Appalachian History

Louis Bryant and Justus Stearns needed each other, and it’s surely no accident that their worlds finally intersected. Bryant, a bright young mining engineer, had moved into what is today McCreary County, KY at the beginning of the 1890s to consolidate mineral and land holdings acquired there by his father.

But while the Bryant family had mining expertise and raw land, they lacked the financial depth to develop the surrounding regional infrastructure they needed to grow their business. And so Louis hit the road to do a little selling. In 1893, he took a one-ton, thirty-six-cubic-foot block of bituminous coal from his family’s Worley mine to the Chicago World’s Fair.

Justus Stearns by this time had made a fortune in the lumber business from his base in Ludington, MI. But virgin timber resources in that region were becoming depleted as the upper Midwest grew in population. And so Stearns hired field agents scattered around the country looking for business opportunities. He had expanded the already extensive holdings of Stearns Salt & Lumber Co. in the Midwest to include properties in the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes, New Orleans and Florida.

Kentucky was experiencing a lumber boom in the late 1890s, and Justus Stearns heard reports of vast tracts of virgin timber in the southern Kentucky counties of Pulaski, Wayne, and Whitley and Scott County just over the border in Tennessee.

In 1900, Stearns sent Michigan surveyor William Alfred Kinne to Kentucky to secure tracts to add to his timber holdings. Al Kinne traveled extensively through Kentucky and Tennessee, meeting up finally with Louis Bryant.

The two became friends, and Bryant later became a valuable associate of the Stearns Company, teaching them a great deal about coal mining.

Photo caption reads: "Stearns; the Sheriff's Daughter, 1900 – 1915"

By 1901, Kinne had negotiated a twenty-five-year lease with Bryant that called for the construction of a railroad and the opening up of mines in the area, and gave Stearns the right to harvest the timber in the area. Kinne secured 50,000 acres in what became known as “The Big Survey,” an area that included lands from the Kentucky & Tennessee counties mentioned earlier.

On May 22, 1902, Kinne and Nashville attorney E. E. Barthell rode horses three miles north from Pine Knot to a Cincinnati Southern siding known to the railroad crews as the Gum Tree Tie Yard. Acting as agents for the Stearns Salt & Lumber Company, the two men, using a briefcase as a desk under the big black gum's boughs, signed documents which incorporated the Stearns Lumber Co., the Stearns Coal Co., and the Kentucky & Tennessee Railroad.

The old gum tree stood next to the site where the first company store in the brand new town of Stearns, KY would soon be constructed. The Stearns Company was the sole proprietor of its headquarters town, and would govern all aspects of daily life for the residents there.

The town site, one square mile purchased from the Bryant family, was uninhabited at the time but a fairly well known place in the region. Riley Sellars had owned a farm there, where General Ambrose Burnside's troops had camped in September 1863 on their backcountry march to take Knoxville from the Confederates.

Stearns sat on the location of the old town of Hemlock, at the crossroads of the Somerset-Jacksboro Road and the east-west road from Williamsburg to Monticello.

Today’s McCreary County Museum is located in the 1907 Stearns Coal & Lumber Company office building.

In 1903, Justus Stearns sent his only son, Robert L. Stearns, to reside in the small company town that bore his name so that he might oversee all the operations in the community.

Al Kinne lived in Stearns the rest of his life and was later a Kentucky state senator. Barthell moved his practice to Chicago, but remained the company's general counsel until his death. An in-law of Rob Stearns, he was honored by having the first company mine camp named after him.


Sources: Lore & Legend, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 3, published by J. P. Thomas, Box 248, Stearns, KY 42657
http://freepages.folklore.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~smokymtnman/stories/stearns.htm
www.ket.org/kentuckylife/900s/kylife920.html
www.sailingshipsandspitfires.com/pdfs/chapter3.pdf
Appalachian Folkways, by John B. Rehder, JHU Press, 2004



Justus+Stearns Stearns+KY coal+mining appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, coal mining, Justus Stearns, Stearns KY

She was the only woman to take part in the negotiations that brought about the creation of Shenandoah National Park in 1935.

Addie Nairn Hunter, an accomplished, independent divorcee from Washington, exercised an enormous impact on the direction of George Pollock’s Skyland resort in Stony Mountain, VA from the moment she swept into Pollock’s life. She provided the first solid financial advice, backing and direction that her trumpet-blaring husband had ever seen.

Not long after meeting in 1910, the two married. Pollock’s memoir, Skyland, does not mention her previous marriage, perhaps out of respect for his wife’s privacy, and refers to her only as Addie Nairn. Several of her first husband’s relatives owned lots and cabins at Skyland.

Addie shared with George a sense of obligation to the land. She once bought 100 old-growth hemlock trees near Skyland, in an area she named the “Limberlost,” after the novel Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter, at $10 a pop to save them from the logger's ax. The biggest trees may be 350-400 years old.

Addie immediately built the most impressive and imposing of all of the Skyland cabins from the Pollock era, Massanutten Lodge, designed by the noted Washington, DC architect Victor Mindeleff and constructed in 1911.

George Pollock had worked at Glen Echo, originally a summer chautauqua just outside Washington DC, 20 years prior, and had met Victor Mindeleff there. Mindeleff also designed a cabin for himself at Skyland with the telling name of Tryst-of-the-Wind.

In his 1923 Annual Report to the Secretary of the Interior, Stephen T. Mather, Director of the National Park Service, suggested that a national park be established in the eastern United States, possibly in a “typical section” of the Appalachian Mountains.

The following year, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work acted on Mather’s idea and appointed the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee to study and recommend potential sites for a park. After reading a Washington Star article regarding the committee’s search, Harold Allen, a frequent guest at Skyland, sent the newspaper clipping to Pollock with the words “Why not Skyland?” written on the page.

Massanutten Lodge shortly after its completion.

Although Pollock did not respond, Allen remained persistent. When he learned that the committee believed that there were no appropriate sites north of the Smoky Mountains, he obtained a copy of the committee’s site selection questionnaire, and with the help of Pollock and George Judd, completed the form during a visit to Skyland during 1924. He then returned the questionnaire to the committee in Washington.

Pollock subsequently focused his energy on improving the areas in and around Skyland in an effort to boost the appeal of his Blue Ridge location. Pollock was also concerned that government intervention was necessary due to the extensive chestnut blight that decimated the trees at Skyland, resulting in a serious fire hazard.

Unbeknownst to the Skyland boosters, 13 county organizations from around the Shenandoah area had formed Shenandoah Valley, Inc. (SVI), to promote Massanutten Mountain as the site for the new park. However, Pollock and Allen were able to persuade the group to change their allegiance and recommend the Skyland site.

President Roosevelt and visiting dignitaries at Big Meadows Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Shenandoah National Park. August 12, 1933.

With $10,000 from SVI, Pollock built new trails and observation towers, and offered up his resort as a place where organizations promoting the Blue Ridge could entertain–and hopefully impress–key decision makers in the park designation process.

L. Ferdinand Zerkel, an active member of SVI, was able to influence the selection committee, resulting in their recommendation in December 1924 that the “Blue Ridge of Virginia [was] the outstanding and logical place for the establishment of the first new national park in the eastern section of the United States.”

The Shenandoah National Park Association was created in the summer of 1925 to lobby for the passage of park legislation and to raise funds for land acquisition by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Later, in 1927, a plan that would allow Virginia to condemn and purchase land that would then be donated to the United States government for the park was proposed.

Zerkel was chosen to coordinate with local residents and assist in their relocation. This proved to be an exceedingly slow process, with many families not relocated until 1935. It was to Zerkel’s advantage to portray them as squatters, illiterate, immoral and backward to stir up sentiment against them and thereby get complete approval to establish the Park and displace all the hundreds of people who had lived in the area since the early 1800's.

Recreational skiers at the new park, 1940.

In December of that year, Virginia turned the land over to the Federal government, and Shenandoah National Park was formally dedicated on July 3, 1936, with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaking before a crowd of 5,000 at Big Meadows.

Pollock’s property–as well as others at Skyland– had been condemned by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1930. Pollock was forced to hand the operation of Skyland over to the Virginia Sky-Line Company, Inc., the park’s new concessionaire, in January 1937. However, the Pollocks retained life tenancy and continued to live at Skyland until their deaths, Addie in 1944 and George in 1949.


Sources: www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Page/NR_Greene_SkylineDriveMPD_xxx-xxxx.pdf
http://wfls.com/News/FLS/2007/102007/10302007/329123/printer_friendly
http://shenandoah.com/stories/?id=1968
www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/shen/massanutten_hfr.pdf
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~dianesmith/
75 Hikes in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, by Russ Manning, The Mountaineers Books, 2000



Skyland Shenandoah+National+Park George+F.+Pollock appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: Addie Nairn Pollock, appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, George F. Pollock, Shenandoah National Park, Skyland

To the locals, he was an arrogant and self-serving businessman, responsible for the dislocation of over 400 families when he sold his mountaintop acreage to create the core of the Shenandoah National Park. One neighbor felt "especially betrayed by George Pollock…[for] "pushing the people out. And, you know, coming up with all the stories of the areas that were just really poor. They didn't ever say anything about the people who worked, and made a good living, and lived there peacefully and nicely."

To his guests at Skyland---‘Polly,’ they called him---George Freeman Pollock was the eternal party boy, blowing his bugle at sunrise while dressed in ten-gallon hat, hunting trousers and boots, with a .45 revolver strapped to his hip. He liked holding up live rattlesnakes to show visitors. Massanutten Lodge, where Pollock lived with his wife Addie for many years, was known as ‘Poker Flat’ to resort regulars thanks to the non-stop gambling there.

Pollock was well connected from the start. Louise Pollock, George's mother, was a pioneer in American kindergartens, opening the first one in 1862. Schools were modeled after her National Kindergarten and Normal School. She had the backing of First Ladies Lucretia Garfield and Lucy Hayes. She wrote and transcribed journals, song books and education manuals, and she had an exhibit at the 1904 World's Fair.

His father, George H. Pollock, a prosperous Washington DC importer, formed the Miners’ Lode Copper Company in 1845. He and partner Stephen M. Allen, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, purchased 5,371 acres of land on Virginia’s Stony Man Mountain in order to mine copper.

That didn’t last long. The area’s ore was poor quality, and there wasn’t much of it, and so the mine shut down in 1850. Local residents grazed their cattle and pigs in the clearings, removed lumber and tanbark from the property, and ‘squatted on the land,’ according to the Pollock family version.

“[George Freeman Pollock] wasn't factual in his statements about the mountain people. He called them squatters when in fact most of them held deeds to their property. Deeds dating back to the early 1800's, long before Pollock was born,” says Diane Nicholson Smith, a descendant of one of the accused ‘squatter’ families.

Trouble would brew soon enough.

George Freeman Pollock fancied himself a naturalist and had a keen interest in taxidermy. When Dr. William T. Hornaday, young Pollock's mentor at the Smithsonian Institution, asked him in 1886 to collect specimens of small animals, the elder Pollock suggested his son do his searching on the copper tract.

George F. was so taken by the scenic splendor of the region that he returned to Washington determined to share his enthusiasm with others by creating a rustic resort. His father was willing to pursue the idea as a way of making some money with the languishing property, and convinced Allen along with Colonel John Bowles, a Washington real estate developer, to buy out the other stockholders and develop potential buyers for resort property.

Heaton Cabin at Skyland.

By 1889, George F. Pollock had collected $3,000 from sales of lots. He had also established Kearney, English and Pollock: Millowners, Builders and Contractors to process and sell the materials necessary to build cabins at the Stony Man camp. Over the next few years, Pollock and others built several cabins and a log stable, in addition to the lumber mill. In 1891, Pollock fenced 125 acres to establish control of the land and began accumulating his own livestock, including dairy cattle, horses, mules, pigs, and chickens.

But the following few years were problematic. The declining economy sent Pollock to other jobs, and in 1893, the worst year of a very bad depression, both Allen and the elder Pollock died, leaving the legal status of the property in chaos for a decade.

In protest against the problems the Pollock family had caused them, the locals burned the resort buildings that had been built.


sources: www.nps.gov/shen/historyculture/displaced.htm
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~dianesmith/
http://shenandoah.com/stories/?id=1968
www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/shen/massanutten_hfr.pdf



Skyland Shenandoah+National+Park George+F.+Pollock appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, George F. Pollock, Shenandoah National Park, Skyland

When you’re in Oakland or Grantsville, Maryland, you’re in Old Order Amish territory. If you’re not Amish yourself, you may be wondering just how that group got its name. You’d have to go back to the Zurich, Switzerland of the 1690s and make the acquaintance of one Jakob Amman. Amman’s roots were in the Anabaptists, a movement that had sprung up in 1525, in direct conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholics practiced infant baptism; the Anabaptists believed solely in adult baptism.

Originally known as Swiss Brethren, the Zurich group soon became referred to as Mennonites---a like-minded group led by one Menno Simmons had formed about the same time in the Netherlands, and the tag stuck with the Swiss Brethren as well.

By Jakob Amman’s time, a serious dogmatic dispute had arisen amidst the Mennonites over the practice of Meidung, or shunning of excommunicated members. This practice had been more important in former times, but had lapsed.

Amman, determined that the Meidung should be observed strictly, traveled extensively throughout Switzerland and Alsace between 1693 and 1697 preaching exactly that, and was so insistent that his followers formed a separate camp, excommunicating all other Mennonites who did not practice shunning.

Amman’s conservative Anabaptist followers became known as “ammanasch,” a name which was corrupted eventually to the present “Amish.”

Hounded constantly by the Catholic Church, the Amish immigrated to Pennsylvania, where other religious groups had fled, seeking religious freedom. Many Amish settled first in Lancaster County, PA, and subsequently migrated westward to other parts of Pennsylvania and down into western Maryland. Later Amish immigration from Germany in the 1800’s had more to do with avoiding military conscription than with physical persecution.

There is a difference of opinion as to whether the Amish are a church or an ethnic group, as they do not actively evangelize, and conversions to the group are not common.

The Amish prefer to let their strong and silent lifestyle serve as an example of Christian living. The most important institution within the Amish community is the church. The Bible is interpreted literally and directly. The Mennonite hymn book, the "Ausbund," is believed to have appeared in 1564 and is still used today by the Old Order Amish.

The worship service includes the singing of four hymns in High German. The German dialect used in everyday discourse, and the more formal German or High German used in worship services, tend to make the group exclusive, although everyone is welcome to attend church or convert to the faith.

Title page of the Ausbund Hymn Book, 1564

Garrett County, Maryland has two communities of Old Order Amish. German immigrant Peter Gortner purchased property four miles south of Oakland in 1850 and established a farm in an area that is today known as Pleasant Valley.

The Old Amish congregation was probably organized in 1855. Church services were held in Gortner’s house in the 1850’s-1860’s, and Peter Gortner is identified as the first minister of the church located there. Peter Gortner Jr. later enhanced the original farm by constructing grist and saw mills, a store, and a post office that was officially designated Gortner.

Joseph Slaughbaugh had a significant influence on the town when he purchased 723 acres in approximately 1857, referred to as Ashby’s Discovery Tract at a tax sale in Cumberland, MD. Slaughbaugh’s siblings moved to the area and developed farms on the expanse of land.

Joseph Slaughbaugh’s house served as the worship center during the 1860s. The Slaughbaugh family donated land for construction of Union Church in Gortner, aptly named as it combined Mennonite and Old Order Amish congregations. Through the preaching of John Holdeman several families left, including two preachers. Daniel Beachey was the first bishop in the congregation. After his death in 1897, bishops from the Somerset churches served the congregation until 1908, when Bishop Lewis M. Beachey was ordained.

Other families who settled in Gortner include Pfeil and Miller from Germany, and Yutzy, Slabach, Selder, Beachey, Gnagey, Schrock, and Petersheim from Somerset and Cambria counties, Pennsylvania.

The settlement always considered itself as one church district, even though in the early days of the settlement several families lived about ten miles west of Oakland, near Aurora and Eglon, WV.

The second western Maryland Old Amish community formed as an integral part of the Amish settlement along the border of Somerset County, PA. Grantsville was the Maryland side center of the settlement; it began in a small way about 1770. This area was in the valley of the Casselman River and so has long been called the Casselman Valley district.

The original settlement here was largely built up by German immigrants from Hesse and Waldeck in 1830-1860. Since numerous Grantsville Amish families moved westward to Holmes County, OH, and Johnson County, IA, before 1860, the community never grew large. The Grantsville Amish community ultimately became almost totally Conservative Amish or Beachy Amish.


Sources: Old Order Amish Settlement: Diffusion and Growth, by William K Crowley, Annals of the Assn of American Geographers, Vol. 68, No. 2, June 1978
www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/G3755.html
www.mountaindiscoveries.com/stories/ss2003/gortneramish_plain.html



Amish appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Garrett+County+MD Mennonites Old+Order+Amish

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Labels: Amish, appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Garrett County MD, Mennonites, Old Order Amish

Rebecca Latimer Felton, in her customary way, saw right through the political machinations that led to her officially becoming the first woman to serve in the United States Senate.

When Georgia Senator Thomas E. Watson died on September 26, 1922, Governor Thomas Hardwick appointed a replacement to serve until a special election could be held. Hardwick noted that his appointee would not actually "serve" because Congress was not in session when Watson died, and the next session would not begin until after the special election.

Hardwick himself wanted to be a senator, and he knew that the person he appointed would have a real advantage (as incumbent) in the special election. So rather than give an edge to a potential opponent, and to get on the good side of Georgia's newly enfranchised women voters (whom he had offended by opposing the Nineteenth Amendment), Hardwick appointed the eighty-seven-year-old Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835-1930) on October 3. To this day she holds the record for the oldest freshman senator to enter the Senate.

Felton sitting at the Senate Office Building desk she occupied for 24 hours.

Hardwick lost the special election two weeks later to Walter F. George. When the session opened George allowed Felton to present her credentials before he claimed his seat so that she might make history. She was sworn in at noon on November 21.

In one sense it was a meaningless, perhaps even condescending parody; Felton herself called it a “joke.” But it acknowledged her years of political activism and set the stage for women to become serious participants in the political process. Minutes after being sworn in, Felton rose to address her temporary colleagues: “Mr. President, the women of this country are going to come and sit here. There may not be very many the next few years, but in time they will come. When they do I pledge that this body will get ability, integrity and unstinted usefulness.”

The next day Senator-elect George was sworn in. Felton's term had lasted for just twenty-four hours.

Rebecca Latimer Felton is worthy of our attention for far more than this passing episode in her long life. A writer, lecturer and reformer who had a special interest in agricultural and women’s issues, she did not accept the popular belief during that time that a woman’s proper role was a housewife and instead had an active role outside the home.

As a columnist for the Atlanta Journal for twenty-eight years, Felton contributed various articles under the titles "Mrs. Felton's Timely Talks" and "The Country Home," their format being a cross between a modern "Dear Abby" and "Hints from Heloise."

Late in her life, Felton campaigned tirelessly for Progressive Era reforms. Through speeches and her writings, she helped to effect statewide prohibition and to bring an end to the convict lease system, a system of leasing cheap labor to private companies, which often maintained the convicts in substandard and even inhumane conditions. Both were achieved in 1908.

She supported the state university against its opponents—the church-affiliated colleges and those who felt that the state's limited funds should be directed toward improving public schools below the college level. In 1922 Felton received an honorary doctorate from the University of Georgia.

She also spoke out for vocational education opportunities for poor white girls in the state. Not until the early twentieth century did Felton embrace the reform with which she is most associated: women’s suffrage. She became the South's best known and most effective champion of women's right to vote. Hence the symbolic importance to Georgia’s women voters of her Senate seat appointment.

Felton published her Memoirs of Georgia Politics in 1911, Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth in 1919, and The Romantic Story of Georgia Women in 1930, shortly before her death. In her preface to Country Life in Georgia… she stated: “[The readers of Georgia’s newspapers] write to me and touch my heart, and some of them say further – ‘You have a large following in the State of Georgia who are devoted to you, especially among the rural citizens, the plain people of the State. They always feel assured you will state facts and furnish proof if your statements should be questioned.’”


Sources: www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2005_06/house/kids/famous/rebeccafelton.htm
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=F000069
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-904
www.roselawnmuseum.com/history%5Cfelton.html
www.georgiawomen.org/_honorees/feltonr/index.htm



Rebecca+Latimer+Felton womens+suffrage Georgia+politics Appalachian+politics appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Appalachian politics, Georgia politics, Rebecca Latimer Felton, womens suffrage

In August 1843, a Tennessee gold prospector working on Potato Creek discovered a reddish-brown and black decomposed rock that contained deep red crystals; his "gold" turned out to be red copper oxide. At the time, this copper deposit was one of the world's largest finds.

The Hiwassee Mine opened in 1850, and within 5 years the Tennessee, Mary’s, Isabella, and Eureka mines were operating full swing. The Copper Basin, a 75-square-mile long geologic formation, was fast becoming home to the Southeast's largest metal mining operation, employing more than 2,500 people at its peak.

Who could have foreseen that the largest man-made biological desert in the nation would emerge out of this economic fervor?

By 1861, trees were becoming scarce in the Basin. Wood was needed to fuel the smelters. The Polk County ores contained significant sulfur content. When roasted, the sulfur was released, forming sulfur dioxide, which later rained down as sulfuric acid. After the trees had been cut, the gases from the open smelting destroyed the remaining vegetation.

By 1876, there was no wood left in the immediate area. Logs were floated down the Ocoee River from Fannin County, GA to fuel the smelters. By 1878, about 50 square miles had been stripped of vegetation. Without trees and undergrowth, the top soil began to erode and huge gullies formed. Very few plants or animals survived. The nation was getting its first look at the long-term effects of acid rain.

Starting about 1885, the State of Georgia began filing lawsuits because of the damage to its timber and crops.

By 1899 the Tennessee Copper Company (TCC) had bought or leased mines from most of the other mining companies in the Basin. It built a new smelter in McCays (renamed Copperhill) and in 1904 placed its headquarters in the town.

Original caption reads: Copper mining section between Ducktown and Copperhill, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land.

That same year, TCC erected smoke stacks 150 feet tall to solve the acid rain problem, and in 1905 erected a 325 foot stack. The stacks helped locally but dispersed the gases over an even wider area. Instead of settling lawsuits, this tactic created more lawsuits from a broader area.

Tennessee courts ruled that the value of the copper companies’ contributions to the county out-weighed damages they caused. Before the copper industry came to the area, there were only around 200 residents. The court noted that, at that time, the open-roast heap method of smelting was the only known smelting method.

In 1906 in Georgia vs. Tennessee Copper Company, the Supreme Court heard Georgia’s claim that TCC was taking away its sovereign rights of control over its land and air. Georgia sought an injunction preventing TCC from using the open roast heap smelting method, and the Supreme Court granted it in 1907.

This injunction, had it been enforced, would have probably meant the end to mining, which in turn would have killed the Basin economically. TCC mining engineers instead proposed the idea of condensing the gases to produce sulfuric acid. Georgia officials agreed to wait and see if the new process would help the situation.

“The Tennessee Company is erecting an acid plant to make low-grade sulphuric acid out of the fumes from the blast furnaces,” said Walter Harvey Weed in ‘The Copper Mines of the World,” in 1908. The company built two acid plants, in Isabella and Copperhill, which did in fact contain the sulfur dioxide output.

And so, even though the Court had found for Georgia, it did not instate the injunction. Ironically, sulfuric acid ultimately replaced copper as TCC’s major product. In 1942, TCC built a large sulfuric acid plant at Copperhill.

Within two decades of the acid rain ruling the first efforts were made to reclaim the barren landscape. Reforestation efforts began in the 1920s and 1930s and concentrated efforts began in the 1940s. Early efforts were carried out by the mining companies and TVA.

In 1941 the TVA established a CCC camp in the Basin to enhance their tree planting efforts. Hundreds of acres of pine were planted between 1939 and 1944. The CCC workers built dams, planted trees, and covered the ground with straw to prevent runoff.

Today, the Burra Burra Mine Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places. The State of Tennessee purchased the site in 1983, making it the first state-owned historic industrial site.

The district stands as a stark example of the devastating environmental damage that stems from unplanned, unregulated large-scale industrial development.


sources: www.tennessee.gov/environment/hist/pdf/copperhill.pdf
www.gamineral.org/commercial-burra-burra.htm
www.telliquah.com/History2.htm
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=D058



acid+rain Tennessee+Copper+Company Copper+Basin Polk+County+TN appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Labels: acid rain, appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Copper Basin, Polk County TN, Tennessee Copper Company

...continued

On November 11, 1926, young neighbor Manville Perry noticed the living room door of William and Sarah Stout's farmhouse open, and was shocked by the sight he saw. He ran to a nearby coal mine and called for several miners to accompany him back to the farm.

Mrs. Stout's body lay in front of the living room stove. Her face, neck and portions of her body were burnt and charred beyond recognition. One arm was extended on the floor in front of her and was not burnt, suggesting that she had not tried to extinguish the flames of the fire. All her hair was burned off except where her head came in contact with the floor.

It was obvious to the gathered group that the body had been placed in front of the stove. Local Prosecuting Attorney Blake was called in, and he and Dr. O. S. Cox and Dr. A. E. James studied the scene. Their post mortem concluded that Mrs. Stout died of strangulation, not burns. The body was then covered with kerosene and set fire, they declared.

Sarah Stout was last seen alive in McArthur, two days prior, when she had sworn out a warrant against Arthur Stout, her stepson. The adultery charge cited his illicit relationship with one Inez Palmer, who had been co-habiting with him for three years on his family farm about three miles east of Sarah & William’s farm. It was rumored that Inez and Arthur had had a child since they had been living together.

The young Stout had been bailed out of jail by his father. Mrs. Stout feared that Arthur would kill her on account of her actions, Stout neighbor Mrs. Lucy Gibbs later testified.

Sarah, age 60, and her husband, age 65, were recently wed and were respected, well-to-do farmers in the county. We don’t know Sarah’s exact motive for turning in her stepson, especially if she realized it would be a life-threatening move.

One view is that for her to allow the situation to fester would undoubtedly have tarnished her and her new husband’s reputations and thereby threatened her future security. Another view is that she was a gold digger, looking to eliminate any competition for the old boy’s money. We just don’t know.

William Stout immediately called for the arrest of his son. "I shall demand his punishment," he said. "It was an awful thing to do, to murder the woman who had raised him even if she was only his step-mother." Interestingly, before his own death William Stout hired the law firm of Woolley and Rowland to defend his son.

Bloodhounds followed the trail of the murdered woman's stepson from a wagon he had unhitched in the yard to the room in which Sarah Stout was slain, which in turn led to Arthur Stout’s arrest. In early February 1927 a Grand Jury indicted him for first degree murder.

When Stout was taken to jail, Palmer became a housekeeper for the elder Stout. So apparently William didn’t suspect her of any wrongdoing. Or maybe he did and wanted to keep close tabs on her!

Here’s where the Athens Messenger account becomes confusing: "Coming from Bellaire several years ago, Inez Palmer first took care of Mrs. Arthur [sic] Stout. Mrs. Stout had been ill for some time. There she met Arthur Stout." So far so good. "Mrs. Stout died and William Stout remarried." Now wait a minute! We’re not told why the death of his daughter-in-law coincided with William Stout remarrying. But the red flag here is that the elder Stout said he was angered that his son murdered the woman who RAISED him. The newspaper accounts shed no light on this inconsistency.

So to recap, at the time of her own arrest in mid-March 1927, Inez Palmer was in the Stout farmhouse with Artie and William Stout, Arthur Stout’s sons, who’d been living with their grandfather for some time, while Arthur was behind bars.

Inez Palmer didn't say anything about Sarah Stout's death when she was first arrested. She did confess that she killed William Stout because he made advances toward her. She explained that she attempted to cover up the crime by putting on a pair of her victim's shoes and had made footprints near the repaired fences. And yes, she said that she'd forgest the will placed it in the dinner pail under a tree.

When Arthur Stout learned of Palmer's confession, he confirmed her story, and furthermore declared that she had killed Sarah Stout. Palmer had instructed him to burn the body, he said.

Arthur Stout and Inez Palmer were tried for the murders. On the stand, Arthur Stout, Jr. informed the prosecutor that his father was the person who proposed the idea of murdering Sarah Stout, because she’d had him arrested for living with Inez Palmer without the benefit of marriage.

Arthur Stout was found guilty of second degree murder and Inez Palmer with first degree murder in April of 1927. They both were sentenced to life terms.


Sources: Athens [OH] Messenger, 11/18/26, 11/19/26, 3/14/27, 3/18/27, 5/1/27 issues
www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5870/mc.html
Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003, by Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ohio University Press, 2003
Vinton County, Oh, by Family Heritage (Firm), Turner Publishing Company, 1996



Vinton+County+OH Vinton+County+double+murders crime+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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The last time she saw William Stout, the man missing, he was mending fences here at his Axtel Ridge place, Inez Palmer told the sheriff. She’d heard her boyfriend’s father had headed out west, and was acting strangely before he left Vinton County.

Maude "Sheriff Maude" Collins and her deputy Ray Cox followed the trail of patched fences. Two and a half miles from the house they found a lunch pail under a tree. The pail contained a handwritten will, in which William Stout cut off his other two sons, Noah and Burn, and named Palmer’s boyfriend Arthur as the sole heir. The document was not signed by any witnesses.

Sheriff Maude examined the footprints leading to and from the dinner bucket. She returned to William Stout's farmhouse and retrieved a pair of his shoes. The shoes fit exactly to the footprints, but Sheriff Maude noticed that the footprints were not as deep in the soil as those of Deputy Cox, a man about the same stature as Stout.

Sheriff Maude Collins, Vinton County, OH.

The sheriff dropped the Stout shoes to the ground and slipped them on. She walked up and down beside the original set of footprints. Her own fresh footprints were about the same depth. Sheriff Maude concluded that a person much closer to her weight made the prints, not William Stout.

The two law officers proceeded to the missing man’s home and examined the contents of the house. It was obvious that William Stout never took any of his belongings. They went back into McArthur and presented the will to the cashier at Vinton County National Bank, where Mr. Stout maintained his account. Sheriff Maude compared the handwriting of the will to that of his canceled checks. No match.

Sheriff Maude and Deputy Cox returned to Axtel Ridge the next morning to search the Stout's farm for any trace of William Stout’s body. Once there, they conversed with the missing man's two young grandsons.

Arthur’s sons Artie and William innocently provided the missing clue that solved the case. In the course of questioning, they informed the two law officers that Inez Palmer had told them the water behind the Stout house was not fit for consumption and they’d best just stay clear of the well.

Sheriff Maude and deputy Cox promptly arrested Inez Palmer, who’d been living at the house, as a suspect, so they could search the premises without interference.

Sure enough, they discovered William Stout’s body in the well behind the house. Stout had suffered severe head trauma caused by a blunt instrument.

Why was Inez Palmer staying at the house? And where was Arthur, the boyfriend, during all this? Did William have a wife at the farm? There’s more, far more, to this Ohio murder story. Stay tuned!

Part two tomorrow...


Sources: Athens [OH] Messenger, 11/18/26, 11/19/26, 3/14/27, 3/18/27, 5/1/27 issues
www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5870/mc.html
Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003, by Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ohio University Press, 2003
Vinton County, Oh, by Family Heritage (Firm), Turner Publishing Company, 1996



Vinton+County+OH Vinton+County+double+murders crime+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Listen to 1921 recording of "St. Louis Blues" by Original Dixieland Jazz Band, with Al Bernard


William Christopher “W.C.” Handy, acknowledged ‘Father of the Blues’ and composer of such American musical standards as St. Louis Blues and Beale Street Blues, was born on November 16, 1873, in Florence, AL.

He grew up in a log cabin his grandfather had built on what is now College Street. His father served as pastor of Greater St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, where sacred hymns and spirituals sowed early seeds of musical inspiration in young W.C.

"[My grandmother] was the first to suggest that my big ears indicated a talent for music,” Handy explained in his autobiography. “This thrilled me…When I was no more than ten, I could catalogue almost any sound that came to my ears… I knew the whistle of each of the river boats on the Tennessee… Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale… All built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony. This was the primitive prelude to the mature melodies now recognized as the blues. Nature was my kindergarten…”

As he grew older, Handy’s musical tastes stretched beyond the spiritual confines of his father’s church. In his leisure time, Handy loved listening to black field workers and dockhands sing secular songs of toil, strife, hope and joy.

“The trumpet playing of Mr. Claude Seals fired my imagination... Almost immediately I set my heart on owning a trumpet. Since buying one was out of the question, I tried making my own by hollowing a cow horn and cutting the tip into a mouthpiece. The finished product was a useful hunting horn but certainly not a trumpet. I decided to content myself for the time being with the hope of a guitar.”

W.C. Handy, age 19, holding a cornet.

However, musical talent, especially the playing of musical instruments, was frowned upon by his family and church.
Despite Handy's lack of encouragement, he secretly saved the money he made by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap.

“Work meant nothing now. It was a means to an end. But saving was slow and painful… Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed… With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds, I grew impatient as my small savings grew.

“I selected the instrument I wanted and went often to gaze at it loving through the shop window. The days dragged… The name of my ailment was longing, and it was not cured till I finally went to the department store and counted out the money in small coins before the dismayed clerk.

“A moment later, the shining instrument under my arm, I went out and hurried up Court Street. My heart was a leaf… When I came to the house, I held up the instrument before the eyes of the astonished household. I couldn't speak. I was too full, too overjoyed…" 


His family had a slightly different reaction. Handy's father made him take the guitar back and exchange it for a dictionary.

Ultimately, over his father’s objections, Handy did buy a trumpet and left Florence to pursue his musical dreams.

W.C. Handy has been credited with having single-handedly introduced a new style of music to the world. But he was quick to acknowledge that he did not invent the blues, but merely transcribed them and presented them to a worldwide audience.

“You’ve got to appreciate the things that come from the art of the Negro,” he observed, “and from the heart of the man farthest down.”


sources: www2.una.edu/library/handy/biography.htm
www.wchandyfest.com
www.wchandymusicfestival.org/downloads/HandyBiography.pdf
"Father of the Blues: An Autobiography of W.C. Handy," by W.C. Handy,Macmillan Co, 1947



appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history father+of+the+blues Florence+AL the+blues WC+Handy

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Amelia Earhart flew into the Anderson, SC airport in her Pitcairn PCA-2 Autogyro on Nov 14, 1931 and attracted over 1,000 spectators. Mayor G.T. McGregor and other city leaders met her at the airport. In May of that year, flying that plane, the thirty three year old had set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet.

In May the following year she flew across the Atlantic Ocean alone from Newfoundland to Ireland, the first woman to do so. In January of 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. Then, in June 1937, Amelia Earhart tried to fly around the world in a Lockheed 10E Electra, and the newspapers were full of news of her journey. She vanished over the Pacific Ocean en route to New Guinea.

While to us it might seem that Earhart was engaged in flying stunts, she was, with other female flyers, crucial to making the American public 'air minded' and convincing them that aviation was no longer just for daredevils and supermen.


sources: South Carolina Postcards: Anderson County, by Howard Woody, Arcadia Publishing, 2003
www.experiencefestival.com/a/Amelia_Earhart/id/1910138
www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=260&period=1930s



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No other rocks in the area have similar markings, although there are many other boulders in the vicinity. Some of the pictographs on it appear to be animals and animal tracks, while others appear to be human figures, suns, and geometric figures.

Judaculla---or Jutaculla--- Rock is one of the greatest archaeological mysteries in the United States. The largest petroglyph in North Carolina, and one of the largest in the Southeast, is named for a Cherokee legend about its formation. Judaculla Rock sits in the Caney Fork Creek valley in Jackson County, outside of Cullowhee. The details of the petroglyph's formation, as well as its origin and purpose, are unknown to scientists.

Artist rendition of Judaculla Rock engravings.

The soapstone slab is about sixteen feet long by eleven feet wide. The designs on it appear to have been produced in a variety of manners, including incising, pecking, and smoothing. These methods are evident upon close examination, but are becoming more difficult to identify with the continued erosion of the rock.

In the late 19th century, Cherokee groups were known to hold ceremonial assemblies around the rock. Additional outcrops of soapstone, used by Cherokees then to sculpt pipes, beads, bowls, and bannerstones, are located near the Judaculla Rock. Archaeologists think the Cherokees camped at, or near, the rock when they came to quarry soapstone. Furthermore, due to recent excavations of the areas surrounding Judaculla, scientists now postulate that the rock was part of a larger grouping of soapstone creations.

James Mooney, a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution, recorded the Cherokee legend of Judaculla Rock in the 1880s. According to Mooney's story, a being named Judaculla (called by the Cherokee Tsul-ka-lu or Tsu’ Kalu--- the Great Slant-eyed Giant) was the greatest of all the Cherokee mythical characters, a giant hunter who lived on the southwestern slope of Richland Balsam Mountain at the head of the Tuckaseegee River in Jackson County.

Judaculla was very powerful and could control the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. He was known to drink whole streams down in a single gulp and stomp from mountain to mountain as one might over ant hills. (In fact, according to Sequoyah’s Cherokee translation of the Bible, the word 'Goliath' was renamed Judaculla.)

One legend claims that the markings are hunting laws that Judaculla ordered. Another has it that Judaculla jumped from his mountaintop farm and landed partially on the rock, producing scratches, while running a band of American Indians off his land. The seven-toed foot at the lower right hand side of the boulder is said to depict Judaculla's footprint.

The rock was once thought to depict a map of the 1755 Cherokee victory over the Creeks at the battle of Taliwa in what is now Georgia, or perhaps a victory over another enemy, the Catawba.

Archeologists now know that the Judaculla Rock predates the Cherokee habitation of western North Carolina, but its exact time of origin is unknown. It is currently dated from the late Archaic Period, between 3000 and 1000 BCE, when evidence first appears of Native American societies forming mound societies.

The North Carolina Rock Art Survey has organized a Judaculla Advisory Committee composed of site owner Jackson County NC, members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Tribal Historic Preservation Office and Tribal Elders, the Office of State Archaeology, professors from nearby Western Carolina University, and members of the surrounding community. The Advisory Committee agreed to pursue a formal recording of the petroglyphs along with a condition assessment and conservation plan. You can read about their progress so far in the current issue of the North Carolina Archaeological Society newsletter.


sources: www.cs.unca.edu/nfsnc/rock_art
http://rla.unc.edu/lessons/Lesson/L502/H502b.htm
www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?ct=ddl&sp=search&k=Markers&sv=Q-4%20-%20JUDACULLA%20ROCK
Footsteps of the Cherokees, by Vicki Rozema, John F. Blair, Publisher, 2007
www.mountainlovers.com/vg/issues/2006/ncm_ancient_mystery.html



appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Cherokee+myths Jackson+County+NC Judaculla+Rock petroglyphs

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"One time we were hauling long timbers for the railroad company. 30 ft. long and it required 2 cars to haul the timbers on, a car under each end and it was pulled with 2 mules, one in front of the other which was called a double team.

"I myself was driving one of the double teams and a fellow by the name of Keene Lancaster was driving a single team just in front of me. We had quite a hill to go down about one fourth of a mile long and where the trainroad started off the hill, it went over a wood trestle and it was about 200 yards long from where it started at the top of the hill until it came to the lower end of the trestle.

"The trestle was 35 feet high in the highest part. It was a gradual slant to the lower end of the trestle and as we were on our way to the station at Monica with six loaded cars of railroad timbers and as said before, there was one single car in front of me and four cars behind me and when we started down the hill, the car in front of me, I waited at the top of the hill for him to get to the lower end of the trestle before I started down the hill.

"It was late in the fall, about the middle of November, and it had fell quite a frost the night before and there was quite a bit of frost on the track, and we had brakes on the front and rear cars of their double cars and when I started down the hill I got a cousin of mine at the top of the hill to brake the rear car down the hill.

"The fellow on the next car behind me was Derben’s double car load and when I started down before him I said to him, 'Allen, you had better wait at the top of the hill until I get down, and I will come back and brake your rear car down the hill for you.'

"But instead of waiting, he turned over the hill just behind me, and I saw he wasn’t going to hold his cars with only one brake and I knew if I didn’t get out of his way, he would run into me about the middle of the bridge, and I whipped my team up and let up on my brake, and before I got down the hill my mules was in a long lope.

"As soon as I got to the lower end of the bridge, I jumped off my car and whipped my mules out of the track and as the hook that the stretchers was hooked to was turned sideways and the stretchers came loose from the cars and my mules just trotted out in the field.

"When Derben saw he couldn’t hold his cars with only one brake, when he got to the other end of the bridge, he jumped off the cars and turned the cars loose on the mules. When the cars got to the highest part of the bridge, it punched the mules off the bridge and they fell 35 feet to the ground.

This photo is not from Wolfe County, KY where this accident took place; it’s from Nacogdoches County, Texas. But it approximates the scene of sawed logs brought to a railroad siding by mule teams described in this story. Photo by John Vachon.

"It broke the wheel mule’s back, and throwed the lead mule way up on the hillside and hurt it very bad. It trotted out in the bottom and went to picking grass, but the other mule was never able to get up. It had to be killed, and some of the mules didn’t jerk the heavy loaded cars off the track and they came down and rammed into the rear end of my cars and the two heavy loaded cars rammed into the rear end of the cars ahead of my cars.

"The fellow that was driving the front car just had got off to open a gate when the cars hit his car and he didn’t have time to get the gate open, and it rammed the car, mule and all through the gate, and then they started down a small hill and about 40 yards ahead there was another gate, and then it rammed the front cars and the old mule thru the other gate. By that time myself and the driver of the car behind Derben’s car jumped on the cars and broke them down and got them stopped at the foot of the little hill.

"The company was notified and they sent some men to kill the wounded mule and take it off and bury it. Then we coupled the 2 cars together and hitched 3 mules to the double cars and we hitched the mule that wasn’t killed in front of my 2 mules and pulled them to the station and unloaded them, and drove back to camp and eat our dinner."


Daniel Boone Childers (1873-1956)
born in Wolfe County, KY, on Holly Creek
source: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kywolfe/childers.htm



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Half Kenyan, half Kansan. Half black, half white. Raised on a polyglot island far from the mainstream culture’s slave legacy and all of its attendant blinders and obsessions.

Yet mainstream media tends to identify our newly elected president not as the first multiracial president, but as the first black president. In American culture, if you can’t prove you’re 100% white or ‘pass’ for such, you get lumped into the minority by default.

This is a cultural bias the Chestnut Ridge People (CRP) of West Virginia have been familiar with for several hundred years now.

"There is a clan of partly-colored people in Barbour County often called Guineas, under the erroneous presumption that they are Guinea negroes," observed WV historian Hu Maxwell in the 1890s. "They vary in color from white to black, often have blue eyes and straight hair, and they are generally industrious. Their number in Barbour is estimated at one thousand.

"They have been a puzzle to the investigator; for their origin is not generally known. They are among the earliest settlers of Barbour. Prof. W.W. Male of Grafton, West Virginia, belongs to this clan, and after a thorough investigation, says 'They originated from an Englishman named Male who came to America at the outbreak of the Revolution. From that one man have sprung about 700 of the same name, not to speak of the half-breeds.' Thus it would seem that the family was only half-black at the beginning, and by the inter-mixtures since, many are now almost white."

Indeed, Barbour County Courthouse records indicate that several of the CRP petitioned the courts (successfully) to be declared legally white during the Civil War era, and they undoubtedly would not have done so if being considered ‘West Hill Indians,’ ‘Maileys,’ ‘Cecil Indians,’ ‘G. and B. Indians,’ or ‘Guinea niggers’ offered any advantage.

“I believe each of our people has the name Male as an ancestor,” says genealogist Joanne Johnson Smith. This is Elizabeth 'Betsy' Mayle, of Chestnut Ridge, in 1975/06.

By 1946, local courts treated the CRP as colored, regarding them as mulattoes. William Harlen Gilbert, Jr., of the Library of Congress, had more to say of the CRP that same year in ‘Social Forces’ magazine:

“They do not associate as a rule with Negroes or whites.

“Location: Primarily centered in Barbour and Taylor counties, West Virginia. Also, small scatterd families in Grant, Preston, Randolph, Tucker, Marion, Monongahela, and Braxton counties, West Virginia. Said to have originated in Hampshire County, West Virginia. A few occur in Garrett County, Maryland. Have recently migrated to Canton, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Akron, and Sandusky in Ohio and to Detroit, Michigan. Word Guinea said to be an epithet applied to anything of foreign or unknown origin.

“Numbers: Estimated to be from 8,000 to 9,000.

“Organization: Have own schools and churches in Barbour and Taylor counties. Have an annual fair at Phillippi, West Virginia. Family names are Adams, Collins, Croston, Dalton, Dorton, Kennedy, Male (Mayle, Mahle, Mail), Minard (Miner), Newman, Norris, and Pritchard.

“Environment and Economy: Many are coal miners, hill cultivators on sub-marginal lands, truck farmers and dairy farmers, domestic servants, and in cities industrial workers. Original habitat was inaccessible hilly area on a horseshoe bend of the Tygart River, the so-called Narrows. Live in compact settlements in this area.

“Physique: Sharp and angular features characteristic. Originally a mixture of white and Indian types to which Negro has been added. Deformities of the limbs and other congenital defects.

“In-Marriage: Has been pronounced in the past. Now said to intermarry with Italians who are also called Guineas in this area.

“Religion: Mainly Free Methodists in Barbour and Taylor counties.

“Schools: Have special schools classed locally as colored. Considerable tension over attendance at white schools in Taylor County. In Barbour County two schools have been burned down due to troubles.

“Military Draft Status: In Taylor County (Grafton and vicinity) have almost uniformly gone into the white status.

“Voting and Civil Rights: Have voted since organization of the State. Now hold balance of power in Barbour County.

“Relief: Received during the Depression.

“Cultural Peculiarities: Folklore, annual fair.

“History: Claim English descent from Revolutionary ancestors. Building of Tygert River Dam in 1937 scattered them in Taylor County due to flooding of original settlements.”

Today, widespread sharing of genealogical information via the internet has helped clarify much of the mystery and ‘otherness’ surrounding groups such as the CRP. “We would like you to keep an open mind as we, the Guineas, tell you about ourselves, since we know more about our heritage than anyone else,” said Joanne Johnson Smith & Florence Kennedy Barnett in a 1997 presentation at the First Union in Wise, VA., where about one thousand people converged on the College of Wise campus to reclaim their lost heritage. Their 20 years worth of combined research on Guinea bloodlines is available here.


Sources: The History of Barbour County, by Hu Maxweoo, (Morgantown, West Virginia, 1899) pp. 510-511.
Mixed Bloods of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia, by William Harlen Gilbert, Jr., Journal of the Washington Academy of the Sciences, 36, no. 1 (Jan. 15, 1946), pp. 1-13.
‘Memorandum Concerning the Characteristics of the Larger Mixed-Blood Racial Islands of the Eastern United States,’ by William Harlen Gilbert, Jr., Social Forces 21/4 (May 1946): 438-477
http://theoasis57366.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/864



Chestnut+Ridge+People Guineas Philippi+WV Melungeons appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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"The log cabin no longer adorns the landscape. Instead, is the stately mansion, indicative of wealth, of taste and of hospitality. There are spacious, nicely painted barns, hedges, orchards, well-fenced, well-tilled fields. Steel bridges span the turbulent streams, and macadamized roadways wind among the valleys and skirt the rising hills. Where the wigwam once stood, temples dedicated to the deity now dot the surrounding scene.

"The farmer has become a prince. The telephone has put him in touch with all his neighbors. The daily paper with the markets of the world, is regularly at his gate, and ere he goes afield he may scan its pages, and know the commercial history of the universe.

"The sickle, the hoe, the cradle, the flail, are the ancient farm implements about which he tells his grandchildren. All the modern scientific, up-to-date methods of farming are employed in Harrison County. Instead of bathing at the back porch pump of an evening, the farmer now adjourns to his porcelain bath tub.

"The gas grate has succeeded the back log: the swinging crane and the Dutch oven, the spinning wheel, and the perforated cream skimmer have disappeared. The tallow candle is regarded as the 'light of other days.' Where the rifle once adorned the chimney piece is a portrait in crayon or oil of 'mother' or of 'father.'

"In the parlor are music and books; in the kitchen sunlight, conveniences and comfort. The farm today, in Harrison County, is a scene of art, of taste, of plenty, of comparative ease, and delightful independence. Gone are the 'good old times,' and the Harrison County farmer has fulfilled the poetical idea ---

“The farmer’s the chief of the nation;
The oldest of nobles is he,
How blest beyond others his station,
From want and envy, how free.”


HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF HARRISON COUNTY, OH
1909 Souvenir edition of the Harrison County Democrat
source: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohharris/scan0001_1.pdf

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William E. Carpenter shot these 8x10 glassplate photographs at the scene of a November 17, 1901 fire in Freemansburg, WV.


According to the Weston Independent of November 19, 1901, the fire destroyed the businesses of Robinson and Hall and C. H. Taylor, the post office (in Robinson and Hall), and the Grange Hall.















Lost were "the stamps and other postal property, the store accounts, the books of the milling company, the books and papers of the secretary of the bo[a]rd of education of Freemans creek district . . . ." The fire was set during a robbery.



Freemansburg+WV Lewis+County+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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"Oh, to return once more to the days when they made real country sausage and souse meat! Where grandpa and grandma smoked their long-stemmed clay pipes and would light them by dipping a live coal from the old fireplace.

"Let's go into the big house and sit by the fire and see the old-fashioned dog-irons and the wrought iron shovel and tongs made in the country blacksmith shop. Did you ever see your granddaddy heat the old shovel on a bitter, cold day and hold it in front of the old clock to thaw out the oil in the old timepiece so it could go on tickin' off the hours?

"I would like to help grandma fill the lamps with oil or ile carried from a country store in a can with an Irish tater stuck in the spout, and watch her trim the wicks so the lamps would glow more evenly. I want to eat some food cooked on an old step-stove, sweet taters baked in an oven on the hearth over hickory and red-oak coals. It would be a welcome sight to see some of the womenfolks swing the fly brush to keep the pesky devils offen' the table. Right here, it might be said that a family rated according to the kind of fly brush it had. The very poor used a limb, cut from a mulberry tree, and the middle class had one cut out of newspapers, and the upper crust had one made of peafowl's tail. That family rated, and rated high, brother!

"I want to go back where all the common, everyday towels were made of salt sacks, and where there was only one store towel which was put out only when the preacher came. I want to see the man of the house take his table knife of chilled steel and whet it on the tines of his fork before he carved the sow-belly that had been cooked with the beans. Did you ever eat any lye hominy or shuck beans? If not, you have never really lived...you have merely existed!

"I want to see the housewife reach into the salt gourd and get a pinch or two or salt to season the beans and taters, which were usually cooked by hanging on a hook in the fireplace to conserve stove wood. And who has not seen the home-made soap in the terrapin's shell soap dish on the wash bench just outside the door?

"I want to go back to the time when all the shoe boxes were saved to make splits for the womens' bonnets. Remember 'em?

"I would like to once more watch apple-butter being made in those huge old, brass kettles, where the long handled stiring wooden ladle never stopped, and that bubbling pot of apple-butter gave off an aroma that I haven't smelled since, nor can it be expressed in words on paper.

"I want to spend Christmas in the old way once more and get from the Christmas tree, one stick of candy, one orange, and one penny pencil. The rich ones gave their children a French harp and the night was filled with music and the cares that infested the day folded their tents like Arabs, and silently stole away.

"I want to go back."


See I want to go back [part 1]


--excerpted from
Too Late For Flowers
Never Too Late For Tears
By Roy L. Sturgill

Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia, published by the Historical Society of Southwest Virginia, Publication 12, 1978
http://vagenweb.org/scott/HSpubl72.html



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Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 2 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, Historical Society of SW Virginia, Old Christmas

Today Dr. William Henry Burritt is remembered in Huntsville, AL as the man who left his mountaintop estate to the city in 1955, and in doing so, provided that city’s first public museum: the fourteen-room, "X" shaped, Burritt Museum and Historic Park on Round Top Mountain.

One of Dr. Burritt's earliest charitable donations sounds like an odd thing to modern ears, and therein hangs a tale.

As both the son and grandson of two noted homeopathic physicians, it seems only natural that Burritt would have been interested in natural, non-pharmacological remedies from an early age.

That, and the fact that his mother, two of his uncles, his sister, and his only nephew had all been committed due to mental instability, may help explain why Dr. Burritt and his first wife Pearl, wealthy new arrivals to Huntsville looking to make a good impression, felt committed to donate malted milk to the community’s recently opened (1895) City Infirmary.

Malted milk? The stuff of candies and soda shop concoctions? What has that got to do with mental health remedies?

Malted milk was originally created in 1887 as an easily digested infant's food made from an extract of wheat and malted barley, combined with milk and made into a powder called "diastoid," by James and William Horlick of Racine, WI. Horlick supposedly coined the name "malted milk," but his formula resembled one already being marketed in England. He promoted his mixture of dried milk extracts of malted barley and wheat as a food supplement for infants and invalids (mental illness was broadly included in the latter category).

William Burritt graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1890, and immediately moved into post graduate study at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and at the New York Lying-in Hospital. As a highly educated, well traveled man, it’s no surprise he’d learned of Horlick’s recent invention. And he may well have passed along his knowledge and experience with malted milk to another Huntsville family also plagued by mental illness.

Remember Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaper? Two of his seven children had schizophrenia. One of those, daughter Mary Virginia, moved into Huntsville’s ‘Kildare’ mansion in 1900. Or more accurately, the trust fund established for the heiress purchased the home on her behalf and established her there, supported by a large staff under the guidance of one Grace Walker.

Dr. Burritt certainly would have encountered Mary Virginia McCormick in Huntsville society circles: he was by then a member of a Huntsville social group called the 'Chimpanzee Club,' formed for evenings of polite social conversation, dinner, chamber recitals, and theater productions; He was also a member of the Civitan Club, Kappa Sigma, Madison County Chapter of the Citizens Historical Assn., the Church of the Nativity, an Episcopal Church in Huntsville, and the Republican Party.

Mary Virginia McCormick in 1901.

The historical record doesn’t tell us whether Mary Virginia took malted milk as a curative, but we do know her brother Stanley, who lived in Boston, did. By 1906, his episodes had increased to the extent that he was hospitalized at McLean Hospital for the Insane in that city. He was diagnosed with "dementia praecox of the catatonic type," ---schizophrenia--- characterized by marked violent outbursts and gradual mental deterioration, punctuated by periods of relative clarity. His intake report noted the family history of mental illness: "All the family of nervous temperament, mother eccentric, sister insane."

The same report noted that Stanley was fed eggnog, oyster stew, and malted milk.


sources:
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/summer/mccormick.html
www.burrittonthemountain.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=53
www.foodtimeline.org/foodicecream.html#maltedmilk
www.vvwrealtor.com/2004%20Kildare.htm



William+Henry+Burritt malted+milk Mary+Virginia+McCormick mental+health+issues 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, malted milk, Mary Virginia McCormick, mental health issues, William Henry Burritt

English law in the American colonies could get a bit florid on the topic of illegitimate children. A bastard child (or ‘bastarda’, if female) could become a ‘special bastard’ by the subsequent marriage of its parents. And if that couple had another, legitimate, son, that son was known to the law as ‘filius mulieratus,’ and the first or bastard son in turn became the ‘bastard eigne.’

The North Carolina colony, starting in 1736, used a tool called the bastardy bond to protect the Crown from being responsible for the support of children born out of wedlock. Bastardy bonds placed the ultimate burden of support for a bastard child upon the father should the mother become unable to provide proper support.

Otherwise, the child would become a ward of the local poor house and be an expense to the government. This English bond system was carried forward when North Carolina became a state in 1789.

As you might expect, the presence of bastardy bonds followed westward settlement right into Appalachia. Hamburg Township, for example, in today’s Jackson County, was settled in 1827. A September, 1853 bastardy bond from that county read: "Ordered that the Sherriff bring into this court on tomorrow during court hours an orphan child (illegetamant of Sarah Dills) named Andrew Jackson" Andrew Dills appointed Guardian, Phillip Dills security.

So how did bastardy bonds work? Typically the process started with public knowledge or a complaint that an unwed woman was with child. Sometimes the process was started after the fact. A warrant was issued and the woman brought into court.

She was questioned under oath and asked to name the child’s father. If she named the father, another warrant was then issued to bring him before the local justices of the peace, and he posted bond to appear in court to answer the charges on a particular date. If found guilty, he would then have to post bond for support of the bastard child. This document was the bastardy bond.

If the woman refused to name the father, she, her father, or some other interested party would post the bond.

In some cases the mother and the alleged father posted the bond together. If the woman refused to post bond or name the father, she could be sent to jail. Where support subsequently became necessary, the court would issue a judgment for collection of the requisite amount from the father and/or his bondsmen.

Bastardy cases seldom came up for trial. Usually the reputed father came into court, admitted the charge, and gave bond for the support of the child according to law.

In 1933, North Carolina’s General Assembly repealed the legislation requiring that bastardy bonds be filed, though state archives continued to store records pertaining to bastardy bonds until 1957.

There’s only one mention of bonds in the current North Carolina General Statutes, Chapter 49, Bastardy:
“At the preliminary hearing of any case arising under this Article it shall be the duty of the court, if it finds reasonable cause for holding the accused for a further hearing, to require a bond in the sum of not less than one hundred dollars ($100.00), conditioned upon the reappearance of the accused at the further hearing under this Article.”


sources: www.jcncgs.com/bastardy.htm
Suspect Relations, by Kirsten Fischer, Cornell University Press, 2002
www.infouga.org/site/



bastardy+bonds NC+law Jackson+County+NC 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, bastardy bonds, Jackson County NC, NC law

Certainly if you were in Wheeling, WV or Parkersburg, WV that night you could have received it. Even as far out as Zanesville, OH or Gallipolis, OH, if you had a crystal radio set, you could have picked up the very first commercial radio broadcast from Pittsburgh station KDKA on November 2, 1920. With a power output of 100 watts on a wavelength of 360 meters, the transmitter's signals could reach homes several hundred miles away.

"Will anyone hearing this broadcast please communicate with us," Leo Rosenburg requested, "as we are anxious to know how far the broadcast is reaching and how it is being received."

KDKA's broadcast that night featured the Harding-Cox Presidential election returns, and occasional music, from 6 p.m. election night to noon the following day. From a wooden shack atop the Westinghouse Company's East Pittsburgh plant, five men entertained their unseen audience for eighteen hours. Donald G. Little served as chief engineer, while R. S. McClelland and John Frazier handled telephone lines from the old Pittsburgh Post newsroom where the returns were received. William Thomas served as station operator and Rosenburg acted as announcer throughout that stormy night.

The power of radio was proven when people could hear the results of the Harding-Cox presidential race before they read about it in the newspaper.

KDKA grew out of the hobby of Frank Conrad, an assistant chief engineer at Westinghouse. Conrad was a modest man with a modest education. He didn't have a degree from a prestigious university. He didn't have a degree at all - (except an honorary Doctorate that he received later in life from the University of Pittsburgh). Conrad didn't even have a high school diploma - but he did have a genius for radio.

In 1916, Conrad registered his amateur radio station, 8XK. The station was not an ordinary amateur station-the 'X' indicated a special experimental license-any more than Conrad was an ordinary amateur. Conrad, through 8XK, was in touch with other engineers who were seeking to use radio to synchronize timepieces and their accuracy, and thus he required the ability to receive the Naval Observatory radio station.

While most of the nation's amateurs were forced to cease operations for the duration of World War I, Westinghouse was issued special licenses 2WM and 2WE and continued experimental radiotelephone work for the military throughout the war. Two stations were designed, equipped, and operated during the war. One was located near Westinghouse's plant in East Pittsburgh, and the other at Conrad's home.

Almost as soon as he was permitted to do so after the war, Conrad went back on the air. 8XK was relicensed as a 'special land station' sometime between June 15 and August 1, 1919.

On October 17, 1919, Conrad delighted hams in his network by substituting a phonograph record for their usual conversation about wireless equipment. In response to the flood of requests for particular musical selections, Conrad was forced to announce that instead of complying with individual requests, he would broadcast records for two hours each Wednesday and Saturday evening.

This twice-a-week program schedule was continued with live vocal and instrumental talent provided from time to time by Conrad's two young sons, Crawford and Francis, who acted as announcers and played the piano. The other program material was largely phonograph records, although there were some talks as well as baseball and football scores.

Conrad’s popularity grew, and it wasn't long before he had the interest of a local music store, and was borrowing records from them in exchange for an advertisement. That was probably the first radio advertisement on the air, and it was probably the beginning of what we think of today as commercial radio.

When Westinghouse picked up on the popularity of Conrad's idea, they decided to create KDKA—it was licensed October 27, 1920 by the United States Commerce Department specifically for commercial broadcasting. Westinghouse, one of the leading radio manufacturers, used the station as a way to get more radios into people's homes. Keep in mind that alternating current tubes, making possible the all-electric receiver for the home, were not introduced until 1925. The early days of crystal radio required earphones.

KDKA offered a semi-weekly broadcast from November 2, 1920, to December 1, 1920. The station’s great success led Westinghouse to increase its power output by 10-fold within one year. By the end of 1923, KDKA was heard regularly all over the United States as well as some parts of Europe, South America and the Hawaiian Islands. In four years there were 600 commercial stations around the country.


sources: www.ccrane.com/library/first-broadcast.05.20.02.aspx
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dt20ra.html
Broadcasting's Oldest Stations: An Examination of Four Claimants, by Joseph E. Baudino and John M. Kittross
Journal Of Broadcasting, Winter, 1977, pp. 61-82
www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/kdka.html
www.nrcdxas.org/articles/1stfacts.txt



Frank+Conrad first+radio+broadcast KDKA Pittsburgh+PA 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, first radio broadcast, Frank Conrad, KDKA, Pittsburgh PA