Appalachian History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said, "Sure I can."

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

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


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

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



farm+chores Melvin+KY appalachia appalachian+history +history+of+appalachia Ralph+Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


appalachia Girl+Scouts Juliette+Gordon+Low Camp+Juliette+Low,appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



Oliver+Perry+Temple Knoxville+TN Covenanters Scots-Irish appalachia appalachian+history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





















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



appalachia appalachian+folk+medicine Appalachian+folk+toys appalachian+history English+plantain history+of+appalachia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salem College, Salem WV, in 1912.

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

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

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


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



appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia Salem+College Salem+WV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia teaching+Appalachian+history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



appalachia appalachian+history Army+deserters Ashe+County+NC history+of+appalachia World+World+I

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

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

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

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

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

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

---Herbert Lamont Pugh

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



appalachia appalachian+history dogs history+of+appalachia snakes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



appalachia appalachian+history feuds history+of+appalachia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


John+Chapman Johnny+Appleseed appalachian+folklore appalachia +appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

"16 KNOWN DEAD IN FLOOD"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



Letcher+County+KY floods appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related article on Konnarock School here.



Konnarock+School Preservation+Virginia National+Trust+for+Historic+Preservation appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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

We open today's show with a review of the recently published “Power in the Blood,” Linda Tate’s memoir of how three generations of family women bear successive witness from 1902 till now. Reviewer Lynn Salsi is the author of "The Jack Tales" and "Young Ray Hicks Learns the Jack Tales;" she was named the North Carolina Historian of the Year in 2001.

Pearl Harbor finally dragged the US into WWII in early December 1941, but the government had already anticipated the likelihood of America’s involvement. In spring of 1941 the Feds built a military powder bag-loading plant in Childersburg, AL. It brought new jobs to the area, yes, but it also displaced 210 farm families. Let’s take a look at the upheaval as it was happening.

Can you imagine accidentally shooting your own child while hunting? It’s every sportsman’s nightmare. Your heart will go out to Grover C. Shepherd; listen as this Ashe County Journal newspaper article from 1929 describes how he held the dying boy in his arms.

The Houston Museum of Decorative Arts in Chattanooga houses one of the finest collections of Staffordshire glass, Mettlach steins, and Rockingham-Bennington pottery in the world. What the lovely displays don’t divulge is the desperate situation of the woman who single-handedly assembled the collection. Anna Safley Houston married 9 times, but by the end of her life lived alone, impoverished, in a decrepit barn, surrounded only by her 10,000 pieces of glass and her dog.

If you’ve ever sung “Heralds of Christ” in church, you’ve touched a corner of Laura Scherer Copenhaver’s universe. This Smyth County, VA daughter of a preacher became a widely respected lay leader in the Lutheran church in the early decades of the 20th century. Her passionate advocacy helped establish the Konnarock School, which provided elementary-level academic and religious education for Smyth County children who did not have access to other public schools.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at a little wager from 1900. Young Italian bricklayer Thoney Pietro, who later made his fortune in road construction around Morgantown, WV, was quick. Could he lay enough bricks in a day’s time to topple the proud Irishman who held the local record?

And, thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from "Uncle" A.C. "Eck" Robertson in a 1922 recording of “Ragtime Annie.”

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

Item 032596 in the collection of the West Virginia Historical Photographs Collection reads Testament to the Brick Laying Prowess of Thoney Pietro and appears to be a 1946 newspaper clipping, though its source is not identified in the collection.

"The life of Thoney Pietro has not always been that of a retired country gentleman; he has earned the right to retire by his own labors. He commenced his career as a common laborer, but he was never content with doing anything less than his best.

"A typical example of his physical strength and skill, as well as his desire to be the best at any job, occurred during September, 1900, when he was working as a bricklayer for James McAfee and Company, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, who were engaged in a street paving project in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

Pietro Company Road Crew at work in Williamson, W. Va., 1915

"The speed and skill with which young Pietro handled the paving bricks attracted the attention of his superintendent, a Mr.Ross, supt.of the work,who became so enthused over the young Italian's prowess that he offered to bet $300.00 that Pietro could better the existing record for the number of bricks laid in a given time. The record was then held by an Irishman who had laid 806 square yards of brick in ten hours.

"Admirers of the Irishman quickly took the bet. So on a bright September morning in 1900, 0n 12th Avenue in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the contest was held. Eight hours and fifteen minutes later measurements disclosed that Pietro had established a new record and one which stands to this day - he had laid single handed a section of street 30 feet in width and 350 feet long- an amazing total of 1166 square yards of brick, 58 bricks per sq.yd., totaling 67,628 bricks or an average of more than 136 bricks per minute all day. The same bricks as he laid then are still in use 46 years later."



Thoney+Pietro bricklaying Williamson+WV appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Please welcome guest blogger Lynn Salsi, author of "The Jack Tales" and "Young Ray Hicks Learns the Jack Tales." She has received the American Library Association's Notable Book Award, six Willie Parker Peace History Book Awards for her non-fiction books about North Carolina, and was named the North Carolina Historian of the Year in 2001.


In the newly published memoir "Power in the Blood" (Ohio University Press), author Linda Tate reflects on her life’s experiences, expertly weaving in historical facts and settings that she acknowledges came to her through years of research. This is not a handed-down oral tale passing between generations. Rather, it proceeds from snippets of information, flashbacks, dreams, and mysteries surrounding lost Cherokee-Appalachian family members.

The trauma following her parents’ divorce amplified the author’s longing for a continuous relationship with her father, even though he ceased communication when she was twelve. Bereft of relationships on her father’s side of the family, Tate dwelled on what might have been as she grew older.

Tate threads the story of her father by hanging her text on females in the family, especially her great-great grandmother, great grandmother, and grandmother. Through them she skillfully weaves personal memories and family recollections (including those gleaned from newly met relatives). The author melds her personal memories, interviews, and formal research into an engaging story. She captures place, colloquial language, and facts while placing herself, her parents, and her grandparents into believable scenes.

Even though Tate states that she combined her imagination with research to flesh out her story, she bravely includes the personal “flaws” and shortcomings of her subjects, revealing struggles with power, abandonment, abuse, sex, discrimination, and divorce. In fact, there is little joy in the lives of her female ancestors, who are trapped in cycles of early marriage, too many children, hard work, and no conveniences.

These facts are not lost on the author as she brings forth females who “had to give up being a girl.” Their histories provide contrasts to the accomplishments and success of the author as she overcame family disappointments, earned a PhD, and became an established writing professor.

"Power in the Blood's" storytelling strategy does not pursue the unfolding of a seamless timeline. The five chapters begin in modern times (1988 to 1993), then flash back to 1902 before returning to 1964, more dramatically emphasizing the differences of the generations of women.

Pay close attention to how Tate uses voice. She frames her personal story in current day vernacular. Likewise, she puts Louisiana and Fannie within their own setting and within their own language skills. This heightens contrast as well as tension. The author examines the difficulties of each generation as they confront their lives and times within social expectations, religious beliefs, male domination, and ethnic limitations.

Linda Tate has brought forth gripping pictures of how her female ancestors from three generations sought something more than a hard scrapple life. The women in "Power in the Blood" bear successive witness in this tale of seeking and finding.



Power+in+the+Blood Linda+Tate Cherokees appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Hearings before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, House of Representatives, Seventy-seventh Congress, first session, pursuant to House Resolution 113, a resolution to inquire further into the interstate migration of citizens, emphasizing the present and potential consequences of the migration caused by the national defense program.

MAY 7 AND 8, 1942
Huntsville AL


Concerning CHILDERSBURG BAG-LOADING PLANT
TALLADEGA COUNTY, ALA.

Late in November of 1940 information was given out that some 27,000 acres of land in Talladega County bordering the Coosa River north and west of the small town of Childersburg (515 population in the 1940 census) were to be taken as site for a powder plant. The location was tentatively outlined in January and agricultural agencies, both Farm Security and Extension workers, were set to work warning people to vacate this property.

Because no certain information as to the location of boundaries could be obtained, the actual work of relocations did not get under way until the last of January and February. By the time Farm Security had made its original survey a good number of families had moved, both from the area finally taken and from land around it.

After this survey had been made, and after 80-odd families had been moved from land finally not included in the area, an accurate boundary line was established. While no official confirmation was made of the original territory marked out on maps used in the area, all indications pointed so clearly to its being taken that farmers in this territory decided to move while there was still time to find a new place, and to make another crop.

Original caption reads: Local family moving off of government reservation to make room for bag loading plant development. May 1941

The section of land finally taken was one containing much river land. Some of this 14,000 acres was good farm land, ideal for large farm operations. Most of it was poor, carelessly operated by Negro tenants, or lying out. Of the farm operators, almost 30 percent were receiving Farm Security aid. When the final area was chosen, 210 families were displaced.

The survey revealed that the area contains very few owners who will be financially able to relocate without some assistance. The number of cash renters, sharecroppers, and cotton renters constitute the largest group in this area.

Note these things: While 39.2 percent of Talladega County's total number of farm operators are colored, 72.3 percent of the farm operators in this section were colored. Note also the comparatively large number of Negro landowners. In the county 22.3 percent of the Negro operators are landowners. In this section almost 32 percent were landowners.

In other words, about one-fifth of all Negro farm owners in Talladega County were in this section. Their holdings were small. The bulk of the land was owned in large tracts either by white resident operators or absentees. The comparatively small number of nonfarm workers is significant, especially since so many of these displaced families have gotten their first taste of "public works money" at the powder plant. Will they want to go back to this kind of marginal living again?

This was a section of old plantation holdings that had gradually been abandoned or partially abandoned by the old families who held on to them. In it, along the river and in the low places, were a few very small communities of Negro landowners who supplemented their farming income with fishing, hunting, and working for white men who came to enjoy these sports.

The average of all grants for moving totaled $37.50, which again reveals how little these people had to move.

Here, then, is a group of dislocated people who know almost nothing except farming, and of that the cruder kind. Some few of these were making a new beginning and, where they could get some of the better land, were succeeding on a very moderate scale. Some few were making a fair living from the game and sportsmen, whom the very desolation of the place had brought to the area. Only a few are going to make alone the readjustments life in a new place will call for.

Original caption reads: Local family moving off of government reservation to make room for bag loading plant development. May 1941

Few [Farm Security Administration loan] applications for next year have come in. The county supervisor expects many to come in during the next few weeks, because the powder plant job is "turning off" men at the rate of 300 to 600 a week. The full tide of applications will not come, he said, until late February, when many farmers (especially Negroes) who have had their first taste of public works wealth will suddenly realize there is little hope of getting more such work and will want to farm again.

Farm Security will, he said, get more than its share of these people because they have broken their relations with their old landlords, sometimes without ceremony, and in the middle of crop season, and will not be able — or will not want to — go back again.

About 90 percent of the Farm Security Administration borrowers have gotten at least a few weeks of work on the [bag loading plant] project. E. E. Wilson, county FSA supervisor for Talladega Countv, knew of only two who had paid back loans with defense-earned money (one paid $150, another $250). The rest have wasted some of the money. But not as much as people think. We've had practically a crop failure in here for the past 3 years. These people have gone without, all that time. They've had other debts and they've had to buy clothes and something to eat and some of the other people they've owed have put the kind of pressure on them [the FSA] can't.


Source: www.archive.org/stream/nationaldefensem32unit/nationaldefensem32unit_djvu.txt



Talladega+AL Farm+Security+Administration military+installations appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia