My great grandfather was born in Wales in 1842. As a young child, he worked in the lead mines near Ysbty Ystwyth. His father made shoes for the miners. The balance of the family raised sheep in Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn. The butched sheep provided meat and leather for shoes. The lucky sheep were just fleeced for wool. At age 11, my great grandfather was too big to enter the mine, so he was reassigned to watch the sheep. He "escaped" to liverpool where he worked until age 18. At that point he sought passage to the USA and signed on as "ship's company" to pay for his passage. On arrival, he found his sweetheart from Aberystwyth. To impress her father, he joined the Union Army and found himself shortly on a flatbed rail car on the way to the civil war front. He was shortly taken prisoner by the Confederates and spent the balance of the war in a Confederate POW camp. He survived and returned to Pittsburgh to marry his sweetheart. They raised 19 children. My grandfather and his twin brother were the youngest born in 1887. My great grandfather passed in 1912.
I visited Llanfihangel-y-Creuddyn in the late 1990s. The cemetery headstones have my family surname going back to the mid 1400s. The village is still doing well in the present time. My great grandfather's childhood home still stands down the hill from the lead mine at Ysbty Ystwyth.
Fascinating history you have.
Your Welsh ancestor may have fought against mine in the Civil War. as North Carolina was a Southern state.
My husband’s family were early settlers of N. Carolina, even have a tiny hamlet named for them. My father-in-law still had a summer cabin there when he was alive. I’ve never been there and perhaps the tiny hamlet has been absorbed or grown into a larger town...so I looked and found that it is. You can see it on YouTube:
Just go to YouTube and enter:
I’m visiting every town in NC - Dortches, North Carolina
Family name was Dortch.