ABSTRACT
One of the most common and important stories in the biographies is how people with skilled occupations worked at their craft for a time in America, only to purchase land and take up farming. This seems to have been the goal of many all along. Insight on how this was done is contained in many biographies, including that of Timothy Thomas, a Welsh cloth-dresser who in 1816 emigrated to Pennsylvania and then Ohio, erected a small mill for cloth, and then took up wool-carding farther west, where he also purchased land to farm. Even elite members of society got in on the action. In his earlier years he was engaged in the carding and fulling business with his father, with whom he remained till twenty-one years of age. Mr. Thomas, though not a member of any religious organization, is a man of strict moral principles and a firm believer in the merits of the church.
