Few of us can still say that our grandparents were born in a log cabin, but I'm happy to say I'm one of them. And the cabin still stands, at the Heritage Park in Samaria, Idaho, where my Welsh great-grandparents Thomas John and Elizabeth (Williams) Davis settled in 1868.

The Davises came to America in the 1850s from Ystradgynlais, Brecon and Castell-nedd (modern Neath), Glamorgan, in southern Wales. They first established a home in Coaldale, Pennsylvania, where they had their first five children. Two more were born in Idaho, and the last was Ephraim Rees Davis on January 11, 1875.

Rees Clark