American Family

A personal story of the origination of two family’s early Celtic, Norman, Welch origins through their Scot, Irish and English descendant’s migrations to Colonial America. A survival story of overcoming severe limitations while continuously seeking to protect and provide for their families through persistence, faith and pure grit. Migrating from the Appalachian Mountains’ Berkshire spurs of western Massachusetts and Pennsylvania south into the remote southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, they would raise their large families. With little outside support, a distrust of centralized government and a fierce independence, they would sustain their families through farming, logging, coal mining and the sale of meat, vegetables, and occasionally home brewed “moon shine”.