Appalachian History

Napoleon Hill’s book 'Think and Grow Rich' is the all time bestseller in the success motivation field, with over 100 million copies sold around the world.

Napoleon Hill was born in 1883 in Wise County, in the western part of Virginia, not far from the West Virginia border. Hill's view of his childhood was very negative and would probably have resulted in little if any success in his life were it not for Martha Ramey Banner. Napoleon Hill’s mother, Sarah, died when he was ten years old and his father James married Martha when Napoleon was twelve. Up to this time Napoleon was the scourge of Wise County, running wild and even carrying a pistol.

She saw the value in young Napoleon where most had written him off as a ne'er-do-well. Martha did something that was a turning point in young Napoleon's life. She asked him to give up the pistol that he had been carrying for the past several years and replaced it with a typewriter. This typewriter opened a new world for the young boy. He would eventually turn to writing articles for the local paper and achieve recognition for his accomplishments rather than his infamy.

Napoleon Hill in a 1904 portrait.

This developed Napoleon’s writing talent and established the skills needed to write his books about the power people possess for achieving success.

In 1900, after graduating from high school, Napoleon left Wise County and traveled a little less than one hundred miles to attend business school in Tazewell, VA. The school’s one year curriculum consisted of shorthand, typing and basic bookkeeping. Though this sounds like training for a secretary, at the time, it was the traditional entrée into business for even the most ambitious young man. And Napoleon Hill was determined not to return to Wise County ever again without being a singular success.

As Hill neared graduation from school, his goal was to work for a prominent attorney with many business holdings named Rufus Ayres. Ayres was a very powerful figure in the region and Napoleon would have a difficult time to find a more influential person to work for at the time. Through his audacious approach to Ayers for a job, even saying he would pay Ayers for the first three months to have the privilege to learn from him, Hill got the job.

He took to the job quickly, arriving early, staying late, providing meticulous service by “going the extra mile to render more service than compensated for”…a future principle of success. Through a series of circumstances that allowed Napoleon to shine by exhibiting his ability to handle difficult situations and extreme honesty, he became manager of one of Ayers’ mines at the age of nineteen responsible for three hundred and fifty men.

A 1906 cover of Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

One of the traits Napoleon Hill exhibited throughout his lifetime was first demonstrated when, though he held a lofty and influential position, he decided there were other things he wanted to do than manage a mine. Hill set his sights on becoming a lawyer. At this same time, his young brother Vivian was determined to go to law school. Hill announced to his family his intentions and that he would pay his and Vivian’s tuition at Georgetown University in Washington, DC by going to work for Robert L. Taylor, a former governor of Tennessee.

Taylor published a magazine called Bob Taylor’s Magazine that was based on the possibilities that ordinary people have to achieve wealth and power. Napoleon’s law school ambitions lasted less than a year. He realized he could not do the curriculum work, nor make the money as a freelance writer he had achieved as the mine manager. He told his brother he could not pay his tuition and Napoleon dropped out of law school.

Hill’s next stop was a lumberyard where he took the job as sales manager. Again, Napoleon excelled and by age twenty-two, he was a partner in the business. His success continued for the next two years but in early 1907, the economy was in turmoil. The stock market was reeling with large corporations and banks failing. By 1908, the lumberyard was out of business and so was Napoleon. Here was a young man at twenty-four who had achieved great success twice only to find himself broke with no job or prospects. Hill returned to Washington, DC and went back to work for Bob Taylor’s Magazine.

Andrew Carnegie in 1913.

As a correspondent for Bob Taylor’s Magazine, Hill managed to schedule an interview with Andrew Carnegie, at that time, the richest man in the world and a leader in the steel industry. Hill went to Carnegie’s home in New York City with enough money to return to Washington after he completed his interview.

During the interview Carnegie liked what he saw and heard from the young writer. Hill was looking for information from Carnegie about how someone achieves the kind of wealth and success Mr. Carnegie had achieved. Carnegie talked about the men he knew, and he knew many…Edison, Ford, Firestone, and every other person of prominence at the time. He focused on their success and what a great a gift it would be if someone were to organize this information.

In the Author’s Preface of ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ Hill relates “When he saw that I had grasped the idea, he asked if I would be willing to spend twenty years or more, preparing myself to take it to the world, to men and women who, without the secret, might go through life as failures. I said I would, and with Mr. Carnegie’s cooperation, I have kept my promise.”


From “A Lifetime of Riches: The Biography of Napoleon Hill," by Michael J. Ritt and Kirk Landers, Duttons Books, 1995

"During the early days of Norton in Wise County [VA], most of the 4th of July Celebrations were either in Norton or Big Stone Gap. As a general thing when the celebration was in Norton, some of the higher up men and wives would come down, get high and take over.

"So the mayor and the council of Norton decided that they would appoint deputy town policemen to help the regular policemen keep things down. Dad was one of the deputy policemen appointed, and also Mr. Joe Dollyhide, and probably some more but I can’t remember who.

"As usual one of the Wise citizens, one of the higher up and up citizens at that, came to Norton and began to shoot up the town. I don’t know how many times, but I have been told by Dad that several times he and Mr. Dollyhide would take his gun away from him and place him in jail. Each time after staying in jail a while, the mayor Mr. John Dixon would turn him loose.

"Mr. Dixon ran the livery sable just across from where the Coca Cola plant is now. Just before dark, Dad and Mr. Joe Dollyhide was upon him again with a gun shooting, and they had a plan to take his gun away from him again. They did not quite get to him and he began to shoot at them. Dad and Mr. Dollyhide backed away from him to the sidewalk, which at that time were board sidewalks in Norton, and they had to step up at the end of each intersection.

"Dad told me that every time the Wise man would shoot he would shoot at the blaze of the pistol. Evidently they hit him several times because he was considered in serious condition. As soon as the shooting was over, Dad and Mr. Dollyhide knew that the Sheriff and his deputies from Wise would be down after both of them for shooting up one of their distinguished citizens.

"He and Mr. Dollyhide went to the mountains to hide until things could settle down. I can remember very distinctly the night of the shooting, the Sheriff and the Deputy Sheriffs came to our home on the south side to get Dad, who was gone. They looked under the bed. I remember them pulling the covers from off me and looked in the bed and all around the house and anywhere they figured Dad would be, but failed to find him.

"After a few days or soon after the shooting, Uncle William (Bill) Jenkins, who at that time was an attorney, advised Dad and Mr. Dollyhide to come in and he would go with them to Wise and make bond, which they did.

"When the trial was set, Uncle Bill and Dad and Mr. Dollyhide had to hire--did hire--some extra help, a Wise attorney to defend them. They were both exonerated from on account of the shooting. However, Dad and Mr. Dollyhide were out a considerable expense as the Town Council refused to pay the attorney fee. I think that was the last time that Dad ever accepted an appointment as a Deputy Policeman in Norton."


William Henry Jenkins
(1892-1988)
http://vagenweb.org/wise/WmJenkinsLetter.html

"I went up to Wise that night along with my cousin and not meaning no harm,” testified Edith Maxwell at her murder trial. “Along in the evening Raymond Meade came along and said he would give me a lift back to my house in Pound. There was some more people in the car with him but we let them out down the road a piece and Raymond Meade says to me: 'Let's go to the Little Ritz and get something to eat.' "

"The Lonesome Pine Girl," accused of killing her father Trigg on July 20, 1935, attracted the attention and support of newspaper, magazine, and radio reporters, as well as women's organizations, across the United States and Canada. Her nickname is a reference to a well known 1908 John Fox novel, The Trial of the Lonesome Pine, that portrayed the lifestyle of mountain residents in a rather one-dimensional manner.

So
 popular was the tale with the American public that a third production of it--
this one in sound and color--was being filmed, with considerable publicity,
even as Edith Maxwell faced the first of two trials in the Wise County, VA courthouse.

The media coverage the case received for nearly 
two years rivaled that given to the Scopes "monkey trial" of the 1920s. By the end of Maxwell's ordeal, even Eleanor Roosevelt had gotten involved.

Why the national spotlight? The Maxwell case was a clash between modernity and tradition, between "women's rights and reason against bigotry and fanaticism.” On the side of bigotry and tradition was the "code" of the Virginia mountains, where women and children had to obey and submit to the father, even when he physically abused them.

Edith had left home for two years of teacher's college, highly unusual for a young woman of her circumstances. After attending Radford State Teachers College (later Radford University), Maxwell reluctantly returned to Pound, where she associated with the "bright young set," tested the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and became frustrated by the limitations of small-town life.

Raymond Meade tried to get her to drink some liquor, Edith continued in her November 1935 court testimony, but all she took was some potato chips and a glass of ginger ale. She told him it was getting late and she had better be starting for home because she was going blackberrying next morning. When she got home around midnight her little sister, Mary Catherine, warned her: "Your bed covers is in Pappy's room but don't go in there. He's drunk and he's going to run Ma out of the house tomorrow." But Edith went in anyhow. Pappy woke up.

'I'm goin' to whip you," he said.

"Pappy, don't you do it," said Edith.

Pappy chased her out of the bedroom and grabbed a carving knife. "Pappy, don't you cut me," said Edith.

"I'll show you I can whip you," said Pappy.

Edith fell to the floor and fumbled for a pair of old high-heeled shoes she had given her Ma. She flailed out with one of them. Pappy fell back. Edith, half-naked from the fight, caught up a covering, ran out of the house. She could hear Pappy moaning: "Jesus, Jesus, why can't a man whip his own child?" Trigg was soon dead, allegedly from the beating Edith gave him.

The prosecutor tried to show that Edith was a fast filly who had saddened her honest mountaineer father with her late hours and citified ways. But he could not shake her story of the fight. It was further corroborated by Edith’s 11-year-old sister Mary Catherine who, when twitted by the prosecutor for forgetting certain details, leaned out of the witness chair and yelled: "And you wouldn't remember so good either if you had been as scared as I was that night with Pappy a-yellin' and a-cussin' and Edith a-tryin' to outrun him!"

Edith, argued her lawyers, had exercised no more than her "God-given right of self-defense." But that did not impress the jury, which, after less than an hour's deliberation, returned a guilty verdict.

Despite expert medical testimony that Trigg's wounds could not have caused his death and that he had probably died of a stroke or heart attack, rumor and innuendo were enough to send Edith to jail for five years of a 25 year sentence.

She was pardoned by Gov. James H. Price in December 1941 – thanks, in part, to a letter written on her behalf by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Upon her release, Edith changed her name to Ann Grayson and eventually made a new life for herself in Jacksonville, Fla., after marrying Otto Abshier, the owner of an Indianapolis trucking company.

The day after Trigg Maxwell died, his wife Ann, along with their daughter, had been indicted, but never brought to trial. Was Trigg Maxwell hit by Edith? Or was it Ann? Or was he hit at all?


Sources: www.blueridgecountry.com/FavoriteArticles/EdithMaxwell_MA06/index.html
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/VALib/v52_n2/reviews.html
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,848229,00.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_199512/ai_n8723473
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14615437&BRD=1283&PAG=461&dept_id=158544&rfi=6



appalachia Radford+State+Teachers+College Eleanor+Roosevelt Edith+Maxwell womens+suffrage Wise+County+VA John+Fox+Jr appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history