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Ellis Pugh was a Quaker emigrant and became a member of the Friends Church from the age of eighteen. In 1686 he, along with his family and many other Welshmen, began the lengthy voyage to Pennsylvania. Pugh settled as a farmer and minister in America during the summer of 1686. He left, in manuscript form, a work entitled ‘Annerch ir Cymru’ (‘An Address to the Welsh, to call them away from the many things to the one essential thing to ensure the salvation of their souls’). This particular copy was published in Philadelphia in 1721 and is accepted as the first Welsh book to be published in North America. As in Wales, printing became the most effective way of transmitting religious values and beliefs.