Appalachian History

"A long time ago, when Jack was growin' up, his daddy give him a brand new shotgun for Christmas. Obviously, Jack was as proud as a peacock over this new gift. He wanted to show his daddy just how proud he was by going out and gettin a whole mess of game on his first huntin trip. So, bright and early the very next morning, Jack jumped out of bed, threw on his overalls, boots, and jacket and flew out the door before breakfast. He got up so quick he even beat the crack of dawn.

"As the sun slowly yawned out over the horizon, Jack's shadow was beginning to cast out over Bear Creek. He figured that most of the small game around these here parts would be gettin themselves a drink, right smart early in the morning. Well it wasn't long before Jack's logic paid off.

"Just 40 feet ahead of where Jack stood sat two rabbits, one on each side of a large boulder. Sittin right purty on top of that boulder was a flat rock with a large gray squirrel eatin a hickory nut. Jack looked and calculated a bit. He raised his gun up under his chin and aimed. Boooom. One shot was all it took.

"Jack had hit that flat rock smack dab in the middle and broke it in half exactly under where that big old grey squirrel had been perched. Of course it instantly killed the squirrel. The flat rock's two broken pieces fell simultaneaously on each side of the boulder killing the two rabbits, in a moments notice.

"The kick from the double barrel shotgun was so strong that it knocked Jack clean out into the middle of the creek. It nearly took Jack the better part of 30 minutes to climb out of that creek. Reason being, his overalls had gotten so full of bass that he could barely climb up the bank.

"Finally, when it was able to get up the bank and out of the water his dad-burned butten come flyin off them overalls due to the overload of fish they contained. That button had such force that it flew at a whiz-bang velocity like a rocket into the woods and just happened to hit a twelve point buck running from all this excitement. When this deadly button hit him in mid-stride his momentum carried him nearly 60 feet before he landed and hit his antlers on another rock. This caused a portion of the antlers to become a fragmented projectile that flew into the next pasture killing the neighbors prize bull.

"All that there was left to do now was for Jack to gather up everything to carry home. The only problem was; how in the world was he going to carry 24 largemouth bass, 1 large grey squirrel, 2 fat rabbits, 1 very large slightly damaged deer, and a 2000 lb. prize bull home by himself? Now that would really be a story…"

Told in the Beech Mountain tradition, from the Wilson Library North Carolina Collections/University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

http://www.ibiblio.org/bawdy/folklore/hunt.html

related post: "The Jack Tales. Not just beanstalks"


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Christmas+in+Appalachia hunting Jack+Tales

For Pennsylvania Dutch children Christmas started yesterday, the beginning of ‘chriskringling’ (or ‘Kris kringling,’) the two-week period culminating in Christmas. It’s a hybrid of trick or treating, mischief night, and Christmas caroling.

Tradition dictates that after dressing in costumes, the children sneak up to aneighbor's house armed with noise makers of every shape and size. When all are positioned, a signal is given and a clatter sure to wake the dead booms out. The targets of the attack, usually aunts and uncles, invite the perpetrators in, where the identity of the children is guessed, and everyone enjoys hot cider and all sorts of sweet treats.

The Pennsylvania Dutch Santa figure, Pelze Nichol, or Pelznickel, which Americans tend to pronounce "pelsnickle," eventually became re-worked to "belsnickle." And so, as this Christmas tradition permeated south and into the Shenandoah Valley region, Kris Kringling and Belsnickling have become synonymous. Mrs. Annabelle Vance, the 2007 Hardy County (WV) Folk Festival Belle, for example, said this past July that "at Christmas time, she enjoys Kris Kringling, or Belsnickling, to provide gifts to the children of her community."

Dr. Edwin Fogel says in Twelvetide "The Pennsylvania German belsnickel is derived from St Nicholas, who lived in Asia Minor in the 4th century. He has many names in German including St. Nicles, Niclas, Neckels and Klas; his Dutch form is Santa Claus and the Pennsylvania name is Belznickel or ‘Niklas clothed in furs.’

"In the Shenandoah Valley the Belsnickel and Santa Claus are distinctly different. One is a mythical figure who is supposed to arrive after the children are in bed, and the other actually arrives while the children are still up. The belsnickel is a reality, not something to be believed in on a basis of faith and hearsay, as is Santa Claus."

This duality harks directly from the Black Forest of Germany, where the annual visit of Santa Claus is preceded by that of Knecht Rupert, who goes around the village in a frightful disguise, visiting every house, and terrifying the naughty children by his acquaintance with their various misdemeanors.





related post: "The Belsnickle: definitely NOT Santa Claus"


sources: www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/people/people/polly_baumgardner_shank.htm
www.hottelkeller.org/christmas.php
Glenville Democrat and Pathfinder, July 19, 2007 (Hardy County, WV)
www.geocities.com/cenantuaheight/PageHH/handh09-13-01.html


belsnickling kris+kringling Christmas+in+Appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Hail the blest morn
See the Great Mediator
Down from the regions of Glory descend!
Shepherds, go worship the Babe in the manger,
Lo, for the a guard the bright angels attend.

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and lend us Thine aid
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

Cold on His Cradle the dew-drops are shining
Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall;
Angels adore Him in slumber reclining
Maker and Monarch and Savior of all.

Vainly we offer each ample oblation,
Vainly with gifts would His favor secure;
Richer by far is the heart’s adoration,
Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

Shall we not yield Him in costly devotion,
Odors of Edom and offerings divine,
Gems of the mountains and pearls of the ocean,
Myrrh from the forest and gold from the mine?

"I guess Christmas is without a doubt the best time in the whole year, all around the world, for all folks who celebrate it, and in our family in Kentucky it must be better than any place else. I suppose every child must feel that way about his own home place and his family and their Christmases together. I can remember looking forward all year round to the happy time in December when all the scattered ones of us would gather in around our fireplace and sparkling tree. Just thinking about it would fairly send me out of my mind with joy and excitement.

"On Old Christmas Eve we’d sit fore the fire and Mom and Dad and Granny’d atell us about the baby Jesus born in a stable on this night, and they’d say that if we’d go out at midnight we’d see the elderberry bush blooming in the fence corner right in the snow, and that if we’d peep in through a chink in our stable and make no racket atall we’d see the cow and the old mule kneeling, paying honor to the little King of Kings. Then maybe Granny’d sing us her Christmas carol, "Brightest and Best," in the old mountain tune, and we’d all sing some…That used to be our Christmas."

Jean Ritchie, Singing Family of the Cumberlands
University Press of Kentucky, 1988

Jean Ritchie (b. 1922) is the best known and most respected singer of traditional ballads in the United States. Born in Viper, Kentucky, she comes from a family of musicians who have preserved folk traditions for generations. As to the origin of the carol, Englishman Reginald Heber wrote “Brightest and Best” for the Feast of the Epiphany, and in 1811 published the hymn in the Christian Observer.

sources: www.richardandmimi.com/collaborators.html
www.ket.org/mountainborn/jeanritchie.htm
www.il.essortment.com/jeanritchiebio_rxrr.htm


appalachian+history Jean+Ritchie Best+and+Brightest Christmas+carols Christmas+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachian+mountains+history Appalachian+ballads

Not every place has the distinction of being named after a Christmas treat. Tradition holds that Pudding Ridge, NC, in western Davie County, got its name one rainy day in February 1781 during a Revolutionary War engagement. British General Cornwallis was driving his troops through the soggy hillsides in hard pursuit of American General Nathanael Greene, before finally battling his rival near the current day site of Guilford College in Greensboro. The crossing at Dutchman Creek, until the early 1900s the main crossing toward Yadkin County, was so boggy and thick with mud that it reminded the British of pudding (by which they meant “Christmas pudding.”)

The name stuck with the colonists, who would have been as familiar with Christmas pudding as their rivals and understood the reference immediately. Fortunately most Appalachian traditions associated with this classic seasonal treat have a much more positive connotation than that of being chased by enemies through the mud.

A nineteenth century recipe for Christmas Pudding.

In many of the region’s households, part of the fun of eating Christmas pudding is finding a trinket that predicts your fortune for the coming year. For instance, finding a coin means you will become wealthy. Find a button, you’ll remain a bachelor, find a thimble, you’ll stay a spinster, but find a ring ---ah!--- find a ring, and you’ll be married soon enough. The idea of hiding something in the pudding comes from the tradition in the Middle Ages of hiding a bean in a cake that was served on Twelfth Night. Whoever found the bean became “king” for the rest of the night.

There are more symbols tucked into that luscious black dessert. A traditional Christmas pudding contains 13 ingredients representing Christ and his disciples. When you light the brandy that is poured over the pudding (or in the case of Carolina Christmas pudding, the whiskey) the flame represents Christ’s passion, while the garnish of holly is a reminder of His Crown of Thorns. A proper Christmas pudding is always stirred from East to West in honor of the three Wise Men. Puddings are traditionally prepared five weeks before Christmas, most frequently on the Sunday of the week before the start of Advent.


sources: www.daviecounty.com/commerce/communityHistory.asp
www.burttravels.com/pdf/biltmore.pdf "Christmas at Biltmore Estate/Asheville NC"
www.ca.uky.edu/fcs/keha/materials/2006-07_Recreation.pdf

Christmas+in+Appalachia Christmas+pudding Pudding+Ridge+NC appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

Jesse Jewell (1902-1975) started what was to become the Georgia's largest agricultural crop- poultry. The now $1,000,000,000 a year industry has given Gainesville the title "Poultry Capital of the World."

Jewell pioneered vertical integration—the combining of all phases of the business, such as raw materials, processing, and distribution, within a single company—in the poultry industry. At the helm of J. D. Jewell, Inc. for more than twenty years, Jewell was a key national leader of the poultry industry.

Jewell's father, Edgar Herman Jewell, owned a feed, seed, and fertilizer business. He died when Jewell was only seven years old. In 1922 young Jesse began working in the family feed business, along with his mother and stepfather, Leonard Loudermilk.

When his stepfather died in 1930, Jewell began managing the family business. As the Great Depression drained the company's receipts, he tried a new approach to boost feed sales. He bought baby chicks and supplied them, along with chicken feed, on credit to cash-poor farmers. Once the chicks were grown, Jewell bought them back at a price that covered his feed costs and also guaranteed the farmers a profit. More and more Hall County farmers began to contract to grow chickens for Jewell.

By the late 1930s Jewell began adding the elements that would make J. D. Jewell the largest integrated chicken producer in the world. The first step, in 1940, was to open his own hatchery. Next came a processing plant in 1941. The booming World War II economy gave a lift to the fledgling Jewell enterprise. By 1954 Jewell added the final touches—his own feed mill and rendering plant. This vertically integrated corporation set the standard for poultry processors everywhere, as did Jewell's trademark frozen chicken. Jewell's hiring policies were also innovative: his processing plant was among the first factories in Gainesville to hire black workers.

Employees of Swift and Company Poultry, a competitor to J. D. Jewell, gathered in December of 1953 or 1954 for a Christmas party. Swift was one of the many poultry processing plants which employed African Americans in Gainesville.

Jewell was a founder and the first president of the National Broiler Council, the president of the Southeastern Poultry and Egg Association, and a U.S. delegate to the 1951 World Poultry Congress. He also gained the presidency of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which he led during the 1950s.

source: www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2120

Jesse+Jewell Georgia+poultry+industry+JD+Jewell+Inc Gainesville+GA appalachia appalachian+history +appalachian+mountains+history

Computer games haven’t always dominated the world of childrens’ toys. Two classic wooden folk toys, the whimmydidle and the flipperdinger, have been enjoyed by children for hundreds of years throughout Appalachia. These toys were handmade by people for their own use. Many of the designs for such folk toys were passed down from one generation to the next.

The gee-haw whimmydiddle, also called a ziggerboo (TN), geehaw (GA), hoodoo stick (Cherokees), and lie detector (OH), is mad of smooth twigs stripped of bark. Its two parts are a notched stick with a spinner – or whirligig – pivoted on one end, and a smaller rubbing stick. The object of the whimmydiddle is to make the whirligig spin smoothly to the right (gee) or left (haw), seemingly at your spoken command.

To do this, you must hold both parts lightly to produce maximum vibration. This vibration is set up when you stroke the rubbing stick rapidly back and forth across the notches. If at the same time, you let the tip of your index finger slide along the far side of the notches, the whirligig will twirl unfailing to the right. To reverseits direction, you simply bring your thumb to bear on the near side of the notches. With a little practice, you can switch contacts so inconspicuously that anyone who doesn’t know the trick will have a hard time guessing why the whirligig responds.

The Flipperdinger is a hollow-reed blower with a plug in one end, and a nozzle, made of a smaller reed, projecting from it just behind the plug. In one model, and acorn cup with its center bored out is cemented over the nozzle. In another, a little ‘basketball ring’ bent from copper wire is aligned with the nozzle about three inches above the tip. Both models come with a featherweight ball formed from cornstalk pith.

To work the first flipperdinger, you place the pith ball in the acorn cup and blow lightly but steadily into the open end of the larger reed. When done right, the ball rises slowly in a jet stream of air, hovers a few inches above the nozzle, and then as you ease off, settles back.

The other flipperdinger is harder to master. Here the pith ball has a wire thrust through it – one with a crook in one end. You hang the crook over the basketball ring. Then, with plenty of well-controlled lung power, you can unhook the ball, lower it through the ring, and finally, blow it back up again and replace the crook on the wire.

sources: http://www.wvculture.org/goldenseal/winter04/schnacke.html
Popular Science, Mar 1960, pp. 144-7
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1985/6/85.06.04.x.html

related post: "All I want for Christmas is a whimmy diddle"


Appalachian+folk+toys whimmy+diddle flipperdinger appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history

The only asylum
Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford,
Rather than send their folks to such a place,
Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.
But it’s not so: the place is the asylum.
There they have every means proper to do with,
And you aren’t darkening other people’s lives....

Robert Frost (1874–1963), "A Servant to Servants"


Poorhouses (or Almshouses) were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were required to go if they could not support themselves. They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now call "welfare" - what was called "outdoor relief" in America’s early days.

People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor (sometimes also called a Poor Master) - an elected town official. If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poorhouse instead of being given relief while they continued to live independently. Sometimes they were sent there even if they had not requested help from the Overseer of the Poor. That was usually done when they were found guilty of begging in public.

"Day laborers, who had worked all summer for a quarter a day, were lucky to get bed, board, and roll-your-own Bugler tobacco in exchange for help with winter chores. Some, in dire straits, went on relief or to the county poorhouse. Many times, farmers just took their tobacco checks to the grocer or the banker and turned it over to them to pay off bills and notes, maybe holding a little out for Christmas. Some got their checks cashed, got drunk, and lost it all in a poker game in Huntington, WV. Then the whole process started over."

Tragedy on Greasy Ridge: True Stories from Appalachian Ohio
Danny Fulks, Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2003

By the 1930’s, the poorhouse population became increasingly more narrowly defined, as social welfare legislation (Workman’s Compensation, Unemployment benefits and Social Security) began to provide a rudimentary “safety net” for people who would previously have been pauperized by such circumstances. Eventually the poorhouses evolved almost exclusively into nursing homes for dependent elderly people. But poorhouses left orphanages, general hospitals and mental hospitals -- for which they had provided the prototype -- as their heritage.

Source: www.poorhousestory.com


the+poorhouse almshouses Robert+Frost Greasy+Ridge+OH appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Kephart: “People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may be a revenue officer or a spy.

“Of course, that is nonsense; but there is one thing that I'm as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all. You know my habits; I like to explore--I never take a guide--and when I come to a place that's particularly wild and primitive, that's just the place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that, one of these days when I'm out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation--what would happen? What would they do?

Moonshiner: "Waal, sir, I'll tell you whut they'd do. They'd fust-place ask you some questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin' in that thar neck o'the woods. Then they'd git you to do some trifflin' work about the still--feed the furnace, or stir the mash--jest so's't they could prove you took a hand in it your own self."

"What good would that do?"

"Hit would make you one o'them in the eyes of the law."

"I see. But, really, doesn't that seem rather childish? I could easily convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that's what it would amount to."

Revenue officers with a captured still on Rich Mountain, NC in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, November 18, 1931. Photographer George A. Grant.

"I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to convince. The judge'd right up and want to know why you let grass go to seed afore you came and informed on them."

He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: "I reckon you wouldn't be in no great hurry to do that."

"No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sampled their liquor, nobody would be likely to mistreat me?"

"Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin' you? At the wust s'posin' they was convicted by your own evidence, they'd only get a month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for it? Hit's all 'tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has!"

"I thought so. Now, here! The public has been fed all sorts of nonsense about this moonshining business. I'd like to learn the plain truth about it, without bias one way or the other. I have already learned that a stranger's life and property are safer here than they would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your country good to have that known. But I can't say that there is no moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it. Now what is your excuse for defying the law? You don't seem ashamed of it."

The man's face turned an angry red.

"Mister, we-uns hain't no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary thing we do. We're poor; but we don't ax no favors. We stay 'way up hyar in these coves, and mind our own business. When a stranger comes along, he's welcome to the best we've got, such as t'is; but if he imposes on us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick!"

Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart
(Outing Publishing Company, 1913)


Our+Southern+Highlanders Horace+Kephart moonshining revenuers rich+mountain+nc Great+Smoky+Mountains+National+Park appalachia appalachian+mountains+history

"We were out playing one Sunday evening and it was cold as blue blazes. It was blowing a little blue snow I believe. And Daddy, he had always been strict about things, and he didn’t want us out that evening. It was just too cold for any of ust to be out there but we went on anyway. He couldn’t get us in the house, without just whipping us and making us stay in the house.

"Daddy had an old face mask. We called it an old dough face and it had a beard, you know. It had eyebrows, and old hair on the chin. Daddy put that thing on and he put an old black coat on and and old black hat. And we knew Daddy had this now all the time but when it happened we didn’t. It scared the daylights out of us.

"He had a store building and were out behind that old store building playing. There was a little bank out there kind of where we could dig holes back in and we were just working away. One of the kids looked up and saw him, and man, there wasn’t a thing left between there and the house. Even though we knew all the time Daddy had that thing.

"After awhile Daddy came in the house and wondered what was wrong. We told him the booger man got after us and he says, 'Now see there, I told you if you got out and built roads and cards and did things like that on Sunday that’s what’d happen to you. The booger man would get you.'"

Ruth Cabe
The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys & Games
by Linda Garland Page, Hilton Smith
(UNC Press, 1993)


booger+man appalachia appalachian+culture Appalachian+tales appalachia+history appalachian+mountains+history

"Back in the days when I knew him, Uncle William [ed.-- William Creech 1845-1918] was the sage of Pine Mountain; he was the leader to whom the creek dwellers far and near turned for guidance in time of decision.

"In any rural community the mail is always a matter of importance, particularly in a region so isolated as the Cumberlands. Uncle William had decided that Pine Mountain’s crying need was a post office.

"For years he had labored so that letters could come to the little cabins that dotted the green hollows. At every attempt his efforts foundered on the stern government rule that no office could be opened until the postal business in the area reach a certain definite total each year.

"Uncle William at last grew weary of delay and failure. He decided to take drastic action; when Uncle William took action a result was as certain as night follows day.

"The difficulty in the great postal war was that most of Uncle William’s neighbors could neither read nor write; mail is after all a form of written communication. He made a first attack on the problem by calling at every mountain cabin; solemnly he urged each mountaineer to send off to both of the leading mail-order houses for their catalogues. If the son-in-law of the family had a different name, he asked the farmer to send it off twice. Whenever the necessity arose, which was often, he wrote the cards of request himself.

"This initial undertaking produced a considerable postal volume; each heavy catalogue that arrived was balm to Uncle William’s soul. His next move in the campaign was in the more complicated field of correspondence. The First World War had come upon the countryside; most of the young men were away in the Army.

William and Sally Creech about 1900.

"Uncle William made the rounds of the cabins again, urging mothers to write to their sons and daughters to their sweethearts. Here again the lack of formal learning interfered with their desires. Once more Uncle William became the correspondent, writing long letters telling the news of the day. When the answers came, scrawled by some soldier friend of the absent one, he would journey to the cabin and read it aloud to the whole family.

"So effective were his efforts that even the postal authorities in charge of the district were impressed by the quantity of mail that was arriving. At last they decided the business was enough to warrant opening the office.

"There are many Uncle Williams still in the Cumberlands; it is their presence which makes these hazy uplands unique. For they are the last outposts of a vanished world."

Children of Noah: Glimpses of Unknown America
By Ben Lucien Burman
Publ. by Julian Messner, Inc. 1951



William+Creech Pine+Mountain+KY post+offices+of+Appalachia appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+mountains+history

Monday, Nov. 23, 1942---

"The begetter of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith died last week in Manhattan.

"In many ways Billy De Beck lived a life as unreal as the comic-strip characters he fathered. When he was at high school in Chicago he drew imitation Charles Dana Gibson pictures, peddled them for profit. He did cartoons for a theatrical weekly and for several newspapers. But he stayed poor until he turned out a correspondence course on 'How to be a cartoonist and make big money.' He sold thousands of copies for $1 apiece.

"He was doing a so-so successful strip, "Married Life," for the Chicago Herald at $35 a week when King Features hired him in 1919. Result: Barney Google. Before he died last week at 52 after a year's illness. William Morgan De Beck had a 14-room Florida house, a Manhattan Riverside Drive apartment where, once, he threw dollar bills to kids from the window until he was stopped by police.

"Knee-high, banjo-eyed, potato-nosed Barney Google and his wonder nag, Spark Plug, were to U.S. kids in the '20s what Superman is today. Barney Google ('and his goo-goo-googly eyes') was a 1923 song hit that sold more than a million copies.

"Three Barney Google musicomedies toured the U.S. for two years; a toy manufacturer sold $1,000,000 worth of Google and Spark Plug toys and dolls; many a Google catchphrase entered the language ('Horsefeathers!' 'Heebie-jeebies'; 'Jeepers Creepers!' 'Youse Is A Viper'; 'Bust Mah Britches!' 'Times a wastin!'). In the mid '30s De Beck abandoned Spark Plug, subordinated Barney, brought bodacious Hillbilly Snuffy Smith (also a slangy shorty) to the fore.

"Because of De Beck's illness, an understudy [ed. – Fred Lasswell] has been drawing the strip for months. Just as Andy Gump survived Sidney Smith's death (in 1935), Snuffy and Barney will survive De Beck's."

TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,773938,00.html

related post: "Mammy Yokum, Pappy Yokum, and Fearless Fosdick"


appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history Billy+De+Beck Snuffy+Smith

Was Charged With Killing John Stinson on Laurel Creek Sunday, June 30th

November 22, 1935 --

The jury returned a verdict of guilty late Wednesday afternoon and fixed Ed Nelson's punishment at twenty years in the Virginia penitentiary. Two full days were consumed in Judge Buchanan's Circuit Court this week in the trial of Ed Nelson for the murder of John Stinson, on Laurel Creek on June 30th. A large array of witnesses were present, many of whom were present at the killing.

Character witnesses to support the testimony of the witnesses for the Commonwealth were also introduced. According to H. H. Johnson, of Richlands, two car loads and one truck load of people left Richlands on the Sunday of the murder, to spend the day with relatives of Johnson and the Stinsons. Johnson was leading the procession and when he reached a point near the residence of Wm. Vandyke, just over the brow of a hill, he discovered that the road was blocked by a Ford car.

He requested that the road be cleared, and violent objection to moving the car was raised by Ed Nelson, according to Mr. Johnson, who stated that Nelson threatened to shoot any who tried to move the car. Johnson's statement was emphatically denied by other witnesses. Johnson also stated that Ed Nelson came down the road from the Vandyke yard, pushing a pistol in the stomach of Doc Stinson, father of the man who was killed, and turned loose a volume of profanity.

At this point in the proceedings, according to Johnson, Doc Stinson's son, John Stinson, came up behind Nelson and struck him on the side of the head, whereupon Nelson is said to have turned and shot John Stinson, both he and Stinson falling into a creek, on the edge of which the difficulty having occurred. Other witnesses stated that both Stinsons seized Nelson, that the shooting didn't occur until they had reached the creek bed in the shuffle, and that Nelson shot in self defense.

There was evidence introduced to show that Nelson and other associates were drunk. Nelson is alleged to have run, according to Mr. Johnson, from the scene of the crime. Commonwealth's Attorney Jos. S. Gillespie was assisted in the prosecution by Commonwealth's Attorney Fuller, of Russell, Bruce Johnson, and son H. H. Johnson, of Richlands. R.O. Crockett represented Nelson.

Clinch Valley News Folder
Tazewell County, Virginia

source: www.rootsweb.com/~vatazewe/CVN/1935.htm

related post: "One of the oldest Confederate Veterans"


Tazewell+County+VA crime+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+mountains+history

Now git on out of here and go have some turkey. We're closed today!

"In my younger days, during the 1920s, work was very good, and I would see men at the commissary company store, flipping gold and silver coins in the air and catching them as they fell. Shopping at the company store was an event. We all had our favorite clerk and would stand in line to have him wait on us. I recall Mr. Norman, the store manager; Mr. Bartlett; Mr. Ross, and a Mr. Meadows. Potatoes and pinto beans were the big sellers for a long time.

"Beans came loose and were ordered by the pound. I will never forget when a clerk was scooping up beans from the large bin under the counter, and he threw a scoop of them in the floor under the counter. Come to find out someone had forgotten to close the lid at closing time, and the cat found a new litter box. Bread came unwrapped; eggs loose; and if you wanted meat, Mr. Bartlett, the butcher, cut it on order for you.

"One of the officials of the company, every Christmas, would give dimes to all the kids who came by, which was all of us. That dime went a long way. Christmas was a good time for all of us. At the commissary the large show window would be converted into a toy wonderland. The window would be covered until the day after Thanksgiving. We would all try to be there at 9:00 a. m.

"Thanksgiving and Christmas were our favorite days. The turkey and ham dinners were the best foods I ever knew. The turkey would be purchased live and dressed out the day before. I will always remember the wonderful smell of the dressing cooking. I don't think anyone makes this dressing, also called stuffing, anymore.

"No one I knew had electric Christmas lights back then. A few people would put a red bulb in a homemade wreath and hang it in the window. Christmas trees were mostly decorated with homemade decorations. Trees were cut live in the hills, and we would be looking for a nice one long before we needed it. We all got toys, but not as many as children get today. For Christmas we also got lots of candy and fruit. Sometimes we also got sick from so many goodies."

Curtis R. Pfaff
b. 1921
Allais, KY

source: http://kentuckyexplorer.com/nonmembers/3-remem.html


Allais+KY thanksgiving+in+appalachia appalachian+food appalachian+culture +appalachian+history

"Butchering conjures up the image of a country diet laden with generous servings of ham, shoulder, tenderloin, bacon, sausage and spareribs. The restocking of our primary source of hog meat began every spring with the selection of four shoats. Their pre-slaughter fattening schedule coincided with cutting and shucking corn, hand-husking ears of golden grain, and storing each day’s harvest in the crib. Much of this bounty was used in a two-month feeding regimen designed to induce rapid weight gain and, in turn, soften the fat properly for rendering into lard.

"Hog slaughtering was a festive time that required a late fall day of well-coordinated activities, and instilled a sense of espirit de corps. A willingness throughout the neighborhood to pitch in and help each other lifted the load of this annual ritual. Farmers were freer to do so because their field work was winding down. The various tasks also needed many eager hands racing against shorter daylight hours.


"My favorite butchering by-product is ponhaus, a term familiar to those with a German ancestry. Scrapple is the name for the same preparation made and sold commercially. The flavoring comes from starting with the “liquor” or broth remaining after the meat destined for puddin’ has been cooked. Miss Hattie, our next door neighbor, added corn meal to this stock and a small quantity of flour for thickening.

"The mixture needed constant stirring by a specially made all-iron rod to which was attached a semicircular blade. The end of this implement was designed to scrape along the bottom of the kettle and prevent the bubbling contents from sticking. Mama insisted only Miss Hattie could be entrusted with tending the fire, seasoning and determining when the blend was sufficiently cooked. If the puddin’ meat was handy, she most likely added some for extra flavor. A well-deserved reputation for turning out tasty ponhaus followed her everywhere.

"Grandma Ambrose scooped the hot preparation out of the kettle with a large sauce pan and ladled the thickened mass into a series of rectangular bread pans. The contents cooled in these molds and solidified overnight. The family enjoyed many a hearty breakfast from slices cut about the thickness of a piece of bread and then lightly fried to a toast brown on either side."

Kenneth A. Tabler
b. 1926
Martinsburg, WV
"The Day is Far Spent" (Montani Publ, 2006)


hog+butchering+day ponhaus puddin'+meat scrapple appalachia appalachian+diet appalachian+culture

Future champion college basketball coach Sonny Smith was born November 15, 1936 in Roan Mountain, Tennessee, the son of a mill worker and a cafeteria employee at the local schools. His hometown, he said years later, wasn’t the end of the world---but that you could see it from there. He said there were so many shotgun weddings performed in Roan Mountain that the local church was dubbed "Winchester Cathedral."

Smith rose to college basketball prominence by turning around losing programs at East Tennessee State University, Auburn University, and Virginia Commonwealth University during his 22 years of coaching leadership.

Smith spent his first 11 years after graduating from Tennessee’s Milligan College playing semi-pro basketball and coaching in the high school ranks. As a high school coach in Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky, Smith began to make his contacts to move into the collegiate game. The legendary Vic Bubas helped Sonny land his first collegiate assistant coaching job at William & Mary in 1969. He stayed with the Tribe for a year, moved to Pepperdine for another year, and finally in 1971 landed as assistant coach to Virginia Tech’s Don DeVoe.

Smith was DeVoe's right hand man until 1976, during which time the Hokies never had a losing record. Tech captured the NIT Championship in 1973 and earned a NCAA Tournament berth in 1976.

In 1976 Smith landed his first head coaching job at East Tennessee State, a college in dire need of a winning streak. After a 12-14 record during his inaugural season in 1976-77, Smith guided the program to an 18-9 mark, and the Buccaneers were the Ohio Valley Conference co-champions the next season. Smith won his first of four conference Coach-of-the-Year honors, while establishing himself as an upcoming young coach on the national level.

Sonny Smith is best remembered for his coaching years at Auburn University, where he was named Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year in 1984 and 1989. He was the first coach in Auburn history to have a twenty win season, and the only coach in Auburn history to date to have three consecutive twenty win seasons ('84-'86). In 1985, he coached the Auburn Tigers to their first SEC Tournament Championship in school history.

Smith was a tough disciplinarian who coached Charles Barkley, Chuck Person, and Chris Morris into NBA stars in his three decades of coaching. On January 3, 2007, he was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

A basketball yarn from Sonny Smith: "There was an Kentucky fan, an Alabama fan, and a Tennessee fan that went to Saudi Arabia and got in trouble for gambling. They were arrested and each given 20 lashes as their punishment.

"Each fan was given one wish before his punishment was administered. The Kentucky fan went first. His wish that was a pillow be strapped to his back to soften the blows. After seeing how much pain the Kentucky fan endured even with the pillow, the Alabama fan’s wish was that he have two pillows strapped to his back while he was flogged.

"Finally, it was time for the Tennessee fan’s punishment. Because the person who was administering the blows had heard of the Big Orange, he granted the UT fan two wishes instead of the customary one. So, the Tennessee fan’s first wish was that he be given 200 lashes, rather than just 20.

"The Saudi was perplexed. He couldn’t figure out why someone who wish to endure such pain. He then asked,

"'What’s your second wish?' To which the Tennessee fan replied, 'Strap that Alabama fan on my back!'"


sources: www.ashof.org
www.sportsstarsusa.com/php/featuredartist.php?id=606&name=sonny+smith
community.foxsports.com/blogs/MrVolunteer/2006/02/19/SONNY_SMITH_BRUCE_PEARL_SWAP_BASKETBALL_WAR_STORIES_AT_BIG_ORANGE_TIPOFF_CLUB_IN_KNOXVILLE


Sonny+Smith Roan+Mountain+TN sports+in+Appalachia appalachia +appalachian+history

Breaks Interstate Park, located astride the SW Virginia/eastern Kentucky border along the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River, is one of only two interstate parks in the nation. Perhaps the scale of the 5-mile-long, .25-mile-deep gorge that forms the park's centerpiece cannot rival that of the Grand Canyon, but the 250 million year old "Grand Canyon of the South" IS the largest gorge east of the Mississippi.

The park takes its name from this gorge, which forms a “break” in Pine Mountain. Passes through these rugged mountains were called breaks by early settlers. Where the raging waters have carved the solid sandstone to break through Pine Mountain, nature has dressed the canyon walls in some of the region’s most spectacular scenery.

Daniel Boone is credited with discovering The Breaks in 1767 as he attempted to find ever-improved trails into Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley beyond. Both he and Simon Kenton explored here in the last quarter of the 18th century.

Because of elevation and moisture differences, the park contains various biospheres, ranging from oak/hickory climax forests on the drier ridge tops to a laurel/hemlock environment in the bottoms and along the creeks. This biodiversity results in an amazing display of spring wildflowers, including rare plants like yellow lady’s slipper and Catawba rhododendron.

The region was a hunting ground for Cherokee and Shawnee Indians. It is the home of Pow Wow Cave, used by the Shawnees.

The crown jewel of the park is the Towers, an imposing pyramid of rocks more than half a mile long and a third of a mile wide. The area around the Towers is said to contain the lost silver mine of Englishman John Swift. In the late 1700s Swift supposedly had one or more silver mines that were subsequently lost. He spent the last part of his life trying to relocate them. The lost mines are one of the great –and recurring- legends of southeastern Kentucky.

Public Law 275 created the park on August 14, 1953, and today, the 4,600-acre Breaks accommodates more than a third of a million visitors annually.

Sources: “Hiking Kentucky” by Brook Elliott (1998, Human Kinetics)
www.virginia.org/site/features.asp?featureid=283
www.breakspark.com
www.parks.ky.gov


Breaks+Interstate+Park Grand+Canyon+of+the+South Daniel+Boone Simon+Kenton Cherokees Shawnees appalachia +appalachia+history appalachian+geology

Two photographs show the bent hickory tree that is rooted at both ends. One includes the mess hall in the background and two shirtless C.C.C. workers sitting upon the tree.


Included with these photographs is a letter and envelope from Ripley's Believe It or Not, which states that this item will be depicted in the Believe It or Not cartoons on about November 14, 1935. The address on the envelope shows that the photographer, John D.Howell, was at C.C.C. Camp 3464, Cumberland Homesteads, in Crossville, TN.


All photos from "Volunteer Voices: The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee" / Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville


Civilian+Conservation+Corps Ripleys+Believe+it+or+Not Crossville+TN appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

Morgantown Post, Nov 13, 1937 -

People of State Owe Much to Dr. Harriet B. Jones
First Woman To Be Doctor In The State
Served in Legislature - Pioneered in Fight Against Tuberculosis

Eighty-one years old and in the late stages of a long and honorable career in medicine, statecraft, politics, and public welfare, Dr. Harriet B. Jones, referred to many times in no overstatement as "West Virginia's foremost woman," is not content to let the memories of a brilliant life impair her visions for the future.

Not satisfied is she to rest upon the laurels she earned as West Virginia's first woman physician, as the first woman to serve in the State Legislature, as the founder of numerous hospitals and welfare institutions, and as a vigorous pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis.

Dr. Jones lives in a modest home in Glendale, Marshall County. She lives simply and quietly and is very happy. In June, 1936, she celebrated her eightieth birthday. Her friends in the First Presbyterian Church at Moundsville gave a party in her honor. Four days later she was off for Cleveland to attend the Republican National Convention.

She has retired from the practice of her chosen profession - medicine. Likewise, she isn't as physically active in many of her varied avocations. But now, as ever, she is a keen observer of political fortunes and many are the public office aspirants who beat paths to her door for advice.

Founded Four State Institutions

Long after this generation has passed there will remain monuments to the untiring efforts of this woman in the form of the West Virginia Industrial Home for Girls at Salem, the State Tuberculosis Sanitarium at Terra Alta, the West Virginia Children's Home at Elkins, and the State Tuberculosis Sanitarium for the Colored. She was instrumental in the founding of all of them.

… Two years as a general practitioner were followed by three years and a half at Weston as assistant superintendent at the State Hospital for the Insane.
Returning to Wheeling, Dr. Jones opened a hospital for women. Two years later, she constructed a new building, enlarged her equipment and set up a hospital which thrived for 20 years. During this time she practiced medicine and surgery and was regarded as one of Wheeling's leading doctors.
…
Interspersed with her medical practice and her hospital management were the endeavors for which she is best known.

Included among these are her agitation to have created the four institutions named above, her anti-tuberculosis work, her literary efforts, her service in the Legislature, and her general interests in politics.

Attended Twenty Legislative Sessions

While practicing medicine, Dr. Jones attended 20 consecutive sessions of the Legislature as a lobbyist. She broke precedent by making a successful race for Delegate in 1924 and she was re-elected for the following term.

source: www.wvculture.org/history/women/jonesharriet01.html

related post: "Did the early polio vaccine cause cancer??"


Dr.+Harriet+B.+Jones first+woman+physician+in+WV West+Virginia+history appalachia appalachia+history medicine+in+appalachia appalachian+mountains+history

"I got married in 1926. I met [Charlie] in Davie County, between Mocksville and Salisbury. We met at a friend's house. I spent the night down there with a friend. We just wrote to each other for quite some time. [Laughter] He'd come to Conover once in a while. My grandmother had died a long time before then. I was still boarding with my aunt and uncle, though. We just decided to get married, that's all. [Laughter] We got married at Mocksville. At a justice of the peace. He wanted to get married down there, and we just got married down there.

"We stayed down there for a little while, but not long. I got off [work] for a little while. Then we moved up here to Conover and lived up here for several months, and he couldn't find any work at that time. The Depression had started then, so we moved back to Davie County to his mother's. His father was dead. We lived down there a year then, and he worked on the farm. Then that next fall we moved back up to Conover, and he got work, too, in the glove mill, and we both worked there. He turned.

"I was off, I guess, about a year when Billy was a baby. I quit pretty soon after I got pregnant. We just wanted a child so bad, and I just decided to quit. I did have some trouble [getting pregnant]. I just don't know what it was. He was born the thirty-first of May [1930], and we'd have been married four years the sixteenth of October.

"I hadn't been to the doctor but very little, unless it was just something I had to go for. [Laughter] I hadn't been to the doctor till I got pregnant, and then I started going. Dr. Herman at Conover [delivered the baby at home]. I didn't have any trouble with my pregnancy. I had a little trouble because of my age when he was born, but outside of that everything was all right.

"My aunt stayed with me, one of them, at one time, taking care of our youngest one, and after we moved out here my mother taken care of some of them part of the time. And one of my cousins stayed with me one time and taken care of them, so it's just different ones. But we always had somebody to take care of them when they wasn't in school.

"We've got four children. We had a boy and then a girl and then two more boys."

Junie Edna Kaylor
b. 1904
December 12, 1979 interview
Conover, N. C.
Interview H-106. Series H. Piedmont Industrialization.
Southern Oral History Program Collection (H-4007)
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/aaron/aaron.html

related post: "June Bride? Time for a Shivaree!"


North+Carolina+Piedmont Junie+Edna+Kaylor Conover+NC appalachia appalachia+history courting appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

"A Hard Journey" brings to life Don West, poet, ordained Congregationalist minister, labor organizer, educator, leftist activist, and one of the most important literary and political figures in the southern Appalachians during the middle years of the twentieth century. Author James J. Lorence is a professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin, Marathon County, and served as Eminent Scholar of History at Gainesville State College, Gainesville, Georgia, when writing "A Hard Journey."


"I first met Don West in the early summer of 1983," says Jeff Bigger, author of The United States of Appalachia.

"I was a dropout from the University of California and had just gone through a wild nine-month tour of duty in Berkeley’s corridors, spending more time in jail and at leftist political meetings than in classrooms. I failed to finish my last quarter.

"Returning from a stint in jail for a demonstration in central California, I was involved in a tragic car accident, which resulted in the death of a young woman. I was at the wheel. Still in a daze, I eventually took a Greyhound across the country, and then started hitching and hiking through the South, drifting into the Appalachian Mountains. I was angry, resentful, and adrift. I had lost faith in the power of education, politics or even activism. Don West saved my life that summer.

"Here are his bona fides as I see them: Raised by a sharecropper from the north Georgia mountains, West put himself through Lincoln Memorial and Vanderbilt Universities at the same time the southern Agrarian literary movement took the stage in the late 1920s. But West was no youthful antebellum sycophant; he earned a master’s in divinity, traveled around Scandinavia and Europe to examine folk schools, and returned to the South to launch his own revolution in the mountains. Raised by a radical Republican grandfather in a part of Appalachia that had supported both the Union and Confederacy, West rejected the hillbilly stereotypes for his proper place in the mountain South’s vanguard for independence, freedom, and enlightenment.

"In 1932 he co-founded the Highlander Folk School, which became the training ground for the civil rights movement. As one of the lonely activists in the generation before the glorious Montgomery bus boycott, he went underground and defended a radical black (Communist) leader in Atlanta in the mid-1930s. Wanted dead or alive by the Atlanta authorities, he fled the state and became a union organizer for mill workers and miners in the Carolinas and Kentucky and was often beaten and jailed, often forced to quietly return to work his farm in Georgia.

"Not too quietly: In a top secret FBI file, West was added to a proposed list of dangerous Americans who should be interned during World War II. In fact, one memo referred to the poet as the most dangerous man in the South.

"There were some good times. After turning a small Georgia school district into an acclaimed model of transformative pedagogy and cooperative learning, he returned to the national scene with his Clods of Southern Earth. In 1946, New York publishers Boni and Gaer (Boni had published Ernest Hemingway’s first stories) announced the release of West’s record-breaking volume of poetry. Here is where his secret life began to haunt him.

"During all of these years, riding an Indian Chief motorcycle across the mountains and down the East Coast, West had left a legacy of poems in his wake, as author John Egerton has written, like a phantom revolutionary—poems that unveiled the miseries of mill hands, miners, and sharecroppers, and the hopes of justice and racial unity in the South. His pioneering work reclaimed Appalachia as a progressive region and purveyor of the good life. For a while, he became the proverbial people’s poet, his work passed out at rallies and memorized by miners who had never read a book in their lives.

"Hounded and red-baited by newspaper after newspaper in the late 1940s and 1950s, West drifted into oblivion, losing job after job, called time and again into the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings that popped up in the South with the regularity of catfish fries. In one of the most unusual persecutions in American literary history, West’s poetry was often used against him at hearings and in newspaper editorials. Destitute, he even took to peddling vegetables from his garden on the streets of Atlanta. The Ku Klux Klan added a final touch, burning down his farm and his collection of books, manuscripts, and family heirlooms. After editing a newspaper in a mill town in North Georgia during a volatile period, he even had to flee a lynch mob; scurrying across the back mountain roads, West shot his way out of a jam, when a car attempted to drive him off the road. He finally left the South in exile.

"When I was literally dropped on Don West’s doorstep in the 1980s, he had returned to Appalachia as one of the elder statesmen in their folk revival. He had become the link between the Old Left and New Left activists in the 1960s, and had founded a new folk school and farm, the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia, which had become a hub of activity for young Appalachians in search of their history and progressive culture. His poetry returned to print and sold thousands. His role as an Appalachian historian became more poignant with a series of pamphlets he printed in his barn in the tradition of his hero, Tom Paine.

"With less than 10 bucks in my pocket, I worked on West’s farm that summer. I attended classes he set up for school dropouts and mountain youth in an employment program. We listened in awe at West’s poetry readings and his lessons on the heroic role of mountaineers at Kings Mountain during the American Revolution. 'Remember,' he would shout, 'we had the first abolitionist newspaper, not the northerners,' and then pausing, he would always end, 'and we didn’t burn any witches in these hollows.'"


Related posts: “Poverty pays unless you’re poor”

appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+language Appalachian+poetry Don+West Highlander+Folk+School James+J.+Lorence

Middlesboro, KY is the only city in the US now known to be built within a meteor crater. William M. Andrews Jr., a geologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey, said erosion and vegetation have hidden most signs of the meteor's impact. However, enough evidence remains, he said, to support the conclusion.

"You have the round shape, shattered rock in the middle and deformed rocks around the sides that have been bent, folded or shoved," Andrews said. "That's pretty strong evidence that it was a meteor impact crater."

"Middlesboro is in this strangely round valley in the middle of Appalachia," he said. "You don't get round valleys here. It's not normal."


View Larger Map
The town (also spelled “Middlesborough”) was established in 1886 to exploit iron and coal deposits. The town's founder, Alexander A. Arthur, apparently did not know of the crater's extraterrestrial origin. Omni magazine listed the site in a 1979 article as one of the 15 outstanding craters in North America (there are more than 170 known meteor craters on the continent) and also as the most circular.

The Middlesboro Crater is located in the Appalachian Mountains, exposed to the surface, between the Cumberland Mountains and Pine Mountain. The theory is that a meteor more than 1,500 feet in diameter struck the earth here less than 300 million years ago and carved a hole approximately 3 miles in diameter, with slopes that rise as high as 1,900 feet.

As much as 80 percent of the meteor either was blown back into the earth’s atmosphere or disintegrated on impact, and life may have been destroyed within 50-100 miles of the impact. Geological maps indicate that the center of impact occurred where the YMCA pool is now on North 30th St, and that the crater perimeter ran through what is now 12th St and Cumberland Avenue intersection. Geologists believe that before the meteor hit, the area around Middlesboro may have been a wide plain, much higher than the 2,400 ft Pinnacle overlook at Cumberland Gap. Geologists say that rock formations in the area do not substantiate the theory that the Gap itself may have been created by the impact and explosion of the meteor.

sources: Kentucky Stories, by Byron Crawford(Turner Publishing, 2001)
Associated Press article in St Petersburg Times (Sept 20, 2003)
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/20/Worldandnation/Kentucky_town_sees_a_.shtml

related post: "Bald is Beautiful"


Middlesboro+KY meteor+craters Middlesboro+Crater appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history appalachian+geology

"The Mormons in the hills of eastern Tennessee were often under attack by people from other churches. Near Bybee on November 6, 1934, I wrote, 'Went around & visited about 4 families of Saints. At Luther Talley's found a boy 21 yrs. old, just been married two days, reading & studying Book of Mormon. Found this to be case all over the community. The sectarian Ministers have been jumping on the children of the Saints. They have to study so as to defend Mormonism!'

"Everyone in the headquarters seemed to pity me for being sent to such a godforsaken place. My own feelings at the time were mingled apprehension and anticipation, because East Tennessee District was considered the 'pits' of the mission. However, I knew that Kirkham was not trying to 'punish' me and chose to regard it instead as a test of my mettle.

"In retrospect, I'm actively grateful for his decision. I not only survived but came to enjoy the mountaineer people and to appreciate their culture. My experience there with the Scotch-Irish stock of the Martins and the Coys and their fascinating traditions going unbroken back to the days when Daniel Boone pioneered the land on the other side of the Cumberland Gap strengthened my resolve to become a historian.

"The modern revolution introduced by the New Deal had not yet touched the coves and hollows of the thick forest. Some of them were still living like their nineteenth-century ancestors, in log cabins with dirt floors, cooking over fireplaces, sometimes lacking even outhouses. When Mother Nature called, a stranger might be invited to visit the nearby cornfield, although it could be embarrassing when the chickens would follow you into the patch.

"One night we stayed with a miller whose grist mill dated back to the 1840s. I was astonished one day to see a yoke of oxen hitched to a cart and listened with much interest to solemn warnings that sweet potatoes should be dug only in the dark of the moon, that pigs should be killed in the last of the full moon, and that a person would surely come down with the flu if he or she should put his or her hands in newfallen snow.

"Almost always the mountaineers were hospitable. If we came suddenly on a cabin in a clearing, we were invited to dine and spend the night. I learned to love persimmons, apples cooked in new molasses, and, of course, cornbread, and sweet potatoes. Within four months I had gained fifteen pounds, reaching my mature weight of two hundred pounds.

"We enjoyed the common salutation, 'You'ns come over and see wee'ns,' with its appropriate response, 'Us'ns will.' The dialects were straight out of Abraham Lincoln's time with 'heerd' for 'heard' and 'fit' for 'fought.' The old saw that 'I raised a sight, sold a heap, and have a right smart left' would not have raised any eyebrows in Clay County.

"One of the principal reasons for missionary reluctance to serve in East Tennessee was the comparative scarcity of Mormons to whom a homesick or hungry missionary could turn for help and comfort. There were only two organized branches in the whole eastern half of the state. The Chattanooga Branch had no chapel. At Northcut's Cove a small frame chapel was tucked in a fold of the forest."

Against the Grain:
Memoirs of a Western Historian, by B. Dwaine Madsen
(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998)


Mormons Mormon+missionaries B.+Dwaine+Madsen appalachia +appalachia+history appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

"The Barrenshe Run mishap was one of the worst log train wrecks in West Virginia history.

"As the story became legendary, the runaway train gained additional notoriety as the subject of a local blind poet, who supported himself by selling copies of his works for a nickel on Oakford Avenue in Richwood WV. The poem brought additional attention to the accident, popularizing it more than recounting of the wreck circulated by word of mouth.

"Like so many items from the past, today there are several uncertainties about the poem. In one version of the poem, Charles Lough [one of 3 railroadmen known to have been killed in the accident] is replaced by Luke King, and the identities of the loadermen seem a bit uncertain. Although the poem leads to a degree of confusion, it is invaluable in many respects-including verifying the date of the accident.

“As for the story behind the poem, one version is that J. A. Howell of Diana wrote and peddled it with his other poetry. Another recollection is that J. A. Collins was the blind poet from Diana. Jim Comstock, editor of the West Virginia Hillbilly, prefers the story that J. A. Howell originated the rhyme, adding that Howell wrote other poems about mountain railroading.”

---Long Train Runaway on Berrenshe Run 1912, by George Deike, publ. in The Log Train, issue 80, Nov 2004

Original photo caption reads: Before the clean up: wreckage strewn down the hillside on Barrenshe Run. Visible are several tracks from the skeleton log cars, the Barnhart loader, and Shay no. 7’s diamond smokestack.



THE WRECK ON THE BAREEN-SHE RUN"

On Cranberry River,
Up Barren-She Run,
The trainmen seemed jolly,
Were having their fun,

Eight cars they had loaded,
And four empties, it seemed,
The crew got on board and
turned on the steam.

Ivan Green jumped off
As she started down hill;
They had lost all control,
It was running at will,

Dick Green and Luke King
Both jumped off alarmed;
Near eighty rod further the
excitement grew worse,

The further the faster
Those loaded cars flew.
Frazier Adams, engineer,
Jumped off and was killed;

His head struck a tie,
His brains they were spilled,
Joe Taylor, conductor,
And Russell Berry turned brake.

Both stood to their places,
Which was a mistake.
For the cars jumped the track,
And their lives fled as fog

Their bodies were covered
With the wreckage of logs.
The engine still rolling
And left on the road

Pete King, (the log rollerman)
Alone left on board.
The engine turned over
In Barren-She Run

But, Pete, he slipped out
Of the cab as she turned.
So, he took a tie-ticket
For Camp Four, so they say;

And he arrived there quickly,
The very same day.
For he thought himself all
That was left to tell now

The crew, cars and engine
Broke up in a row.
Squire Thomas and Doctor McClung
Got the word and rushed

To the scene - as quick as they could,
Ivan Green and Dick King
Were both badly hurt,
So Doctor McClung was
Soon put to work.

I must speak of an act
Joe Taylor in Life;
He left some support for his
children and wife.

Sixteen-hundred dollars,
In a check that was good,
His wife she received from their
good brotherhood.

Taylor, Adams and Berry
Were three youngful men,
So prompt in their business,
But sudden their end.

Their bodies were mangled,
In all abscess.
Their spirits departed:
They greatly are missed.

But, those four should be thankful,
To God for their breath,
He, the Great Prophet,
Hath saved them from death,

That they may have time
To prepare for the grave:
God is always able and willing
to save.

I am grateful to Paul Richard Greathouse of Richwood, WV for the generous research assistance and time he offered on this post.


Barrenshe+Run Richwood+WV log+train+wrecks blind+poet+of+WV JA+Howell appalachia appalachia+history Appalachian+ballads appalachian+mountains+history