Samuel P. Langdon built a sawmill on a branch of Duck Creek, the other opened a small stock of merchandise.

Morris J. Rowlands, a son of one of the colonists, wrote in 1912, Early in the summer of 1845 several families from North Wales met accidentally at Liverpool, England, seeking passage as immigrants to the United States of America.

After a stormy voyage on the lakes they arrived at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the 16th day of September, where a portion of them landed, and on the 17th at Racine, where the remainder left the boat.

They entered into Columbia, then called Portage County, about four miles north of the present site of the village of Randolph, arriving foot-sore and weary on Saturday evening, September 27th.... ...[T]hey continued their westward course until they came to a point on the Fox River near the center of Section 16, Township 13, Range 11.

There they discontinued for the first time their westward course and turned south, passing over Portage Prairie.... After crossing Duck Creek the party entered South Prairie, to which they took quite a fancy, and after traveling over the land, examining the quality of the soil, locating the timber land and investigating the source of water supply, late in the afternoon they walked up to the highest point, which was about half a mile southwest of Zion's Church in Springvale, and there sat down on the green grass deliberating over the situation and comparing notes on the different localities through which they had passed during the week.

Viewing the beautiful landscape before them and stretching in splendor for miles in every direction under the variable-colored rays of the setting sun, they deliberately decided to make that locality their place of future abode, hoping that they were thus forming a nucleus around which their countrymen in the future would gather to form a Welsh colony.

Then, returning to their families at Milwaukee and Racine, they immediately prepared to move onto their farms, coming over in covered emigrant wagons — 'prairie schooners' — and by the middle of October they were all on their places, housed in what people nowadays would call 'miserable shanties,' but to them, after their wearisome journey, they were 'comfortable homes.'

Facing the winter of 1845–46, the settlement contained in round numbers, including children, fifty-three persons, composed of nine families and seven single men.

In the article, he records that as a young man in 1898, he had visited Cambria to meet his kindred and found it was still a Welsh-speaking community which maintained its links with Wales.

In 1848 the Langdons raised a frame for a gristmill, but they had exhausted their means in their sawmill and store, and were unable to purchase the necessary machinery to operate it.

In the spring of 1849 a Mr. Bell appeared and advanced money for that purpose, taking a mortgage upon the Langdon property as security.

In consequence of nonpayment of the debt, the property passed into his hands, and the new owner surveyed and platted quite a large addition to the original site.

[13] At least seven employees have pleaded guilty or been convicted of charges including concealing environmental violations, lying to investigators and falsifying cleaning logs.