Appalachian History

Lent is here, and that means that many residents of Helvetia, WV will be foregoing hosenblatt meat pastries deep-fried in lard for awhile. Luckily last Saturday folks there had ample opportunity to consume that delicacy, along with donuts and rosettes, at the annual Fasnacht celebration. The Swiss settlers of Helvetia combined the Catholic celebration of Lent with the Protestant Winterfest of Zurich, when Old Man Winter is burned in effigy to hasten the advent of spring, to produce this annual February revel.

Fasnacht is the most famous city and canton in Switzerland's Basel Stadt. And Helvetia is the Latin name for Switzerland. In West Virginia's Helvetia, homes are decorated with scary figures to frighten Old Man Winter away. These after all are the Rauhnächte (rough nights), the nights between winter and spring, when evil ghosts are supposed to go around.

This photo of musicians in Helvetia is undated; prior to the construction of the Star Band Hall in 1910 Fasnacht celebrations took place in homes, with the musicians off to one side of the parlor as in this photo.

Helvetians decorate the community hall in colorful ribbons and Swiss lampions (paper lanterns with candles), and hang a gruesome Old Man Winter by the neck in the middle of the dance floor. And they create elaborate masks.

At dark on the Saturday night before Ash Wednesday, the villagers and guests don their masks and congregate at Star Band Hall. This plain rectangular frame structure, built in 1910, was for many years home of a quite famous brass concert and marching band.

“The Helvetia Star Band will rank favorably with the best in the State,” declare the authors of ‘The Story of Helvetia Community,’ an undated article most likely from the early 1920s. “This band is frequently asked to play for occasions at various distant points over the State.

“There is band practice twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and in this way the players are always able to measure up to the expectations of those asking them to perform. Several of the members of the band served their country as buglers or musicians in the bands of the respective branches to which they belonged while in the army.” The Star Band was active for 65 years.

The assembled parade marchers light the lampions, then proceed up the road Mardi Gras style to the Community Hall where they parade around the dance floor as their masks are judged. They dance schotisches, waltzes, polkas, and squares until midnight, when the fiddler announces the hour to burn Old Man Winter. The prettiest maiden then mounts the shoulders of the tallest man and cuts down the ghoul. He is dragged out into the snow, roughed up and cursed, then thrown onto the bonfire amid shrieks and applause.

A group of Swiss immigrants from Brooklyn, NY calling themselves 'the Gruetli Verein' settled the tiny community of Helvetia in 1869. The members had agreed that they would all emigrate to another section of the country together when the time was right.

A member of the society named Isler surveyed large swaths of the eastern West Virginia mountains for a Washington-based firm, and reported back to the society on the richness of the country. A committee of six men was assembled, and left Brooklyn by rail on October 15, 1869. They arrived at Clarksburg and began the difficult work of traveling by foot over the mountains.

At one time there were three Swiss colonies in Randolph County: Helvetia, Adolph, and Alpina. In the early 1900s Dr. Hanz Gruber was Helvetia’s village doctor for about ten years. He was a nephew of Franz Gruber who wrote for his Austrian church choir the much loved carol "Silent Night, Holy Night." Dr. Gruber's house still stands.


Sources: 'The Story of Helvetia Community,' by Eugene Daetwyler, Annie Teuscher, and E. Metzner at www.wvculture.org/history/agrext/helvetia.html
Helvetia, West Virginia : a study of pioneer development and community survival in the Appalachia, by Atje Partadiredja, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1978
One's own hearth is like gold : a history of Helvetia, West Virginia, by David H Sutton, New York: Peter Lang, 1990
www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/wv/fasncht_1
www.timeswv.com/entertainment/local_story_042191843.html
www.wvhumanities.org/fasnacht.htm
www.wvculture.org/history/agrext/helvetia.html

Many thanks to Elvira Niles of Lithia, FL for her input on this article.



appalachia appalachian+history Fasnacht Helvetia+WV history+of+appalachia Randolph+County+WV

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Fasnacht, Helvetia WV, history of appalachia, Randolph County WV

MIMI CONWAY:
I think we're talking about when you were in Pulaski County [KY], and you were talking about how it was the year that you learned the most in your life. Did you take notes at the time, some notes?
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
No, I took no notes. I did, to practice writing, write some descriptions of scenes and things. You see, this was a remote place, a log house, and many of the things they used were much like those of the pioneers. For example, I had never seen a watering trough made of the hollowed-out trunk of a poplar tree.
MIMI CONWAY:
Oh, wow.
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
And other things around. I was especially intrigued by their language. They were as definite as Shakespeare. For example, the children never said "tree"; they named the tree: white oak, black oak, post oak, poplar, they knew them all.
MIMI CONWAY:
Now this was in fact a place only fifteen miles from Burnside.
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
That is right.
MIMI CONWAY:
Was it for you the first close contact you'd had with hill people?
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
Well, yes and no. My people were hill people, after a fashion, but I had never been in a community that was so remote. Though Burnside was only fifteen miles away, it was on the railway-this place was not-Burnside had also been served by steamboats since 1833. It was more or less in the world. Like at home, we had a daily newspaper and magazines and books and other things we could buy.
MIMI CONWAY:
Right. And also you had doctors and dentists, isn't that right?
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
In Burnside, yes, but not these people. Most of them had never been to a physician or a dentist.
MIMI CONWAY:
Now when you went to teach in the school in Pulaski County, what was the name of the town or the actual place?
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
Well, they called it Possum Trot School. I've forgotten if it had a better name; I don't know.
MIMI CONWAY:
Was that also the name of the place, Possum Trot?
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
Was it Hargis? No. Perhaps it was Hargis; I've forgotten. I should know, because there was a post office there, where the mail came three times each week in saddlebags on a mule. And rarely did one see a wagon, and my schoolchildren, most of them, had never at that time seen an automobile, the road was so rough. Most of the men, however, had. They'd go to Somerset. And they did most of what they called the "trading": they didn't use the word "shopping". They traded. This, I think, arose from the fact that they usually had something to sell. It was too far away for milk and butter, but they could, as I say, trade eggs at a small store across the river. Others dug ginseng-it was about all gone-dried it and sold it to a company in Burnside. Some dug yellow root and May apple root. There were few furbearing animals left, but several of the boys sold raccoon and opossum hides.
MIMI CONWAY:
How did these people feel about you coming in? Do you know how they reacted to you? Were you as unusual in your education and in coming from Burnside as if you had come from four or five hundred miles, from outside the whole culture?
HARRIETTE ARNOW:
I think they thought I was peculiar. On the other hand, I tried very hard. I stayed over many weekends. When they went to church, I went to church with them. We had a bit of trouble with speech sometimes. Most of the younger children used the word "ungen" for "onion" and other words which I had never heard and didn't have sense enough to know. I just thought, "Queer!" Like they'd say, "So-and-so carried his wagon to town to the railway," and it seemed queer to me, and then later I found the word "carry", meaning to go with or to take, in Shakespeare. Had I had an Oxford English Dictionary, unabridged, with me, I would have understood a great deal more and appreciated a great deal more.


Oral History Interview with Harriette Arnow, April, 1976. Interview G-0006.
Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection,
Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0006/excerpts/excerpt_2466.html



Harriette+Arrow Pulaski+County+KY appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Harriette Arrow, history of appalachia, Pulaski County KY

St. Patrick’s Day is only a couple of weeks off, and one of the things you'll always find plenty of at that celebration is shillelaghs.

The shillelagh [siúil éille is an old Gaelic word meaning "oak club"] is a wooden cudgel associated with the Shillelagh Forest in County Wicklow, Ireland, famous for its once massive stands of oaks.

As often seen in depictions of leprechauns, shillelaghs appear to be nothing more than Irish walking sticks, and they certainly are that. But consider another Gaelic term for the staff: ‘bata,’ which means ‘fighting stick.’

Both the Scots and the Irish used them this way, especially during the historical era when neither group was legally allowed weapons for self-defense. And at other periods the shillelagh served well for those who simply could not afford a gentleman's sword. The Scots called their staff a ‘kebbie’ or ‘kebbie stick.’

In addition to being used as a weapon to ward off wild animals, muggers, and thieves, shillelaghs could be brought out to settle disputes---a ‘kebbie-lebbie’ to a Scotsman. Stereotypes of drunken shillelagh-swinging louts have overshadowed the existence of a disciplined martial arts training with the stick.

In his 1790 book, 'Personal Sketches of His Own Times,' Sir John Barrington wrote that stickfights were exhibitions of skill...."like sword exercises and did not appear savage. Nobody was disfigured thereby, or rendered fit for a doctor. I never saw a bone broken or a dangerous contusion from what was called 'whacks' of a shillelagh (which was never too heavy)."

The preferred material for shillelaghs is oak or blackthorn (‘pear hawthorn’ to us) due the density and hardness of those woods. The blackthorn, in particular, also has longstanding religious connections to staffs. One old legend says St. Joseph's staff was cut from the same hawthorn tree that produced the Crown of Thorns placed on Jesus' head at the crucifixion. Another states that the first hawthorn bush grew from the staff of St. Joseph.

The knobby end can be bored out and filled with molten lead, transforming the shillelagh into a ‘loaded stick.’ To keep the wood from splitting during the drying process and to harden it, sticks were often buried in a manure pile, or smeared with butter and placed in the chimney to cure, which gives them their distinctive black patina.

When the Scots-Irish settled in Appalachia, they had very little trouble locating materials for shillelaghs: The forests of the southern and central Appalachians are full of black, northern red, white, chestnut and scarlet oaks, and several species of hawthorn are common throughout the region, including may, pear, fanleaf, cockspur, and rome, all of which grow in woodland thickets at altitudes up to 8,500 feet.

In Appalachia as elsewhere, the fighting stick continues to be a symbol of pride for all Celtic and Gaelic cultures.


sources: www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/AEmblem/shillelagh.html
www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes/1981-01-01/Shillelaghs-Make-and-Market-Them.aspx
www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/shillelagh_and_walking_sticks-t13650/index.html?s=866301538806e6579404e48f05fe42d0&t=13650
The Holy Thorn Ceremony: revival, rivalry and civil religion in Glastonbury, (Presidential Address by Marion Bowman to the Folklore Society, March 2005)
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5677803/The-Holy-Thorn-Ceremony-revival.html
Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, by John Johnstone, John Longmuir, W.P. Nimmo, 1867



shillelagh Irish+fighting+sticks Scots-Irish appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Irish fighting sticks, Scots-Irish, shillelagh

"Once we hit a place where a feud was being settled. It was back in the hill country of Virginia and the place was called Rocky Comfort. It really wasn't a town. There was a water-power grist mill, a store, a blacksmith shop and about a quarter of a mile up the little valley there was a meeting house, where traveling preachers would sometimes hold revivals which were called camp meetings.

"The feud was between the Buxton --or Bruxton-- and another bunch of natives named Greenberry,--I think that was the name.

"Old Uncle Jed Buxton, a tall, sharp-eyed old fellow with a yellowish-gray, hang-down, moustache was boss of the Buxton bunch and Grandpappy Lindsay Greenberry was head of the enemy tribe.

"I never heard what the feud started over, probably some Buxton stole a Greenberry pig, or some Greenberry shot a Buxton cow. But whatever it was that started it there'd been killing on both sides and from what I heard about it they were always gunning or ganging up on each other, or cutting each other up with Bowie knives. The cause of the feud wasn't important, though; it was the way it ended that seemed funny to me.

"And a queer thing was that both tribes were religious and when they'd go to the camp-meetings they've have a temporary truce while the meeting was going on.

"It was at the camp-meeting the feud ended. The preacher was a big raw-boned Hard-shell Baptist, and he certainly believed in hell-fire and damnation; and when he'd get up and start to preach he'd always pull out a twist of long-green tobacco and pull off a big chew--then he was ready to go at it. And he went.

"He was almost as good as Doc Porter when it came to oratory. He talked hell-fire and brimstone...sizzlin' and bilin' and smokin' until he'd have the whole audience sweating and groaning. Finally he got under the hides of the Buxtons and Greenberrys and had them all tremblin' on the brink as he called it...jest hangin'over eternal damnation by a brickle thread!

"The payoff was that old Uncle Jed Buxton and Grandpappy Greenberry both got more religion than they'd ever got before and decided to make peace and stop their tribes from carving and shooting and beating each other up.

"The preacher got them together at the mourner's bench and got them to agree to make friends and be brethren. But they had to do something to prove the treaty would last and they could trust each other... And that's where the funny part of it came in.

"Old Uncle Jed Buxton and Grandpap Greenberry acted for the whole bunch of each of their tribes. The peace ceremony was performed at the camp-meeting in the presence of the whole audience, the Hard-shell Baptist preacher acted as master of ceremonies. You'd never guess how they pledged themselves and proved that they trusted each other. Those two old mountain codgers who had been killin' enemies shaved each other! And not with safety razors either!

"They did it right on the preacher's platform while the whole congregation looked on and muttered a lot of 'Amens' and 'Praise the Lords.'

"They drew straws for to see who should shave who first, and Uncle Jed Buxton got the chair first. Grandpappy Greenberry lathered Uncle Jed up, took that wicked long-bladed razor (the preacher supplied the outfit) and whittled the whiskers off of Uncle Jed's face and neck...but when he got down around Uncle Jed's wind-pipes I noticed the Buxton clan got mighty tense and silent. But Uncle Jed didn't bat an eye while his old enemy was fooling around his neck with that darned sharp razor!

"When Uncle Jed was well shaved, Grandpappy Greenberry sat down in the chair, which was a common hickory split-bottom kitchen chair, and Uncle Jed took the razor and went over him!

"That settled the feuds. Each had trusted his neck to the other when the other had a sharp razor in his hand...and as far as I know they never feuded again. But I'll say those two tough old mountain hillbillies had a lot of nerve."


Source: Library of Congress, American Memory, American Life Histories: Manuscripts for the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940. From an interview conducted with William D. Naylor on Sept, 19, 1938; Sept. 27, 1938; Oct. 1 and 3, 1938 by Earl Bowman



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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, camp meeting, feuds, history of appalachia, revival meeting

Right up till the early years of the 20th century, a bite from a rabid animal could strike terror in the hearts of Appalachian residents. Rabies slowly destroys the nervous system. It finally attacks the spinal cord and its victim may froth at the mouth, scream and fight. Before Louis Pasteur developed a successful vaccination in 1885, death from rabies was a forgone conclusion, unless a madstone could be obtained. This trusted folk medicine gets its name from the delirious behavior caused by hydrophobia, a condition produced by the rabies virus.

"The mad-stone? People believe it will cure snakebites and hydrophobia," hunter Ben Lester told the authors of 'The Heart of the Alleghanies' in 1883. "Here's one. It was found in the paunch of a white deer I shot this fall was a year ago; and, mind you, the deer with a mad-stone in him is twice as hard to kill as one of ordinary kind. Five bullets were put in the buck that carried this one."

Ben Lester's madstone, "smooth and red, as large as a man's thumb, and with one flat, white side," was technically a calculus, a stone-like object sometimes found in the stomach of animals who chew their cud.

According to beliefs surrounding this folk medicine, a madstone from a brown deer will work in a bind if another cannot be found. A better grade of madstone comes from a white or spotted deer. The very best madstone comes from an albino or witch deer.

To treat someone bitten by a rabid animal you'd boil the madstone in sweet milk and then, while it was still hot, apply the stone to the wound, states Douglas Mahnkey in 'Hill and Holler Stories.'

"If the dog was actually mad, the stone stuck to the wound and would draw the 'pizen' out," he continues. "Once the stone was filled with the poison it would drop off, and it was again boiled in sweet milk and applied to the wound. The milk would turn green. This process was repeated until the stone no longer adhered to the wound."

Madstones have always been greatly prized by anyone fortunate enough to come into possession of one, and would be handed down in the same family for generations. Before Pasteur's immunization came to North Carolina in 1915, some owners charged up to $100 for lending a madstone, or required a $1,000 bond to guarantee its return.

And in North Georgia "Faith Cochran advertised his madstone every week in the county paper. People came from as far away as Alabama to be treated," according to Floyd C. Watkins and Charles Hubert Watkins in 'Yesterday in the Hills,' a portrait of farm life in Cherokee County at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Mad Stones of Vacherie [LA] featured in "Dixie Roto Magazine" June 19, 1949. The NC Museum of History has a madstone in its collection (no photo available, sorry!) whose catalog description reads: "Light brown trapezoidal stone; 'R.L. Steel/1829' scratched into 1 end of stone; '809' scratched into other end; small black leather pouch."

"It looked like a worn creek rock about the size of a partridge egg with a chip broken off one end. Faith dipped the stone in milk and stuck it to the wound. After it had sucked out the poison, it dropped off the wound."

Worn creek rock? What happened to white deer calculi? Dr. Thomas M. Owen, Director of the Department of Archives and History of the State of Alabama, in a letter dated September 22, 1917, wrote:

"Some of these stones are reputed to have been taken from the stomach of a deer, but they were in fact nothing more than native rock, worn smooth, and which, because of their porosity, were capable when heated of drawing out or absorbing liquids."

We know today that rabies is caused by a virus that is usually spread through contact with an infected animal's saliva. Whether madstones were made from deer stomach calculi or rock, was their ability to absorb quickly and efficiently the real issue, was it a chemical reaction (the tight bonding of the madstone to the wound and the milk), or some combination of both?


sources: www.nchealthandhealing.com/topic/33/
http://thelibrary.org/faq/files/momadstone.cfm
www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~okmurray/stories/mad_stone.htm
www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/02_06/02_01_06/mtn_voices.html
www.folkmed.ucla.edu/FMDetail.cfm?UID=22_4353
"Yesterday in the Hills," by Floyd C. Watkins, Charles Hubert Watkins, Quadrangle Books, 1963
"The Heart of the Alleghanies, or Western North Carolina," by Floyd C. Watkins, Calvin S. Brown, A. Williams & Co., 1883
"Hill and Holler Stories," by Douglas Mahnkey, S of D Press, School of the Ozarks, 1975



appalachian+folk+medicine madstones rabies Louis+Pasteur appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian folk medicine, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Louis Pasteur, madstones, rabies

The North Carolina historical marker skirts the issue diplomatically: there’s much more to the story of how Felix Walker ‘gave new meaning to the word’ than the sign is letting on.

The verb debunk means to expose or ridicule the falseness or hollowness of a myth, idea or belief. It is made up of the prefix 'de-', meaning to remove, and the word 'bunk'.

On February 25, 1820, the Missouri Question, whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state, was being hotly debated in Congress. Near the end of the debate and amidst calls from the floor to have a vote, Felix Walker, representative from Buncombe County, NC, rose to speak. And speak. Did I mention that Felix Walker spoke?

When asked by other members to desist, he replied that he was bound ‘to make a speech for Buncombe,’ and continued to hold forth.

Walker was elected as a Republican to the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses, serving from 1817 to 1823. One can only wonder if his long-windedness got him hounded out of North Carolina, for he moved to Mississippi in 1824.

But he left in his wake a masterful symbol for empty talk that could not be ignored by the speakers of the language, and buncombe, actually spelled bunkum in its first recorded appearance in 1828 in "Niles' Weekly Register," must have been widely used. Bunkum, noted that journal, was said to be a 'very useful and expressive word, which is now as well understood as any in our language.' And "The Wilimington Commercial" referred in 1849 to 'the Buncombe politicians --- those who go for re-election merely.'

In George Ade's 1900 book "More Fables in Slang" the –um ending has been dropped: "he surmised that the Bunk was about to be handed to him.'

The term debunk originated in a 1923 novel "Bunk," by American novelist William Woodward (1874–1950), who used it to mean to take the bunk out of things. And H. L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore and a connoisseur of the American language, entitled one of his books "A Carnival of Buncombe."


sources: www.ncmarkers.com/Results.aspx?k=Search&ct=btn
www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/feb2004/feb.html
Safire's Political Dictionary, by William Safire, Random House, 1978
Word Myths, by David Wilton, Ivan Brunetti, Oxford University Press US, 2004



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On October 1, 1755, while returning home from Fort Cumberland [MD] Trading Post several miles away, white settler Jane Frazier was captured by Miami Indian warriors and taken to the Miami River in Ohio. "By a person who arrived in town last Monday from Col. Cresap's (Oldtown about ten miles from Ivitts Creek)," reported The Maryland Gazette on October 9, "we are told that last Wednesday the Indians had taken a man prisoner who was going to Fort Cumberland from Frazier's and had also carried off a woman from Frazier's Plantation which is four miles this side of Fort Cumberland."

Fort Cumberland in 1755, from "History of Cumberland, Maryland", 1878, by William Lowdermilk.

Jane Frazier miraculously escaped after thirteen months and made her way back to safety. She wrote a detailed narrative of her experience, which has been preserved by successive generations of her family: "Thus to be torn away from home and friends and all that was dear to me, and consigned to live like a brute among savages, and then to lose my only comfort, my first born, and have it buried in this wilderness, was more than my frail nature could bear, and I was nearly crazy for a time. Still the Indians were kind to me, and when they saw my child was dead, they cut a hickory tree, peeled off the bark and made a coffin, and wrapping it in some of the clothes they had stolen, they placed it in the coffin they had made and buried it near our town in their own burying ground.

"I remained with these Indians 13 months, in the summer time helping the squaws in their corn and vegetable patches and in the winter time assisting them in their cooking operations. While I was with this tribe they determined on another raid into Pennsylvania, consequently they performed their powwows and war dances, in order to give them good luck in their expedition, then left for their long trip. They took all their best warriors, leaving a few old men and some boys to hunt game and food for the squaws and papooses.

"The chief and warriors were gone about seven weeks. They returned bringing with them two Dutchmen from Pennsylvania, whom they adopted into the tribe. One of them was a tanner by trade, and they employed them to tan their skins for them. He worked a little ways from the town where there was a large spring and the other man was allowed to help him. These men were very restless in their confinement.

"A little later the Indians determined on another raid, and in a few days departed. The Dutchmen now determined to leave, and let me into their secret, so we procured an old rifle which they repaired, and we hid all the provisions we could find, and a week after the warriors were gone the game became very scarce, so the hunters had to be out nearly all the time for provisions for the squaws and children. We now concluded this would be the best time to gain our liberty, so obtaining a small amount of ammunition we gathered up our old gun and some provisions and left our new connections without stopping to say goodbye, and taking advantage of the warriors and hunters we left for home."

Full version of her narrative here



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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, Ft Cumberland MD, history of appalachia, Jane Frazier, Miami Indians, Ohio River

"We go to bed at night and get up in the morning, and our Milk Bottles are standing on the back porch waiting for us," observed Rev. W.L. Stidger in a sermon titled 'Milk Bottles & Monotony.'

"Fifty years ago we got up at five o'clock, dressed in the cold, shivering as we dressed, went out to the barn, knocked ice from the buckets, primed the old iron pump with hastily heated hot water, and milked the cows before breakfast. We worked for our milk then. Now it is brought to us. That is monotony."

William Stidger in Missouri, about 1925.

Stidger published this sermon in 1926, the same year that writer Sinclair Lewis was spending time shadowing the famous preacher as part of his research for a forthcoming novel about the Chautauqua circuit and the preachers it produced.

Stidger himself apparently wasn't bored having his milk brought to him. He had a full time maid and gardener when he wrote these words.

William Leroy Stidger (1885-1949) attracted Lewis' attention for the modern marketing methods and publicity tactics he brought to his crusade to save souls.

Long before Sinclair Lewis appeared in his life, the future preacher grew up to the slow tempo of late nineteenth century daily life in Moundsville, WV. This town of 5,000 souls was disrupted each summer by Methodist revival camp meetings that more than doubled the population.

"The town rocked with religion each summer," says John Hyland in Evangelism's First Modern Media Star: Reverend Bill Stidger. "It was a form of group hysteria. People would climb over chairs to get down the aisles to confess their sins."

Religious fervor wafted through the heat in the summer of 1901 as Rev. William B. King pressed his followers to find salvation. One audience member, 16-year-old Bill Stidger, decided then and there to follow the ministry. "He learned about evangelism from the exhorters," notes Hyland, his grandson.

Moundsville, West Virginia in 1899.

Stidger went on to become an ingenious innovator whose marketing abilities filled churches wherever he pastored: San Francisco, San Jose, Detroit, Kansas City, and Boston. He wrote 52 books, ran FDR's radio reelection campaign in 1936, and taught techniques for sermon writing at Boston University's School of Theology. He was one of the first radio preachers. By the mid-1930s, Stidger had a radio audience of half a million listeners.

Sinclair Lewis and Stidger first met in Terre Haute, IN in August of 1922 when Stidger was lecturing on the Chautauqua circuit. He challenged Sinclair Lewis to write a "real preacher book" about a minister "who lives and walks and has a being; not all good, not all bad---some of both---a human being."

Four years later Lewis accepted the Reverend's invitation to stay at his house to help get the sense of a preacher's world. Lewis wasn't the best houseguest: he stayed with the Stidgers for several weeks, during which time he was visited by Ethel Barrymore, Edwin Markahm, William Allen White, Gilbert Frankau and Harpo Marx. They came to attend a wedding between Stidger's maid and a gardener - a ceremony which Stidger had planned to conduct quietly. But Lewis slipped out and called a newspaper and the wedding made the front page.

When Elmer Gantry released, Stidger was pastoring the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, MO. He'd let it be known that Lewis would be writing about him, which led many to think he was the model for Gantry (which, in part, he was). Naturally, he was outraged when he saw how Lewis had shaped the novel---nearly every man of God is either a hypocrite or a closet agnostic.

This photograph of Sinclair Lewis was taken by Nikolas Muray for Vanity Fair magazine in the 1920s.

The Gantry publication created a church backlash and the book was banned and burned in many cities. Stidger declared that the book contained fifty technical errors in its account of church practices and that the author had been drunk all the time he was working on the book.

Shot back Lewis: “Stidger was a flamboyant man who in many ways resembled Elmer Gantry…unaware of the kind of novel that Elmer Gantry was to be, he went to Kansas City…boasting that the central character was to be modeled on himself.”

A bitter battle ensued between the two men, conducted in the press and from the pulpit, which neither of them ultimately won.


Sources: "Stidger," Russell Maloney, The Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, March 2, 1940, p. 9
Evangelism's First Modern Media Star: Reverend Bill Stidger, by Jack Hyland, Cooper Square Press, 2002
www.stidger.com
www.archive.org/stream/MN40290ucmf_8/MN40290ucmf_8_djvu.txt
Sinclair Lewis, by Richard R. Lingeman, Minnesota Historical Society, 2005
Sinclair Lewis: an American Life, by Mark Schorer, New York, McGraw Hill, 1961



are delightfulappalachia William+Stidger Moundsville revival+meeting Sinclair+Lewis Elmer+Gantry +appalachia+history history+of+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, Elmer Gantry, history of appalachia, Moundsville, revival meeting, Sinclair Lewis, William Stidger

(continued from yesterday...)

Gib Morgan never wrote down his tall tales before he died. But in the hands of two early 20th century men, working independently of each other, and with different motives, the real life of Gilbert Morgan of Callensburg, PA, created Gib Morgan, the myth.

Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio oil field workers picked up Morgan's stories and retold them after 1900 in the Texas, Oklahoma, California and Illinois oil fields. Subsequently they came to the attention of Mody Boatright, a University of Texas professor active in the Texas Folklore Society from 1943 to 1964.


Boatright compiled 51 tales reputed to have been told by Morgan into the folklore study Gib Morgan, Minstrel of the Oil Fields. The 1945 publication was the first of its kind to study the impact of the oil industry upon the folklore and the folkways of the American people. It won Boatright national recognition as a folklorist.

Meantime, back at the turn-of-the-century, traveling salesmen for the Red River Lumber Company of Bemidji, MN (which probably supplied rig timbers to California and Illinois oil fields) had also heard Morgan’s tall tales. Many oil field workers, who knew the Morgan stories, simultaneously went to work for the Red River Lumber Company’s logging camps and sawmills (in California and Minnesota).

In 1914, Archie D. Walker, secretary of the Red River Lumber Company, employed his cousin William B. Laughead, a former lumberjack turned free-lance advertising man, to develop an advertising campaign for the sale of lumber produced in his company's new Westwood, CA mill. Most of his buyers at that time purchased soft white pine, traditionally harvested on the east coast, and were apprehensive about the quality of the wood grown in the west.

Walker wanted an imaginative advertising campaign which would catch the interest of prospective buyers, while reassuring them that west coast timber was indeed of good quality. Walker urged Laughead to incorporate the Paul Bunyan folk myths into the advertising campaign, hoping that the use of such an unusual gimmick would spur the company's sales.

Frontispiece illustration of Paul Bunyan, by William Laughead, from "Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue Ox" pamphlet.

Laughead developed a series of postcard-size pamphlets in which Paul Bunyan tales and cartoons of the character he'd drawn accompanied the Red River Lumber Company's ad for its goods and services. Some of these tales were based on Laughead's recollections of stories he had heard --Gib Morgan's stories--ten years earlier in a Minnesota lumber camp.

A total of three advertising pamphlets for the company were sent to prospective buyers within the industry during the 1910s and 1920s. Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood Cal. was published in 1914. Tales About Paul Bunyan, Vol. II rolled off the press two years later.

Few buyers, apparently, appreciated Walker and Laughead's efforts, and most threw away the Red River Lumber Company advertisements. And thus, first editions are scarce. Those that do remain are rare collectors' items due to the immense popularity of Laughead's third pamphlet, published in 1922.

The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan was really a revamped version of Laughead's first work. Although intended for the same specialized audience of lumbermen, this booklet unexpectedly had a much more far-reaching impact on society at large. The popularity of a lengthy review of the pamphlet appearing in the Kansas City Star served to introduce the legendary folk hero to the general public.

The instant success of the work necessitated the reproduction of new editions for years to follow, culminating in 1944 with the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. It was occasionally given other titles in subsequent reproductions, one of the most common being Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue Ox.

William B. Laughead, through his Red River Lumber ad pamphlets, created much of the Paul Bunyan canon we're familiar with today. Gib Morgan's tall tales are an integral part of that culture.

And Sistersville? Make a point to visit it in September to attend the WV Oil and Gas Festival. The Gib Morgan Wrench Throwing Contest is a highlight.


sources: www.oil150.com/essays/2008/09/emlentons-lumber-industry-was-intertwined-with-oil-production-and-traditions
http://oilstorieshistories.blogspot.com/
www.foresthistory.org/ead/Laughead_William_B.html
www.wvculture.org/shpo/nr/pdf/tyler/75001899.pdf
www.marietta.edu/~crowthes/sishistory.html
Gib Morgan, Minstrel of the Oil Fields, Mody C. Boatright, ed., Dallas: Texas Folklore Society, 1966
Handbook of American Folklore, by Richard Mercer Dorson, Indiana University Press, 1986
Folksongs and Their Makers, by Henry Glassie, Edward D. Ives, Popular Press, 1971


Gib+Morgan Sistersville+WV appalachia +history+of+appalachia appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Gib Morgan, history of appalachia, Sistersville WV

Sistersville, WV mushroomed into a boom town overnight with the discovery of oil there in 1891. The rural village of 300 people suddenly had to house 15,000 souls from the massive influx of oil men, drillers, leasers, speculators, camp followers, floaters, wild-catters, and hangers-on. By the end of 1892 164 wells and 55 drilling stages were producing up to 20,500 barrels of oil a day.

A 1936 article from the Cincinnati Enquirer ranked the Ohio River town of Sistersville as one of the wickedest turn-of-the-century towns:

"Houses were even torn down to make room for a drilling derrick. Shacks and tents were thrown together to help house the people; houseboats lined the river banks on both sides of a mile or more up and down the river--moored so closely that one could walk by stepping from one to the other without going ashore--and helping to feed and sleep the people and at the same time furnishing liquor, amusement and entertainment of every kind to suit the taste of those seeking it, for nearly every houseboat was a speakeasy, gambling room or worse.

"Saloons, gambling houses and theaters sprang up over night. One popular saloon was burned down during the night during the Hey-Day and early the following morning before the ruins had cooled and ceased smoking the erection of another building on the site commenced."

Enter Gilbert 'Gib' Morgan.

Gib Morgan (1842-1909) was a tool dresser, driller, roustabout and pipe-line laborer. He was never a rich man, he never owned an oil company, he could hardly be considered important at all, except for one thing. Gib Morgan was a brilliant story teller.

Wherever he went, this gypsy oil man carried his stories with him, and left a little piece of himself behind before moving on. We know some of his stories today, both under his own name, and as a portion of the Paul Bunyan tales.

Gib Morgan was already getting noticed during the Civil War for his yarns while a private in the Tenth Pennsylvania Infantry. Because of poor organization at the war department, his company was hunkered down in the same location for months. To help keep up his comrades' spirits, he passed the time with stories.

Morgan returned home to Emlenton, PA in June, 1864, and began working steadily in Pennsylvania's Venango County oil fields. He married Mary Ritchey, and they had three children. It was not until his young wife died and their children were adopted out that Gib Morgan began wandering from oil field to oil field.

Oil field crewmen used huge wrenches in the backbreaking work of connecting steam lines or laying pipeline. It was dangerous, it was exhausting, but a drink from the saloon and a trip to the local house of ill repute would ease the pain. As would the levity and camaraderie provided by men like Gib Morgan.

Photo caption: First Oil Well Drilled in the Great Sisterville Field, Tyler County, W. Va. Taken 1907.

By the time the Pole Cat Well (pictured above) blew the lid off Sistersville, Morgan had worked fields in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, and his 30 years of tale-telling had earned him the nickname 'Minstrel of the Oil Fields.' In the stories he spoke of himself in third person, as in the following tall tale from the boomtimes in Sistersville:

"When he was in West Virginia, Gib Morgan, more as an accommodation to his friends than anything else, put up a boarding house for oil field workers."

Then word gets out about his delicious buckwheat cakes, and he draws so many oil field workers he’s forced to develop mass production methods:

"He bought a dozen of the largest concrete mixers and steam engines to turn them…Into these mixers his workmen dumped flour and milk and eggs…[the batter] was turned into a pipe line leading to the kitchen. The griddles were bottoms of 43,000-barrel oil tanks, each heated by a gas well underneath it…Seven big strapping men skimmed over the hot surface of each griddle continuously [on sides of bacon fat under their feet]…followed by another crew who handled the batter hoses…

"Another crew with shovels turned the cakes…a fourth took them up and tossed them to the waiters…Melted butter and maple syrup flowed through pipes along the half-mile counters, and at each seat were spigots from which the customer drew…Gib fed twenty-five thousand oil field workers at a time…[He] had to put up a sign: ONLY DRILLERS AND TOOL DRESSERS FED HERE."

(continued tomorrow...)


sources: www.oil150.com/essays/2008/09/emlentons-lumber-industry-was-intertwined-with-oil-production-and-traditions
http://oilstorieshistories.blogspot.com/
www.foresthistory.org/ead/Laughead_William_B.html
www.wvculture.org/shpo/nr/pdf/tyler/75001899.pdf
www.marietta.edu/~crowthes/sishistory.html
Gib Morgan, Minstrel of the Oil Fields, Mody C. Boatright, ed., Dallas: Texas Folklore Society, 1966
Handbook of American Folklore, by Richard Mercer Dorson, Indiana University Press, 1986
Folksongs and Their Makers, by Henry Glassie, Edward D. Ives, Popular Press, 1971


Gib+Morgan Sistersville+WV appalachia +history+of+appalachia appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Gib Morgan, history of appalachia, Sistersville WV

William E. Brock's company wasn't the first to mass market the delightful French concoction in the US. That distinction goes to the New York City firm Cella's Confections, which began large scale production in 1929. But Brock Candy Company was well positioned to become a major competitor.

During the 1930s, Brock introduced its own chocolate covered cherries, which quickly became a nationwide favorite. That particular candy not only helped the company survive the lean Depression era but would remain one of its biggest sellers for the next 60 years.

By 1930, William E. Brock had already been in the candy making big leagues for more than two decades. Born in North Carolina, he’d been a traveling salesman for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. when, in 1906, he decided to settle down in Chattanooga, TN. He borrowed money and invested with some associates in a small wholesale grocery shop, which also held a candy shop, the Trigg Candy Company.

1952 photo of the Brock Candy Company in Chattanooga. Here chocolate covered cherries receive the bottom coat of chocolate.

Brock continued the candy making operation, which consisted of handmade penny and bulk candies, peanut brittle, peppermints, and fudge. Using the experience and connections he had made as a traveling salesman, he sold primarily through former clients in small country stores.

Three years later, he bought his partners out and reincorporated the company as Brock Candy Company.

Sugar rationing during World War I hampered the business, but in 1920 the company introduced a five-cent peanut stick that became a big seller. In the early part of that decade it modernized its factory, installing automatic moguls (a starch molding machine).

Next, Brock eliminated all slab confectionery items, such as peanut brittle and fudge, which were products already produced by many manufacturers, making that area extremely competitive. Instead, Brock concentrated on launching new lines of jelly and marshmallow candies, using the new automated moguls. Also during the 1920s, Brock worked with the DuPont Company to develop and test the packaging of candy in cellophane bags. His company was one of the first candy makers to use cellophane bags, and it influenced the entire candy industry.

Brock found innovative ways to deal with the problems presented by the Depression. When the bank moratorium of 1933 made it impossible for Brock workers to cash their paychecks, Brock collected his daily receipts from local retailers of his candies and paid his employees in cash.

In addition to his prosperous candy manufacturing, William E. Brock also had involvements in insurance and banking interests. He became a trustee of the former University of Chattanooga, now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Emory and Henry College, and also Martha Washington College.

Undoubtedly because of his high visibility in the public affairs of Chattanooga, Brock was appointed U.S. senator by Tennessee Gov. Henry Horton in September 1929, after the death of Sen. Lawrence D. Tyson in a Philadelphia sanitarium. Sen. Brock Sr. was elected for a short term in 1930 and served until March 1931. He was considered a Woodrow Wilson Democrat.

His son, William, Jr., succeeded him to head the company. By the time of his death in 1950, Brock Sr. had built his family-run company into the South's—and Appalachia's—largest candy maker.


sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=B088
http://utpress.org/appalachia/EntryDisplay.php?EntryID=017
www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Brach-and-Brock-Confections-Inc-Company-History.html



Brock+Candy+Company William+E.+Brock Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachia+history history+of+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, Brock Candy Company, Chattanooga TN, history of appalachia, William E. Brock

Middlesboro Daily News
Middlesboro, KY
Feb. 5, 1921

There are some persons who are emotional to such an extent that they completely lose control of themselves and let their emotions sway them. When persons of this nature are overcome by their emotions, they cannot control themselves and they are not in a position to judge of their actions.

Mrs. Lucy Chadwell, a member of the church of "Holy Rollers," who lives in the East End, by her own admission in police court today, is such a person. When Mrs. Chadwell, accompanied by her daughter, attended the services last night in the Second Baptist church, and her religious feelings overcame her so that she shook and rolled, thereby throwing those present at the service into a state of alarm and disturbance, the Rev. A.L. Chadwell of the Second Baptist church, swore out a warrant for the arrest of Mrs. Chadwell on the grounds of disturbing the peace and breaking up religious services. 

When arraigned before Judge Wood in police court this morning. Mrs. Chadwell declared that she did not mean to create a disturbance or to break up the services. "I was so overcome with the spirit of religion," she told Judge Wood, "that I could not hold myself back. The Holy Ghost was within me and I could do nothing but give demonstration to my feeling."  During the hearing, which was attended by a large number of the members of Mrs. Chadwell's church, a demonstration was given showing how services are conducted by "Holy Rollers." 

Judge Wood placed Mrs. Chadwell on probation, with the warning that if any more complaints of a similar nature are made, he will be compelled to deal more severely with the offender.


source: http://kykinfolk.com/bell/newspaper_abstracts.htm



Holly+Rollers religion+in+Appalachia Bell+County+KY appalachia appalachia+history history+of+appalachia

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, Bell County KY, history of appalachia, Holly Rollers, religion in Appalachia

Prior to easily retrievable birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates, and digitized record keeping in general, the family Bible held the ultimate narrative of ancestral history.

They’re a treasure trove for both genealogists and historians. For example, here’s a simple entry in the Lampton family Bible, which was carried from southwest Virginia as the household migrated to eastern Kentucky: "Jane Lampton, born 1803, married John M. Clemens" Lampton and Clemens were the mother and father of Samuel L. Clemens --Mark Twain.

More often than not, the family Bible was the only written record of births, marriages and deaths of loved ones. In addition, between the leaves of this precious possession one could expect to find a wealth of newspaper clippings, letters, photos, and other ephemera pressed for safekeeping over generations of forbears.

It was understood that the book was to be carefully guarded and passed along: "1960 -- This Bible goes to Mary Rose. after I am done with it. Momie [sic] Promised it to her. Dad" And: "I wonder how old this old Bible is. Gert gave it to me sometime after Mother Hawkins died. Someday it will be yours. Love, Mother."

Most family Bibles present dates without any embellishment, but every now and again a quirky personality shines through. The transcriber of Thomas Snelling’s death entry seems obsessively precise in noting the time: "Thomas C Snelling died Dec 25, 1884 half past 1 o'clock and burried ten minuts of 12 the 26" [original spellings].

It was illegal for any printer in the Colonies to produce the English Bible. Publication of the King James Version of Scripture was controlled by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses as well as other printers licensed by the king.

In response, Colonial printers created a ‘family Bible’ with the addition of record keeping ability to circumvent the copyright restrictions of English law. They frequently included blank pages for multi-generational notes and commentary, as well as engravings and illustrations. These Bibles were sold in inexpensive serial editions.

After the Revolutionary War, the budding American legislature wasn't any more friendly to Bible printers. "An effort was made in its first Congress to restrict the printing of the [Bible] to licensed houses," says the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.

However, this political attempt to continue regulated distribution "was cut short by the first amendment to the Constitution, and the book was thrown into the hands of the trade at large, with anything but a beneficial effect on its general integrity."

Isaac Collins Bible from 1782; one of only two surviving copies.

England refused to send its former colonies any more Bibles, so demand for the Good Book was high and supply was low. Isaac Collins rose to the challenge in his Trenton, NJ print shop. He pre-sold 3,000 copies before the project was even begun, and by the time the presses stopped, 5,000 copies awaited eager hands.

Rag cotton linen paper was a precious commodity in early America, which forced Collins to resort to wood-pulp paper. His choice of stock was somewhat thicker than that used for books today. The resulting folio had the unintended benefit of more heft, greater durability, and a therefore a built-in likelihood of arriving at heirloom status.

Isaac Collins produced the most influential American Bible from the late 1700’s until the mid 1800’s, originating the “Family Bible” format we’ve come to know today.


source: "Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in the Victorian Market" (review): English Studies in Canada - Volume 32, Issue 2-3, June/September 2006, pp. 203-206
The First American Bible, by Margaret T. Hills, American Bible Society, 1968
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, edited by John M'Clintock and James Strong, Vol. I, pg. 563, Baker Book House, 1981
www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bible-leaves/collins-leaf.html
www.biblerecords.com/news.html



family+bibles appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, family bibles

When temperatures begin to rise in February and March, maple sap begins to flow from the roots of trees up the trunks to the branches and limbs. During the short period of spring when the daytime temperatures are above freezing, and the night temperatures are below freezing, the sap flows up and down the tree trunks daily.

Appalachia has a long history of sugar making. The Cherokees threw hot rocks into hollowed-out logs that were filled with sap. The early colonial settlers, too, quickly learned to make the sweet stuff: even though census enumerators were inconsistent in reporting maple sugar production, the 1790 output is reported for 26 Appalachian counties of southwest Virginia, West Virginia, east Kentucky, and east Tennessee.
While all maples produce the sweet sap that eventually may become syrup, it is only the sugar maple and black maple that are generally tapped. At least 75 percent of all commercial maple sugar comes from sugar maple trees because they are the species with the highest sugar content in their sap (about 2%).
Sugar bush workers drill small holes in the trunks, and insert taps to allow some of the sweet sap to come out. At first these taps consisted of carved, hollowed out pieces of wood, with a wooden bucket hanging from them to collect the sap. Later, metal taps and buckets were mass produced, as well as bucket covers to keep the sap cleaner.

In the 1930s the sap was hauled to the sugar house by human, horse, ox, and tractor power. Considering that a sugarbush usually contains hundreds of trees, this was an incredible amount of work. Large trees can fill upwards of 10-12 buckets each.

Some folks think the sap just comes out of the trees and is packaged as syrup for sale. Wrong! It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. Even more is required to make maple sugar. The water content of the sap has to be boiled off, leaving the syrup behind. You can't just leave the sap around and boil it at your convenience either! The sooner you boil the sap, the better the quality of the syrup. If you wait too long, the sap will spoil and you'll have to dump it.

The sap is transported to a holding tank where it accumulates until there's enough to boil off—known as “sugaring off.”

Sources: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/faculty_archives/appalachian_women/frontier.htm; http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/spf/documents/southernhardwoodmanagement.pdf
http://www.edsanders.com/lan028.htm

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Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, history of appalachia

In early 1907 consumer goods prices were high and continuing to increase, a situation set in motion by too easy credit. Most glaringly, the money center banks of New York City owed their depositors more money than the whole country possessed, real money and ‘credit money’ combined. The system couldn’t sustain itself that way any longer. A stock market "panic" hit that threatened to topple the New York investment banks and reverberate through the economy, triggering a depression.

The ‘Panic of 1907’ caused nationwide bank failures, timber prices collapsed, mine operations ceased, railroads stopped running, a rash of bankruptcies occurred, and a dramatic loss of confidence and a nasty economic downturn sank in for the next year. Although not as severe as many in the past, the Panic made clear the need for national legislation to protect bank depositors.

The First National Bank, of White County, TN was one of the few banks in that state which was able to keep open through the Panic. The Tennessee Bankers Association (TBA) took notice of that fact. They sought to craft a proposal to the state’s legislature that would emulate many of that company’s best practices.

Customers inside of the First National Bank in Jackson, TN, 1900.

The TBA’s lobbying activities were in fact responsible for the state’s 1908 legislature passing banking bills of very minor importance. The TBA made every effort to prevent what it considered undesirable legislation until it could present a bill satisfactory to banks as well as offering sufficient protection to depositors.

At each succeeding annual association convention many bankers increasingly felt that depositor protection legislation was inevitable. However, the legislative committee of the association found it very difficult to prepare a bill that met the approval of all the bankers in the state.

In 1911 the association convention resolved: “supervision is desirable and examination made by and under the authority of the State of Tennessee would strengthen confidence in state banks and prevent failures.”

When the convention of 1912 was held the legislative committee was able to present a bill which had almost unanimous support of the association members, and this bill was presented to the legislature of 1913.

On February 13, 1913, five years after the Panic of 1907, the legislature finally passed the Banking Act of 1913, which greatly strengthened the state's ability to oversee bank operations. It stated: [Section 1] “There is hereby created a Banking Department of the State of Tennessee, charged with the execution of all laws relating to corporations, firms and individuals doing or carrying on a banking business in the State of Tennessee. The chief officer of the Banking Department shall be known as the Superintendent of Banks, and he shall be appointed by the Governor upon the recommendations of the Tennessee Bankers Association, and his term of office shall be four years or until his successor is appointed in the manner aforesaid.”

The act required that every state bank within Tennessee should be examined by the superintendent or his examiners at least twice each year, or more often if he deemed it necessary.

The act established minimum capital requirements for banks: at least $7,500 in towns of less than 1,500 inhabitants on up to $50,000 in cities over 100,000 in population. It prohibited any bank from reducing cash on hand and due from banks or bankers below ten percent of demand deposits.

Loans could not be made to officers or employees except on approval of the directors or finance committee. Loans to one person or interest could not exceed fifteen percent of the capital, surplus and profits, except on approval of approval of a majority of the executive or finance committee.

Loans on or the purchase of the company’s own stock was prohibited, unless to prevent loss on previously contracted debts, in which case the stock had to be disposed of within six months.

On the national level, Congress was determined to create a central bank that provided a vigilant monetary policy, price stability, a more elastic currency and more careful supervision over the nation’s banks, and so the panic of 1907 led directly to the development of the Federal Reserve Act.


Sources: The Development of Banking in Tennessee, by Warren P. Gray, Capricorn House Publishers, 2007 (orig. publ. 1948)
Trust Companies, by Clay Herrick, Bankers Publishing Company, 1915
The Panic of 1907, by Robert F. Bruner, Sean D. Carr, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007



banking+history Panic+of+1907 appalachia appalachian+history appalachia+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, banking history, Panic of 1907

"The home of Nathan Noble was known far and wide for the ample room, good living, welcome cheer and forest hospitality. The entertainment was noble, majestic and grand in its services and welcome in its invitation. A stranger never left the cabin door of these mountaineers hungry, unless it was destitute of food or the wants of the stranger were unknown to the inmates of the cabin.

"Early in the history of the settlement two Methodist preachers came to pass Sunday at the home of Noble, [and they] insisted that all the cooking be done on Saturday for Sunday. Their will in this was granted. Next morning, Sunday, Nathan had his wife prepare for him a warm breakfast and place it on the end of the table where they were to eat and place the cold meals on the other end where the preachers were to eat. Breakfast was called and the parties seated as intended.

Isabelle Deaton Turner: her father was Jackie Deaton, and her mother was a Noble. Brothers were: Joe Deaton, who ran the post office & railroad station at Wolfcoal; Brant Deaton, and Ned Deaton.

Photo mounted on cardboard. Middle Fork/Turkey area of Breathitt County.

"The meal had not proceeded far when the preachers asked that they be served with the warm breakfast whereupon Noble interrupted by telling them that they had requested that this be done and that they must eat the cold breakfast. Noble explained by saying that they had matters as they requested and that he wanted, so far as possible, people who ate at his house to have what they wanted and the way they wanted it.

"Sometimes a new preacher might find his way into the neighborhood. At that time it was almost considered sacrilegeous for the children to play or make a noise while the preacher was there. This quietness proved the breeding and manners of the home. Little Johnny or some other little boy was hard to hold in restraint very long. Something was sure to occur to bring a recital of the grammar or some of the most used words of the home vocabulary--- all to the annoyance of the mother or shame of the sister."

---History of Breathitt County, by E.L. Noble, (publ. 1928 in Jackson Times newspaper of Breathitt County KY)



Breathitt+County+KY mountain+preaching appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Labels: appalachia, appalachia history, appalachian history, Breathitt County KY, mountain preaching

No, they’re not taking over the world, they’re not Illuminati. The Masons were and are a fraternity of men who all share similar moral beliefs (including a belief in a God) and get together regularly, often to raise money for various charities. And for many decades they were at the center of small town life--being a Mason was the entree to a town's business and political elite--which is why their presence is widespread throughout Appalachia.

Members bill the study of Freemasonry as a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. This system offers three progressively harder grades, or degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and finally Master Mason. There are numerous side degrees available in Masonry once a member has attained the Master Mason degree, though they are not part of the core rituals.

A side, or ‘chair,’ degree has a definite lesson to teach, and an inner meaning to its ceremony. Side degrees are not under the control of any central governing organization. Generally anyone who has received the degree can confer it upon someone else. Modern side degrees tend to be humorous fundraisers with the fees going to a designated charity.

The Thrice Illustrious Master is a good example of a side degree. “At a meeting of the Grand Council, Royal and Select Masters of North Carolina, held at Asheville in 1932, a resolution was adopted authorizing appointment of a committee to prepare a ritual for the degree of Thrice Illustrious Master,” says Ray Denslow in ‘Masonic Rites & Degrees.’

“Grand Master McKell appointed J. Ray Shute and J. Edward Allen as a committee to prepare the ritual, but charged with the responsibility of obtaining the right to its use from the Supreme Grand Chapter of Scotland, the only authority pretending to hold jurisdiction over the degree.

“The degree was exemplified at the annual assembly in 1933 and a committee was ordered to prepare the ritual, see that it was conferred at each annual assembly, and collect a $5.00 for each candidate, candidates being limited to those who had been elected as Masters of their respective Council.

“In some States the Order is referred to as the Order of Anointed Kings, in others, the Order of the Silver Trowel, and in other instances the Order of Thrice Illustrious Masters.

“Membership is limited to those who have been elected as Masters of Councils. The principal character is King David, and the ritual of the degree refers to events connected with the closing years of King David’s life.”

The ritual consists of two sections, the candidate representing the young King Solomon in both sections. In the first section, the candidate learns of the conspiracy by his half-brother Adonijah, to wrest the throne by cunning from Solomon.

He also learns of his mother (Bathsheba) interceding with the aged and ailing King David to prevent this. After securing David's approval, Solomon is symbolically conducted to Gihon by Benaiah where he is duly obligated, anointed and hailed as King by Nathan the prophet and Zadok, the High Priest.

In the second section, the newly anointed king is brought before his father David who, in his dying moments, instructs him in moral wisdom and counsels him to govern uprightly and to serve the Lord with all his strength. Upon Solomon's assent to all this, the king expires.


Sources: Masonic Rites and Degrees, by Ray V. Denslow, p 122, Kessinger Publishing, 2006
www.tngrandyorkrite.org/index.php?chapters=Y&page=OST

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“John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big steam drill on the left,

Before that steam drill could beat him down,

He hammered his fool self to death.”

---stanza 7 from one of the earliest written copies of the John Henry ballad,
prepared by a W. T. Blankenship and published about 1900.

He’s an American folk hero, the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels. The legend of John Henry began in Big Bend Tunnel, in Summers County, WV, which CSX Railroad still uses today. He was the best steel-drivin' man to ever grace the mountains of West Virginia, say the songs, working on the largest tunneling project in American history at the time.

That John Henry lived seems beyond doubt. That he drove steel in Great Bend Tunnel (as it was then called) in the early 1870's seems certain. That he drove steel against a steam drill and beat it seems likely. That he died from over exertion in the contest seems somewhat less likely, if eyewitnesses are to be believed.

In 1972, Michigan sculptor Charles Cooper completed this eight-foot bronze statue of John Henry. It stands in Memorial Park above the east portal of the Big Bend Tunnel near Talcott, West Virginia.

Mrs. C.L. Lynn of Rome, GA, sent her copy of the Blankenship songsheet quoted above to Guy B. Johnson, of the University of North Carolina, in the mid 1920s when he was collecting research for his forthcoming “John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend.“ Johnson’s 1929 work was the first published book-length study of John Henry and the John Henry legend.

Johnson spent four days in Talcott, WV in June 1927 interviewing still-living men who were likely to have seen the event with their own eyes. Mr. C.S. (Neal) Miller told him "Now some people say John Henry died because of this test. But he didn't. At least, he didn't drop dead. As well as I remember, though, he took sick and died from fever soon after that.

"I came here when I was seventeen," said Mr. Miller, "It was the spring of 1869. In the fall of that year I began work at Big Bend. I carried water and steel for the gang of drivers at the east end. I would take the drills to the shop and bring them back after they were sharpened. I often saw John Henry, as he was on the gang that I carried water and drills for.”

John Henry ballad version by W.T. Blankenship, about 1900.

Folk historian Dr. Louis Chappell of West Virginia University had also interviewed Miller about the John Henry story, two years earlier. But his book, “John Henry, a Folk Lore Study,” didn’t make it to press till 1933. Neal Miller had told Chappell, "he didn't die from getting too hot in the contest . . . The boys around the tunnel told me he was later killed in the tunnel . . ." And a D.R. Gilpin said, "The last time I saw John Henry was when some rocks from a blast fell on him. I always thought he died in the tunnel."

Now, Guy Johnson was a highly respected scholar who had co-authored several works on African American song, but a bit of controversy surrounds his work with John Henry, as Chappell was quick to point out.

According to Chappell, Johnson at first thought that the character of John Henry was totally mythological, and that he may have hailed from Georgia or the Carolinas. After Chappell's work began to circulate in unpublished form, prior to 1929, Johnson took up Chappell's position for his study, without crediting Chappell.

Many rare book collectors today feel Chappell produced the superior work, which easily brings $250 a copy in the rare book market. Chappell's work was much more thorough than Johnson's, drawing on many contemporary newspapers, scientific journals, treatises on tunneling, and reports from the construction of other tunnels, as well as on the oral and written reports from his many informants. Chappell wrote with more conviction than Johnson about the certainty that John Henry was a real person and not just a legend.


sources: John Henry: Tracking Down a Negro Legend, by Guy Benton Johnson. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1929)
John Henry, A Folk-Lore Study, by Louis W. Chappell, (Jena, Germany: Frommannsche Verlag, Walter Biedermann, 1933)
www.abaa.org/books/abaa/news_fly?code=49
www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/wv2.html
www.ibiblio.org/john_henry
www.threeriverswv.com/legend-of-john-henry.php
www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1963/6/1963_6_34.shtml



John+Henry Talcott+WV Big+Bend+Tunnel railroad+workers appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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The Knoxville Journal
1890-02-03

'An Elopement'

Chattanooga, February 2,-News reaches the city of a romantic elopement, with an unhappy ending, in Polk County, Tennessee, yesterday. A young farmer named Stancel stole the twelve year-old daughter of a planter named McCash. The eloping pair went to Cleveland and were married last night by Squire Harry Parke. This morning they took the track and walked as far as Red Clay, GA., twelve miles.

They were just beginning to feel safe from pursuit, when the irate father of the girl put in appearance, having come by rail from Cleveland where he had traced the fugitives. An animated triangular quarrel took place, but might triumphed and the old man took the girl under his arm and went back home, the disconsolate groom following at a safe distance. He had bought tickets to Dalton GA., and was to have taken the train his father-in-law went down on.


Source: http://genealogytrails.com/tenn/polk/newspaperbits.html



courting Polk+County+TN appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

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Zane Grey is rightly known today as the "Father of the Adult Western." The author wrote more than 80 books, featuring rich western imagery and highly romanticized plots with often pointed moral overtones. He's the best-selling Western author of all time, and for most of the teens, 20s, and 30s, had a least one novel in the top ten every year, inspiring scores of imitators.

Yes, but what's that got to do with Appalachia? Well, Grey's ancestors had been vigorous pioneers in America's "First West", the historic Ohio Valley, and his boyhood thrill at their adventures would eventually motivate the grown writer to novelize both his family's own story and the stories of many another pioneer, as the great migration Westward coursed across the continent.

Pearl Zane Gray was born on January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, OH. The town was founded by Ebenezer Zane, an ancestor of his mother, Alice Josephine Zane Grey. (The spelling of the Gray family name was changed to "Grey" sometime during the late 1890s.)

Zane Grey with his three children, Romer, Loren and Betty in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, ca. 1916.

Ebenezer Zane's exploits played a very direct role in the shaping of Zane Grey's book 'The Spirit of the Border': "The writer is the fortunate possessor of historical material of undoubted truth and interest," he explained. "It is the long-lost journal of Colonel Ebenezer Zane, one of the most prominent of the hunter-pioneers, who labored in the settlement of the Western country.

"The author does not intend to apologize for what many readers may call the brutality of the story; but rather to explain that its wild spirit is true to the life of the Western border as it was known only a little more than one hundred years ago."

'The Spirit of the Border' was the final book in Zane Grey's first trilogy, which had begun with 'Betty Zane,' followed by 'The Last Trail.'

Inspired by the life and adventures of the author's great-great grandmother, 'Betty Zane' tells the story of the last battle of the American Revolution, in which the heroine was a young, spunky, and beautiful frontier girl named Betty Zane.

In 'The Last Trail,' a woman is kidnapped from Fort Henry by a band of renegades and hostile Ohio Valley Indians, and Lewis Wetzel and Jonathan Zane set out in pursuit, with little hope of survival.

Finally, in 'The Spirit of the Border,' Lewis Wetzel must single-handedly save Fort Henry, armed only with his long rifle and knife.

The true-life narratives of Betty Zane & Ebenezer Zane weren't the only stores of family tales Zane Grey had to draw from.

Ebenezer's youngest brother was one Isaac Zane.

It has long been the family history of all the Zanes that Isaac, who was captured in his youth and brought up and remained with the Wyandots, was adopted by the Chief and made a member of the Chief's family - and it was a part of that well understood history that he married what they were pleased to call an Indian princess, the daughter of the Chief.

That he was in the family of Chief Tarhe is almost unquestioned for Tarhe was the Wyandot Chief in this section of Ohio for many years,-his home town being Solomonstown, near to and just south of Richland in this county - and somewhat known by all persons trading and trafficking with the Indians.

Isaac Zane was captured and carried away from Virginia in the year 1762, being at the time nine years of age and being the youngest of five brothers. He was carried to Buffalo, thence to Detroit, thence to Sandusky, and to what is now Logan County. His brother Jonathan, who was captured with him, was ransomed and released and returned to Virginia.

Isaac was adopted into the family of the Chief of this particular tribe and like hundreds of other captives became enamored of Indian life,--and sometime in 1796 or 1797 must have married for in 1786 when General Logan came from Kentucky to destroy the Indian towns in the Mad River Valley, Zane was living in what is now Zanesfield, and what was then his home protected by a fort, or blockhouse, and had some four or five children.

He was not disturbed, it being understood that he was friendly to the whites. His eldest daughter married William McCulloch, the eldest of the three McCulloch brothers, William, Solomon and Samuel, all of whom were brothers of Ebenezer Zane's wife of Wheeling.

Before the time of his (McCulloch's) marriage, Tarhe, the Crane, had removed his village from Solomontown to the crossing of the Hock Hocking, at Lancaster, and it is family tradition that William McCulloch, who with his brother Jonathan was assisting Ebenezer Zane in cutting the road from Wheeling to the Limestone, there met the daughter of Isaac Zane, Nancy, who had gone to the home of Tarhe, her grandfather, on a visit and they were married in the year 1797, and afterward lived for a time at Zanesville.

---"Tarhe and the Zanes", by E. O. Randall, in Ohio History magazine, Volume 26, No. 1, January 1917

Zane Grey didn't stay in Zanesville. He lived for a time in New York, and spent most of his adult life in Altadena, CA. But Zanesville most surely stayed in him.


sources: http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/places/se07/index.shtml
www.zgws.org/zgbio.html
http://snipurl.com/awn7j
www.histfiction.net/noframes/authors/ZANE_GREY.html



Zane+Grey Zanesville+OH appalachia appalachian+history +appalachia+history

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