e hundred miles away from the scene of their earlier disappointments. Williams also loaned them, free of interest, enough money to enable them to establish themselves. And it is at this point, it seems, that Hopkin Hopkin and his family disappear from the written record. Despite numerous efforts, we, the authors, have not been able to discover any references - in either American or Welsh sources - which might give clues as to their subsequent fate.
There is, however, one more Amman Valley link in this remarkable story. Originally Hopkin and his son had planned to go on from Dallas to New Cambria, near Jacksboro, Texas, where other acquaintances of theirs, Morgan and Mary Hughes, had a farm. 27 However, heavy snow near Fort Worth prevented them going any further. The Hughes story, as described by Morgan in a letter dated 30 December 1879, is a startling example of the incredible mobility of some Welsh migrants in nineteenth century America. The letter was originally sent to an old neighbour and friend of theirs, Job Phillips of Cwmaman (d.1922), a shop-keeper and postmaster who was also a bosom friend of Mabon's. Phillips in turn sent Morgan Hughes's letter to Tarian y Gweithiwr, 28 partly to warn intending emigrants that prospects on the other side of the Atlantic were not so rosy after all.
Morgan Hughes was the son of Thomas and Ann Hughes, formerly of Ty'nywern Farm, Glanaman. He appears to have worked in coal mines all over south Wales before he and his wife emigrated to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the early 1870s. There, Hughes continued his calling for seven years and in 1878, having accumulated enough money, they purchased a farm near Jacksboro, Texas, where the small Welsh settlement of New Cambria was beginning to be established. By 1880, however, although one Welsh resident there believed the place was 'a paradise of a country', 29 for Hughes the venture had not worked out and he was in a desperate position:
Yr wyf mewn tipyn o helbul yn awr beth i wneud; nid oes genyf ddigon o arian i brynu stock, a byddaf yn hir cyn y gallaf werthu dim oddiwrth y rhai sydd genyf yn bresenol, ac hefyd yr wyf wedi colli un or ceffylau, y mae hyny wedi beri gofid mawr i mi . . . Y mae chwant arnaf i renti y lle am tua dwy flynedd, a myned yn ol i'r gwaith glo, ond nid wyf wedi penderfynu beth i wneud; eto nid oes dim lle i enill arian ond wrth ffarmo yma, ond enillaf fwy o lawer yn y gwaith glo. 30
[I am now greatly troubled by what to do; I do not have enough money to buy stock, and it will be a long time before I can sell any of the ones I have at present, and I have lost one of the horses, which has caused me much worry ... I am tempted to rent out the land for two years and go back to the coal mines, but I have not yet decided what to do; again there is no way of earning money here except by farming, but I will earn far more in the coal mines.]
How exactly Hughes resolved his dilemma will probably remain a mystery. No further letters from him appear to have been published in Tarian y Gweithiwr (or elsewhere) so he and his wife's later years are as lost to written history as are those of their friends, Hopkin and Margaret Hopkin. For both these Amman Valley families the reality of agricultural life on the American frontier turned out to be far removed from the idyllic existence many at the time believed it to be. There is no way of knowing to what extent these emigrants' experiences, with their hardships and triumphs, were typical or exceptional; most probably they were a little of both. Nevertheless, the glimpses into emigrant lives which these letters present are significant in their own right. They also stand as a vivid reminder of the extraordinary circumstances which ordinary people could find themselves in as they strove to come to terms with the new worlds they had entered.
1. Tarian y Gweithiwr, 19 December, 1879, 9 January, 7 May, 1880. English-language translations of edited extracts from these letters can be found in Alan Conway, ed., The Welsh in America: Letters from the Immigrants (Cardiff, 1961), 151-156. See al