Alby & Donna Cunningham were both born and raised in West Virginia. They have five children and 16 grandchildren.

Alby’s lifetime career was as a welder, working for Koppers Company in Baltimore, Maryland for 33 years. He is an ordained minister and also pastured a church in Baltimore for 20 years before retiring and moving back to Tucker County, West Virginia.

Donna, a housewife and mother, worked several years as management in the restaurant business prior to being credited with the masterful development of the company’s original and unique soap recipes. Her model recipes are the same ones still used by the company today.

She became intrigued with soapmaking when a granddaughter was born with eczema. Reading books, about natural products that could help these types of skin conditions, was the catalyst that piqued her interest in learning about soapmaking. Upon discovering that goat’s milk was rich in emollients, naturally homogenized, non-allergenic, and containing caprylic acid, which helps balance skin ph, the answer seemed to have been found.

She and Alby began visiting local Amish farmers and obtaining supplies of fresh goat’s milk. Alby designed and built handmade molds and cutters. Together their “labor of love” produced, cut, packaged, marketed, and sold, thousands upon thousands of natural, handcrafted soap bars over the years.

Alby and Donna Cunningham remain partial owners in the newly restructured, Appalachian Milk Soap, LLC. They serve not only as outstanding mentors, but as consultants and part-time manufacturing and sales representatives of the company as well.