Appalachian History

Buffalo Ridge Baptist Church, originally located eight miles north of Jonesborough, has been accepted by historians as the first organized church body in Tennessee territory. Tidence Lane moved from North Carolina in 1776 to the Watauga Settlement, where he established and pastored the first congregation.

The first church was constructed of logs with a clapboard roof. A single window provided the light for the pastor to read his text and "line off" his hymns. There was a large fireplace, one window placed high in the end of the building out of the range of Indian gunfire, and a heavy wooden door. The seats were of split logs and had no backs.

In 1785, Jonathan Mulkey succeeded Lane as pastor.

By 1786 there were seven Baptist churches organized in upper East Tennessee; Kendrick's Creek (Double Springs); Bent Creek (Whitesburg); Beaver Creek (Sullivan County); Greasy Cove (near Erwin); Cherokee Creek; North Fork of the Holston (Abingdon, Va.); and Lower French Broad (Dandridge).

Pastor Mulkey was instrumental in forming the first Baptist Association in Tennessee, the Holston Baptist Association, in October of that year, and remained active in it till the end of his life.

By 1817 Buffalo Ridge had a membership of 300, but for many reasons, membership declined over the next several years. Around 1815 some preachers began preaching a "Reformation."

Jonathan Mulkey served Buffalo Ridge for forty-one years until his death in 1826. When the weight of his years laid heavy upon him, and his health had faded, the congregation placed a chair near the pulpit for him to sit down and "pour out his soul in melting exhortations to a devoted people who would listen to his every word."

The church suddenly found itself without a pastor; furthermore the change in doctrine caused a division in the church and a loss of many members. Membership declined to 23 in 1828. Better times returned to the church with the selection of Rees Bayless as pastor. Membership increased over 300 percent during his pastorate.

Congregation from Buffalo Ridge Baptist Church baptizing members at Gray Station, Tennessee, 1931.

Several newly organized Baptist churches sprang up over the next few years, including Limestone and Union. Some members left Buffalo Ridge to join these churches, causing another drop in membership. In the 1854 epidemic of cholera, Buffalo Ridge lost 19 members and the association reported 168 deaths overall.

By 1848 a new building was needed and a committee was appointed. Church minutes record that "Reverend Martin Kitzmiller preached the first sermon that ever was preached in the New Brick Church, March 22, 1851." The debt on the new brick church was settled in July 1858.

During the late 1800's and early 1900's, Buffalo Ridge slowly lost membership due to population shifts and the isolated location of the church. By 1915 the church had only 77 members and closed due to a lack of support. For nearly ten years, the only time the church doors were opened was for an occasional funeral service.

The church was revived by Missionary S.W. Tindell in the early 1920's. On October 1, 1922, the membership decided to relocate at Gray's Station (now Gray, TN), about one mile from the original site. The first services in the new location were held in the upper room of Maden & Saunders Store. After a time, the congregation moved to the "upper room of the canning factory", then to the high school building. For a while, meetings were even held under a tent. In 1927 the new church building was completed.

On top of Buffalo Ridge in the Buffalo Ridge Cemetery is a marker telling all who visit there that they are standing on very historical and memorable ground. This marker is inscribed: "Here stood Buffalo Ridge Baptist Church 1778 First Baptist Church in Tenn. Pastors Tidence Land, organizer 1778-1785, Johnathan Mulkey 1785-1826. Baptist Historical Society & E. Tenn. W.M.U. Golden Jubilee memorial 1938."


sources: The Overmountain Men, by Pat Alderman, The Overmountain Press, 1986
http://jctcuzins.org/church/carrier.html
History of Washington County Tennessee, Watauga Association of Genealogists - Upper East Tennessee, Walsworth Press, 1988.
The Baptists of Tennessee, Volume One, by A.B. Tindell et al., Kingsport: Southern Publishers Inc., 1930.



religion+in+Appalachia Baptists Buffalo+Ridge+Baptist+Church appalachia +appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Baptists, Buffalo Ridge Baptist Church, religion in Appalachia

A prolific composer, South Carolinian Lily Strickland (1884-1958) published 395 musical works for popular, church, and children's performances. Her early works displayed the influences of life in the Jim Crow South, incorporating numerous elements of African American spirituals and folk music and the rhythms of Southern speech.

Lily was the only daughter of Charlton Hines Strickland and Teresa Hammond Reed. The family lived with her maternal grandparents, Judge & Mrs. J. Pinckney Reed at Echo Hall in Anderson, described by The State newspaper in 1958 as "a beautiful old place in the midst of formal gardens." The home was built by Judge Reed, whom the paper went on to portray as a "man of such great personal charm and ability that his legend persists after six generations. He is remembered as an immaculate dresser, who wore frock-coat and stove-pipe hat and carried a gold-headed cane. Yet he often 'fiddled,' as he called it, for dances at his house when his many daughters were young, and is said to have been full of fun and frolic."

In addition to his distinguished career as a judge, Reed was a successful lawyer, publisher of Anderson, SC's first newspaper, and a member of the South Carolina Secession Convention. Lily’s grandmother was also known for her friendliness and charm, and both grandparents provided strong influences on Lily Strickland’s childhood.

For a brief time the family relocated to New York City, where Lily's father's work as an insurance salesman had taken them. But upon her father's death a few years later, Lily and her two brothers returned with their mother to Echo Hall. Often sung to sleep by her mother and aunt, Lily was surrounded by a musical, and warm, loving family.

She attended local Anderson schools and began learning to play the piano at the age of six. At an even younger age, her family reminisced that she would stretch up on tiptoes, barely reaching the keyboard, to pick out a few notes of musical expression. As a small child she often listened to the cotton pickers as they sang while working in the nearby fields.

Absorbing the Negro rhythm and melodies and the other influences of the natural environment of long Southern days amidst the pines and magnolias and the chirping of songbirds provided Lily with inspiration for her first compositions. Her older cousin Reed Miller, a noted concert tenor, encouraged her by singing the songs she made up. Other family members fostered her musical ambitions as well, and Lily played the pipe organ in the local Episcopal church and published her first compositions when she was only sixteen.

Lily received her formal musical education at Converse College in Spartanburg, known across the South for its strong music program. She studied piano and composition there from 1901 to 1904. Strickland went on to fame and fortune elsewhere, but in recognition of her accomplishments as a composer, Converse College conferred an honorary Doctor of Music degree upon her in 1924.

Lily Strickland enjoyed wide popularity, an unusual accomplishment for a female composer in the early twentieth century. Numerous ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the Charleston Symphony, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, performed her work.

MAH LINDY LOU
Words and music by Lily Strickland (1920)

Honey, did you hear that mockingbird sing last night?
Oh Lord, he was singing so sweet in the moonlight
In that old magnolia tree, bustin' his heart with melody.
I know he was singing of you, Mah Lindy Lou, Lindy Lou
Oh Lord, I'd lay right down and die
If I could sing like that bird sings to you,
Mah little Lindy Lou.

Lindy, did you smell that honeysuckle vine last night?
Oh Lord, he was smelling so sweet in the moonlight
Clinging 'round my cabin door, reckon it's 'cause he loves you so.
Honey, that's the way I love you, Mah Lindy Lou, Lindy Lou
Oh Lord, I'd lay right down and die
If I could be as sweet as that to you,
Mah little Lindy Lou.

Lindy, did you feel that south wind blow last night?
Honey, it was kissing you sweet in the moonlight
Blowing from that old bayou, seems to say it loves you so.
Honey, that's the way I love you, Mah Lindy Lou, Lindy Lou
Oh lord, I'd lay right down and die
If I could be that wind a-kissin' you,
Mah little Lindy Lou.

Her most famous composition was a popular piece with a Southern flavor, Mah Lindy Lou, which entered the popular repertory through repeated performances by ballad singers in vaudeville in the 1920's, and later was recorded by both Burl Ives and Paul Robeson.


sources: More Than Petticoats, Remarkable South Carolina Women, by Lee Davis, Globe Pequot, 2009
http://www.scencyclopedia.org/strickland.htm



Lily+Strickland appalachian+music appalachian+history +appalachia +history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian music, history of appalachia, Lily Strickland

It was the original Gold Rush, and it kicked off 21 years before the California event we usually associate with that phrase. Gold fever raged in Lumpkin County, GA till the close of the nineteenth century, and Dahlonega attorney Wier Boyd placed himself in the midst of the myriad legal dealings.

Boyd was admitted to the bar in 1856, and later represented his county and district in both branches of the Georgia legislature. He and his son Marion formed Boyd & Boyd in 1870 and acted as a broker, collector and liaison for a number of mining clients.

Correspondence to Colonel Boyd (he served in the Civil War) now online at the Digital Library of Georgia documents the activities of the Rider Mine (1868-1883), the Yahoola and Cane Creek Hydraulic Mining Company (1868-1883), the Consolidated Mines (1879-1882), and the Phoenix Gold Mining company (1891-1892).

Here’s a typical example, a letter from an F. E. Dickie, secretary of the Phoenix Gold Mining Company, to Wier Boyd, dated April 28, 1892. Dickie promises to pay Boyd for costs associated with preparing the Exter v. Etowah Gold Mining Company case for argument before the Supreme Court.

Dickie asks to compare Boyd's bill of exceptions with that of his own lawyer in preparation for the case. He argues that because F. C. Exter accepted stock in lieu of monetary compensation, he does not have a valid claim against Etowah Gold Mining Company for monetary compensation. On those grounds, Dickie believes they can get the case dismissed.

Your favor of the 25th inst [instant] at hand and noted. In reply will say, please prepare the case for the Supreme Court, and on Monday or Tuesday of next week I will send you a check for $50 to pay costs in the matter.

When you have prepared your bill of exceptions inasmuch as the suit that we contemplate bringing at this end against the old management might be affected by the suit at your place, if agreeable I wish you would forward the bill to me so that I could refer it to my lawyer who being more thoroughly acquainted with the whole matter might be able to suggest some things that would benefit us in our suit here and which could be put in the bill of exceptions as prepared by you. I think we would have time to do this.

In regard to President Cheney will say, that we must go to the Supreme Court without his appearing in the case at all. We do not question the employment of Mr. Exter, but we do question the consideration that he claimed for the employment; his consideration for the employment was the large amount of stock that he held and for which he did not pay a nickel. If he did not receive the stock then he would be entitled to a money consideration, but he did accept the stock, and as you will notice in his testimony swore to having sold some of it and kept the proceeds. This of itself ought to be sufficient to throw his case out. We can prove by the Vice President that he was to receive nothing as Gen'l [General] Manager, except as stated above.


Yours truly,
F. E. Dickie

Gold mining continued on a limited scale in Dahlonega until the turn of the twentieth century, when the advent of new mining technologies gave rise to a flurry of new activity. Amory Dexter, a gold mining entrepreneur with business interests in Dahlonega, had alluded in letters to Wier Boyd that board members of the Yahoola Mining Company of Boston, MA would probably decide to erect a mill in Dahlonega.

Construction of the Consolidated Gold Mining Company began in Dahlonega in 1899, during a revived interest in the area's gold. The company was the largest gold-processing plant east of the Mississippi River.

Several companies did indeed set up new gold-processing plants locally. The one erected by the Dahlonega Consolidated Gold Mining Company in 1899 on Yahoola Creek was the largest ever built east of the Mississippi River. None of the operations were able to turn a profit, though, and they soon went out of business.

Wier Boyd did not live to see that turn of events. In November of 1893, in company with his son, he was returning from an inspection trip to one of his gold mines on the outskirts of town. In front of the residence of E. E. Crisson, on Clarkesville Street, Col. Boyd suddenly exclaimed that he was very sick; and as he spoke, he dropped dead.


Sources: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Elgboyd/chapter4.htm
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-785&pid=s-60
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/dahlonega/mka016.php



Wier+Boyd Dahlonega+Ga Lumpkin+County+Ga gold+mining appalachia +appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Dahlonega Ga, gold mining, Lumpkin County Ga, Wier Boyd

Fulton Caldwell opened his personal diary with details of a trip from Ohio to Iowa in December 1859. His careful list of all expenses clues the reader in right away to a man concerned with the details. “Fulton Caldwell, now a prosperous farmer and a leading citizen, was born on the Caldwell homestead in 1833,” says his biography in the “History of Noble County [Ohio]” from 1887. “He was brought up a farmer, and has followed that occupation principally.”

Caldwell must have gotten waylaid by the business of living, however, since his next diary entry doesn’t turn up till 1873. The ‘History of Noble County’ profile gives a hint: “He was engaged in mercantile business four or five years, and for about two years was a stock-buyer and drover. With these exceptions he has devoted his time and attention to farming, stock-raising and dairying.”

But between January 1873 and December 1910 ‘Fult’ Caldwell managed the impressive feat of producing a daily journal entry. The typed, single-spaced document transcribes to 508 pages.

View of Caldwell, Noble County, Ohio, ca. 1886-1888. This photograph is part of a collection compiled by Henry Howe while researching the 1889 edition of "Historical Collections of Ohio."

Caldwell’s entries typically note the weather, farm chores completed or in need of attending, neighbors visited, village births and deaths. He didn’t vary that writing strategy much over the entire 37 years of diary keeping. Here are his diary entries for the last week of April, 1873:

Sunday, 27…Pleasant day – sun shines warm – at home – Mr. and Mrs. Moor here.

Monday, 28…Cloudy morning – quit at noon – rain early all day – Mr. and Mrs. Moor went home.

Tuesday, 29…Cloudy morning – sprinkles rain a little – I went to Gouchenours and Moors. Corden got hurt.

Wednesday, 30… Clear frosty morning – I commence plowing for oats – turn all stock on pasture – good pasture on Glidden farm – Sam Archer commence work today at $13.00 per month – boys haul wood.

MAY

Thursday, 1…Cloudy morning – we made a little garden – and finish sowing oats in field west of barn – rain in afternoon – we commence post holes for ball lot – Worthy McKee here.

…and 37 years later, that same last week of April in 1910:

Wednesday, 27…40 degress – rain during nt – cloudy threatening morning, clears off, pleasant by noon – cloudy again before night though sun sets red – find spring growing day – I am home – assist Ruth cleaning kitchen.

Thursday, 28…75 degrees – cloudy threatening day – sprinkles of rain – I borrow of C.C.C. check, $100.00 and pay same to Hugh Nughart to be accredited Mrs. Dr. Martin, money borrowed one year ago today.

Friday, 29…48 degress – Clouding threatening morning – clears off pleasant warm day – I walked with Marsh Merry to Ruths land west of town, then went on to Wm. Treadways home in hollow on west part of H. Caldwell farm where I have not been for over 50 years – called to see Mrs. D. Gouchenour, Dave Devold, Peter Walters and Mrs. Brock – Ben Davis hoed our sweet corn in garden – planted March 24 and all grew and standing now – also hoes potatoes well up in garden, Irish Cobble variety.

Saturday, 30…60 degrees – Partially cloudy morning and day – Ben Davis and I place logs front of west porch and stick poles and I plant 40 hills lima beans at west side of garden – also first beans – this ends a very favorable April with just about enough rain, though not as pleasant weather on average as March.

MAY

Sunday, 1…60 degrees – Partially cloudy morning – bright breezy warm day, flying clouds – we are home alone resting after weeks house cleaning – George Kean borrowed field glass to go to Mc Thorlas hill for observation.

Caldwell’s second to last entry in the diary tells the reader “I raid part of day working on books – worked steadily, drinking no whisky or other stimulant, took no medicine.” He doesn’t specify whether ‘working on books’ meant the accounting books, or something else.

But it’s quite clear that his diary by the end was meant to be passed on. The diary we now have opens with an “Index of Deceased” which Campbell later added after the original diary was completed, since it references diary entries that apply to each person listed.

And page 6 is titled “Index of Items for Future Reference” which opens with the perfectly expected entry “Page 8, 13 July 1873, Presbyterian Church Dedication” on through “Page 486, 13 Sept. 1910, mention again of Poochville school.” Quite useful for future historians and genealogists. Caldwell’s diary was transcribed in 1986 by the Noble County Historical Society.


Source: www.digitalshoebox.org ‘The Digital Shoebox Project, Historical Treasures of Southeastern Ohio’



Noble+County+OH Fulton+Caldwell diaries appalachia +appalachian+history +history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, diaries, Fulton Caldwell, history of appalachia, Noble County OH

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the left side of your screen. If you'd rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here.

We open today's show with a look at democracy in action in 1930s Kentucky. Animal rights activist Lucy Truman, with no lobbying money behind her and very little money to call her own, spent 4 years pushing for an anti-steel-trap hunting law, and against all the odds, succeeded.

Next up, if walls could talk! You’ll be amazed at the stories that played out in Ohio’s Stockport Mill, the last remaining mill on the Muskingum River in the town named for that same mill.

What do you call them in your hometown? Sweat flies? Russian hornets? Sand hornets? Warm weather’s here, and that means they’re starting to come back. In both Appalachian and Ozarks folklore, news bees appear as omens to those wise enough to read them.

Meet English reformer Thomas Hughes. In the 1870s he had a dream of planting a refined community of ladies and gentleman in Tennessee’s eastern highlands. But the town of Rugby wasn’t even a year old before disaster struck.

We’ll wrap things up with an oral history excerpt from Herman J. Miller of Cumberland, MD. One bootlegger on North Mechanic Street, Miller tells us, had a box-like platform built out of a second story window over Wills Creek. If a raid should occur, the operator would just pull a rope and the bottom would drop out and the contents would drop down to the rocks below, for this is where he kept his whiskey. When the glass bottles hit the rocks, the bottles would shatter, and thus, no evidence.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia, we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from I.D. Stamper (b. 1904) in a 1970’s recording of “Nine Hundred Mile.”

So, call your old blue-tick hound up on the porch, fire up your corn-cob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:10 PM | 0 comments Links to this post    

On a cold day in March 1881, three masked men on horseback, brandishing revolvers, held up an army paymaster on the banks of the Tennessee River near Muscle Shoals, AL. The paymaster was on his way with the payroll to pay the construction workers digging a canal near Muscle Shoals.

The masked men kidnapped the unlucky paymaster and took him into the woods where they relieved him of the payroll, his horse, and even his gold pocket watch he’d inherited from his deceased father. They then released him to a long walk home and disappeared into the dark woods, over $5000 richer.

Making his way north to Kentucky, Bill Ryan rode into the tiny crossroads of White’s Creek Tennessee, a few miles north of Nashville, and took refuge in a saloon from a gathering thunderstorm. A few shots of whiskey later, he was drunk and disorderly and running his mouth about being an “outlaw against state, county, and the United States Government!”

One local barfly had the temerity to question his outlaw credentials and Ryan pulled his pistols and made a scene. At gunpoint, he extracted an apology for the offense, but his luck, and ultimately that of the James Gang, had finally run out. The bartender just happened to be an off-duty Sheriff’s deputy.

After a vigorous scuffle, Ryan was disarmed and under arrest. He was carried off to the Nashville jail where his identity was soon revealed, and he was asked to explain how he came into possession of a large portion of that army payroll.

Huntsville Courthouse, where Frank James was tried, circa 1900.

Jesse James, and his brother Frank, were soon implicated in the robbery and warrants were issued for their arrest.

Within a year, Jesse would be dead, shot in the back of the head by Bob Ford in an attempt to earn clemency from the government for his own crimes and collect a hefty reward offered by the governor of Missouri.

During the following year, Bill Ryan would be sentenced to a long prison term, Frank would surrender to the Missouri authorities, the rest would scatter, and the infamous James Gang would be retired for good.

With Frank now in custody, it was time for him to face justice. A Huntsville grand jury indicted Frank and he was charged with armed robbery and brought to Huntsville to stand trial.

By this time, the James Gang’s exploits were already the stuff of legend. A whole entertainment industry had been built around their adventures. Dime stores across America carried pulp novels and magazines that thrilled their readers with the gang’s daring exploits.

Frank James received a celebrity trial. A large cheering crowd greeted his train as it arrived at the Huntsville depot. Newspaper reporters from far and wide descended on what was then the tiny town of Huntsville, filled the hotels and boarding houses, and filed sensational reports on the latest developments in the case.

On April 17, 1884, the trial began. Frank entered the courtroom accompanied by his wife, young son, and an all-star legal team headed by veteran Huntsville lawyer, Leroy Pope Walker who also happened to be the former Secretary of War for the Confederacy. The prosecution was headed up by the formidable William H. Smith, US Attorney and a former governor of Alabama during Reconstruction.

The two lead attorneys sparred and jousted in front of a jury made up largely of Civil War veterans. Leroy Pope Walker well understood his jury. He emphasized in his opening statement that Frank had also fought for the Cause, having served with the Missouri irregulars under William Clarke Quantrill during the closing days of the war.

Governor Smith countered with the facts of the case. He brought out witnesses who identified Frank as one of the robbers. Under withering cross examination, Walker got each to recant their claim. As his case looked increasingly lost, Governor Smith saved his ace in the hole for last.

James Andrew Liddel had been a loyal member of the James Gang for many years. He was the one who discovered Ryan had been arrested and even helped Frank and Jesse make their getaway. But Liddel had a weakness for women.

Sometime after they fled Nashville, Liddel became involved with an attractive widow who had also caught the eye of Woodson Hite, a cousin of the James brothers. An argument over money turned violent and Liddel shot Woodson Hite to death.

Liddel was subsequently captured by the law and, realizing the fix he was now in, decided to cooperate with the authorities. Governor Smith made him his star witness against Frank, his former comrade and employer.

Frank James shortly after his acquital.

Liddel surely regretted his decision to come to Huntsville, for Leroy Pope Walker saved his most brutal cross examination for the government’s star witness. Liddel was portrayed as a liar and career criminal, who was destroying the character and reputation of an upright man like Frank, so he could avoid going to the gallows for murder.

Governor Smith could see his case slipping away. He tried on redirect to reestablish some of Liddel’s credibility, but in the end it did no good. After a parade of witnesses by the defense who swore that they saw Frank in Nashville on the day of the robbery and a brilliant final summation by Leroy Pope Walker, the jury reached its verdict.

Frank James was acquitted of all charges. He walked out of that Huntsville courthouse a free man. It had been the trial of the century.


Source: http://huntsville.about.com/od/people/ss/frankjames.htm (originally reprinted from Old Huntsville Magazine)



Frank+James James+Gang Huntsville+AL appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Frank James, history of appalachia, Huntsville AL, James Gang

Please welcome guest blogger Cindy Gladden Tuttle of Salem, VA. She is the granddaughter of Texas Gladden (1895-1967), an American folk singer best known for her traditional Appalachian ballad style of singing.


A black and white log house. Red shuttered windows. Beds ablaze in summer with a multitude of blossoms of all kinds. Seven white pines, their boughs heavy laden with snow in winter. No furnace, but a wood cookstove and a stone fireplace. Spring water by gravity. Washtubs, washboards, and clotheslines. An unfinished attic bedroom, the presumed home of Rawhide & Bloody Bones and the Hairy Teeth Man. The sweet aroma of fried apples. Afternoon Bible stories sitting on the floor round Granny’s rocker.

These are some of my richest and warmest memories I have of childhood. The memories of the statuesque woman known affectionately to us as Granny, to others as Mom, and to the rest of the world as Texas Gladden. She possessed a literate style of speech accompanied by a gentle laugh and a radiant smile. She was a lady devout in her Mormon faith and devoted to her family of husband James, nine children, and twenty-eight grandchildren. Her countenance and manner belied the treasure she carried within herself.

Born in 1895 in Smyth County, VA, Texas Gladden had a repertoire of over 200 old time mountain ballads. These are songs that traveled to these mountains with the early settlers and were handed down through the generations. They are of Anglo-Saxon/Celtic origin and contain the remnants of the European ideals of female subjugation. These old ballads also gave expression to the wishes, desires, and fantasies of the women like Granny who cultivated them. Some of these ideas are easily illustrated in ballads such as The House Carpenter ---the tale of a woman lured away from her loving husband and babies only to discover her ill-fated mistake.

Granny always said that these songs should be sung by an uneducated voice as the ballads themselves were uneducated. She stylized these songs through the use of odd phrasings and grace notes. She defined grace notes, which she learned from her mother, as unexpected twists on a note. She never thought that people who sang operettas should tinker around with mountain music. An hour or so of immersion into the music of the mountains allows the listener to understand that Granny was correct in her thinking on this concept.

Most of Granny's singing was done at home and she modestly claimed she didn’t sing anything but lullabies. Raising nine children during the Great Depression certainly left her with little time to do much else. Her public appearances were rather sparse. She sang on occasion at community events at the old Fort Lewis School and at the festivals at Whitetop Mountain during the 1930s. She and her brother, Hobart Smith, performed at the White House in 1933 at the request of Eleanor Roosevelt. Her only other known public appearance came in 1941 at the request of Alan Lomax.

In 1959, as part of his Southern Journey project, Lomax visited Granny at home and recorded a number of her songs. These can be found on Ballad Legacy: Texas Gladden (Rounder CD 1800). This CD also contains snippets of Lomax' interview with my Granny. Listening, one can hear warm gentility. She says during these interviews that she always had a perfect mental picture of the story in the song. Listening to her rendition of 'Mary Hamilton,' one can see the tragic picture she paints, both for the audience and in her mind, as she sings:

Word has come from the kitchen
And word has come to me,
That Mary Hamilton drowned her babe,
And throwed him into the sea.

Down came the old Queen,
Gold tassels around her head
Oh Mary Hamilton, where’s your babe,
That was sleeping in your bed?

I think that perhaps I inherited some of Granny's visualization when it comes to music. There is an old mountain lullaby she used to sing to me. Every time I hear it, I have the most wonderful vision of all those pretty little horses.

Go to sleep, go to sleep,
Go to sleep little baby,
When you wake, get some cake,
And ride them pretty little horses.

Black and a bay, sorrel and a gray,
Whole heap a’ little horses.
Black and a bay, sorrel and a gray,
Whole heap a’ little horses.

Little old horse, little old cow,
Ambling around the old hay mound,
Little old horse, he took a chew,
"Darned if I don't," said the old cow too.

Granny's music and singing style were rediscovered by Joan Baez during the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Granny was not a part of this as her health was failing at the time. She died in 1967 without ever achieving the fame and fortune she so richly deserved. Nonetheless, she remains a true Appalachian treasure to those of us who loved her and to those who loved her music.

Useful links on Texas Gladden & Hobart Smith ---
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/gladden.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart_Smith
http://www.oldtimemusic.com/FHOFHobart.html

If you are interested, she is also seen in a short film narrated by Pete Seeger titled To Hear Your Banjo Play. It can be found at:
http://revver.com/video/263858/to-hear-your-banjo-play/



Texas+Gladden Smyth+County+VA Alan+Lomax Appalachian+ballads appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: Alan Lomax, Appalachian ballads, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Smyth County VA, Texas Gladden

Excerpt from 'Cumberland, Maryland Through the Eyes of Herman J. Miller,' (1978)


During the 1920’s and early 1930’s, so many arrests and convictions were made by dry agents that the Allegany County Jail could not hold all of the prisoners, so some were housed in the Garrett County Jail at Oakland, Maryland.

One bootlegger on North Mechanic Street had a box-like platform built out of a second story window over Wills Creek. If a raid should occur, the operator would just pull a rope and the bottom would drop out and the contents would drop down to the rocks below, for this is where he kept his whiskey. When the glass bottles hit the rocks, the bottles would shatter, and thus, no evidence.

One bootlegger I knew wore an overcoat all the time. People who didn’t know him thought he was an eccentric, but he had a half dozen pockets inside the coat in which he carried his stock of whiskey for sale.

One of the favorite places for good moonshine, to the ones in the know, was a well-known Liberty Street shop. Most speakeasies were ones that you got in, if they knew you, got your drink, and got out. Some were fixed up like club rooms, with chairs, tables and some with slot machines.

People referred to the quality of liquor bought in the prohibition era, calling two dollar whiskey “long life” and the one dollar whiskey, “early grave.” While some bootleggers sold only whiskey, mostly their places sold both whiskey and home brew. Most fraternal clubs were for members only, but had both whiskey and beer for sale.

Some speakeasies stole the idea from the strictly private clubs and had membership cards made for the patrons of their places. As an example of how many wanted to sell liquor when the country went dry, there were thirty-six licenses issued for 1921 for soft drink establishments. Not all sold liquor, but most did. Some bootleggers would deliver to your home. You would use a code over the telephone. If you wanted three pints, you would ask for three pounds.

On April 7, 1933, 3.2 beer became legal. Baltimore, Hagerstown and others parts of the state were selling the brew. Cumberland and Allegany County could not because a bill that had been passed in the General Assembly pertaining to county beer licenses stipulated that the applications became available on the day beer came back, but permits became effective only seven days later. You could buy beer on the first day of repeal in Pennsylvania. A store just over the state line on the Bedford Road was selling beer on the first day. A steady stream of Cumberlanders took advantage of the beer sale.

On Friday, April 14, 1933, beer could be bought in Allegany County. Those who could sell beer reported a good business. There were almost as many women as men customers. With the return of beer, many speakeasies came out in the open, applied for licenses and operated under regulations. It is worth noting that it has been only about two years since beer and liquor could be sold legally on Sunday in Allegany County. Many people of the area would go to Ridgeley, West Virginia, to buy beer on Sundays. Now, restaurants and private clubs in Allegany County can sell alcoholic drinks after 1:00 PM on Sundays.

When it was all over and the country was again wet, there seemed to be no attachment of lawlessness or the stigma of hoodlum attached to the convicted bootleggers who had served time in jail. Some, in later years, joined highly regarded fraternal orders. Others operated successful businesses. William Harvey, who was considered to be the outstanding prohibition enforcement officer in Allegany County, became sheriff of Allegany County for a time.


Herman Miller was a lifelong Cumberland, MD resident, serving on the City's Advisory Commission on Historical Matters and the Historic Preservation Commission during the 1970s. He was a member of the Cumberland Fire Department until his retirement. In 1978, he was the subject of an oral history by Dr. Harry Stegmaier of the history department at Frostburg State University. The resulting text was entitled 'Cumberland, Maryland Through the Eyes of Herman J. Miller.'


Source: www.whilbr.org/Cumberland_HermanMiller/index.aspx



Cumberland+MD prohibition+in+MD speakeasies appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Cumberland MD, history of appalachia, prohibition in MD, speakeasies

Excerpt from “Ninety Pounds of Fight,’ by Tom Wallace, Nature Magazine, Feb. 1942

Because of politics Kentucky’s anti-steel-trap law, passed nearly four years ago, hangs in the balance. The Legislature meets in January. Between the law, which has not been fully enforced, and repeal, sought by conservatives who want to continue using steel traps, stands Lucy Furman. She weighs, maybe, ninety pounds, but is as full of fight—her kind of fight---as anybody in the Cumberland Mountains.

Miss Furman was educated at fashionable Sayre Institute, Lexington, and took a literature course at the University of Cincinnati. Early in life she began writing fiction. Soon after publishing ‘Stories of A Sanctified Town,’ in 1897, she became a worker in Hindman Settlement School, in the Kentucky Mountains.

There she wrote ‘Mothering on Perilous,’ ‘The Quare Women,’ ‘The Lonesome Road’ and other novels. These established her as an interpreter of mountain life. She became interested in conservation of wildlife when in contact with mountain trappers.

In 1928, she wrote an article, published by ‘The Atlantic Monthly,' on cruelty of trapping. The late Commander Edward Breck, who had founded the Anti-Steel-Trap League three years before, read the article and made its author Vice-president of the League.

In 1933 Vernon Bailey, chief naturalist of the United States Biological Survey, invented the humane leg-hold animal trap, not for profit, but in behalf of animals caught—at the rate of many millions every year---in traps that caused many of them to gnaw off the leg between the vice-like jaws of the steel trap and brought slow death in the trap to others. Foxes caught in steel traps sometimes die of burst ventricles of the heart, so great is their fear and suffering.

Steel trap, 1881, from Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making.

The less nervous animals manage to chew the flesh of the trapped leg, sometimes tearing the flesh from the bone and breaking the bone, leaving a paw in the trap when they hobble off, to die of starvation because they no longer have the physical equipment they must have to find their food. Not until the leg-hold trap was invented, and made available to manufactures by the inventor, was there hope of outlawing the steel trap.

There seemed to be little ground for hope that it would be outlawed in Kentucky when Miss Furman came to Frankfort and set up headquarters there. In 1934 her bill was beaten. She then began the work of an evangelist. By 1936 the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and many other organizations were her supporters.

She had only to call upon daily newspapers for editorial support and news column space, because all of them knew and valued her.

Foxhunters were her champions because steel traps catch and mutilate many fox hounds that have considerable money value and the deep affections of owners.

The bill failed in 1936.

In 1938 the Animal Trap Company of America, which had been the world’s largest maker of steel traps, began making leg-hold traps as a result of the intervention of R.E. Hinman, of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company, of Louisville. Mr. Hinman was a Nature lover and Miss Furman took her story of the new trap and the tortured animals to him, after 1936.
In 1938 Miss Furman, who had been known at two earlier sessions as ‘the trap woman,’ got her bill passed, to take effect in 1940.

Other traps designed to take furbearers without torture are now in the market. Several of them, for the smaller animals, have won annual prizes offered by the American Humane Association. An argument in behalf of such traps is that pelts are not injured by animals gnawing off legs, and that annual production of furbearers is not diminished by starvation of injured animals that escape, three-legged, from steel traps.

But trappers are ruralists. Ruralists do not like change under statutory compulsion. So, Miss Furman is on guard at Frankfort to prevent, if possible, repeal of the anti-steel-trap law.

If this stalwart crusader is able to keep the Kentucky Legislature under her influence until the trappers become used to the new-style traps nothing, presumably, would ever repeal her law.

Miss Furman accomplished, between 1934 and 1938, a task that seemed at first impossible of accomplishment.

Moneyless people as lobbyists for moneyless enterprises---people who have nothing to barter in the trades of politicians---are at a disadvantage at sessions of legislatures, and Lucy Furman pleads only a cause.

When, single-handed, she began asking law-makers to consider the situation of wild furbearers---“varmints” to ninety-nine of one hundred Kentucky legislators---her project seemed, to most observers, a more hopeless one than the education of Huckleberry Finn.

Will she now be able to persuade the legislature not to repeal her law when steel trap users, fearing its better enforcement, and utterly unconcerned about humaneness to wild animals, exert pressure?



Lucy+Furman steel+trap+hunting hunting appalachia history+of+appalachia appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, history of appalachia, hunting, Lucy Furman, steel trap hunting

The Rugby Colony was founded by English author and social reformer Thomas Hughes in the eastern Tennessee mountains, and was officially christened on October 5, 1880.

Hughes published the President’s Address he'd given at the opening of the town site in a pamphlet circulated in London, Boston and New York with the intent to attract additional lot purchasers:

"The prospectuses and pamphlets of the numerous corporations and individuals who are just now engaged in this work of settling and developing the unoccupied lands on this glorious continent, are full of figures and statements showing the rapidity with which enormous gain will be made in the several regions to which they desire to attract settlers. This being so, you may fairly ask, what have I, standing here at the representative of the founders of this settlement, to say upon the subject?

"I answer them broadly and frankly; we have nothing to say. We believe that our lands have been well bought, and that those who settle here and buy from us will get good value for their money, and will find it as easy as it is at all well that it should be to make a living here.

"Beyond this we are not careful to travel. Whether the lands will double or quadruple in value before you have fairly learned to live on them; whether you will make five or twenty or one hundred per cent on your investments, we offer no opinions. You can judge for yourselves of the chances, if these are your main aims.

"Speaking for myself, however, I must say that I look with distrust rather than with hope to very rapid pecuniary returns. I am old fashioned enough to prefer slow and steady growth. I like to give the cream plenty of time to rise before you skim it.

The wise men wait; it is the foolish haste,
And, ere the scenes are in the slides would play,
And, while the instruments are tuning, dance.

"So far as I have been able to judge, these new settlements are being, as a rule, dwarfed and demoralized by hurrying forward in the pursuit of gain, allowing this to become the absorbing propensity of each infant community.

"Then follows, as surely as night follows day, that feverish activity of mercantile speculation, which is the great danger, and to my mind, the great disgrace of our time.

"If it must come it must, but, so far as we are concerned, it shall get no help or furtherance here.

"On the other hand, all that helps to make healthy, brave, modest, and true men and women will get from us all the cordial sympathy and help we are able to give.

"In one word, our aim and hope are to plant on these highlands a community of gentlemen and ladies; not that artificial class which goes by those grand names, both in Europe and here, the joint product of feudalism and wealth, but a society in which the humblest members, who live (as we hope most if not all of them will, to some extent) by the labour of their own hands, will be of such strain and culture that they will be able to meet princes in the gate without embarrassment and without self-assertion, should any such strange persons ever present themselves before the gate tower of Rugby in the New World."

Members of the Rugby Colony in Morgan County, Tennessee, participating in a summer outing. Undated photo.

The utopia Hughes envisioned didn’t last long. In 1881 a typhoid epidemic took the lives of seven Rugbians. By 1884 the 400 or so colonists had managed to establish a canning company, a sawmill, a commissary, a printing office, and The Tabard Inn, a boarding house which drew in summer holiday traffic. But by 1887 a decline in commodity prices, falling land prices, and a long drought marked the beginning of the end for the settlement.

On top of these woes, the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad failed to build a spur line through Rugby, as they originally had promised. And so, less than two decades into Hughes' grand experiment, many of the original colonists by the 1890s had left for other parts of America, unable to prosper in Rugby.


Sources:
www.lib.utk.edu/dlc/
www.tngenweb.org/scott/fnb_v3n4_historic_rugby.htm
tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/utopia/TimelineBibliography.pdf



Rugby+Colony Morgan+County+TN Thomas+Hughes appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 2 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Morgan County TN, Rugby Colony, Thomas Hughes

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the left side of your screen. If you'd rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here.

We open today's show with the rags to riches story of John R. Brinkley. His medical quackery was aimed squarely at elderly gentlemen who wanted to be “sweetly dangerous among the ladies again.” They happily paid Brinkley in excess of $12 million, guest blogger Gary Carden tells us. Carden's autobiographical "Mason Jars in the Flood" received the AWA Book of the Year Award in 2001.

Next up, a short discussion of local beliefs about witchcraft, from a 1900 autobiography by one Thomas L. Preston of Saltville, VA. Preston notes the curious case of 2 young girls who saw a black cat coming down the chimney with a cap on its head. From that moment one was struck dumb and the other rendered incapable of walking. Until exactly one year later to the day, when the two girls traded afflictions.

Ever play with a Duncan yo-yo? You’re not alone. With more than 600 million sold, it is probably the most popular toy in history, and has been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. We’ll share with you the story of Donald F. Duncan of Huntington, WV.

The United Mine Workers had organized 95 percent of the miners in Kentucky’s Harlan and Bell Counties by the beginning of 1941. The only non-union outpost was the Fork Ridge mine just across the Kentucky line in Tennessee, a short distance from Middlesboro. On April 15 things came to a head there, and it got ugly.

If you’re a baseball lover, we’ve got plenty of stats for you about pitcher Charles Louis (“Deacon”) Phillippi, of Rural Retreat VA. The Deacon’s claim to fame is that he won the first game of the first World Series in 1903 against Boston’s Cy Young.

Go to Harrisonburg, Virginia and you’ll find them in just about any of the numerous old, old Mennonite churches in the area. They’re “Old Folks Singings,” an event unique to that religious group in that region. And the songbook they use is The Harmonia Sacra. No other hymnal in the English language has had such a long lifespan of constant use in any Christian denomination. Listen in with us on how that came to be.

Finally we'll wrap things up with a look at Bank Night at the Metropolitan Theatre in Morgantown, WV. “Bank Night is a copyright scheme,” fumed Time magazine in 1937. “What it amounts to is a clever evasion of state & municipal lottery laws whereby, by registering his name at a theatre, a patron becomes eligible to win a substantial prize if he is present at the theatre on 'Bank Night'— when the prize is awarded to the holder of a lucky ticket after a drawing on the theatre stage.”

And, thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive, we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from Clarence Ashley in a 1931 recording of ‘My Sweet Farm Girl.’

So, call your old blue-tick hound up on the porch, fire up your corn-cob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:45 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the Azalea Festival in Pickens, SC. Last year about 15,000 people swelled the streets of this town of 5,000 in search of classic cars, a pet pageant, hot air balloon rides, and of course, acres and acres of pink, orange, and purple azaleas.

The extravagant use of floral flourishes in public celebration isn't exactly a recent development in Pickens. Here are two photos from the Pickens County Library System, shot a year apart, labeled simply 'Pickens Fair (1910),' and 'Fair and Parade (1911)' below.







Pickens+SC appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia Azalea+Festival

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Azalea Festival, history of appalachia, Pickens SC

West Virginia entrepreneur Donald F. Duncan (1892-1971) had never heard of the yo-yo until 1928, when he encountered Pedro Flores on a business trip to California.

Earlier that same decade, Flores had immigrated to America from the Philippines, and initially worked as a bellhop at a Santa Monica hotel. Carving and playing with wooden yo-yos was a traditional pastime in the Philippines, but Flores found that his lunch break yo-yo playing drew a crowd. He promptly started a company to make the toys, calling it the Flores Yo-Yo Company ("yo-yo" means "come-come" in the Tagalog language).

In 1930 Duncan bought out Flores, who went to work for Duncan running promotions. The company teamed up with Hearst Newspapers to promote yo-yo contests. Hearst added a twist, requiring players to sell three newspaper subscriptions if they wished to compete in the contests. A single promotion in Philadelphia sold 3 million yo-yos in 30 days. Duncan introduced the looped slip-string, which allows the yo-yo to sleep - a necessity for advanced tricks.

The company imported a number of teenagers from the Philippines to demonstrate the toy and numerous tricks and stunts to the American public. This marketing worked and quickly the toy (which Duncan called the "O-Boy Yo-yo Top") became a bestseller. Manufacturing shifted to Baurle Brothers in Chicago. The first ever World Yo-Yo Competition was held in London, in 1932. Harvey Lowe, age 13, won.

Also in 1932 Duncan filed for and was assigned a trademark for the word yo-yo, which the company held until challenged in 1965. In a landmark intellectual property case that year (Donald F. Duncan, Inc. v. Royal Tops Mfg. Co., 343 F.2d 655 (7th Cir. 1965), a federal court of appeals ruled in favor of the Royal Tops Company, asserting that the term had become a part of common speech.

The genuine Duncan yo-yo is a classic toy that has endured for 70 years. With more than 600 million sold, it is probably the most popular toy in history, and has been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.


http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/yoyo.htm
http://www.yo-yo.com/history.asp
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/yoyo.asp
http://members.aol.com/jeff560/famousd.html


Duncan+yo-yo appalachian+history appalachian+culture appalachia history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 2 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, Duncan yo-yo, history of appalachia

There was a notable character, a Mrs. Henagar, who had the reputation of being a witch. Her upper eye-lids were paralyzed and drooped over her eyes, giving her the appearance of being blind. Whenever she read her Bible she was obliged to stoop over it and hold the lids up with her hands. Then her vision was perfect.

Mrs. Preston asked her, "Why, Mrs. Henagar, do people say you are a witch?"

"Law, bless your sweet soul, honey," she replied, "it's because I have got more sense than all of 'em put together."

This bad reputation, however, clung to her, and every rise that had "a spell" upon it, and every child that had convulsions in the neighborhood was supposed to be bewitched by Mrs. Henagar. So fixed was this belief that Charley Talbot, a notable hunter and marksman, once had " a spell " on his gun, and he could not win at shooting matches nor kill a deer in the woods.

He said that Mrs. Henager had a " grudge " against him, and had put the " spell " on his gun. To avenge himself and rid the neighborhood of this supposed meddlesome person, he determined to practice a "spell " upon her. To accomplish this it was necessary to draw an outline of her figure upon a tree and shoot it in the heart with a bullet in which there was a large portion of silver. This he did, but, to his surprise, Mrs. Henager did not "pine away and die," but continued in her usual health. He was, therefore, convinced that it was not Mrs, Henagar that had "spelled " his gun, but some other witch.

Many other stories of witchcraft were circulated and believed, but, perhaps the best authenticated was that of the children of young Mrs. Talbot and her cousin, Mrs. Henagar. They lived together on the north side of the river, about a mile from the King Salt-Works. Their children were little girls, nearly of the same age, and had learned to talk well enough to be understood. On a bright summer day the two mothers barred the door of the house in which the children were left, and went to the river side to do their washing.

Suddenly there was a noise and shrill outcry from the house, and the mothers ran back to it. On entering the door one of the children was found sitting in the “crib,” and the other greatly excited and alarmed running about the floor.

Soon it was discovered that the one on the floor had lost the power of articulation; was, indeed, dumb, and the other, in the cradle, was paralyzed in its lower limbs, but could speak. No intelligent explanation of what had occurred could be given by the only child which could talk, and, as far as she could indicate, the only cause for alarm was that a black cat had come down the chimney with a cap on its head.


This solved the mystery, and was accepted by the families and the neighborhood as a clear case of witchcraft.

Subsequent events confirmed the opinion. On the anniversary of this event the mothers and children went to bed just as they had done for a year; but, lo! when they awoke next morning the paralyzed child sprang up and ran about the floor as actively as her cousin had done the day before, but that cousin sat in bed talking in the advanced language of a year, but could not move her legs.

This periodical interchange of condition continued for two or more years, and until the paralyzed child sickened and died. The dumb one lived to be an old woman.


source: "HISTORICAL SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES OF AN OCTOGENARIAN.," by Thomas L Preston, BF Johnson Publishing Co, Richmond, VA, 1900


Preston was the son of Gen. Francis Preston & grandson of Gen. William Campbell & Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell (sister of Patrick Henry. The historical sketches referred to in the title are first hand accounts of Washington County, VA & of the Preston Saltworks at Saltville, which Preston operated before the Civil War. According to the 1850 Federal Census for Smyth County, Preston was worth over $500,000 on paper, making him one of the wealthiest men in America (he was actually heavily in debt at the time.)



Thomas+L.+Preston Saltville+VA appalachian+witchcraft appalachia +history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 5 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian witchcraft, history of appalachia, Saltville VA, Thomas L. Preston

By January 1, 1941, Harlan and Bell Counties were 95 per cent organized. The only nasty non-union outpost was the Fork Ridge mine just across the Kentucky line in Tennessee, a short distance from Middlesboro. The mine was operated by C. W. (Dusty) Rhodes, president and general manager. Searchlights were placed on the tipple and plug-uglies guarded the mine property with tommy guns. Every time a union organizer attempted to talk with a Ford Ridge employee, he took his life in his hands.

Rhodes was a large, reckless young man who arrogantly told union men that if miners attempted to picket his mine, he would slaughter them. For months, he and Bob Robinson, a former Tennessee highway patrolman, had been parading around with their Tommy guns and challenging the miners to a fight. More than half of the employees had been signed up by the UMWA, but Rhodes ignored their demands and hired more thugs.

On April 15, 1941, the union decided to post a picket line in the safest place they could find. The pickets chose stations where they could take cover in case they were attacked by company guards, and then moved to a strategic place near the mine. When the caravan of cars came to a stop at the state line and started to unload, the fifty pickets were greeted with a broadside from fifteen or eighteen armed guards who had word they were coming and had preceded the pickets to the state line. On the first volley, one picket was killed and more than a dozen were wounded, nine seriously enough to be hospitalized.

When James Ridings, A. T. Pace and George Gilbert, union representatives, were getting out of their car, Gilbert was shot in the leg, and Ridings, in addition to having his necktie shot off, also had his clothes perforated by bullets. The pickets took cover behind trees, rocks and cars and returned the fire, killing Rhodes, the company president, E. W. Silvers, company vice president, and Robinson, the company guard.

Sam Evans, a union member, was killed. The nine men in the hospital who were jointly charged, along with Turnblazer, Ridings and Pace in the Tennessee murder warrant were: R. W. Lawson, Bell County deputy sheriff; Alford Smith; Walter Pilly; Earl Alley; John Holland; Clayton Webb; Millard Forester and A. J. Napier. Some of these men were from Kentucky and some from Tennessee.

The battle raged across the state line and more than a thousand shots were fired.

This was the last gun battle in southeastern Kentucky and/or Tennessee over the UMWA's right to organize. The feudal coal barons learned a valuable lesson from this encounter, namely that times were changing. They could no longer murder miners like dogs with impunity and with the protection of state governments. They had been taught that workingmen, for the first time in American history, were thought of as first-class citizens.

Thinking back, I realize that the Harlan County gun thugs in reality got nothing for their efforts to drive out the union. Most of them died violent deaths.

The ones who survived or died natural deaths had their consciences to live with. How they did it, I do not know.


source: "Hell In Harlan," by George J. Titler, pp 213-15, BJW Printers, 1972



UMWA Fork+Ridge+Coal+Mine+War coal+mining appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, coal mining, Fork Ridge Coal Mine War, history of appalachia, UMWA

Please welcome guest blogger Gary Carden.

Carden's autobiographical "Mason Jars in the Flood" received the AWA Book of the Year Award in 2001 and his dramatic monologue, "Prince of Dark Corners" (Neal Hutcheson's film about the outlaw, Lewis Redmond) is currently on PBS. In addition, he has been awarded the N. C. Folklore Award in 2004 and an honorary doctorate by Western Carolina University in 2008.


Sometime around 1940 on a warm spring day, my grandfather took me on a ride in his ailing Dodge up the Tuckaseigee River to Cullowhee.

I was five years old, dressed in short pants, a sailor bib and my aviator cap with goggles – my Sunday best. I remember a mountain string band, dinner on the ground, a field full of parked cars and the raw smell of a freshly constructed oak platform complete with fluttering banners. There was much hustle and bustle, laughter, barking dogs and loud talking until a well-dressed group of men arrived and marched self-consciously to the platform.

I guess they were important folks like perhaps the president of our little teachers’ college, some board members and several local ministers. When the crowd grew suddenly quiet, my grandfather hoisted me onto his shoulders where I sat astride his neck, my chin resting in his curly, black hair and my feet in his coat pockets. “Pay attention,” he said with something akin to reverence. “This is a very important man who was born and raised a few miles up the road.” I tried my best.

The man glittered. Standing on the platform with the sun shining on his white beard, his gold-rimmed spectacles, his rings, watch-fobs, cuff-links and a diamond tie-pin, he seemed to glow, wink and twinkle like an April Christmas tree. And, could he talk!

Dr. John R. Brinkley in 1941.

As he paced back and forth, he shouted, laughed, sang, gestured and whispered. Sometimes, he would halt and point directly at a member of the audience and demand agreement with what he had just said. Then, he would suddenly spread his arms as though trying to embrace the surrounding mountains, proclaiming that this was his home. We hung on every word, struck mute, our mouths agape like the audience at the Ritz Theatre on Saturday when Roy, Dale and the Sons of the Pioneers sang “Blue Shadows on the Trail.”

The glittering man was magical, and his words were wonderful, and I didn’t understand any of it. When he finished speaking, the admiring crowd surrounded him, and people struggled to shake his hand or touch his tailored coat sleeve. My grandfather remained where he was. “I’d like to shake his hand, but I’d best not even try,” he said, like maybe he was unworthy.

On the way home, I asked, “What did that man talk about?”

“He told us how to make a million dollars,” my grandfather said, “It’s a shame you couldn’t understand him. He said he usually thought of at least three ways to get rich before breakfast each morning.”

“What does he do?” I was riding standing up in the car seat, my left hand on my grandfather’s shoulder.

He didn’t say anything for a while, but finally he smiled and said, “Well, for one thing, he can make the dead bough quicken and turn green again.”

And so, I was left thinking that the speaker was a tree doctor.

However, by the time I was in the second grade, I knew who the man was. He was Dr. John R. Brinkley, and my grandfather had been listening to him on the radio for ten years.

The powerful XERA (and other stations that Brinkley owned) boomed through Jackson County and was rumored to make the dishes rattle in the cabinet all the way to the Canadian border.

Dr. Brinkley and his son, Johnny Boy, answered questions from write-in listeners about anything from astronomy to religion. Local mountain musicians, Harry Cagle and Aunt Samantha Bumgarner drove all the way to XERA to play for their mountain neighbor.

The Carter Family at XERA in 1939.

Between the music and the “educational lectures,” Brinkley sold everything from Kolorbak ("scientifically imparts color and charm to gray hair ...") to a wind-up John, the Baptist doll (It would walk around until it’s head fell off.) Eventually, I would learn just how Brinkley could make the “dead bough turn green again” since the “Doctor’s” goat-gland operation was a favorite topic of conversation in the United States. Indeed, elderly gentlemen who wanted to be “sweetly dangerous among the ladies again,” paid Brinkley in excess of $12 million.

A favorite joke of the time concerned a fellow who sued Brinkley. In court, he was asked, “Are you suing because the operation was
a failure?”

“No,” said the fellow, “I’m suing because I smell so bad.”

At the height of his career, Brinkley’s wealth became legendary. His mansion in Del Rio, Texas had all the gaudy spectacle of a Las Vegas showplace, complete with cascading fountains, peacocks and ornate Italian statuary.

What my grandfather and I did not know on that spring day in Cullowhee in 1940, was that Brinkley was in trouble. Even as he spoke to us, his vast fortune was dwindling due to lawsuits, charges of malpractice, Federal injunctions and Federal Communications charges.

Even though his recent campaign for governor of Kansas had almost succeeded, the yachts, planes, the fleet of Cadillacs, the vast estates, vacation homes and jewelry were being sold or bartered away.

In the end, shortly after suffering a leg amputation and while desperately attempting to save a fraction of his holdings for his family, he collapsed. Brinkley died May 26, 1942, at the age of fifty-six, leaving the lawyers and heirs to sort out the details.

In addition to the debts, Brinkley’s patriotism was suddenly in question by a host of politicians. In those final years before World War II, Brinkley had befriended several unsavory folk, (most of them soliciting contributions from a man noted for his generosity) including William Dudley Pelley, the Asheville founder of the Silver Shirts (pro-Nazi) and the anti-Semitic Father Charles E. Coughlin, who had his own radio show. However, before the
Un-American Activities Committee could issue either a summons or a reprimand, Dr. John R. Brinkley had passed beyond their call.

Even after Brinkley had been judged a charlatan and a fraud by the New York Times; denounced by the AMA and the Federal Trades Commission, my grandfather remained his stalwart defender.

Certainly, I didn’t understand why. I don’t think my grandfather was ever in need of Brinkley’s “rejuvenation” operation (he couldn’t have afforded it, anyway), and never bought any of the lotions, nostrums and panaceas advertised on his radio program, yet his devotion remained undaunted. I finally asked him why. His answer was characteristically direct and simple.

“He amounted to something,” he said.



Gary+Carden Dr.+John+R.+Brinkley medical+quacks appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 7 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Dr. John R. Brinkley, Gary Carden, history of appalachia, medical quacks

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the left side of your screen. If you'd rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here.

We open today's show with some useful information for hickory chicken hunters heading out into the woods this month. Hickory chickens, by the way, have nothing to do with either hickories or chickens, but are the delicious Appalachian delicacy known elsewhere as morel mushrooms.

Jeff Biggers, author of ‘The United States of Appalachia,’ sits in as a guest writer on our next piece, in which he offers up some keen observations about PBS’ new series on Appalachia that premiered last week.

Don’t be surprised if you notice your toes starting to tap as you tune in to our following segment on the fascinating origins of the steps found in Appalachian clog dancing.

In Alabama, ‘Yellow Mama’ isn’t a person; it’s the nickname for the state’s electric chair. When it was first built in 1927, the state roads department offered up some extra paint for the project, and with a color like that it didn’t take long for a nickname to appear.

By the end of his long life, philanthropist Dr Charles Holzer had restored and donated to the city of Gallipolis OH a historic tavern where Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette had once stayed. You’ll hear the story of how Dr Holzer and his wife built the region’s first general hospital along the way.

The Treasury Department’s Section of Painting & Sculpture helped give relief to unemployed artists during the Depression by assigning public mural projects in post offices and courthouses. Listen in as the Ft Payne AL postmaster relates how pleased he is to be receiving a mural shortly…though he’s not quite sure what a mural IS.

Finally we'll wrap things up with an 1891 newspaper article that breathlessly describes the kidnapping of a Wheeling WV girl. Her two abductors arrive at their destination, only to find that their accomplice isn’t there. “It looks like the game is up,” says one of the kidnappers, and suddenly all their plans change.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive, we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from modern day banjo player Tom Joad in a 2000 recording of the traditional tune "Cluck Old Hen.”

So, call your old blue-tick hound up on the porch, fire up your corn-cob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

Posted by Dave Tabler at 9:31 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    

Bunny is derived from the old or Middle English root word "bun" and describes a rabbit, a young one in particular. Rabbits are small furry mammals that belong to the order Lagomorpha. If you happen upon a rabbit in the wilderness of Appalachia, it will definitely have come from the Leporidae family, and will usually be one of three different species of cottontails that inhabit the eastern United States.

Eastern Cottontails Silvilagus floridanus are the most abundant rabbit found here. Appalachian Cottontail Sylvilagus obscurus and New England Cottontail Sylvilagus transitionalis are similar in appearance to the Eastern, but each has differences in coloration unique to their species. Debate exists whether the latter two species should be classified as one species or two.

If you live in suburban areas and small towns and see a rabbit or two or three, usually these will be Eastern Cottontails. They prefer bushy undergrowth with mixed habitats. Outside suburbia, a little bit of analysis may be needed to determine which species is present. Physical differences can be too subtle for the average observer. The Appalachian and New England Cottontails are found more in wooded, mountainous areas with higher elevations but Easterns may live there as well.

All three cottontail species found in Appalachia have brown fur and fairly long ears that give them excellent hearing ability. Full grown rabbits normally weigh several pounds. Rabbits hop because their hind legs grow longer than the front legs. Most memorable about these animals is their cottontail, a white ball of fur.

It's too late to hunt fresh rabbit for your Easter dinner; regular hunting season ended in February.

If you happen to see the Easter Bunny while out enjoying nature, please let him or her know to be very careful. Four leaf clovers may be popular lucky charms, but so too is a rabbit’s foot.

May you have a Joyous Easter.

Sources:
http://tinyurl.com/344mzy
http://tinyurl.com/2trvqy


appalachian+history appalachian+culture history+of+appalachia appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history, history of appalachia

Please welcome guest blogger Jeff Biggers, author of 'The United States of Appalachia:'

As the nation was pulling itself out of another Depression, legendary novelist Thomas Wolfe returned to his home in the Appalachian mountains in the 1930s, and so stunned by the plunder of his native forests, he asked America "to hear again," and called on his mountaineers "to go out from these hills and find and shape the great America of our discovery."

This Thursday, April 9th, as the nation finds itself dealing with another Depression and a planet in peril, PBS will premiere the first in an extraordinary four-part series called Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People. Narrated by actress Sissy Spacek, this important PBS series explores Wolfe's challenge with a stunning series of portraits about our nation's environmental and cultural backbone. Years in the making by filmmakers Jamie Ross and Ross Spears, who won acclaim for their Academy Award-nominated biopic on James Agee, Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People transcends the usual media portraits of poverty, pity, depravity and the picturesque in America's most misunderstood and maligned region, and delivers a breathtaking view of Appalachia's extraordinary role in shaping our country.

This PBS series is a landmark event for television, and it couldn't be more timely.

Listen here, Diane Sawyer.

Did you know that years before Thomas Jefferson completed the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, a backwoods Appalachian community had drawn up their own articles of independence and stunned the British Crown with its "dangerous example"? Or that an alliance of southern Appalachian insurgents orchestrated their own attacks on the British-led troops and turned the tide of the American Revolution? Or that a humble band of preachers and writers in Appalachia published the first abolitionist newspaper in our nation, and inspired William Lloyd Garrison? Or that a Cherokee inventor created the first syllabary in modern times? Or that a backhills woman from western Virginia astounded the Boston literary elite and gave birth to literary naturalism in our country in 1861? That a young publisher from Chattanooga took over the New York Times and set its course for world acclaim? That the "High Priestress of Soul" Nina Simone put a spell on her audiences in New York with ballads from her backwoods Appalachian hamlet? Or that a self-proclaimed "radical hillbilly" trained the shock troops of the Civil Rights Movement in his eastern Tennessee school? Or that the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was recognized for the literary mastery of her family memoirs about West Virginia?

Detroit may be sinking these days, but few observers recall that the Motor City's "most dangerous man"--United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther--hailed from Appalachia, and often invoked the vanguard role of labor from his native region; or, that the most important work of fiction about Detroit's industrial rise, The Dollmaker, by Appalachian novelist Harriet Arnow Simpson, was hailed as "our most unpretentious American masterpiece," by Joyce Carol Oates.

As a paean to our nation's oldest and most diverse mountains, the PBS series reaches back millions of years to examine the upheaval clash and subcontinent collision that made the very mountains that would ultimately define the nation's frontier.

Did you know that more plant, tree and animal species can be found in one acre in the North Carolina Blue Ridge mountains than in all of Europe's forests?

Featuring some of our country's most notable writers, scientists, and scholars, including novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Denise Giardina, Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Edward Wilson and historian Ron Eller, Appalachia takes viewers on a breakthrough journey through our nation's burning ground of discovery, colonization, industrial development, social revolutions, and cultural and artistic endeavors .

Divided into four parts--Time and Terrain, New Green World, Mountain Revolutions, and Power and Place--the PBS series will be broadcast over several weeks.

For more information, see the film's website: http://appalachiafilm.org/series

The series ends with an engaging and informative look at mountaintop removal, the disastrous form of strip mining that has destroyed over 500 mountains in the region.



PBS Jeff+Biggers appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 6:12 AM | 6 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Jeff Biggers, PBS

"Some time between 1 o'clock and daybreak, Horace Devaughn will be led into the death chamber to pay the penalty for the murder of A.B. Moore and Mrs. Ruby Thornton in Birmingham last January," reported The St. Petersburg Times on April 5, 1927. Three days later Devaughn, a black man, was executed at Kilby Prison, marking Alabama's first use of the electric chair. Two weeks later, Virgil Murphy, a veteran of World War I who was convicted in Houston County of murdering his wife, became the first white man electrocuted in the chair.

In 1923, legislation had provided for state-performed executions to be carried out by electrocution. Prior to 1923, executions were the responsibility of the counties, and in Alabama, that generally meant hanging.

The electric chair was first used in 1890. The execution box consisted of a simple electrical panel with three buttons: an orange power button, a red stop button and a solemnly black execute button. The chair was subsequently used by more than 25 states throughout the 20th century, acquiring nicknames such as Sizzlin’ Sally, Old Smokey, Old Sparky, and Gruesome Gertie.

Alabamans referred to their electric chair as Yellow Mama; the chair acquired its yellow color from a contribution of highway line paint from the adjacent State Highway Department lab. It was built by a British inmate in 1927.

Yellow Mama now sits unused, inside the execution chamber at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. The last execution to occur in the chair was that of Lynda Lyon Block on May 10, 2002. Following her execution, a bill was passed that would allow for execution by either lethal injection or electrocution.


sources: www.patrickcrusade.org/YELLOW_MAMA_RETIRES.html
www.spiritus-temporis.com/yellow-mama/

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, crime in Appalachia, electric chair, history of appalachia, Jefferson County AL

An Extraordinary Story
Told by a West Virginia Girl who was Kidnapped Sunday Night

[New York Times, April 8, 1891]


Wheeling, West Va., April 7. ---Since Sunday night, about 9:30 o’clock, there has been much excitement in this city and vicinity over the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Miss Amy Morgan, niece of Henry Morgan, Assistant Cashier of the Exchange Bank of Wheeling. The family resides two miles from the river on the Ohio side, at the extreme western end of Bridgeport.

Sunday evening the young lady left home and attended a neighboring church. She was escorted home by a gentleman friend, and after chatting at the gate for a few minutes, they separated, Miss Morgan proceeding toward the house. From that moment all trace of the girl was lost until noon to-day, when she was driven home by Charles Hill, who found her at the Bridgeport station in an exhausted condition.

Miss Morgan states that when she left her friend at the gate she found that she had dropped a letter and walked back a few steps to look for it. While thus engaged she was seized by two men, who choked her and hurried her into a closed carriage, threatening her with death if she offered to scream. After turning the carriage around several times they started off and drove all night.

About daylight they stopped and one of the men got out and pounded at a door several times. He came back and said “There’s no one there, I guess the game’s up.”

Then they deliberated as to whether they should kill her or let her go, and finally fixed upon the latter course, telling the girl that if she attempted to follow them they would kill her.

After walking several miles, the girl struck the Bellaire, Zanesville and Cincinnati Railroad and followed it. She reached Kelsey Station, fourteen miles from Bellaire. There she was given food and kept last night, and to-day a ticket was purchased for Bellaire and money given her to ride from Bellaire to Bridgeport, where she was found by Hill, as stated.



crime+in+Appalachia kidnapping Wheeling+WV appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 2 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, crime in Appalachia, history of appalachia, kidnapping, Wheeling WV

Today, Holzer Medical Center-Gallipolis is the largest employer in Gallia County, OH with 1,123 people on the payroll.

Dr. Charles Elmer Holzer (1887-1956) came to Gallipolis in 1909, as a resident surgeon at the Ohio Hospital for Epileptics. Recognizing the need for a community hospital, he returned in May 1910, after completing his training. With a local loan, he converted a private home into a seven-bed infirmary just a stone's throw from the Ohio River.

In 1913, Holzer furthered his training in surgery, closing the hospital temporarily to study in Europe (where he in a few short years would volunteer as a surgeon during the World War). He returned to Gallipolis in 1914, married nurse Alma Vomholt and resumed his practice. The couple bore a son, Charles Elmer Jr, in 1916. That same year Holzer senior began construction on the First Avenue Holzer Hospital, the first general hospital in southeast Ohio.

The new facilities opened in 1917, and Holzer Hospital continued to expand until further growth in that location was no longer possible. Dr. and Mrs. Holzer meantime opened the area’s first school of nursing in 1920.

Holzer Hospital in the 1930s.

Dr. Charles E. Holzer's contributions beyond the field of medicine include founding The French Art Colony, a regional multi-arts center. It occupies a historic Greek Revival house, "Riverby,” on a site continuously occupied since 1796. Dr. George Livesay constructed Riverby between 1855 and 1858. Originally, the building had three stories, six rooms, a large front hall, and a winding stairway.

The Holzers purchased four adjoining city lots and the home in 1918 for $5,700.00. Alma Holzer is credited with naming the home "Riverby" after seeing that phrase in a book, "A Journey Down the River," by naturalist John Burroughs. The Holzers made a number of physical changes to the house, adding a large front porch and a swimming pool where Mrs. Holzer gave swimming lessons to area children. The couple remained in the home the rest of their lives.

Charles Holzer organized construction of the Silver Bridge in 1928, joining the capitals of Ohio and West Virginia; purchased land for an airport; and initiated the first air ambulance service in Ohio.

In 1933, the Holzers bought an old Gallipolis tavern---‘Our House’---originally built in 1819 by a Henry Cushing and his sister Elizabeth, and furnished it. The tavern had been the center of the community's social life for many years. General Lafayette, on his triumphant tour of America, was entertained there on May 22, 1825. Gallipolis still celebrates Lafayette's visit with a ceremony each spring.

Jenny Lind, internationally recognized singing sensation of the mid-nineteenth century, stopped at Our House in the 1850s during her American tour. The Cushing family owned and operated Our House until 1865.

In 1936, the house opened as a public museum, The Our House Museum, and was given by the Holzers to the Ohio Historical Society in 1944 as a memorial to the French families who founded Gallipolis.

In 1949, the Holzers gave the growing Holzer Hospital to the citizens of the five county area, to be administered by the Holzer Hospital Foundation. After outgrowing its downtown location, Holzer Medical Center opened on Jackson Pike in 1972 with 269 beds.


sources: www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM2KMM
www.oll.state.oh.us/your_state/remarkable_ohio/marker_details.cfm?marker_id=553&file_id=3904
www.wegoplaces.com/OHGallipolis_Region_510_Cat_Attractions.aspx



Charles+E.+Holzer+Sr Gallipolis+OH medicine+in+appalachia appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Charles E. Holzer Sr, Gallipolis OH, history of appalachia, medicine in appalachia

It still stands on record as the 5th deadliest twister in American history. Shortly before 9:00 A.M. on the morning of April 6, 1936, the citizens of Gainesville, a prosperous northeast Georgia textile mill center, were dealt an agonizing blow when a series of deadly tornadoes ripped through the heart of the city.

Eyewitness reports recalled seeing at least two tornadoes strike the southwest section of Gainesville, then move northeast through the commercial district and on to the residential neighborhoods near North Green Street. From the northeastern residential area, the tornado traveled east two miles towards the textile center of New Holland where it destroyed nearly one hundred homes, as well as the Pacolet Manufacturing Company. The whole thing was over in under ten minutes.

William M. Brice, a prominent citizen and correspondent for the Atlanta Journal and Associated Press, described Gainesville in his writings as "a city laid waste."

"We were talking about how dark it had become,” then teenager John "Rudy" Rudolph remembered many years later. “My friends and I stopped in front of a store in downtown when the owner came out and told us to take cover. I really didn't understand what he meant. It was daytime, but the sky was as dark as night.

"We'd never seen anything like it...just before it struck there was a sound so loud that I felt in my body... When I woke up, I couldn't move my leg. I waited for what seemed like hours for someone to come and help me...my leg was broken (from falling debris)."

Minutes after the attack, numerous fires erupted throughout the Public Square and downtown area. Damage from the tornadoes immobilized the Gainesville Fire Department and forced rescuers to dynamite buildings on the Public Square as a means of controlling the rapid spread of fire.

The most tragic of these fires occurred at Cooper Pants Factory, a two-story garment factory located on the corner of West Broad and Maple Streets. When the tornado struck, many of the 125 workers, most of who were young women and girls, rushed to seek shelter in the basement level of the factory. The sudden clamor of the employees coupled with damage sustained from the tornado caused the building to collapse and ignite into flames. Sixty of the factory's employees died.

In the days following the tornado disaster, an army of 2000 relief workers converged to haul away the millions of tons of debris in the city's business section. The American Red Cross reported that over 500 homes were destroyed and nearly 750 dwellings were damaged. More than two hundred men, women, and children were killed and an estimated 1,600 citizens were injured.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt paid two visits to Gainesville, a brief one three days after the tragedy and one two years later. Of the rebuilt city he stood before in 1938, he noted "You were not content with rebuilding along the lines of the old community. You were not content with throwing yourselves on the help that could be given to you by the State and by the Federal Government.

"On the contrary, you determined in the process of rebuilding to eliminate old conditions of which you were not proud; to rebuild a better city; to replace congested areas with parks; to move human beings from slums to suburbs. For this you, the good people of Gainesville, deserve all possible praise."


sources: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/tornado/history.php
http://ngeorgia.com/weather/gainesvilletornado.html
http://www.gendisasters.com/data1/ga/tornadoes/gainesville-tornadoapr1936.htm


Gainesville+GA tornadoes FDR+in+Gainesville appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 1 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, FDR in Gainesville, Gainesville GA, tornadoes

Shenandoah Herald
Woodstock VA
April 2, 1909

'To Find Your Affinity'

Your affinity is your mate, but unless you know the six types of happy married folks on Olympus, up to date, you may miss yours. Jupiter, king of heaven, ruler of men, house and business, must marry Juno, the queenly woman, plump, domestic, wise as Minerva, yet loving as Venus.

Venus should mate with Apollo, but being fond of all men and usually pretty, a Venus woman marries any one, often several times. Marry and be petted and adored she must or die.

Minerva, on the contrary, can be happy only with a Vulcan, a man her counterpart, wise, lofty, patient, a reformer, teacher and philosopher. Both have contempt for frivolity and meanness and vice.

Most all of the elderly single women in the world, especially those descendants from Puritan or Calvinistic stock, are single just because they are the Minerva type and too wise to marry anyone but Vulcans. And Vulcans, being the best of their sex, are scarce.


source: Library of Congress/Chronicling America: http://tinyurl.com/cxfzyg



appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+humor history+of+appalachia marriage+customs

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian humor, history of appalachia, marriage customs

Lydia Ann Kimble married Isaac Graham, who’d served as a drummer boy in the War of 1812, in 1869, when he was an elderly man and she was a woman of 32. Her husband by a previous marriage reared 11 children, while Lydia and Isaac went on to have three daughters of their own. The Grahams lived in Brushy Run, near Franklin, WV.

"My husband was born on May 12, 1793. This was during Washington's administration, you know, and the year that the cornerstone was laid for the National Capitol. I remember my husband used to smile, when asked his age, and say that he was as old as the National Capitol. He had a vivid memory, and enjoyed talking about the war, the gold rush, pioneer days, and so forth, right up till the time of his death, which occurred on November 10, 1881."

Mrs. Graham shared her reminiscences with a reporter for the West Virginia Review in 1934, when she was 96 and the sole remaining widow of a War of 1812 veteran. She was born during Van Buren's administration, near the place where she spent her last years.

At the time of the interview she lived alone in her mountain cottage, raising chickens and cultivating her garden, living comfortably on the $50 check she received each month from the veterans' administration.

She had no modern conveniences - running water, lights, or gas - but still used kerosene lamps and carried in her own fuel.

"Though I have always lived in Pendleton County," she said, "nevertheless, I have been a resident of two states. I lived in Virginia until I was twenty-five," she explained, "at which time this part of the state separated from the Mother State and became West Virginia.

“I never had a desire to live elsewhere. I love my hills and my mountain home. Though I have lived to see this country pass through four victorious wars, and was united in marriage to a dear old soldier who had served his country faithfully in another, I have no desire to talk about wars. I have seen and heard too much about them, I suppose.

“I trust we never have another war. I would much rather think about the beauties of nature." Her eyes brightened as she glanced through the open door at the distant hills. "And here, stranger, nature is at its best. The beautiful sunsets, the towering mountains, the cooling springs, the green pastures, the crystal rivers, the shady forests, all help to make this one of the most charming places that can be imagined.

Lydia Kimble Graham lived in Brushy Run, near Franklin, WV, shown here in 1913.

"When I was young I dearly loved to climb those rugged mountains to their summits. The view from those advantageous points never fail to awe, silence, and inspire me. I am no longer able to go up there, but, like the Hebrew poet of old, thank God, I can still 'lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence my strength cometh.' I have dwelt among these hills all my life, love them dearly, and desire that others may see and love them and benefit from them as I have. To me they are always a source of inspiration."

Her son-in-law, Down Calhoun, said Mrs. Graham retained striking cheerfulness throughout her advanced years, always welcomed callers and never grew impatient except when efforts were made to "hurry" her in her work. Then she showed, he said, sharpness suggestive of a much younger person.

Lydia Kimble Graham of Pendleton County, WV, the last surviving widow of a War of 1812 veteran, died on April 1, 1936.


source: www.wvculture.org/history/thisdayinwvhistory/0401.html



Lydia+Kimble+Graham War+of+1812 Pendleton+County+WV appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Posted by Dave Tabler at 5:00 AM | 3 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Lydia Kimble Graham, Pendleton County WV, War of 1812