Appalachian History

Dr. and Mrs. W. B. Lilly and family of Mercer Street have returned to their home after vacationing in Florida.

Mr. and Mrs. W. G. Eanes of Sophia had as Sunday dinner guests, her mother and brother, Mrs. A. B. Hill and Harry, of Princeton, and Hill's daughter. Sharon, all of Princeton.

Mr. and Mrs. Leo Cipolat of Atlanta, Ga., have returned to their home after visiting his brother-in-law and sister. Mr. and Mrs. French Williams of Mercer Street.

Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Slanley and son, Bill, of Mercer Street, spent Monday in Charleston on a shopping trip.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Angell of Sophia had as Monday guests, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hunt, Jr., of 703 Johnstown Road.

Judy and Johnny McGinnis, young son and daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jack McGinnis, of Glen White, have been ill at home.

Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Tabor of McAlpin, were Sunday guests of their son-in-law and daughter Mr. and Mrs. Eddie McGinnis and family of Burgess Street.

Staff Sergeant and Mrs. Jerry Eanes of New Brunswick. N. J. have returned to their home after visiting his parents Mr. and Mrs. W. G. Eanes of Sophia.

Mr. and Mrs. Howard Brown moved to Midway from Hot Coal this week.

Mrs. Lucille Webb and family of Sophia spent Saturday with relatives in Lester.

E. L. Campbell of the Beckley Place Apartments is vacationing in Tucson, Ariz.

Judy Hudson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Hudson of Charleston is a guest in the home of her grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hudson of Beckley Place Apartments.


Daily News-Digest
Beckley, WV.
Tuesday, January 20, 1953

The Daily News-Digest was a tabloid published mornings, Monday through Friday. The first issue appeared April 9, 1952. It was short lived, however. "Altogether, the International Typographical Union since 1951 has launched nine new dailies in cities where members of the union have been on strike against existing papers," reported the fall 1954 Journalism Quarterly. [The ITU sponsored competing newspapers in Beckley, Charleston, and Huntington.]

"One, the national Labor's Daily, is not included here because of its specialized field. Another, the Beckley, W. Va. News-Digest, has suspended."


source: members.aol.com/jeff560/newspapers.html


Beckley+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history West+Virginia+history

"The ladies would cook dinner, and maybe five or six of them would quilt. They would put up a quilt. I can't remember doing any of that, but I've heard, you know, my family talk about it, and then, maybe, they'd eat lunch and then a lot of them would stay for supper, and maybe they'd have a square dance at night.

"A neighbor across over here has [my quilting frame]. It sits up on the floor. I haven't used it, but I'm going to get it. I had trouble with my hand. I like to do that kind of work by hand.

"Maxine, my daughter-in-law, Larry's wife, liked [the wedding ring quilt pattern], so I said I'll make you one some day. So I made her one, and she said, well I didn't think you'd ever manage to finish it, and so, then after I got hers done, I said I'm going to make me one, but her's is prettier than mine is.

"Some of [the cloth] I bought, and a lady that I worked with, her son worked in a printing factory. He would bring home ends and pieces, and she would call me, and she says, ‘I'm going to come out to see you, and I'm going to bring me some quilting material.’ So whenever, she did. My van was sitting out here. So before she got ready to go, she said, ‘Well, go out and get it.’ So she just jumped in her car and backed it up to the van. I said, ‘Well put it in it.’ She had a whole trunk of the car full.

"They were big pieces, so I sorted it out and washed it and ironed it, and I have enough material to last a long time. It's been about four years [since I finished this one], and I have a niece in Alabama, two nieces, three nieces and a nephew, and I have done all them one but not this pattern.

"One I did, for the boy, I did just a nine patch. For one of the girls I did a star patch, and then the other girl I did the house on the hill, and for the other one I did a king-size but I just did four squares.

"And sometime when you have a chance to be out here and go in the community center, there is a quilt in the community center that we made back whenever they were thinking of using this community for a nuclear waste dump. Done as a protest. We just came up with the idea, and everybody done something, you know, about the community."


Irene Cook
Leicester (Sandy Mush), N.C.
Interviewed by Stephen Cain
Friday, July 31, 1998
UNCA Special Collections ; The Sandy Mush Chronicles Oral History Collection OH-SMC C66I7

source: http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SMC/cook_irene/cook_irene_transcript.htm

related post: Winter's the Quilting Season
appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Leicester+NC quilting

A.S. Hinds Company of Portland, ME distributed its Honey and Almond cream nationally from 1890 till 1930. This 1928 ad, from Ladies Home Journal, reads in part: “Chapped, bleeding knuckles, roughened cheeks, cracked lips – protect your children from them. For chapping damages the delicate texture of children’s skins. But you can prevent this happening to your children- with Hinds Honey & Almond Cream.”






advertisements appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Hinds+cream

During the early decades of the 20th century, hundreds of short-line railroad existed across the nation, and most all were regarded by the local people as their railroad. There was something appealing about the character of a little railroad that was trying to complete with the big lines, and usually the short line's tiny locomotives and makeshift equipment had a certain flavor to them that set them apart from the uniform look of the big railroad lines.

The Kanawha, Glen Jean & Eastern Railway was no exception. The average citizen between Glen Jean and Mt Hope, WV came to be able to identify the engineer on the KGJ&E train even before the train came in sight just by way the train's operator blew the train's whistle. Before long, most of the people of the era came to refer to "their" short line railroad on a first-name basis, simply referring to the line as the "KG." The man who owned the line (William McKell) was usually referred to as Bill, and rarely called William.

With the start of the Great Depression, the KGJ&E was adversely affected, as were the majority of the railroad across the nation. Although the railroad continued to do a good business, the times called for tight money policies by the railroad's management. As the years of the 1930's ground by, there never seemed to be enough money available for the railroad to purchase new locomotives to replace its aging fleet.

As a result, the line's locomotives, built during the early years of the century, were very nearly the end of their useful life by the end of the 1930's. A veteran engineer of the KGJ&E once commented, "One of our locomotives looked so old compared to the C&O and VGN locomotives, some people probably thought it had been built during the Civil War!"

The company able repairmen of McKell’s combination railroad and mining equipment repair shops, in Kilsyth, WV, kept the KG's old steam-breathing beasts going, until the very last moment of the line's existence. There, refinements were added to the KGJ&E locomotives, such as small metal houses, nicknamed "dog houses," that were attached to the rear of the tenders of the KGJ&E locomotives. These tiny enclosures gave the KG's head brakeman a way to escape the cold rains and snows common during the winter months. The KGJ&E locomotives were rarely turned around, so on return trips from Pax, WV, the head-brakeman kept watch from the "dog house" while the engine crew backed the engine over the road to Mount Hope.

The modernization of the KGJ&E equipment never came. In 1939, William McKell died, and in 1940, the C&O rushed to buy the KGJ&E, and at the same time, the New River Company (a company half-owned by the C&O) bought the coal properties of the McKell Coal & Coke Company. Within a few years, the C&O had ripped up much of the KGJ&E tracks between Glen Jean and Mount Hope, but merged its own tracks with most of the short line's remaining sections.

The KG's mining and railroad repair shops in Kilsyth were gradually phased out of existence, primarily because the C&O maintained a complete railroad shop in Thurmond and the New River Company maintained a repair shop in Mount Hope. The KGJ&E Depot in Mount Hope was torn down sometime during the years of World War II.

Source: www.wva-usa.com/history/mthope/kgje.php


Kanawha+Glen+Jean+and+Eastern+Railway Mt+Hope+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history railroad+workers

"The administration of justice in the isolated areas still surprises the visitor with its differences from the ways of the town. Despite a few modern touches, a cuspidor or two missing, or the presence of some young lawyers fresh from the state university, a mountain trial is in spirit much the same as when I first visited the Cumberlands thirty years ago, and court was opened with an old fiddler's contest. A court session is still the great event of the year.

"It is the informality, like so many other phases of mountain life, which instantly charms the visitor.

"I was in a mountain court one afternoon, sitting on the bench with the judge as he prepared to swear in the annual Grand Jury.

"The jurist turned to the tobacco-munching farmers arranged solemnly before him on a double row of chairs. 'Before I swear you in, I want to ask you,' he said. 'Is there anybody sitting here that's under indictment for anything? I don't want nobody on my jury that's under indictment.'

"There was a long silence. Than on the back row a lanky farmer arose, and shifted uneasily. 'Guess they got me up in federal court over at Maysville for moonshining, Judge.'

The judge shook his head in regret. 'You got to get off the Grand Jury, then, Jeff. I ain't going to have nobody on my jury that's under indictment.'

County Judge Boyd Boggs, 1942, Lawrence County, KY.

"One of the most popular figures in the hills today is known as Judge Honey, a philosopher always more concerned with the right and wrong of a case than with the harsh technicality of the law. Whoever it may be that appears before him for sentence, whether solemn old man or impudent young woman, the judge always addresses the prisoner as 'honey.'

'Honey, I hate to do this to you,' he declares. 'But I've got to sentence you to sixty days, honey.' It seems to make the punishment easier to bear.

"A mountain jail has the same homey quality. The jailer has been a neighbor and often a friend of most of his charges; the usual grimness of a prison is altogether lacking. In one mountain town the county jailer, a most amiable soul, took my wife and myself on a tour, carefully introducing us to each of his forty-seven prisoners. We shook hands with them all, including two held for murder.

"So easygoing is the administration of justice, I have more than once heard a sheriff ask a mountaineer from some distant creek to inform a neighbor that he was under arrest and tell him to be sure to come to jail as soon as possible. And he could be certain the arrested man would obey, just as surely as if the sheriff went to his cabin and himself applied a pair of handcuffs.

"The mountaineer has great reverence for his own local authorities. He has none for laws made by people he has never seen in far-off Washington."


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


appalachian+justice appalachia +appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Cumberland Ben+Lucien+Burman

Albert J. Ewing was a traveling photographer who worked on a floating studio aboard the Water Queen showboat that cruised the Ohio River. Way's Packet Directory, 1848 - 1994 indicates that the Water Queen operated from 1880-1915. Ewing, who lived in the town of Lowell, Washington County, OH, photographed thousands of residents of southern Ohio and West Virginia, documenting living conditions and family life in Appalachia at the turn of the century. These two photographs were taken between 1890 and 1910. The Ohio Historical Society owns about 170 of his photographs.




















related post: A National Treasure, Almost Lost Forever


Albert+J+Ewing Lowell+OH appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?"

"You shore air," said Len. "There lays four of as good wives as a man ever had. Them tombstones don’t tell no lies. They’s all ’fore my time, savin’ Aunt Lindy, his last ’un, but I’ve hearn enough to know what they wuz."

"But four? Isn’t it a little unusual?"

"Well, maybe it is, but Uncle Nathe wuzn’t no hand to set at home by hissef."

from Highland Annals
New York: Scribners, 1925

Poet, playwright and novelist Olive Tilford Dargan, widely considered to be one of the best authors ever to come out of the Appalachian South, was born Jan. 11, 1869 in Litchfield, KY. Dargan’s writing focused on women and working class issues of the region. Few have surpassed her in description of mountain beauty or in her sympathy for the less fortunate. She was especially interested in fighting the stereotypes of mountain people and culture that were propagated in local color writings, especially Earley Muriel Sheppard's Cabins in the Laurel.

A feminist and a socialist, Dargan provided one of the few strong southern female voices to the proletarian fiction of the 1930s. As an active participant in that movement, she wrote a series of radical feminist/socialist novels on the Gastonia mill strikes. Her 1932 radical feminist novel, Call Home the Heart, written under the pen name Fielding Burke, was reprinted by the Feminist Press in 1983.

Olive Tilford Dargan began her literary career in 1904 with the publication of poetic dramas and lyric poetry. While in college at Radcliffe, she had gone on a camping trip to the mountains of North Carolina and had vowed to have a home there one day, a dream that was fulfilled in 1906 when she and husband Pegram bought Horizon Farm on the Nantahala River in Swain County. Having dependable tenants allowed them to travel extensively, and Olive spent much of her time in England. There she completed a non-fiction work, The Welsh Pony, followed by her first book of mountain poetry, Path Flower and Other Verses.

When Pegram drowned off the coast of Cuba in 1915, Dargan returned to the North Carolina mountains and spent most of her time there until the farmhouse burned in 1923. During this period, she published three distinctly different collections of poetry. The Cycle’s Rim (1916), a collection of sonnets dedicated to her late husband, won a $500 prize from the Southern Society of New York. Lute and Furrow (1922) contained lyrical verse inspired by her love for the mountains, as does The Spotted Hawk (1958), which won the Roanoke-Chowan Poetry Award.

After moving to Asheville, NC in 1925 she wrote the collection of short stories many consider her best work, Highland Annals, and three novels under Fielding Burke, as well as a final book of verse and a last short story collection. Highland Annals was extensively revised and reissued as From My Highest Hill in 1941. The second edition included for the first time fifty striking illustrations by photographer Bayard Wootten.



sources: www.ncwriters.org/services/lhof/inductees/odargan.htm
www.library.appstate.edu/appcoll/research_aids/ssavell.html
poetry.poetryx.com/poets/220/bio/
www.english.eku.edu/SERVICES/KYLIT/dargan.htm


Bayard+Wootten Olive+Tilford+Dargan appalachian+authors appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

"The first of a series of articles this, through which the chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority will keep Survey Graphic readers abreast of the most arresting single project in America today. As a base, take the long stalemate at Muscle Shoals; take times flat with business breakdown and unemployment; take a region deep-seated with neglect. Turn it all right-side up as a terrain of opportunity and start long run planning in the midst of our emergency moves.

"Reservoirs built now to impound rivers will have piled with silt in the course of years—unless dam-building is paralleled with a height against soil erosion in the highlands. Power plants, rimmed with mills and factories, will suck people into congested centers that ten years from now may duplicate the idle machines and unemployment of other industrial districts—unless a new way of life can be framed in this watershed. These are only two of the exciting alternatives staked out by the TVA.

"AS a small boy, it was my duty each evening to carry in the firewood and to fill the wood-box by the kitchen stove. In order to avoid monotony, I varied the task by different ways of piling the wood. Sometimes it would be in neat horizontal layers; sometimes on end; sometimes the sticks would be matched as to size and length.

"Let me do something of the sort in this series of articles through which I hope to share some of our adventures in the Tennessee Valley. They will be in the nature of an informal log of the work in process; less of a log, however, in another sense, than armfuls of situations, encounters, possibilities, plans and developments. The instalments will be written as we go along, but are less likely to stick to the calendar than to follow the bench-marks of our planning—to employ a term we use in civil engineering when we mark and record the elevation of points for future reference. I shall draw on letters, memoranda, notes of staff meetings, reports and addresses.

"In Antioch Notes, I was able to share periodically with faculty, students, graduates and friends of the college the stream of impulse and discovery that have gone into our educational experiment there, so that we had the reinforcement of their understanding and criticism. It is in much the same spirit that I shall try to put before one group of Americans outside the Valley the running story of what is going forward, and invite the interest of your readers.

"WHEN the President proposed the organization of the Tennessee Valley Authority his action was not in response to a happy thought without relation to his program as a whole. Rather, he saw it as a normal and integral part of that program. Some of the policies he proposed must of necessity be worked out on a national scale, such as the banking system and the NRA. There are others which can best be dealt with on a smaller scale before giving them national application, or which have regional variations and can best have regional solutions …"

Excerpt from
Strength in the Hills
by Arthur E. Morgan
Chairman, Tennessee Valley Authority
Survey Graphics, January 1934

Established in 1921 as a companion to the social work journal The Survey, Survey Graphic targeted a mainstream audience interested in social and cultural issues. In the 1930s, Survey Graphic provided a public forum for discussions about unemployment, labor unrest, race relations, healthcare, and technological change. According to the magazine's editor, Paul Kellogg, Survey Graphic relied on "social team play," bringing together writers from different fields and with different viewpoints to discuss issues that Americans were concerned about, but mainstream media publications seldom discussed.

Full article at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/davis/survey/articles/government/gov_jan34_1.html


Tennessee+Valley+Authority Arthur+E+Morgan appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Prior to the funeral industry’s rise and its use of embalming, a practice that gained legitimacy during the War Between the States, the interior of a corpse was generally not accessible to prying eyes, hands, or medical equipment.

Instead, the deceased was prepared - laid out - and remained in the home until burial. This was a sacred, almost ritualistic, process. The body was washed as soon as possible after death with soap and water. Then it was dressed in its Sunday suit or dress and laid out for viewing.

While in a few instances the laying out was performed by family members, more typically it was done by neighbors who came to a home for the death watch. An old Scottish belief, still seen today in some of the more remote areas of Tennessee’s Unaka Mountains, holds that watching the corpse for 24 hours after death will prevent the body from being whisked away by agents of the devil.

Sometimes the laying out was performed on a bed. If the person did not die in bed, the corpse was often carried there. However, mattresses made it difficult to keep cold death or stiffening by mountaineers) set in.

The solution to this problem was to place a body on a cooling board (sometimes called a laying out board). This board, covered with a sheet, could be a door taken off hinges, a table, a board used for ironing, or indeed any piece of lumber that was handy, though many mountain families had a specific board for the purpose passed down generation to generation.


Original photo caption reads: Mountain people carrying a homemade coffin up creek bed to the family plot on the hillside where it will be buried. This section is too isolated to hold any formal funeral services immediately. Up South Fork of the Kentucky River near Jackson, Kentucky.

If the person died in the winter and the ground was too frozen to dig a grave, the cooling board could simply be placed in a protected place outdoors till spring. Otherwise the cooling board was placed in a parlor on two chairs or sawhorses, and the body stretched out straight. Depending on the person’s position at death (some die while sitting or sleeping curled up) it might have been necessary to break bones or soak parts of the body in warm water to get the corpse flat on the board so it would fit into a coffin.

Neighbors used a rope or sheet to tie the body to the board to keep it straight as well as to prevent it from suddenly jerking upright and scaring the living. Some families employed the Scottish process of saining: the oldest woman in the house lit a candle and waved it over the corpse three times. Then she took three handfuls of salt, placed it in a wooden bowl, and put the bowl on the corpse’s chest. This process was supposed to prevent the body from rising up unexpectedly.

When the corpse was placed on the bed or cooling board, the arms were folded across the chest and the legs brought together and tied near the feet. A rope or handkerchief was tied under the chin and over the head to keep the mouth from opening. Another towel soaked in a strong soda solution took care of discoloration. Some families placed a bowl mixed with salt and ashes underneath the cooling board to absorb disease. Others placed cedar chips or spices around the body to help ward off unpleasant odors.

Some people died with their eyes fully or partially open. If they were left open and rigor mortis set in, they couldn’t be closed. Therefore mountaineers placed weights on the eyes to close them and give the impression that the deceased was sleeping peacefully. Have you heard the phrase "he’d steal money from a dead man’s eyes"? Coins were often used to close eyes, and since they were valuable, there were indeed dishonest community members who would do that very thing. The saying is still heard in the mountains today.

Sources: Death and Dying in Central Appalachia: Changing Attitudes and Practices by James K. Crissman, Univ of Illinois Press, 1994
Demon in the Woods: Tall tales and true from East Tennessee by Charles Edwin Price, Overmountain Press, 1992


appalachia Appalachian+funeral+practices appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history cooling+board laying+out saining

From the mid-19th century to the 1920s, when the refrigerator was introduced to the home, the icebox was the place to keep foods cold. Iceboxes were typically made of wood, lined with tin or zinc and insulated with sawdust or seaweed. Water pans had to be emptied daily.

Initially municipally-consumed ice was harvested in winter from snow-packed areas or frozen lakes and stored in ice houses. With metropolitan growth many of the sources of natural ice became contaminated from industrial pollution or sewer runoff. As early mechanical refrigerators became available, they were installed in large industrial plants producing ice for home delivery. Able to produce clean, sanitary ice year-round, their product gradually replaced ice harvested from ponds.

The ice man became an American institution, delivering ice as needed when consumers posted the 'Ice Today' sign in their windows. "He stopped his wagon in front of each house and hollered 'ice man!' or sometimes rang a bell," says Mars Hill, NC resident Theresa Hammack. Mars Hill is 19 miles from Asheville, where the Carolina Coal and Ice Company built a large ice plant in 1896.

Photo caption reads: Harry Selby of the Acme Store cutting ice, Morgantown, W. Va.[ca.1900-1910]

"The ice man worked with the ice pick, a saw and a pair of tongs. He could cut a nickels worth or a big piece that went into high finance, such as a quarter or even 50 cents worth. Only commercial or rich folks ever bought that much. A nickel piece of ice was about all a small boy could carry.

"The ice man would put a piece of heavy cord around it for a handle. When you began your return journey by holding the ice away from your leg, but as your arm tired the nickels worth of ice would melt on your britches leg and run down in your shoes, if you were wearing any.

"If you stopped to play marbles you had to think up a good reason why it melted. Just to tell your mama it was a sorry grade of ice that melted fast didn’t work. If you had to get 10 or 15 cents worth of ice to make homemade ice cream you had to take your express wagon. Sometimes I shudder at the ignorance of the younger generation. Not knowing how big a nickel's worth of ice is. And how cold water is when you empty the drip pan from under the ice box."

Sources: Mars Hill [NC] Retirement Community newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 7
http://www.rogersrefrig.com/history.html
http://www.history-magazine.com/refrig.html


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Carolina+Coal+and+Ice icebox iceman Mars+Hill+NC Morgantown+WV

Before railroad work was completely mechanized in the 1950s, railroad calls were an everyday part of the track worker's ritual. Most of these gandy dancers—the label applied to railway line workers who maintained railroad tracks and kept the rails straight—were African Americans who adapted the work call to railroad work. The term is said to be from the dance-like movements of the spikedriver, plus the name of Chicago-based Gandy Manufacturing Company, who supplied tracklining tools.

The physical movements of these railroad crew members were synchronized by a caller who sang the chants, ensuring safety and pacing while spiritually uplifting the men at their toil. Teams of eight to 14 men worked together to lay or care for the tracks. They had a rich repertoire of songs used for the many tasks required of them. Called lining track songs, these hollers are closely related to shanties. In the poetic words of folklorist Alan Lomax, the songs "sounded so wild and sweet that the mockingbirds in the nearby bushes stopped to listen, [as the] railroad moved into the Southern wilderness."

Apparently women worked at track lining as well as men. There is a verse in one of the lining track songs that goes "Y'oughta been on the Brazos, 19-and-10, Buddy Russell drove the women like he drove the men."

Since the caller was never sure when the call had to stop, there was generally no narrative logic to the sequence of his calls. This transcribed lining track song verse, for example, recalls a biblical figure and is followed by several about present day women:

If I could I surely would,
Stand on the rock where Moses stood.
If I could (rap it, rap it!)
I surely would, Stand on the rock,
Where Moses stood.

I don't know but I've been told,
Susie had a jelly roll.
I don't know
But I've been told,
That Susie had,
A jelly roll.

Ida Red and Ida Blue,
got a gal named Ida too.
Oh boys over yonder (6 x)

Bluegrass legend Jimmie Rodgers picked up guitar, yodeling and much of the Negro country blues style from gandy dancers.

Sometimes Aaron Rodgers took his son with him out to the tracks and put him to work bringing water to the black work crews who repaired worn ties and damaged rails, cleared brush, and shoveled gravel ballast.

The foreman sent along a command to a "caller," who configured this order into cadences similar to what you might hear from a drillmaster. "If you really wanted to move that track, you made a sexy call," a former gandy dancer named Cornelius Wright told the cultural researcher Maggie Holtzberg-Call. "And they had the language for it. Some callers would talk about the lingerie that a woman wore. Now that caused the crew to really shift that track."
---"In the Country of Country:People and Places in American Music"

sources: www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/oct03/railroad.html
www.folklib.net/folkfile/l.shtml
bluegrassmessengers.com/master/idared1.html
"In the Country of Country:People and Places in American Music" by Nichoas Dawidoff, Vintage, 1998
"Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination" by Jack Temple Kirby, Univ. of Georgia Press, 1986


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history gandy+dancers railroad+workers

It began as a coal and railroad center at the turn of the 20th century in an area fabulously wealthy in natural resources. The only way in and out of the town of five hundred hardy souls was via the railroad as there were no roads in those days. Women, booze, dice and cards were brought in fresh every day, while unlucky losers of arguments over the same were quietly disposed of in the New River.

Thurmond WV is often termed the Dodge City of the East, thanks in large part to the 100-room Dunglen Hotel, whose bar never closed. Thomas G. McKell built the town when his wife left him 12,500 acres of coal fields. After a ten mile branch was built to connect the town to the railway line in the 1890's, the Dunglen was erected in 1901.

Although originally envisioned to be a hard working, religious community, Thurmond will always hold a place in Ripley's Believe It or Not for the Dunglen Hotel's fourteen year continuous poker run. In one well-remembered poker game a New River operator lost his coal mine.

"When my grandfather went up there to see about this hotel job," said George Carper, of Cincinnati, Ohio (whose grandfather, George Flauts, was the barber at the Dunglen Hotel), "he went up to see what the job would be like, and he stepped off the train and he said he almost stepped on a dead body. And it was the body of a union organizer."

Two old sayings survive that describe the town colorfully: No Sunday west of Clifton Forge and no God west of Hinton and The only difference between Hell and Thurmond is that a river runs through Thurmond.

The Dunglen's period of brightness was clouded by the World War I, and after the war a slow decline set in; the auto and its attendant shift of emphasis from the railroad to the highway took more and more business away from Thurmond. Businesses moved away - many of them to Mt. Hope and Oak Hill - and coal mines around Thurmond closed as they were worked out. Gradually even the town began to fold up. The hotel itself burned to the ground on July 23, 1930 and was never rebuilt.

Between 1931 and 1938 the National Bank of Thurmond, the Armour Meat Company, the New River Banking and Trust Company, and the C&P telephone district offices left the town. The last major industry left in Thurmond was the railroad, and even it ceased to be a factor in 1940, when the C&O switched to diesel engines and there was no longer a need to stop at Thurmond for water and coal. Soon afterwards the Thurmond depot closed.

sources: www.wvculture.org/HISTORY/businessandindustry/dunglen01.html
Melody Bragg, Thurmond and Ghost Towns of the New River Gorge, Glen Jean, GEM Publications, 1995
www.loc.gov/folklife/news/Sum-Fall93.txt
gorp.away.com/gorp/publishers/menasha/pad_newr.htm


Dunglen+Hotel Thurmond+WV New+River+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Established in 1935, the Pack Horse Library Project was aimed at providing reading materials to rural portions of Eastern Kentucky with no access to public library facilities. Librarians riding horses or mules traveled 50 to 80 miles a week up rocky creekbeds, along muddy footpaths, and among cliffs to deliver reading materials to the most remote residences and schools in the mountains. Some homes were so remote that the book women often had to go part of the way on foot, or even by row boat.

Original image caption reads: Whitley County, Kentucky. One of the mountain homes visited by WPA Pack Horse librarian. Man was permanently injured by bullet wound.

Materials used by the pack horse libraries were stored in headquarters libraries, usually located at the county seat. Collections consisted mostly of damaged books and magazines that larger libraries no longer wished to circulate, as well as out-of-date textbooks once used by schools or churches. (The W.P.A. only funded librarian salaries; it did not provide funds for collection development.)

When demand for materials exceeded the supply, scrapbooks of magazine clippings, anecdotes, local recipes, and newspaper clippings were made by the librarians as additional resources for the collection. These became very popular in the region, enough so that patrons began making scrapbooks of their own recipes, family history, sewing patterns and child-rearing advice for circulation by the pack horse librarians throughout the community.

By 1936, handmade and donated materials could not sustain the circulation needs of the pack horse patrons. Surveys of readers found that pack horse patrons could not get enough of books about travel, adventure and religion, and detective and romance magazines. Children's picture books were also immensely popular, not only with young residents but also their illiterate parents. Per headquarters, approximately 800 books had to be shared among five to ten thousand patrons.

To help overcome the shortage, Lena Nofcier, Chairman of Library Service for the Kentucky PTA, began the Penny Fund Plan which called on every PTA member in the state to contribute one penny toward the purchase of new books. Nofcier also petitioned the help of boy scout troops, Sunday-school classes, private organizations/clubs and children's school groups to locate or donate books for the pack horse libraries. Through her efforts, existing pack horse collections not only grew, but eight new pack horse libraries were also established.

Despite the ongoing shortage of materials, the Pack Horse Library Project was considered very successful, and one of the most unusual library services ever offered in the country. During its height, the program boasted 30 libraries serving close to 100,000 Eastern Kentucky residents. Interest in ideas outside the realm of Appalachia, an appreciation for education, and an introduction to global cultures were fostered by the program in an area where one-room schoolhouses and churches were the only means of learning about the world.

The pack horse libraries came to an end in 1943 when the W.P.A. withdrew its funding from the project. Consequently, many of the areas served were left with no library service whatsoever. Some effort was made to retain the existing collections, being made available in county courthouses. However, the delivery service needed for isolated communities was no longer available, leaving some communities without access to books for decades until bookmobiles were introduced to the area in the late 1950s.

Source: Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives


pack+horse+librarians WPA +Whitley+County+KY appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"Stories of the feud-ridden, ignorance-shrouded people of the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia have been published far and near and throughout the land the common belief is that every cove harbors a moonshine still, and every home has its feuds. We are taught that the gruff mountaineer has a stern, cold heart; that he is suspicious; and that with his long 'hog' rifle, he will shoot at sight a person who wears a clean shirt or a stiff hat.


"These are a few of the ideas that one gathers from the popular novels of today, and the imaginative characterizations made by writers from specific instances.

"And in defense of what he believes to be an erroneous impression concerning the people in the mountains of the South one of the workers of the University, himself from the mountains of Georgia, writes:

The typical Southern mountaineer lives in Southeast Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Northeast Georgia, and a small portion of Northern Alabama. Here for more than a century has been evolving a peculiar and distinct type of people.

Shut off from an influx of foreign immigration, deprived on the use of railroads and other modern blessings until a comparatively recent time, separated from the life with characterizes the American city today, these people continued to grow as their hardy forefathers grew, plain, simple, strong, roughly gentle and warmly hospitable. As the result of such a growth, we have the Southern mountaineer of today, a pure, undefiled, type of sturdy Americans.

Contrary to belief, they are deeply consecrated. The primitive type of church still exists in the remote districts. With a pastor who receives the princely salary of from $25 to $100 a year, the church, of course, is not strong financially. The rural church generally has a membership of considerable strength in proportion to the population; in fact, a great many more members in proportion to the population than one finds in the city churches.

The people are, as a rule, intensely consecrated, and thought they adhere to the strictest and most literal interpretations of the Bible, they are most practical and devoted in their Christianity. They believe in the command, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ even though in rare instances a community may be riven by a deadly feud. They religiously observe the Sabbath; no ball games and touring pleasures for them. Sundays are spent in church going and visiting after church.

Simple, quiet, unobtrusive, they pursue ‘the even tenor of their way’ each day. Not rich, often abjectly poor, they are fairly happy; yet, an intensity of devotion and an acuteness of desire lead many a boy or girl from his or her humble home. They want to know things; the call of the world outside has found a response in their hearts; they dream, they aspire, they struggle.

Deeply consecrated and sustained by an unconquerable religious devotion, in these hills, they feel as it were, the heartbeat of God. So in a region which has known sorrows and disappointments, here, there, in this community and that, some young man, some young woman is emerging into a new life where an infinite service can be rendered.

JW Morland, "Wellsprings of Consecration,"
Mountain Herald Vol. 28, no. 1 (Jan. 1925)
Lincoln Memorial University (Harrogate, Tenn.), Extension Dept.
Lincoln Memorial University Press
Digital Library of Appalachia


appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history Lincoln+Memorial+University appalachian+mountains+history

"Some boys git it in their heads that they can make a sight of money selling liquor. The law cracks down on them almost as soon as they git a start. We see it happen every day around here. You've got to keep the law paid off a good and plenty or else the penitentiary is where they's going to land. Now if they does pay off, where is the profit left from selling? Ain't none. So there they is. I told Cap if he had it in his head to do that, he better be clearing his head of it right now.

"I don't blame him one bit for having his mind set on making a little money to have fun on. Seems like me and Calvin ain't never done a thing ever but work hard all our lives. Some folks find pleasure in going to meeting on Sunday. But it's no church I've had sight of here in Knoxville where the ones coming in and out ain't dressed up fit to kill. Some says it's all the same in the eyes of the Lord about how you dress. But I knows if He's got sense at all, He knows our clothes is too wore out for Sunday strutting. I know they's shabby in my own sight.

"Calvin and me both can read right well. In times back we use to read the Bible pretty much. But seems like you always come across something you can't make out straight. So we just stopped reading it. Looked a pure shame, as wore out as we was, to read things that upset your head.

"I guess I got on to the main of it, though. I know that Jesus Christ died to save sinners. And all that me and Calvin have to do is trust in Him. And we do. And we believe in Him. I don't see where they's any way to keep me and Calvin out of Heaven. Calvin moved away from the mountains to keep a killing from happening. That clears what's said about not killing. We ain't never stole and have always told the truth. We never brought false witness against nobody.

"They's more to it, but I counted them off one day and we is all right. Calvin and me ain't never harmed a living soul in our lives. So I ain't bothering about Hell if I never gits inside the door of a Knoxville church. When me and Calvin gits there I'd be more than glad to do what I could to help others git in.

"They's some folks, not a thousand miles away from here, that are going to need a heap of help. Ah, Lordy, yes!"

Lola Simmons
Knoxville TN 1938 or 1939

Such as Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties
by Tom E. Terrill, Jerrold Hirsch
UNC Press, 1978


Lola+Simmons Knoxville+TN Tom+E.+Terrill Jerrold+Hirsch moonshining religion+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachian+mountains+history

Breakin’ Up Christmas is both the name for 12 days of partying, dancing, and music making ending up on January 6th, Old Christmas day, and also a song sung during that period. The tradition harks from the area that roughly includes Surry County NC, nearby Grayson and Carroll counties in VA, and the independent city of Galax located between the two.

Hooray Jake, hooray John
Breakin’ up Christmas all night long
Santa Claus come, done and gone
Breaking up Christmas right straight along
Don’t you remember a long time ago
The old folks danced the doesey-doe

The tune itself is not of great antiquity. It may have been composed by Preston 'Pet' McKinney, a fiddler and Civil War veteran from Lambsburg, VA. Mt. Airy, NC fiddler Tommy Jarrell, a 1982 NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipient strongly associated with this song, cited McKinney as one of his early influences.

Whether McKinney was the actual author of Breakin’ Up Christmas or not, there's a reason the song can be distinctly pinpointed to the tri-county area. During rainy periods, that region's roads, made mostly of red clay with no gravel, historically became so muddy that wagon wheels would sink in up to their axles. This made travel during inclement parts of the year either difficult or impossible.

New tunes only slowly made their way into the area, often by visitors or because a community member made a trip outside of his locality. Even so, as a tune bounced back and forth over the mountains between North Carolina and Virginia, local musicians might give it a different name, speed it up, add a new twist, and come up with a 'souped-up' version.

"Through this country here, they'd go from house to house almost - have a dance at one house, then go off to the next one the following night and all such as that. The week before Christmas and the week after, that's when the big time was. About a two-week period, usually winding up about New Year. I wasn't into any of this, but used to laugh about it. They'd play a tune called Breakin' Up Christmas, that was the last dance they'd have on Christmas, they'd have Wallace Spanger play Breakin' Up Christmas. There's an old feller by the name of Bozwell, he'd cry every time."

Lawrence Bolt, fiddler
b. 1894
Galax, VA

http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/jarrell.htm
http://www.nea.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=1982_03


Breakin+Up+Christmas Christmas+in+Appalachia Surry+County+NC Galax+VA Tommy+Jarrell appalachia Appalachian+ballads appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Early one day long ago from time out of memory the people of a Cherokee town awoke and faced east to say their morning prayers to the Creator in heaven (Ca-lun-la-ti). In the distance could be heard the cry of an owl, a sign of death and bad luck. The eastern sky began turning many colors, and it looked as if a storm was about to take place. Indians from other villages joined them and there was a feeling of sadness.

Soon, the Little People (Yun-wi T-suns-di -- dwarfs or fairies with long black hair) who lived deep in the forest appeared to the Cherokee; they were only two feet tall and often brought messages to the people. They spoke first to the tribal elders and then to everyone who had assembled in the town.

They told a story of both greatness and sadness. Many years ago, a new star (no-t-lu-si) had appeared in the eastern sky beyond the big salt water. A special boy-child had been born to a tribe chosen by the creator. He had grown into a man of wisdom and had taught his people the ways of the Creator and the straight white path of peace.

He was a man of kindness and brought strong medicine (nu-wa-ti) to his people. Although he taught purity and harmony with the creator, he had many enemies who would not hear his message of peace. They would not believe that his medicine made sick people well. Thus, on this day, they would torture and kill this wise man, and he would walk towards the nightland (death).

As the sky grew dark, the Indians sang a death song to honor this beloved man of peace whom they called the Son of the Creator. All of the animal nations of the forests soon came and stood by them. Because of their sorrow, the Cherokee began to cry. Their tears soon covered the ground. When their weeping had ended, they looked down and saw that their tears had been changed into small stone crosses.

For the Indians, the cross design had always represented the cardinal points or the four directions. Now it had a new religious meaning. The Creator (E-do-da) had heard their prayers and songs and had given them a gift. The Cherokee kept these stone crosses and always honored them.

The Chiltoskey family of Cherokee, NC has preserved this Cherokee legend of the stone crosses.

source: www.patcovahistory.org/fairystone.htm


Cherokee+myths Cherokees Christmas+in+Appalachia appalachia Appalachian+tales appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

DECEMBER 1915 FRIDAY 24

"Well, the chittlings, a part of them Alice sent over by Pete. They were intestines cleaned ready to cut into short pieces to fry. I told Tillie she needn't fry any for me. They stood in water two or three days and by that time they were smelling like 'all get out' so Tillie carried them away some where. It nearly turns my stomach to think of them.

"After we got the children to bed to-night we three opened up the packages. Put the children's in their stockings which they had borrowed from me and hung up before going to bed. I got a night gown from Tommy & Ola, Sterling tatting shuttle from Al & Edna, Shawl from Jim & Mattie, flash light from Nellie, White silk poplin goods for dress from Mae and Ray silk stockings for Walter and Hilda vest pocket flash light, hand bag & stationery from Orville & Tillie.

"From Mrs. Wilson handkerchiefs, Mrs. Thomas book of quotations. Nellie also sent wrist crochet box for my birthday. Tommy and Ola a second package containing a diary for 1916 which was also for my birthday."













Store at Christmas in Radford VA, 1940




This is a set of diaries/journals that I have that were written 1915-1918 by my great grandmother, Mary Heathcote Thomas, while she was living with my mother's family when my grandfather was headmaster at New London Academy, New London, VA
– Elizabeth Shumate

source: http://snipurl.com/1vre1



Mary+Heathcote+Thomas New+London+VA Radford+VA Christmas+in+Appalachia ,appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

Irish monks in North America, centuries before Columbus? So claimed Dr. Barry Fell (1917-1994), a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and a president of the Epigraphic Society.

Fell’s claims were based on his controversial work in New World epigraphy (the study of inscriptions or epigraphs engraved into stone or other durable materials, or cast in metal, the science of classifying them as to cultural context and date, elucidating them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them.

"The rock-cut inscriptions which are the subject of this article are located at archaeological sites in Wyoming and Boone Counties, West Virginia," said Dr. Fell in 1983 in Wonderful West Virginia.

"They appear to date from the 6th—8th centuries A.D., and they are written in Old Irish language, employing an alphabet called Ogam, found also on ancient rock-cut inscriptions in Ireland.

"The inscriptions are accompanied by short annotations in ancient Libyan alphabetic script. The Libyan script is used to render two languages in the annotations (1) the ancient Libyan tongue itself, and (2) an Algonquian dialect of the northeastern group, perhaps allied to Shawnee."

According to Fell, these inscriptions narrated the story of Christ's nativity. His translation of the Wyoming County petroglyph: "At the time of sunrise, a ray grazes the notch on the left side on Christmas Day, the first season of the year, the season of the blessed advent of the savior Lord Christ. Behold he is born of Mary, a woman."

Calculating the difference between the Julian calendar (used until the 16th Century) and today's Gregorian calendar, on December 22, 1982, freelance writer Ida Jane Gallagher and several others from the archaeological community watched as the sun rose, struck the petroglyph on the left side, and then crept across the entire panel, thus ‘proving’ the translation.

The scientific community remained skeptical. "Using the 'decipherment' methods Fell sets out in his March 1983 article it is possible to find in these rock wall markings not only the nativity story but any other preconceived text one might choose," counter Monroe Oppenheimer and Willard Wirtz in The West Virginia Archaeologist Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 1989.

"It is equally sobering to discover on investigation that Barry Fell's connection with Harvard is as a retired professor of marine biology. His profession had nothing to do with archaeology or linguistics or ancient inscriptions, and he is in fact an extremely controversial figure whose previous decipherments of this same kind have been seriously challenged, after careful study, by American, Irish, English and Scottish archaeologists and linguists.

"Reviewing the Wonderful West Virginia report of evidence regarding the Wyoming and Boone County petroglyphs, these authorities conclude, spelling out their reasons, that this is a transparent hoax."

Since the early 1980s, other similar carvings have been discovered in West Virginia at Bears's Fork in Fayette County and Horse Creek in Boone's County. As with the Wyoming County and Boone County petroglyphs, they remain for all to see, challenging those who view them to tease out the identity of the person or persons who carved the messages they contain.


sources: www.catholicism.org/mike-mccormack.html
http://cwva.org/wwvrunes/wwvrunes_3.html
www.neara.org/mulligan/wvpetroglyphs.htm


Dr.+Barry+Fell petroglyphs+in+WV Irish+Monks Wyoming+County+WV Boone+County+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Please welcome guest blogger Timothy W. Hooker, author of the Sushi Tuesday blog. Tim teaches English at Cleveland State Community College [TN], is a "Point of View" moderator for WDEF-TV 12, and is the author of several works, including: "Rocket Man: A Rhapsody of Short Stories," "Duncan Hambeth: Furniture King of the South," and "Looking For A City."

You know you are deeply imbedded in a culture when you take for granted things that other people have never heard of.

That’s what I’ve had to learn along the way. And, there’s no better example of it than Ruling Days. You can call it Hillbilly Witchcraft. You can call it White Magic. Or, you may think it’s simply a load of malarkey. But, Ruling Days have been around as long I can remember.

The core idea behind Ruling Days is that certain days are predictors for weather for the upcoming year. More specifically, those days coincide with what others would call Kingdomtide or The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Here’s how it works.

According to the legend of Ruling Days, the weather on December 25th will be the predominant weather for the upcoming January. The weather on December 26th will indicate what kind of weather you will have in February. December 27th will forecast the weather for March. And, on it goes, until you get to the forecaster of the next December, which falls on Epiphany, aka January 6.

Trust me. The old folks in my neck of the woods swear by it. And, I, myself, have found it to be uncannily accurate.

I’m not an anthropologist, so I wouldn’t dare attempt to conjure a theory on how Ruling Days developed. I do know Southern Appalachia was settled by folks whom the European feudal system more or less rejected. And, so, some of the original settlers may have still had a bit of orthodoxy in them and they simply adapted it to their purposes.

I don’t know.

But, Ruling Days is a part of our culture. It’s a part that no amount of intellectualism or sophistication can take away. It’s in us, and that’s what makes it real.


Ruling+Days Christmas+in+Appalachia appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

The Roanoke [VA] Times, Thursday Morning, December 19, 1929--

Body of Floyd County Girl Is Found On Bent Mountain; Disappeared Last Thursday

Extensive Search Had Been Made for Freeda Bolt, 18,
of Near Willis--Sheriff Locates Body
on Information Reported Given Him By Buren Harmon,
Held at Floyd in Connection With Case.

The body of Freeda Bolt, 18, of near Willis, Floyd County, who disappeared last Thursday night, was found at ten o'clock last night on Bent Mountain, eighteen miles south of Roanoke.

Discovery of the body was made by Sheriff Hilton, of Floyd, and two deputies who, acting on the reported statements of Buren Harmon, of Floyd county, who has been held since the girl's disappearance, that the body would be found beneath several logs, about thirty yards from the highway, where the highway makes a bend on the mountain.

DISCOVERED BODY.
Sheriff Hilton discovered the body about ten o'clock, and communicated with Roanoke county officers, who departed at eleven o'clock for the scene.

The body, fully clothed, was found in a secluded spot in the woods, and was in a fair state of preservation, Dr. G. A. L. Kolmer, Roanoke county coroner, said at 1:30 o'clock this morning, in a telephonic communication.

A heavy cord had been tied tightly around the victim's neck, but whether or not this had been used for the purpose of strangulation or to drag the body from the road to its hiding place, Dr. Kolmer and Deputy Sheriff J. L. Richardson were unable to say. Only a cursory examination was made this morning before the body was removed to the home of J. D. Willett, half a mile from the scene.

REMOVE BODY TO SALEM.
Arrangements were being made to remove the body to Salem, where an autopsy will be held today, Dr. Kolmer said. Whether or not Harmon will be turned over to Roanoke county authorities has not been determined, Deputy Sheriff Richardson said, since it has not been established just where the young girl met her death.

The girl, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. K. Bolt, who reside about seven mile from Willis, had been boarding in Willis, while attending school. Telling friends she was going to be married, she left her boarding house last Thursday night and, according to her father's report to police here, she was later seen in company with Harmon, apparently headed toward Roanoke.

SEEN IN FLOYD FRIDAY.
Harmon was seen in Floyd Friday morning, the father stated, but denied having seen the girl on the previous night. He admitted, it was said, that he had an appointment with her that night, but contended that the meeting never took place.

Since that time, Mr. Bolt had asked the aid of police in the principal cities of the State in helping to locate his daughter. It was at first thought that she probably had come to Roanoke, since Harmon had friends here. Search, however, was extended to Richmond and other cities.

Deputy Sheriff J. L. Richardson, accompanied by Dr. G. A. L. Kolmer, county coroner, and R. T. Hubard, commonwealth's attorney, of Salem, went to the scene, arriving there shortly after midnight.

source: www.blueridgeinstitute.org/ballads/fboltnews.html


Freeda+Bolt Roanoke+VA crime+in+Appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history appalachia

I think it was the ninth night, I was told that the wild animals came in from the forest, fields and desert. Some had traveled a long way. They came in late at night when everybody was asleep. They didn’t want to scare people.

They came in quietly to see the Son of Heaven, baby Jesus, for already the birds were telling the story of the first Christmas gift. There were wolves, foxes, bears, deer, rabbits, squirrels, crows, owls, eagles and on and on. At least one representative from all the animal and bird clans. Some of the birds who lived by the rivers, lakes and seas, also represented the fish clans and the other animal and insect clans that lived too far away to make the journey. I remember a storyteller saying that, all night, for three nights, the barn was full, as each wild animal took turns to look at the sleeping Christ child, the son of Supreme Being.

The larger animals held the smaller animals up so they could see into the manger. Arturis, a great cave bear, came each night and laid down on one side of the manger, so the small ones could also climb up on his back to see baby Jesus.

Until that first night, even the tabby cats were wild. Ms. Cat came in from the forest, looked around the barn and saw all the barn and house mice and thought, “plenty of food after the temporary, peace-among-the-beasts, truce, but look at all the roaches. This is no place for the son of God or any other human baby, for that matter, and the human houses are not much better than this barn. It looks like these humans need some help to keep their homes clean.”

My cat told me this part. Her ancestor moved in and spread the word and other cats moved into our homes. Cats chose to live with people, they did not become tame first. That’s why cats still have an independent streak, but they do keep our homes and barns free from creepy crawly things.


From "Christmas Stories," traditional Christmas stories collected between 1962 and 1975 from people in the Southeastern [US] region and adapted for telling by Bluegrass Storyteller, Chuck Larkin
source: http://chucklarkin.com/stories/Christmas_1.pdf


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Christmas+in+Appalachia Chuck+Larkin

It was Christmas Eve on Lonesome. But nobody on Lonesome knew that it was Christmas Eve, although a child of the outer world could have guessed it, even out in those wilds where Lonesome slipped from one lone log cabin high up the steeps, down through a stretch of jungled darkness to another lone cabin at the mouth of the stream.

There was the holy hush in the gray twilight that comes only on Christmas Eve. There were the big flakes of snow that fell as they never fall except on Christmas Eve. There was a snowy man on horseback in a big coat, and with saddle-pockets that might have been bursting with toys for children in the little cabin at the head of the stream.

But not even he knew that it was Christmas Eve. He was thinking of Christmas Eve, but it was of the Christmas Eve of the year before, when he sat in prison with a hundred other men in stripes, and listened to the chaplain talk of peace and good will to all men upon earth, when he had forgotten all men upon earth but one, and had only hatred in his heart for him.
---Excerpt from Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories, John Fox, Jr. New Hampshire: Ayer Co., 1904.

John Fox Jr. (1862-1919) wrote primarily on life in rural Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Born in Stony Point, KY, he made his name as a novelist after settling in Big Stone Gap, VA, where he spent the last 29 years of his life.

His wildly popular romance/coming-of-age story The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908) tells the vivid story of coal engineer Jack Hale falling in love with mountain girl June Tolliver. That bestseller, and The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903), were adapted for the big screen in a few different versions in 1912, 1916, and 1936.

Fox gave public lectures to raise money and during one such lecture met Theodore Roosevelt, who later invited Fox to give readings at the White House. Roosevelt became a life-long friend of Fox's.

Counting among his friends other such popular writers as Richard Harding Davis, Jack London, and Booth Tarkington, Fox was awarded many honors in his lifetime. These included election to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1899 and a medal for his literary contributions from the Emperor of Japan. His dedication and lobbying led to the passing of the Federal Copyright Act.

sources: www.shortstoryarchive.com/f/christmas_eve_on_lonesome.html
www.swvamuseum.org/streets1.html
www.online-literature.com/john-fox


Christmas+in+Appalachia John+Fox+Jr appalachian+culture appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history