Appalachian History

The convenient and pithy term for the mountain people of Kentucky, "our contemporary ancestors," does not indicate the origin of the customs, beliefs, and peculiarities which persist among them. For they too had ancestors. These were, for the most part, British, and of the soil. Just as today many a mountaineer has never been ten miles from his birthplace, so also his forebears remained at home.

They were sturdy men and women, steeped in traditional ways, independent and as little humble as possible. The mountaineer is that way too. He cares neither for ease nor for soft living. He is hospitable. "Welcome, stranger, light and hitch," is the salutation, and the stranger is bidden to take "damn near all" of whatever the table offers.

A hunter by race, he is first of all a poacher, in arms against such as would deny him the right to take game where he may find it, a trait dating back to the time of Robin Hood in England. His speech is reminiscent of this older land and people. Labeled as "a survival," the mountaineer in reality is on the defensive, protecting himself against later comers and strange ideas. "I wouldn’t choose to crave this newfangled teachin’ and preachin’," he says. "All I ask is to be let alone. I was doin’ middlin’ well. The hull kit and bilin’ can go to the devil."

Mountain dialect reflects the Anglo-Saxon origin of the mountain people; obsolete forms found in Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible are in common use. "Clumb," "writ," and "et" for climbed, wrote and ate are common enough if you go back a few centuries. "Buss" for kiss, "pack" for carry, and "poke" for pocketbag and the like are pure Elizabethan.

Shakespeare said "a-feared," as does the mountaineer today, and "beholden" is common to both. "His schoolin’ holp him mighty," says the proud mountain father; King Richard of England said, "Let him thank me that holp send him thither." "Hit’s right pied," shouts the mountain boy when the snake he has stoned puffs up and mottles. But he probably never read of "meadows trim with daisies pied," or heard of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. When he sings, the mountaineer "rolls a song," and his expression, "he looks like the hind wheels of bad luck," is so expressive that only the carping student would seek to trace its heritage.

Folklore is found not only among the mountaineers but in every county in the State, in town and in city. In the mountains, however, because of close-knit family and community ties, it is part of everyday life. Songs and sayings are more than quaint and queer; they have living reality.


The WPA Guide to Kentucky, Compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Kentucky, F. Kevin Simon, Editor,Univ. of KY 1939, publ. Harcourt Brace & Co.


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Not far from the towns of Boone, Blowing Rock, and Asheville, deep inside Humpback Mountain below the Blue Ridge Escarpment, lie Linville Caverns, North Carolina’s only publicly accessible caverns. For 30 million years, as the nearby Catawba River ate away at the valley between the Humpback and Linville mountains, the water-filled caverns have slowly drained from the top.

Linville Caverns were discovered by Henry E. Colton and his local guide, Dave Franklin, in 1822. Mystified by what appeared to be fish swimming out of the mountain, they followed their pine-knot torches into the opening. "Having procured a guide, a little after 9 o'clock we entered the cave, and after proceeding about a quarter of a mile, came to water," said Colton of the experience in Mountain Scenery, published in 1859.

"Previous to this, nothing of a very remarkable nature had met with, but now began the wondrous splendors of that hidden world. Stooping through a low passage, in which the coldest of water ran rippling and singing a merry song, which echoed back a thousand times from the dark dismal arched roof of the unmeasured space which stretched itself before, behind, and above us, we emerged into an immense passage, whose roof was far beyond the reach of the glare of our torches, except where the fantastic festoons of stalactites hang down within our touch.

"It looked like the arch of some grand old cathedral, yet it was too sublime, too perfect in all its beautiful proportions, to be anything of human, but a model which man might attempt to imitate."

Legend has it that the caverns were a popular hiding place with soldiers from both sides of the Civil War and a workshop for a resourceful old man who made and mended soldiers' shoes. Traces of campfires were found in the cavern's central chambers. Local lure tells that eventually smoke from these fires made it out of the mountainside and so betrayed the soldiers.

Thomas Edison once sent a team of explorers to the caverns hoping to find platinum — an element at the time thought vital in the production of incandescent lamps. They returned empty handed.

John Q. Gilkey bought the property in 1937, built walkways, enlarged the entrance, and opened the doors for tours on July 1, 1939 – one of the cave’s larger chambers is named after him. He only lived another year.

Linville’s formations are a rainbow of hues: iron oxide creates a pinkish orange color; black from manganese; blues from zinc and cobalt, white from calcium carbonate, green from algae and moss.

One of Linville Caverns’ most famous formations, the Wedding Scene, features a shelf-like stage with a priest wearing a long robe. A bride and groom can also be seen kneeling at the altar, all created naturally.

During the winter and early spring the eastern pipistrelle bat hibernates in the cave. The fish living in the cave are speckled, brown, and rainbow trout. None are true cave animals, but only cave visitors.

sources: Mountain Scenery. The Scenery of the Mountains of Western North Carolina
and Northwestern South Carolina, by Henry E Colton, W. L. Pomeroy, 1859
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/colton/colton.html
www.theapp.appstate.edu/archives_98-99/98-09-29/linville.htm
www.ashevillechamber.org/
www.showcaves.com/english/usa/showcaves/Linville.html


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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Henry E. Colton, Humpback Mountain, Linville Caverns

On March 25, 1931, local authorities in Paint Rock, AL arrested nine black youths on a freight train after receiving word about a fight between blacks and whites on the train. They discovered two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, dressed in men's overalls on the same train and subsequently charged the nine young men with rape.

The doctor who examined the girls found proof that they had been having sexual intercourse but no reason to conclude that they had been roughly handled, except for a small bruise on one of them which might well have been caused by riding on gravel. This was not Victoria Price’s version of the story: "There were six to me and three to her....It took three of them to hold me," she recalled under oath. "One was holding my legs and the other had a knife to my throat while the other one ravished me."

Four of the "Scottsboro Boys," Roy and Andy Wright, Eugene Williams, and Heywood Patterson, had grown up in Chattanooga, Tennessee; the Wrights were the sons of Ada Wright, a widow and a domestic servant in Chattanooga. Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Charlie Weems, and Willie Roberson came from different towns in Georgia and encountered the others for the first time on the train. Olen Montgomery was completely blind in one eye and could barely see out of the other; Willie Roberson suffered from untreated syphilis and could hardly walk.

Presiding judge Alfred E. Hawkins assigned all seven members of the Scottsboro bar to defend the young men, but all of them found excuses not to involve themselves except for seventy-year-old Milo C. Moody.

In Chattanooga, sixty miles away, members of the local Interdenominational Colored Ministers' Alliance raised funds to retain Stephen R. Roddy, a white lawyer from Chattanooga. "I was scared before, but it wasn't nothing to how I felt now," said defendant Norris as the trials got under way. "I knew if a white woman accused a black man of rape, he was as good as dead."

On April 9, 1931, after four separate trials conducted over a four-day period before four different all-white juries in the mountain town of Scottsboro, eight of the defendants were found guilty as charged.

Judge Hawkins promptly sentenced them to death. The case of the ninth defendant-thirteen-year-old Roy Wright-ended in a mistrial after a majority of the jury refused to accept the prosecution's recommendation that he be spared the death penalty because of his extreme youth.

"I was sitting in a chair and one of those girls was testifying," Wright was quoted as saying in a March 10, 1933 New York Times article. "One of the deputy sheriffs leaned over to me and asked if I was going to turn state's evidence, and I said no, because I didn't know anything about this case.

"Then the trial stopped awhile and the deputy sheriff beckoned to me to come out into another room-- the room back of the place where the judge was sitting-- and I went. They whipped me and it seemed like they were going to kill me. All the time they kept saying, "Now will you tell?" and finally it seemed to me like I couldn't stand it no more and I said yes."

Soon after the guilty verdicts, the NAACP and the International Labor Defense came to the defense of the "Scottsboro Boys," contending the trials were unconstitutional. Three more rounds of trials ensued. Ultimately, charges against four of the defendants were dropped, but by that time they had spent over 6 years in prison on death row without trial.

Alabama’s Governor Graves had planned to pardon all of the defendants before he left office in 1938. However, during the customary pre-pardon interview, Graves was angered by the men’s hostility towards him and refusal to admit their guilt, so he did not issue pardons.

sources: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/White/anthology/scottsboro.html
www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000387.html
www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm


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Publishers' Weekly 145 (March 25, 1944):
"Strange Fruit banned by Boston booksellers"

Says a Cambridge adage: "Banned in Boston is the trademark of a good book." On this date in 1944 Cambridge Police Chief Timothy J. O'Leary, Boston's Police Commissioner Thomas F. Sullivan, and the Boston Bookseller's Association all joined in squashing the sale of Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith's recently published controversial novel about Southern racial problems, miscegenation and lynching. "The boldest indecent passages I have ever seen," said Sullivan. The group asked the author to delete three lines of "sexual phraseology," thereby adding the novel to the long list of Boston's hallmarked books.

Smith, for many years director of the Laurel Falls Camp for girls in Clayton, GA, achieved national fame with the publication of Strange Fruit, which tells the story of the forbidden romance between a white man, Tracy Dean, and a black woman, Nonnie Anderson.

Commissioner Sullivan insisted that he had not banned the book, in fact "had no right to do so." He had merely dropped in at Boston's oldest booksellers, the Old Corner Bookstore (whose head, Richard F. Fuller, was also President of the Boston Board of Retail Book Merchants), and drawn an interested clerk's attention to Strange Fruit's overripe passages. Soon all Boston booksellers received a notice from the Board of Retail Book Merchants asking them to withdraw the book.

Detroit was quick to follow Boston’s lead. Nor was the black community particularly won over. In 1945 Dean Gordon B. Hancock, editor of The Associated Negro Press wrote: "It is difficult to imagine a more subtle yet scathing indictment against the Negro race in general and the Negro womanhood in particular than that presented in Strange Fruit."

Smith’s publisher fanned the flames. In response to the requests of some Boston booksellers to make "minor changes," Reynal & Hitchcock issued a statement that they "have no intention whatsoever of tampering with a fine and important book in order to transform it to what official Boston might regard as acceptable. The book was published because Reynal & Hitchcock consider it an outstanding work of literature."

Within 2 weeks of the ban, Smith’s book was selling 3,000 copies a day, while a new edition of 50,000 copies was tumbling off the press.

Thanks to the ban, the novel created a sensation in 1944, going on to become a best seller, and was dramatized by Smith and her sister, Esther, for Jose Ferrer’s Broadway production of it the next year.

"In trying to shut the Negro race away from us, we have shut ourselves away from the good, the creative, the human in life," wrote Smith about the response to her work. "The warping distorted frame we have put around every Negro child from birth is around every white child from birth also.

"Each is on a different side of the frame, but each is there. As in its twisting distorted form it shapes and cripples the life and personality of one, it is shaping and crippling the life and personality of the other. It would be difficult to decide which character is maimed the more--the white or the Negro--after living a life in the Southern framework of segregation."


sources: "Overripe?" Time magazine April 10, 1944
www.georgiawomen.org/_honorees/smithl/index.htm
Patton, Randall. "Lillian Smith and the Transformation of American Liberalism, 1945-1950." The Georgia Historical Quarterly(GHQ). Volume 76, no. 1-2, p. 373-392, 1992.
www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~unsworth/courses/entc312/s99/search.cgi?title=Strange+Fruit


Lillian+Smith appalachian+literature banned+in+Boston Clayton+GA Laurel+Falls+Camp appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian literature, appalachian mountains history, banned in Boston, Clayton GA, Laurel Falls Camp, Lillian Smith

The Kingsport Times
Kingsport, TN
Sunday, March 24, 1935

"Pork Pie" is the Newest Style Note in Hats

The fabled phoenix, that marvelous bird endowed with the power to rise from its own ashes, finds a match in the pork pie hat. Some twenty years or so ago this hat was a favorite among the young ladies. For some reason this vogue passed, leaving no more trace than the lost continent Atlantis.

Found! The Pork Pie

Last summer, Americans traveling abroad noticed many of the summer dressed Englishmen wearing the bi crowned hat. They were quick to take the revived style back to America. It made its first appearance in the famous Eastern tennis matches. From there it traveled to the East-West polo matches and then on to the Eastern universities. This spring it is meeting with an enthusiastic reception from coast to coast.

But Why "Pork Pie"?

Many stories have sprung up concerning the origin of this odd name. It's really very simple. It resembles in shape the round everyday pork pies that are a daily feature in the window of every self-respecting English baker. And from this rather ordinary part of the Englishman's menu, the pork pie hat takes it name. The true pork pie hat is so made that it cannot be worn successfully except when telescoped. However, the pork pie that is the most popular in this country is the one that can be telescoped or revised as an ordinary snap brim at the wearer's option.

Rough or Smooth, It's Still Pork Pie

The dark brown, smooth finished pork pie was first on the fashion field. For this reason it is the one most seen. The dark patterned, not-too-fuzzy type of hat is gaining many adherents as is the dark green color. The lighter weight pork pie with the two ventilation punches directly above the bow will be seen during the warmer spring days.

Before leaving the pork pie, it is well to mention that many of these hats are worn with the crown punched in front. Now just a word to those who want real hat style. Although you can take apart any old felt hat and revise it into something that looks like a new style, it is never as satisfactory as the hat that is blocked to be worn in a certain manner.

With all this talk about pork pies and more pork pies, don't think that the snap brim hat is relegated to the junk heap. On the contrary, influenced in its proportions a great deal by this new style as well as by the Tyrolean chapeau, the snap brim retains its lead as THE hat.


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Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Kingsport TN, pork pie hat

One can hardly talk about Easter traditions in Appalachia without referencing German traditions, since the region is so heavily settled by immigrants from that country. The first known reference to the Easter hare and its eggs appears to be German, in a book dating from 1572: "Do not worry if the Hare escapes you; should we miss his eggs, then we shall cook the nest." The Easter hare (or Osterhase), was once regarded by the Germans as a sacred animal.

The Easter basket tradition also has its roots in the German folklore of the Easter hare. The day before Easter some German children in Swabia make little nests of straw, moss or twigs, known as the "Hare's Garden" (Hasengärtle), so that the Easter hare will know where to leave his eggs when he makes his deliveries during the night. Residents of Odenwald put a miniature house covered with moss in the garden and children are told that the Easter hare will come & put colored eggs in it.

In German households there is spring cleaning and decorations are brought into the home, budding twigs, crocuses and daffodils - which are known as Easter bells (Osterglocken) in Germany, willow and birch, the first shoots of grasses, or wheat sprouts. Easter trees, small trees or branches, decorated with eggs, have long been a part of German Easter celebration.

German settlers brought these traditions to the United States in the 18th century, and by the 19th century the Easter hare had become the Easter bunny, delighting children with baskets of eggs, chocolates, candy, jelly beans and other gifts on Easter morning.

Eostre, or Eastre, was the Teutonic Goddess of Fertility. Her symbol is the egg, symbolizing fertility in nature and rebirth from the long winter months. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the Vernal Equinox (spring).

According to the 8th century Benedictine monk Venerable Bede, writing in Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, the name Easter is derived from the Norse Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. The German name for Easter is ‘Ostern.’ In myth Ostara is said to have amused children by turning her bird into a rabbit, the rabbit then laying colored eggs much to the delight of the children. Bede described the worship of Ostara among the Anglo-Saxons as having died out by the time he began writing.

sources: www.accuracyingenesis.com/happy.html
www.germany.info/relaunch/info/missions/consulates/sanfrancisco/Eastern.htm
www.wiccaweb.org.uk/eastre.html
An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study By Venetia Newall, Routledge, 1971


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Sara Roberta Getty (1880-1973) served as Woman’s Editor for the Cumberland [MD] Daily News from 1924 to 1942. She wrote four books of poetry, including Little songs of every day, (1924) and Maryland Melodies, (1930), the latter dedicated "to the Queen City of the Alleghenies and her warm hearted people who to me have been a never failing source of encouragement and inspiration."

Photo: from the program of the Cumberland Sesquicentennial in 1937. Sara was among the Board of Directors.

Her husband, Charles, was not overly fond of the idea that Sara worked. Despite this, she continued her career. After her husband's death in 1917, she moved to Wellersburg, PA where she again became a columnist, this time for the Somerset Daily American. Sara continued to work until she was 88 years old, regardless of the fact that she was hit by a car in 1965 and broke her hip.

During this time she raised her two surviving daughters (her twin sons both died within a year of birth) as a single, working mother. She had help from her family, which is why she returned to Pennsylvania.

To Lindbergh

To one with the vision and courage to do
Each task, and admit no defeating;
Adventurous spirit, unconquered, to you
We lift up our glasses in greeting.

Searching new goals in each unchartered place
Your hazardous questing has sent you;
Blazing new trails into infinite space
On wings that the morning has lent you.

Modest, retiring, not seeking for fame,
Yet the world in each triumph is sharing;
History's pages will carry your name,
A viking of courage and daring.

The Cumberland News, 1938


sources: www.whilbr.org/itemdetail.aspx?idEntry=2813&dtPointer=9
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~victagg/47.htm
Davis Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1938, by Athie Sale Davis, self-published, Oklahoma City, OK


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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Appalachian poetry, Cumberland MD, Sara Roberta Getty

Please welcome guest blogger Kevin Bannister. Kevin was born in Pike County, Kentucky in 1958 and raised in Mingo County, West Virginia till he was 18. These days he runs Liberty Graphix, a graphic design studio in Atlanta. His favorite quote? "I started with nothing and have most of it left."


Granny---that's what we called my great grandmother---and what a wonderful and complex woman she was; so full of life, love, lore, stories and song. For several years in the late 1950's Granny had the honor of participating in the American Folk Song Festival in Ashland, KY hosted by Jean Thomas, the "Traipsin' Woman."

Here's a photo of my Granny (on the far right), with Jean Thomas the "Traipsin' Woman" (rear middle) at the 1959 American Folk Song Festival. Her oldest daughter, my Great Aunt Polly, is slightly behind her on her right. The seated woman is Dora Harmon; her daughter Elizabeth Robinson stands behind her.

Lula Maynard Curry was born October 15, 1890. She had already lived sixty-eight years before I came along. I only knew her for 17 years before she died, but I'm so glad I had the opportunity to get to know her. She could be hard at times, as were the times she had lived through. But for a mountain woman of that time and place, she was well educated; she helped start Burch High School in Delbarton, WV, which my father and sisters and I all graduated from years later. And fittingly, all three of her daughters became teachers. She was well traveled too, having gone cross-country to California several times by car and train in the 1930s. Quite the socialite you might say.

One of the songs I remember her singing the most was Barbara Allen, of which there are over 90 versions. But since so many people might be familiar with that song here are the lyrics to The Squire's Daughter (aka The Two Sisters), which may be less well known, and like Barbara Allen, there are probably other versions.

So you think the big city has drama! The poor younger sister in this song was done in by her own kin so she could take her lover. Granny sang this song at the festival, though I'm unsure of the year.

The Squire's Daughter
There was an old squire in a country,
Bowers bend to me,
There was an old squire in a country,
He had daughters, one two and three,
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

There was a young Lord came a-courting there
Bowers bend to me,
There was a young Lord came a-courting there
Courting all the youngest fair,
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

He bought the youngest a beaver's hat
Bowers bend to me,
He bought the youngest a beaver hat
'Course the older she didn't like that.
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

Sister, sister yes walk out,
Bowers bend to me,
Sister, sister yes walk out,
See those ships, sailing about
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

As they walked out, around the bend
Bowers bend to me,
As they walked out, around the bend,
The older shoved the younger in.
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

Sister, sister, lend me a hand
Bowers bend to me,
Sister, sister, lend me a hand,
I'll deed to you my houses and land.
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

I'll neither lend you my hand nor glove,
Bowers bend to me,
I'll neither lend you my hand nor glove,
But I'll take from you your old true-love.
True to my love, my love's been true to me.

****************************************

Mountain people know passion about their loves, lives, land and kin, but I think those old ballads and folk songs were meant as a warning to us younger generations to not stray down the broad path to our own destruction. That's the thing that so many young people don't understand. When you do unto others you are really doing unto yourself, but it may take years to catch up with you. You really do reap what you sow. Ask me how I know!

Well, I hope all of you had a wonderful Granny or Gramps in your life to tell you about the awesome times and the tragic times which they lived through and the wonders their eyes have seen. Wonders like you coming into the world and growing up as they pass on their well earned wisdom to you. You can learn a lot from your elders if you just listen and sing along.


American+Folk+Song+Festival appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+music Delbarton+WV Jean+Thomas Lula+Curry

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Labels: American Folk Song Festival, appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, appalachian music, Delbarton WV, Jean Thomas, Lula Curry

Kentuckians have long shared, among other things, their love for horses, whiskey making and music with the Irish. Listen carefully to Eastern Kentucky’s fiddlers and you‘ll hear the refrains of Irish jigs and reels. And Kentucky’s buck dancing, or clogging, is a particularly vigorous and often undisciplined cousin to the Irish jig.

Indeed, more than 696,286 people of Irish ancestry live in Kentucky. That’s second only to the descendants of Germans. They have been there for hundreds of years, even before the great migration caused by the potato famine of 1845-6.

And so March 17 is not just any ordinary day in Kentucky. It’s time for Eastern Kentucky vs. State, corned beef and cabbage, and of course parades.

Ole St Patrick wasn’t always named that. When he was born in ancient Britain, his name was Maewyn Succat. At 16, he was kidnapped by pirates, taken across the sea to Ireland and sold as a slave. Patrick escaped after six years and went to a monastery to become a Roman Catholic priest. When Patrick was about 60 years old, he returned to Ireland as a missionary and became the country's second bishop. St. Patrick established schools, churches and monasteries throughout Ireland.

St. Patrick is surrounded by legends. A popular one is that he gave a sermon so powerful that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Since no snakes are native to Ireland, it probably symbolizes the pagans who either converted to Christianity or were run out of Ireland. Patrick used the three-leafed shamrocks to explain certain church teachings. The shamrock became the symbol of St. Patrick's Day.

Source: www.courier-journal.com/foryourinfo/031802/031802.html

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March 14, 1913
(portion)

Our state, situated as it is in one of the richest mineral zones in the world - outside of the precious mineral class - contains more bituminous coal than Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia combined, and ranks second in coal production but thirty-fourth among the states in the value of its manufactured products. It is a daily occurrence that a great bulk of raw material, shipped out of the state, is returned from the manufacturers of other states to be sold to our citizens after having been converted into finished products.

Again, we see train-loads of our coking and by-product coal shipped into other states to supply the great iron and steel industries, at prices that are not remunerative to our operators, and at the same time fixing a standard of wages for the miner that is an injustice to him, by reason of the long railroad haul to market.

Statistics will show that the coal industry of this state is anything but prosperous under present conditions. As a matter of demonstration, the United States government reports will show that Illinois coal is twenty per cent inferior in grade to West Virginia coal, yet in 1910 Illinois received $1.14 per ton .for her coal while West Virginia received only 92 cents per ton.

What does this indicate? Simply that Illinois has no long railroad haul, and, again, that she has factories to consume her own coal. The bulk of coal consumed in West Virginia is utilized by locomotives in carrying the raw material from our state to the manufactories of other states. This is strong language to use, nevertheless it is true.

Our state is the possessor of more than 300,000,000 tons of excellent iron ore. In petroleum we are fifth in order of production but first in quality; and as to natural gas, after wasting quantities amounting to many millions in value, we produce for the market more than one-third as much as all the other states in the Union.

We have limestone of the best quality in unlimited quantities which is adaptable to any purpose for which lime can be utilized. As to clays and shales for making brick and tile, we have them in quantities beyond estimation. In glass sands there is no limit to quantity and nothing superior in quality.

The ruthless destruction of one of the greatest forests in the world has taken place within our state. It has been reduced from its original acreage of fifteen and three-fourths millions to less than a million and a half.

But rich as we are as West Virginians in our natural resources, it is indeed lamentable to relate that more than eighty per cent of our fuel and raw material is utilized outside the state. If this condition is left unchecked, what will be the ultimate result to the state and its citizens?

What are we going to do? Are we to permit this injustice to go on without any restraint until it is too late? I wish to say that if my efforts can accomplish anything, these conditions shall not endure. It seems to me that all good citizens should be willing to enthusiastically join hands and turn the channels of this great natural wealth into a new channel that will enrich our own people instead of impoverishing them.

source: www.wvculture.org/history/hatfieldia.html


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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Gov. Henry D. Hatfield, West Virginia history

I heared my brother-in-law tell a tale about his, about a man a-drivin' mules and horses to South Carolina. He come to a place and called to stay all night, and this, he got to stay all night there. And in the, in the night when he went to bed, why, they was a man under the bed with his throat cut, and they come upstairs to kill this man, and he, they knocked him in the head, and they said he wasn't a-bleedin'.

He had took the man out from under the bed and crawled under the bed hisself, and so next morning he come downstairs, and they had tied silk cords around a jack's legs till he couldn't walk, and it surprised them kindly when he come walking down the stairs. So he went on to another place and told them.

They axed him how he could, how he ever got away from there, axed him where he stayed all night, axed him how he ever got away from there. Never had been a man [that] went there and stayed all night, but what he never was heared tell of no more, and he told them how it was. And they went back then to, they went there then and arrested all of them and took them out of there, but I don't know what they done with them. That's all of that.

Jack Johnson
Tuckaleechee Cove, TN
b. 1877

source: www.cas.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/transcripts/johnson_jack.html


Tuckaleechee+Cove+TN Appalachian+tales appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 3 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Appalachian tales, Tuckaleechee Cove TN

"My parents were share croppers. My mother and dad separated in, I guess it may have been '36 that they separated, and my daddy continued to work on the farm, and my mother went to Richmond and stayed and took care of babies and she got a job in Fayette County where she was called a nanny to a white family of children.

"We lived with our grandparents. Grandpap John and my step-grandmother Gilmer. Because mother’s mother died when she was five years old. We were in an integrated neighborhood. There was some well-to-do white people that lived in our neighborhood and there was some poor whites that lived in that neighborhood And we were sort of mixed in with all of them. My granddad owned 86 acres that ran back, and his land kind of connected with a well-to-do white man that had oh, I guess he had 300 acres back in there.

"They’ve always been in my family. My grandmother did laundry for these people, and my granddaddy killed hogs for them in the fall, and one of my uncles worked for him for a number of years before he went to Cincinnati to live. So, they’ve always, you know, been more or less friendly with the family. They were called the Deatherages. The James Deatherage family. And, I remember, you know, distinctly most of the . . . uh, uh . . . around us, most white people in the neighborhood called my grandmother, Aunt Emma.

"We got along real well with the, you know, neighbors and that, and whenever, you know, they wanted favors or wanted to borrow something from the family, they would come and borrow it. They borrowed my granddad’s tools. They would come and borrow things from my grandmother. We got along well with them. Of course, we knew our limitations.


Civil Rights march in Richmond KY, 1958


"We speak and talk with them, and sometimes on Sundays evenings, if we were out playing, that was one of our entertainments on Sunday, and especially in warm weather was have a big ball game out in the lot, a baseball game, and they would come and join us and play baseball with us. The neighbor and white people around. And we all just got out there and had a lot of fun playing baseball. We played until dark and then everybody separated and went home. This was a Sunday evening activity.

"I went to . . . I finished Richmond High School there in Richmond, the 12th grade. And I went two years at Kentucky State. I wanted to be a dietician. I worked in the cafeteria at Kentucky State, and I remember the labels of the can goods being shipped to Kentucky State for Negros. That was what was labeled on the outside of the cartons that they came in... it was Kentucky State for Negros."


Mrs. Lillian Ballew Gentry
b. 1927 in Madison County KY
April 1, 1992 interview
conducted by A.G. Dunston,
Eastern Kentucky University,
History Department

Source: www.library.eku.edu/collections/sca/oralhistory/1993oh146.pdf


Richmond+KY sharecroppers race+issues Lillian+Ballew+Gentry Madison+County+KY appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Lillian Ballew Gentry, Madison County KY, race issues, Richmond KY, sharecroppers

Late on the night of March 10, 1948, a fire started in a kitchen of the main building of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Spreading rapidly through a dumbwaiter shaft, flames reached every floor, and, in spite of efforts by hospital staff and local fire fighters to evacuate everyone from the building, nine patients died. Among the victims of the fire, identified only by her slipper, was Zelda Fitzgerald, who with her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, represented for many the talent, sophistication, glamour and excess of American life of the 1920s.

Highland Hospital, originally known as "Dr. Carroll's Sanatorium," was founded in 1904 by Dr. Robert S. Carroll, a distinguished psychiatrist. His program of treatment for mental and nervous disorders and addictions was based on exercise, diet and occupational therapy, and attracted patients from all over the country. The hospital was relocated from downtown Asheville to the northern end of Montford Avenue in 1909, and was officially named Highland Hospital in 1912. Dr. Carroll gifted the hospital to Duke University in 1939.

In 1928, Zelda Fitzgerald had decided to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a professional ballerina, and had begun taking lessons in Paris from a famous dancer. But at that late age (she was born in 1900), three years of intense eight hour a day ballet work damaged her health, and prompted her first mental breakdown, diagnosed as "nervous exhaustion," in 1930. On May 22, after hearing voices and exhibiting delusional behavior she entered a clinic in Switzerland. On June 5 she entered another hospital near Geneva, Les Rives de Prangins. At Prangins she was diagnosed by Dr. Oscar Forel as schizophrenic.

Zelda would reside in and out of hospitals for the rest of her life.After she was released from Prangins on September 15, 1931 she returned to the United States. On February 12, 1932 she entered the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of the Johns Hopkins University outside of Baltimore. During her stay there, she wrote her first and only novel: Save Me the Waltz, which was an almost autobiographical account of her life up to that point.

Zelda’s creative output also included a play, Scandalabra, several short stories and articles, and a large number of paintings, paper dolls, and sketches—some of which were intended to be passed on to her daughter and grandchildren. She began a second novel in 1942, "Caesar's Things," which was never finished but which covered ground similar to her first book.

In April, 1936 Zelda checked herself for the first time into Highland, where she remained until April, 1940. By then estranged from Scott, she instead headed back to her childhood home in Montgomery, AL to live with her mother. She sought out Highland once more in August 1943 for a six month stay, again in early 1946 through the end of that year, and checked in for what became her final stay in November 1947.

Mary Porter worked at Highland and was involved in Zelda's treatment. She described that experience in an interview with Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford:

We were very careful with Zelda; we never stirred her up. She could be helped, but we never gave her deep psychotherapy. One doesn't do that with patients if they are too schizophrenic. We tried to get Zelda to see reality; tried to get her to distinguish between her fantasies, illusion and reality. This is not easy for a schizophrenic. The psychotherapy was very superficial...She often rebelled against the authority, the discipline...She didn't like discipline, but she would fall into it.

Dr. Irving Pine, Zelda’s last psychiatrist, believed (too late) that she may have actually had severe untreated bipolar disorder. He speculated after her death that the cause of her breakdowns may have been as much from her husband's mental bullying and her treatment for her disorder as the disorder itself.


sources: www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/mar2007/index.html
www.nps.gov/nr/travel/asheville/hig.htm
www.cosmicbaseball.com/zelda8.html
www.pbs.org/kteh/amstorytellers/bios.html
Bryer, Jackson R. & Barks, Cathy W. (eds.). (2002), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, New York: St. Martin's Press

appalachian+history appalachia Asheville+NC Highland+Hospital Robert+S.+Carroll Zelda+Fitzgerald appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Asheville NC, Highland Hospital, Robert S. Carroll, Zelda Fitzgerald

Please welcome guest blogger Timothy W. Hooker, author of the Sushi Tuesday blog. Tim teaches English at Cleveland State Community College [TN], is a "Point of View" moderator for WDEF-TV 12, and is the author of several works, including: "Rocket Man: A Rhapsody of Short Stories," "Duncan Hambeth: Furniture King of the South," and "Looking For A City."

I don't pretend to know how or why it works; I just know it does.

Among the Appalachian people, it's known as the Blood Verse and it is probably the most controversial aspect of hillbilly witchcraft. I don't feel comfortable calling it a spell. But, it is something my analytical, scientific, humanistic mind can't rationalize away.

Simply put, the Blood Verse stops hemorrhaging on sentient beings when nothing else will. And, by sentient, I mean it will work on animals just as quickly and effectively as it will on humans. I've seen others use it. I've used it myself.

And, up until now, I've been very hesitant to talk about it.

But, here we go.

The Blood Verse is found in the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 16, Verse 6. It
reads:

"And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said
unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou
wast in thy blood, Live."

Not just anybody can use it. It has to be handed down from male to female to male to female, by someone who already uses it. My mother handed it down to me.

If a sentient being is bleeding uncontrollably, the practitioner can say the verse aloud three times and then say the complete name of the person who is bleeding, and the bleeding will stop.

It's that simple.

The practitioner does not have to have rock-solid faith. The practitioner doesn't have to be sinless. The power of the Blood Verse overrides any deficiencies in the practitioner.

I've seen my mother use the Blood Verse on cattle that have been de-horned. I've used it on people who were recovering from dental surgery. And, it's always worked. Immediately. Conclusively. No questions asked.

I even used it on my father, when his brain stem hemorrhaged. By that time, the damage was done; he was already brain-dead. But later, the doctors, not knowing what I'd done, reported that the bleeding stopped, believe it or not, at the same time I used the Blood Verse.

I don't expect anyone reading this to believe me; feel free to think I'm nuts. I've got a wall full of academic degrees that say I excel at critical thinking skills; I'm not supposed to believe in things I can't measure in a test-tube. But, I know the Blood Verse works.

And, as Charlie Daniels would say, "There are some things in this world you just can't explain."

TWH


Blood+Verse Ezekiel bloodstoppers appalachian+witchcraft appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 5 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, appalachian witchcraft, Blood Verse, bloodstoppers, Ezekiel

Before the days of T.V.A. and large power companies, electricity was supplied to rural areas by such imaginative and pioneering men as Arthur Abernathy Miller. In 1925, Miller, a brilliant self-educated electrical engineer, built the first hydroelectric dam in north Alabama --- the DeSoto dam in Ft Payne, AL.

Miller had furnished electrical power for two towns in Virginia and one in West Virginia before coming to Fort Payne from Chattanooga in 1921. He knew he had found an ideal location for his plant at this picturesque spot atop Lookout Mountain. His initial goal was to help supply power to his Little River Power Company, later sold to Alabama Power Company, which he constructed below the falls on the west side of the gorge.

After he decided to build his electric plant at DeSoto Falls, Miller's first problem appeared to be the area's inaccessibility. There were no roads at all and Miller's heavy Lincoln mired deeply in the muddy log trail on several occasions before he and Baltimore developer Phiffer Smith built the first road to DeSoto Falls. The road connected the falls with the brow of the mountain, where a road already ran to Valley Head.

Miller hired many local men for the construction of his dam, which was first built to a height of 10 feet. Later various people of the area contributed sufficient funds to raise the dam an additional 10 feet in order to increase the size of the lake.

The heavy diesel machinery purchased by Miller posed a problem, as he was at the south end of town and some distance from the depot. There was no double track to aid in the unloading, and train officials emphatically declared they could keep the train stopped for no longer than 30 minutes. They were certain this amount of time was totally inadequate for unloading such massive equipment. However, after skillful and detailed planning, Miller accomplished the feat in the allotted time.

At first Fort Payne was furnished with electricity from dark until midnight. Then, after a number of local women had purchased electric irons, power was supplied on Thursday afternoons to allow this task. Later electricity was made available all day and night.

As there was no central switch for the street lights, Ernest Wallis, a young school boy, became Fort Payne's equivalent of the "ole lamp lighter", riding his bicycle up and down the streets at dusk to turn the lights on and returning after dawn to turn them off.

On many occasions Miller jumped up from his evening meal and rushed through the darkness from his home on the corner of Third and Gault to restore electric service after an incident of power failure. But his worst such experience was to keep the power flowing during a carnival's visit to town. Every time the merry-go-round made a few turns, all the machinery stopped and the lights went out.

Miller and his partner Smith saw great possibilities in further development of this beautiful area and purchased 300 acres of land surrounding the falls. They formed the DeSoto Falls Development Company, with Smith as president and Miller as secretary and treasurer. Their tract of mountain land was divided into 266 building lots, and plans were made for a community clubhouse and tennis courts. A historic old fortress area below the falls was to be preserved as a park. However the descending Depression years prevented the further development of their park.

Arthur Abernathy Miller’s generator has long been out of commission, but the dam, waterfalls, canyon and reservoir above the dam are now a tourist attraction. A square concrete base still marks the spot where electrical power was generated for Fort Payne, Mentone, Valley Head, Collinsville, AL and Menlo, GA.

sources: www.desotostatepark.com/lol-aamiller.htm
www.tourdekalb.com/history%20-%20A.%20A.%20Miller.htm


Arthur+Abernathy+Miller DeSoto+Falls Ft+Payne+AL hydroelectric+dams appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Arthur Abernathy Miller, DeSoto Falls, Ft Payne AL, hydroelectric dams

The Sistersville Ferry is the longest continuously working mode of transportation in Monroe County, OH, operating since 1815. It crosses the Ohio River between Fly, Ohio, and Sistersville, West Virginia, which is the apex of the longest straight stretch on the Ohio River. This section of the river is called the "Long Reach," which runs about twenty miles in length.

At the "Long Reach," one can see Beavertown seven and a half miles to the south, and in the other direction Sardis can be spotted five miles north. The Sistersville Ferry is located near the site George Washington encamped during a survey trip to the west on October 25, 1770.

There are only four ferries left along the 981-mile long mighty Ohio River, with the Sisterville Ferry being the only one along the 277 mile stretch of Ohio River that shares its border with West Virginia.

source: http://www.pbase.com/gshamilton/image/50806746

Fly+OH Sisterville+Ferry Sisterville+WV Ohio+River appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 7 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Fly OH, Ohio River, Sisterville Ferry, Sisterville WV

Great numbers of Hungarian immigrants came to the United States around the turn of the century. The wave of immigration from 1880 to about 1915 was called the 'Great Economic Immigration' for Hungarians, and it drew about 1.7 million Hungarian citizens, among them 650,000-700,000 real Hungarians (Magyars), to American shores. These immigrants came almost solely for economic reasons, and they represented the lowest and poorest segment of the population. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 halted mass migration, but by 1922 7,300 Hungarian-born Magyars had found their way to West Virginia. The exclusionary U.S. immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 pushed the Hungarian quota down to under 1,000 per year.

Many Hungarian immigrants came hoping to make money and then return to their home country with enough capital to make themselves into prosperous farmers. Few of them achieved this goal---25% of Hungarian immigrants returned to Hungary---and virtually all of them became unskilled or semiskilled workers in America's bustling industries. They were the peons of America's Gilded Age, who contributed their brawn to American coal mines and steel smelters, and who produced the mythical Hungarian American hero, Joe Magarac, who could bend steel bars with his bare hands. It was they who unwittingly created the negative "Hunky" image of Hungarians, which then was transferred to all of the East and Southeast European immigrants.

Michael Bartucz’ story is fairly typical: born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1879, he became a barber in the Hungarian Army, according to his grandson, James Nagy. When he read in a newspaper that he had been declared dead, he deserted a wife and the army and fled to the U.S. around 1900. With his uncommon name, he feared that he would be easily found out, so he changed his name to Charles Nagy. He became a coal miner in West Virginia but finally settled in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.

Family structure was very important to Hungarian immigrants, and they created close knit communities with their churches and other cultural societies. For example, the Hungarian Evangelical and Reformed Church in Morgantown, WV offered Sunday school instruction in Hungarian between the two World Wars.

Hungarian immigrants were likely victims of exploitation: they were handicapped by language barriers, used to abominable working conditions and were usually willing to take almost any kind of work. Traditionally, Hungarians typically look down on government aid and very few Hungarians ever received handouts. Some Hungarians, totally unaware of the labor conditions in this country, were brought to the coal mining regions of West Virginia and Virginia as strikebreakers. Much hatred and violence was directed against them because of this.

Új Elore, a Hungarian-language labor newspaper based in Cleveland, published countless short stories and poems, starting in 1921, which conveyed the many hardships endured by Hungarian immigrant laborers. The stories were written about fictional characters, however, they were based on actual incidents related by the immigrants themselves.

There were short stories published about the mining towns of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where many of the Hungarians found initial employment. The writings conveyed the degradation of living in shabbily constructed company shanty towns, of having to work underground and breathing the soot and smoke of the mine. There were many other stories as well: of children who were orphaned due to industrial accidents and of young girls who worked in sweatshops under stifling, unhealthy working conditions for meager wages.


sources: www.clevelandmemory.org/Hungarians/pg241.htm
http://feefhs.org/ah/hu/hurl.html
www.energyofanation.com/f2790e65-0b2d-438e-925d-1175535c4053.html?NodeId=:
www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-La/Hungarian-Americans.html


Hungarians+in+West+Virginia Magyars Morgantown+WV Új+Elore appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history west+virginia+history Joe+Magarac

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:30 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Hungarians in West Virginia, Joe Magarac, Magyars, Morgantown WV, West Virginia history, Új Elore