In the 1840s, the Welsh came to the Delta-Peach Bottom area to quarry slate, as they had in Wales for generations. The quarries boomed for 75 years and then declined from the World War I era to World War II, but the Welsh influence remains today. When high school students from Wales visited Delta in 2023, some felt that they were in their native country. Some found their hometowns inscribed on tombstones in Slateville Presbyterian Cemetery. “The Welsh cracked the stone in one direction,” the region’s primary history book states, “and split it in the other to make roofs that seem to last forever.”

Jamie Noerpel and Dominish Miller talk about the Welsh, their quarry work, their culture, and their lasting influences in this April episode of Hometown History, from the Welsh quarrymen’s village of Coulsontown.