The Joplins are of Welsh extraction and the first of whom we have any definite knowledge settled in the Valley of Virginia.

They have scattered widely-many of them going to the Middle West, while others made their homes in the Southern States.

The features are so similar and so characteristic that they are easily recognized by their long sharp faces,, long noses, and often, blue eyes and auburn hair. Just a few years ago a World War veteran approached a member of the family, who was traveling in Tennessee, and asked, "Is your name Joplin?"

He replied, "Yes, but why do you want to know?" The veteran said "Well, I was in the World War with a young man by the name of Joplin, from Gurley, Alabama, whom you so very much resemble that I thought perhaps you were members of the same family. I was standing by his side when he was shot down, and I have tried, ever since I came back, to find some of his people, so that I might tell them that he died an honorable death, in the service of his country." This traveling man knew little of his family, but the story interested him, but the story interested him, and he wrote to Gurley, Alabama, to see if there were Joplins living there, and found that his father's brother had settled there many years before, and that the young man, killed in France, was his own first cousin, and that his people had never heard any particulars of his death up to this time, and perhaps never would have, but for his unmistakable Joplin features. (From the book, Our Kin).