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Thank you. It led me to the will of Jane Gameson, 1855 - but that only thickens the mystery! Why didn't she choose her brother-in-law as executor, rather than another man, of the same name, from far away? I guess they were all related somehow, if you go back to the 1700s. 

Thank you all for these replies. They seem to answer my question. The gist seems to be that people who wrote "Welsh" on the 1891 census could often speak English, but that Welsh was their preferred language.

were they born in Panteg , Wales ?

I don't know - but their children were christened 1795-1805 in Merthyr Tydfil, Panteg, and Llangattock; and John was married in Panteg in 1794. Where they all were before that, non one seems to know.

Robert and Sarah Gamson had three sons baptised in Whitchurch, Shropshire

John 11 November 1753
William 10 December 1755
James 6 March 1763

That's interesting. I should have added that James is the only one we know anything else about at all. He died aged 91 in 1836, thus born ca 1745. We suspect he married in the 1760s, that his wife died, and that he then re-married and continued begetting children. There is no record of a James Gameson or Gamson (the spelling was used interchangeably and apparently the pronunciation used to be [gamson]) being born/christened in 1744-6 anywhere in Britain. None of them survived even into the 1841 census. Their wives may, of course, have been a deal older or younger than them, and if the men came from England, it is possible they married local girls after moving to Wales, giving no idea of where the men were born and grew up.