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9/28/07

Mountain Heritage Day festival kicks off tomorrow

You can already smell the Cherokee fry bread! The 33rd annual Mountain Heritage Day festival takes place tomorrow over at Western Carolina University's campus in Cullowhee, N.C. The festival will offer demonstrations of traditional folk arts such as blacksmithing, basket making and quilting. Meanwhile, fair goers will be entertained by mountain music on three stages. Do keep an ear out for the "Sacred Harp" shape-note sing late in the morning. A writer for Southern Living magazine once referred to Mountain Heritage Day as “an open textbook of Appalachian folk life.”

Local residents are invited to enter their canned, dried or baked goods in "A Gathering In," the traditional foods competition. “Although home preservation is no longer the necessity it once was, it is still part of the fabric of life for many in our area,” said Suzanne McDowell, curator at WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center museum.

Original 1917 caption to photo reads: CONSERVING CABBAGE IN NORTH CAROLINA (More than 1,000 pounds of cabbage were put up by these women in three ways--kraut in light salt; kraut in heavy salt, and cabbage in brine, or pickled cabbage).
NC food preservation
Readers especially interested in the finer points of home canning should have a look at Barbara Fisher's excellent blog "Tigers & Strawberries."  This post in particular goes into quite some depth on the how-to of putting up a fresh crop. Says Fisher: "I grew up helping my grandmother freeze, can and ferment her harvest, and I know what a lot of work it can be. Long hours I spent in the garden, the kitchen and the basement (she had a stove and sink down there, and we often canned there because being underground–it was cooler down there.)"

Festival info at www.mountainheritageday.com
Photo source: "Food Conservation in North Carolina," American Review of Reviews. Vol. 56 (November 1917). New York: Review of Reviews Co., 1917.

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9/27/07

The smallest church in 48 states

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 Church in 48 States." It boasts seating for 12, with six pews. The church is always open. You may have to buy your postcards on the honor system, since it’s not always staffed. The yellow-stone sanctuary, 24 ft. x 12 ft. (16 x 11 on the inside), was built by Lithuanian immigrant Peter Milkint in 1958. (Both Hawaii and Alaska became states in 1959).

Our Lady of the Pines, smallest church in 48 statesJust beside the little church is the smallest post office - 26716. A sign inside the post office reads: "The mail is picked up daily. Window service every Friday the 13th. Parcel post February 29th."

And down in Crestview Hills, KY there's a tiny chapel called Monte Casino at Thomas More College. The chapel measures 6 ft. x 9 ft. -- the ceiling inside is eight feet high. It was built in 1878 at a nearby monastery by a couple of Benedictine monks, and named in 1922 by Ripley's Believe It or Not as "Smallest Church in the World." The monks subsequently left the area, the chapel was abandoned and vandalized, then rescued and moved in 1965 to the college campus. After a restoration, the Monte Casino Chapel was dedicated in 1971.

When all is said and done, however, both these churches fall short of their claims to smallness: both tower over the truly tiny 3.5-by-6-foot Cross Island Chapel in Oneida, NY. It holds three and seats two.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/church.html


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9/26/07

The pitiful victims live in a protracted hell

Before the organization of the Diamond Match Company in 1867, there were in existence throughout the United States over thirty match factories, employing about 4,000 people, and several of those were found in Kentucky and West Virginia. The typical match factory was very small, often simply the size of a medium sized house, and consisted of anywhere between one and a dozen workers, often children, making matches entirely by hand in cramped and poorly ventilated conditions and for a very small wage. Soon after the turn of the twentieth century public concern nationwide was aroused over the health menace created by the manufacture of matches from white phosphorus.

A case of phossy jaw

“The fumes of this poison or phosphorus cause a disease known as ‘phossy jaw,’ in which the bones of the jaws decay and disappear altogether, and the pitiful victims live in a protracted hell of loathsome, hideous disease. This directly concerns every home where there is a baby, and every woman who has a heart for the thousands of women employed at the risk of this terrible disease.”
‘The PIONEER of an AMERICAN WOMAN'S REPUBLIC’
Publ. by American Women’s League, 1911


Bowing to public pressure, the US Bureau of Labor sought out a Chicago physician named Alice Hamilton to investigate this and other occupational hazards, especially in the “dusty trades,” and published the results of her studies.

“It seems that in the course of a study of wages of women and children made by the Bureau of Labor, under Carroll Wright, investigators came across cases of phossy jaw in women match workers in the South," said Hamilton. "This impelled Wright to institute an investigation in other match centers. [John] Andrews was asked to carry it out and did so, with a result most disconcerting to American optimism. Some of the cases he discovered were quite as severe as the worst reported in European literature—the loss of jawbones, of an eye, sometimes death from blood poisoning.

“All this I had learned, but I had been assured by medical men, who claimed to know, that there was no phossy jaw in the United States because American match factories were so scrupulously clean. Then in 1908 John Andrews came to Hull House and showed me the report of his investigation of American match factories and his discovery of more than 150 cases of phossy jaw.”

Finally in 1910, the Diamond Match Company patented the first nonpoisonous match in the U.S., which used a safe chemical called sesquisulfide of phophorous.

President William H. Taft publicly asked Diamond Match to release their patent for the good of mankind. They did on January 28, 1911, and Congress promptly placed such a high tax on matches made with white phosphorous that they were priced out of the market. Phossy jaw was history.

Sources: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/105/
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_4/DATA/1985/8519.PDF
http://protimient.com/MatchBoxLabels.pdf
http://history.ucpl.lib.mo.us/imagesa%5Cjpeg%5Cd070p001fpdf%5Cd070p001fpdf.pdf


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9/25/07

I took to the dry goods line

"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 there at one time and at the building that burned down. I've been fooling with [the grocery business] all my life. Before we came here, my uncle had a store in Hineytown. He had a little old store there. It was just along the road there. It was on a big farm and we'd go out and work. When a customer came he'd ring a dinner bell or blow a horn. I'd be away up on top of a hill a'hoeing corn and I'd have to go down and wash, sometimes I'd forget to wash, just go in and wait on them.

"We've given credit. That's a great ____. But a lot of headaches. People move away or just don't pay and there is no way you can make them pay. It used to be that you could mark up merchandise month after month and prices would be about the same. Very little variance. I have never seen them like they are today. Seasonal stuff would sometimes be a bit out.

Palmer's Market in Montgomery County, VA"Lots of the distributors, a lot of the merchandise come out of Baltimore. I took to the dry goods line. Groceries were from all different places. Some I bought from wholesale grocers in Stanton. Some from different places in this state, grocery houses, one or two. Of course we had salesmen, plenty of them. Elkins had two or three wholesale houses and their salesmen came here on that Western Maryland train.

"That was the only way to get here unless they drove all the way over the mountains. They would get their horses at the livery stable here and their vehicles, that is the grocery people. The dry goods and notions people located in Baltimore, they had their own outfit, but it was done by horse and hack. Until they got, one time they had a dry goods company, Treek, Ellis, Hertel & Company, in Baltimore, had an old chain model drive truck. First one we ever had. It just excited people to death to see that fellow coming in that. His baggages, his samples they just covered it with something to keep it dry.

"We'd laugh when we saw him come into town. Sometimes he couldn't get it started and he'd lay over a day or two. Nobody understood them very well around here. Finally it would start and he would take off. Just like an old traption engine going up the road."


Mr. Matheny (b. 1885)
interviewed at his grocery store
in Bartow, WV, summer of 1975

source: www.marshall.edu/library/speccoll/cass/html/matheny_transcript.asp

related posts: "Mom & Pop meet the Supermarket"


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9/24/07

We used to catch the cat on a trot line

“Us kids used to go down and we’d find a little hole, maybe big as this room, and these suckers had got in there, water was runnin’ into it, and the water’d get up and these suckers wouldn’t bite. You could take your hook and put a worm down there, and they’d swim all the way around it, same as a big ole bass. They had what we call white bass and speckled bass. Now, the speckled bass’d bite.

The Little River, Lookout Mountain, AL“But them white ‘uns would swim up thata way, they just ease up to it. You could take a worm and throw it down, the water was just clear as crystal, and it’d wiggle down on a rock, and these ole bass and suckers and things’d come up and swim over it two, three times, then directly ease down and pick it up. You could catch some pretty big catfish and oh, some five or six pound bass. We used to catch the cat on a trot line.

“Wasn’t but one place to have a boat down there, and that was what they called the Yonker hole. All them holes in that gulf, I can’t call ‘em all by name, but it used to be, when I was a kid, people’d know ‘em by a certain name. Like, old man Yonker lived right up on top of the canyon. And at the old Kean place, there used to be a ladder to go down them rocks to get in to that Yonker hole.

“Had a big ladder there that went off down the rock about twenty, thirty feet straight down, then they had a trail to get down. But old man Yonker lived on the Cherokee side and they called it the Yonker hole. It’s a big hole with water in it, and we used trot lines in it, and used to catch a lot of fish.”


C.A. Helms
Lookout Mountain, AL
b. early 1900s
interviewed at age 83

source: www.landmarksdekalbal.org/communities/MaysGulf.html


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9/21/07

History Channel to air Appalachia special this Sunday

Usually there's no homework here at the Appalachian History blog, but see that nifty poll over to the right there? Well, I'd like to invite you to put that little baby to use over the next several days! Tell our community what you thought of 'Hillbilly: The Real Story.'

Here's what the History Channel has to say upfront about the film---

"Hosted by actor and country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus, this two-hour special brings America’s mythic and misunderstood southern mountain people to life and reveal their pivotal but little known role in forming the nation and forging the American character. Ever since they first arrived in the southern mountains 300 years ago, the hillfolk of Appalachia have been seen as a group apart, often mocked and misunderstood.

"They have been portrayed in the media as hillbillies and backwoods buffoons or as romanticized heroes of lost innocence and virtue. But none of those stereotypes hit the mark. That’s because behind the clichés is a much more intriguing reality: these are a people who embody the very characteristics we hold most dear as a nation. They’re hard-fighting, freedom-loving, fiercely independent and faithful — willing to stand up for what they believe is right, no matter what the cost.

"Theirs is a story of true courage and grit, bloodshed and mayhem. Of overcoming the hard times and loving the fast times. It’s the story of a people who grew as tough and resilient as the Appalachian mountains themselves.

"HILLBILLY: THE REAL STORY takes the viewer on a sweeping 300-year journey from the violent border wars of the Scottish lowlands to the rough and tumble Appalachian stock car races of the 1950s. Along the way Billy Ray Cyrus will tell stories of: the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780, when a ragtag bunch of mountain men emerged from the hills to whip the British Army and turn the tide of the American Revolution;

"the saga of the Appalachian moonshiners’ deadly cat and mouse game with the Federal revenuers and the dramatic tale of the most famous American folk hero of whom you’ve probably never heard – moonshining outlaw Lewis Redmond; the building of the epic Clinchfield Railroad into the Appalachian mountains - one of the costliest railroads in dollars and lives ever built;

"the largest civil insurrection since the Civil War — the Battle for Blair Mountain in the violent West Virginia coalfields in 1921, when a self- proclaimed Redneck Army of 10,000 coal miners fought for their right to organize; the First Family of stock car racing — the Fabulous Flocks, 3 outlaw bootlegging brothers from a hell-raising family who went on to pioneer modern stock car racing; the century-long fight of the snake handling churches of Appalachia for the right to practice their deeply-held religious beliefs;

"the TVA Fontana Dam, whose construction by the hard working and patriotic hillfolk in 1942 helped win a World War half the world away; and Popcorn Sutton, the legendary moonshiner and mountain man who, at age 74, keeps defying the law by producing his centuries-old recipe for homemade whiskey in clandestine stills in the mountains…. and who, after 60 years of moonshining, is still paying the price for his convictions with new criminal convictions."

Let's see if they get it right!

Show runs:

September 23 8:00 PM
September 24 12:00 AM
September 27 8:00 AM
September 27 2:00 PM

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9/20/07

The Black Gold Festival

The Black Gold Festival kicks off in Hazard, KY today. It’s Kentucky’s second largest festival (the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon/miniMarathon is the largest). Festival goers can see the Black Gold Bike Show, the Road Hazards Extreme Team Stunt Show, the Black Diamond Street Rod Show, Antique Appraisals, the Ugliest Lamp Contest, a parade, and an assortment of food vendors and arts & crafts.

This festival traces its roots to the Hazard Coal Carnival, which began in 1937. The Perry County beauties pictured here competed in the Miss Coal Carnival pageant, one of the highlights of that first carnival.

Miss Hazard Coal Carnival – 1937(Left to right) Miss Chavies - Rita Duff; Miss Blue Diamond - Lorene Yother; Miss Harveyton - Pauline Begley; & Miss Busy; Rebecca Morgan. Rita Duff won the title of Miss Hazard Coal Carnival – 1937.



The photo was taken by Frances Calitri Easterling at Sandy Beach, on the North Fork of the Kentucky River near Viper, Kentucky.

Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys played a free concert at the 1962 Coal Carnival, on the courthouse steps.


sources: www.hazardkentucky.com
www.kyfestivals.com


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9/19/07

Away back in the early days they had disagreed

“This valley is perhaps 3 miles long and a mile wide and is one of the prettiest and most tranquil in all Ohio. It was settled by men and women of a rather serious turn of mind and given largely to moral and religious work. In all the settlement there never were more than 2 or 3 habitual drunkards and very little moral laxity on the part of women. Naturally there were some neighborhood disagreements and quarrels. One of these I approached as I walked forward.

“There was a devil's lane between the Chris Buck farm and that of George Karr, the father of the man I had just left on the shady bench.

A Devil's Lane“Away back in the early days they had disagreed about something and each built his own line fence. It was the only one I ever saw and was some 12 feet in width. The Bucks were thrifty citizens and soon conceived the idea of using that lane to permit their cattle to go to and from the back end of their farm. In time, however, it grew up to bushes and was a blemish on the landscape. Those in the disagreement have long since passed on, but the old overgrown lane is still there.

“Arthur Buck, a grandson of the original owner, lives in the neatly whitewashed home, and he and his ancestral enemy are perfectly good friends - but still they do not clean out the old lane.”

Charles Hartley
October 12, 1921
discussing Nease Settlement
Meigs County, OH

Source: www.rootsweb.com/~ohmeigs/misc/nease/chap5.html


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9/18/07

Hauling the last shipment of Confederate gold

"A few miles from Seneca, S. C. on the Blue Ridge Railroad there was a station called Perryville; now only a few rocks remain on the south side of the track to mark the spot. There was a bar-room, where doubtless many regaled themselves. One man who lived nearby would light his pipe with a one dollar bill. Let us hope he never regretted what had gone up in smoke.

"A family who lived across the road were fine businessmen, and their sons established the Tate Marble works of Elberton, Georgia. They were very successful in their enterprise and one of them built a large home of pink marble which was a show place in that vicinity.

"A few miles down the Railroad, established many years ago, and recently enlarged, is Shiloh cut where Mr. Calhoun Clemson, only son of Thomas G. Clemson [founder of Clemson University] and his wife, Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson, was killed on the Railroad. He was said to be an unusually handsome man with a promising future.

"The Blue Ridge was called the Old Blunder Buss in those days and the people seemed not to realize the importance and the great future of the railroads [ed.—SC statesman John C. Calhoun did! He was a member of the original surveying team.]

"The Blue Ridge was the bearer of the last shipment of Confederate gold, and the seal of state was said to have been thrown into the Savannah River.

"At Pendleton, during the War Between the States, the people eagerly gathered around the station when the train came to hear the news read, especially the Casualty List in which all were vitally interested.

"The tunnel, only a few miles from Walhalla, was begun in 1851 or '52 and is about one and one-third miles long. It was cut through Stump House Mountain and was intended as a link in the Blue Ridge Railway from Knoxville, Tenn., to Charleston, S.C., for the purpose of transporting the coal of the Tennessee mountains to the sea.

the Stump House Mountain tunnel "While the work was in progress [the town, also named “The Tunnel,” had a population of] about 2,000 at this point. When the tunnel was about two-thirds finished, the war came on and the work was never finished. Two or more men lost their lives during its construction."


Mary Cherry Doyle
“Historic Oconee County, South Carolina”
Clemson, SC
January, 1935

source: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/sc/oconee/history/H-14.txt


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9/17/07

A certain girl in the Senior Commercial room wrote the following

Barney was very industriously studying her history lesson when suddenly she looked up and asked: "Mr. Humbertson, what is beheaded?" "Why, beheaded is having the head cut off, of course." After a moment of thought, Barney suddenly exclaimed: "Well, then I guess defeat is having the feet cut off."

Oakland MD High School yearbook 1930Miss Kraft who was given the children written exercises wrote this advertisement: Wanted—a milliner. Apply by letter to Miss Smith, 10 Bank Street. The children had to make application for the position. Louise Moon wrote—I saw you wanted a milliner. I hate to trim hats. Can't you get someone else? Please let me know at once.

IMAGINE—

Miss Kochenderfer on a diet.
Miss Kraft losing her temper in French class.
Miss Broadwater controlling Freshman boys.
Mr. Jenkins saying "Forty minutes."
Mr. Humbertson liking Nancy.
Mr. Speicher telling jokes.
Miss Engle with a girls' basketball team.
Mr. Graser having a date.
Miss Conley in the office alone.
Miss Rice being in a good humor.
Miss Fernald keeping her hair up.
Mr. Smith without his derby hat.
Miss Falkenstein cooking a meal.

HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS VICTORIOUS
John Stevenson, Lewis Lawton and Betty Hardesty were recently awarded gold medals in the recent Marathon Loafing Races, which were held in Vienna last week. These three popular young folks withstood the test and were voted the best and most efficient loafers of all the contestants.

ALWAYS POLITE

"What is wrong with this sentence, children?" asked Miss Engle. "The horse and the cow is in the lot." Crystal spoke up: "The cow and the horse is in the lot." "What makes you correct it in that way, Crystal?" "The lady should be mentioned first," answered Crystal.

Saint Peter—"Who's there?" Helen Sollars—"It's me." Saint Peter—"Come in."

KNOCKING

Saint Peter—"Who's there?" Wilmot Bowen—"It's me." Saint Peter—"Come in."

KNOCKING

Saint Peter—"Who's there?" Voice—"It is I." Saint Peter—"It must be one of those pert teachers again.—Come in." And in walked Miss Kraft.

A certain girl in the Senior Commercial room wrote the following letter to a Corn Syrup Manufacturing Company: Dear Sirs:—I have eaten three cans of your corn syrup and it has not helped my corns one bit.
Yours very truly, G. W. N.


Oakland High School Yearbook, 1930
Garrett County, MD

http://www.whilbr.org/itemdetail.aspx?idEntry=2926&dtPointer=3

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9/15/07

How 'House of the Rising Sun' traveled from KY to Bangkok--and back!

The song "House of the Rising Sun" has a murky history, said to have originated in Appalachia, maybe New Orleans and perhaps even England. The song's ultimate odyssey began on September 15, 1937 when folklorist Alan Lomax recorded a version by 16-year-old Georgia Turner in Middlesboro, Ky. Lomax published the lyrics as "The Rising Sun Blues," and from there it only grew in popularity.

Ted Anthony, author of Chasing the Rising SunIn "Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song," author Ted Anthony searches out the twisted roots and many spreading branches of this lonesome ballad. Please welcome him today to the Appalachian History blog.

Appalachian History: When did you first realize the origins of "House of the Rising Sun" would lead you to Appalachia?

Ted Anthony: I originally thought the song was OF New Orleans. But when you listen to the verses -- "DOWN in New Orleans," "going BACK to New Orleans" -- you realize it is from an outsider's perspective. Many of the early versions seemed to point back to the Appalachian tradition, and then I saw Alan Lomax's book "The Folk Songs of North America," which was the first time I encountered Middlesboro, Ky., and the name Georgia Turner.

AH: You say "House of...." is one of the most vital pieces of music in American history. Why?

TA: By "vital" I don't necessarily mean "necessary," though I think it's an important song. I mean vital in its more literal sense -- full of life. This song has so many incarnations that it keeps renewing itself and its ability to live on.

AH: Most readers will think of Eric Burdon's version of the song, recorded by The Animals in the '60s. How many versions have you managed to track down?

TA: More than 400 -- some on CD, some on vinyl, many on MP3. And then of course there are those I cannot get hold of -- the ever-receding holy grail. I never tire of the diversity of this song -- the "I contain multitudes" notion that, to me, is an underpinning of our culture.

AH: Will readers finally learn where this house is in New Orleans and why it's been the ruin of many a poor boy?

TA: Maybe. Maybe not. Read the book. But I would say this: This is a story about the song and the legend, and how it's traveled. I conclude in the end that the legend, and how it moved around, is more exciting than any one specific answer.

AH: In the book you say you sang the song in a Bangkok karaoke bar. Can you discuss how an American roots song might have found its way to Bangkok?

TA: I've spent chunks of my life in Asia, and American culture is a prized commodity there -- or at least has been. What's more, I have heard a great deal about how GIs in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War would play the song -- usually the Animals or Frijid Pink -- while stationed there. One of my regrets is that I never was able to track down a version in Vietnamese, which I'm told exists.

AH: In the course of the seven years it took to write this book, you met your future wife. Has she been involved with the project?

TA: She is my muse for sure. She challenged my preconceptions about it, talked about it with me ad infinitum, even agreed to take our honeymoon driving through the backroads of the Southern Highlands looking for the song. I can't imagine this book without her sharing the adventure. I'm available to accompany her on her next quest.

AH: For the benefit of aspiring writers/historians/genealogists in Appalachia, what were some of your favorite research facilities in the region?

TA: I thought Appalachian State University's archives were absolutely wonderful and extremely well organized, and the ETSU library in Johnson City, Tenn., was also pivotal to me. What I enjoyed just as much, though, were smaller libraries like the one in West Jefferson, in Ashe County, N.C., where people were as helpful as could be. The Middlesboro Historical Society was also great for capturing a flavor of the place.

As an aside: I love research; I'm totally a research geek. But to try to find the gossamer traces of oral history in printed materials was one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced as a journalist.

AH: You say in the book that folk music thrives on change, with songs remade to reflect changing times. Can you cite several examples from the book that illustrate this?

TA: The Animals are the perfect example. I got called out for referring to their version as "definitive," so I'll just say "iconic." But their take on it was such a product of its era, the 60s, with the attendant energy and insolence and dynamism that came to define the decade. It's hard for me to believe that their version, in 1964, was just 27 years after Georgia Turner sang it in Middlesboro 70 years ago today.

Another good example is "Paradise Club," by a North Carolina band called the Moaners. They adapted the song to be about a depressing strip club near Carrboro, where they live, and suddenly it became folk music again -- expressing current circumstances in a very personal way. It's not "House of the Rising Sun"; it's something totally original that is ... well, we'll call it a "descendant" of the original song. I suppose they all are -- progeny spreading throughout the republic.

AH: You say you don't consider yourself a musicologist. How does your 'American studies' approach to this topic differ?

TA: It's more of a self-inoculation. I don't read music, and I don't want to put myself forward as an expert in something I'm not. One review said I lacked musical knowledge, and I wholeheartedly agree. That said, I think it's valuable to come at it from my perspective. In many ways, this isn't a music book. It's about a song, yes, but it's about how culture changes and moves around, and how the enormous cultural and technological forces unleashed in the 20th century changed how we perceived the world. I never wanted it to be a music book; I wanted it to be a book about what it's like to be American.

AH: Your next project is a book on China. Do you envision any future projects that might take you back to the Appalachian region?

TA: I think, actually, that my next project will focus on how the entertainment economy is permeating the entire American landscape, though I expect I'll write on China down the road a bit. If I did go back to Appalachia, I'd love to explore how the federal highway system and, later, the Interstate Highway System changed communities and cultures. I'm also fascinated by the relationship between the railroad and Appalachia; there's a town in West Virginia I once wrote about called Thurmond, a place in the middle of the woods that was one of the busiest and most raucous communities along the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad line. And it had no main street -- the railroad track was Main Street. Stuff like that completely intrigues me.

AH: Ted, thanks so much for sharing your insights with us today!


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9/14/07

Nashville? Well no. Bristol.

Yes, Nashville has the Grand Ole Opry and the big name recording artists. But Bristol, the town that straddles the Tennessee/Virginia border, stakes its claim as the birthplace of country music. And lately Bristol's been working hard at capitalizing on that fact. This weekend, for example, the town expects 40,000 country and bluegrass music fans to attend the Rhythm & Roots Reunion, an extravaganza boasting 3 outdoor stages and 12 indoor venues.

Victor Talking Machine Co. was the first record producer to catch wind of the (to them!) fledging "hillbilly" music scene (it wasn’t called country music in the 1920s). In the spring of 1927 they released a single by Delaney, AR fiddle player Eck Robertson. On the heels of its success, producer Ralph Peer spearheaded the push to tap the market for rural mountain music, and in July and August he set about to discover and develop the area's musical talent.

Bristol VA 1927 street sceneMusicians and singers originally traveled to Victor’s New York studios to record their music, but when remote recording became possible, Bristol became Peer's initial hub of operations -- chosen because of the proximity of local musicians such as Ernest and Hattie Stoneman, the Johnson Brothers, and Henry Whitter.

"In no section of the south have the pre-war melodies and old mountaineer songs been better preserved than in the mountains of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, experts declare, and it was primarily for this reason that the Victrola company chose Bristol as its operating base." -- Bristol Herald Courier, July 24, 1927.

Soon Peer recorded talent from other southern states, including West Virginia, Virginia (the Carter Family) and North Carolina (Jimmie Rodgers). The Carter Family got their start on July 31, 1927, when A.P. Carter and his family journeyed from Maces Springs, Virginia to Bristol to audition for Peer. They received $50 for each song they recorded. Both the Carters and Rodgers were unknowns when they wandered, separately, to Bristol that summer. All in all, Peer recorded 76 performances by nineteen different groups.

These early recording sessions, called the "Bristol Sessions," would mark the birth of country music, and laid the groundwork for much of the genre’s music that followed. Because Bristol is not usually thought of as the place where country music began, it was especially important that the U.S. Congress recognized Bristol's contribution to music history. In 1998, Congress passed a resolution recognizing Bristol as the "Birthplace of Country Music."


Sources: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/legacies/VA/200003609.html
http://www.thecrookedroad.org/BCMA.htm
http://www.blueridgecountry.com/music/music.html

related posts: "Jimmie Rodgers"
"Carter Family"


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9/13/07

The day they hung Murderous Mary the elephant

On September 13, 1916 a five-ton circus elephant was executed, hung from a 100-ton Clinchfield railroad crane car, in the little town of Erwin, Tennessee. ‘Murderous Mary’ had killed a man, and for that she had to die. Shooting her in the four soft spots on her head would be both difficult and dangerous. She wouldn't eat poison. And the town didn't have enough power to electrocute her.

The bizarre story of the hanging of Mary the elephant begins in St. Paul, Virginia, where Sparks World Famous Shows stopped for a one-day stand. By 1916, Sparks World Famous Shows had blossomed into a successful, 15-car circus with clowns, acrobats, horses, lions and elephants.

Murderous Mary the elephantThe star of their show was Mary, a giant Asian elephant. She was advertised on Sparks posters as "The Largest Living Land Animal on Earth," weighing "over 5 tons" and standing "3 inches taller than Jumbo," the star elephant of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. At 30 years old, she could "play 25 tunes on the musical horns without missing a note." As the pitcher on the circus baseball-game routine, her .400 batting average "astonished millions in New York."

But it was her size that awed many people from rural communities who had never seen an animal this large or exotic. Mary was valued anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000, and was the primary reason many people came to the show.

On Monday, September 11, 1916, Sparks World Famous Shows played St. Paul, Va., a tiny mining town in the Clinch River Valley. Walter “Red” Eldridge, a local hotel janitor, approached head elephant trainer Paul Jacoby for a job as an under keeper of the elephants and was hired, despite his lack of experience. Eldridge's job responsibilities included watering the elephants and preparing them for the parades and shows.

The following day, in Kingsport, TN, the elephants (according to the most popular version of the story) were being led to a watering ditch between shows. Eldridge used a bull hook - a stick with a hook on its end - to guide Mary, but had been warned in his training to nudge her gently and not to provoke her.

Suddenly, Mary "collided its trunk vice-like [sic] about [Eldridge's] body, lifted him 10 feet in the air, then dashed him with fury to the ground... and with the full force of her biestly [sic] fury is said to have sunk her giant tusks entirely through his body. The animal then trampled the dying form of Eldridge as if seeking a murderous triumph, then with a sudden... swing of her massive foot hurled his body into the crowd." ---The Johnson City Staff, September 13, 1916

Circus owner Charlie Sparks knew the animal had to be put down, and decided that the only "humane" way to execute Mary would be to hang her. Clinchfield Railroad had huge, 100-ton derricks that they used to unload lumber off their freight cars. If these derricks could handle those heavy items, they could surely handle a five-ton elephant.

More than 2,500 people gathered to watch Mary swing near the turn-table and powerhouse on the drizzly afternoon of September 13. Her handlers left her hanging for a half-hour, witnesses say, and then they dumped her in the grave they'd dug with a steam shovel 400 feet up the tracks.


sources: www.blueridgecountry.com/elephant/elephant.html
www.themoonlitroad.com/murdermary/murdermary_page001.asp

related post: "They'd get up and swing around on the trapeze"


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9/12/07

Kentucky's fotched-on women

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 of settlement houses and schools to meet the needs of economically deprived families.

Beginning in 1899, two intrepid young women, Katherine Pettit and May Stone, spent three summers in social settlement work in Kentucky at Camp Cedar Grove, Camp Industrial, and Sassafras Social Settlement. They became educational lamplighters in an area of eastern Kentucky where there was little opportunity for boys to get jobs and education was considered superfluous for girls, who often married at thirteen. Loaded with books, games, and a small portable organ, they proceeded to hold “school” for the people of the mountains. The activities of the summer camp were practical in nature—crafts, reading, singing, learning to make biscuits and bread.

In the summer of 1900 Stone and Pettit pitched their tents on the side of a hill overlooking the small village of Hindman, KY, the county seat of the newly created Knott County. When the summer ended, local leader Solomon Everage implored the two women, "quare fotched-on women from the level land,” to remain and establish a permanent industrial school in the Troublesome Creek area. "Fotched-on" women was a colloquialism peculiar to eastern Kentucky. It refers to women reformers--missionaries, nurses, and teachers--who came to work among the mountain people during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Katherine Pettit, co-founder of Hindman Settlement School
Solomon, age 80, watched the two women quietly for hours before he introduced himself to them, saying "Women my name is Solomon Everage. Some calls me the granddaddy of Troublesome. Since I was a little shirttail boy hoeing corn on the hillsides, I've looked up Troublesome and down Troublesome for someb'dy to come in and larn us sumpin. My chilehood pass and my manhood and now my head is abloomin' for the grave and still nobody hain't come. I groed up ignorant and mean. My offsprings wuss and my grands wusser and what my greats will be if something hain't done to stop the meanness of their maneuvers, God only knows. When I heard the tale of you two women I walked the 22 miles across the ridges to search out the truth of it. I am now persuaded you are the ones I have looked for all my lifetime. Come over to Troublesome women and do for us what you are doing hyre."

The pleas resonated with Stone and Pettit, and so, in the words of Stone, “… with little experience and less money, we started a school.” Thus, in 1902, at the forks of Troublesome Creek, the Hindman Settlement School was born.

Sources:
http://curtisnsissy.tripod.com/id43.html
“A Portrait of a Collaborative ARSI Team in Knott County, Kentucky” By Elizabeth Horsch at http://www.inverness-research.org/arsi/a10knottco.html
“History and Families-Knott County, Kentucky,” published by Turner Publishing Co., 1995, Paducah, KY

related post: "Educating the Melungeons"


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9/11/07

A road opens -- bring on the flying machines!

“The old mud road is a road that leads down to perdition. The improved road leads upward to a better land; to better homes; to a better and broader civilization,” said West Virginia Governor Ephraim Morgan as he, along with the mayors of Kingwood and Terra Alta, untied the ceremonial ribbons and let the barrier of bunting fall away. The Terra Alta-Kingwood Road was officially open.

The weather had been cold and rainy for several days prior to September 11, 1924 and it looked as if celebrations could not be held; but on the appointed day the sun appeared and dried the roads and grounds to everyone’s satisfaction.
Work on the Morgantown-Kingwood Road
It’s hard today to imagine a mere road opening being followed by a ball game, basket picnic, airplane rides, band music and various athletic events, but the automobile was still a novel way to get around in Preston County—only 30% of the state’s residents had a car yet. And this stretch of highway was seen as a major connector to the outside world.

The road from Kingwood to Terra Alta is a part of the old Winchester and Morgantown turnpike, which was perhaps the first road designated in the county. The turnpike was, from the area’s earliest settlement, the main route through the county to Morgantown. Some of the first pioneer wagons from the east trundled over it.

The road leads from the outskirts of Kingwood to Terra Alta and joins with a concrete road built from that point to the Maryland state line. From the state line a short two mile stretch in Maryland connected to the National pike.

"The National or Cumberland Road was perhaps the most important [regional Indian trail that became a road], extending originally from Washington to Cumberland and later to Wheeling. These old roads are still in use,” noted Governor Morgan in his address. “Parts of them have been improved and hardsurfaced in recent years. The day is not far distant when the most important of these routes will constitute the main arteries of motor travel across the state over improved roads.”

The governor concluded: “I want future generations to point to these roads and say 'There are roads that were constructed in the pioneer stage of road building in West Virginia under the first State Road Commission after the first comprehensive system was established; and they have endured to this day.'” And he headed off to catch the afternoon’s ballgame between Rowlesburg and Kingwood.


source: www.wvculture.org/history/thisdayinwvhistory/0911.html

related post: "Paving Paradise"

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9/10/07

He brought the deer back to North Georgia

Deer hunting season got underway in Georgia this past weekend. It’s all too easy to forget that in the early part of the 20th century, there simply were no deer to be had in the northern part of the state. Arthur Woody never forgot that, and today’s hunters in Appalachian Georgia owe him a debt of thanks.

Arthur “Kingfish” Woody (1884-1946), served the U.S. Forestry Service from 1911 to 1945, starting out as a surveyor. In 1918 the Federal Government combined various local land holdings into the Cherokee National Forest, part of which extended into North Georgia. A short time later additional land the government purchased was consolidated with portions of the Cherokee into the Georgia National Forest (later renamed the Chattahoochee National Forest) and Woody became the Blue Ridge District’s first Forest Ranger. The district was the first wildlife management area in the South.

Ranger Arthur WoodyIn the midst of the depression the CCC began to improve the area around Suches, GA thanks to efforts by “the barefoot ranger,” and he was responsible for the original proposal for a Visitor’s Center at Brasstown Bald.

At the time of Woody’s birth, deer habitat was under tremendous pressure: much of the Georgia mountains had been stripped bare by lumber companies that found it cheaper to simply leave land they’d cleared rather than replant. Woody had gone with his father John on a hunting trip in 1895 when he was a boy, and claimed his dad killed the last deer anywhere in the North Georgia.

"I vowed I would remedy that situation when I was grown," Woody later told Charlie Elliot, former commissioner of the State Game Commission. In 1927 he started restocking deer in the North Georgia mountains with much of his own money, while managing to raise some money from the U.S. Forest Service. He purchased whitetail deer from a passing show and rounded up more in the mountains of western North Carolina, releasing them in an area near the park headquarters of Rock Creek.

He named many of them. One old buck was named Old Nemo. He had names for others. Finally, the deer did multiply and the state re-opened hunting season in 1941. Among the landmarks in the Chattahoochee National Forest honoring Woody is a trail through the Sosebee Cove, a 175-acre tract of prize hardwood Woody purchased for the Forest Service that is now part of the Brasstown Ranger District.


Sources: http://ngeorgia.com/people/woody.html
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~woodygap/arthur1.htm
www.unioncountyhistory.org/page58/page7/page7.html
www.unionsentinel.com/news/2007/0315/Front_Page/004.html


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9/7/07

Who let the bedbugs bite?

"One night during a revival, we had a very heavy rain. Besides myself, only one other person showed up at the church, a young man. I read a scripture lesson, and had prayer before the young man said, 'Now, Preacher, you have to go home with me tonight. There is nobody else here.' Well, we walked for a mile up a steep hill in the red mud.

"The boy hung up his lantern and said, 'Hey, Paw, guess what we have for breakfast? Preacher!'

"'Put him in your bed. You can sleep on the cot,' said Paw. Man and wife were in a bed in the front room.

"The son picked up the oil lamp from the table and led the way up a steep stairway to the second floor. It was a story and a half house, with the sloping ceilings common to such. There were four teenage daughters, lying in two double beds in a room without partitions. The boy put down the lamp, took off all his clothes, and lay down on the cot.

"'You can have my bed there,' he said, indicating another double bed.

"'Do you blow out this lamp?' I asked.

"'Nope, we leave her burn,' he replied.

"What was I to do? I had to get into my pajamas in some way, and while the girls all had their eyes closed, I had no way of knowing if they were asleep, or 'playing possum.'

"Because of the slope of the ceiling, the bed would go no closer than three feet to the wall. I bent over, after having turned the lamp down as low as I dared, crawled back in the space behind the head of the bed, and changed my clothes. I came out, turned up the lamp, put my shirt over the dirty pillow, and crawled into the filthy sheets.

"In a few minutes, I felt something crawling on my back. I caught the insect and crushed it between my finger and thumb, and knew from the odor that I had caught a bedbug. I fought those bugs all night until about 4:30, when the daylight gave me relief. When I threw back the covers, a whole battalion of bedbugs scurried for cover into a hole in the old straw mattress.

"'Well, I sung the cooks up; now I'll sing the preacher up.' the father said. He sang all the way out to feed the pigs.

"I drove the 26 miles back home that night after church. When I told Elizabeth at the door about the bedbugs, she made me take off all my clothes on the front porch. I even had to leave my suitcase outside. Needless to say, I never went back to that house to eat or sleep again!

"Such are the fortunes of those who would serve the Lord in West Virginia in the earlier days. I found that conditions were worse near the Ohio River than in the mountain areas of the state."


"An Autobiography"
Rev. Troy Robert Brady
(1906-1999)
Elkins, W. Va native


source: http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~bradytrilogy/anthology/

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9/6/07

You really had to work to keep them molasses

“[My grandparents] had a molasses mill; they made molasses. I used to help make them, too. [They made molasses to sell.] And they made for people. They'd make molasses for six weeks or longer at a time, every day except Sunday. Sometimes they didn't make them on Saturday. It was usually five days a week.

“They'd start grinding the cane in the mornings about four o'clock, and it'd usually be ten or eleven before they'd get the last ones cooked and off of the pan, before they quit. [My grandmother] was in charge of the cooking of the molasses, and she was really good at it. She stayed right there from the time they got juice on that pan and started cooking till it was all off at night. She didn't even go to the house to eat her meals. They'd bring her meals to her.

sorghum molassess millPhoto caption reads: Boiling juice of sugarcane into sorghum molasses. Racine, West Virginia. Sept 1938.

“They cooked them with wood. It was a big long pan, and you let the juice come on first, and you'd keep the fire going. It had to be a certain kind of wood, oak wood. And you'd keep the fire going under that pan to get the juice started, and you'd have to skim the skimmings off because it would be real green and foamy skimming. And you had what looked like a wire pan, and you'd take that and go down in under them skimmings and dip them off, and you had cans and buckets that you'd put those skimmings in. They weren't any good; they'd just throw them away.

“And as the molasses would cook, they'd have divisions in that pan, and over here would be when the juice would start coming in. And then after they started thickening a little bit, it had a place that would close up, and they'd open that up and let that juice, as it started to thicken, come over in the next section. And it would cook so long in that section. And then at the last they would let them go over in the third section to finish cooking. And you had to stay with them all the time and keep stirring them to keep them from sticking, after they started thickening.

“You really had to work to keep them molasses. And they tried to keep that temperature about the same temperature all the time, to make good… They would make them for people and take so many gallons for making them. That was the pay they got out of it. They'd get twenty-five cents a gallon for them when sold them, and now they're twelve dollars a gallon.”

Eunice Austin
b. 1915, Catawba County, NC

Interview H-107
Southern Oral History Program Collection

source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/austin/menu.html

related posts: "Maple syrup time"







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9/5/07

A school for subversives and Communists?

It’s back to school time. How would you like to have attended the same school that Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, and Fanny Lou Hamer all attended?

That would be Highlander Folk School, near Monteagle, TN, for many years the only place in the South where white and African-American adults could live and work together, something that was illegal in that strictly segregated society. The 1950s brought Highlander to national attention, as civil rights legends and social activists learned the ways of non-violent protest there in the school’s “Citizenship School Program.” Rosa Parks’ participation in a Highlander workshop in the summer of 1955, 5 months before her back of the bus incident, had a crucial influence on her. And during the subsequent Montgomery bus boycott, Highlander co-founder Myles Falls Horton introduced Rosa Parks to Eleanor Roosevelt as “the first lady of the South.”

billboard denouncing Highlander Folk SchoolPolitical enemies angrily erected billboards across the South showing Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks attending an integrated event at the Highlander Folk School in 1957.

But two decades earlier when the school was first begun, poor, uneducated miners learned about self-respect and self-empowerment at the school. In his autobiography, Horton wrote, "We didn't think of ourselves as working-class, or poor, we just thought of ourselves as being conventional people who didn't have any money."

Highlander, Horton once claimed, held the record for sustained civil disobedience, breaking the Tennessee Jim Crow laws every day for over forty years, until the segregation laws were finally repealed.

Horton attended Cumberland College in Tennessee, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and studied Danish folk school models on site before opening the Southern Mountains School, in 1932. A short time later, he and co-director Don West, a Congregational minister from Georgia, changed the name to the Highlander Folk School. At Highlander the purpose of education was to make people more powerful, and more capable in their work and their lives. Horton had what he called a "two-eye" approach to teaching: with one eye he tried to look at people as they were, while with the other he looked at what they might become.

Not everyone was tickled by the Highlander formula. One anonymous Tennessee citizen wrote FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in 1936: “This school is a hot-bed of communism and anarchy. This is proven by the part taken by its members in the strikes at Harriman Tenn., Daisy Tenn. and at the present at Rockwood Tenn.” Hoover promptly opened a file, one that over the years accumulated in excess of 1,000 pages.

For his outspoken support of union, civil rights, and poor people's organizations, Horton endured arrests, threats, violence, and denunciations from industrialists, politicians, and segregationists.

Finally, in 1961, the state of Tennessee closed the school, revoked its charter, and sold off the assets at auction. During this time, many of the buildings were burned by arsonists. Undaunted, Myles Horton redesignated the folk school as a research center under a new charter and moved from Monteagle to Knoxville, and then to the present location in New Market, Tenn., where it is now known as the Highlander Research and Education Center.


sources:www.etsu.edu/cass/archives/Collections/afindaid/a598.html
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2072/Horton-Myles-1905-1990.html
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=H073

Related posts: "Don West background"


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9/4/07

He answered the call, not by a natural death

'Wright’s Fork of the long ago -- McRoberts of Today'
by Burdine Webb
September 4th, 1941 edition of The Mountain Eagle [KY]

"A few days ago I saw Wright’s Fork and the town of McRoberts that lies along its waters, Shea’s Fork, Chopping Branch, Tom Biggs and Bark Camp– but it was a different picture to that of the long ago when, as a barefoot, one-gallused boy I trudged along pebbled creeks to the old school house which stood exactly where The Consolidation office and the post office have quarters now, where two of my older brothers taught “the young idea” in the olden days, when settlements were scant in these parts.

"It was a house now and then, one on Shea’s Fork, the hospitable home of Uncle Bill Wright, one on Chopping Branch, one on Tom Biggs, one at its mouth, and one or two further up. Uncle Jess Wright, brother of Capt. John Wright of the old days, had his log cabin home on the extreme head of the creek, and like the home of Uncle Bill, it was a haven of rest. No one was ever turned away.

William S. Wright, Letcher County KY"It was 'exhibition time' at the little school—the last day, a bleak December noonday, when a few recitations, a short talk from my brother, the teacher, a handful of patrons, and the term of school for that year ended. I recall recollections back from the haunts of the long past, and what Uncle Bill, the lone resident of Shea’s Fork, said to Brother and I, 'Dinner’s waiting for you and you’re going up to eat.' Yes, we went along, down the creek apiece, then up Shea’s Fork—it seemed a mile, along the zigzag creek, with tall, stately trees, proud monarchs of the forest clear down to the water’s edge—not a stick amiss.

"Three months later, in the month of March, poor old, blessed Uncle Bill Wright answered the call, not by a natural death, but from a felon’s bullet that ended all, and the country mourned. I heard it said by every one, 'No better man ever lived.' And in the same deplorable battle, 'Little Andy' Wright died like Uncle Bill. 'Little Andy' was his nephew.

"It was a mere, simple little dog fight, and Lige and Sam Wright, relatives of the two victims, angered, shot their rifles empty, leaving Uncle Bill and 'Little Andy' dead in fifteen inches of snow. Lige was shot, but he recovered. And all this because of a simple dog fight. It is a sickening story, a dark and bloody tragedy, that I have regretted to reiterate—but I never think of Shea’s Fork without my mind reverting back to that dismal, heartless day in the long ago.

"Today the only remnant that is left of the Uncle Bill place is the open top well. I stood beside it on my visit there, and thought, retrospective of Uncle Bill, Aunt Nancy, and their goodness. A tear to their precious memory.

"Today the Fork is teeming with good people, quiet, contented, prosperous. You have only to mention Uncle Bill Wright and they know the story."


source: http://www.geocities.com/nancybays/billandy.html







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9/3/07

Labor Day! Picnics, parades, dove shoots

In the hunting world, it's a fast growing sport. Dove season opened September 1 in North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and Georgia. Federal authorities regulate the sport, because mourning doves are considered to be migratory birds just like ducks and geese. Therefore, the season dates, bag limits and specific regulations are set each year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

mourning doveThe mourning dove is one of the most populous birds in the United States: fall populations nationwide have ranged from 350 to 600 million doves.

Three historical trends in Appalachia have enabled the dove to expand its numbers to regional abundance. At the beginning of the 20th century timber companies inadvertently enhanced the dove population by clearing large areas of deciduous forests. These birds need some hardwoods to roost and nest in, but gravitate to overgrown prairie lands dotted by small clusters of trees.

Secondly, expanding grainfields and farmsteads have created an excellent combination of food (waste grains) and nesting cover for mourning doves. Finally, intensive grazing throughout the region has encouraged exotic plant species that often produce more seeds than native grasses. The food requirements for doves are generally quite varied, but include virtually any type of grain or seed, whether of the cultivated variety or from a wild source.

First thing you need to hunt doves is a shotgun and bird shot. A 12-gauge is better than a 20-gauge, because the larger gun reaches out further and presents a wider and denser pattern. Wildly corkscrewing doves can make complete fools of the wingshooter who prides himself on shot placement! A field where doves are coming in for water or feed provides the hunting opportunity. They gather around small open bodies of water to drink and browse for bits of the gravel that they must ingest in order to digest grains and seeds. The only other requirement is enough shooters to keep the birds moving.

During the early season in September, the usual concern for hunters is the heat. However, thunderstorms can wreak havoc on dove shoots, as can torrential rains and lightning. Windy days do not seem to deter doves. This early in the season, most of the birds taken in the region are homegrown adults and juveniles. Doves are great breeders, getting an early start in April. Many will nest again during the summer.

It's quite common in the South to use standard farming practices for the express purpose of planting fields for dove shoots. This can be the expensive part of the sport, as a field of sunflowers can be costly to plant. Cornfields work well, too, if the corn harvest happens to commence just before the dove season opens. Residual grain left over from the harvesting process is a great dove attractor - and perfectly legal. Mowing weedfields is also a quick way to create a dove field.

Some landowners plant several fields at different dates to stagger their maturity, thus providing a food source to last over a longer span of time. After the initial season is over, some forage - like sunflower fields - may be virtually barren as the doves pick them clean. Shooters have to switch to other crops harvested later in the year, like soybeans or corn.

Dove hunters looking for public lands also find that many wildlife management areas have planted fields for dove hunts.


sources: www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/animals/bird/zema/all.html
www.kentuckygameandfish.com/hunting/doves-hunting/KY_0905_02/
www.mississippigameandfish.com/hunting/doves-hunting/ms_aa092904a






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