Synopses & Reviews
Bringing immigrants onstage as central players in the drama of rural
capitalist transformation, Anne Kelly Knowles traces a community of
Welsh immigrants to Jackson and Gallia counties in southern Ohio. After
reconstructing the gradual process of community-building, Knowles
focuses on the pivotal moment when the immigrants became involved with
the industrialization of their new region as workers and investors in
Welsh-owned charcoal iron companies. Setting the southern Ohio Welsh in
the context of Welsh immigration as a whole from 1795 to 1850, Knowles
explores how these strict Calvinists responded to the moral dilemmas
posed by leaving their native land and experiencing economic success in
the United States.
Knowles draws on a wide variety of sources, including obituaries and
community histories, to reconstruct the personal histories of over 1,700
immigrants. The resulting account will find appreciative readers not
only among historical geographers, but also among American economic
historians and historians of religion.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-317) and index.
About the Author
Anne Kelly Knowles is a historical geographer who teaches at Middlebury College, where she has been a member of the Department of Geography since 2002. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, she is the author of Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio’s Industrial Frontier, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and the editor of Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship.
Table of Contents
List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
Guide to Pronouncing and Interpreting Welsh Place-Names
Common Elements in Welsh Place-Names
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Historical Geography of Welsh Emigration to the United States, 1795-1850
2. The Context of Choice: Internal Migration
3. The Context of Choice: Emigration and Settlement
4. Charcoal Iron and the Welsh
5. The Moral Context of Migration
Appendixes
A. Occupations of Cardiganshire Natives in the Merthyr Tydfil Area, 1851
B. Jefferson Furnace Company Land Agreements
C. Cân Newydd/A New Song
D. Welsh Immigrants to the Jackson/Gallia Settlement
Bibliography
Index