Appalachian History

re-posted from Appalachian State University News
June 29, 2009

BOONE, NC— Meredith Doster Edgerton has received an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship at Berea College.

The fellowship program encourages scholarly use of Berea's non-commercial audio collections that document Appalachian history and culture, especially the areas of traditional music, religious expression, spoken lore and radio programs. The fellowship will support four weeks of research in the college’s archives.

Edgerton is a student in the master’s degree program in Appalachian studies at Appalachian State University. She is also a fourth-generation shape note singer. The fellowship will allow her to incorporate extensive archival research into her master’s thesis on the study of music in two Independent Baptist Churches in Watauga County.

Appalachian State University graduate student Meredith Doster Edgerton is researching the shape note singing tradition in the South, particularly at two churches in Watauga County. Her work is supported by an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship at Berea College.

"The archives at Berea are a great resource. Their collection includes papers presented at a hymn symposium held on campus in the late 1970s, and archived sound files," Doster Edgerton said.

Doster Edgerton's interest in shape note singing brought her to Appalachian. "There are not a lot of places in the country where you can see the seven-shape tradition actively practiced," she said. "I knew there were active congregations in the region that incorporated shape-note signing in their services."

Edgerton's research focuses on the conflicts between the four- and seven-shape traditions of the 19th century as one example of the tension created when traditions and their rituals change.

She is studying two rural churches whose singing traditions have their roots in the seven-shape Gospel tradition. The stories of sacred song and singing in Mount Lebanon Baptist Church and Mountain Dale Baptist Church in Watauga County, N.C., highlight the evolution of sacred music traditions at the local level. Her study also analyzes the deep-seated ties between land, culture and religion in small, rural communities and the collective impact of those Appalachian qualities on worship practices.

Shaped notes, such as these in a hymnal in Appalachian State University’s Appalachian Collection, help singers more quickly read the vocal sections of a hymn. Appalachian State University graduate student Meredith Doster Edgerton is researching the shape note singing tradition in the South.

Doster Edgerton plans to continue exploring these themes in a doctoral program after completing her master's degree.

Doster Edgerton was the Cratis D. Williams Scholar for the 2008-09 academic year, the highest honor bestowed upon a student entering the Appalachian studies program. She earned a bachelor's degree in music from Columbia University in New York.

The Appalachian studies master's degree program is administered through the Center for Appalachian Studies, a unit within Appalachian's University College. The center develops, coordinates and facilitates curricula and programs that deal with the Appalachian region.

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It started back when the animals of the forest had a ball team.

The forest animals had a rough line up, a big line up. The Big Bear was the captain. In his lineup he had the Fast-Running Deer. And he had the Big Wolf, and the Big Bob Cat, and the Big Panther.

The Big Bear liked to boast. He'd get in front of all his ball players and show them how strong he was by picking up boulders and tossing them, or maybe picking up a big log, and tossing it. He said there's no team can win over us.

While he was talking and boasting about his team and himself, there was someone trying to get his attention. And this someone was so small that he couldn't get the Big Bear's attention. All he could do was tap him on his toes. Maybe Big Bear would feel that tapping and get the signal and look down.

And sure enough, the Big Bear wondered what was tapping him, and when he looked down it was a little mouse about as big as your thumb looking up at that big giant.

He said, "I come to play ball with you. I can join your team. I'm a forest animal, you know.”

The Big Bear thought that was the funniest sight he had ever seen. He fell backwards laughing at that little mouse. Then when he finally got up, he pointed his finger at that little mouse and said, "I want you to tell me what in the world you can do in a ball game? Just look at you, and look at your size! I don't know about you!" And then he kicked that little mouse way out into the bushes.

And when that little mouse landed, of course his feelings were hurt. And then he said, "That's no way to treat a person." He got thinking he wasn't going to give up. He got thinking, there's another team way in the distance. They're getting ready to play ball. I think they're having a big ball dance before they play ball. So the evening before the game he thought he'd go see that team, and maybe they'd let him play on their team.

He walked for miles, and he finally arrived. There was a big eagle, Captain Eagle, a fowl of the air, who had a team. And they had the Falcon and the Big Hawk, and the Big Buzzard, and all those big birds of the forest. And they were getting ready to put on a ritual.

And the little mouse explained to the eagle the story of what happened between him and the Bear, what the Bear did to him. And he said, "I still want to play ball." He said, "May I join your team?"

The Eagle said, "Why sure! You can join us. But one thing, though, you don't have any wings. You need wings to play with us. You've got to fly."

They looked around real quick and they found a piece of leather, and they cut him out a little set of wings. And they attached them to the little mouse's sides. And after they'd finished, they took him high up into the sky, the Eagle did, and dropped him. When they dropped him, he could fly. The little mouse could fly, and he fluttered all the way down to the ground.

And they were so proud of him because he could fly. And they said, "You can play with us tomorrow. We're going to play the Big Bear and his team."

Pair of Cherokee stickball sticks, made 1916. Split oak bent in half to form head at one end; net made of woven wire. Names of Soco team members and owner’s name—Robert Crow---written on sticks.

Well, the next day was ballgame time. So after all the speeches were made, the rules were set up: twelve points is the ball game. Whoever gets twelve points, wins the game. The goal post is two little bushes that are cut and set in the ground about eight feet apart. You've got to carry that ball through between those little bushes.

When the ball was tossed up for the center man, they batted the ball -- I don't know who batted it, the Bear or the Eagle.

But before that ball ever hit the ground, that little mouse with the new wings swooped down and grabbed that ball, and went between all those big vicious animals -- they were trying to knock him down with their paws as he passed. And he went in and out, in and out. And he went out into the clear, and he was gone! He scored!

Again and again and again he scored. And he dominated the game. And he beat that Big Bear who had kicked him out into the bushes. He won over that Big Bear.

Don't ever underestimate the size of a person or the looks of a person or the color of a person when he wants to join you. Whatever you have going, always welcome him in, because if you don't, he just might turn and beat you.


source: http://hilltop.mhc.edu/050508/JerryWolfe/StickBallLegend.asp



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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 an oral history from Brenda Collins Dillon of Richwood, WV. She describes how her grandfather lost his older daughter, his wife, his sister-in law, and his brother-in law to the Great Flu of 1918. The man was crazy with grief and left with a baby (Dillon’s mother) whom he felt wouldn't live either. He wrapped the tiny baby and placed her into a cigar box, covered it with a towel, dropped her off with a trusted neighbor, and disappeared from town forever.

Kentuckian Sara Ogan Gunning lost lots of loved ones prematurely, too. But her grief was tinged with rage over the local company bosses and the wretched conditions they forced on their workers. Luckily for us she was talented enough to write it all down in song. We’ll take a close look at one of her pieces, “I Hate the Company Bosses.”

Remember Beta vs. VHS? That same kind of rivalry happened between the Victaphone and Movietone methods of adding sound to the movies. Sherwood Anderson, later to become a world famous novelist, edited the Smyth County News for a time, and his 1929 article explains the difference between the two systems.

Ever run into an old school flame far from home, only to strike it up again? Steubenville Ohio’s ‘Harding Bee Hive’ newsletter kept school alumni apprised of who was dating whom long after graduation. In this next segment recent college grad Jimmy Roberts encounters ‘Mary’ at a business seminar in Cleveland and they dive headlong into a whirlwind romance. Not so strange for old high school flames, perhaps, but ‘Harding Bee Hive’ was the newsletter of Harding JUNIOR High School.

End of June means time to bring the hay in if you’re a farmer, and before the advent of tractors, that meant pitchforks, strong backs and a haywagon. Martinsburg WV native son Kenneth Tabler relates how as a teenager it was his job to stand atop the wagon as men on either side heaved forkfuls in his direction. He had to tamp the hay down properly so it didn’t slide off the wagon. In this piece he gets to drive the wagon for the very first time.

Summer time is carnival time. If it seems to you that every time you try you fail miserably at games such as ring toss, there’s a reason for that. This 1930 article from Modern Mechanix magazine lays out in glorious detail all the tricks of the trade to keep you from winning those big stuffed toys.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at the ongoing controversy between artifact collectors and archaeologists. Both value antique treasures that emerge from the ground, but who’s got rightful claim? We’ll zoom in on a dustup that occurred in Dayton, TN around the turn of the century between these two camps.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music The Bluegrass All-Stars in a 1930s recording of “White House Blues.”

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.

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"Mother was born April 4, 1919, Zelma Zane Bennett. She was all of two pounds and fit very nicely into a cigar box. She was the daughter of Fred and Mollie (Perry) Bennett who lived in Curtin, WV. Fred was a fireman on the logging train that ran through the mountain community.

"The Flu outbreak of 1918 & 1919 hit the little community hard and the Bennett family did not escape the sickness. Fred and Mollie cared for their elder daughter, Eva Maxine Bennett, but the girl did not pull through. She was laid to rest along side her grandparents in the Alderson Church Cemetery in Craigsville, WV in October, 1918. Mollie was pregnant with Mother at the time. Tired from caring for Maxine and grief stricken at her loss she became sick too. Mollie really never got over the flu and in April 1919 she finally went into labor and delivered Mother early. A week later Mollie's sister and her husband also died.

"Fred Bennett had lost his older daughter, his wife, his sister-in law, and his brother-in law, and was left with a baby whom he felt wouldn't live either. He wrapped the tiny baby and placed her into a cigar box and covering it with a towel, walked a few doors down to the Godfrey house.

"Claire and Sylvanis Godfrey had tried without success to have a family but it was just not meant to be. Sylvanis, nicknamed Doc, was the engineer on the same train that Fred was fireman. They were great friends and he knew they were good people. Fred left the tiny infant with Claire and disappeared from Curtin.

"Zelma was tiny but she was a fighter. With Claire's love and care Zelma thrived.

"One day Doc wanted to go to the store. Zelma being about 3 years old at the time cried to go with him. He took her hand in his and off they went. The store was a hangout for all the men in town. They would gather and collect the news.

"Well, Doc and Zelma came walking in and everybody knew Doc loved to tell stories so they asked him to set a spell and tell a story. Doc didn't want to tell a story but said he had a joke for them......he told the joke and everybody roared with laughter.

"Then he decided to sing a dirty song.....well wouldn't you know Zelma caught onto the tune real quick and everybody thought she was just the cutest thing standing on the table of that store singing a dirty song.

"Doc and Zelma collected their things and went home. Claire greeted them at the door and asked if they had a good time. Zelma popped up with "Yes, and Dad taught me to sing a new song..." and she began to sing. Well, Doc turned 40 shades of red and couldn't get out of that house fast enough.

"When Zelma started her first day of school she was enrolled as Zelma Godfrey. The next summer the Godfrey's left Curtin, WV and went west to Lewis County, WA where Doc's family had settled several years before. Doc got a job as an engineer on the trains and Claire operated a boarding house that sat close to the tracks. Zelma grew into a young lady there in Mosseyrock, WA.

"When Zelma was 14 Claire took sick and as she laid on her death bed she explained how Mom came to be their daughter. Claire told her everything she knew about her natural parents but she couldn't tell Mom what happened to the father who'd left the tiny bundle with them and walked away.

"After Claire's death Doc decided to take Zelma back to West Virginia to live with his sister while he was working. Zelma by this time was starting high school. It was a good plan but shortly after their arrival Zelma's aunt Jane Spencer took sick and Mother was tossed from one family member to another. The days of her happy childhood were over and for the next few years she shed a lot of tears."


Brenda Collins Dillon
(1944-2006)
b. Richwood WV

sources: http://www.saponitown.com/brenda-collins-dillon/mother.htm http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvnichol/bd/godfrey.htm



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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, Brenda Collins Dillon, Curtin WV, history of appalachia, Spanish flu

I Hate the Company Bosses

A Song by Sarah Ogan Gunning

I hate the company bosses
I'll tell you the reason why
They cause me so much suffering
And my dearest friends to die

Oh yes, I guess you wonder
What they have done to me
I'm going to tell you, mister
My husband had T.B.

Brought on by hard work and low wages
And not enough to eat
Going naked and hungry
No shoes on his feet

I guess you'll say he's lazy
And did not want to work
But I must say you're crazy
For work he did not shirk

My husband was a coal miner
He worked and risked his life
To try to support three children
Himself, his mother, and wife

I had a blue-eyed baby
The darling of my heart
But from my little darling
Her mother had to part

These mighty company bosses
They dress in jewels and silk
But my darling blue-eyed baby
She starved to death for milk

I had a darling mother
For her I often cry
But with them rotten conditions
My mother had to die

Well, what killed your mother
I heard these bosses say
Dead of hard work and starvation
My mother had to pay

Well, what killed your mother
Oh tell us, if you please
Excuse me, it was pellagra
That starvation disease

They call this the land of plenty
To them I guess it's true
But that's to the company bosses
Not workers like me and you

Well, what can I do about it
To these men of power and might
I tell you, company bosses
I'm going to fight, fight, fight

What can we do about it
To right this dreadful wrong
We're all going to join the union
For the union makes us strong

"About 1939, Moe Asch-later the proprietor of Folkways Records-first heard Sarah sing this piece. He complimented her by commenting that it was the most radical composition he had ever heard in his life. It is sometimes sung and called "I Hate the Company Bosses," but the original title was "I Hate the Capitalist System;" the song was recorded as such for the Library of Congress.

"Sarah thought of it as autobiographical-a response to the death of her loved ones-and not polemical. Although she stated to me that the music was made up out of her mind, it is clearly related to at least two tunes known in mountain tradition: a Carter Family melody for a broadside usually called The Sailor Boy (Laws K 12); a haunting air printed by Josiah Combs from his mother's singing on Troublesome Creek, Knott County, Kentucky, about 1889 (On the Banks of that Lonely River in Folk-Songs from the Kentucky Highlands)."

---from notes written by Archie Green for the booklet that accompanies the recording "Sarah Ogan Gunning: 'Girl of Constant Sorrow,'" Folk-Legacy 26, published in 1965 and still obtainable from Folk-Legacy Records.



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There were plenty of days to 'make hay while the sun shines' the summer I worked for the Grant brothers. Lee started by driving the team of horses pulling the wagon to the far corner of the field. The fluffy piles of sun-cured alfalfa hay smelled as wonderful as they looked. I kept my eye on Lee before he got down from the empty wagon. He reached up over his head, looped the free end of the check reins around the tip of the front uprights and tied them in a loose-fitting knot.

Lee instructed me: 'You stand atop the wagon while George and I do the heavy lifting. We'll keep the team moving down between two windrows. That way you can build the load from each side." Two strong men vying for attention kept me hopping as I moved back and forth. They would lift a forkful, lean back and pivot at the right moment so as to exact every possible ounce of leverage as they hefted each pile of hay.

Both ends of the huge platform had a set of vertical uprights to stabilize the load from front to back. Each one was about six feet high. The anterior support was narrow, ladderlike and hinged so it could be lowered out of the driver's way when the wagon traveled empty. The stationary prop stretching across the rear was different. The two stakes kept the load from shifting and had a single crossbar. The configuration resembled a miniature set of football goal posts.

I labored mightily to carry out the loading plan and made sure each layer of hay was tamped uniformly across the wide hayrack. An even bigger challenge was to methodically see that the build-up was square along the edges and securely tied-in with the middle. The double binding insured that no section was apt to slide off and threaten the stability of the whole load while en route to the barn. Furthermore, if the job of interlacing each forkful of hay had been done properly, the wagon could be easily unloaded in the barn with a two-pronged hay fork penetrating two or more layers at a time.

George hoisted the last pile of hay to top out the center. With a long-handled pitchfork in midair he called out "Oh boy, it's all I can do to reach you!" The load was so high I was standing on top of the world. It was time for a breathing spell; beads of sweat ran down my face. A big red handkerchief helped wipe away the perspiration. I must have struck a proud stance, for my maneuver caught Lee's attention.

"You've done a fine job topping out that load, Kenneth. Find your way up front and grab hold of the reins. I've seen you cruising back and forth to town with Maude hitched to the spring wagon." The chance to pilot the haywagon by myself just about had me bursting all my shirt buttons. My concentration shifted to driving the team of horses as they strained in their collars. The wagon's wood creaked as they pulled the massive load through the field and on towards the barn.


---Excerpt from The Day is Far Spent, by Kenneth A. Tabler, Montani Publishing, 2006
b. 1926, Martinsburg, WV



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“Well, if it isn’t Jimmy Roberts, where have you been the last two years? I have asked people about you but no one seemed to know,” inquired Mary as she spied Jimmy at the door.

“Why---hello Mary! It sure is good to see you again. I don’t believe I have seen you since graduation night two years ago last June. I have been working for the Transport Power Company ever since I left college. Most of my work has been traveling and out of doors. I started out as a surveyor and that was the reason no one knew much about me. But now I’m an electrical engineer in the General Office. Isn’t that great? Where have you been all this time?”

Unidentified couple. Based on period costume and age of couple could be a couple much like Jimmy & Mary.

“Oh me? I worked several places the summer following my graduation but for the past eighteen months I have been working for the Company at Chicago. I am a private secretary for the General Manager and that is the reason I’m here. Here comes Mr. Walsh and I will have to go now, but I’m staying at a friend’s house, Mrs. J.W. Kenny, 642 S. Pine St. in Cleveland and I wonder if you would like to call---maybe this evening?”

“Do you really mean it, Mary? Gee, I’d be tickled to death. Sure I’ll come, and this evening too. I never---“

“Well, so long Jimmy, I’ll see you this evening,” said Mary.

“So long, Mary,” replied Jimmy.

After that Jimmy Roberts was a different man. Immediately after dinner he went to his room to get dressed for the evening. He sang all the while he was getting ready. It seemed as though the world was all laughter and sunshine to him.

A happy man it was that strolled down Pine St. dressed up in his very best, and his mind very rapidly turning over recollections of the afternoon’s incidents. He took the card, which Mary had given him with her address on it, to make sure of the right house.

1912 postcard view of Market Street at night, Steubenville, OH.

At half past eight he was rapping on Mrs. Kenny’s door. Mary answered the door. They talked all evening of many things that had happened since their graduation. Each one told of his or her particular incident.

That night Jimmy couldn’t sleep. Too many things were on his mind. He was so happy to think that it wouldn’t be long until Mary would be his own.


---excerpt from “Jimmy Roberts,” by Virginia Hopkins
Harding Bee Hive
Printed and Published Weekly by the Students of Harding Junior High School
Steubenville, OH
Jan. 22, 1903



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‘How the Talking Pictures Talk’
Smyth County News
Thursday, June 27, 1929

There are two main ways of making talkies. One is the so-called disc method and the other the sound track method. In the disc method, the cheaper and less satisfactory of the two, discs something like regular phonograph records are used and the sound is synchronized with the movements of the actors. This is the Vitaphone system and it is all right but rather difficult if the film breaks or the machine gets out of whack.

When pictures are made by this method, the action of the play is photographed in a sound proof studio and at the same time the records of the voices, music, and incidental sounds are made.

The other system is the sound track system. It is the one used in the new Lincoln Theater. Under this system the sound is recorded on the film at the same time the picture is photographed in the sound proof studio. A film with a small track of different substance at one side is used. The recording is done by light which plays over the sound track, made of a delicate chemical substance, and the light varied by the sound of the action caused vari-shaded little bars on the sound track.

This system is the Movietone system.

When the picture is shown, another needle of light in the projecting machine plays on the marked sound track and through it to the delicate electrical apparatus. As the light is varied by the shades on the track, the sound is varied and the human voice, the noise of machines, music, etc. comes out of the speakers.

These are located behind the screen, which is of a special cloth full of little holes to let the sound through unmuffled. Back of the screen, except where the speakers are placed, is a heavy black cloth to cut off the light.

Marvelous things have been accomplished by this method. Exact synchronization of sound and action in the picture play have been achieved and the characters moving on the screen never get ahead of or behind the sound of their voices. To the audiences it is like the characters were speaking their parts.

Undated early photo of Lincoln Theatre in Marion; collection of Lincoln Theatre, Inc.

In addition to this equipment there is another special outfit in the new Lincoln. This is a disc outfit not intended to go with the showing of talking films, but to furnish incidental music to the performance of silent films and to furnish overtures and the like. It will play the finest of organ solos as played by Jesse Crawford in the Paramount Theatre in New York and it will play the music of some of the country’s greatest orchestras.

Altogether, the Lincoln Theatre is completely and finely equipped for the reproduction of sound with the showing of its photoplays. The equipment is of the finest; nothing cheap has been used. It is far ahead in quality of the equipment used in sound reproduction in theaters of some of our neighboring towns.

Costing thousands of dollars, well into five figures, this equipment promises much entertainment to the citizens of Smyth County and those citizens of our neighboring counties who will come to Marion to visit the finest picture house between Roanoke and Knoxville.


source: Sherwood Anderson Newspapers Collection/Smyth-Bland Regional Library
www.sbrl.org/sa_newspapers.htm



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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 guest blogger Dylan Thuras. Thuras is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the website ‘Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica.’ We’ll follow him into the night of the Great Smoky Mountains, which in mid-June light up as fireflies begin to blink in beautiful, astonishing unison. The fireflies, who can sense when their neighbor fireflies are flashing, and attempt to flash before them, send waves of light cascading down the hillsides.

Next we’ll follow the youthful high-jinx of Kentuckian Ralph Hall and his brother Mutt, as they connive of ways to get rid of Betsy, the mean old family cow, in this excerpt from Hall’s recently published autobiography “Why Daddy Sold Old Betsy.”

Juliette Gordon Low was originally from Savannah GA. But she founded the first Girl Scout camp, the one that bore her name, in Chattooga County, best known today as the longtime home of folk artist and country philosopher Howard Finster and as the place where Sequoyah developed a written alphabet for the Cherokee language.

Speaking of camp, if you like scary stories told round a fire, listen in as an elderly black preacher in Clayton, GA regales us with the tale of Fiddler’s Mountain. During the 1930s and 1940s Rose Thompson worked as a home supervisor with the Farm Security Administration in Rabun County, and we’re lucky she wrote this tale down for us.

Knoxville retired judge Oliver Perry Temple hit a burst of creative activity in his last years. One of his dear friends bemoaned the fact that “our southern people will not write their own history, nor even prepare materials for the future historian. Hence our noblest deeds and characters are forgotten, or misrepresented.” He took that as his call to action and produced three history books, starting at the tender age of 77.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at the toys you can fashion from summer mountain woods and meadows. Skipping stones across a creek or running alongside a fence, stick in hand, clacking the fenceposts---these pastimes are available any time of year. 

But the summer meadow has always held special treasures.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from Jim Lurson, in a 2006 recording of the traditional Irish tune “Coleman’s March.”

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.

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Please welcome guest blogger Dylan Thuras. Thuras is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer. The following post ran originally on Boing Boing.


Happening right now, and for the next few days, the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee will light up as P. Carolinus fireflies begin to blink in beautiful, astonishing unison. The fireflies, who can sense when their neighbor fireflies are flashing and attempt to flash before them, send waves of light to cascading down the Tennessee hillsides.

One of the best spots to see them is in one small area, near the Little River Trailhead in Elkmont, TN.



Long thought to be an exclusively Southeast Asian phenomenon, the dazzling behavior was only discovered in an American firefly species (P. Carolinus) in 1992. The American fireflies were first brought to the attention of scientists by a reader of Science News, who thought it odd that an article on Asian firefly synchronicity mentioned nothing about the bugs near her own home. She wrote a letter to a Steven Strogratz, a Cornell mathematician who studies synchronization:

I am sure you are aware of this, but just in case, there is a type of group synchrony lightning bug inside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Elkmont, Tennessee. These bugs "start up" in mid June at 10 pm nightly. They exhibit 6 seconds of total darkness; then in perfect synchrony, thousands light up 6 rapid times in a 3 second period before all going dark for 6 more seconds. "We have a cabin in Elkmont... and as far as we know, it is only in this small area that this particular type of group synchronized lightning bug exists. It is beautiful.

In 1995, scientists confirmed the existence of the Great Smoky Mountain synchronized fireflies, and have subsequently discovered other populations in the Congaree Swamp in South Carolina and other high altitude locations in the Appalachian mountains. As this curious phenomenon remained undiscovered for years, it is quite possible that there are other varieties of fireflies blinking in unison throughout the United States, perhaps even in your own backyard.

More info on the Smokey Mountain fireflies here and here; more info on bioluminescent spots around the world on the Atlas bioluminescent spots page.



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"That night, as Mutt and I lay on the featherbed that Grandma had made, we talked by the light of the coal oil lamp. We were working on a plan on how to get rid of Old Betsy. That cow just had to go, we reasoned, and soon. Our first plan was to throw rocks at her all the way to the barn, hoping she would fall and break a leg and become a part of dinner. Well, we rocked her to the barn every day for about a week, and not once did she fall. So it was time to work on Plan Two. Betsy was smart, be we were smarter than any old cow.

"Here was our plan: There was this small path that ran alongside this small cliff. Mutt would do about anything I ever told him to do, me being his bigger brother and all, so we came up with this great plan. How could it fail? We asked ourselves.

"I said, 'Mutt, you rock Old Betsy down the hill like you always do and I will stand in the path and wave my arms and cry 'Shoo, Betsy, shoo!' and she will run over the cliff and kill herself.' The next day, we figured, would be Betsy's last day on this earth. After all, how could a great plan like that fail?

"So, that next afternoon, old Mutt ran Betsy down the hill, throwing rocks at her and cussing all the way. I was ready. Standing in the path, I hollered, 'Shoo, Betsy, shoo!' I saw Betsy coming down that narrow path---800 pounds of speeding dynamite looking me straight in the eye. I was doing everything that I was supposed to do, waving my arms and crying 'Shoo, Betsy, shoo!'

"But that stupid old cow didn't understand one word I was saying. She hit me like a speeding locomotive and I went sailing over the small cliff intended for Betsy. When I landed, I hit hard. And boy, did I ever hurt. Nothing was broken but I sure was in a lot of pain for the next few days.

"On Saturday afternoons, Mutt and I always went to the movies. Most of the shows were cowboy movies, and Mutt and I just loved cowboys. Sometimes, the cowboys would ride bulls in the movies. That gave me yet another plan. Betsy hadn't won yet. No one could ever get me to say 'uncle,' and no cow was going to beat me.

"So I told Mutt, 'Here's what we will do.' I planned it all. I told Mutt that I would get on top of the barn and that he should run Old Betsy out through the barn door. 'As she comes out the door,' I said, 'I will jump on her back and ride her into the ground.'

Mutt said, "Ralph, do you think you can do that?"

I said, "Sure I can."

Well, I climbed up onto the barn roof and readied myself. Then I called out, "Okay, Mutt, let her rip!"

"Out the door came Old Betsy, sailing straight away. I leaped off the roof and landed right in the middle of her back! Away we went--down through the barnyard, out through the gate and into the backyard of our house. Betsy and I were headed straight for my mother's clothesline. Betsy decided to take me right into it. I caught the line full in the middle of my neck --- the darn thing almost took my head off! As I fell, Betsy went one way and I went the other, landing on the ground, square on my butt. Yep, some cows just never learn."


Excerpt from Why Daddy Sold Old Betsy, by Ralph Hall, Ithaca Press, 2009

Ralph Hall, born 1936, was raised in Melvin, KY.



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Camp Juliette Low, in Chattooga County GA, today is a private, non-profit summer camp for girls ages 7 to 17. Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was instrumental in getting this camp underway; in fact it's the only camp she personally helped establish.

Low brought girl scouting to her hometown of Savannah, Georgia, with a troop of just eighteen girls. She envisioned, however, that Girl Scouting would eventually be "for all the girls of America." And indeed, more than fifty million women and girls have belonged to the organization since its founding on March 12, 1912.

As the founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low correctly intuited what activities girls would enjoy. She envisioned an organization that would combine play, work, and healthy values to shape girls into active, modern women. The group participated in outdoor activities, camping, and sports, attracting girls and women with leadership qualities.

Gypsy Troop at Camp Juliette Gordon Low attend campfire, 1927.

In 1921 John and Will Ledbetter, representing the Cloudland Park Corporation, developers of the mountain resort known as Cloudland, gave a ten-acre tract of land to the Cherokee Council of Boy Scouts at Cloudland for camp purposes, at the same time donating nearby land for what became Camp Juliette Low.

Dorris Hough, who headed of the Southern Regional Headquarters for Girl Scouting, was the first camp director.

A few shacks were built by the boys in 1921, and in 1922 others were added. The girls had an assembly hall 40x72 ft. A portion of the adjacent Little River was dammed to create a swimming area for campers. Camp stay was two weeks, and the camp stayed open for 8 weeks in the summer, taking on about 100 girls per season.

The county surrounding the camp is named for the Chattooga River, which flows through the area and is the smaller of two Georgia rivers bearing that name. (The larger Chattooga River forms part of the state's northeast border between Georgia and South Carolina.) The county may be best known as the longtime home of folk artist and country philosopher Howard Finster and as the place where Sequoyah developed a written alphabet for the Cherokee language.

Camp Juliette Low dissolved its affiliation with the Girl Scouts in 1937, when it incorporated as a non-profit camp.


sources: http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Fa-Gr/Girl-Scouts.html
A history of Rome and Floyd County, State of Georgia, United States of America, by George Magruder Battey


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University of South Carolina
Columbia, S.C.
June 29, 1889
O.P. Temple, Esq
My dear Judge
I have read with great interest every word of the Knoxville Journal, concerning John Sevier, etc. The occasion was on of deep historic interest. I hope you will send me the more permanent publication which will doubtless be issued hereafter.
Your own contribution is of special value & beauty. Allow me to suggest that you should devote some of your leisure to the composition of a History of East Tenn. No living man is perhaps so well qualified as yourself for this work. At least you might select some special topic, if no more. Ein kind regard to your family. We are well.
Yours very truly, Ed. T. Joynes

University of South Carolina
Columbia, S.C.
July 11, 1889
Dear Friend –
Your most interesting letter recd. Let me hope you may yet carry our your plans, if only on the narrower lines such as you suggest. It is a deficit in our southern people that they will not write their own history nor even prepare materials for the future historian. Hence our noblest deeds and characters are forgotten, or misrepresented. How different in New England. Regard G Flemming If I can run off for a week, I shall come to Knoxville this summer if only for a planning visit with him and a talk with you
very truly Ed. S Joynes


Oliver Perry Temple (1820-1907) did indeed carry out the plans referred to in the second letter. He took the idea Joynes proposed about writing histories of East Tennessee and went on to author ‘The Covenanter, the Cavalier, and the Puritan (1897)’; ‘East Tennessee and the Civil War (1899)’; and ‘Notable Men of Tennessee,’ which was published posthumously in 1912.

Joynes was well qualified to spot writing ability in his friend. By the time he wrote the above letters, he’d already published “Introductory French Lessons,” “The Education of Teachers in the South,” and “A German grammar for schools and colleges.” He went on to publish 10 more books, mostly in the same ilk.

In the preface of his first book, Temple introduces himself as ‘OLIVER PERRY TEMPLE, For twelve years one of the Equity Judges of Tennessee,’ and dedicates the book ‘To the Scotch-Irish Society of America, which is doing so much to rescue from oblivion the history of the Covenanter People.”

The Covenanters were Scotsmen who in 1638 signed the National Covenant, a covenant confirming their opposition to the interference by the Stuart kings in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Temple named his estate ‘Melrose’ after the ruined abbey in Scotland near which his wife had been born. All his maternal ancestors were from Scotland. Scotch-Irish issues were personal.

“The publication of this little book in its present form is due to an accidental circumstance,” he continues. “The matter it contains was prepared as a part of a larger and perhaps more important historical work, on which I am now engaged, and which I hope will soon be in print. Happening to show some of the chapters to a friend, in whose judgment I had great confidence, he said to me : Why not publish these chapters as a separate book?

"The matter they contain is only remotely related to that of the main book, and the two should not appear together. It happened that my own mind was running in the same direction, and had nearly arrived at the same conclusion. The publication of this book, in its present form, is, therefore, mainly due to that interview. It is, as it were, a leaf torn from another book.

"The chief reason for writing so fully, or at all, about the Covenanters is given in the opening sentences of Chapter IV of this book. The error and injustice there referred to are remarkable, indeed amazing; but it is not too late to correct them by letting in the light of history. A brief comparison of the record of the Covenanters with that of the Cavaliers and the Puritans shows in how remarkable a manner the former people have been neglected and ignored in the history and the public thought of the country. If I shall be able to quicken the interest in this great race, already existing, awakened by the noble efforts of The Scotch-Irish Society of America, I shall feel that I have, indeed, done a good work."


Sources: The O.P. Temple Papers/University of Tennessee Special Collections Library
http://www.archive.org/details/covenantercavali00temprich



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Mountain woods and meadows are full of toys for any child with eyes to see. Skipping stones across a creek or running alongside a fence, stick in hand, clacking the fenceposts---these pastimes are available any time of year.

But the summer meadow has always held special treasures. Two of the best just happen to grow cheek by jowl: the clover, endless provider of necklaces white or red, and the English Plantain.

Before the advent of the manicured lawn, in which the plantain is an unwanted guest, mountaineers viewed this marvelous plant through very different eyes.

“Plantain is a vulnerary (a wound plant), and in everyday use it is excellent for relief of stings and bruises, and an alleviant for nettle stings,” says Bill Church in Medicinal Plants, Trees, & Shrubs of Appalachia - A Field Guide. “Traditionally, leaf tea used for coughs, diarrhea, dysentery, and blood urine. Leaves applied to blisters, sores, ulcers, swelling; also used for earaches and eye ailments; thought to reduce heat and pain of inflammation.”

In addition to its medicinal uses, English plantain (also known as buckhorn plantain) helped keep backwoods aviary inhabitants chirping; the seeds are often eaten by songbirds.

This common European perennial has been naturalized worldwide; Native Americans from Massachusetts first noticed it seemed to spring up wherever the Europeans settled in the New World, and the nickname “white man’s foot’ or “Englishman’s foot” has stuck ever since.

But back to plants kids can make toys from. The plantain’s botanical name is ‘plantago lanceolata,’ and that ‘lance’ part has a special attraction for mountain boys at play, who prefer to call it the ‘shooter plant.’

If you’re going to fire one of these little devils at your buddies, you’ve got to select carefully. Look for a seed head that has NOT blossomed yet! It should be tightly formed and look like a bullet (photo #1).

If the seed head is long and rangy, it just will not pop off the stem when you go to shoot it (photo #2). Select a stem long enough that you can break it into two halves about 8-9 inches apiece (photo #3).

Fold the stem piece without the seed head in half, and thread the other piece through it (photo #4). As you can see, it reminds one a bit of the bow & arrow, and that’s exactly the way to shoot the seed head off. You have to squeeze the folded piece together tight enough so that the seedhead doesn't simply pull through it.

This is one of those childhood arts, like whistling with two fingers under your tongue, or riding a bike, that you simply have to learn by trial & error. No amount of written instruction, diagrams, or photos can ever replace that.





















sources: Medicinal Plants, Trees, & Shrubs of Appalachia - A Field Guide, by Bill Church, Lulu.com, 2006
www.childrenstories.ca/Stories/Ribgrass-Or-Whitemans-foot.html



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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 an oral history from Lillian Parks Adams, who recalls how as a young girl she captured June beetles in Wayne County, WV. She loved their song, enough that she decided one day to keep one as a pet, and proceeded to tie a thread to its leg.

In Ashe County, NC in June 1918, a group of forty World War I deserters decided to hide out in the hills for the duration of the war. By the time Governor Thomas W. Bickett caught wind of "The Ashe County Case," the renegade band had held off an armed civilian delegation that had tried to apprehend the deserters. One member of the posse had been shot and killed.

If you think the long-winded graduation speech is a recent invention, take a listen to this excerpt from Corliss Fitz Randolph’s address to the class of 1913 at Salem College in Salem WV. He was a noted philosopher of his day, and he most surely could pile the verbiage to the heights.

Next, we’ll hear a vivid description of how the Pugh family dog Rover kept the garden free of snakes at the Batesville, VA homeplace. Rover was smart enough that he used different tactics to root out poisonous vs. non-poisonous snakes.

Molly Wilkins is a graduate student in Washington State in a Master’s of Education program. As an assignment for her Social Studies Methods course, she recently wrote a paper on the importance of Appalachian cultural and environmental history in the social studies curriculum in the elementary public school system to help foster stewardship. She shares her paper with us in this next segment.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at a Holly Springs, SC feud. For many years Ira Butts and neighbor Clifton Pitts had been arguing over the boundary line of a small piece of property. One June morning in 1939 Pitts gunned down Butts from behind as the former greeted a friend on a local country lane. Butts lost his life over land valued at not more than the $3.50 he had in his pocket when he died.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from Obed “Dad” Pickard, one of the first Grand Ole Opry performers, in a 1929 recording of “Sally Goodin.”

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.

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'Education, and Not Instruction'
An Address Delivered at the Celebration of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of Salem College, at Salem, WV, June 12, 1913 [excerpt]
By Corliss Fitz Randolph

Today, still in the first flush of the glory of her youth, this college stands at the threshold of a magnificent opportunity.

Reared upon soil that has been stained by the bloody footprints of devoted service to humanity---a trail of footprints that extends, for a thousand years, all the way from the embarkation of Hrolf, the majestic Norseman, upon his voyage of adventure, to this spot, whither his lineal descendant, of kingly physique and fiery zeal, led a company, more than six score years ago, to establish new homes for themselves amid the freedom of the wilderness---a wilderness speedily transformed into comfortable, hospitable homes dedicated to the faith and mission of Palestine’s Nazarene, and where, but a generation ago, another son of the warrior from the German Sea, his life also dedicated to the uplift of humanity, performed the greatest service ever yet rendered by any one man in all that part of the state which constitutes the geographical setting of this temple of learning; reared upon such soil, I repeat, amid the scenes of achievements which bear witness to the nobility of character that distinguishes the people who first made this institution possible and then tenderly nursed it through all the anxious, precarious years of its early existence, growing slowly, but surely, into such sturdiness of stature and character as to inspire generations yet unborn with lofty zeal and purpose.

Salem College, Salem WV, in 1912.

Salem College is face to face with a tremendous responsibility---a responsibility she can not escape if she would, nor would she if she could. A flood of golden opportunities is rising at her portals in portentous volume---opportunities which she can not afford to ignore or lose. Upon the bosom of this flood is borne her destiny.

If in its physical, intellectual, and spiritual fiber, the fabric of her walls is strong enough to withstand the mighty pressure to which they are subjected; if the material of which they are constructed is drawn from the storehouse of enduring ages; if the walls are rooted deep down upon the solid rock of unselfish devotion to the eternal verities of humanity; if thus embedded, and then reared by hands kept clean from the grim of unworthy motive; then this college, guided by a discerning judgment of the elemental qualities of life, no less than of the perfect, delicate flower of its highest culture and humanity, will be, through all the changing years, an impregnable fortress against the powers of ignorance and darkness and decay---a beacon light to guide the footsteps of wayfaring humanity, and to impel to supreme effort, to noble purpose, and to lofty aims.

So standing, she will become an enduring monument with a living voice, a law and an oracle to the throngs that hang upon her words, inspiring them to zealous devotion, to high aspirations and determined endeavor; and the ever-widening circles of her influence, following swiftly, one upon another, ever increasing in volume and power, ultimately will extend to the confines of the world, and bring joy and hope and comfort and peace, with purity of life, strength of character, magnanimity of courage, and glorious achievement, to successive multitudes through coming centuries.


Source: Published by the American Sabbath Trust Society, Plainfield NJ, 1913
http://openlibrary.org/details/educationandnot00randgoog



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Please welcome guest blogger Molly Wilkins, a graduate student in Washington State in a Master’s of Education program. As an assignment for her Social Studies Methods course, she recently wrote a paper on the importance of Appalachian cultural and environmental history in the social studies curriculum in the elementary public school system to help foster stewardship. Her paper was originally published on the iLoveMountains.org site.

I was raised in the Tennessee Valley, along with many generations of my ancestors. I went to public school in the small town of Athens, TN, starting in kindergarten and ending with my senior year of high school. Once I graduated high school, I made my first grand move across the mountain to Asheville, NC. There, I completed my undergraduate career with a degree in Environmental Management and Policy.

The brief biography is given to state this: of the 18 years that I was raised in the Tennessee Valley and educated in the Tennessee public school system, I knew very little of Tennessee cultural and environmental history. This was not due to a lack of interest. I continued my education to earn a degree in Environmental Policy; a decision and path I chose as a sophomore in high school. I adventured in the Tennessee hills and mountains with family and friends my whole life. I loved the area, but I didn’t know why. I love the area, but I didn’t know the history behind it.

When I began school at UNC-Asheville, part of the humanities and liberal arts curriculum included fostering a sense of place for incoming freshman. I began to learn more about Asheville and the history of North Carolina than I had ever known about Tennessee. Through this realization, I began my own investigations and fascination with Appalachian history. I was mainly interested in how the land and culture affected each other; how political acts, cultural beliefs, other influencing cultures in the surrounding area, and natural phenomenon came to create what I now call my home.

Through this personal research, I began to develop a sense of place with Athens, TN, a place that had already been my home for 18 years. I also began to ask my grandparents questions and slowly began to learn more about my own heritage. I learned about my Great-Grandfather’s farm being cut in half by the creation of Interstate 75, and how my grandmother helped to organize the Red Cross to make supplies in Athens for World War I.

I began to look at the Tennessee hills differently. They weren’t just dirt and red clay. They held the history of my family. They held the history of the environment and resources that I depend on. They held the history of a culture that I was immersed in and carried with me to any new situation. My heart began to hurt when I would see a hill cut in half for development or an entire mountain for sale- and for cheap. I decided to make my passions in life in line with stewardship and protection of Appalachian history and culture, particularly the Tennessee Valley.

I am now currently a graduate student in a specialized residency program in Washington State. The decision to leave the Southern Appalachian area that I love so much was difficult to make, but the program was specialized for environmental and cultural place-based education. The experiences I have had and learned from in this program are tremendous and will be very beneficial for me when I return to UT-Chattanooga to finish my Master's of Education.

I plan to teach in the Tennessee Public school system, and once I am in the classroom, I plan on making Southern Appalachian and Tennessee cultural and environmental history a priority in the elementary curriculum. Social Studies standards for the elementary classroom include state and local community history, yet, as a product of the public school system, I can say that this has not been stressed enough.

It is of great importance to begin this historical and cultural education and discovery as early as possible. The Southern Appalachians are being developed, small towns are bought up by chain stores, and a culture, so rich to the American history as a whole, is being forgotten. By educating the youth and future generations, there will be a better connection to the land and the history that it holds. This connection will help to develop a sense of pride and a sense of place. It is then that we will be able to begin to foster stewardship for the land and the history that it holds.



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The vast majority of the 86,000 North Carolinians called into service during World War I served willingly, but four thousand of their number did desert during the war. Discontentment with conditions in training camp or bad news from home was the most likely reason for young recruits to go "AWOL" (absent without leave) long enough to earn the technical distinction of deserter. Most were either caught or voluntarily returned to face their punishment.

In Ashe County in June 1918, however, a group of forty deserters decided to hide out in the hills for the duration of the war. "The Ashe County Case" consists of a series of telegrams exchanged between officials in Ashe County and Governor Thomas W. Bickett on the crisis. When Bickett received the first telegram, the renegade band had just held off an armed civilian delegation that had tried to apprehend the deserters. One member of the posse had been shot and killed.

In an effort to avoid further bloodshed, Governor Bickett went to Jefferson, the county seat of Ashe, to address the anxious townspeople. He ordered the local draft board to "send notices by special messengers to every nook of Ashe County, especially the disaffected districts" about his upcoming speech. Bickett stressed, "I especially want all friends and relatives of delinquents notified."

Before Bickett began to speak, one of the deserters presented himself to the Governor. Bickett, in turn, gave the lad a letter to present to his commander at Camp Jackson in South Carolina in which the governor vouched for the deserters' loyalty and urged leniency on their behalf.

In his oration, Bickett pledged to "save wayward and willful boys from the sad and certain consequence of ignorance and sin." He expressed his belief that the deserters were not cowards but were somehow ignorant of the purpose of the war and the details of the draft law. He also commended Ashe County's patriotic heritage and discussed the war and the draft.

Bickett's justification of U.S. involvement in the war is a prime example of wartime patriotic rhetoric. He first emphasized America's peaceful nature, stressing that the nation only reluctantly joined the conflict after German aggression made neutrality impossible. He then cast the war as a contest between American democratic civilization and the despotic German Kaiser and the brutal German "Hun."

After Bickett returned to Raleigh, the rest of the deserters turned themselves in and asked to be reinstated. The Ashe County case was commented about in the North Carolina press for weeks afterward, but the county disputed any reputation it might have gained for disloyalty. In all, 536 Ashe County men served in the military in World War I, 461 draftees and seventy-five volunteers. The statewide draft evasion rate was 2.7 percent; Ashe County's was less than 1 percent.


Source: 'Public Letters and Papers of Thomas Walter Bickett, Governor of North Carolina, 1917-1921,' Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1923; summarization by Michael Sistrom, at Documenting the American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/bickettashe/summary.html



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This dog's real metier as a guardian, however, rested with his skill in dealing with snakes. His technique for killing snakes was masterful and varied, for he didn't always adhere to the same strategy and tactics. For black snakes, garter snakes, etc., he would just pick them up wherever he could conveniently catch hold and snap their heads off in much the same manner as a teamster snaps or "cracks" his whip.

With a copperhead it was a different story. Rover entertained genuine respect for this treacherous and highly poisonous snake that, unlike the rattler gives no warning, but can leap forth and sink his poison with the best of them. Rover kept a lookout for these mean and vicious snakes in clover fields and in patches of wild strawberries where we picked many gallons every June.

Whenever he or any of the children (it was usually the dog) came upon a coiled copperhead, Rover's standard plan of attack would be to draw a lead from the snake. By one heckling device or another he would make the copperhead spring out of his coil, then with lightning-like swiftness Rover would seize the snake and literally shake him to pieces.

It was a magnificent sight to see this great dog standing straight up on his hind legs with a copperhead in his mouth and turning his head from side to side with such snap and speed as to prevent the snake from doubling back and biting him. The snake had little time to bite, for the piece that flew off first and often landed at the feet of the onlookers, frequently turned out to be the snake's head.

Rover didn't always come off unscathed in his battles with copperheads. He was bitten a number of times. With the first couple of bites the swelling was so marked about his head and throat as to make swallowing even of warm sweet milk extremely difficult. But as time went on and he had been bitten several times, bites of copperheads affected him scarcely at all, so powerful was his acquired active immunity. This was just as Pasteur would have expected it to be.

As an index of Rover's efficiency for finding and killing all manner of snakes, no member of our family ever was bitten by any kind of a snake in all of the years we were exposed to them.

---Herbert Lamont Pugh

Pugh was born in Batesville VA in 1895, and rose to become US Surgeon General from 1951 to 1955. This excerpt is from his autobiography “Navy Surgeon,” 1959, J.P. Lippincott Co.



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For many years Ira Butts and neighbor Clifton Pitts had been arguing over the boundary line of a small piece of property. The land was separated between the neighbors by a small creek, which headed on property owned by Butts. Each neighbor suspected that someone had channeled the branch to run opposite its original location.

Early in the morning of June 6, 1939, Ira Butts left his home in Holly Springs, SC for a trip back to his old homeplace near Toxaway Baptist Church. He set out walking by way of old foot-paths and wagon roads, for this was nearer than by way of the main roads. He was born and raised in the mountains, and knew every inch of the woods for miles around.

On his way he visited his sister Julie Lee near the Welcome Baptist Church, and Dandy Lee, who lived then at the old Joel Vinson place.

Just before noon, he arrived at the home of his son Tom, who was not there, for he was working that day at a textile mill in Greenville. Ira spent a short while talking with Tom’s wife Bessie. She offered to fix lunch for him, but he refused to eat with her.

After visiting with Bessie, Ira started walking down a path leading to a spring from which the family carried water, and which was close to the property that had caused problems for years between Pitts and Butts.

Tom’s son, Edward, had gone to the spring for water, and was at the spring when Ira arrived, and he talked with his grandfather for a few minutes. The well at the homeplace had gone dry while work was being done on the Southern Railway; blasting had probably cracked the bottom of it. Several attempts had not gained water in the well. The water from the spring formed a branch, which was also a property dividing-line.

After talking with Edward for a while, Ira started walking down the branch bank toward a street which lead from the Toxaway Road to the home of William Carson, another neighbor of Ira Butts and Clifton Pitts.

Edward ran back to the house, leaving his water bucket, and told his mother that he thought trouble was going to occur. Rumor has it that he saw Pitts coming toward the place where Ira was about to enter the road. He was frightened terribly when he reached the house.

Felix Bradley, a long-time neighbor and friend of Ira Butts, was walking up the road just at the time Ira stepped into the road. Ira had not seen Pitts, for some pine bushes along the road had blocked his view, so he turned toward Felix and started to talk to him. Just then, Felix saw Pitts behind Ira with a shotgun, and he yelled - "Look behin ju Pharoah!" (This was a name he used when addressing the aged man, for Ira was then 72 years old.)

Turning, Ira faced a 12-gauge shotgun aimed directly at his chest from not more than thirty or forty feet away. Ira reached into his overalls pocket and drew a revolver, but it was too late, for at that instant a blast from the gun struck him in the left side of the chest and knocked him over. He fell dying in the dusty country road, shot by his own neighbor.

Even though he lay on the ground with a two inch hole in his chest from the shotgun, with the last bit of life left in his body Ira continued to squeeze the trigger, but there was no strength left.

Bradley moved foreword, and by that time Pitts had also moved closer. Ira must have thought Pitts was intending to shoot him again, for with the final breath in his body, Ira said - "Don't let him shoot me again, he's got me."

These words marked the end of a life that had been taken for a piece of property; land valued at not more than the $3.50 Ira had in his pocket when he died.


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



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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 on a road trip with guest blogger Sonja Ingram. Ms. Ingram is a Partners in the Field representative for Preservation Virginia and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In this piece she’ll take us along on her initial inspection visit of the Konnarock School in Hillsville, VA and explain how this institution became listed as one of Preservation Virginia’s Most Endangered Places of 2009.

The fury of the flood that swept through Letcher County Kentucky on June 2, 1927 far exceeded anything that had ever hit the area up till that date, reported the Mountain Eagle newspaper. Pull on your galoshes; we’ll take a quick survey of the scene on the ground after the waters receded.

It’s June. If you’ll be getting married this month, keep an eye out on those fun loving neighbors down the way. They may shivaree you and your loved one if you don’t watch out. Shivaree was a nineteenth and early twentieth century Appalachian custom of teasing a married couple on their wedding night or shortly thereafter. The bride was carried around in a tub at times, and the groom was ridden on a rail. All in good fun, of course.

Next, we’ll fill you in on Sarah Moon's brand new play Light Comes. The New Mummers theatre troupe unveiled the play's first public reading last Friday, May 29th, in New York City as the kickoff event to the 2nd annual NY Loves Mountains Festival, a weekend full of theatre, music, and activism promoting an end to mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.

"It's a priority for us to tour this play in coal country," says Moon. "We want to premiere the play in Kentucky, then bring it to theatres throughout Appalachia before bringing it back to New York."

We’ve got a separate interview with Sarah Moon on how this play came about. “In May of 2007,” she says, “our company was asked to put together a performance piece on the subject of mountain top removal for a media action event at the UN.

“Our dramaturg found transcripts from victims of the Buffalo Creek flood in 1972. I chose one of those testimonies to perform and through it found a connection to the suffering of Appalachians who've lost or suffered damage on their land because of strip mining and mountain top removal.”

We’ll wrap things up with a look at a man you’ve heard of since you were a kid, but probably don’t know too much about: Johnny Appleseed, aka John Chapman. No figure from American folklore personifies the spread of the apple into the heartland quite like him. He was as his legend suggests a man who moved around a great deal, planting his orchards in western Pennsylvania, across central Appalachia into Kentucky, and on throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from Dot Zeh in a 1979 recording of the 1931 tune “Baby Won't You Please Come Home.”

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.

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No more important fruit tree graces the homesteads, farms, and backyards of Appalachia than the apple. When early settlers headed west from the eastern seaboard, they took apple seeds because they didn’t weigh too much or take up too much space.

And no figure from American folklore personifies the spread of the apple into the heartland like Johnny Appleseed, aka John Chapman. Not a great deal is factually known about him, and by now the tall tale spinners have probably entirely obscured the full reality of the man himself. He was a strict vegetarian. He also primarily wore discarded clothing or would barter some apple saplings for used clothes. He walked alone in the wilderness, without gun or knife, slept outdoors, walked barefoot and ate berries. Stories that he wore a cooking pot as a hat, however, seem to have been stitched on at a later date.

Reproduction of an illustration depicting John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, published in A History of the Pioneer and Modern Times of Ashland County From the Earliest to the Present Date by H. S. Knapp, 1863.

One thing is clear: he was as his legend suggests a man who moved around a great deal. Born in Leominster, MA, on September 26, 1774, John became a Christian minister who beginning in 1802 and for 43 years thereafter planted apple orchards from western Pennsylvania, across central Appalachia into Kentucky, and on throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. While doing so, he spread the word of God as a self-appointed missionary for the mystical Swedenborgian church.

Legend says Chapman’s first seed scatterings were culled from the orchards he frequented as a child. It’s said that he gathered canoe-fulls of apple seeds from western Pennsylvania at cider-making time as he headed westward.

It’s easy to forget that Chapman, painted as a romantic mystic, was a level-headed, if eccentric, orchard businessman. For example, he owned more than 1074 acres of land in fifteen different tracts in Ohio. He sold his seedlings for three cents each, or planted an orchard for six cents a tree, earning about three dollars a day (compared to laborers in Philadelphia who earned about a dollar a day.) One of Johnny Appleseed’s authenticated varieties, the Albemarle Pippin (also known as the Newtown Pippin) is today one of the premier mountain varieties.

There are no records to indicate John Chapman had a wife or children, but according to the Johnny Appleseed Education Center & Museum in Urbana, OH Chapman had a sister and a brother. His brother died in infancy and mother soon after. Chapman's father remarried and had an additional family, thus giving Chapman ten half brothers and sisters. Visits to them help document his whereabouts at various points in his life.

We know, for example, that in 1816, while visiting family members in Center Township, OH he planted at least one orchard in Bristol Township for a Mr. Fuller.

Chapman’s last Ohio visit, in 1842, included a trip to Moscow Mills in Center Township in Morgan County to see his brothers Nathaniel and Parley and sister Sally Whitney, who lived there. In March 1845, Johnny Appleseed passed away at age 70 in Fort Wayne, IN.


Sources: www.morgan.lib.oh.us/Morgan%20County%20History%20Stories.doc
http://www.a-spi.org/tp/tp50.htm
www.urbana.edu/appleseed/museum.htm
www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=94


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Labels: appalachia, appalachian folklore, appalachian history, appalachian mountains history, John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed

Appalachian History: You're a Milwaukee-born individual, trained in Washington and Massachusetts, teaching writing at Baruch College in NYC. What connects you emotionally to the folks of Appalachia? Why should they care about your voice?

Sarah Moon: My connection to this region began in 2006, when our company New Mummer Group brought a little known Tennessee Williams play called 'Candles to the Sun' to Louisville, KY, for what would be only its third ever known production. 'Candles to the Sun' tells the story of a family living in the coal camps of southern Appalachia in the 1930's.

As most of the cast were unfamiliar with coal country, Stephanie Pistello, our director, planned a driving route that would bring us through Virginia, West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, stopping to tour an old coal mine and coal museum and to meet some of her relatives along the way. We even did an outside rehearsal on her aunt's land, with the hills all around us. I distinctly remember that day and a photograph I took of one of our actors, lying on the grass looking up at the sky. In it, his body and the land are both blue-dark, as though they're merging into one another.

It felt like we all connected strongly with the land on that trip. I think if it weren't for that, our performance would not have been as rich as it was. My connection then to Appalachia was established because of theatre but also went beyond theatre. When the time came for us to return to New York, I didn't want to. In fact, I actually planned a road trip down South to prolong my time away. When I did get back, I felt different. What had changed me more than anything was the connection I had felt with nature, land and water, on that trip and I've been working to get closer to it ever since.

That connection grew in May of 2007 when our company was asked to put together a performance piece on the subject of mountain top removal for a media action event at the UN. Our dramaturg found transcripts from victims of the Buffalo Creek flood in 1972. I chose one of those testimonies to perform and through it found a connection to the suffering of Appalachians who've lost or suffered damage on their land because of strip mining and mountain top removal.

That connection grew more real on the day of our performance when I met and listened to coal field residents, Larry Gibson and Judy Bonds, speak out for environmental justice. After that day, I knew that the subject of our next play would have to be mountain top removal. I wanted to lend my voice to this issue because of that love I'd developed for the region while doing Candles to the Sun and because of the empathy I felt with those already fighting, literally, for their survival.

My connection to Appalachia grew from that moment. In the summer of 2007, we went down to Berea, KY to do a workshop of six new one-acts, three by Kentucky playwrights and three by New York playwrights. After the workshop, I extended my trip to allow time to interview environmental professor Richard Olson, activist Teri Blanton and environmental researcher Tammy Horn on mountain top removal. I also took a flyover of mountain top removal sites in West Virginia with Southwings, an organization that provides free flight trips over environmental disaster areas.

Over the past two years, I have grown closer to the region by getting to personally know coalfield leaders in the movement and attending gatherings like Mountain Justice Summer in Kentucky and West Virginia. My "research" has turned out to be a very personal journey. I now feel Appalachia as part of my identity in a way that words can't really do justice. It's a collection of memories, images, like getting stuck on the icy road up to Kayford Mountain and having to hike the rest of the way without falling and breaking a leg. But if we hadn't gotten out and hiked, I never would have noticed an expanse of green moss and icicles that clung to the side of the hill. Now that's a memory I'll have forever.

AH: If readers of the Appalachian History blog like what you have to say, how might they expect to get access to this play? Will you be touring the region soon? Do you plan online videos?

SM: It's a priority for us to tour this play in coal country. We want to premiere the play in Kentucky, then bring it to theatres throughout Appalachia before bringing it back to New York. We want it to inspire discussion and even action. The play ends with the lead character asking "Will you stand?" The question is directed at an actor who is standing in the audience so the audience feels that the question is also being asked of them.

My dream is that audiences will, in fact, stand up in the theatre to show their solidarity with the movement and will take that with them out into the real world. This fight is about numbers. We outnumber the coal company owners. We can win simply by standing together, just as the rednecks did in the 1930's. The mountains need the people to come together now on their behalf and the play is a tool for making that convergence happen.

Several people suggested online videos to us after our reading on Friday. We haven't discussed it yet, but we likely will create them, once we have footage from our first full production. Though it's no substitute for live theatre, videos certainly give us the advantage of reaching a wider audience and we want to reach as many people as we can with this message. There's no one in America for whom this issue is not important.

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"We belong to the mountain; what you do to the land, you do to the people," says Caitlin, the pivotal character in Sarah Moon's brand new play Light Comes. The New Mummers theatre troupe unveiled the play's first public reading last Friday, May 29th, in New York City as the kickoff event to the 2nd annual NY Loves Mountains Festival, "a weekend full of theatre, music, and activism promoting an end to mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia."

Stephanie Pistello, who plays Caitlin, grew up in Lexington, Kentucky with strong roots in Southwest Virginia and Tennessee. She and Moon cofounded both this festival and the New Mummers, which has plans to hit the road soon. "It's a priority for us to tour this play in coal country," says Moon. "We want to premiere the play in Kentucky, then bring it to theatres throughout Appalachia before bringing it back to New York."

Light Comes is actually two plays running concurrently. Moon achieves this dramatic hat trick through the device of having most of the actors playing a character in each drama, switching back & forth instantly throughout the overall performance.

I say 'most' because two central characters, Caitlin and Granny (played by Carol Neiman), do not appear at all in the Historical Play (HP), but only in the Contemporary Play (CP). Caitlin's brother Virgil, on whose surprising change of heart the play's outcome hangs, appears in the HP as Samuel Insull, a business associate of Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison, you ask? What's he got to do with a play about mountaintop removal mining? Plenty, as it turns out.

Edison had hired the brilliant Croatian inventor Nikola Tesla as an assistant in the early 1880s. Edison needed a system to distribute electricity to houses. He designed a DC (direct current) system, but it had too many unworkable problems in it. Edison promised Tesla lots of money in bonuses if he could get the bugs out. Tesla took the challenge and ended up saving Edison what would be millions of dollars by today's standards. Furthermore, Tesla proposed that Edison's re-designed AC (alternating current) generators should be powered by wind, which was a limitless resource.

Enter King Coal. "You can’t own the wind," Edison tells Tesla flatly in Moon's play. Coal mining rights, on the other hand, can be bought, sold, and controlled. Several scenes later Edison and partner Insull scheme in a closed doors board of directors meeting how to maintain private monopoly control over the new electric companies.

Edison never kept his promise to pay Tesla the bonuses. Tesla quit, and Edison spent the rest of his life trying to discredit Tesla. In Moon's CP, actor Jeff Biggers switches from his Tesla character to 'Birdman,' a quirky but brilliant neighbor of Granny, Caitlin & Virgil. "I see spinning blades on Healy Mountain," he whispers to Caitlin of his vision for the region's future. But like his historical shadow Tesla, Birdman is ruined by corporate interests he lacks the ability or courage to stand up to, and flees to Colorado in frustration and shame.

Virgil, played by Andrew Stokan, is the CP flipside of Samuel Insull. Insull was a British immigrant who rushed to America in search of fortune. Virgil can't wait to get out of Appalachia; he scoops up his university degree and heads for Wall Street, where he lands in a financial house that trades, wait for it, in coal stocks. Just as with Insull, money is the only thing Virgil can see before him. On a visit back home, Granny tells Virgil about the mountaintop removal going on: "It feels like we mountain people are being pulled up by the roots." But her deep love of the land falls on deaf ears with Virgil.

Caitlin, meantime, is gaining renewed appreciation for Granny's wide knowledge of the region's flora and fauna, and for Granny's treasure trove of Cherokee stories and ways, but she also understands the need to work for change in the modern world.

She sees Birdman's visions for the future, contrasted by the need for a firm backbone to bring those visions to life. And she observes Virgil's insider ways on Wall Street and takes a lesson in how to work the system. It's only a matter of time before Caitlin musters all her resources to tackle the reckless environmental destruction taking place around her.


Tomorrow: An interview with Sarah Moon, playwright & author of 'Light Comes'

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The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG, LETCHER COUNTY, KENTUCKY.
THURSDAY JUNE 2 1927

"16 KNOWN DEAD IN FLOOD"

The death list of the terrific storm which swept Letcher County Sunday night has mounted to sixteen, with reports coming in which indicate that it may reach twenty.

Property damage cannot be estimated. Homes are destroyed, livestock and poultry drowned, and whole farms practically ruined. The fury of the flood far exceeded anything that has ever hit this area in its history.

Numbers of the dead have been found, but searchers are still at their gruesome task of tearing into drifts along the banks of the streams in hopes of finding bodies. Loved ones anxiously await some word from the searchers.

Mrs. Nannie Collins, on Rockhouse, died after her family had to be moved out of the home on account of rising water, but she was already at the point of death, and it is thought that the flood did not contribute to her death.

The bodies of the little Boggs child and Breeding child have not been found yet; but, so far as reports here go, all others have been recovered.

Original caption reads: Letcher County, Kentucky. Thunderstorm on Pine Mountain.

The storm has left desolation in its wake. A large number of homes that escaped the death toll do not have food or clothing, except as it is furnished by neighbors, the L. & N. railroad and the Red Cross.

Train service has been cut off, telephone and telegraph service is practically destroyed, and the North fork of the Kentucky River is in a world by itself. The extent of the storm cannot be determined.

Nobody is going hungry, so far as is known. There is enough food in the valley to last several days, and arrangements have been made by which more supplies can be brought in through the Big Sandy valley if they are needed before the train service can be restored.

Volunteers are busy with rescue and reconstruction work everywhere, and a heroic effort is being made to heal the wounds inflicted by the angry storm.

Red Cross headquarters at Washington, D. C., volunteered help; and the local committee, under the direction of Chairman C. H. Burton, is furnishing aid wherever a need can be found.

Elsiecoal was the first place to be reached. The work there was turned over by Mr. Burton to Dr. Collier, railroad surgeon, who is taking care of the situation at that place.

All mining work has been stopped, and many men are out of employment. It is estimated by the operators that the work will be held up from a few days to several weeks, depending upon the extent of the damage at the different places.

The greatest loss of life and property was in the heads of small streams. It appears that the rain Sunday night came in cloud-burst fury, flooding the narrow gorges and trapping people before they knew what was upon them. It is in these isolated places throughout the county that the greatest suffering will result, men who are studying the situation say.


source: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyletch/articles/flood.htm



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Please welcome guest blogger Sonja Ingram. Ms. Ingram is a Partners in the Field representative for Preservation Virginia and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This article first ran May 27, 2009 on the PreservationNation blog.

Being the field representative for Preservation Virginia and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, I receive many phone calls and emails asking for assistance on a variety of preservation topics. When I received an email about the Konnarock School in Smyth County, my initial thoughts were that it would be a typical request for grant information — but I was wrong.

My first trip to Konnarock School in March of 2009 was an adventure itself. As I left Danville, I traveled across the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the Crooked Road, Virginia's Heritage Music Trail. Further up the Crooked Road travelers will find Bristol, Virginia, the birthplace of country music and Carter's Fold, the home of the famous Carter family where bluegrass is still played every Saturday night.

But my trip did not take me that far west; instead I successfully navigated my way across Lover’s Leap near the town of Stuart, named after Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, then through the scenic Meadows of Dan and onto the aptly named town of Hillsville.

When I arrived at Konnarock School, located at the foot of Whitetop Mountain and near Mount Rogers, the two highest peaks in Virginia, I was met by two fantastic folks, Penny "the Penster" and Monroe Herring; and one very friendly dog, Buddee. Once we started discussing the school, I began to fully realize the importance of the Konnarock School and what it has meant — and still means — to this community in western Virginia.

The Konnarock Training School was built in 1924 by the Lutheran Church as a boarding school for girls. For the next twenty-five years, the school educated many girls in this rural part of Virginia who would not have received the opportunity otherwise. The school also engaged in extensive health, educational, and religious outreach throughout the mountains of Southwest Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. A companion school for boys, the Iron Mountain Lutheran School for Boys and Young Men, was built in the 1930s.

The Konnarock School was built of native hardwoods and is sided with the bark of the American Chestnut tree, a species that is nearly extinct after its decimation during the Chestnut blight in the 1930s-1940s.

The school went out of operation in 1959 and later became a training center for the United States Forestry Service. The school became the property of Konnarock Retreat House, Inc. in 2006 with the assistance of Congressman Rick Boucher. Konnarock Retreat House, Inc. a non-profit formed specifically to renovate and bring new life to the school is currently managing extensive renovations to the school and has plans to use the facility for retreats and as a place to preserve Appalachian history and heritage.

As I was given a tour of the facility, Monroe and Penny (and Buddee) explained that when the school was in operation, it was locally and agriculturally sustainable way before the sustainability movement became popular. The school owned hundreds of acres in which fruits and vegetables were grown for the students and the community. It also had its own dairy.

As I toured the lonely rooms with scattered desks and chalk boards and the chapel with its missing stained glass windows, I tried to envision what it will be like in the future when the renovations are complete and the rooms are once again thriving with community projects. It is clear to me now that the Konnarock School was more than a school, it was the anchor for this rural community, and with the efforts of Konnarock Retreat House Inc. soon it will come full circle.

Since my first visit, the Konnarock School has been listed as one of Preservation Virginia's Most Endangered Places of 2009. Our hope is that this listing will garner further awareness to help raise the funds needed for the school's extensive renovations.

If you are interested in helping the Konnarock Retreat House, Inc. with donations or otherwise, or if you would like more information about the school, please contact Jean Hamm at jeanhamm[at]yahoo[dot]com (replace the words in brackets with the customary symbols) or visit www.konnarockretreathouse.org.

Related article on Konnarock School here.



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Labels: appalachia, appalachian history, history of appalachia, Konnarock School, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Preservation Virginia