2018-09-05 05:00
After her father died in 1904, Frances Miles Hagood (aka “Miss Queen”) inherited his house in Pickens, SC. That same year she married Judge Thomas J. Mauldin, and the two of them… Read More
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Appalachian History Blog
appalachianhistory.blogspot.com
Folktales, anecdotes and quotes drawn from Appalachia. Emphasis on the Depression era.
2018-09-04 05:00
Samuel ‘Sad Sam’ Pond Jones (1892-1966) reached the pinnacle of his major league pitching career on September 4, 1923 when he threw a no-hit, no-run game against the Philadelphia… Read More
2018-09-03 05:00
“The Republican Party can never become strong and deserving of support from the best men of the State until it is purged of people whose only purpose in being in the party is to secure… Read More
2018-08-31 05:00
It was born from a foreclosed company, and in the end had so little value as a railroad that it was simply abandoned rather than sold. Georgia’s Tallulah Falls Railway owners had a gra… Read More
2018-08-30 05:00
The first time I ever visited Georgia was in Habersham County. Uncle John and Aunt Irene had a ridge farm in the Georgia mountains. You may never have seen a ridge farm or if you did you may… Read More
2018-08-29 05:00
It wasn’t the only American city simmering with race riots in that ‘Red Summer’ of 1919. But Knoxville, TN up till that time had always prided itself as a model southern ci… Read More
2018-08-28 05:00
The Parkers of Lawrence and Pike County Kentucky grew with a community obligated to raise up their children in the “good old fashioned way.”
Walter Parker (1911-1986) was known f… Read More
2018-08-24 05:00
There’s no dispute that a trademark application for a soda named Mountain Dew was filed on November 12, 1948 with the U.S. Patent Office by Hartman Beverage Co. of Knoxville, TN. After… Read More
2018-08-23 05:00
For many years Ira Butts and neighbor Clifton Pitts had been arguing over the boundary line of a small piece of property. The land was separated between the neighbors by a small creek, which… Read More
2018-08-22 05:00
The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying… Read More
2018-08-21 05:00
One of our cousins had a fight once with a fertilizer spreader, with an inanimate machine. He was pouring fertilizer into cotton rows with this spreader, a brand new expensive labor saving d… Read More
2018-08-20 05:00
In the fall of 1941 on the eve of the United States’ entry into WWII, the Auburn High School freshman class of 1941-42 undertook an extraordinary community project. Under the guidance… Read More
2018-08-17 05:00
On August 17, 1925, screen actress Gloria Swanson, her husband and her staff arrived on a special train from New York.
They were in New Martinsville, WV to film “Stage Struck,” a… Read More
2018-08-16 05:00
“I suppose there is no part of the mountains of Kentucky that has not had some experience in search for this silver mine. Last summer (1921) I was on the train going from Pineville to… Read More
2018-08-15 05:00
Ever heard or used the expression duke’s mixture? It has nothing to do with royalty, unless you consider the tobacco titans of the nineteenth century to be such.
Washington Duke of Nor… Read More
2018-08-14 05:00
“I sweated over my introduction, rewrote it ten times. When I had finished, this, in part, was the text:
“There were Alabama Bankheads in one or another of the houses of Congress… Read More
2018-08-13 05:00
You can still see part of the boiler room and a few intact boilers from the old cotton mill in Mortimer if you know where to look. There’s also a white maintenance building built by th… Read More
2018-08-10 05:00
By the spring of 1920, 35 states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, which would give women the right to vote. Thirty six states were required to ratify the Amendment in order for it to f… Read More
2018-08-09 05:00
Jesse Jewell (1902-1975) started what was to become Georgia’s largest agricultural crop—poultry. The now $1,000,000,000 a year industry has given Gainesville the title “Pou… Read More
2018-08-08 05:00
On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves held in locations in conflict with the United States were henceforth free. Black communities in Virginia, Georgia a… Read More
2018-08-07 05:00
There were plenty of days to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ the summer I worked for the Grant brothers. Lee started by driving the team of horses pulling the wagon to the far co… Read More
2018-08-06 05:00
On August 6, 1890, baseball great Cy Young pitched his first professional game against Cap Anson’s Chicago White Stockings. Anson had scouted Young while he was at Canton and rejected… Read More
2018-08-03 05:00
People with an abnormally strong sex drive were said to suffer from white liver. The folk medicine record contains scant information on this folk illness, because openly talking about sex wa… Read More
2018-08-02 05:30
For all the jokes about KFC’s Colonel Harlan Sanders or the ABA’s “Kentucky Colonels,” the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels is for real. It is also not very Kentu… Read More
2018-08-01 05:00
A long time ago there was an old woman and an old man and a little girl and a little boy and their pet squirrel sitting up on the fireplace. One day the old woman wanted to bake some biscuit… Read More
2018-07-31 05:30
The Spring House was a common site at many farms in the past. It was a pre-electricity version of a refrigerator – a crude structure built into the side of a hill with a spring running… Read More
2018-07-30 05:00
Listen to Eleanor Steber sing intro to ‘Knoxville:Summer of 1915′
She was the most celebrated American soprano of the 1940s and 1950s. She went on from there to become head of th… Read More
2018-07-27 05:00
Here is a little insect that with all his faults, and they are many, possesses certain virtues. He has solved the problem of race suicide, for he multiplies with astounding rapidity. He adap… Read More
2018-07-26 05:00
A Letter written by Isaiah [Zade] Greer, July 8th 1912
Pike County, KY
this badly dun cold & dark, but you can draw it of it is true. we have had some Sickness. Sabra 31 days that she wa… Read More
2018-07-25 05:00
The town boomed when the railroad came through in 1856, and so in 1872 a former Confederate surgeon named Dr. Charles T. Pepper started a soon-to-be-thriving business dispensing patent medic… Read More
2018-07-24 05:00
Annie Taylor could get away with anything she pleased at school. Her father Champ was feared in Catawba Falls, NC by every teacher who had ever tried to rein her in; he’d threatened to… Read More
2018-07-23 05:00
The Keil Farm is significant as an example of the evolution of an antebellum farm house from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and also symbolizes the role that a German imm… Read More
2018-07-20 05:00
Anderson, SC was the first city in the United States to have a continuous supply of electric power and the first in the world to create a cotton gin operated by electricity.
Portman Shoals P… Read More
2018-07-19 05:00
The pack was expensive at 20 cents, but you got the first menthol-infused cigarette, ancestor to “Kool,” “Salem” and others. Why was it called “Spuds?”
Ll… Read More
2018-07-18 05:00
Ten miles north of Dahlonega, GA, at the intersection of US 19 and State Road 60, is a stone pile in a triangle where the roads cross, known as the Stone Pile Gap. “This pile of stones… Read More
2018-07-18 05:00
Leo Lambert (1895-1955), though trained as a chemist, was an avid cave enthusiast. He was the first person to explore the Tennessee Cave on Mount Aetna (now known as Raccoon Mountain Caverns… Read More
2018-07-16 05:00
It has become common knowledge that Cyrus H. McCormick invented and manufactured the mechanical reaper, but it was actually his father’s genius as a simple inventor that led to the fam… Read More
2018-07-13 05:00
James Camak started his career as a professor at University of Georgia, left to make a fortune in banking, and went on to become president of Georgia’s first railroad company, a respec… Read More
2018-07-12 05:30
If you missed the Gatlinburg (TN) Scottish Festival & Games back in May, or can’t wait till November for the Scottish Clans of the South to gather in Hendersonville, NC, don’… Read More
2018-07-11 05:00
A Kentucky folktale
Back in the olden days, an old man lived alone in a big house on his farm. He never married or raised a family. To him, a wife would have been too expensive. Raising a fa… Read More
2018-07-10 05:00
‘Musty’ is one of those old-fashioned words you don’t hear used much anymore. You might on occasion refer to a damp basement that way, and that’s about it. But in the… Read More
2018-07-09 05:00
Dr. William James Glass, Sr. (b. 1879) owned about twenty-five saddle horses. He made an effort to buy the very best. The average horse he bought would last about three years, but he had a f… Read More
2018-07-06 05:00
Native West Virginian Dr. Patrick W. Gainer dedicated the balance of his life to a personal crusade to revitalize folk traditions, and to elevate the image and self-esteem of the Appalachian… Read More
2018-07-06 05:00
Part 2 of 2 —
“I guess in all he [Bob Catlett] must have come to me some twelve or fifteen different times and I at last consented to kill the Whaleys for him, for which he agree… Read More
2018-07-05 05:00
Part 1 of 2 —
The White Caps of Sevier County, TN, were a vigilante group formed in approximately 1892 by citizens who wished to rid Sevier County of individuals (mostly women) whom th… Read More
2018-07-03 05:00
Wild berry picking was once a common summer activity throughout Appalachia, and before the advent of Styrofoam or plastic containers the homemade bark berry basket was just the thing to haul… Read More
2018-07-02 05:00
The much anticipated grand opening of Lynchburg, VA’s first true skyscraper had been scheduled for July 4, 1931, but a last minute political twist changed the Oppenmeyer Tower’s… Read More
2018-06-29 12:44
On June 29, 1941, Charles Jones, C.A. Cecil and eight other young Jehovah’s Witnesses from Mt. Lookout, WV drove to nearby Richwood, WV “to distribute literature of the said rel… Read More
2018-06-28 05:00
This dog’s real metier as a guardian, however, rested with his skill in dealing with snakes. His technique for killing snakes was masterful and varied, for he didn’t always adher… Read More
2018-06-27 05:00
[27a. I. If any person fight a prize fight in this State, or act as second or trainer, or time-keeper, or referee, or umpire, to any persons so fighting, or if any person assist or in any wa… Read More
2018-06-26 05:00
‘Education, and Not Instruction’
An Address Delivered at the Celebration of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of Salem College, at Salem, WV, June 12, 1913 [excerpt]
B… Read More
2018-06-25 05:00
Author James Milton Hanna (b. 1932) has written 9 books chronicling local historical color from the mid-20th century. Many, such as his first, “Cornbread and Beans for Breakfast… Read More
2018-06-23 05:00
Mountain woods and meadows are full of toys for any child with eyes to see. Skipping stones across a creek or running alongside a fence, stick in hand, clacking the fenceposts—these pa… Read More
2018-06-22 05:00
On June 22, 1932, her lifeless body was found where it had been dumped on 22 Mountain, which was then called Trace Mountain. She had been savagely murdered: shot in the head twice, neck frac… Read More
2018-06-21 05:00
Here’s a letter written by one George A. Barrows to a Lewis ______ (perhaps Coleman) in Seattle, Washington, dated June 16, 1901. It’s from the James B. Frazier Papers Collection… Read More
2018-06-20 05:00
Originally posted at Hillbilly Savants by Eric D. Smith
Lorenzo & Eleanor Fugate
(Image from Hazard, Kentucky & Perry County: A Photographic History)
Around the world there are le… Read More
2018-06-19 11:00
Representative Joseph Crockett Shaffer (R-9th District, VA) had been a member of the 71st Congress for only 3 months when the De Priest incident made national news. It was June 1929, and Fir… Read More
2018-06-18 05:00
The vast majority of the 86,000 North Carolinians called into service during World War I served willingly, but four thousand of their number did desert during the war. Discontentment with co… Read More
2018-06-15 05:00
On June 15, 1934 it all officially came together at long last. Congress’ act dated that day noted that an area of 400,000 acres within the minimum boundary of the park had been acquire… Read More
2018-06-14 05:00
Shivaree was a nineteenth and early twentieth century Appalachian custom (originally dating back to sixteenth-century France) of teasing a married couple on their wedding night or shortly th… Read More
2018-06-13 05:00
I Hate the Company Bosses
A Song by Sarah Ogan Gunning
I hate the company bosses
I’ll tell you the reason why
They cause me so much suffering
And my dearest friends to die
Oh yes, I gu… Read More
2018-06-12 05:30
“I’ll tell you, Mrs. Higher was right down here on the corner. As you go down over the hill and go to town. She was right on the corner. That corner building was where she was. A… Read More
2018-06-11 12:00
Photo caption reads: “First car to Crow, W. Va. Walter Dudley and family of Glen Morgan, Permission Postmisstress at Crow. June 11, 1910″
appalachia appalachian+history appalachi… Read More
2018-06-08 05:00
On the evening of June 8,1939 limousines began to deliver the cream of Washington D.C. society to the East Room of the White House. President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt w… Read More
2018-06-07 05:00
Traditional dancing in Appalachia includes several types: step dancing, set dancing, and couple dancing. Step dance traditions include clogging, buckdancing, flatfooting, and the Charleston… Read More
2018-06-06 05:00
Wilma Dykeman (1920-2006) authored more than 20 non-fiction books and three widely acclaimed novels. She wrote prolific columns for the ‘Knoxville News-Sentinel.’ She serve… Read More
2018-06-05 05:00
“Well, if it isn’t Jimmy Roberts, where have you been the last two years? I have asked people about you but no one seemed to know,” inquired Mary as she spied Jimmy at the… Read More
2018-06-04 05:00
From a 13-year-old bellhop at Wheeling, WV’s McLure House to a business giant and multimillionaire—Ellsworth Milton Statler, virtually without benefit of formal education, climbe… Read More
2018-06-01 05:00
From April – June 1914 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write “Fountain Square Conversations.” The “Conversations” cleverly combined he… Read More
2018-05-31 05:00
If you’re a lover of classical chamber music living in Asheville, NC, you can thank the efforts of Jeanette and Joe Vanderwart for helping make that performing art available locally. T… Read More
2018-05-30 05:00
In October 1790, Gallipolis (“City of the Gauls”), OH was settled by a group of French immigrants who later became known as the French Five Hundred. Many of the Frenchmen were fl… Read More
2018-05-29 05:00
Shepherd Youth Killed
Accidentally By Father
Accident Occurred As
Father and Son Were
Out Hunting
Ashe County [NC] Journal, May 29, 1929— Blaine Shepherd, a youth of the Crumpler-Grass… Read More
2018-05-25 05:00
Few records of the Glen Alum [WV] payroll robbery exist, but in 1959 the late O.H. Booton, retired ‘Daily News’ staff writer, wrote to Charlotte Sanders from Macon, Ga., recallin… Read More
2018-05-24 05:00
A few years ago the blacksmith was the very heart and center from which the great machine world grew.
In your grandfather’s time the blacksmith shod horses, made plough points, built w… Read More
2018-05-23 05:00
The Vardy School, completed in 1929 and in operation until the 1970s, was a mission school that offered educational opportunities to members of one of America’s least-known ethnic grou… Read More
2018-05-22 05:00
It’s the whispering foil, the flexatone, or simply, the musical saw.
Some consider the musical saw an American folk musical instrument believed to have gotten its start somewhere in t… Read More
2018-05-21 05:00
Many years before the white man penetrated the forests of Alabama, there dwelt a happy, thrifty tribe of Indians in the central portion of the present county of Talladega [ed.- Conchardees… Read More
2018-05-18 05:00
CEDAR BLUFF “REBEL” SOLDIER HALE AND HEARTY AND NEARING 100. — Cedar Bluff, May 19 –
Today, in our town, one of our grand old veterans of the ’61 gang passed th… Read More
2018-05-17 05:00
They’ll have plenty of time to regroup during the slow months of July and August, but right now it’s the end of the spring honey flow, and apiarists throughout Appalachia are kne… Read More
2018-05-16 05:00
On May 18, 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, creating the TVA. The aim was to provide river navigation, flood control, electric power, employmen… Read More
2018-05-15 05:00
In days long gone, when the world was new, the Terrapin had a very fine whistle, of which he was quite proud; but the Partridge had none.
The Terrapin was constantly going about, whistling… Read More
2018-05-14 05:00
“In 1996, on my last visit to San Toy, Ohio, I had to stop and ask directions twice. Driving down a long, unpaved road to the bottom of a deep, wooded valley, I came to a crossroads wi… Read More
2018-05-11 05:00
There was virtually no work to be had for Papa in Berea, KY, so he had to remain behind in Lee County as long as his job lasted. But at no time, then or later, did he fail to provide for his… Read More
2018-05-10 05:00
“RECENTLY I observed a peculiar behavior of a film of bichromated gelatine after it had been exposed to the action of light for a short time and then immersed into an aqueous solution… Read More
2018-05-09 05:00
It took the individual effort of each Jarvis, mother and daughter, over two generations to forge the Mother’s Day we recognize today. And it’s a story with a twist, so buckle up!… Read More
2018-05-08 05:00
Item 032596 in the collection of the West Virginia Historical Photographs Collection reads Testament to the Brick Laying Prowess of Thoney Pietro and appears to be a 1946 newspaper clipping… Read More
2018-05-07 05:00
Hearings before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, House of Representatives, Seventy-seventh Congress, first session, pursuant to House Resolution 113, a resoluti… Read More
2018-05-04 05:00
Twelve-year old William P. “Punch” Jones and his father, Grover C. Jones, Sr. were pitching horseshoes in Peterstown, WV one day in April 1928 when one of the shoes landed on an… Read More
2018-05-03 05:00
Here’s a memory jug from the collection of Melver Jackson Hendricks (1867-1933) who served in the North Carolina House of Representatives in the early 1920’s. Memory jugs made fr… Read More
2018-05-02 05:00
Perry and Emma Gatewood’s oldest daughter Helen was already 20 years old in 1928, and the other children weren’t far behind. So Emma Gatewood became “Grandma Gatewood&rdquo&hell…Read More
2018-05-01 05:00
“From about 1895 to 1936 Tennessee was one of the nation’s six leading states in marketing pearls,” announces the historical marker on Market St. in Clinton, TN. “Cli… Read More
2018-04-30 05:00
Kentucky began a campaign in the 1880s to attract Western European immigrants to the state, which had been losing population to America’s new westward movement at alarming rates. The K… Read More
2018-04-27 05:00
Fulton Caldwell opened his personal diary with details of a trip from Ohio to Iowa in December 1859. His careful list of all expenses clues the reader in right away to a man concerned with t… Read More
2018-04-26 05:00
“In this county Godfrey L. Cabot of Boston, MA has the largest carbon factory in the world, utilizing natural gas for the purpose,” stated the WV Geological Survey about Calhoun… Read More
2018-04-25 05:00
It was the original Gold Rush, and it kicked off 21 years before the California event we usually associate with that phrase. Gold fever raged in Lumpkin County, GA till the close of the nine… Read More
2018-04-24 05:00
Clogging is an expressive style of American dance with origins in the folk dances of the British Isles, Africa, and pre-Columbian America. Settlers in the American South took elements of the… Read More
2018-04-23 05:00
“When I started I didn’t have very much. Didn’t need very much, didn’t have many customers. Course I would see them go into the store across the street. I worked over… Read More
2018-04-20 05:00
The South in the days before the Civil War had despised manufacturing, but the men who rebuilt the war-ravaged Southern states were well aware of the importance of industrialization.
The new… Read More
2018-04-19 05:00
The city of Middlesboro, Kentucky, was established in the late 1880s by Scottish born Canadian Alexander Alan Arthur and his British backers in the American Association Ltd. They were drawn… Read More
2018-04-16 05:00
“Psychologically, the wagon is the thing,” commented librarian Mary Lemist Titcomb of the project she is most remembered for. “One can no easier resist the pack of a peddle… Read More
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