Customer Reviews

Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier (University of Chicago Geography Research Papers)

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A graduate thesis that is easy to read and follows the travels of Welshmen into PA and OH and the communities they founded. Why would someone buy land as poor as what they left behind? Why settle in the middle of America? Why leave all that is familiar behind? Not uncommon questions for anyone studying their ancestors, but the Welsh reasons, while often similar to other groups, are still refreshing in this work. Ms Knowles has helped the genealogist greatly with this work.

I was born in Portsmouth, Ohio over 60 years ago and lived in southern Ohio for the first 12 years of my life, I visited relatives in both the Jackson and Gallia county while young. About six years ago after moving from California to Michigan, I started regularly visiting southern Ohio. My grandfather, grandmother and mother are buried in Moriah cemetary. My gradfather's mother's family are the Isaac family that immigrated from Wales mentioned in the immigrants in the back of the book.

I hadn't read any thing in historical geography before and it was exciting to read about the conditions both of the land and Calvenistic Methodist influence on the residents. I now have a better understanding of my family and the Welsh experience in south eastern Ohio.