2018-04-15 05:00
Baseball pitcher Charles Louis (“Deacon”) Phillippi, of Rural Retreat VA, was drafted into the National League by Louisville in 1898, and began his baseball career with that team… Read More
Blog Directory > Books & Literature Blogs > Classic Blogs > Appalachian History classic Blog >
Appalachian History Blog
appalachianhistory.blogspot.com
Tags:
mill built plenty
hero deacon phillippi
leroy pope walker
bessie
chattanooga
deacon
grove
dandelion
denton
lefty
Folktales, anecdotes and quotes drawn from Appalachia. Emphasis on the Depression era.
2018-04-13 05:30
Along Route 219, in Silver Lake, WV, southeast of Kingwood (pop. 2,944), you’ll find “Our Lady of The Pines,” promoted on old postcards and signs as the “Smallest Chu… Read More
2018-04-12 05:00
Ahhhh, dandelion wine! The popular name comes from dent de lion, French for “lion’s tooth,” referring to the teeth on the leaves. Wine is made from the heads. Choose dandel… Read More
2018-04-11 05:00
When Bessie Smith sang the blues she meant it. Smith (1894-1937) was the greatest and most influential classic blues singer of the 1920s. Dubbed “The Empress of the Blues,” Smith… Read More
2018-04-10 05:00
John Denton fought for the Confederate Army, but deserted it. Then he joined the Union Army, but deserted it even faster. And that was just the beginning of his troubles.
Denton volunteered… Read More
2018-04-09 05:00
On March 25, 1931, local authorities in Paint Rock, AL arrested nine black youths on a freight train after receiving word about a fight between blacks and whites on the train. They discovere… Read More
2018-04-06 05:00
The western Algonquin called it the ‘Mooskingom,’ and to the Narragansett tribe it was the ‘Mooshingung’ —“water clear as an elk’s eye.” The M… Read More
2018-04-05 05:00
Robert Moses “Lefty” Grove is one of only 24 major-league baseball pitchers to win 300 games or more, and he reached the 300 win plateau in fewer games than any pitcher in histor… Read More
2018-04-04 05:00
On a cold day in March 1881, three masked men on horseback, brandishing revolvers, held up an army paymaster on the banks of the Tennessee River near Muscle Shoals, AL. The paymaster was on… Read More
2018-03-30 05:00
Doctors once prescribed a tonic.
Sulfur and molasses was the dose.
Didn’t help one bit.
My condition must be chronic.
Spring can really hang you up the most.
“Spring Can Really H… Read More
2018-03-29 05:00
When we think of coal company towns, often the first things that come to mind are the company store and company built houses. The Sandlick Sportsman’s Club in McDowell County, WV shows… Read More
2018-03-28 05:00
Hoard Of Ancient Coins Found Near Madisonville
Maryville Times, Monday, July 11, 1927
(By Mrs. Robert Magill in Chattanooga Times)
MADISONVILLE, Tenn—Just imagine how it must feel to b… Read More
2018-03-27 05:00
(continued from yesterday…)
Massive oak trees scattered their nuts on the forest floor; thousands of chestnut trees showered bushels and bushels of sweet tasty nuts on the ground. Hic… Read More
2018-03-26 05:00
It was while trout fishing in the spring of 1938, in Big Stony Creek, that I first saw the old Carter Mill. I well remember taking two beautiful, brightly speckled, brook trout, each of them… Read More
2018-03-23 05:00
Publishers’ Weekly 145 (March 25, 1944):
“Strange Fruit banned by Boston booksellers”
Says a Cambridge adage: “Banned in Boston is the trademark of a good book.&rdquo&hell…Read More
2018-03-22 11:00
Report on Construction Products Plant, Mar 6, 1920
West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company
Covington Va
“Herewith picture taken 3:15 p.m. 3-4-20 of construction grounds taken from a point… Read More
2018-03-21 05:00
The Long Trail of Shortia, by Charles Elliott, appeared originally in Horticulture Magazine, August 2001
(continued from yesterday)…
In the autumn of 1886, Charles Sprague Sargent, fo… Read More
2018-03-20 05:00
The Long Trail of Shortia, by Charles Elliott, appeared originally in Horticulture Magazine, August 2001
It doesn’t sound like much, really. “A charming, small, but not easily g… Read More
2018-03-19 05:00
Big Emory – our river used for swimming, providing water for a multitude of steam engines, used as the source of ground water for the drilled wells for the homes and businesses. Emory… Read More
2018-03-16 05:00
As we look over the country today we see two classes of people. The excessively rich and the abject poor, and between them is a gulf ever deepening, ever widening, and the ranks of the poor… Read More
2018-03-15 05:00
As the horse is becoming less and less important, the blacksmith shop, so intimately connected with horses, is becoming rare.
There was a time when the shop shared with the general store the… Read More
2018-03-14 05:00
“Benito Fernandez, known by all the Spaniards as Benito El Tuerto because he couldn’t see out of his left eye, lived just two houses away from our house on Ashton Lane. His wife… Read More
2018-03-13 05:00
Major crime remained very rare in Noble County [OH], and the occasional exceptions made big news. One of the county’s more baffling murder cases began on November 5, 1905, when the fam… Read More
2018-03-12 10:00
In early days for some strange reason, the little town of Keystone, WV sported one of the biggest red light districts [Cinder Bottom] in existence.
On payday Saturday nights, men, young and… Read More
2018-03-09 05:00
It is the privileged role of the Art Smiths, the William Pelleys, and the George Christians to lay only the cornerstone of fascism. It is in their rudimentary organizations that the petty bo… Read More
2018-03-08 05:00
By the 1820’s, several thousand African Americans had settled in Ohio. Early slave laws discouraged black settlement. In spite of the severe fines and penalties imposed by these laws… Read More
2018-03-07 05:00
“Practically all Melungeons preferred a care-free existence with members of their own clan. For many generations they seldom married outsiders, and virtually all families in each area… Read More
2018-03-06 05:00
Sara Roberta Getty (1880-1973) served as Woman’s Editor for the Cumberland [MD] Daily News from 1924 to 1942. She wrote four books of poetry, including Little songs of every day, (1924… Read More
2018-03-05 05:00
Moseley’s Administrator v. Black Diamond Coal & Mining Co.
Appeal from Muhlenberg Circuit Court filed April 16, 1908
Opinion of the court by Judge Carroll, reversing.
James Moseley… Read More
2018-03-02 05:00
That spring, I gathered up suitable pieces of scrap lumber wherever they could be found in order to construct a brooder house. Many of these boards came from a discard pile of surplus materi… Read More
2018-03-01 05:00
Granny women. Appalachia’s midwives. They are usually elder women in the community, the ones people come to with their problems. They do not wear any special garb or have any physical… Read More
2018-02-28 05:00
St. Patrick’s Day is only a couple of weeks off, and one of the things you’ll always find plenty of at that celebration is shillelaghs.
The shillelagh [siúil éille… Read More
2018-02-27 05:00
A town once meant as many things as there were people in it. For instance, there are noises of the early 1900s that you are not likely to hear again—
A fire engine, belching smok… Read More
2018-02-26 05:00
“It is a happy circumstance that the first showing of this traveling exhibition of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild should be at the American County Life Association conference a… Read More
2018-02-23 05:00
Liner notes for 1951 Folkways record ‘Old Harp Singing,’ featuring the Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee, by Sidney Robertson Cowell—
continued from yesterday…
T… Read More
2018-02-22 05:00
Liner notes for 1951 Folkways record ‘Old Harp Singing,’ featuring the Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee, by Sidney Robertson Cowell—
‘Singers in the Harp’… Read More
2018-02-21 05:00
“Stories of the feud-ridden, ignorance-shrouded people of the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia have been published far and near and throughout the land the common belief i… Read More
2018-02-20 05:00
“The home of Nathan Noble was known far and wide for the ample room, good living, welcome cheer and forest hospitality. The entertainment was noble, majestic and grand in its services… Read More
2018-02-16 05:00
The largest Waldensian colony in the world outside of Italy–Valdese, NC–was officially incorporated as a town on February 17, 1920.
The Waldenses, or Waldensians, are a Christian… Read More
2018-02-15 05:00
Right up till the early years of the 20th century, a bite from a rabid animal could strike terror in the hearts of Appalachian residents. Rabies slowly destroys the nervous system. It finall… Read More
2018-02-14 05:00
You can send me pretty flowers you can send me valentines
Send me letters every day but it won’t pay
Leap to my desire, nothing else will do
It’s goodbye and so long to you
You c… Read More
2018-02-13 05:00
In early 1907 consumer goods prices were high and continuing to increase, a situation set in motion by too easy credit. Most glaringly, the money center banks of New York City owed their dep… Read More
2018-02-12 05:00
“I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I only clucked and motioned for what I wanted. Lots of people thought I was an idiot because I could not talk. I may have looked like… Read More
2018-02-09 05:00
When temperatures begin to rise in February and March, maple sap begins to flow from the roots of trees up the trunks to the branches and limbs. During the short period of spring when the da… Read More
2018-02-08 05:00
During the Depression the Federal Writers’ Project provided wages for unemployed clerks, writers, editors, lawyers, teachers, librarians, and similar workers, and sought to compile ant… Read More
2018-02-06 05:00
Black Man o’ Mine,
If the world were your lover,
It could not give what I give to you,
Or the ocean would yield and you could discover
Its ages of treasure to hold and to view;
Could i… Read More
2018-02-02 05:00
A Fort Payne, AL city library had been established during the 1889-1891 boom and located on a second floor in the Opera House block. But during the mid-1890s depression years there was no mo… Read More
2018-02-01 05:00
Jenkins, KY didn’t come into existence by steady settlement over a period of years. Jenkins was planned and built by Consolidation Coal Company [Consol] for men who came to mine its co… Read More
2018-01-31 05:00
“Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?”
“You shore air,” said Len. “There lays four of as good wives as a man ever had. Them tombston… Read More
2018-01-30 05:00
When I was born, I guess everybody just threw up their hands! The night I was born, Hobart went to visit with the neighbors, the Buckles family, across the street. According to Hobart, Mr. G… Read More
2018-01-29 05:00
Before the days of T.V.A. and large power companies, electricity was supplied to rural areas by such imaginative and pioneering men as Arthur Abernathy Miller. In 1925, Miller, a brilliant s… Read More
2018-01-26 05:00
From the mid-19th century to the 1920s, when the refrigerator was introduced to the home, the icebox was the place to keep foods cold. Iceboxes were typically made of wood, lined with tin or… Read More
2018-01-25 05:00
“When I was seven or eight years of age, I began hauling all the wood used in the house and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, of course, at that time, but I could drive, and th… Read More
2018-01-24 05:00
I was born September 13, 1893, at the old Sapp homestead, my lifelong home, which my parents, John R. and Sanepta A. Sapp, bought in the early ’80s from Lewis Wilson. At my birth, Dr… Read More
2018-01-23 05:00
On January 23, 1897, Elva Zona Heaster Shue of Lewisburg WV, a bride of three months, was found dead at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor of the log house where she lived… Read More
2018-01-22 05:00
William Ganaway Russell had the good fortune to buy a farm exactly halfway between Walhalla SC and Highlands NC.
In 1849 an industrious group of Charleston German businessman were looking fo… Read More
2018-01-18 12:35
Sunday school picnic. Much of the food brought into abandoned mining town of Jere, West Virginia by “neighboring folk” from other parishes. There is a great deal of &ldquo&hell…Read More
2018-01-17 05:00
On January 17, 1781, American General Daniel Morgan scored a stunning victory over British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre “Barbarous Ban” Tarleton’s regulars at the Battle of… Read More
2018-01-16 05:00
Nationally recognized herbalist Tommie Bass (1908-1996) was the subject of scholarly and popular books, television features, a front-page essay in the Wall Street Journal, and numerous artic… Read More
2018-01-13 05:00
Like many locations in Georgia, many of Rabun County’s place names are derived from Indian names. In Rabun County that would be the Cherokees. In most Indian place names, we know the E… Read More
2018-01-12 10:00
“One of the most popular pages of the monthly publication of a tool collectors’ club is its Whatsis Column. Antique gadgets that stump the experts are frequently turning up. In t… Read More
2018-01-11 05:00
“Now to go back in history farther than my own time and recollections, let me venture upon some unoccupied territory and tell how Cherokee Georgia became the home of that much-maligned… Read More
2018-01-10 05:00
Established in 1935, the Pack Horse Library Project was aimed at providing reading materials to rural portions of Eastern Kentucky with no access to public library facilities. Librarians rid… Read More
2018-01-09 05:00
The following is an excerpt from an unrehearsed taped interview with Mrs. Leora Rhodes Brooks Franklin (b. 1920), long time resident of Richmond, KY. The interview was conducted by A.G. Duns… Read More
2018-01-08 05:00
The snow’s been collecting on the garden and the blooming season seems very far away. Of course the seed catalogs have started trickling in already (January is ‘seed month’… Read More
2018-01-05 05:00
In the tragedy of the Galveston hurricane of 1900 — the most fatal natural disaster in U. S. history — more than 6,000 souls perished. Yet that number would have nearly doubled h… Read More
2018-01-02 05:00
Viola Brown Black wrote the poem below about her childhood home. It still stands on Bell St. in Hiawassee, GA. It was built by her father, Lona Cicero Brown, in 1909.
HOME
The tall, white h… Read More
2017-12-29 05:00
Cold and flu season’s here. These days a quick trip down to the local Walmart will arm the grippe sufferer with every pharmaceutical weapon imaginable. But in 1937 Sam Walton, age 19… Read More
2017-12-28 05:00
Please welcome Timothy W. Hooker. The Cleveland, TN based author and teacher has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis. He’s taught composition, creative writing, a… Read More
2017-12-27 05:00
Well, it’s almost a new year, and depending on your definition, there will either be two blue moons in it, or none. Using the Farmers’ Almanac definition of blue moon (meaning th… Read More
2017-12-26 05:00
The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum is celebrating the end of another successful year. In 2017, more than 2,000 people saw exhibits on company town life, the dangers of mining, the Paint Cree… Read More
2017-12-22 05:00
One Christmas morn in eighty-one,
Ashland Kentucky that quiet burg,
Was startled the day had not yet dawned
When the cry of fire was heard.
For well they knew two fair ladies
Had there reti… Read More
2017-12-21 05:00
Some would consider her the founder of Adult Literacy Education in the United States. Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958) was an elementary school teacher and county school superintendent in eas… Read More
2017-12-20 05:00
Three remaining parts of the hog deserve brief mention. One, the tail, is a most delectable morsel when roasted in an oven or over an open fire.
Two, the hog’s spleen, sometimes called… Read More
2017-12-19 05:00
The Roanoke [VA] Times, Thursday Morning, December 19, 1929–
Body of Floyd County Girl Is Found On Bent Mountain; Disappeared Last Thursday
Extensive Search Had Been Made for Freeda Bo… Read More
2017-12-18 05:00
The whimmy diddle (sometimes called a Hooey Stick or Gee-Haw) is an Appalachian folk toy that has been around for centuries. It’s fashioned from two sticks of laurel or rhododendron i… Read More
2017-12-15 05:00
Clarence Nixon wrote of his father’s store in his book Possum Trot, “We stocked up with fruit in December, and I still think of Christmas when I smell oranges in the country.&rdq&hell…Read More
2017-12-14 05:00
Ever since the beginning of human existence trees have played an important role in the growing culture of man. Primitive man used them in various ways as means of providing him not onl… Read More
2017-12-13 05:00
“The revolt against the high cost of living, expressed in the nation-wide formation of old-clothes leagues, overalls clubs, and lunchbasket clubs, is highly significant in that it is t… Read More
2017-12-12 05:30
It was Christmas Eve on Lonesome. But nobody on Lonesome knew that it was Christmas Eve, although a child of the outer world could have guessed it, even out in those wilds where Lonesome sli… Read More
2017-12-11 05:00
I think it was the ninth night, I was told, that the wild animals came in from the forest, fields and desert. Some had traveled a long way. They came in late at night when everybody was asle… Read More
2017-12-08 11:47
Please welcome guest author Bob Plott. Plott is a third great grandson of (Johannes) George Plott, who first brought the Plott bear hounds to America in the mid-18th century, and he is a gre… Read More
2017-12-07 05:00
Frank Slake (right) and Ray Stratton gathered holly and mistletoe in the hills near Lerose, KY for Christmas 1907 when they worked for the K. & P. Lumber Company established there. Full… Read More
2017-12-06 05:00
“John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big steam drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
He hammered his fool self to death.”
—stanza 7 fr… Read More
2017-12-05 05:00
Upon his father’s small farm [in Carroll County, VA], George L. Carter, the first of nine children, was born not long before the war; and though apparently physically unfitted to endur… Read More
2017-12-04 05:00
John Jacob Niles composed the Appalachian influenced Christmas carols The Carol of the Birds, The Flower of Jesse, What Songs were Sung, Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head, and Sweet Little Boy J… Read More
2017-12-01 05:00
“Boiling Spring”The Anniston Times, December 30,1932
by Bessie Coleman Robinson
Our county abounds in beautiful springs, but no other surpasses Boiling Spring in beauty. It is lo… Read More
2017-11-30 10:00
As the day was coming to a close and the evening was drawing on people started to the church. They came from the hollows and mountains where they lived. That night Lester Raines took two cop… Read More
2017-11-29 05:00
On the 8th of March, 1782, William White, in sight of Fort Buckhannon [ed.-in modern day Upshur County, WV], was shot from his horse, tomahawked, scalped and lacerated in the most frightful… Read More
2017-11-28 05:00
“The Western Maryland Hospital, the first institution of its kind in Allegany County, was erected on Baltimore Avenue to minister to the suffering. The building stands there as a monum… Read More
2017-11-27 05:00
The 1912 Barranshe Run mishap was one of the more dramatic log train wrecks in West Virginia history.
As the Nicholas County story became legendary, Cherry River Boom and Lumber Co… Read More
2017-11-24 10:00
Water witching (rhabdomancy) is very common in West Virginia. According to a study done about fifty years ago, at that time there were twenty-five thousand practicing water witches in this c… Read More
2017-11-21 05:00
When you’re in Oakland or Grantsville, MD, you’re in Old Order Amish territory. If you’re not Amish yourself, you may be wondering just how that group got its name. You&rsq&hell…Read More
2017-11-20 05:00
When the Civil War ended, two Federal soldiers, Z. C. Patten and T. H. Payne, were mustered out of the army in Chattanooga. They formed a partnership for selling paper, blankbooks and miscel… Read More
2017-11-17 05:00
When a cold winter shadow I cast on the ground
And frost from the foothills is creeping all around
I now and then glance down the road towards the town
In a kind of a hope you’ll be… Read More
2017-11-16 05:00
Shortly after taking office in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt announced plans for creation of a “conservation army.” FDR at first saw the Civilian Conservation Corps primaril… Read More
2017-11-15 05:00
In November 1931, as chairman of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, well known author Theodore Dreiser organized a special committee to infiltrate Kentucky&rsquo&helli…Read More
2017-11-14 05:00
In Appalachia Santa Claus comes the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Since 1943, the Santa Special, more commonly known as the Santa Train, has traveled 110 miles through the mountains of easter… Read More
2017-11-13 05:00
According to Dr. H. G. Shearin, Professor of Anglo Saxon and of English Philology in Transylvania University, Kentucky is the most fertile State in the Union for folklore.
As a special insta… Read More
2017-11-12 05:00
Her paintings were shown at the 1939 World’s Fair, and she helped decorate the White House during the Roosevelt Administration. But the artistic highlight of Lola Poston’s painti… Read More
Subscribe to Appalachian History
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!