This is a genealogical study of four families: Wyckoskas, Kadish, Baubonis, and Perles. They came to America from Lithuania between the years 1886 and 1904 and settled in a coal mining region in Pennsylvania. It is a herioc story of people facing intolerable conditions in the Old World, of whole familes being uprooted, making their way across Prussia to the ports of Bremen and Hamburg, thence across the ocean to a completely new and often hostile environment in the Pennsylvania coal fields.
Joseph A. King -- author, historian, speaker, college instructor -- the leading authority on the Donner Party until his death in 1996 at the age of 71. He was an advisor and participant in Donner Party films for The American Experience and The Real West series on television. He was also a leading authority on Irish emigration to rural America and Canada. He authored seven books and over fifty articles in journals in Canada, Ireland, England, and the United States.
