to follow him to Brynffynon because Tennessee was a slave state and they were abolitionists. As the war progressed, he was increasingly viewed suspiciously in the North because he settled in Tennessee — even though Scott County was a Union enclave that had declared itself independent from Tennessee.

Finally, in 1867, the Roberts brothers returned to Wales. Samuel Roberts was financially ruined. The rest of the Welsh settlers moved to Knoxville, Tenn., where they joined a Welsh community, or to Coal Creek in Anderson County.

Samuel Roberts returned to Scott County in 1870 to negotiate the sale of his property, and that was the official end of Brynffynon. The post office was closed that year.

Aftermath

Today, nothing remains of Brynffynon. The area quickly returned to forest, and has been forested ever since.

Samuel Roberts continued to advocate along political and religious lines after his return to Europe. He concentrated on issues facing the church, supporting the congregational principle of self-government against attempts to organize Wales’ independent churches along presbyterian lines. He started a weekly newspaper called Y Dydd in 1868, and another called Y Celt in 1878.

Richard Roberts died in 1883, and Samuel Roberts died in 1885. Both were buried at Conway Cemetery in a shared grave, along with their brother, Jon Roberts.