Louis E. Adams Books

"“. . . Retracing the VanishingFootprints of Our Appalachian Ancestors” represents a genealogical history of thirteen major pioneerfamilies who settled in eastern Kentuckyduring the 18th and 19th Centuries. The surnames include Adams,Berry,Brooks,Brown, Burton, Castle, Chaffin, Daniel, Large, Thompson, Ward, Wellman, andYoung. To fully appreciate their social and economic hardships andchallenges requires the reader to visualize what life was like on the earlyfrontier. After the American Revolution and the Civil War, many of these earlypioneers traveled from North Carolina and Virginia into the sheltering hills ofeastern Kentucky via Cumberland Gap and Pound Gap. Others came fromPennsylvania. They settled in early Floyd and Lawrence Counties, which werelater divided into present day Boyd, Elliott, Floyd, Johnson, Lawrence, andMartin Counties. They were mostly of English, Irish, Scotch-Irish orAnglo-Saxon extraction and made their living by farming the hilly terrain orworking in the coalmines. Some supplemented their income by trapping andhunting. They may have been poor by economic standards, but they remained aproud and independent people with strong character traits. Many of theirdescendants have gone on to become physicians, lawyers, teachers, scientists,military leaders and public servants."