Appalachian History

If you're in the Huntsville, AL area you'll want to get yourself on over to Burritt on the Mountain this weekend. A brand new play titled "Appalachian Witches," by Christine Burke Ashwell wraps up its premiere run this weekend. It's the story of three women bound to the Appalachian Mountains, its traditions and music, superstitions and ghosts, history and faith. One family's bloodline speaks in the joyful voices of the mountains with a capella songs, stories and legends presented in a light-hearted storyteller style.

Tanja Miller, left, and Criss Ashwell appear behind Karen Lynn in "Appalachian Witches."

Ms. Ashwell has served as Alabama's state chairperson for community theatre under the Alabama Conference of Theatre, and as Alabama State Representative to the American Association of Community Theatre from 2001-2007.

We caught up with her this week to get a peek at what's in store for audiences:

APPALACHIAN HISTORY: Why did you write this play?

CHRISTINE BURKE ASHWELL: I suppose I see a lot of culture getting lost in development throughout the Appalachians, or just the progression of time. I certainly think that we have lost a lot of connection with the land, natural remedies and healing arts. I think the stories told throughout the mountains are allegorical as well as historical and funny and sad and so very valuable to the history of a resilient and vastly diverse population who resided in the hills of Appalachia.

So I'm creating a few more stories, reminiscent of theirs and incorporating history and culture to appeal to a modern audience. Moreover, I think my grandfather said it best, "Being poor does not mean living poorly." In fact, as hard as some families had it, there was often more riches to be found in the people themselves than money could ever buy.

AH: What was one of your biggest challenges in pulling this play together?

CBA: The one thing that I hesitated with is the dialect. Even being from the area I have a difficulty understanding some folks in the mountains. We have strived for the voices to be the natural sounds of the mountains in a dialect and accent that are not stereotypical or affected, but can be generally understood by most theatre audiences.

AH: What are some of the influences you drew on for this piece?

CBA: Hmm, a lot of absorption of reading everything from the backs of herbal tea boxes to Lee Smith's books to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to –my favorite--the Foxfire books. Or listening to the tour guides recite their scripts--yes, there are those of us who listen! In addition, I LOVE picking up those little self published booklets that you'll find in the gift shops of MANY places around the hills or rest stops.

Many times, I don't buy them, I just browse them right there in the store. Somehow, something sticks in the back of my brain until I start on something, talking about history or superstitions. I don't have a photographic memory or anything as grand as that, but those little books have proven quite entertaining, and rather informative of how life was for that family in that community.

One place that I will credit, too is the Hillbilly Savants blog. They had a great article on an earthquake and I did incorporate that into the show with a story of a meeting with the devil and some old demon exorcism goodies from the Bible.

I am ambiguous about time in the play: there are still quakes and such these days (one last year right here in Alabama) on the fault line that made these mountains.

AH: Where in Appalachia is the play set?

CBA: I wrote the play to be ambiguous in the locale. The mountains are so wide and diverse, one hill to the next is different, much less Georgia mountains to Tennessee to Virginia to Pennsylvania. I took a little from each place and created a few of my own "legends". The show is presented in a storyteller style so it's pretty audience friendly with very simple staging and production. I was also a little ambiguous on the language. At times, I cannot understand a word from the folks in the hills--whether from Virginia or Georgia.... Or my own family! But we've tried to remain true to mountain sounds, still remaining understandable by general audiences without being caricatures or stereotypes.


AH: Does the play take a religious moral stance?

CBA: You can't tell the stories of the mountains without including a big dose of God and His affect on the lives of the people of the mountains. Many healers quoted the Bible for their powers to stop blood or draw out fire. Faith and church was a source of comfort, support and hope in difficult times and a joyous gathering place when times were good. Going to meeting was source of news and certainly gave the spread-out lonesome hills a sense of community. I never wrote the show intending to have such a strong dose of religion or any sort of message or morality play. God is simply an everyday presence, and religion a way of life, for these characters. These are joyful souls.

AH: The show's music is entirely a cappella. Why that choice?

CBA: Singing the songs a capella lend the production towards what I consider an honest and true voice that should be uncaring of whether there is perfect pitch or not. The voices are REAL voices that sing hymns next to you in church or sing when working around the house. The religious songs are reminiscent of songs you've heard in church.

Camp meetings were a constant gathering place in the hills and songs traveled as much as the preachers. The first song is a mountain story song, passing the news of a local event. The next is a lullaby, sung to comfort a boy and pray for healing. The song that ends the first act is a toe-tapping hymn to encourage faith and hope.

The second act contains another spiritual calling sinners to God before it's too late. Then there's a mountain story-song of Ma Mary and the tragedy that befell her and her children. The play ends with the chorus of a traditional hymn that reminds Kate of her grandmother.



"Appalachian Witches" runs January 30 and 31 at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $15 per person and groups of 12 and more are $12 each. Tickets are available at 536-2882 or www.burrittonthemountain.com. At the Old Country Church at Burritt.

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    

(continued from yesterday...)

When the Union forces first reached Atlanta, Callahan sent his daughter word not to go in for more goods, but to stay home with the children. From 30 miles away the loud roar of cannon could be clearly heard. She declared in 1928 that she would never forget the battle sound. Callahan was killed during the battle of Atlanta, after having fought for the Confederacy for several years.

After the burning of Atlanta, Sherman's march took him through the Indian family's cornfields, which were "in roasting ear," and Nancy assumed full responsibility for providing food for the other fatherless children.

Nancy remained single for over 40 more years. In her seventies, she married Norman Dollar and moved to the Mentone area. Twenty years later, her husband died. She managed to buy his tombstone by selling her cow. From this time until her death eight years later, the legends grew around Granny Dollar. She enjoyed embellishing the stories told about her and encouraged their telling. She told fortunes and managed to survive by growing chickens and vegetables and by the generosity of friends and neighbors.

"Another race has taken our fields, our forests and our game. Their children now play where we once were so happy. The trouble with the white race," she mused, "is that they lay up so much for old age that they quit work at 50 or 60 years. When they stop working, they get out of touch with nature; all wear shoes in summer which keeps them from God's good earth; then they begin to fail, and soon they are dead."

Her last years were spent on Colonel Milford Howard's property. The ruins of her cabin are almost hidden from DeKalb County Highway 156, on the south side of the road a short distance east of DeSoto Parkway. The chimney still stands and vines have taken over the decaying ruins. Across the paved road a dirt road meanders up a hill to the former site of Colonel Howard's Master School.

Colonel Howard is responsible for much of the legend surrounding Granny Dollar. In 1928 he wrote a feature story about her for The Birmingham News. He met Granny upon his return from a long stay in California. She had then settled into one of his cabins. Although his own financial situation was precarious, Howard agreed to provide for Nancy, which included a bit of fat meat in her greens and biscuits, her baccy for her ever-present corncob pipe, and rations for her “Injun” chickens and mongrel dog Buster.

Buster was very old himself, having reached the age of 20. He'd long served as Granny's faithful guardian, ever ready to attack anyone who approached either him or his mistress. He had frightened so many people and had even bitten several children, Buster was despised by the neighbors as a mean, vicious beast, but Granny had loved him.

Preparing for her own demise, Granny had saved twenty-three dollars toward a tombstone, but the money was stolen from her. Three years to the day from the publication date of the Progressive Farmer article about Granny Dollar, the January 28, 1931 issue of the Fort Payne Journal announced her death.

People in the community arranged for her burial beside her husband in Little River Cemetery, and Colonel Howard delivered the eulogy.

After Granny's funeral no one wanted Buster and he was equally unwilling to have anything to do with any prospective new master or protector. When neighbors went to check on the old dog, they found him gnawing the door, his angry snarl revealing the gums which once had held dangerous teeth.

After he refused to be coaxed or driven from his vigil, the mountaineers decided it would be more humane to chloroform Buster than to allow him to grieve himself to death or slowly starve. When Buster’s body was buried, another funeral was held with Col. Milford W. Howard, famous lawyer, congressman and author, eulogizing Granny Dollar’s faithful mongrel dog.

In 1973, largely through the efforts of Annie Young of Fort Payne, Granny’s tombstone was erected. The head of an Indian woman is inscribed at the top and "Daughter of the Cherokee" is written at the bottom, next to the dates "1826-1931" (her exact birth date is uncertain.)


Sources: www.desotostatepark.com/lol-Granny%20Dollar.htm
www.mentonealabama.org/Strayhorn/StrayhornLegends.htm
http://www.mentonealabama.org/Granny.htm



Granny+Dollar Ft+Payne+AL Trail+of+Tears Cherokees appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Cherokees, Ft Payne AL, Granny Dollar, Trail of Tears

She said she was 101 at the time of the interview in the January 28, 1928 issue of the Progressive Farmer, but she remembered the early days of childhood well.

There is no doubt that Nancy Emmaline Callahan Dollar, who came to be known as "Granny Dollar," was what is known as a character. This friendly old woman, who lived on Lookout Mountain about nine miles from Fort Payne, AL, enjoyed reminiscing and talking to visitors.

Born in Buck's Pocket (a five-mile-long gorge on Sand Mountain spanning DeKaIb, Jackson and Marshall counties) eight miles east of Coffeetown, Nancy was the daughter of a Cherokee father named William Callahan and a half Cherokee Indian, half Scots-Irish mother named Mary Sexton.

She enjoyed the games played by Indian children, including one called "dog and fox" and liked to pitch quoits, an activity similar to pitching horseshoes. She never attended any kind of school.

Nancy's father hunted game while the rest of the family raised corn and potatoes. On one occasion after having killed a very large deer, her father appeared to be very sad and unable to eat. The concerned mother, after persistent questioning finally elicited the reason for his distress. "I cannot eat my meat," he said. "I fear my three poor little children in South Carolina are hungry. I have a wife and three children in South Carolina and I was forced to leave them there." Nancy's mother replied, "Go and fetch them. There is room and plenty to eat."

Thus, Nancy's family soon included another mother and sister and two more brothers. The Cherokees were allowed to have more than one wife and in Nancy's family, at least, there appeared to be no dissension or jealousy. "My father's hut was enjoyed by all," she recalled.

She remembered that her mother appeared as happy over the new arrivals as did the children and had her big dirt oven full of baked potatoes and venison ready for the ravenous children. The two women labored together in raising the crops and caring for the family. Together, they had a total of 26 children, including three sets of triplets born to Nancy's mother.

This large family ate wild turkey, deer and fish with vegetables, which included cabbage, pumpkin and corn. Their corn was roasted with the shuck on. Johnnie cake, sweetened with molasses and hominy, were also common foods. The oven used for cooking their meals was made of red clay and was used under a shed outside the home.

When most Indians left this area to join the forced march over the "Trail of Tears," William Callahan avoided moving his family from their beloved mountain home by hiding in a cave. He did leave later, however, after an altercation with a white man named Jukes, during which the Indian, his temper aroused by curses and a false accusation, bit off Jukes' nose and one ear. Fearing that the Jukes family might retaliate by burning his home, Callahan moved to Georgia and settled in Marthasville, near Atlanta.

When Nancy was about 21 years old she sought a way to make money in order to help provide food for her many younger brothers and sisters. One of the mothers was now dead (she did not specify which one.)

She began hauling goods from Marthasville to the country stores near her home, a distance of 30 miles. She made long trips over rough roads in a covered, or tar-pole, wagon drawn by two mules. The wagon axles were greased and the mules hitched, unhitched and fed by Nancy herself.

Slaves helped her load the goods at Kyle Brothers Wholesalers and storekeepers helped her unload the cases of molasses, meat, salt, powder, lead, gun caps, shoes, dishes and wagon tires which she hauled for some 15 or 20 years. She was never robbed or molested in any way during the many trips she made alone.

During this period she became engaged to a storekeeper's son named Thomas Porter, but the Civil War ended this romance. Porter joined the Confederate Army and was killed in battle.

(continued tomorrow...)

Sources: www.desotostatepark.com/lol-Granny%20Dollar.htm
www.mentonealabama.org/Strayhorn/StrayhornLegends.htm
http://www.mentonealabama.org/Granny.htm



Granny+Dollar Ft+Payne+AL Trail+of+Tears Cherokees appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Cherokees, Ft Payne AL, Granny Dollar, Trail of Tears

The South in the days before the Civil War had despised manufacturing, but the men who rebuilt the war-ravaged Southern states were well aware of the importance of industrialization.

The new era began with the opening of the Piedmont Mill in the upper part of South Carolina in 1876. The textile industry grew quickly after 1880, and South Carolina was one of the leading textile-producing states in the nation for the next forty years. By 1892 there were fifty-one mills in South Carolina, making the state first in the nation in power looms and second in spindles. Textile mills became a major element of industry, commerce, and society in the upcountry.

William Ashmead Courtenay of Charleston was one of the pioneers of the industrial movement which transferred the bulk of the American cotton industry from New England to the Southern states where the raw material is produced. Courtenay served as mayor of that city from 1879-1887, where he was lauded for his handling of a major earthquake in 1886.

In weighing a location for the cotton mill he wished to build, Courtenay selected the Piedmont section of South Carolina for proximity to the growing fields, and narrowed his choice to Oconee County with its river resources flowing vigorously out of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Among other criteria he considered was the expanding rural population with its eagerness for "real pay" and more favorable living conditions. He knew that a new, clean village with more conveniences and steady pay would draw the sharecroppers. And indeed, many unsuccessful farmers did turn to the textile mill for employment.

Of a nervous temperament, his was an impetuous and in some respects aggressive nature, involving constant effort to restrain impulses and check too hasty action. He possessed quick perceptive power, tireless energy, strong facility for organization, wonderful capacity for work and marked executive ability. Impatient of unnecessary delays, this with some left the impression of needless austerity and impulsiveness, but under all this seeming brusqueness there was a genial disposition.

----Description of William Ashmead Courtenay from History of South Carolina, by Yates Snowden, Harry Gardner Cutler, Lewis Publishing Company, 1920

On April 21, 1893, Courtenay and his associates received a charter from the South Carolina secretary of state "to establish a factory in Oconee County for the manufacturing, spinning, dying, printing, and selling of all cotton and woolen goods." Courtenay built his cotton mill and a village of workers' houses along the Little River, naming the town Newry in memory of his ancestors’ original family home in Ireland.

There was a rumor about William Courtenay using funds allocated for earthquake relief in Charleston in order to start the mill community, says Henry Cater, who worked for Courtenay Manufacturing Company from 1952 to 1964, in an oral history. Even the location of the mill is key to the story, as it was claimed that the community was essentially “hidden” by its location in the valley.

Cater says the corporation formed by Courtenay with Frances J. Pelzer, William B. Whaley, R. C. Rhett, W. B. S. Hayward, and John C. Carey in fact raised stock aboveboard and was innocent of that charge.

"It was in a sparsely settled and unfrequented corner of the county," Courtney wrote of the new site to his stockholders. "Labor had to be brought there, shelters built for them; in fact all the primitive conditions of the distant border had to be dealt with, machinery for brick making and other purposes had to be transported from distant points, one and a half miles of railroad must be graded and built."

Courtenay Mill was constructed in a typical New England textile factory design. The design is attributed to William B. Whaley. On June 14, 1894, water first turned one of the mill power wheels. The mill was in full operation by the end of that year. The plant was originally operated by hydro power, but about 1905, steam engines and boilers increased production.

Many of the structures at Newry, including the mill, mill office, post office, store, church, supervisors' houses, and many of the workers' houses, were built between 1893 and 1911. The houses are excellent examples of buildings in a planned textile village.

Courtenay also built a house at Newry which he called Innisfallen and lived there until 1902. That year he told stockholders in the company’s annual report: “Under the Company's By-Laws it has not been possible for me to be absent for more than a few days at a time during these ten years. I may be obliged to have a vacation in the coming spring.” But it was more than a vacation. He moved to Columbia, the state capital, where he spent the last years of his life, dying in 1908.

The mill itself closed in 1975, and The Newry Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.


Sources: www.newrymillsc.org/
http://192.220.96.192/wac.htm
http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/oconee/history/FCH-10.txt
http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/oconee/cemeteries/c137a.txt
www.lib.clemson.edu/SpCol/findingaids/manuscripts/Mss278Wegner.pdf
www.oconeeheritagecenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25
www.nationalregister.sc.gov/oconee/S10817737008/S10817737008.pdf



William+Ashmead+Courtenay Newry+SC Oconee+County+SC cotton+merchants appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, cotton merchants, Newry SC, Oconee County SC, William Ashmead Courtenay

“Look at the city--at any city built by man! They, the great last word of the century, a tremendous expression of the human intellect, grow up wild, according to no plan or intention, allowing nothing for expansion, discommoding everybody, causing intolerable civic growing-pains, and utterly upsetting any adventitious efforts toward beauty or dignity of proportion in the whole."

"They might, at least," agreed the White Pigeon, "take advantage of facilities close at hand for their own comfort. I see every day the waste of material and of opportunity in this ramshackle, helter-skelter civilization of theirs. It disturbs my rest at night when I think of the hundreds sweltering in trap-like rooms where the air is utterly still and seems to burn. They add to the heat of their closed-in dwellings by fires for cooking. How they must suffer!"

"Some of them go out in autos to cool off," said the Sparrow.

"How many can do so?--one in fifty?--and how much intelligence do they display in joy-riding? Gliding through the open country, breathing the sweet evening scents from the fields, is one good way of resting the overstrained system; but a mad rush is another thing--the unrestrained impulse to speed that rests nobody, and leads to fearful calamities."

"If more autos traveled tortoise," said the Sparrow, "there wouldn't be so many turning turtle. But let me tell you that some folks have learned how to sleep. More and more beds are made in the open air as old superstitions are overcome, superstitions about malaria and night air no less than about ghosts and wild beasts that might get you if you don't watch out. There are families in the suburbs who eat on one porch and sleep on another almost year round."

"There ought to be plenty of such families right in town, too," said the White Pigeon.

"Oh, yes; that proves what I said, or began to say," declared the Gray Pigeon. "That Man is capable of planning well enough for his own individual needs, but has never learnt to think collectively; for the good of all. Now, above these same sleepers, just over their heads, in fact, there are acres and acres of cool open space where hundreds might sleep in comfort under the stars if they only would, lifted clear of the noise and dust of the streets, continually filling their lungs with a sleeper's deep draughts of life-giving oxygen, and never missing the lightest breeze that stirs the night.

"But these broad roof spaces that might be such a blessing every night through the hot months to tired throngs of toilers, remain an undiscovered country, an utter desert. No one ever makes the slightest use of them, except when I walk across the gravel with which they are covered and choose a few for my crop."

"Not all cities so neglect this opportunity," said the White Pigeon. "The Swallow tells of splendid roof developments in some parts of the country. There are roof gardens, and hospital tents, and even schools for anemic or tubercular children of rich and poor who would perish in the ordinary confined schoolroom."

"Well, sometime it will be so here," said the Gray Pigeon. "Sometime when property becomes too valuable to let an inch of space go to waste. Overcrowding will go on as it has elsewhere, till the growing pressures causes an upward burst, and then the Overhead Country will be discovered, utilized, improved, and made the most of in all sorts of ways, to the benefit of everybody who lives or works in the crowded portion of the city."

*****

From April - June 1924 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write "Fountain Square Conversations." The "Conversations" cleverly combined her naturalist's knowledge and her social commentary. They featured birds and other creatures on the square conversing under the shadows of the human statues. Miles (1879-1919) is remembered primarily for "The Spirit of the Mountains" (1905), the first comprehensive study of Southern Appalachian culture.


sources: www.phoebeclaire.com/miles/fsc20.htm
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/documents/pdf/fall_2005/emmabell_miles.pdf

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Chattanooga TN, Emma B. Miles

Scots-Irish or not, you may already be aware that this year is the 250th anniversary of the widely loved Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). Many of the bard's songs and poems have become international favorites - even among those who find his use of Scottish lowland dialect difficult to decipher.

If you find yourself in Franklin, NC this week, you might want to track down The Friends of the Scottish Tartans Museum. They, like lovers of Burns everywhere, host an annual Burns Supper, a celebratory tribute to the life, works and spirit of the man, on, or about, the poet's birthday, January 25th. Suppers range from stentoriously formal scholarly gatherings to uproariously informal sloshfests of drunkards and louts.

Most Burns Suppers fall in the middle of this range, and adhere, more or less, to some sort of time honored form which includes only three absolutely essential elements: Burns himself – in a toast, a poem or a song, haggis or some other great Scottish food, and hospitality.

A traditional Burns Supper outline:

The Selkirk Grace

The meal commences with the recital of Selkirk Grace, which is actually the prayer read aloud before the meal and goes like this:

Some hae meat but cannae eat.
Some hae nane but want it:
But we hae meat and we can eat,
So let the Lord be thankit.'

Address to the Haggis

This is a threatening moment for the haggis, which is about to be stabbed by the chairman after he pronounces the last words it will ever hear: The 'Address to the haggis'!

'His knife, see rustic labour dicht
An' cut ye up wi' ready slight'

The address should ideally be accompanied by some gestures to give a hint to those who are not familiar with the poet's language and be followed by the guests toasting the haggis with whiskey.

The Bill o' Fare

A typical Burns' night menu might include: Cock-a-leekie soup, an old Scottish recipe, the main course of Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties and a sweet course of Tyspy Laird (sherry trifle)

The Immortal Memory

This speech comes in many different types, ranging from smart and humorous, to literary and historical, but the main point is to praise Burns as a great man and poet and invite everyone to toast to his immortal memory.

Toast to 'the Lassies'

This toast aims to outline the importance of women in the life of the poet (and in ours!) It is given by a male guest in thanks to the women who have prepared the meal. The speaker invites all men to stand and toast 'To the lassies', in a complimentary or funny tone; however, he should be aware, as the lassies are the ones who have the last word!

Reply to the Toast to the Lassies

A woman will stand and reply to the previous toast, (hopefully) thanking the speaker in an amusing way. She might also make a reference to Burns' women and life. Burns spread his affections freely, and in one decade saw 8 illegitimate children born to him through 5 different women. One of these, Jean Armour, became Mrs. Burns in 1788.

Closing poems and songs

Favorite poems and recitations which usually follow are "Holy Willie's Prayer," "To A Mouse," "Tam o' Shanter", and of course "Auld Lang Syne."

Holy Willie's prayer is a poem written about a certain Willie Fisher, an elder in the Parish church of Mauchline, in Ayrshire. Burns rented a farm near Mauchline as a young man.

Fisher was a hypocrite and himself a sinner who spied on people and reported them to the minister if he thought they were doing wrong. The poem is a satire based on Fisher's sickly self-righteousness. The phrase "Holy Willie" has become part of the Scots language for describing someone humorless and ultra religious.

"To A Mouse" was part of Burns' first published work of poetry ---"Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect" ---published in July 1786.

The success of this first effort convinced Burns to abandon plans to emigrate to Jamaica. Buoyed by his burgeoning reputation as an unschooled "ploughman poet," Burns moved from Mauchline to Edinburgh. He was unable to find a patron to support his writing, but publisher James Johnson gave him work editing a collection of Scottish folk songs.

In 1790 he produced "Tam o'Shanter", which was first published merely as an accompaniment to an illustration of Alloway Kirk, in a volume of "Antiquities of Scotland.".

All the while Burns was still editing the folk song collection, titled "The Scots Musical Museum", which was ultimately published in 5 volumes over sixteen years. Burns himself contributed over 150 songs, including "Auld Lang Syne," a reworking of an earlier folk song of unknown origin.

It's the one piece we ALL know of Burns, whether we know the man by name or not, and so it's fitting that a Burns Supper always ends with everyone joining hands and singing "Auld Lang Syne".


sources: www.scottishtartans.org/burns.htm
www.britainexpress.com/History/bio/burns.htm
www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/holy_willie.htm
www.burnssupper2009.com/burns-night/default.aspx



Robert+Burns Burns+Suppers Scots-Irish appalachia +appalachia+history appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Burns Suppers, Robert Burns, Scots-Irish

A Fort Payne, AL city library had been established during the 1889-1891 boom and located on a second floor in the Opera House block. But during the mid-1890s depression years there was no money available for library service. Although various women volunteered their services as librarian during these years, no new books were purchased. Old books were lost or destroyed and interest waned.

Finally, through the efforts of a very remarkable Fort Payne woman, a library was again established in 1930. Mrs. Mary C. Weatherly, wife of C. I. Weatherly, president of the First National Bank, scoured the county for books and, with 400 volumes donated by interested citizens, started the Fort Payne Library on October 1 that year. This date marked the beginning of 40 years of library service to the citizens of DeKalb County by Mrs. Weatherly, a period during which she neither received nor desired any compensation.

The city council having agreed to pay the $5.00 per month rent for the upstairs room of the Masonic Building, F. E. Ladd donated coal for the open grate which heated the room. The initial supplies were purchased from a $100 loan made by Mrs. Georgia McFarlane, who was reimbursed in money from small charges collected for the rental of books. Every day of the week Mrs. Weatherly ascended the stairs to the library carrying her infant son in her arms, and proceeded to build and tend the fire and to serve as librarian, janitor and handyman.

By 1940 the little room was not large enough to hold the 4,000 volumes Mrs. Weatherly had accumulated through donations and careful buying. Fortunately the WPA was at this time providing funds for small libraries, and $11,000 thus obtained was matched by the state and county. But as federal and state money could be used for county libraries only, the name was changed to DeKalb County Library whence it came to be moved to the basement of the new City Hall.


sources: www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/4826/Dekalb/history_dekalb_city_fort_payne.htm#History_p_2
www.landmarksdekalbal.org/communities/FortPayne4.html



Ft.+Payne+AL libraries appalachia appalachian+history appalachia+history Mary+C.+Weatherly

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Ft. Payne AL, libraries, Mary C. Weatherly

This is an excerpt from a 1949 letter written by Capt. Tom Greene, owner of Greene Line Steamers, to his friend Dan Heekin, a Cincinnati industrialist and river buff. The letter was discovered tucked in a copy of Steamboats & Steamboatmen by Ellis C. Mace.


“I have about decided to put the CHRIS GREENE'S whistle on the DELTA for the following reasons. First of all I like it as it is of low mellow 'big boat' quality. I don't believe it will annoy the passengers sleep and it comes from the HOMER SMITH which boat was partially owned by one Capt. C.C. Bowyer a great friend of my Dad's and a banker in Point Pleasant, W.Va.

“Capt. Bowyer was a 'friend in need' when the going was rough for my Dad and he went all out financially to help Dad after he had bought the WHITE COLLAR LINE from Commodore Laidley in 1903. Besides a good whistle I feel that it would be sort of a tribute to Capt. Bowyer from a sentimental standpoint to use this HOMER-SMITH-CHRIS GREENE whistle.

“The TOM GREENE'S whistle is the most historic on the river. It was my Dad's favorite and some of the oldtimers have said that my Dad bought the WHITE COLLAR LINE to get that whistle. It was then on the Str. COURIER. It had been on the sidewheel EXPRESS which I believe ran before the Civil War. It was later on the Str. ST. LAWRENCE and has always been known as the ST. LAWRENCE whistle.

“My Dad certainly loved this whistle and it was on nearly all the G.L. boats at one time or another. My Dad sorta wore this whistle as he did his hat and had it aboard the boat he generally thought he would be on for a long period.

“Just a little more history on the TOM GREENE-ST. LAWRENCE whistle while I'm about it. During the 1917-'18 ice siege, the GREENLAND had the ST. LAWRENCE whistle and at that time the GREENLAND was on the docks at the old Cincinnati Marine Ways here in East End.

“Of course you probably recall the ice knocked the GREENLAND off the cradles at that point and down the river she came in the gorge sideways. As I had been born on the GREENLAND my Dad called my Mother at home in Hyde Park and said, "…get Tom out of school and bring him down here to the wharfboat to see his birthplace go by," which my Mother did. I was then eleven years old and in the formative age when things impress you.

“When I got down to the boat the gorge was moving fast, the other GREENE LINE boats had steam up and were 'comin ahead strong.' There was a 'wailing and gnashing' of timberheads, cavels and lines snapping. Pretty soon someone hollered, "here she comes," meaning the GREENLAND. As the GREENLAND hove in sight on her side everybody stood in silence. There was an old purser on the wharfboat who had been on the GREENLAND a long time and he too was in love with the ST. LAWRENCE whistle and he said he would give a hundred dollars to anyone who could get that whistle off the boat when the gorge stopped moving.

“The next couple of days the GREENLAND was down about Rising Sun, Ind., and in the meantime some thieves went out on the ice and took off the whistle, got some chairs and the boats silverware. They were apprehended and the whistle returned. My Dad dropped the charges against the thieves feeling that getting the whistle back and the risk they had taken in going over on the boat in the gorge should cancel the charges against them.”

Caption reads: Steamer Greenland 10 minutes after breaking away from Dock. Flood and Ice Gorge, 1918, Cincinnati, O.

The Greenland was Gordon Greene's finest boat of his Greene Line fleet. He watched helplessly as the ice swept away three of his wharf boats. The Greenland was a total loss. An ice gorge was an ever possible winter danger up & down the Ohio River. It occurs as a result of river ice piling up against an obstruction, such as a wharf, forming a temporary dam. When that ice pack-up finally breaks, the channel formed down the river’s middle is the ice gorge. The river, which flows at the same speed as before, is now forced through a narrower channel, which means the churning waters rolling down an ice gorge are great destroyers of boats and anything else swept into it.

The White Collar Line was one of the early steamboat lines to ply the Ohio River and westward. Its Mississippi River network extended from St. Louis north to St. Paul. Its name comes from the broad painted collars encircling the tops of the ship smoke stacks, which identified the boats at a distance from rival lines.

The White Collar Line competed fiercely with an operator known as the Northern or Red Collar line for passenger and freight traffic. Each strove to profitably carry freight at lower rates than the other, and neither company was above giving passengers free berths and meals, or a money consideration on the side to win their business away from the other steamboat line.


Sources: www.vangrafx.com/PTHS/river/lafayettepg2.html
www.steamboats.org/history-education/tom-greene-letter.html
www.cincinnativiews.net/flood_&_ice_gorge.htm



ice+gorge White+Collar+Line steamboats Ohio+River appalachia appalachian+history appalachia+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, ice gorge, Ohio River, steamboats, White Collar Line

When I was born, I guess everybody just threw up their hands! The night I was born, Hobart went to visit with the neighbors, the Buckles family, across the street. According to Hobart, Mr. Gray Buckles said, “Well, It looks like the stork is visiting Oscar’s house again." Joe Bush, one of the Buckles’ relatives who was also visiting, responded: "Hell, that ain’t no stork! That’s a duck! The stork’s done worn its legs off!” So, I came into the world with laughter echoing on Carolina Hill.
---from ‘The Flavour of Home: A Southern Appalachian Family Remembers’ by Earlene Rather O’Dell

Earlene O’Dell, born in Bristol, TN, certainly wasn’t the first person in Appalachia to be exposed to the idea that the stork delivers babies. This myth can be found widely throughout US culture. In O’Dell’s case, it’s entirely possible that she could have encountered North America’s only native stork, the wood stork, as a child. The wood stork has a post-breeding summer range that extends from its Gulf Coast wetlands nest areas north to Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

But the physical presence of wood storks hardly explains why ‘stork stories’ are so prevalent in areas of the US where wood storks never venture. The folk tales and beliefs that Appalachia’s German immigrants brought to their new home are a better place to look. The stork’s association with babies seems to have originated in northern Germany centuries ago.

In that country, white storks are known as “Adebar” which translates as “luck-bringer.” And apparently seed bringer, as well; even today pregnant German women are said to have been ‘bitten by the stork.’

Storks nesting on one's roof means good luck generally, and especially in the form of family happiness. The birds were actively encouraged to nest there. German nursery stories are full of references to the stork delivering babies down a chimney. By contrast, in rural Denmark, it means bad luck if a stork builds a nest on your roof; someone in the house will die before the end of the year.

One popular German stork tale revolves around the folk legend that the souls of unborn children live in watery areas such as marshes, wells, springs and ponds. Since storks visit such habitats frequently, they were believed to fetch babies’ souls and deliver them to their parents.

White storks are highly migratory, leaving Europe for Africa in the fall. They return to central and northern Europe in late March or early April, and hence are regarded as a herald of spring.

They arrive just about nine months after Midsummer's Day, June 21, the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. This was a major festival in pagan Europe, a time for weddings and merrymaking well lubricated by fermented beverages.

(After the arrival of Christianity the feast continued to be celebrated as Saint John's Day; the modern association of June with weddings may also be related to this festival.) The return of storks just as the progeny resulting from summer revels put in their appearance would not have gone unnoted.

Furthermore, storks are monogamous, tend to return to and raise their annual offspring in the same nests, and seem to attach themselves to the same houses or villages year after year.

No surprise, then, that they’ve come to symbolize traditional human ideals of home, family, fertility, faithfulness and constancy.


Sources: The Flavour of Home: A Southern Appalachian Family Remembers, by Earlene Rather O’Dell, The Overmountain Press, 2000
Beacham's Guide to the Endangered Species of North America, by Walton Beacham et al., Thomson Gale, 2000
www.cafebabel.com/eng/article/24532/bun-in-the-oven.html
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2144/why-are-storks-associated-with-babies
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=stork



stork+myth Earlene+Rather+O’Dell.+Bristol+TN appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Earlene Rather O’Dell. Bristol TN, stork myth

On January 17, 1781, American General Daniel Morgan scored a stunning victory over British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre “Barbarous Ban” Tarleton’s regulars at the Battle of Cowpens, in what is now Cherokee County, SC. This win came at a crucial time for Revolutionary War patriots in the South, who had been repeatedly forced to retreat.

Private James Collins, a 17-year-old South Carolinian, served in that state’s militia during the campaign in the South. He writes of the day:

“It was not long until it became necessary for us to seek safety by joining Morgan, who was encamped at the Cowpens, but we were not permitted to remain long idle, for Tarleton came on like a thunder storm, which soon put us to our best mettle.

“After the tidings of his approach came into camp--in the night--we were all awakened, ordered under arms, and formed in order of battle by daybreak. About sunrise on the l7th January, 1781, the enemy came into full view. The sight, to me at least, seemed somewhat imposing; they halted for a short time, and then advanced rapidly, as if certain victory.

“The militia under Pickins and Moffitt, was posted on the right of the regulars some distance in advance, while Washington's cavalry was stationed in the rear. We gave the enemy one fire, when they charged us with their bayonets; we gave way and retreated for our horses, Tarleton's cavalry pursued us; ("now," thought I, "my hide is in the loft;") just as we got to our horses, they overtook us and began to make a few hacks at some, however, without doing much injury.

“They, in their haste, had pretty much scattered, perhaps thinking they would have another Fishing creek frolic, but in a few moments, Col. Washington's cavalry was among them, like a whirlwind, and the poor fellows began to kneel from their horses, without being able to remount.

“The shock was so sudden and violent, they could not stand it, and immediately betook themselves to flight; there was no time to rally, and they appeared to be as hard to stop as a drove of wild Choctaw steers, going to a Pennsylvania market.

“In a few moments the clashing of swords was out of hearing and quickly out of sight; by this time, both lines of the infantry were warmingly engaged and we being relieved from the pursuit of the enemy began to rally and prepare to redeem our credit, when Morgan rode up in front, and waving his sword, cried out, ‘Form, form, my brave fellows! Give them one more fire and the day is ours. Old Morgan was never beaten.’

“We then advanced briskly, and gained the right flank of the enemy, and they being hard pressed in front, by Howard, and falling very fast, could not stand it long. They began to throw down their arms, and surrender themselves prisoners of war. The whole army, except Tarleton and his horsemen, fell into the hands of Morgan, together with all the baggage.

“After the fight was over, the sight was truly melancholy. The dead on the side of the British, exceeded the number killed at the battle of King's Mountain, being if I recollect aright, three hundred, or upwards. The loss, on the side of the Americans, was only fifteen or sixteen, and a few slightly wounded.

“This day, I fired my little rifle five times whether with any effect or not, I do not know, Next day after receiving some small share of the plunder, and taking care to get as much powder as we could, we (the militia) were disbanded and returned to our old haunts, where we obtained a few day's rest."

--- from Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, by James Collins, Clinton, LA: Feliciana Democrat, 1859

Cowpens, along with the recent battle at King's Mountain, was a triumph that the Continentals urgently needed to boost their morale, and demoralize the British army and loyalist sympathizers. It was a decisive blow to Britain’s commanding General Cornwallis, who might have defeated much of the remaining resistance in South Carolina had Tarleton won. That cold clear January day was a turning point in the Patriots' war for independence.


Sources: The Historical Atlas of the American Revolution, by Ian Barnes, Charles Royster, Routledge, 2000
www.theinternetfoundation.org/Family/RevolutionaryWar.htm
www.freeinfosociety.com/article.php?id=193
www.ngb.army.mil/resources/photo_gallery/heritage/cowpen.html



Revolutionary+War Battle+of+Cowpens appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Battle of Cowpens, Revolutionary War

Please welcome guest blogger C.J. Pitzer. Pitzer, who recently graduated from West Virginia University with both a Bachelor Degree in Political Science and a Masters Degree in Business Administration, has recently begun researching the life of West Virginia towns that were submerged by the Tygart Lake Dam. He's publishing his findings in a brand new blog: Towns of Tygart Lake.


Ever thought it could happen in your own back yard? Visualizing your home sinking down to the dark depths forever arouses nightmares and primal fears. And yet this scenario became a reality in 1938 for those living along the river a few miles south of Grafton, WV.

Cecil WV, early 1900s. From 'Towns of Tygart Lake' blog.

The Tygart Lake Dam was designed to provide flood protection for the Tygart River Valley as well as for the Monongahela and upper Ohio rivers. Although the benefits of the dam may be now be seen as immeasurable in terms of preventing the loss of lives and property, there were some negatives associated with its construction. One of which was the flooding of many small towns along the banks of the Tygart river.

The rising water forever changed the land as well as the lives of those who had to be relocated.

These towns may have been small and insignificant compared to today’s standards; however, to their residents they were home. The first of these towns was Yates, located near the modern day swimming area of Tygart Lake. Next heading up stream was Stonehouse approximately two coves down from Yates.

The third, located in modern day Hailslip Cove, was called Cecil and may have been the largest of four communities. Cecil as a whole may not have been swallowed up by the lake; however, it seemed to have disappeared from the maps after the forming of the lake. The fourth small town was referred to as Sandy and was located close to the lake’s head waters. It appears to have been settled around the county line dividing Taylor and Barbour counties.

In an effort to put a human face on the flooding of these four small communities I have attempted to find newspaper stories that discuss how people were affected by the building of the dam. One Cecil resident, a W. W. McDaniel, was lauded in the Grafton Sentinel for his poems 'Where the Rhododendron Grows' and 'The Old Water Mill.'

His overall involvement in the community eventually led to his becoming known as the "Sage of Cecil." For 56 years Mr. McDaniel lived in Cecil, tending to his farm, marrying, and raising his children. This all would change in 1936 when the federal government compelled Mr. McDaniel to leave his home behind as the waters began to rise. The "land he loved so well was relinquished with the deepest sorrow." This is only one personal story related to the flooding of these towns and there are no doubt others just as dramatic.

Throughout history towns have been forgotten or abandoned, lost in the continuous march of time. These four towns suffered the same fate. Although they are gone in the physical sense the fact that they where once full of life is reason enough to remember them.



appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history Grafton+WV Tygart+Lake+Dam

Posted by Dave Tabler at 7:00 AM | 2 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Grafton WV, Tygart Lake Dam

A new president is being sworn in next week, so expect churchbells to peal in honor of the occasion.

There are two places in today's Appalachia where you can hear an authentic peal of the churchbells: at Breslin Tower in Convocation Hall at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, and at Patton Memorial Tower in St James' Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, NC. "What are you talking about?" you may say. "Why, my own local church has bells in the tower!"

The Bells at Breslin Tower, University of the South.

But a 'peal' is a technical term which comes down to us from the ancient art of change ringing. Change ringing of bells produces not a specific song, but rather a cascade of sound, and requires special bells. They are large, ranging in weight from a few hundred pounds to several tons. Bells for change ringing are hung in stout frames that allow the bells to swing through 360 degrees. Each bell is attached to a wooden wheel with a handmade rope running around it. The harmonic richness of a swinging bell cannot be matched by the same bell hanging stationary, and each swinging bell requires one ringer's full attention.

Change ringing is based on mathematical formulae in which every bell in a church’s tower is rung in a sequence, or a ‘change,’ followed by another sequence in which they are rung in a different order until a ‘peal’ is completed.

The more bells involved, the longer the bells can be rung without repeating a row. Five bells allow 120 changes. The numbers increase rapidly. Six bells yield 720 changes, seven bells 5,040. Eight bells can be rung through 40,320 changes. As a result of all the possible combinations, peals customarily last about three hours.

The changes, which are notated, are passed along through the sub-subculture of bell ringers just like folk songs. Change ringing is also called "ringing the changes."

Early American churches outfitted for change ringing naturally patterned themselves after the British model, in which a small number of bells, usually no more than twelve, were used. The first peal was rung in England in 1715. The first peal in North America was rung at Christ Church, Philadelphia, in 1850.

Breslin Tower was built in 1886 and modeled after Magdalen College of Oxford. It was not initially engineered for change ringing, but at first had only clock bells (installed around 1900) that were struck with hammers and did not swing. As a result, the stress placed on the tower was relatively insignificant when compared to that which would occur with change-ringing bells.

To the casual observer the bell tower looks imposing and strong. In reality, however, it required significant renovation to accommodate bells for change ringing (see this Traditional Masonry article for a discussion of how 4SE Inc., a structural engineering firm based in Charleston, S.C., dealt with the challenge.)

Today the tower houses Sewanee's Bentley Bells, which were made possible by a 2004 gift from Mrs. Donne Bentley Wright of Chattanooga. These English change ringing bells were cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry of London, England, which was also responsible for Big Ben and our Liberty Bell.

Early photo of St James & modern photo, showing Patton Memorial Tower.

Whitechapel Bell Foundry had also cast the bells for Patton Memorial Tower at St James’ Episcopal Church in Hendersonville. The tower and bells were dedicated in 1978, though the church congregation itself was by that point 135 years old.

In 1843, St. James was a scion emerging from the summers-only congregation of St. John's-in-the-Wilderness at Flat Rock---the "little Charleston of the mountains." St. James was carefully nurtured by the Rt. Rev. Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of North Carolina, who appointed the first rector, Nicholas Collin Hughes. The first church of St. James Parish was consecrated on September 19, 1863, with eight communicants.


Sources: www2.sewanee.edu/academics/catalog/the_university
www.traditionalmasonry.com/Articles/302/church-bell-masonry.cfm
www.nagcr.org/pamphlet.html
http://math.lib.umn.edu/changeringing.html



St+James+Episcopal+Church appalachia University+of+the+South change+ringing Hendersonville+NC Sewanee+TN appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, change ringing, Hendersonville NC, Sewanee TN, St James Episcopal Church, University of the South

After a serious train accident in 1891 in Ohio, caused by the malfunction of an engineer's watch, the North American railroad industry charged their General Time Inspector Webb C. Ball to establish unified standards for all the watches used by their personnel across the various participating Railroad Companies.

When these standards were developed, most manufacturers of the time adopted them and produced watches specifically for use on the railroad. The Ball Watch company did not actually produce any pocket watches of its own.

General Railroad Timepiece Standards included specifications such as:

• only American-made watches may be used (depending on availability of spare parts)
• only open-faced dials, with the stem at 12 o’clock
• minimum of 17 functional jewels in the movement, 16 or 18-size only

• maximum variation of 30 seconds (approximately 4 seconds daily) per weekly check
• watch adjusted to five positions (face up, face down, crown up, crown down, or sideways)
• adjusted for severe temperature variance (34 to 100 degrees Farenheit) and isochronism (variance in spring tension)
• indication of time with bold legible Arabic numerals, outer minute division, second dial, heavy hands,
• Breguet balance spring
• micrometer adjustment regulator
• double roller
• steel escape wheel
• anti-magnetic protection (after the advent of diesel locomotives)
• jim-proof
• lever set ( therefore no risk of having the stem left out, thus inadvertently setting the watch to an erroneous time), regulator, winding stem at 12 o'clock
• Have bold black arabic numerals on a white dial, with black hands.

The Waltham Watch Company quickly complied with the requirements of Ball's guidelines, and so did Elgin Watch Company and most of the other American watch manufacturers, applying the American System of Watch Manufacturing. Waltham became the official timekeeper of railroads in 52 different countries.

W.C. Ball's guidlines are the basis of the officially certified Chronometers standards, as now laid out by the "Société Suisse de Chronométrie," which was founded in 1924, and "The Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute" COSC ("Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres").


source: www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Railroad-chronometers



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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, railroad pocket watches, Webb C. Ball

When cold weather come on he would tell me to move his chair up in front of the fireplace. He would sprawl out there in the same way all winter long. There wasn't room for anybody else to get around saw just at the sides. Every time anybody set down he would rare about them killing time. 'Setting here hain’t buying the baby a new dress nor paying the one it's got,' he would say. And he would keep on patting his foot. Whether he was piddling with anything or not.

Sometimes though he wanted us to pop popcorn for him, and we did. We never could pop it to suit him much. He said he just liked to see the white balls go up and down. It did seem like they went up and down just like his foot---fell right into the time. He made us crack walnuts and pick out the kernels for him. One time he got so mad at Amy because she didn’t get the boy's britches out whole that he grabbed the hammer and hit her on the head with it. He knocked the breath plumb out of her.

That was before she was yet four year old. I though he had kilt her and it near scared the daylights out of me. Barshia didn’t do a thing but set there and grin like a possum all the time I was working with her. Amy still has got the scar on her face. None of us ever told the truth about the scar. We always just said she bumped into the crib door over there.

Barshia said he liked to watch the blaze and see the sparks fly up. Sparks like the color of his hair. And Barshia thought is was pretty—he was stuck on himself. Sometimes the smoke would puff out in the room and he would say 'Look at it. It comes right toward me. Smoke always follows beauty.' I guess he was right pretty. But just setting there all day.
---excerpt from "Barshia’s Horse He Made, It Flew"
The Hawk's Done Gone: And Other Stories
Mildred Haun (1911-1966)

Mildred Eunice Haun's only collection of fiction, The Hawk's Done Gone (1940), combines modern realism with ancient beliefs and superstitions, creating a disturbing yet intriguing look at east Tennessee mountain life in the period from the Civil War to 1940. The work consists of a group of stories linked by the narrator Mary Dorthula White and members of several families.

The themes of witchcraft, infanticide, incest, and miscegenation reveal a dark side of the author. But amid the talk of spirits and age-old prejudices is Haun's use of dialect, mountain beliefs, and songs. The collection is not quite a novel, but is more than a series of stories.


sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=H028
The Hawk's Done Gone: And Other Stories, by Mildred Haun, Vanderbilt University Press, 1985



The+Hawk's+Done+Gone Mildred+Haun Cocke+County+TN appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Cocke County TN, Mildred Haun, The Hawk's Done Gone

"Now to go back in history farther than my own time and recollections, let me venture upon some unoccupied territory and tell how Cherokee Georgia became the home of that much-maligned and misunderstood individual known as the Georgia cracker. I have lived long in his region, and am close akin to him.

"There is really but little difference between the Georgia cracker and the Alabama or Tennessee cracker. They all have, or had, the same origin, and until the Appalachian range was opened up to the rest of mankind by railroads and the schoolhouse these crackers had ways and usages and a language peculiarly their own.

"It will be remembered that until 1835 the Cherokee Indians owned and occupied this region of Georgia, the portion lying west of the Chattahoochee and north of the Tallapoosa Rivers. They were the most peaceable and civilized of all the tribes, but they were not subject to Georgia laws, and had many conflicts and disturbances with their white neighbors. It seemed to be manifest destiny that they should go. "Go West, red man!" was the white man's fiat. They went at the point of the bayonet, and all their beautiful country was suddenly opened to the ingress of whomsoever might come.

"Georgia had it surveyed and divided into lots of forty acres and one hundred and sixty acres, and then made a lottery and gave every man and widow and orphan child a chance in the drawing. But the cracker didn't wait for the drawing. The rude, untamed, and restless people from the mountain borders of Georgia and the Carolinas flocked hither to pursue their wild and fascinating occupation of hunting and fishing for a livelihood.

"They came separately, but soon assimilated and shared a common interest. There are such spirits in every community. There are some right here now who would rather go up to Cohutta Mountains on a bear hunt than to go to New York or Paris for pleasure. I almost would myself, and I recall the earnest cravings of my youth to go west and find a wilderness, and with my companions live in a hut and kill deer and turkeys, and sometimes a bear and a panther.

"But for my town raising and old field school education, I too would have made a very respectable cracker. This was the class of young men and middle-aged that first settled among these historic hills and valleys and climbed these mountains and fished in these streams.

"By and by the fortunate owners of these lands received their certificates, and many of them came from all parts of the state to look up their lots and see how much gold or how much bottom land there was upon them, but gold was the principal attraction. The Indians had found gold and washed it out of the creeks and branches and traded it in small parcels to the white man, and it was believed that every stream was lined with golden sand.

"This proved an illusion, and so the squatters were not disturbed, or else they bought the titles for a song and then sung 'sweet home' of their own. They built their cabins and cleared their lands and raised their scrub cattle, and with their old-fashioned rifles kept the family in game.

Maj. Charles H. Smith (Bill Arp)

"Many of these settlers could read and write, but in their day there was but little to read. No newspapers and but few books were found by the hunter's fireside. Their children grew up the same way, but what they lacked in culture they supplied in rough experiences and hairbreadth escapes and fireside talks, and in sports that were either improvised or inherited.

"Pony races, gander-pullings, shooting matches, 'coon hunting, and quiltings had more attractions than books. How they got to using such twisted language as "youuns" and "weuns" and "injuns" and "mout" and "gwine" and "all sich" is not known, nor was such talk universal. When such idioms began in a family, they descended and spread out among the kindred, but it was not contagious.

"I know one family now of very extensive connections who had a folklore of their own, and it can be traced back to the old ancestor who died a half century ago. But these corruptions of language are by no means peculiar to the cracker, for the English cockneys and the genuine yankee have an idiom quite as eccentric, though they do not realize it and would not admit it.

"The Georgia cracker was a merry-hearted, unconcerned, independent creature, and all he asked was to be let alone by the laws and the outside world."

Proceedings of the Fourth Congress at Atlanta, GA., April 28 to May 1, 1892

The Georgia Cracker
, by Maj. Charles H. Smith (Bill Arp), Cartersville, Ga.

Source: www.electricscotland.com/history/scotsirish/congress4-14.htm



Georgia+crackers Bill+Arp Charles+H.+Smith appalachia appalachian+history appalachia+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Bill Arp, Charles H. Smith, Georgia crackers

This photo, from the 'Museum of Found Photographs' on Flickr.com, measures 8 x 10 inches, photographer and exact location unknown. It was found in southern Ohio. Everyone in this image appears to be very pleased with the family's new washing machine save the young daughter on the right who seems indifferent. Note the son is smoking a pipe just like his father. '1911' appears on the roof of the building structure in the background, which gives us an approximate age of this photograph.

Compare the closeup of this B&W photo (below left) with the studio shot of the '1900' brand washer, ca. 1907 (below right). If you rotate the studio photo 180 degrees so that the '1900' logo faces away from you, the gear mechanism and the clamp key circled in the closeup suggest that our Ohio family are the proud owners of this washing machine brand.

"It is believed that the 1900 company was the first to mass produce and market the electric washing machine," says Dr. Lee Reynolds, author of Save Womens Lives---History of Washing Machines. He cites an article by a B. D. Flower in the December 1907 issue of The Arena, No. 217, page 593, whose accompanying photo shows a lady reading a newspaper while her washing is done by an electric powered washing machine manufactured by the Nineteen Hundred Company, proving that the electric washer was being manufactured by at least that date.



The Nineteen Hundred Company was the ancestor of the company we know today as Whirlpool. The Binghamton, NY company merged in 1929 with the Upton Machine Company of St. Joseph, MI, which had been making washers for Sears Roebuck & Co. since 1916. In 1948 the company, still called The Nineteen Hundred Company, began marketing Whirlpool brand washers. The manufacturer added automatic dryers to its product line in 1950 and changed its name to Whirlpool Corporation.

"It is estimated that there were over 1,000 companies producing washing machines during the early 1900s," says Reynolds, who holds the Guinness World Record for his collection of antique washing machines, numbering 1,060.

"Most of these companies were very small but almost all would have had the wherewithal to manufacture at least one electric washer. By 1900 small electric motors were sold with the intention that householders would connect them to hand cranked washing machines."


sources: www.oldewash.com/articles/Electric_Washer.pdf
http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/washingmachines.htm
Save Womens Lives---History of Washing Machines, by Lee Reynolds, Oldewash Publishing, Eaton, CO, 2003
www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Whirlpool-Corporation-Company-History.html



Ohio appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history washing+machines

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Better get started on putting that hitching post up outside your office building in Knoxville, TN. It's still the law.

Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard.

In Nicholas County, WV, no member of the clergy is allowed to tell jokes or humorous stories from the pulpit during a church service.

A Kentucky statute says: "No female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state unless she is escorted by at least two officers or unless she be armed with a club." Later, an amendment proposed: "The provisions of this statute shall not apply to any female weighing less than sixty pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds; nor shall it apply to female horses."

In Forest City, NC you must notify City Hall before entering the town.

Cross-dressing in the town of Ironton, OH is not allowed and will send you to jail.

One is forbidden from eating juicy watermelons at the Magnolia Street Cemetery in Spartanburg, SC.

While in Huntsville, AL if you see someone in an animal control officer uniform, that means by law the person is in fact an animal control officer.

In Cumberland, MD you may not bring missiles to a playground.

It's illegal to eat chicken with a fork in Gainesville, GA.


source: www.idiotlaws.com



crazy+laws appalachia +appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, crazy laws

When Gertrude Dills McKee of Jackson County took her seat in the North Carolina Senate on January 7, 1931, she became the first woman in the state's history to serve in that chamber. She was sworn in ten years after Lillian Exum Clement of Buncombe County became the first female member of the state House.

McKee (1885-1948) was in her day among the state's most prominent women and brought to the legislature a wealth of experience in public affairs. Born and reared in Dillsboro, she was the daughter of the town's founder. A 1905 graduate of Peace Institute, Dills in 1913 married Ernest Lyndon McKee. In 1923 the McKees bought the 2,300-acre estate of Wade Hampton at Cashiers and, with the help of investors, developed the present-day resort, High Hampton Inn.

Her first involvement in politics came in 1928 with her participation in the campaign for Congress of Zeb Weaver. Two years later Gertrude McKee successfully sought the state Senate seat from the Thirty-second District. She jokingly referred to her forty-nine male colleagues as "my children."

As chair of the public welfare committee, she took a special interest in child labor laws and old age assistance. Voters returned her to the Senate in 1937 and 1943, the year in which The State magazine speculated on the possibility of her becoming North Carolina's first female governor. In 1948, she died three weeks after being elected to a fourth Senate term.

Gertrude McKee's other activities as a civic leader and clubwoman were numerous: president, North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, 1925; president, Southeastern Council of Federated Women's Clubs, 1926; president, North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1928; Commission for Consolidation of the University of North Carolina, 1932; State Board of Education, 1943-1945; Commission to Restore Tryon Palace, 1945-1948; and a trustee of the University of North Carolina, Western Carolina University, Peace College, and Brevard College.


sources: North Carolina Manual, 1931, 1937, and 1943
The History of Jackson County, Max R. Williams, ed., 1987
"Gertrude Dills McKee: A Biographical Analysis" by Joan W. Ferguson, (M.A. thesis,
Western Carolina University, 1988)
The State, December 2, 1933, and June 5, 1943
Charlotte Observer, July 25, 1935
Asheville Citizen, November 28, 1948

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Gertrude Dills McKee, Jackson County NC

Surpluses of the main US farm products had been piling up in storage bins since the early 1920s, and President Roosevelt used the Agricultural Adjustment Administration starting in 1933 to try to limit the output of those products.

If their supply went down, then their prices would go up, enabling many farm families to make a living again. Eight products were to be reduced: corn, hogs, and milk were produced all over the region, tobacco was produced in central Appalachia, and cotton was produced in far southern Appalachia.

Corn and hogs were linked together in a single unified program, and large-scale farmers gained disproportionate benefits from that program. Appalachia received short shrift simply because it had few large-scale farms. In the cases of tobacco and cotton, small-scale farmers usually received equal benefits IF they owned their own farms.

However, sharecroppers and other types of tenants were no longer allowed to grow tobacco or cotton unless their landlords let them, nor did they share in the cash recompense for NOT growing those crops unless their landlords let them. With these last two policies, the AAA-hastened elimination of sharecropping jobs in the region created a northward migration of tenants, sharecroppers, and farm laborers to city slums.

Years later, Rexford Tugwell, who had served as Asst. Secretary of Agriculture under Henry A. Wallace, said of the AAA: "The problems of another generation were created by the policies of 1933, and absolutely nothing was done to avert what was plainly to be a disaster."

Participation in the 'corn-hog' limitation program was voluntary, and most mountain families did not participate. Corn & hogs were the two basic subsistence products of the region, and those two products were the only two AAA reductions administered in tandem: a farmer could only receive money for reducing corn acreage if he also reduced hog numbers, and vice versa.

The compensating payments mailed to farmers who participated in the corn-hog program reimbursed them at the pre-AAA market value of the corn & hogs in question. But the cost to replace them was higher than that. In corn, bumper years in 1932 & 1933 had driven the price of a bushel as low as 18 cents.

But a major drought afflicting the Plains states in 1933-34 drove the price back up to 79 cents a bushel by December 1934, and $1.00/bushel in some parts of eastern KY. So farmers who signed up to sacrifice 20-30 percent of their 1932-33 production were only offered 30 cents a bushel by the AAA for their 1933-34 crop.

As to hogs, the 1934 corn-hog contract specified that hogs raised for home consumption were restricted to the average annual number per farm raised for that purpose in the two base years of 1932-33.

But industrial cutbacks being caused by the ongoing Depression meant the region’s farms had to produce more as off-the-farm work dried up. The Bureau of Agricultural Economics reported in eastern Kentucky that an almost 30 percent "increase in the number of farms from 1929 to 1934 was brought about largely by change of occupation from mining to farming.

"The same families were involved, but because of less employment in the mines or forests, they did relatively more farming and became classed as farmers in 1934" Excluding eastern KY, throughout the rest of Appalachia farms went from 5.45 residents per farm on average in 1930 to 5.6 per farm in 1935.

In effect, then, the AAA program hindered small farmers in Appalachia from supporting themselves, driving some onto relief. But AAA's Washington administrators weren't interested in the program's effect on small farmers. "Commercial slaughter is the important item for a corn-hog program," said AAA's acting administrator HR Tolley in April 1935. 150,000 fewer 'small producers' chose to sign 1935 corn-hog contracts than had signed 1934 corn-hog contracts, but he didn't seem to care. Paul Salstrom supports this point of view in Appalachia's Path to Dependency.

"My study of WV leads me to somewhat different and more charitable conclusions about the New Deal,” counters Jerry Bruce Thomas in An Appalachian New Deal.

"The advance of industrial capitalism and destructive agricultural practices wrecked subsistence agriculture well before the Great Depression. New Deal relief payments in WV, often less than half the national average, generally were desperately needed by the recipients. The AAA provided little help to WV's small farmers, but other New Deal legislation tried to help low-income farmers save their farms.

"Although the New Deal failed to foster a complete recovery for either the nation or WV before WWII, it did much to make the Depression more tolerable and to encourage in the American people a sense of compassion. That it fell short of its goals is not surprising, given the severity of problems it faced, the nature of the Federal system, and the inconsistency and lack of continuity in the New Deal itself."

A Gallup Poll printed in The Washington Post revealed that a majority of the American public opposed the AAA. This is mostly because of the mass killing of six million pigs in 1933 which was criticized by many people at the time.

Supreme Court Justice Owen Josephus Roberts.

The Supreme Court ruled on Jan 6, 1936, in United States v. Butler, that the processing taxes instituted by the AAA were unconstitutional. Justice Owen Josephus Roberts argued:

The act invades the reserved rights of the states. It is a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. The tax, the appropriation of the funds raised, and the direction for their disbursement, are but parts of the plan. They are but means to an unconstitutional end.

Sources: High Mountains Rising, by Richard Alan Straw & Tyler Blethen, University of Illinois Press, 2004
Appalachia's Path to Dependency, by Paul Salstrom, University Press of Kentucky, 1997
An Appalachian New Deal, by Jerry Bruce Thomas, University Press of Kentucky, 1998
United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936)



Agricultural+Adjustment+Administration sharecroppers corn-hog+limitations appalachia +appalachian+history +appalachia+history

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Labels: Agricultural Adjustment Administration, appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, corn-hog limitations, sharecroppers

Her provocative pin-up images violated all manner of the era's sexual taboos, finally invoking a United States Senate Committee investigation into pornography. In 1955, Bettie Page was summoned from New York City to Capitol Hill by Sen. Estes Kefauver, a moral crusader known for wearing coonskin caps.

Kefauver, a Madisonville, TN native, was at the time a Democratic presidential hopeful. His detractors routinely called him "too liberal for Tennessee," and so his choice to target Nashville born Page certainly appears to have been politically calculated. Tennessee kept re-electing him to the U.S. Senate, first in 1954 and again in 1960.

In 1951, Bettie Page had fallen under the influence of photographer Irving Klaw and his sister Paula, who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.

"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.

When asked by Kefauver in preliminary Senate sub-committee hearings what she thought of the bondage photos she simply replied "Why, Senator honey, I think they’re cute." Page told truthfully that she had never even been shot topless in Klaw’s studio, let alone anything pornographic. The committee had nothing to gain from getting Bettie Page to testify; subpoenaing her could be seen more as a scare to show some power and authority over who Bettie Page was and what she represented.

Kefauver maintained that FBI rulings found that Klaw’s photos were obscene. He stated in a subcommittee report that "It's rather difficult, unless one has an understanding of the particular perversion involved, for the average person to completely understand and notice the pornographic nature of Klaw’s material."

Page arrived early to attend the Committee's formal 9 a.m. Saturday session, and then anxiously waited sixteen hours with no food, toilet facilities or water in a witness room, hoping for a chance to testify in support of her friends the Klaws, something that she never got to do.

In the end, the Kefauver pornography hearings led to the laws under which the federal government to this day prosecutes pornography.

Pressure from the Kefauver committee drove Page out of the modeling business and ruined a number of the photographers who worked with her; the Klaws closed their business and Klaw eventually burned most of his negatives, including the Page photos.

Page retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over. Shortly before Christmas 1957, Bettie Page left New York City, never to return to modeling or acting again. She became a born-again Christian but never apologized for her work, because if God created the female form, why would he be offended by its display?

Despite Kefauver's best efforts, Page won. Her face still appears on the covers of albums, as pinup art, in books, and even tattoos. Her name and image are used for all sorts of commercial appeals, including a 2006 film starring Gretchen Mol.


sources: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_en_ot/obit_bettie_page
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2008/12/voices----betti.html
www.feralchild.net/?p=1043
www.shamanalternative.com/bettiepage_com_page_3.htm
www.populist.com/96.10.kefauver.html



appalachian+history Bettie+Page Estes+Lefauver Madisonville+TN appalachia +appalachia+history

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"The revolt against the high cost of living, expressed in the nation-wide formation of old-clothes leagues, overalls clubs, and lunchbasket clubs, is highly significant in that it is the first indication of protest to come from a class which has been a silent and patient sufferer during all the clashes that have taken place between capital and labor in recent years," said the unsigned op-ed author of the Men & Things column in the April 1920 issue of American Medicine.

Men who joined these clubs pledged to wear overalls, and women to wear gingham, until prices became less prohibitive. They formed overalls clubs, held parades, threw parties, went to church, and even got married in overalls.

Some members of the Overalls Club of Pickens, SC.

Cheap blue denim work overalls like farmers or laborers wore were the weapon of choice, but people who couldn't find those wore various other types of work clothes or whatever old clothes they had to hand.

The movement caught on in Birmingham, Wilmington, Savannah, New Orleans, and other southern cities, then spread to other regions of the country. The employees and officers of various companies showed up at the office outfitted in overalls. The cotton mill owners of New England issued statements denouncing the Southern cities, where the movement had its birth, and alleging that the cotton-growers of the South had launched the movement to increase the price of cotton.

In Washington, Representative William David Upshaw of Atlanta formed an "overall brigade" in the House of Representatives, and secretaries in the Capitol showed up for work in overalls. The Assistant Post Master General sent out a directive to postmasters permitting postal employees to make their rounds in overalls.

The various "overalls clubs" and "old clothes clubs" sent petitions to mayors, governors and diverse other notables protesting high clothing prices. "The movement appears to have lasted from March to June or July of 1920, then faded away as the novelty wore off," says Paul Eugen Camp, who works in the Special Collections at the University of South Florida library.

"Everybody seems to have had quite a good time protesting in their overalls, but I don't know if the movement actually had much effect on the cost of clothing."


Sources: NY Times: April 15, 1920, "Overalls Clubs Spread in South and West; National Organization is Now Started," Special to The New York Times, Page 15
NY Times: April 15, 1920, "UPSHAW'S OVERALLS STARTLE CONGRESS," Special to The New York Times, Page 7
American Medicine, April 1920 "Old Clothes and Lunch Baskets," p. 187
The Argus, [Melbourne, Australia], June 26, 1920, "American Life: Overalls Craze," pg. 6

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, overalls clubs, Pickens SC

Well, it's a new year, and one with a blue moon in it to boot, though you'll have to wait a bit on that: the blue moon doesn't make its appearance till December 31. Although we had a blue moon last May, don’t take it too much for granted: just under 3% of all full moons are blue moons.

Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining,
Shine on the one that's gone and proved untrue;
Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining,
Shine on the one that's gone and left me blue.

It was on a moonlight night, the stars were shining bright;
And they whispered from on high, your love had said goodbye.
Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining,
Shine on the one that's gone and said goodbye.
---Bill Monroe, Blue moon of Kentucky (1947)

Monroe wrote the song he’s most known for right on the cusp of an expansion in public understanding of just what a blue moon is. In the 1940's, astrologists and meteorologists started using the term to describe when the moon takes on a blue coloration. This happens when small atmospheric particles interfere with light, causing a bluish tint to the moon's appearance from earth. The particles can come from things such as forest fires and volcanic eruptions. However, this only occurs "once in a blue moon."

More traditionally, a blue moon was referred to as the 4th full moon in a season. Each of the 4 seasons of the year has 3 months, and will usually have 3 full moons. Each of these 12 moons has a name like "Harvest Moon," "Hunter's Moon" and so on. When a season occurs that contains 4 full moons, the 4th becomes the blue moon.

Blue moon is different from the monthly or seasonal moon names as it isn't restricted to a time of year. It is a movable feast that occurs because the moon and our calendar are not in sync and all the months but February are longer than the moon's cycle.

So just how often is "once in a blue moon?" There are 1,200 calendar months in a century. In the same century, there are, on the average, 1,236.83 full moons. The difference is the average number of blue moons in a century: 36.83, or an average of one per 2.72 years.

Actually, about one year each 19 has two blue moons, because its shortest month, February, has no full moon at all; for the Eastern Time Zone, the complete list of such years from 1951 through 2050 is 1961, 1980, 1999, 2018, and 2037. Between these years, blue moons happen at intervals such as 2 years and 7, 8, 9, or 10 months.

There's a pretty fair chance that the jilted lover of Monroe's blue moon song was singing in October, August or July, historically the months with the most blue moons.

So was it the coloration of the moon that reminded the singer of how sad and blue they felt, was the singer comparing the inconstancy of a blue moon to the lover's inconstancy, or both? Kentucky's General Assembly offered no answer to this question when, in 1989, it passed KRS 2.100, designating the song "Blue moon of Kentucky" as the official state bluegrass song.


sources:www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/kybgsong.htm#BlueMoon
www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/articles/folkloreBlueMoon.html
www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names
www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/moon/3304131.html?page=1&c=y



blue+moon Bill+Monroe appalachia appalachian+history appalachia+history

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