Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier / Edition 1

by Anne Kelly Knowles

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226448534
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	02/01/1997
Series:	University of Chicago Geography Research Papers , #240
Edition description:	1
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Anne Kelly Knowles is lecturer in geography at the Institute of Earth Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and is a member of the editorial advisory board for Historical Geography.

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