Journey through Welsh hills and American valley

By Ellis Wynne Roberts

Subjects: Biography, Welsh Americans

Description: The book tells the story of mass immigration to the USA from Europe around the turn of the 19th/20th century. The author's parents, Ellen and Hugh Roberts, left their native North Wales and the slate industry for the promised prosperity offered in the anthracite coal mining regions in the state of Pennsylvania. However, prosperity was not immediate and working conditions in the coal mining industry was little different from that which employees had experienced in their homelands. The book describes the lives and times of Welsh immigrants like Hugh and Ellen Roberts in Victorian Wales through to the Great Depression era. The social and political changes of the period are discussed; as well as the influences of the First World War and the impact of the Great Depression on the lives of the immigrant Welsh families.