Coal & Cotton describes the working origin of my fathers northern ancestry in which every generation in some way was linked to these two products.I have spent countless hours to create the study of our past that is now before you. I sincerely hope that it gives you as much pleasure in reading it as it has given me in the research of it. I have tried to paint a picture of each age in which our ancestors lived and what their lives must have been like.
I truly feel that during the writing of Coal & Cotton I have stood alongside our ancestors and in a strange way now feel closer to these people, whose genes I share.