2019-10-29 05:00
Now began the building of Middlesborough, the name which [my employer, Mr. Alexander A. Arthur] had proposed for the town having been adopted. Men of all trades and callings were entering Ye… Read More
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Folktales, anecdotes and quotes drawn from Appalachia. Emphasis on the Depression era.
2019-10-16 05:00
In October 1960, Dr. Bernice Eddy gave a talk to the Cancer Society in New York without warning her employer, the National Institutes of Health, in advance. She startled the attendees by ann… Read More
2019-09-20 05:00
Prior to easily retrievable birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates, and digitized record keeping in general, the family Bible held the ultimate narrative of ancestral hist… Read More
2019-09-10 05:00
The American Museum of Science & Energy is today’s No. 1 Oak Ridge, TN tourist destination. But from 1941 to 1949 Oak Ridge was a town that did not exist. It was one of the top sec… Read More
2019-09-09 05:00
Deer hunting season got underway in Georgia this past Monday, September 9. It’s all too easy to forget that in the early part of the 20th century, there simply were no deer to be had i… Read More
2019-09-04 05:00
Dr. Richard Banks, one of the most shining ornaments of the medical profession in this State since its organization, was a native Georgian, born in Elbert County in 1784. After obtaining the… Read More
2019-09-03 05:00
At 3 A.M. a storm began to brew in the northwest, and a few minutes later Commander Zachary Lansdowne, the skipper of the dirigible USS Shenandoah, was back in the control car. The Shenandoa… Read More
2019-09-02 09:01
The post Happy Labor Day! appeared first on Appalachian History.
You Might Also Like:Happy Labor Day! Read More
2019-08-30 05:00
The Battle of Blair Mountain marked a turning point in the national movement to better the conditions of working people by demanding the legalization of unions. It was the largest armed labo… Read More
2019-08-26 05:00
Richwood, WV Aug 26, 1937 — “The Cherry River Navy’s flagship ‘Clothespin’ is riding at anchor this morning, resplendent in gala attire awaiting her christening… Read More
2019-08-22 05:00
Anyone who has been to the Cherokee Indian Museum down here where you buy the tickets to “Unto These Hills” has probably seen some chunkey stones. They are a variety of sizes; th… Read More
2019-08-14 05:00
She had hosted Susan Steele Sampson, wife of Kentucky’s governor, the previous year at her first American Folk Song Festival, held at the Traipsin’ Woman Cabin. Now, in August 19… Read More
2019-08-05 05:00
Mountain Advocate
Barbourville KY
Fri, August 5, 1910
Jackson County.
Great Rejoicing Among the Edwards People.
Last Monday being county court day in McKee, there was quite a large crowd gat… Read More
2019-08-01 05:00
“The T. stands for Taliaferro. I was named after Booker T. Washington. My people came from Sherrill’s Fort in Catawba County, NC. I was brought up by my mother, but in 1920, came… Read More
2019-07-30 05:00
“Cider for apple butter must be perfectly new from the press, and the sweeter and mellower the apples are of which it is made, the better will the apple butter be. Boil the cider till… Read More
2019-07-29 05:00
The July 29, 1806 letter was the thing that undid the Burr Conspiracy.
Harman Blennerhassett had been a moderately well off Anglo-Irish aristocrat prior to his becoming involved with Irish r… Read More
2019-07-25 05:00
Asheville, NC
July 25, 1923—Fire down at the Emporium Department Store just outside of Pack Square. Photo looking towards Biltmore Avenue (south).
Ashville+NC firefighting appalachia a… Read More
2019-07-24 05:00
When the dark clouds of war were gathering in the South in the spring of 1861, not everyone embraced the new cause. While some were eager to fight for a secessionist government, many others… Read More
2019-07-16 05:00
Kephart: “People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think… Read More
2019-07-02 05:00
In the late 1800s, the Progressive Movement was sweeping the industrialized cities of the North. One of the key features of this urban social and political reform movement was the creation o… Read More
2019-06-26 05:00
“Yes, I am working on a part time job as cook, but you don’t need to ask what I’m doing the rest of the time. What don’t I do? I get up early and sometimes wash out c… Read More
2019-06-20 05:00
The year he turned 44 years old, in 1864, Joseph Hubert Diss Debar was appointed WV commissioner of immigration by Governor Boreman; during his tenure he produced the only handbook for immig… Read More
2019-06-19 05:00
“From some long-forgotten source, I heard that June beetles made a sweet sound while flying around. I loved music, and the method to acquire this living music box was to fasten a long… Read More
2019-06-17 05:00
An important tradition symbolic of the vital place of family in Appalachian life is Decoration Day, usually held on a Sunday in June. Families gather at rural churches and cemeteries to hono… Read More
2019-06-14 05:00
During the 1930s and 1940s Rose Thompson worked as a home supervisor with the Farm Security Administration in Georgia. While she worked with farmers and their wives — teaching them to… Read More
2019-06-13 05:00
A prolific composer, South Carolinian Lily Strickland (1884-1958) published 395 musical works for popular, church, and children’s performances. Her early works displayed the influences… Read More
2019-06-12 05:00
On July 1, 1915, statewide prohibition went into effect in Alabama, for the second time, five years before the federal prohibition amendment was ratified under the Kilby administration. Betw… Read More
2019-06-11 05:30
“[The farm was] wedged in . . . there’s a branch . . . a big branch come down, and it’s clean up on both sides of the hollow. That was just a holler, see. And a hillside. I… Read More
2019-06-10 05:00
“Well, always when they’d get up, you know, early, they’d go feed their horses to get ‘em ready for the day’s work. And then they plowed with a turning plow. Th… Read More
2019-06-07 05:00
There was a class that were ignorant and no-account. They never had much of a chance; you’ve got to say that for them. Once in awhile, one of them would sort of pull himself up by his… Read More
2019-06-06 05:00
“I don’t know when I got my first radio, but Daddy had one of the first radios there was in Ceres. It was about as big as television is now. They have the soap operas on the TV… Read More
2019-06-05 05:00
Folk hero Davy Crockett (1786-1836) was born in Greene County, TN. He remained in East Tennessee until 1811, when he and his family moved to Lincoln County. They moved again in 1813 to Frank… Read More
2019-06-04 05:00
(original spellings have been kept from the following narrative –ed.)
In the year 1843, an occurrence took place of not a little importance to the subjects of this narrative.&nbs&hell…Read More
2019-06-03 05:00
‘How the Talking Pictures Talk’
Smyth County News
Thursday, June 27, 1929
There are two main ways of making talkies. One is the so-called disc method and the other the sound trac… Read More
2019-05-31 05:00
Sometimes the official stories that make it into museum collections just don’t shed enough light on the complete context of an event. Take this photo, titled “Picnic in a Coal Mi… Read More
2019-05-29 05:00
“From his father, my father Ira Jacob Butts learned how to mix certain roots and leaves of grass together for a cure for snakebites. He never told which weeds and roots he used, and I… Read More
2019-05-24 05:00
Agricultural education throughout the State, and scientific farming, have developed within the last fifty years. Most of the progress has been made within the last decade. These developments… Read More
2019-05-16 05:00
We spent Sunday night before the case opened in studying it, and then Ewing said to me :
“Well, you have this case remarkably well in hand. This is the greatest opportunity of your lif… Read More
2019-05-15 05:00
I began to practice as a young lawyer in an adjoining county and about sixty miles from George A. Ewing’s home. Up to that time I had never met him, nor did I know any of his immediate… Read More
2019-05-14 05:00
My father died suddenly at 44 years of age and is buried in a little grave yard, just outside of the town he helped to build among the people he loved. His grave is marked by a stone of Tenn… Read More
2019-05-08 05:00
Long before it became the brand of a search engine, the creature whose uttered cry gave it a name haunted Kentuckians. Daniel Boone told tales of “killing a ten-foot, hairy giant he ca… Read More
2019-05-06 05:00
Myrtle Corbin was known far and wide in the late nineteenth century as the Four-Legged Woman. While at a glance one could plainly see four legs dangling beyond the hem of her dress – o… Read More
2019-05-03 05:00
EVERY CREEK’S A STORY IN CLINTON COUNTY
Ridge hikes and crossroad chats yield a bumper crop of legends
down near the Tennessee border.
By Howard Hardaway —Louisville Couri… Read More
2019-05-02 05:00
It was the greatest disaster ever known to this Western Virginia mountain village.
On May 2, 1929, the unusually violent storm slammed into the little community of Rye Cove, VA in the mounta… Read More
2019-05-01 05:00
In her book about growing up in Lonaconing, MD, Ruth Bear Levy (1898-1994) wrote about how “modern artists could create masterpieces out of the sights and sounds of Lonaconing,”… Read More
2019-04-30 05:00
Madison County, KY native Frances Estill Beauchamp (1857-1923) spearheaded the late nineteenth century antiliquor crusade in Kentucky and was a leading figure in the temperance movement nati… Read More
2019-04-29 05:00
In this excerpt from her 1979 autobiography “What My Heart Wants to Tell,” Kentuckian Verna Mae Slone (1914-2009) relates the story of how her father Isom ‘Kitteneye’… Read More
2019-04-26 05:00
“You want to know when l really entered public life.
“I did not enter; I was shot into it, as by a catapult, and I learned politics in front of Gatling guns and Mauser rifles. Th… Read More
2019-04-25 05:00
I sought and received the forgiveness of my sins in August 1861, at a camp meeting at Bird’s Chapel, in Dade County, Georgia. My conversion was so definite – I may say, so sweet… Read More
2019-04-24 05:00
Sweat flies, Russian hornets, sand hornets, and Japanese hornets are some of their common nicknames. Warm weather’s here, and that means they’re starting to come back. In both Ap… Read More
2019-04-23 05:00
“One of the most important business enterprises of modern Pennsboro was the founding of the Collins Company, [the holding company for Pennsboro Lumber Company] which was opened as a re… Read More
2019-04-22 05:00
The work of the mountain mother is burdensome and she bears more than her share of responsibilities of the household. Her housework includes washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and… Read More
2019-04-19 05:00
Go to Harrisonburg, Virginia and you’ll find them in just about any of the numerous old, old Mennonite churches in the area. They’re “Old Folks Singings,” an event un… Read More
2019-04-18 05:00
Bunny is derived from the old or Middle English root word “bun” and describes a rabbit, a young one in particular. Rabbits are small furry mammals that belong to the order Lagomo… Read More
2019-04-17 05:00
During the 1870s, William Murphy of Greenville, S. C., wandered through these mountains making music every day. He, like Stephen Foster, was regarded as a half-vagabond, but he was tolerated… Read More
2019-04-15 05:00
THE GREENVILLE [TN] DAILY NEWS – April 15, 1910
MYSTERY SHROUDS THE KILLING OF BEN ALLEN.
Did Mill man commit suicide or was he Murdered?
MAN ARRESTED AND NOW IN JAIL.
J.C. Lindley, wh… Read More
2019-04-12 05:00
They’re the first greens of the season, and they’re coming up right about now. Ramps, (Allium tricoccum or Allium tricoccum var. burdickii, Alliaceae) also known as wild leeks, a… Read More
2019-04-11 05:00
On April 22, 1799, the Governor of Kentucky issued a Proclamation offering a reward for the capture of either or both of the Harpe Brothers. Reports of killings in Kentucky were followed by… Read More
2019-04-10 05:00
“Some time between 1 o’clock and daybreak, Horace Devaughn will be led into the death chamber to pay the penalty for the murder of A.B. Moore and Mrs. Ruby Thornton in Birmingham… Read More
2019-04-09 05:00
Excerpt from ‘Cumberland, Maryland Through the Eyes of Herman J. Miller,’ (1978)
During the 1920’s and early 1930’s, so many arrests and convictions were made by dry… Read More
2019-04-08 09:00
An Extraordinary Story
Told by a West Virginia Girl who was Kidnapped Sunday Night
[New York Times, April 8, 1891]
Wheeling, West Va., April 7. —Since Sunday night, about 9:30 o’… Read More
2019-04-04 05:00
“My great uncle Ellis, being the youngest of the family, lived at home with his mother Martha until her death. I remember my grandmother (Ellis’ sister Fannie Mainous Botner) and… Read More
2019-04-03 05:00
My mother was a great sassafras drinker. And every spring we had to have sassafras along with our poke salad (that was a wild green). The mountain people particularly gathered a lot of wild… Read More
2019-04-02 05:00
Shenandoah Herald
Woodstock VA
April 2, 1909
‘To Find Your Affinity’
Your affinity is your mate, but unless you know the six types of happy married folks on Olympus, up to date… Read More
2019-03-29 05:00
Fans like it because it is short, completely independent (in more ways than one), and sticks staunchly to steam power—represented by three extraordinary locomotives, the like of which… Read More
2019-03-28 05:00
It was the city’s worst flood up to that time. The March 1924 deluge left most of Westernport MD, which sits in a valley at the confluence of the North Branch of the Potomac River and… Read More
2019-03-27 05:00
At the first call of the robin in the spring, Aunt Emmie on Honey Camp Run, in clean starched apron and calico frock, dragged her rocker to the front stoop of her little house and there she… Read More
2019-03-26 05:00
Ramps are the first green thing of spring in Appalachia, and certainly the smelliest. Mountain folks have traditionally looked forward to the return of the ramp after a winter of eating most… Read More
2019-03-25 05:00
The Kingsport Times
Kingsport, TN
Sunday, March 24, 1935
“Pork Pie” is the Newest Style Note in Hats
The fabled phoenix, that marvelous bird endowed with the power to rise from i… Read More
2019-03-22 05:00
Any Woman’s Blues
My man ain’t acting right
He stays out late at night
But still he says he loves no one but me
But if I find the gal
That’s trying to steal my pal
I&rsquo&helli…Read More
2019-03-21 05:00
Most of the boys carried an old Russell Barlow pocket knife. You could get a one blade at a store for fifteen cents and a two-blade—that is, a long blade and a short blade—for a… Read More
2019-03-20 05:00
Frances L. Goodrich was a Presbyterian missionary and teacher from Binghamton, NY, who came to Madison County, NC in the autumn of 1890. She’s responsible for getting the White Rock Ho… Read More
2019-03-19 05:00
The Fayette Journal (WV) reported on February 24, 1933 that 130 of the 3,000 men working on the Hawks Nest Tunnel at Alloy had already died from silicosis, caused from inhalation of silica r… Read More
2019-03-18 05:00
Herman Drenth, alias “Harry F. Powers,” startled the nation in 1931 after he confessed to the brutal murders of three women and two children. This West Virginia based traveling s… Read More
2019-03-15 05:00
The Rabbit and the ‘Possum each wanted a wife; but no one would marry either one of them. They talked the matter over, and the Rabbit said: “We can’t get wives here… Read More
2019-03-14 05:00
Big Pharma had not yet perfected the widespread manufacture of synthetic drugs in 1932. Instead, the industry relied on “western North Carolina, southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky… Read More
2019-03-13 05:00
Smallpox Patients at Middlesboro, Ky., Without Food Since Saturday. Federal Authorities May Act.
NY Times, March 14, 1898.
MIDDLESBORO, Ky., March 14—Surgeon Wertenbaker of the United… Read More
2019-03-12 05:00
Camp Juliette Low, in Chattooga County GA, today is a private, non-profit summer camp for girls ages 7 to 17. Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was instrumental in getting thi… Read More
2019-03-11 05:00
On March 10, 1920, the West Virginia Legislature passed a joint resolution ratifying the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote.
The original constitution of… Read More
2019-03-08 05:00
Just here it may not be amiss to refer to those broad, wholly enclosed valleys whose meandering streams are often bordered by rather marshy ground. Such valleys are known in Garrett County a… Read More
2019-03-07 05:00
The Possum used to have a long, bushy tail, and was so proud of it that he combed it out every morning and sang about it at the dance, until the Rabbit, who had had no tail since the Bear pu… Read More
2019-03-06 05:00
“An interesting story is told of another Anderson man of long ago,” says Louise Ayer Vandiver in her 1928 book Traditions and History of Anderson County [SC]. “He was… Read More
2019-03-05 05:00
Leo Finkelstein’s father came to Asheville, NC in 1903; Leo was born in 1905. “Kosher food and orthodox cooking was family tradition until my father died. I attended camp in Brev… Read More
2019-03-04 05:00
“Rattlesnakes are brought into existence in the following manner:
“The female snake deposits twenty or thirty eggs in the ground, where the warm earth gives them life, and at the… Read More
2019-03-01 05:00
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia, That whenever the Superintendent of the Western State Hospital, or of the Eastern State Hospital, or of the Southwestern State Hospital, or… Read More
2019-02-28 05:00
Oleomargarine hearings before the Committee on Agriculture
House of Representatives
on bills proposing to amend the oleomargarine laws
February 28 to April 2, 1912
Statement of LP Bailey
Mr… Read More
2019-02-26 05:00
In May of 1926, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill authorizing the establishment of a 521,000-acre Shenandoah National Park. The bill stipulated that no federal funds could be used to a… Read More
2019-02-22 05:00
Back in nineteen and thirteen me and my brother coon hunted lots [in the] Smokies. We had a dog named Track. He was a good one. We went to Flat Creek one evening, built up a camp fire, and s… Read More
2019-02-21 05:00
There is a town in Maryland’s westernmost county of Garrett that got its name from a happy accident. In 1750, Maryland settler George Deakins was granted 600 acres of land as a payment… Read More
2019-02-20 05:00
In early 1904, with the growth of the western end of Carter County, KY, residents there sought to form a new county. They broke away, along with some citizens of Rowan and Elliott counties… Read More
2019-02-19 05:00
(continued from yesterday…)
Not everyone sided with Drake, however.
On February 18, 1841, the KY legislature offered a reward of two thousand dollars to anyone “who shall, withi… Read More
2019-02-18 05:00
Variously described as the trembles, the slows, or the illness “under which man turns sick and his domestic animals tremble,” milk sickness was a frequent 19th century cause of i… Read More
2019-02-15 05:00
The same Fall or beginning of Winter Col. G. Rogers Clark from Hanover was Fixing for a Campaighn to go down the Ohia to the Falls. The Virginia Legislator had authorized him to raise an arm… Read More
2019-02-14 05:00
William E. Brock’s company wasn’t the first to mass market the delightful French concoction in the US. That distinction goes to the New York City firm Cella’s Confections… Read More
2019-02-13 05:00
Ice skaters glide on the frozen Jackson River at Covington [VA] in 1897
No wonder these skaters look so carefree! The 1890’s brought economic boom to Covington, VA. Population jumped f… Read More
2019-02-12 05:00
In winter one must draw the little hickory split chair close to the hearth, for most of the heat from the great glowing fire goes up the chimney. The house may have a small window-sash immov… Read More
2019-02-11 10:00
When I go a-courtin’,
I’ll go on the train.
When I go to marry,
I’ll marry Liza Jane.
Chorus:
O Law’, Liza, po’ gal,
O Law’, Liza Jane,
O Law’, Liza… Read More
2019-02-08 05:00
“To be the mother of many children is ranked among nature’s chief blessings but when the cares of the busy housewife are added to the trials of frequent motherhood, it is too gre… Read More
2019-02-07 05:00
On bitterly cold mornings, when dry snow squeaks under boots and mustaches freeze solid, a variety of hardy animals keep the spark of life.
An Appalachian frog holds one such amazing sp… Read More
2019-02-06 05:00
Los Angeles, February 6, 1934 Editor Tribune: Sixty years have passed since the writer answered an advertisement in the columns of The Tribune’s honored predecessor, The Ironton Regist… Read More
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