Appalachian History

By the time of the Great Depression, natural resource use and environmental change in the Appalachian region had become a national issue. In terms of conservation, the Depression accomplished what the USDA Forest Service had been unable to do: it reduced timber cutting throughout the Southern Appalachians. The slowdown in mining and other industries reduced pressure on mountain resources and environment, but subsistence agriculture became a major cause of land degradation in the 1930s.

In the coal-producing counties, the mill towns, and the cities, many people lost their jobs and joined the movement back to the land. Farm acreage remained steady during the Depression, but the number of farms increased to about 400,000. Because most farms were too small to allow fallowing, and fertilizer was too expensive, farmers eked out a precarious existence from exhausted and eroding fields.

Enter FDR. New Deal reforms led to the purchase of large quantities of land by the Federal government. National forests expanded using New Deal money to buy out farmers and company lands. These new national forests and parks began to moderate human impact on the land in places once devastated by mining & lumbering. Reforestation and wildlife restock programs attempted to reverse the worst excesses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Of course Federal agencies provided employment for local residents. But as always in Appalachia, there was a dark side to their presence. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration was a prime example.

In 1933, the AAA was created to buy “submarginal” farmlands and resettle farm families on better farms elsewhere. This program was moved to the Resettlement Administration, then to the Farm Security Administration, and later died of insufficient funding under the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Because funding was insufficient, many farm families received payment for their land but no further aid. Because the money from the sale of their land was often not enough to pay for a new farm, help from the AAA actually worsened the financial situation of some families. Most of the land removed from farming went to the national forests and parks, but many tenant farmers remained on Federal land. The National Park Service moved the mountaineers off park lands, but the USDA Forest Service allowed them to stay on the national forests.


Source: “The Southern Appalachians: A History of the Landscape,” US Dept of Agriculture/Southern Research Station, 1998, Susan L. Yarnell


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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When it comes to Baptists, “my father’s mansion has many rooms” is certainly true in Appalachia. "Old Time Baptists" or "Old Baptists" are informal titles employed by some in the central Appalachians to indicate not only the Regulars and the Separates, but also a host of equally small denominations with titles such as Old Missionary Baptists, Old Regular Baptists, Regular Old School Baptists, Regular Primitive Baptists, and United Baptists.

All are derivatives from either the Regulars, the Separates, or both, and share many of the same tenets such as the observance of such traditional practices as lined a cappella singing, rhythmically chanted impromptu preaching, congregational shouting, and warmly tactile worship behavior; strict adherence to "natural water" (also called "living water") baptisms and communion services that are followed by footwashings; the practice of such governance rules as Paulinian gender mandates, Paulinian directives for elders and deacons, and articles of decorum that date from the earliest history of colonial Baptists; and restrictions on divorce and "double marriage" (remarriage after divorce, while the original spouse still lives).

A common liturgical format that, for example, makes the typical Regular Primitive service appear remarkably similar to those of Regular, Old Regular, and United Baptists includes--among other common liturgical elements--at least three sermons, and as many as seven or eight, depending on the nature of the service.

In terms of doctrine, these "Old Baptists" are a mixed lot. With the exception of the Separates, each of these sub-denominations believe in some version of "election." However, Primitives usually interpret election as meaning that before the beginning of time God chose who would become the beneficiaries of Christ's atonement, while Regular, Old Regulars, and Uniteds generally see election as a process by which God individually "calls" the sinner to regeneration and redemption.

Separates have adopted a general atonement doctrine that grants to the individual the "free will" to choose or reject redemption. One unique Regular Primitive group found in Appalachia, the Primitive Baptist Universalists, believes Christ's atonement is for all, with the result that at the "Resurrection" all of humankind will be reunited with God and Christ in heaven.

Source:
Howard Dorgan, Appalachian State University
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net

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Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:45 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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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's Harlan coal mines to investigate allegations of crimes and abuses against striking miners. The self-appointed group of left-leaning writers (including Theodore Dreiser, Lewis Mumford, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson) listened to various members of the mining communities—the oppressed—in order to learn about this vivid example of class warfare, and place it in the context of international class struggle.

Though many miners welcomed the Dreiser Committee's interest in their plight, others in the community perceived the group of writers as Communist intruders. It should be noted that during this period, the Communist-led National Miners Union rivaled the United Mine Workers of America for a dominant union role.

Dreiser's life was threatened for calling attention to the matter. Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and others on the "Dreiser Committee," as it was called, were indicted by the Bell County Grand Jury for criminal syndicalism, and a warrant was issued for Dreiser's arrest.

“It is characteristic of our whole American attitude just now,” said Mr. [Sherwood] Anderson. We are a speakeasy country. Liberal thinking is strictly private almost everywhere. That is what makes me glad for Theodore Dreiser. He and those other people have had the nerve and the manhood to go down there into Kentucky, where there is apparently a reign of terror. They went openly, and only after other men and women had refused to go. Mr. Dreiser wanted to call public attention to what was going on. He wanted truth. And then too, he spoke out loud in a speakeasy country. He said in public what millions of Americans think in private. For that he is accused of criminal syndicalism.”
--NY Times, Dec 7, 1931

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York at the time, said he would grant Dreiser an open hearing, and John W. Davis agreed to defend the Committee. Due to widespread publicity and public sentiment, however, all formal charges against Dreiser and the Committee were dropped.

Sources:
http://tinyurl.com/2wjyms
http://tinyurl.com/3a6687
http://tinyurl.com/3crnta


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:45 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
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“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. They'd hook the horses to that turning plow, you know, and plow. Whatever they done on the farm, they used the horses.

Just had the two horses. They worked the horses out, and they didn't have any tractors. So they worked the horses and that's what they farmed with. Well, a horse kicked my father; he lived about a week and then he died.


The horses was in stables and this one horse got to kicking at the other horse, so he went into . . . they was real gentle, you know, and he didn't think about them hurting him, and he went in to get the horse's foot out of the . . . it had got hung in the partition, you know, . . . and when he got the horse's foot out, of course, it thought it was kicking the other horse and it kicked him.

So my mother raised the seven of us. Of course, back then girls was taught to work, you know. They helped . . .whatever was to do, they helped do it. If they was working in the garden, they helped work in the garden. If they canned, they helped can the . . . you know, the food. And, of course, my brothers was little at that time, so they wasn't big enough to really help my dad, you know.

And it wasn't like it is now. See, now if a widow's left, why they draw a lot of welfare and stuff like that, but there wasn't nothing like that then. She seen a hard time. You might know she did because the seven children. But we got by, I guess. She lived to be ninety-five years old.”

Deva Mullins
Born 1920
Chapel Ridge, KY
Interviewed June 10, 1991 for
Family Farm Oral History Project
University of Kentucky

Source: http://tinyurl.com/2g6vpo

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Posted by Dave Tabler at 9:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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The Blue Ridge Parkway is the longest (469 miles), narrowest national park in the world and is the most visited unit in the US National Park system. The parkway runs from the southern terminus of Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive in Virginia at Rockfish Gap to U.S. 441 at Oconaluftee in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee, North Carolina.

Begun during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, the project was originally called the "Appalachian Scenic Highway." Most construction was carried out by private contractors under federal contracts under an authorization by Harold L. Ickes in his role as federal public works administrator. Work began on September 11, 1935 near Cumberland Knob in North Carolina; construction in Virginia began the following February.

On June 30, 1936, Congress formally authorized the project as the "Blue Ridge Parkway" and placed it under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The project would take over 52 years to complete. Some work was carried out by various New Deal public works agencies. The Works Progress Administration did some roadway construction. Crews from the Emergency Relief Administration carried out landscape work and development of parkway recreation areas. Personnel from four Civilian Conservation Corps camps worked on roadside cleanup, roadside plantings, grading slopes and improving adjacent fields and forest lands.

“The charm and delight of the Blue Ridge Parkway lies in its ever-changing location, in variety. And of course there is the picture it reveals of the Southern Highlands, with miles of split-rail fence, with Brinegar cabins and the Mabry Mills. These are evidences of a simple homestead culture and a people whose way of life grew out of the land. around them. Provincial life, gee! The mountaineer buildings we acquired to preserve within the holdings of the Parkway itself have resisted the whitewash brush, the Sears Roebuck catalog, and the tar paper of Johns Manville. They are as interesting a part of the Blue Ridge as the natural scene around them.”

Stanley Abbott, Resident Landscape Architect and Acting
Superintendent for the Parkway 1933-1944

Sources: http://www.ncptt.nps.gov/pdf/2000-18.pdf
Wikipedia.org


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:57 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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The thaw’s not too far off now and it’ll soon be time to think about putting in the early plants like kale or spinach. When’s the best time to plant and harvest? Well, you might rely on your own experience, dumb luck, or more likely consult an almanac. Llewelyn Moon Sign’s started up in 1935, and Farmer’s Co-op calendar’s been around for awhile. But the gold standard was, and still is, the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Originally known simply as ‘Farmers Almanac,’ it issued long-range weather forecasts, based on obscure interpretations of natural phenomena, long before any weather service existed, and generations of farmers have planted and harvested according to its advice. First published by Robert B. Thomas in 1792 (for the year 1793), it went on to outlast dozens of competitors. And like an early Reader’s Digest, it hasn’t tampered too much over the years with its winning formula of long-term weather predictions, planting schedules, astronomical tables, astrological lore, recipes, anecdotes, and sundry pleasantries of rural interest.

“One particular fascination I have observed since the days of my youth is how the elders of the community will gather and discuss the coming of spring and make plans around the farmers almanac. My grandfather was one of these people who always had the free Farmers Co-Op calendar hanging on the wall with all the important information printed on it. Things like moon phases, astrological signs, sunrise, sunset how much rain to expect and of course the predicted highs and lows for the day.

“Everybody seemed to have their own tried and tested sure fire method of beating Mother Nature at her own game. ‘Papaw’ seemed to be pretty decent at getting his crops out at just the right time of the season. He was a professional farmer you might say. This is what he did for a living back before corporate farming became the standard.

“Being an amateur weather man is just one aspect of being a farmer but it is a very important skill that is cloaked in secret and involves mysterious practices that can only be done in private and on occasion can involve a brotherhood of weatherman/farmers that must come together during a particularly difficult weather predicting season to pool all their resources and make decisions that have the potential to devastate and embarrass even the most weathered agricultural engineer. I'm not sure which would have been worse, a lost crop or the embarrassment of a bad weather prediction that didn't hold water.”

March, 2006
http://blueridgegazette.blogspot.com/


Sources:
http://www.answers.com/topic/farmer-s-almanac


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 12:20 PM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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I had lived all my life an American away from America. Then I returned, a sort of immigrant among immigrants, except that I came to my native land. But it was as new to me as though I came from Sweden or from Italy or Greece. I knew almost as little what to expect before I landed.

But we all have pictures, we immigrants, of what the America is to which we come. They must be pleasant pictures, or we would not have come. People do not easily leave all they know unless they hope for something much better. Now I had my picture of America, too. It was made up of visual images of my mother's much loved country home, of which she told me many stories, of a land of great plenty and ease, from which came money for the poor Chinese, because all Americans were rich and Christian.

It would not have occurred to me that there were illiterate Americans, or unwashed or poor Americans, or criminals. As I grew older and understood better inevitable human nature this picture was modified and reason did indeed compel me to understand that heaven existed nowhere.

But still something of this early picture persisted. Believed, for instance, that in leaving China I was leaving forever the sight of hungry people whom I was powerless to feed. I thought I was leaving behind the sight of wasting floods and dried and sun-baked, treeless lands, swept by dusty winds. I thought I was coming to a country which had organized itself into economic plenty and moral clarity. I had heard all my life that America was rich, and I did not think of these riches as being selfishly gained or used.

Money was poured generously out of America into China for famine relief, for Christian propaganda, for many and endless causes. Americans, then, though they were rich were generous, interested in a world culture, international-minded. I longed to meet my countrymen, whose idealism seemed almost fantastic to the materialistic philosophy of China.

On Discovering America
Pearl S. Buck
June 1937
Nobel-prize winning author
born Hillsboro, WV


source: http://tinyurl.com/2bevth

Related post: "We spoke just Italian at home"

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Posted by Dave Tabler at 12:31 PM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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After heavy rains in Huntington, WV during much of December 1936 and January 1937, the Ohio River jumped its banks with a vengeance, cresting on January 27 at 69 ft. (Cincinnati, OH, further upriver, was 80 ft under water). By the time the waters subsided five days later, over $17,000,000 in damages had been done, dwarfing the damage caused in the area’s most destructive previous flood (1913: $1,456,833 of damage). Five people were dead locally; up & down the Ohio River valley 400 total had been killed. 25,000 Huntington residents were affected, with some 11,000 requesting Red Cross services. City services were suspended for 2 weeks.


Those who were there just call it "The Flood." There was nothing like it before. There's been nothing like it since. It was a rolling catastrophe, as the river rose house by house, street by street, climbing stairs and pushing families into second and third floors of houses. Communities turned to lakes, people lined up to get fresh water in buckets and soup pots, rescue workers navigated streets in boats. It was Appalachia’s Katrina.

“The common complaint last night was not the closing of the liquor stores but the lack of drinking water. Curiously enough in downtown restaurants milk was easier to order than water and sweet milk was available where buttermilk was not.”
--- Herald Dispatch (January 27, 1937)

A 1933 flood caused $108,481 in damages, and an official government engineer’s survey placed 1936 flood damage at $369,288. Finally, the devastating 1937 flood convinced the federal government that a flood wall was needed. Irene Drukker Broh, one of Huntington's foremost suffragists and civic leaders, led a campaign to pass a $1- million bond to fund Huntington's flood wall.

The flood protection system was completed in 1943 with money from the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program designed to relieve the hard times of the Great Depression. Huntington has not experienced a serious flood since the wall was constructed.

Sources:
http://tinyurl.com/2wvtax
http://tinyurl.com/2je36s


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 9:01 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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I love little Willie, I do.
Mama, I love little Willie, tra, la, la, la, la.
I love little Willie, but don't tell Pa,
For he mightn't like it, Mama, Mama.

He told me he loved me, he did, Mama,
He told me he loved me, tra, la, la, la, la.
He told me he loved me, but don't tell Pa,
For he mightn't like it, Mama, Mama.

And now we are married, Mama, Mama,
And now we are married, tra, la, la, la, la,
And now we are married, now you can tell Pa,
For he's got to like it, Mama, Mama.

Collected by Bess Brown Lomax
“American Ballads and Folk Songs”
MacMillan, 1934


Source: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/
american-ballads-and%20folk-songs/index.html


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:53 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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The Hatfields and McCoys. America’s very own Montagues and Capulets. Symbols etched in America’s mind for Appalachian lawlessness, vigilantism, and ruthless violence. Note that the most famous feuds all clustered in the closing years of the 19th century: Hatfield-McCoy (1880–1887), Martin-Tolliver (1874–1887), French-Eversole (1885–1894), and Hargis-Callahan-Cockrell (1899–1903). By the Depression era they were the stuff of schoolbooks. How did such bitter disputes arise, often even over the most trivial things?

The generation born immediately before and during the War Between the States had lots of scores to settle. Being the only state cleaved from another state at that war’s end, West Virginia suffered double trauma. As in other border states, friends set against friends, family against family, and one part of a neighborhood against the other over the Union/Confederacy divide. Animosity continued afterward on the issue of whether to seek statehood or not. In 1913, West Virginia was the only state to send relatively the same number of Union and Confederate veterans to the Battle of Gettysburg 50th year reunion, a potent symbol of this division.

In “Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900,” Altina L. Waller explains what legend does not: namely, that both Hatfields and McCoys devotedly sought legal redress, ultimately through the Supreme Court of the United States. But justice was never done.


Waller describes how passions were actually intensified by the intrusion of the state. The Hatfields and McCoys were tangled by marriage and many other common interests. They were separated only by the Tug River, which happened to serve as the state line, further complicating the legal logistics. When news of the feud began to circulate, the governor of Kentucky worried that the coal- and timber-rich mountains of his state would soon be seen as unsafe by outside investors.

He sent an extradition request to the governor of West Virginia for the "troublemaker Hatfields," hired a special deputy, and offered rewards for their capture. Private detectives and bounty hunters flooded the region, ironically provoking more violence, which in turn led to more negative publicity.

The Civil War generation was in its ‘80s by the 1930s, so even though the actual feuds themselves had died down, the bitter stories were still being handed down from grandparent to grandchild. Is it any wonder revenuers and other government officials continued to be viewed with such suspicion?


sources: http://www.answers.com/topic/feuds-appalachian-mountain
“Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900,” Altina L. Waller University of North Carolina Press.


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:43 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
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It’s Valentine’s Day. We KNOW lovers everywhere are preoccupied, but what about everyone else? Here’s a day in the life as reported in the February 14, 1930 edition of the Clinch Valley News in Raven, VA:

“A delicious and exquisite birthday dinner was served by Mrs. Parson at her home in North Raven at 7:30 on Wednesday evening, Feb. 5th, in honor of her husband, Dr. Andrew Parson, commemorating his birthday. The cake was emblazoned with Illuminated candles which harmonized with the artistically decorated color scheme of the beautiful dining room. Many presents were received and those who enjoyed the dinner were: Capt. and Mrs. D. D. Cox, Mr. and Mrs. Prease, Mr and Mrs. J.J. Draper, Miss Anna Cox, and Dr. Guinn, of Raven.

"William Wells, of Upper Swords Creek, left here Sunday morning en route to Abingdon to visit his brother Elbert, who is a patient in the Geo. Ben. Johnson hospital.
Mr. and Mrs. C.P Mitchell, west Raven, are the proud parents of a fine eight pound girl, born on Feb 10.

"Jess Boyd, private at Camp Fort Hoyle, at Fort Hoyle, Md. is at the home of his mother, Mrs. LD Boyd on a thirty day furlough.

"CLARENCE LAMBERT -- Raven, Va. Feb 12 - Clarence Edward Lambert, 48 years of age, died at state convict No. 1, of spinal meningitis, about two thirty Monday evening, after being ill only a few days. He was a popular citizen living in Raven for some time and leaves a wife and several children, of this place. Interment was in the Hankins cemetery near Richlands. He is survived, besides his wife and children, his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. John Lambert and brother and sister of Raven, besides sisters and brothers elsewhere.

"MRS. JOHN MCKEE -- Mrs. John McKee, aged 56, died at her home in Raven early last Thursday night. Death was attributed to heart trouble. Mrs. McKee was sitting by the fire about 9 o'clock when she suddenly became ill and fell from her chair dead. She had been completely blind in both eyes for the past 4 or 5 years. Interment was in cemetery on Horton Ridge, a few miles west of Raven. Surviving her is a husband and several children of this place.”

Source: http://www.rootsweb.com/~vatazewe/CVN/1930.htm


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Posted by Dave Tabler at 9:03 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
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Remember the images: There's cocky Barney, hitching up his belt, jutting out his lower lip and cocking his head, taking on the role of crimefighter. And there's Andy, rescuing Barney from the bad guys or from himself — after he had locked himself in a cell. There's high-strung Barney, the scrawny deputy agitatedly rousting law-abiding citizens as real criminals carry on their business right under his nose.

Don Knotts (1924-2006), television and movie actor, is best known for his roles as 'Deputy Barney Fife' in the 1960s television series the "Andy Griffith Show," and as landlord 'Ralph Furley' from the late 1970s television situation comedy series "Three's Company."

He was born in February in Morgantown, WV, where his parents and relatives were farmers. He was the youngest of four boys in a family he described as "dirt poor." Knotts said, "It was the 1930s, and those were tough times for all of us, but we had such humor in our family -- except for my father. He was pretty sick. He had a nervous breakdown about the time I was born -- maybe I did it -- but all my brothers were very funny, and my mother loved to laugh."

Jesse Donald Knotts graduated from Morgantown High School in 1942. The 1942 school yearbook lists him as Donald Jesse Knotts. He attended West Virginia University, where he majored in speech, hoping to become a teacher. A street in Morgantown has been renamed Don Knotts Boulevard.

Mayberry is where anybody who appreciates that small town love and friendship would like to live. Mayberry is a friendly town where everybody knows everybody and would do anything to help you out anytime you needed them. Don Knotts helped give us Mayberry.

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:32 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
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In 1934 25-year-old cartoonist Al Capp took his hillbilly idea to United Features Syndicate (creating a lifelong public feud with Ham Fisher, whose popular boxing strip “Joe Palooka” he’d been ghosting) and "Li'l Abner was born. The comic strip starred Li'l Abner Yokum, the lazy, dumb, but good-natured and strong hillbilly who lived in Dogpatch with Mammy and Pappy Yokum. Whatever energy he had went into evading the marital goals of Daisy Mae, his well-endowed girlfriend, until Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry. This was such big news that the happy couple made the cover of Life magazine.

Abner was carried at first by only eight newspapers, but his hapless Dogpatchers hit a nerve in Depression-era America. Within three short years it climbed to 253 newspapers, reaching over 15,000,000 readers. Before long he was in hundreds more, with a circulation exceeding 60,000,000 (the entire US population then was about 180 million.)

Connecticut born & raised, Al Capp had traveled the mountains of West Virginia as a child, and drew from those experiences to speckle his wild narratives with unforgettable characters - among them heartless capitalist General Bullmoose; human jinx Joe Bfstplk, who was followed by his own bleak rain cloud; Evil Eye Fleegle whose double whammies could melt skyscrapers; cave-dwelling buddiesLonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe who concocted Kickapoo Joy Juice, the ultimate moonshine; Mammy Yokum, the sweet old lady who could outbox men twice her size; fumbling detective Fearless Fosdick, whose bullet-riddled body resembled Swiss cheese; and the gorgeous but odorous Moonbeam McSwine who preferred the company of pigs to men. And when readers thought there was no sadder and poorer place than Dogpatch, Capp would take his readers to frostbitten and poverty stricken Lower Slobovia.

Besides entertaining millions, Capp permanently affected the popular culture. In 1937 he introduced the annual Sadie Hawkins Day race into his strip. It quickly inspired real life girl-asks-boy dances across America and Sadie Hawkins Day became a national institution.

Sources: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2841
http://www.lil-abner.com/cappbio.html

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“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” said newly nominated Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 2, 1932.

Editorial cartoonists had a field day with the alphabet-soup of agencies the newly elected Roosevelt spun out starting in 1933: the AAA, CAA, CCC, CWA, FAP, FCA, FMP and so on: 15 in his first year in office alone!

More than one agency held out promise to Appalachian residents. The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) was an unusual entrance of government into business -- a government-owned network of dams and hydroelectric plants to control floods and produce electric power in the Tennessee Valley. The AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) was an attempt to organize agriculture, though it favored the larger farmers as the NRA favored big business.

“The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?” noted British author H.G. Wells.

It did give jobs to the unemployed, helped the consumer with lower electric rates, and in some respect deserved the accusation that it was "socialistic." But the New Deal's organization of the economy was aimed mainly at stabilizing the economy, and secondly at giving only enough help to the lower classes to keep them from turning a rebellion into a real revolution.

That rebellion was fermenting when Roosevelt took office:. Desperate people were not waiting for the government to help them; they were helping themselves, acting directly. Aunt Molly Jackson, a woman who very soon became active in labor struggles in Appalachia, recalled how she walked into the local store, asked for a 24-pound sack of flour, gave it to her little boy to take it outside, then filled a sack of sugar and said to the storekeeper, "Well, I'll see you in ninety days. I have to feed some children . . . I'll pay you, don't worry."

And when he objected, she pulled out her pistol (which, as a midwife traveling alone through the hills, she had a permit to carry) and said: "Martin, if you try to take this grub away from me, God knows that if they electrocute me for it tomorrow, I'll shoot you six times in a minute." Then, as she recalls, "I walked out, I got home, and these seven children was so hungry that they was a-grabbin the raw dough off-a their mother's hands and crammin it into their mouths and swallowing it whole."

source: http://www.ditext.com/zinn/zinn15.html

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It’s a great winged beast, with scales like a reptile and the wings and talons of a great bird. No. It’s half bird, half wildcat with yellow and black stripes. No. It’s a sable-eyed muskrat with a tuxedo front.

It’s the Snallygaster, and for several years in the late 1920s and early 1930s it caused a sensation in Frederick County, Maryland. Area settlers had told stories already for hundreds of years of a beast that stole chickens and other small farm animals and was generally viewed as a pest by farmers in the region. Many would paint symbols - called “hex signs” - on their barns in the hopes of warding off the monster.

The name “Snallygaster” is actually a mispronunciation of the term Schnellegeister - which is, itself, a corruption of the German term “schnelle geist,” or “quick spirit.” In Pennsylvania Dutch traditions, a “quick spirit” is responsible mostly for things like sudden drafts knocking over lightweight household objects or scattering papers.

For generations, the story didn’t change. No one ever saw the Snallygaster, but everyone assumed it was there. The monster’s reappearance coincided with Prohibition. Moonshiners in the forests and mountains of northern Maryland coopted the old story in an effort to scare revenue agents away and to explain the sounds (like explosions and bending metal) that came from their stills at night.

Accounts of thunderous explosions and loud screeching sounds began circulating with disturbing regularity. As the noises became more common, so did reports of a winged creature - this time with huge tentacles - that would swoop down and snatch grown men up and drag them off into the night. If bodies were found, they were said to be drained of blood and scorched.

A local paper, The Middletown Valley Register, got on the case. Publishing detailed reports of the sightings, they painted a grim picture of the dangerous mountain regions of the area. It was decided that this new monster was the offspring of an egg that had been reported a generation prior.

Other papers jumped in on the act. The Baltimore Sun published articles, as did the Washington Post. As scrutiny increased, more pressure came to catch or photograph the Snallygaster. Supposedly, National Geographic was preparing an expedition to capture it on film. Trying to avert a panic, the Baltimore Sun reported the Snallygaster’s death in November 1932.

A shadowy photo of the dead creature accompanied a questionable account of how it had drowned in a vat of whiskey mash on a Baltimore County farm. By suspicious coincidence, the report stated that Federal Prohibition Officers "inadvertently" blew up the still before the carcass could be examined. In yet another so-called "coincidence", Prohibition ended just a short time later, and in the resulting celebration, the Snallygaster Incident seemed but a foggy, post-hangover delirium.

So beware if you venture out after dark. And whatever you do, stay away from chicken coops and whiskey stills.

Source: Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County by Timothy L. Cannon and Nancy F. Whitmore; Studio 20 Inc., 1979

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, history of appalachia

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 salesman used matrimonial correspondence agencies to ensnare lonely women, whom he robbed then murdered. Police estimated that before his arrest he had killed fifty victims, although that number seems highly doubtful. He confessed to killing only those five whose bodies were found buried next to his "murder garage," wherein he bound and gassed his victims and watched in delight as they died. The pleasure of the sight, said Powers, "beat any cat house I was ever in."
Powers announces himself in his correspondence form letter as a man "longing for someone to take [my former wife's] place in my heart," and promises that his new wife "can have anything, within reason, that money can buy." The letter begins, "My age is [blank], height 67 inches, have clear blue eyes, medium dark hair." Powers evidently had used the letter as a model for writing to various women, no doubt adjusting his age to fit the year of writing or the age of his correspondent.

"In a shallow grave beside a garage in Clarksburg, W. Va., were found the bodies of two women and three children. In Clarksburg jail cowered a fat, beady-eyed, flabby little man, battered and bruised into a confession of his sadism. Police in many States followed clues to other crimes, other murders, all linked to Clarksburg's "Bluebeard" and the matrimonial societies through which he operated. From his papers it was apparent he had conducted at least 115 mail-order "court ships" with lonely, foolish women. Relatives of Widow Asta Buick Eicher, 50, in Park Ridge, Ill., became suspicious when Harry F. Powers, with whom she and her three children had left home after a mail-order courtship, reappeared to claim her house.

"Letters from Powers postmarked Clarksburg, W. Va., were found in the house. Clarksburg police went to Powers' home (not far from where famed Lawyer John William Davis once lived) and beside a windowless, cell-like garage dug up the bodies of Mrs. Eicher and her children. The two girls, 9 and 14, had been strangled; the head of the boy, 12, was beaten in with a hammer. The police arrested Powers, pounded a confession out of him. Convicts still digging in the foul trench found the body of Dorothy Pressler Lemke, a grass widow who had withdrawn $1,533 from a bank and left Northboro, Mass, with Powers a month earlier."

Time, Sept 14, 1931

Powers was executed by hanging at Moundsville, W. Va., March 18, 1932. Press coverage of the event, naturally, was breathless.


Source: “The Literature of the American Serial Killer” By Patterson Smith, AB Bookman Publications, 1988

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“Under the spreading chestnut tree…” begins a Longfellow poem widely familiar to 19th century readers. But the mighty American chestnut, once king of the eastern forests, took a hard hard fall in the first half of the 20th century.

Castanea dentata was once the most prolific tree in the eastern forest, spreading out over some 200 million acres in and around the Appalachian region. It was truly a money tree, the driving force behind lucrative industries in lumber and produce. Its wood was unsurpassed for building. Because it grew straighter and stronger than other trees, chestnut was the finest lumber money could buy, and was far more rot-resistant than other types of wood. Rising hundreds of feet in the forest canopy, chestnut branches were home to birds, and its nuts were an endless food source for both man and animal.

"There were more chestnut trees on Lookout Mountain than there were anything else," William Raoul (b. 1911) said in describing the woods of his boyhood in east Tennessee. One ridge on the mountain was called "The Hog's Back"--not an uncommon name for a ridge in those days, yet this particular hog's spine was literally spiked with chestnut trees.

With a lifespan averaging 400 years, the American chestnut was invincible--or so it seemed. In the late 1800s, some well-meaning growers imported chestnut trees from Japan and China. They planned to crossbreed the trees, producing a composite tree with the American size and the Asian chestnuts.

But those grand plans fell apart when the American trees became infected with the deadly fungus scientists call Cryphonectria parasitica, first sighted in New York City in 1904.

The blight moved southward through the eastern United States at a rate of some 50 miles a year. Its progression down the Appalachian forest was all too apparent as it left millions of trees withering in its wake. By the 1930s, the fungus had moved into Georgia, and by the 1940s, ravaged ridges were all that remained of the once-dense chestnut ranges. What was arguably the forest's best and brightest tree was gone--reduced to a gray and ghostly skeleton.

Ellen Mason Exum
“Amercian Forests”
Nov. 1, 1992

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, history of appalachia

“The final steps in the formation of the modern reading series came in the 1920s and 1930s as more books were added to the typical series and as stricter controls over vocabulary and syntax were adopted into the reading selections, particularly in the lowest reading levels. The Dick and Jane series, issued by Scott Foresman & Co in the 1930s, was responsible for many of these changes and remains today as the proto-typic American reading program of the 20th century.”

Richard L. Venezky
“American Primers”
Univ. Publications of America, 1990


“I was schooled in West Virginia in the 60’s. By some piece of fortune every teacher I had for my first umpteen years was well on the way to retirement or serving their final year. So I had a group of people teaching in “the really, really old school.” I’d place their collective training in the 1930’s. So I would call them “Depression era” teachers. And they were frugal, strict, socially oriented, and their conception of school was a place to “get ahead.” I call them American Dreamers.”

Sarah McIntosh Puglisi
Morgantown, WV
http://borderland.northernattitude.org

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:52 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    

Masking tape was invented in 1925, cellophane tape in 1930, and duct tape in 1940. What on earth did people use before these wonderful adhesives? Why, string or twine, of course. And chances are that the first two inventions were new enough in the culture during the 1930s that plenty of people, out of old habit, still relied on tying things rather than taping them. And furthermore, because of their newness, tapes were pricier than string.

You’re a thrifty farmer, it’s the Depression, and that new fangled tape, though appealing, is expensive. You might simply purchase store-bought string. Better yet budget-wise, you could pull odds & ends of string from say, butcher’s packages, or the morning newspaper ties, and create yourself a Big Ball of String to tap as needed.

So it comes as no surprise that a farmer would be the one to take this originally very sensible idea to its extreme conclusion, and create not just A big ball of string, but the BIGGEST ball of string! 17,400 lbs. and 12 feet in diameter, and twine, to be exact. Nor does it come as a surprise that the farmer, Francis A. Johnson, of Darwin, MN, was born in 1904. In other words he was of a generation used to using string or twine, not tape, to bundle things.

No, Johnson never lived anywhere in Appalachia, but you can bet there were and are plenty of farmers just like him throughout the region who’ve got their more humble, if perhaps a bit more useful, version of the big ball of string.

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, history of appalachia