Appalachian History

Fort Payne [AL] Journal
May 28, 1941

Mr. Driskill’s ancestors on his father’s side were three Irishmen who settled in Maryland. His mother’s ancestors were English. Charles Driskill was born March 15, 1866, a mile from Portersville, in Big Valley, on the George Place. His Grandfather, who came from Winchester, TN, settled there in 1830.

Charles was the 13th child in a family of 16 children, though one died in infancy. The living consisted of nine boys and six girls. He attended school at Lookout Chapel, three miles from Sulpher Springs. At the ripe old age of 18 he taught school at Lookout Chapel where he had learned his A B C’s.

On Christmas Day, 1889, he married Miss Laura Dean, of Valley Head, who was born on Puddin’ Ridge. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on Christmas, 1939.

This couple at Noccalula Falls, AL is not the Driskills! But the Driskills lived near here and were about the same age as this man and woman. Photo late 1800s.

After their wedding, the Driskill’s settled on a farm and lived there until 1912, when they came to Fort Payne and bought out the Jim Malone Restaurant. After a few month’s work in the restaurant, Mr. Driskill went to work in the J.O. Crow Store and worked there on and off for ten years. He also worked in G. L. Malone’s Store for three years and he worked in a store for J.W. Walker. He served in the Fort Payne City Council for 16 years and was City Clerk for two years. In 1930, he retired from active life, except for work in his vegetable garden and other work around the home.

Mr. and Mrs. Driskill are the parents of five children, three boys and two girls; and they have five grandchildren, three boys and two girls. The boys are all telegraph operators. Byron Driskill is a telegraph operator at Tuscaloosa now, but he was for twenty-five and one-half years, operator at Fort Payne Railroad Station. Bernard Driskill quit the telegrapher’s job to work in the bank. He is now Teller and Assistant Cashier of the First National Bank of Fort Payne. Bill lives in Daytona Beach, Florida. He is manager for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, a position he has held for 25 years.

The girls are Mrs. W.S. Brown (Fanny Driskill) of Jackson, MS, (she worked in a bank in Birmingham for some years) and Mrs. Donald V. Marshall (Carrie Driskill) of Birmingham, AL. D.V. Marshall is widely known for his successful business dealings with Holiday Inn activities.

Fort Payne Fire Department and City Clerk's Office mid 1940s.

Mr. Driskill has held nearly all the offices in the Masonic Lodge and there are many men in Fort Payne that have learned Masonry from Mr. Driskill. He is a conscientious worker in the First Methodist Church and has been a steward for more than forty years.

Mr. Driskill does not look his age of 75. He has had no serious illness, except influenza. Until he was 49 years old, he never had a doctor call on him. His chief hobby is playing checkers. And he is still laughing over a game he played and won in Daytona Beach, FL, last year when he and Mrs. Driskill were visiting their son, Bill. The Driskills have lived in the home they live in now since 1915. The lawns and the flowers are wonderfully kept. Mrs. Driskill looks after the flowers which she loves. Mr. Driskill takes no interest in the flowers, except to enjoy their beauty. But he looks after the vegetable garden. He said that no plow has been in his garden for ten years. He digs the soil with a fork.


source: http://files.usgwarchives.org/al/dekalb/newspapers/gnw326charlesl.txt



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The Carolina coast was the site of the earliest evidence of pottery making in North America, with pieces dated 4,500 BC and tempered with Spanish moss.

In 1540, when Hernando De Soto traveled through the Carolinas, the Catawba Indian Nation controlled 55,000 square miles of land including portions of North Carolina and Virginia, and most of South Carolina. The Catawba Nation has maintained the longest pottery making tradition in North America and was instrumental in keeping the Cherokee pottery making tradition viable.

The Catawba, who eluded forced removal to Oklahoma by the US Government during the 1830s, joined with their former enemies, the hold-out Cherokees, hiding in the hills, in the struggle to remain on their homelands. But by 1847 most of the Catawba left the Cherokee and returned to their original base in South Carolina (the 1760 treaty of Pine Hill and 1763 treaty of Augusta had established a fifteen mile square reservation for them along the Catawba River). Before they departed, they left behind a permanent influence on Cherokee pottery making.

The Native American Art Collection at the University of Houston - Clear Lake purchased this bowl by Cherokee potter Cora Wahnetah in 1969.

"The Catawba and Cherokee pottery families intermarried," says Michael Simpson, author of Making Native American Pottery. "A cross-fertilization of methods took place, with the final result being that the Cherokee adopted the Catawba method of firing in an open pit, abandoning forever the traditional mound firing method, which has been nearly forgotten in modern times."

Within both traditional Catawba and Cherokee culture, women were the potters, though that gender barrier was broken during the 20th century.

After pulverizing dried clay and mixing it with water, Cherokee craftswomen molded and coiled their earthen vessels. The coil building method more easily accommodated the production of large storage pieces.

Cherokee potters often used carved wooden paddles to imprint designs --- zigzag, crosshatch, feather and figure motifs---and smooth the surfaces to make them waterproof. Partly dry pottery may be burnished with a polishing stone to achieve its characteristic satin patina. Some pieces are deeply carved, some painted with slip (a liquid form of clay that may have color additives).

If clay preparation is not done correctly, or the pots are constructed incorrectly, they will crack upon simple drying. If stone polishing takes place at the wrong drying stage, or the friction of polishing is allowed to overheat and hence dry out the still damp clay, the pots will be rough- sanded, rather than smooth-polished.

This Cora Wahnetah wedding vase has been low-fired, burnished, and has an inscribed design.

The stone polishing procedure is a method that smooths by compressing the clay particles, not by sanding it, hence contributing to its strength, rather than weakening it.

The work is unglazed, and is fired in pits of burning bark and native woods, the subtle tones of red, cream, and soft grey to deep black determined by the kind of wood used in the fires. To further waterproof the insides, corncobs and bran were thrown into the fires while the pots hardened.

The vast tourist market in the North Carolina mountains that opened starting in the 1920s provided an important source of income for the Cherokee potters. Traditional wares were being produced in very small quantities, but pottery making was maintained through the creation of small decorative ware for sale.

The well known Cherokee potter Cora Wahnetah (b. 1907), whose work is shown here, tapped into that outside market starting in the 1940s. As a young girl, she had learned pottery making from her mother, in the traditional Cherokee manner: first forming the very simplest type of pot (pinched); next, the slab pot, and finally the coiled pot.

Wahnetah’s work varies from traditional pieces-- pit-fired, incised pots--which would have been used in ceremonies by her ancestors, to contemporary pieces. Her pieces are owned by the Department of the Interior and are on permanent display at Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee, NC.


sources: Catawba Indian Pottery: The Survival of a Folk Tradition; Thomas John Blumer; Univ of Alabama Press, 2004
www.cherokee-nc.com/index.php?page=30
www.carolinaarts.com/608ncpotterycenter.html
Making Native American Pottery, Michael Simpson, Naturegraph Publishers, Happy Camp, CA, 1991



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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Catawbas, Cherokees, native american pottery

continued...

KENTUCKY: On October 6, the Kentucky State Board of Health announced the closing of "all places of amusement, schools, churches and other places of assembly."

Because they were almost certainly simply overwhelmed with combating the disease, Kentucky officials did not even report influenza cases to the U.S. Public Health Service until late October. Likewise in Alabama: it is impossible to know for sure exactly how many Alabamans were affected by the flu, since regular reports to the U.S. Public Health Service were never made.

At that point, KY state officials reported more than 5,000 cases of the flu. Over the next three weeks, they reported over 8,000 more.

In Pike County, KY, a miner named Teamus Bartley called the epidemic "The saddest lookin' time then that ever you saw in your life."

He and his brother worked at a coal mine when his brother's entire family came down with the disease. Teamus visited his brother every night, and reported on what he saw:

"...every, nearly every porch, every porch that I'd look at had--would have a casket box a sittin' on it. And men a diggin' graves just as hard as they could and the mines had to shut down there wasn't a nary a man, there wasn't a, there wasn't a mine arunnin' a lump of coal or runnin' no work. Stayed that away for about six weeks."

Teamus later said that each night, he saw four or five miners and family members die in the camps.

VIRGINIA: John Brinkley, a sharecropper in Max Meadows, VA, believed that "a little fresh air could be fatal." So he sealed his family in his living room around a fire in a wood stove. For seven days the family remained in the room with the fire. On the eighth day, the house caught fire and the Brinkleys were forced to evacuate. By mid-October, Virginia had seen more than 200,000 cases of influenza. By the end of the year, more than 15,000 Virginians would die.

WEST VIRGINIA: Charleston saw its first cases of influenza on September 28th when 7 cases occurred. Over the next five weeks, there were more than 2,300 cases, and more than 200 deaths.

More cases followed, but they were not recorded. Around the middle of November, Charleston authorities stopped reporting to the U.S. Public Health Service. It's likely that they were simply too overwhelmed.

In Martinsburg, WV, so many people were either sick themselves or were caring for people suffering that a local committee estimated that only two out of every ten people were able to attend to their normal duties.

Gravediggers could not keep up with the demands for their services in Martinsburg. For several weeks, gravediggers maintained a backlog of at least two-dozen graves, which needed to be dug each day.

Burials themselves were quick. Funerals were banned, as were all other public meetings, churches were closed and theaters were shut.

The local Martinsburg newspaper published a list of "Some Don'ts that Should be Followed: Don't Worry, Stop Talking about it, Stop Thinking about it, Avoid People who have it."

Such Don'ts were hard to do. For instance, a James Horvatt was brought to trial before the Martinsburg-area county court on September 27, 1918 for allegedly forging a $40 check. Horvatt had contracted the flu while in jail waiting his trial, and was very ill from the disease when he appeared in court.

The disease spread among those who were in the courtroom with him that day. Three lawyers who engaged in proceedings contracted influenza and died within three days after Horvatt's trial was concluded. Three others, the judge, the county clerk and the assistant prosecuting attorney in the Horvatt case, all contracted the disease and came close to death. So did their immediate families.

It was said that nearly every family lost someone. One family that experienced such a loss was that of an infant who would grow up to become one of the Nation's longest-serving Senators. The mother of Senator Robert Byrd was actually a North Carolinian. She died of influenza when he was just one year old, and an aunt and uncle from West Virginia took him in.

MARYLAND: By September 28th, more than 1,700 cases were reported across the state. In Cumberland, 41% of the population became ill. City officials converted buildings on the city's main street into emergency hospitals but there were only three nurses to staff these hospitals. Officials asked the Maryland Board of Health for additional nurses but the nurses never appeared.

OHIO: The state outlawed spitting. Influenza was not confined to the cities. Rural communities across the state also experienced high rates of influenza as well as significant numbers of deaths from influenza or pneumonia. By the last week of October, Ohio reported 125,000 cases of the Spanish flu. That week, more than 1,500 Ohioans died.

By the end of December 1918, the worst was over.


Sources: www.pandemicflu.gov/general/greatpandemic2.html
http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/index.htm



Great+Pandemic+of+1918 appalachian+history appalachia +appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Great Pandemic of 1918

Across America in the fall of 1918 the Spanish influenza-and the fear of it-was everywhere. The flu’s name came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain where it allegedly killed 8 million in May that year. No one knows exactly how many people died during the 1918-1919 global influenza pandemic, but estimates place 675,000 Americans among the dead: more than died during World War I!

Many physicians succumbed to the flu themselves. Shortages of essential personnel of all types often compounded the crisis even further. A lack of sanitation workers in cities allowed sewage to accumulate in the streets, raising concerns about other diseases. Emergency hospitals could not be opened to accommodate the growing numbers of patients because they could not be staffed.

Most patients were isolated in their homes and treated there, if they could get medical attention at all. Gauze masks started sprouting on faces everywhere, though wearing masks does little to prevent the spread of influenza. Those sickened were often left to fend for themselves—neighbors refused to come to the aid of neighbors for fear that they too would be struck.

ALABAMA: It first appeared in late September 1918 in Florence, in the northwest corner of the state. Just three weeks later, over 25,000 cases of influenza in the state had been reported to the U.S. Public Health Service. Following a common practice in many communities, Alabama doctors often wrapped the wheels of their horse drawn carts with cotton so people would not become alarmed when they heard the cart leaving during the night. During the last two weeks of October, more than 37,000 cases of the flu erupted in Alabama. People around the state died by the hundreds.

GEORGIA: It probably arrived during the first week of October 1918, and then spread like a wildfire throughout the state. In just three weeks, from October 19th to November 9th, there were more than 20,000 cases and more than 500 deaths. State officials filed their first report on October 19. On that date, they claimed that the state had 6,304 cases with 68 deaths. The real number of cases and deaths was probably much higher. The next week saw an increase in the number of cases: 9,637 cases and 308 deaths were reported. The following week, the week ending November 2nd, saw a tapering off of the epidemic with only 4,287 cases and 138 deaths being reported.

SOUTH CAROLINA: By early October, the disease had spread into the upper reaches of the state. Eucapine, Vick's VapoRub, and other patent medicines became popular and were touted as cures. South Carolina’s governor even permitted the use of then-illegal alcohol because doctors were advocating its use as a remedy and nothing else seemed to be working. Alcohol didn’t work either. Home remedies were widespread. Onion plasters, the eating of raw onions, and even drinking hot lemonade to induce perspiration were recommended. None of these treatments were effective.

TENNESSEE: On October 15th, there were 27 deaths in Knoxville. Dr. E.L. Bishop, of Tennessee’s State Board of Health, offered his advice by condemning "promiscuous kissing ...especially that of the nonessential variety." He said, "[a] kiss of infection...may truly be the kiss of death." On October 27th, "conditions were better in mining camps generally and...reports from rural communities in a few counties indicated that the disease is not yet prevalent at these points." In the last two weeks of October, when the pandemic was at its peak, nearly 11,000 Tennesseans were struck. More than 650 fell. Writing in a medical journal, one Tennessee physician summed up the situation in saying "The man who dug his neighbor's grave today might head the funeral procession next week. No telling who would be next."

NORTH CAROLINA: Dr. W.S. Rankin of North Carolina’s State Board of Health refused to approve the use of rum in emergency hospitals due to lack of evidence that it was effective against influenza. Instead the Board called for treatments of "sunshine and open air." Calomel, a purgative (and insecticide), was also prescribed. By the time the pandemic passed, at least 13,000 North Carolinians had perished. The state's many mill towns suffered tremendous losses from the pandemic. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and poverty all served to exacerbate the number of cases and deaths in these regions.

to be continued...


Sources: www.pandemicflu.gov/general/greatpandemic2.html
http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/index.htm



Great+Pandemic+of+1918 appalachian+history appalachia +appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Great Pandemic of 1918

That's the exact caption of this photo, and while the caption dwells in specifics, the photo itself captures a universal moment that most any parent can respond to.

Gertrude is the daughter of Darley Hiden & Mary Ramsey, of Asheville, NC. We don't know the date of the picture, or who shot it, though it's most certainly from the late 1920s. Hiden & Mary [nee Sumner] married in 1926.

The grown Gertrude served on the Board of Trustees for Asheville-Biltmore College starting in 1958. She was recognized for her work as the Society Editor at Asheville’s Citizen Times by Editor & Publisher International Year Book (1963) and by The Working Press of the Nation (1969).

Her father had paved the way for her career rather smoothly, having spent 23 years as the general manager of the Citizen-Times Company, corporate parent of the Citizen Times. He’d worked at the Citizen as an associate editor for a year starting in 1920, then moved over to editorship of the Asheville Times the following year (where he served till 1926). Ramsey also served on the State Board of Education (1945-1953) and on the State Board for Higher Education (1955-1960). He died in 1966 at age 75.

D. Hiden Ramsey did well enough as a newspaperman that he was able to endow the University of North Carolina, Asheville with a new library facility: the D.H. Ramsey Library. His correspondence, speeches, and writings, including more than 200 manuscript speeches on a wide variety of subjects and occasions, plus 30 essays and articles on public issues and events, have become the D. Hiden Ramsey Collection. And it’s over in a personal corner of that inventory that this charming photo resides.

source: toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/ramsey/ramsey.html



appalachia University+of+North+Carolina Citizen-Times+Company D.+Hiden+Ramsey Gertrude+Ramsey Asheville+NC appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Asheville NC, Citizen-Times Company, D. Hiden Ramsey, Gertrude Ramsey, University of North Carolina

Please welcome guest blogger Matthew Burns of Pendleton County WV, author of the recently begun Appalachian Lifestyles blog. "My goal in starting this blog was to create a forum where I could share my colorful family stories," he tells me, and the following story certainly fits that bill.

A few days ago, I received from a distant cousin a photo of my great-great-great grandfather and my great-great aunt, Solomon Hedrick & Mahala Teter. I had never before seen this photograph and seeing it reminded me of their story.

The story begins with Mahala's parents, Samuel and Sidney (Wimer) Teter. When Mahala was 10 years old, her father Samuel died in a farming accident. A few years later, the widow Sidney gave birth to a daughter, which she named Sidney Teter. No matter how you look at it, there is no way possible that the baby belonged to Samuel Teter. Word got around, and it turned out that the widow Sidney had been laying with Solomon Hedrick and that the baby belonged to him. With the secret out, Solomon and the widow Sidney made their relationship known and Solomon acknowledged the child as his own, but here is where it gets colorful.

About this time a man named Cornelius Ketterman, whom the widow Sidney had grown close to in the months following her husbands death came back into the scenario. According to stories, Cornelius was really in love with the widow Sidney and promised to marry her after some time had passed (she was in mourning) and when the War was over (in those days, men thought the War of Northern Aggression would only last a few months).

Well, when ole Cornelius came back into the picture, the widow Sidney cut it off with Solomon Hedrick and took up again with Cornelius. It wasn't long until she and Cornelius had a son together, and soon thereafter Cornelius went back into the Confederate Service where he was captured and sent to the Yankee Prison Camp in Camp Chase, OH. He died there. The widow Sidney was once again left alone, only this time with two young children to raise.

In the meantime, a new romance was budding, this one between Solomon Hedrick and Mahala Teter. I guess Grandpaw Solomon thought if he couldn't have the mother, then by golly, he'd have the daughter. Mahala and Solomon were no relation, per se, since she was the daughter of the widow Sidney's first marriage. As time passed, Mahala and Solomon were married, and the widow Sidney moved in with them with her two children, a girl by Solomon and the boy by Cornelius. By all accounts, the widow Sidney approved of the marriage between her daughter and her former suitor, and always held Solomon in high regard because he was a good provider.

The daughter of the widow Sidney and Solomon Hedrick that was named Sidney Teter, soon took on her father's surname as well, and became Sidney Teter Hedrick. She was my great-great grandmother. I wonder how she really felt about her sister being her step-mother? About her father being her brother-in-law? She didn't get married until she was 19 years old, which in those days was a little long in the tooth, so I can only guess that she must have been comfortable with the whole situation.

When the daughter Sidney Teter Hedrick married Miles Thompson, they built a house next door to Solomon, Mahala and the widow Sidney, and lived there the rest of her life.

I know there has to be more to the story than what I've been able to collect from family stories and historical records and such. I'd say there is a very interesting story here somewhere...lost in the recesses of time. My how tongues must have wagged!



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When the fire had died, the neighbors and relatives who went through the smoking ruins of the cabin were met with a most gruesome sight: the charred bodies of Betty and Lydia and two of the children. Betty had apparently been decapitated. The investigation, led by detective A.C. Hufford of Bluefield, WV, aided by Robert Bailey, concluded that a local man, Howard Little from Bull Creek, WV-- just a short distance north of Laurel Creek-- had committed the murders and had acted alone.

Howard Little was believed to be the killer based upon the testimony of his wife and some rather strong circumstantial evidence: namely, a lantern which belonged to the victims which was found on Little's property. Little had recently suffered some injuries coincidentally and too near in time to the crime. He had also allegedly borrowed a pistol of the same caliber as that used to kill George Meadows, and had done so only a week or so before the murders. It was also discovered that he had planned on leaving the county shortly before he was captured. Finally, Little was in possession of a large sum of cash at the time of the fire.

Howard Little was taken into custody and transferred to the jailhouse in Lebanon for his own safety by a posse of specially-appointed police constables, as there had been rumors that he might be lynched.

The trial began on November 18, 1909, and concluded three days later. After testimony was heard from his wife and the evidence was presented, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Howard Little was convicted of the murders on Laurel Creek and sentenced to death. He was electrocuted in Richmond on January 7, 1910.

In two letters purported to be written by Little after the crime, he makes no admission of guilt or protestation of innocence. "After he was arrested for the murder of the Justus family, Grandpa Howard always maintained his innocence," says fuzzypanda68, "and even while he was tortured to get him to admit to the crime, he still claimed to be innocent. In the book that was written, it says they used Chinese torture techniques on him, like depriving him of water, and placing his head between two blocks and hanging a bucket of water over his head, letting it drip one drop at a time between his eyes."

Muriel Oehme of Maryland, another Howard Little descendant, has also gone on record to say that Little's wife was fed up with his womanizing, and that was her motive for testifying against him at the trial. Their estrangement may have been going on for nearly four years when the crime occurred.

Betty's land was passed on to her children in common and they, in turn, sold their interest in it to Betty's oldest son, Daniel, who purchased it for $150.00, just a little over a dollar an acre. Every one of the children of Elizabeth Justus signed this document by mark. The timber rights, however, still belonged to the W. M. Ritter Lumber Company.


Sources:
From the Baker family side:
http://www.geocities.com/heartland/ridge/7616/jstsmrdr.html

and from Little family side:
http://edit.journals.aol.com/pallidalove/FacingtheTide/


Laurel+Creek+murders appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Laurel Creek murders

On the night of September 21st, 1909, Howard Little allegedly came to visit Elizabeth E. Baker Justus and her extended family in Laurel Creek, VA and asked if he could spend the night. The family knew him and quite naturally opened their home to him. By nine o'clock, all six family members were asleep. Then, using a pistol, a knife, and a hatchet (Betty kept the hatchet next to her bed for protection), Little is said to have dispatched the lot of them, set the cabin on fire and made good his escape.

Who was Howard Little and why would he commit such a heinous deed? Robert M. Baker, great-great-great grandson of Betty Baker, in his telling of this story, maintains that in July 1909 Betty Baker had been paid $1,300 ($1,650 according to her) by Little, an agent for the W. M. Ritter Lumber Company in Hurley, VA, for the sale of some timberland (or perhaps it was for the rights to the timber on her 150 acres on Laurel Creek), the implication being that the September visit was a bungled petty theft that ended as non-premeditated murder.

A woman identifying herself only as ‘fuzzypanda68@aol.com of Lahoma’ (Oklahoma?) counters this version: "I was told that Grandpa Howard ran moonshine for a living. He would run it through the mountains from Bull Creek, WV to Laurel Creek and Guesses Fork VA and back, carried by pack mules late at night to avoid the law. Late one night, he was jumped by some Justus boys, who allegedly beat him, stole his moonshine, and took what money he had on him. In retaliation, he went to their home…"

Betty had several hundred dollars in a metal milk pail hidden beneath the hearth in her house. She had a hundred dollars saved for each of her children. This was in addition to the money she had received from Howard Little, and it was not found by the killer or killers. If the sums are correct, Betty had almost $2,500.00 hidden in various places on her property. Detectives determined that some of the money from the sale of her timber rights had been taken during the commission of the crime, but not all of it was missing.

Down the holler about three hundred yards lived Baker relatives Sennit Justus and his wife Lilabelle---Lillie. On that September night Lillie claimed she heard two gunshots and then saw the orange glow of flames from the Baker house. She ran up the holler to the cabin and could see the bodies of Betty, daughter Lydia, and two of the boys lying on the floor in the flames.

Sam Justus, another Baker relative and neighbor, claimed that he was the first to arrive at the cabin as it burned. He saw that the youngest child, Lafayette, was still alive and tried to carry him away from the burning cabin, then ran to get help. The boy managed to fall or climb back down to the burning house where he too was consumed by the fire, the sixth and last victim. George Meadows, Lydia’s husband, was found shortly afterward outside near the fence where he had crawled after being shot twice.

to be continued...

sources:
From the Baker family side:
http://www.geocities.com/heartland/ridge/7616/jstsmrdr.html

and from Little family side:
http://edit.journals.aol.com/pallidalove/FacingtheTide



Laurel+Creek+murders Buchanan+county+VA appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Buchanan county VA, Laurel Creek murders

"Cider for apple butter must be perfectly new from the press, and the sweeter and mellower the apples are of which it is made, the better will the apple butter be. Boil the cider till recuded to one half its original quantity, and skim it well.

"Do not use for this purpose an iron kettle, or the butter will be very dark, and if you use a brass or copper kettle, it must be scoured as clean and bright as possible, before you put the cider into it, and you must not suffer the butter to remain in it a minute longer than is actually necessary to prepare it, or it will imbibe a copperish taste, that will render it not only unpleasant, but really unhealthy.

"It is best to prepare it late in the fall, when the apples are quite mellow. Select those that have a fine flavor, and will cook tender; pare and quarter them from the cores, and boil them in the cider till perfectly soft, having plenty of cider to cover them well.

"If you wish to make it on a small scale, do not remove the apples from the cider when they get soft, but continue to boil them gently in it, till the apples and cider form a thick smooth marmalade, which you must stir almost constantly towards the last.
A few minutes before you take it form the fire, flavor it lightly with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, and when the seasonings are well intermixed, put it up in jars, tie folded paper over them, and keep them in a cool place.

"If made in a proper manner, it will keep a good more than a year, and will be found very convenient, being always in readiness. Many people who are in the habit of making apple butter, take it from the fire before it is boiled near enough. Both to keep it well, and taste well, it should be boiled long after the apples have become soft, and towards the last, simmered over coals till it gets almost thick enough to slice.

"If you wish to make it on a large scale, after you have boiled the first kettle full of apples soft, remove them from the cider, draining them with a perforated ladle, that the cider may fall again to the kettle, and put them into a clean tub. Fill up the kettle with fresh apples, having them pared and sliced from the cores, and having ready a kettle of boiling cider, that is reduced to at least half its original quantity; fill up the kettle of apples with it as often as is necessary.

"When you have boiled in this manner as many apples as you wish, put the whole of them in a large kettle, or kettles, with the cider, and simmer it over a bed of coals till it is so thick, that it is with some difficulty you can stir it: it should be stirred almost constantly, with a wooden spaddle, or paddle, or it will be certain to scorch at the bottom or sides of the kettle. Shortly before you take it from the fire, season it as before directed, and then put it up in jars."

The Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan, 1839, (p. 375-77)

Mrs. Bryan's contribution to the literature of Southern cooking is her thoroughness. Not only are there more recipes in this than in other books of the period---1,300---but the ingredients, techniques and results are also described more completely than was typical at the time.

Source: www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq.html#applesauce



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Today realtors tout the Dingle neighborhood west of Cumberland, MD for its charming Craftsman houses of the early 20th century. But this placid upscale neighborhood was a fierce wilderness when Nemacolin, a Delaware chief, and Thomas Cresap, a Maryland frontiersman, first blazed a trail through here in 1749 or 1750.

The trail ran between the Potomac and the Monongahela rivers, traversing the land beneath this Cumberland neighborhood and leading on to the mouth of Redstone Creek, near Brownsville, PA.

Site of the Dingle in Cumberland, MD. Braddock Road is on the right and it's heading up Haystack Mountain. Today, right behind where the car is in this photo is a modern Maryland Historical Road Marker reading: "The National Road (called The Cumberland Road) was the first of the internal improvements undertaken by the U.S. Government. Surveys were authorized in 1806 over the route of "Braddock's Road" which followed "Nemacolin's Path", an Indian trail over which George Washington Travelled in 1754 to Fort LeBoeuf." Photo by Ernest K. Weller.

In 1755, during the French & Indian War, British General Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards led a 2,100-man army from the Washington DC area to what was then Fort Cumberland. The troops intended to dislodge the French from Fort Dusquesne on the “Forks of the Ohio” (now Pittsburgh) roughly 100 miles away.

Braddock had received important assistance from Benjamin Franklin, who helped procure wagons and supplies for the expedition. Setting out from Fort Cumberland on May 29, 1755, the expedition faced an enormous logistical challenge: moving a large body of men with equipment, provisions, and (most importantly for the task ahead) heavy cannon, across the densely wooded Allegheny Mountains and into western Pennsylvania.

Braddock’s aide, Captain Robert Orme, duly recorded the army’s 30 wagons, 400 horses, siege artillery and tons of supplies. Braddock built a road over Wills Mountain, across the Cumberland Narrows, continuing over Haystack Mountain through (what was not yet) the Dingle, close to Nemacolin’s path, and ending ultimately in Great Meadow, near Union Town, PA.

By the time he was ready to leave his 4th camp, Braddock acknowledged the ongoing challenge posed by advancing such a massive retinue, and so took a young George Washington’s advice and created a flying column, “leaving the heavy artillery and baggage behind to follow by easy stages under Colonel Dunbar,” according to the General Braddock's 5th Camp Maryland Historical Road Marker.

Among the wagoners, incidentally, were two young men who would later become legends of American history: Daniel Boone, and Daniel Morgan.

Braddock met defeat east of Fort Duquesne and was fatally wounded. He was buried in the middle of the road he built and his soldiers marched over the grave in hopes of concealing its location from the Indians.

More than 150 years after Braddock’s march to his disastrous fate, John Kennedy Lacock, a Harvard Professor hailing from Amity, PA, led an expedition to retrace the original route of Braddock’s Road. Lacock spent countless days scouring the countryside and was able to identify the exact path of Braddock's march.

“From Fort Cumberland westward Braddock had to make a road for his troops across mountains divided by ravines and torrents, over a rugged, desolate, unknown, and uninhabited country. The history of the construction of this road and a description of its course it is the purpose of this paper to set forth; for the growing interest with which the routes of celebrated expeditions are coming to be regarded, and the confusion that attends the tracing of such routes after a lapse of years, make it altogether fitting that the road by which the unfortunate Braddock marched to his disastrous field should be surveyed, mapped, and suitably marked while it is yet possible to trace its course with reasonable definiteness.”

'Braddock Road' by John Kennedy Lacock

Lacock hired photographer Ernest K. Weller of Washington, PA to document the road. Fortunately, Weller's photographs survive in the form of postcards which Lacock published between 1907-1914 (see above).

The Dingle development then being built around Braddock’s historical path was no doubt one motivator for Lacock and his survey. The president of The Dingle Company, Tasker Gantt Lowndes, was the well-connected son of a recent Maryland governor, and contesting his development was probably difficult.

And why, exactly, was it named ‘The Dingle’? “After a beautiful private estate on the outskirts of Liverpool, England,” said Lowndes in a 1926 letter. “The Dingle lies between two roads (McMullen Highway and Braddock Road), and means a 'Hollow between the Hills' which is very appropriate". When it was first developed it was a gated community that excluded Jews and African Americans.


sources: "Redcoats in the Wilderness: British Officers and Irregular Warfare in Europe and America, 1740 to 1760", Peter Russel, The William and Mary Quarterly > 3rd Ser., Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1978), pp. 629-652
Who's who in Finance and Banking, By John William Leonard, Who's Who in Finance Inc., 1922
http://www.whilbr.org/itemdetail.aspx?idEntry=535&dtPointer=0
Allegany County, by Albert L. Feldstein, Arcadia Publishing, 2006
Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America, by Francis Jennings,New York: Norton, 1988.
www.route40.net/ history/ braddock-lacock.shtmlJohn



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The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks and sometimes half hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids! And when the weather was cold, Grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron, and from the garden it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that old time apron that served so many purposes.


source: Wilson Historical Society Newsletter, Vol 37, No. 6 www.wilsonnewyork.com/hist_society.html



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Neal Thompson, author of Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR, read at the 2008 Carolina Literary Festival over in Burnsville, NC this past weekend. We caught up with Neal to get a quick overview of the wild world of early moonshiners and stock car drivers.

Appalachian History: Could stock car racing as we understand it have emerged from, say, New England, the Midwest, or California, or is there some specific Southern cultural attribute(s) that is indelibly connected with it?

Neal Thompson: I'd argue strongly that the varied mix of elements that led to the creation of stock car racing could only have occurred in the South. Just one example is the lack of professional sports and spectator sports in the South, which didn't get it's first true professional sports team until the Braves moved to Atlanta in the 1960s. That meant people were hungry for a sport like stock car racing to attend on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, to root for their favorite driver, a sport to call their own.

Also, the deep roots of the southern moonshining culture are directly responsible for the sport, since so many of the early racers (and mechanics, and financial backers) were moonshiners. As I explore in the book, the Northeast and Midwest and West Coast had their own forms of racing, mainly open-wheel, Indy-style racing. But stock car racing was a truly southern creation, and that's why it remained a 'southern sport' for so long.

AH: During Prohibition, moonshiners were using souped up cars to outrun police. When do we first see a transition from that use to organized races?

NT: It's hard to pin down an exact transition point, but I've focused in the book on the period of the mid-1930s. That's when bootleggers began racing each other on makeshift racetracks, to see who had the fastest whiskey car. And that's when stock car racing as a spectator sport began to emerge and to spread, a phenomenon that coincides with the advent and spread of Ford V-8s (introduced by Ford in 1932), which became the favorite car of both the moonshine runners and the first twenty years of stock car racers.

The V-8 coupe, for example, was a big, sturdy, reliable car with a roomy trunk to hold plenty of liquor, but it was also relatively easy for mechanics to tinker with - and to make it run faster than Henry Ford intended it to. When fans then got a look at those V-8s roaring around a dusty track, a new sport was born.

AH: Raymond Parks was neither a driver nor a mechanic. What was his role in promoting stock car racing?

NT: Raymond's role in the creation of the sport that became NASCAR is so crucial that it has always amazed me that more has not been written about the man. Although, I've recently learning that when the new NASCAR hall of fame opens in 2010, there will be a special display that honors the sport's five founding fathers, including Raymond and two other characters in the book - Red Byron and Red Vogt. Each of them (and, of course, Bill France) played an important role during those critical early years. But Raymond's role was hugely important.

Not only did he create the first stock car racing "team" before WWII (with two moonshining cousins driving, and Red Vogt as the mechanic, and Raymond as the financier), but he replicated that successful "team" approach after WWII and put together the threesome that won NASCAR's first championship in 1948 (and again in 1949). He also let Bill France drive his cars now and then, and a few times loaned Big Bill money when he needed cash to pay drivers at the end of a poorly attended race.

AH: Early stock cars were all Fords: Ford Model As, then Ford Model Ts, then Ford V-8s. That changed after WWII. What happened?

NT: After the war the nation's automakers got back up and running and Ford's competitors finally began to produce cars that could compete - on the road and on the racetrack - with Ford's V-8s. Within just a few years after the war, the Ford would lose its long-running dominance.

AH: How did 'Big Bill' France outmaneuver Parks & Red Vogt (who coined the name NASCAR) for control of the organization?

NT: A lot of people would argue that Bill Bill "stole" NASCAR from the other co-founders. And it's true that he did nudge aside his friends, including Raymond Parks and Red Vogt, and took control of the organization - and it's shares - right from the start. At the same time, however, no one else was really interested in taking over the business side of the sport - the book keeping and money managing, etc. Mainly, they just wanted to race. So Big Bill, in many views, did what had to be done for the sport to survive, even if he was a bit of a bully about it.

AH: What competition did the NASCAR organization face from other racing leagues?

NT: I found it fascinating that AAA, the organization that now does roadside assistance and promotes safety, was once a race promotion organization. But they got out of the business in the 1950s, as did other groups that were vying for dominance of stock car racing, and ever since around 1955 NASCAR has been the dominant force in the sport.

AH: Thanks so much for joining us today!



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Some would consider her the founder of Adult Literacy Education in the United States. Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958) was an elementary school teacher and county school superintendent in eastern Kentucky's Rowan County who, in the fall of 1911, decided to open the classrooms in her district to adult pupils.

When the Moonlight Schools opened on September 5, 1911, adults were taught at night in the one-room schools in which children were taught by day. They were called "moonlight schools" because classes were held on nights when the moon cast enough light for students to see the footpaths and wagon trails they often followed for miles to reach the school. Teachers volunteered their time to teach at these schools.

Original caption reads: "'Gladys Thompson's Moonlight School'"; adults and a few children sitting or standing in a room with a potbellied stove, pictures of horses and Abraham Lincoln are hanging on the wall".

"It was expected that the response would be slow, but more than 1,200 men and women from 18 to 86 years of age were enrolled the first evening," said Stewart of the initial 50 schools in the program. "They came trooping over the hills and out of the hollows, some to add to the meager education received in the inadequate schools of their childhood, some to receive their first lessons in reading and writing.

"Among them were not alone illiterate farmers and their illiterate wives, sons, and daughters, but also illiterate merchants or storekeepers, illiterate ministers, and illiterate lumbermen. Mothers, bent with age, came that they might learn to read letters from absent sons and daughters, and that they might learn for the first time to write them."

Stewart later called this first night "the brightest moonlit night the world has ever seen."

Stewart was convinced that adults should not use the same materials as children to learn to read, so she developed for adult students The Rowan County Messenger, a newspaper with short sentences and lots of word repetition. In teaching writing, she concentrated first on teaching adults to write their own names, believing that this was a vital way of developing what we would today call self-esteem.

In 1912 the enrollment reached nearly 1,600 and the movement had spread to 8 or 10 other counties. Of these 1,600, "300 entered the school utterly unable to read and write at all, 300 were from those who had learned in September, 1911, and 1,000 were men and women of meager education."

In 1914-15, it was estimated that 40,000 Kentucky adults had learned to read and write in moonlight schools. A Carrollton, KY woman wrote Stewart in 1914: "I wish to thank you for the Moonlight Schools. I have been going six nights and have learned to read and write. I am forty-three years old and have written my first letter to my mother, the next to you . . . Yours, Amanda McKinney."

In 1915 Stewart published the Country Life Reader: First Book and the next year she published the Country Life Reader: Second Book. Both books featured functional materials from adult's daily lives:

"This is dirty and ugly. The house needs paint. The porch is falling down. A lazy, shiftless family lives here."
"How do you know that?"
"I know it from the house. Lazy, shiftless people live in dirty, ugly homes."
From Country Life Readers by Cora Wilson Stewart (1915)

"Dear Friends," she wrote on the last page of the first reader. "This little book was written especially for the dear boys and girls of the moonlight schools, not the youngest, perhaps, but the finest school children on earth . . . The preparation of this book has been truly a labor of love. If you have received any benefit from it, the author is fully repaid. "Yours sincerely, Cora Wilson Stewart"

Alabama and Mississippi adopted Stewart's idea, and by 1916, adults in 18 states had been enrolled.

Cora Wilson Stewart was born in Farmers, KY and attended Morehead Normal School (later Morehead State University) and the University of Kentucky. Stewart began teaching in 1895 at age 20. During World War I she was concerned with Selective Service findings that some 700,000 men were totally illiterate, so she developed The Soldier's First Book to teach military recruits to read. She was the first woman president of the Kentucky Education Association and in 1926, she was named director of the National Illiteracy Crusade.

From 1929-1933 she was named chairperson of President Hoover's Commission on Illiteracy. She was active in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs as well. Stewart was also a delegate to the 1920 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, and was nominated for President of the United States.

Stewart's private life was not as successful as her public one. She spent her last years in a home for the elderly in Tryon, NC, alone, with only enough resources to live. She had been married three times -- twice to the same man. Her only child had died in infancy. Glaucoma had left her blind.

She died in December 1958 at age 83.


Sources: Statistics of Land-grant Colleges and Universities, by United States Office of Education, Office of Education, United States Govt. Print. Off., 1913
Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky's Moonlight Schools, by Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin, University Press of Kentucky, 2006
www.womeninkentucky.com/site/education/c_stewart.html
www.kentuckystewarts.com/WilliamG/CoraWilsonStewartArticle.htm



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It probably started out as All-ee, all-ee, outs in free, a call from the person who was it letting those hiding children (the outs) know it was safe to come back to base in the children's game of hide-and-seek. The phrase can also be used to coordinate hidden players in the game kick the can, where a group of children hide within a given radius and a seeker is left to guard a can filled with rocks.

If the core phrase is All outs in free, the -ee is added, and the all is repeated, for audibility and rhythm. Another approach: in Britain, it was common for the town crier to pre-phrase a declaration with All Ye, All ye meaning that all the citizens of the town needed to be aware of the information the crier was about to state, and early Scots-Irish immigrants to Appalachia would have brought that phrase with them.

"When I was growing up in the American South," says Charles Wilson in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,"we actually said, 'All ye all ye outs in free' when playing hide-and-seek (although we called it 'hide-and-go-seek)." Regional variations include:

Ollie Ollie in come free,
Ollie Ollie oxenfreed,
Ollie ollie in come free-o
Ollie ollie oxen free
Ollie ollie oxen free-o
Oly Oly oxen free,
Oly Oly ocean free,
Alley Alley oats in free,
All-ye All-ye outs in free
Ole Ole Olsen free (more common in areas settled by Scandinavians)
Ole Ole Olsen free-o

Children's sayings were hardly recorded until the 1950s, and they are very variable. That's because they’ve been passed down orally from one generation to the next, with no adult intervention or correction. But one educated guess is that the phrase's root is an English-Norman French-Dutch/German concoction: "Alles, Alles, in kommen frei" or "Alle, alle auch sind frei" (literally, "Everyone, everyone also is free")or "Oyez, oyez, in kommen frei!"

"Allez, allez" was a Norman addition to the English language, pronounced "ollie, ollie" and sometimes written "oyez, oyez" and meaning "everyone."

The game hide-and-seek is at least four centuries old, and it seems that the call phrase discussed here was in common use by the 1920s, and probably earlier (‘home free’ is found in print in the 1890s).


sources: http://snipurl.com/3octq [songfacts.com]
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, by Richard Pillsbury, Charles Reagan Wilson, Ann J. Abadie, University of North Carolina Press, 2006
Words to the Wise, by Michael Sheehan
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-oll1.htm
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970422



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The town was once a stop on the Northwest Turnpike, one of the main roads west in the early days of the country, running from Winchester, VA to Parkersburg (now West Virginia). Later the town was a stop on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that ran between Clarksburg and Parkersburg. During those early 20th century days the city of Pennsboro, WV (population 1,129; all the other communities in Ritchie County are listed as towns) was a thriving place.

If Ritchie County ever had a trademark it was surely the Ritchie County Fair held in Pennsboro. The Ritchie County Agricultural Fair Association incorporated in January of 1887, and promptly leased a tract of land on the outskirts of town from the Bradford family. This was the first Agricultural Fair organized in the state of West Virginia. With the exception of two World War II years (1943-44) the fair was held every year during the last days of August into early September, from 1887 until 1962. By 1922, 20,000 people attended the fair and gate receipts totaled $10,000.

"The Ritchie County fair was certainly one of the grandest fairs in the state when it was in its prime," says author Rock Wilson. "Vast crowds would gather each year. Horse races were quite prevalent there."

Racing. First horses, later cars. It’s the second thing the town of Pennsboro is famous for. According to local historian and author Betty Leavengood, the first auto race at what was then called Ritchie County Raceway was held Sept. 1, 1926, featuring 1 horsepower vehicles!

The raceway was a dirt oval situated on what was probably a field or pasture not far from the bank of the Middle Island Creek. It was a 5/8ths mile track.

The upgrading of Rt 50 must have been completed as there was a road celebration and 1,000 cars left Pennsboro on September 18, 1927 and traveled east. This procession lasted from 6 am until 6 pm.
Diary of Nancy Clark Dotson (1904 – 1946), p. 46

The rugged Northwest Turnpike had become well paved Route 50 and automobile culture rose to prominence; before too long the railroad pulled up its tracks. Pennsboro, once the beneficiary of a rail connection in an area of under-improved roads, lost its monopoly on accessibility. The raceway began to be replaced by newer tracks in the region and the track’s importance faded.

By 1967, then owners Pete and Ruby Wilson, along with Ideline Hinkel, were feeling the pressure to come up with a plan to attract big-name drivers to the track. To do so they needed a big race, a big purse, and a big weekend. The big race would be a 100-lap Super Late Model feature event. The big purse was set at $1,000 during a time when the Census Bureau pegged the median income per year at $5,974. The big weekend: Labor Day. To attract a large crowd the name had to be just right. Hinkel’s granddaughter coined the name "Hillbilly Hundred."

In 1976 Carl Short leased the track formally known as Ritchie County Raceway and changed the name to Pennsboro Speedway. He was responsible for attracting the Dirt Track World Championship to the Pennsboro Speedway each October.

Short also purchased the rights of the name Hillbilly Hundred. He kept the Hillbilly 100 alive and even raised the purse that increased from $2,000 to $5,000 in 1973.

According to Allan E. Brown's "The History of America's Speedway - Past & Present", Pennsboro ceased operation in 1987, then operated from 1989 through 1997 and again from 2000 through 2002. The Dirt Track World Championship now makes its new home at KC Raceway in Waverly, OH.


sources:www.wvculture.org/goldenseal/fall07/pennsboro.html
Ritchie County, by Rock S. Wilson, Arcadia Publishing, 2004
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/563741/a_visitors_guide_for_pennsboro_west.html?cat=16
http://theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/513642.html?nav=529
http://westunion-wv.com/history/greenwood4.htm



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Did you know that 40% of Fortune 500 companies are family businesses? Family business forms an extremely valuable segment of American society, yet it has steadfastly received insufficient attention.

"Before the multinational corporation, there was family business," writes William O'Hara in Centuries of Success. "Before the Industrial Revolution, there was family business. Before the enlightenment of Greece and the empire of Rome, there was family business." In case you’re wondering, THE oldest currently functioning, continuously family-owned firm is Osaka Japan’s Kongo Gumi, founded in 578 A.D. and now in its 40th generation!

In Appalachia, two firms make the list of the 100 oldest companies in the world (compiled by Family Business magazine), all of which are continuously family-owned firms—all of which can indisputably claim to have outlasted governments, nations, cities and once-powerful corporations.

As might be expected, the age differences between the oldest family businesses in the various US states reflect the dates of settlement of the East, Midwest, and Far West. Generally, the oldest business in a young state has not been around nearly as long as the oldest in an old state.

The Stuart Land Co. of Virginia ranks at #96 on the Oldest 100 Worldwide list (it’s the 17th oldest company in the USA). Today’s Stuart Land and Cattle Company encompasses 20,000 acres in the state’s Russell, Tazewell, and Washington counties. In 1774, Henry Smith II started Clifton Farm in Rosedale, VA on land deeded to him by Patrick Henry, then Colonial Governor of Virginia, as a reward for building an Indian fort on the Clinch River.

When his great-granddaughter Mary Taylor Carter married William Alexander Stuart, she brought a dowry of 80,000 acres, which Stuart added to his own large land holding. The company is named after Stuart, brother of the famous Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart. His son Henry Carter Stuart was governor of Virginia in the early 20th century. The company entered the cattle industry in 1884. Current proprietor and CEO William Alexander (Zan) Stuart (below left with wife Lynda) is an eighth-generation family member (Henry Carter Stuart was his great uncle). He has no children in the business, but his grandchildren may succeed him.

In 2002, The Nature Conservancy of Arlington, VA, an environmental group, purchased the rights to cut trees on the ranch as part of a novel approach to conserve wildlife habitat in the South, where most of the forest is privately owned. The conservancy pays the Stuart family a percentage of the appraised value of the timber in exchange for the rights to harvest trees on 5,750 acres of the ranch.

Tennessee’s oldest business, ranking #98 on the Oldest 100 Worldwide list, is St. John Milling Co. According to the Institute for Family Enterprise at Bryant College, it’s America’s oldest continuing family food-maker. Located in Watauga, TN, an area known as "The Bread Basket of the Southeast," its operation has changed from a feed and milling business to now mainly processing animal feed.

Stone mason Jeremiah Dungan built the original foundation for a mill and stone manor (still standing), and ran the mill starting in 1778 with children Jeremiah and Mary D. Hendrix. The mill passed to son Jeremiah’s daughter Mary and her husband, John Houston (brother of frontier hero Sam Houston), and then to their sons John Jr. and William Houston. In 1866 George W. St. John (1837-1904), great-nephew of Jeremiah Dungan, took over.

His son James St. John (1874-1956) inherited the mill from his father in 1904. James' son, George St. John, took over the mill's daily operation in 1935, eventually installing an electric milling process using the knowledge he attained when he earned his electrical engineering degree from the University of Tennessee. Prior to that the mill had used a 16-foot water wheel to grind flour. George St. John was 95 when he died July 19 of this year. He had worked at the St. John Milling Co. since he was 5.

Today the mill is owned by George's daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Ron Dawson (sixth generation), who've run it since the 1970s. Because of shifting boundaries, the company has paid taxes in three different states: North Carolina, Tennessee and the short-lived "State of Franklin." It originally paid taxes to the Watauga Association — the first self-governing body in the American frontier.


sources: Centuries of Success: Lessons from the World's Most Enduring Family Businesses, by William T. O'Hara, Adams Media, 2004
http://jcpress.org/Detail.php?Cat=LOCALNEWS&ID=64130
http://web.bryant.edu/business/family_business.html
www.familybusinessmagazine.com/oldestcos/oldestcos2.html
www.bizaims.com/articles/business+economy/the+100+oldest+companies+world
www.cojoweb.com/ref-companies-Am-oldest.html
www.simmgene.com/pdf/sim_talk/Tradition.pdf



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"From his father, my father Ira Jacob Butts learned how to mix certain roots and leaves of grass together for a cure for snakebites. He never told which weeds and roots he used, and I would not attempt to try to describe them. Anyway, he would boil the roots and leaves, and would then strain away the particles, leaving only the water in which they were boiled.

"This would be diluted with whiskey, and be given to the victim to drink. The whiskey, I am told, caused the blood to thin, allowing faster flow to the bitten area. Then too, it might have taken the whiskey to kill some of the taste until a person could drink the solution, who knows? One thing I am certain of, and that is, that the same medicine worked on all snakebites, and modern doctors seem to not agree with this today.

"Personally, I witnessed him curing his granddaughter, Vera Mae Butts, when she was bitten by a Copper-Head, and again curing Dave Pitts when he was bitten by a Rattle Snake. Once a victim started drinking the solution, he could drink a little or a lot, but once the bottle was taken away, another drink was sure death, for it was stronger than the poison from the snake.

"Samuel Burton, Ira's son-in-law, had a dog bitten by a snake. It was given the solution, then soon recovered. Sam said if a little helped, then some more would do better. No sooner had he poured some more solution into the dog’s mouth, then the dog died instantly.

"On one occasion, when Samuel Burton was fishing on Chauga River, he was bitten by a Rattler, and was then carried to his mother’s home on Rocky Fork. They sent for Ira, who lived some ten or more miles away, and he came to the scene, and prepared a solution from leaves and roots located nearby. At that time, Samuel's tongue had swollen out of his mouth, and very little hope was left. Within thirty minutes from the time he had been given the solution, Samuel Burton began to talk, and within an hour he was walking.

"Ira Jacob Butts (1868-1939) was raised in the upper part of Oconee County, SC, in a small community known as Brasstown, near Long Creek. As an adult he rented a place from his brother Silas Butts near Holly Springs, at the foot of Grassy Mountain, where he lived until his death."

Carlie Glen Butts
b. 1928

source: http://sciway3.net/scgenweb/oconee-county/cemetery-txt/c024.txt



Ira+Jacob+Butts snakebite+cures Oconee+County+SC appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Ira Jacob Butts, Oconee County SC, snakebite cures

Samuel 'Sad Sam' Pond Jones (1892-1966) reached the pinnacle of his major league pitching career on September 4, 1923 when he threw a no-hit, no-run game against the Philadelphia Athletics to lead the New York Yankees to their first World Series title.

"That slow ball of his simply floats up there and you swing your head off," said Hall of Famer Tris Speaker. Jones was sent from Cleveland to the Red Sox in a 1916 trade for Speaker. "Then he's got a fast one that's on top of you before you realize it. Plus, he's got as good a curve-ball as anyone in the league."

The Woodfield, OH ballplayer was one of professional baseball's top pitchers in the early 1900s. Jones had a lifetime record of 229 victories (including 36 shutouts and one no-hitter) and 216 defeats.

He started his 22 year career with the Cleveland Indians in 1914; only he and Cy Young pitched that many years consecutively in the majors. "You know, I think one reason I pitched so long is that I never wasted my arm trying to throw to first to keep runners close to the base," Jones told baseball biographer Lawrence Ritter in 1966. "There was a time there, for five years, I never once threw to first base to chase a runner back. Not once in five years. Ripley put that in 'Believe it or Not.'"

Later Jones played for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, St Louis Browns, Washington Senators, and Chicago White Sox (there were only two American League teams he didn’t play for). He posted a career high 23 victories for Boston in 1921 and won 21 for New York in 1923.

His best seasons were with the Red Sox, in 1918, when he led the league with a 16-5 record, and in 1921, when he won 23 and lost 16. He appeared in four World Series.

Sad Sam, the Cemetery Man was actually a whimsical man full of backwoods humor. Rookie sportswriter Bill McGeehan of the New York Herald-Tribune dubbed him that because, to him, Jones looked downcast on the field. "I would always wear my cap down real low over my eyes," Jones explained to author Ritter. "And the sportswriters were more used to fellows like Waite Hoyt, who'd always wear their caps way up so they wouldn't miss any pretty girls."

Jones was also called Horsewhips, because of the crack of his sharp breaking ball. Jones was born in Woodsfield, OH, which further earned him the moniker "The Squire of Woodsfield."

"Great eye," he once said of Babe Ruth. "He don't hit bad balls because he makes good ones out of everything you throw him---four inches outside the plate or in the dirt."

Jones retired in 1935 as the oldest player in that season (42). His 22 consecutive seasons pitching in one league is a major league record shared with Herb Pennock, Early Wynn, Red Ruffing and Steve Carlton.


sources: www.thebaseballpage.com/players/jonessa01.php
www.thedeadballera.com/Obits/Jones.SamuelP.Obit.html
www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=jonessa01
1918: Babe Ruth and the World Champion Boston Red Sox, by Allan Wood, iUniverse, 2000
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men who Played it, by Lawrence S. Ritter, Macmillan Co, 1966
www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Sad_Sam_Jones_1892



appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Monroe+County+OH Samuel+Pond+Jones Woodfield+OH sports+in+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Monroe County OH, Samuel Pond Jones, sports in Appalachia, Woodfield OH

“One of my elections was contested. They accused me of buying gingerbread and using other ways of influence on the voters. Giving them money. They figured what they done, I done the same thing.

“Actually, it comes to a point where most people have to have some encouragement to be interested in elections and they get encouragement in different ways. You did whatever you thought would make them be for you in the elections. If it was hoeing corn, pulling fodder, digging potatoes, gathering corn, milk the cows, hugging the women, or diapering the babies---whatever it took.”

---Ruby Watts, Judge Pro Tem, Knott County, KY
(1905-1992)

Watts wasn’t alone in his practices. Plenty of other mountain politicians bought gingerbread cakes from elderly women and distributed them to people in the hope of gaining a few extra votes. By doing this, candidates earned the goodwill of the gingerbread bakers and of the people who received a free piece of cake.

Of course, this was just a subtle means of vote buying... but you didn't hear many complaints as local women generously passed out samples of their best family secrets.

Scots-Irish immigrants to eastern Kentucky would have known about the election tactic of ‘buying gingerbread’ from the old country. Here’s a snippet from an 1855 British novel titled The Heir of Selwood :

“I do not, however, approve of my friend Walter’s manners!” whispered the captain to Miss Norman. “There is a fitness of things even in buying gingerbread at a fair. He is behaving to-day in a manner highly commendable at an election; but his deportment is too candidatorial for ordinary occasions. As a member, it is right to court popularity; it is infra dig. To seek it as a man. All this distribution of gingerbread is trivial and out of place.”

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does ryhme,” Mark Twain once observed. Just this past June, Knott County Judge-Executive Randy Thompson was convicted of scheming to buy votes; the federal jury also convicted John Mac Combs and Phillip G. Champion, deputies under Thompson, and Ronnie Adams, a former magistrate who now works for the county.

The Knott County town fathers have in recent decades figured out a way to take this negative and turn it to a positive. And so, in 1981 the county government created a Gingerbread Festival in Hindman to be held, naturally, when election day rolls around. Each year local folks vie for the title of Knott County's best cook, bringing samples of their tastiest stack cakes, shucky beans and gingerbread. The Saturday parade features the world's largest gingerbread man. This year’s festival kicks off tomorrow.


Sources: Our Appalachia, by Laurel Shackelford, Bill Weinberg, Donald R Anderson, University Press of Kentucky, 1988
http://ces.ca.uky.edu/knott/youthdev/Gingerbread%20Facts.htm
http://bluegrassbeat.bloginky.com/2008/08/28/pineville-mayor-son-indicted-on-vote-buying-charge/
The heir of Selwood By Mrs Gore, Catherine Grace F. Gore, Routledge, 1855, Collection of Oxford University



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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Gingerbread festival, Hindman KY, Knott County KY, Ruby Watts

Squirrel hunting was and is a passion, necessity (that may be more of a was), and a sport in the hills of Virginia and Kentucky. You see it reflected in the place names: Dickenson County, VA has Squirrel Camp, Squirrel Camp Tunnel, and Squirrel Camp Branch; there’s a Squirrel Hollow in Russell County, VA; over in Kentucky Harlan County also has a Squirrel Hollow; Breathitt County, KY has Squirrel Fork; and there’s a Squirrel Run Hollow in Elliott County.

The story goes that Squirrel Camp in Dickenson County was named by Dick Colley and Joshua Counts, who once came to that area to camp and hunt. They had no luck killing any large game, such as bear or deer, so they had to hunt squirrels for food. They didn't like hunting such small game, so they named the local river branch Squirrel Camp as a joke.

Group at squirrel camp in Millard, VA 1912; photo by Gaines Whitley.

Right across the VA/KY border from Dickenson County lies Pike County, KY.

“My grandfather, 'Pop' Ross Anderson,” writes John Lee Anderson, “was an expert squirrel hunter and a great storyteller. When I was in high school, we were eagerly awaiting the beginning of hunting season. The evening before the season opening, I was visiting Pop to get any advice and hopefully some of his hunting secrets.

“Just a few years prior, Pop went squirrel hunting in the mountains behind Elkhorn City. He decided to go over into Eel Flats to an area that he was familiar with and knew that was sure to be loaded with squirrels. He had no more picked out a good spot among some large hickory trees that it began raining. The rain was so hard Pop knew he had to find shelter.

“There was a huge old oak tree that had a hollow crack in it. The tree was large enough that Pop could squeeze into the hollow of the tree. When the rain stopped, Pop decided to squeeze out of the crack in the tree to resume hunting. However, due to the rain, sweating and high humidity, he, with the wet clothing, had swollen and was unable to squeeze out of the tree.

“He tried to remain calm, but knowing the probability that no one would be able to find him or assist him, he became more anguished. He said his whole life flashed before his eyes. He remembered all of the wonderful times he had had with his great family. He remembered how thankful he was to have such a wonderful wife. He remembered all of the friends he had. He remembered all of his accomplishments and the rewards of his early days as a teacher.

“Then, he said, he remembered that he had voted Republican one time and he felt so small he slid right out of that tree.”

Kentucky hunters currently can bag 10 squirrels a day; in Virginia the limit is 6.

Today hunters can pursue gray and red squirrels throughout Virginia, but if they want the much rarer fox squirrels, state law only permits that species to be hunted in the counties west of the Blue Ridge. Kentucky squirrel hunters traditionally get started the third Saturday in August, but Virginia sportsmen have to wait till Sept 6.







sources: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~janderson15/AndersonBook.pdf
www.dickensoncounty.net/names.html



squirrel+hunting Dickenson+County++VA Pike+County+KY appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Dickenson County VA, Pike County KY, squirrel hunting

It's September; time to head back to school.

Here's the Tater Valley Schoolhouse, active 1850-1950, moved from Tater Valley in Anderson County, TN to the Museum of Appalachia. Furnished in the manner of an early mountain school with wooden pews and a lectern.

Happy Labor Day!





Tater+Valley+TN one+room+schoolhouse Anderson+County+TN appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: Anderson County TN, appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, one room schoolhouse, Tater Valley TN