Appalachian History

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 breathless closeup report of events in New Martinsville WV during one August week in 1925. Glamorous screen star Gloria Swanson had swooped in with her entourage from New York to film “Stage Struck,” about a small town waitress who gets her big break on the local showboat. It was a box office disaster. "About the only people who made any money out of Stage Struck," moaned the show’s producer afterwards, “was the guy in New Martinsville who owned the hotel and the showboat."

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

The Battle of Blair Mountain, in which 10,000 WV miners marched to demand their rights as workers, ended in 1921. The battle to preserve Blair Mountain’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places is just heating up. Modern day strip mining interests would just as soon have at the coal that the mountain still holds. C. Belmont Keeney, great grandson of Frank Keeney, one of the march’s three organizers, weighs in with his view of the current situation.

In our next piece, an anonymous author for the Bulletin of the Virginia Department of Agriculture speaks to farm mothers on best methods for dealing with over-wrought, nervous children at bedtime. The article is from July 1921 but many of the techniques are ones you might very well have used just last evening!

Ben Robertson, a journalist in Pickens County, SC in the early 20th century, was a keen observer of human foibles. In this excerpt from his memoir, “Red Hills and Cotton,” a cousin of his faces off with a hard headed pig, which in turn leads Robertson to stop and consider the larger fate of his circle of family and friends.

Reverend John J. Dickey, a traveling Methodist minister who roamed southeastern Kentucky in the late 1800's, came across his share of unexpected surprises in his wanderings. In this diary entry from 1898 he seeks out Harrison Napier, a merchant living two miles above the mouth of Wooton's Creek near Hyden. Napier apparently holds the power to hire a teacher for the local school. Rev. Dickey is not at all pleased that this 44 year old man has just married a 14 year old girl.

We’ll wrap things up with a pitch letter to join the KKK, in which North Carolina’s Grand Dragon claims the group is seeking to recruit men who are “thoroughly American, Protestant to the core, a law abider and lover of our Constitution, and one who has had the welfare of our country close to your heart.” No mention of burning crosses.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Danielle Fraley in a 1973 recording of the dulcimer classic “Forked Deer.”

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.

Forest City, N.C.
August 15, 1928.

Dear Friends,

You have been vouched for as a man who is thoroughly American, Protestant to the core, a law abider and lover of our Constitution, and one who has had the welfare of our country close to your heart. As such you are invited to attend a Lecture on “Americanism” by Dr. W. Earl Hotalen, a Lecturer of National reputation, at

8:00 P.M., TUESDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 21ST, IN THE HALL ON THE THIRD FLOOR OVER RECTOR’S CAFÉ, 7-1/2 W. PACK SQUARE, ASHEVILLE, N.C.

Dr. Hotalen will appear in Asheville under the auspices of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. If your only source of information regarding the Klan has been obtained through the Newspapers, many of which are unfriendly to us due to lack of information regarding our Organization, then you have no doubt a biased opinion toward the Klan and the principles it espouses.

Now, just be fair and come out and hear our side. Dr. Hotalen will have some facts and statistics to present that will astound you.

If you wish, bring a good Protestant friend whom you can vouch for. You will be under no obligation in attending this meeting.

Yours very truly,
Amos C. Duncan
Grand Dragon
Realm of North Carolina
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.



Ku Klux Klan pitch letter sent to Edgar M. Lyda (1873-1956), who was Chairman of the Buncombe County Commissioners and Finance at the time he received it.


source: http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/lyda/series_lyda/folder_03_1927_1928.htm



Klu+Klux+Klan Edgar+M.+Lyda Asheville+NC appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

May 31, 1898

Yesterday morning, Monday, I left Hyden to come to this neighborhood to see about getting permission to furnish a teacher for this school district. There are 109 scholars in the census. I want to put a Wilmore teacher here, full of the Holy Ghost, to get the people saved.

Storefronts in Hyden, KY, 1928. The Filson Historical Society collection.

As I passed near the school house there were 10 or 12 men sitting at the roadside on blankets or coats, playing cards. There were two games going on. I stopped and warned them mildly; they never stopped playing or made any reply.

I went to see Harrison Napier, a trustee, a merchant living two miles above the mouth of Wooton's Creek. He is 44 years old or nearly so, and five weeks ago married a girl not quite 14 years of age. He has grandchildren, several children at home. She came to the store, looked as she is, a little girl, with short dress on, very childlike in her manner and appearance.

Mr. Napier told her to go back to the house as that was the place for the children. He is a very bright man, is considered the best salesman in the county.

He said that he would employ any teacher that the district wanted, but I am told he has a man whom he wants to put in.

He gave me no encouragement, was not disposed to talk about the matter. He is very impure and his impurity led him to kill a man whose wife's affections he had alienated, a man named Bailey.

Hiram Napier or Harrison Napier, collection of Pamela Walker Robinson, New Albany,IN

His excuse for marrying a child was that he knew that she was pure and being a child she and his children would get along pleasantly together. This is a hard community though there are some good citizens in it. There is a lawless element; two stills were cut up a few days ago.

June 1, 1898

I visited the county jail, and held services twice. Monday morning last, I went to Wooton's Creek again to see further about the school at that place. During my stay, Emanuel Wooton received an appointment to raise a company for the Cuban War from the governor. He got it the 27th and the 31st; he led 46 men. Then young men in the county were enlisting very fast. Some married men were volunteering also.

The creeks are full of timber. They have had no tides yet in Leslie County, and very little in Clay. In the two counties there are 80, 000 logs ready for market, worth $240,000 or at least $200,000. The young corn is very vigorous in the bottoms and on the hillsides men, women and children are cultivating it. I hardly past a field that did not have women in it, where work was being done. The people have an abundance of corn this year. This staple is worth little more than last year, and there are thousands of bushels in this county, and plenty in Leslie County to do the people.

The people are strong in intellect considering their lack of culture. The children are both handsome and bright. The young people make a much more attractive appearance than in former years. They have more money, more knowledge of what other parts of the world are doing, and have a greater desire to keep up with the customs and fashions of the world.

From the Diaries of Reverend John J. Dickey, a traveling Methodist minister who roamed southeastern Kentucky in the late 1800's


sources: www.globalgraffiti.com/family/sizemore/dickey.htm
http://files.usgwarchives.org/ky/bell/bios/napier310gbs.txt



Leslie+County+KY marriage+customs mountain+preaching appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

One of our cousins had a fight once with a fertilizer spreader, with an inanimate machine. He was pouring fertilizer into cotton rows with this spreader, a brand new expensive labor saving device, and he could not get it to spread the proper amount. It dropped too much, it dropped too little. He worked for two hours on the adjustments; then in a sudden tempestuous frenzy of temper he picked up a rock and beat the thing to bits. Throwing the broken pieces over the pasture fence, he yelled: "You dirty low-down evil contraption, stay there!" and going to the barn, he got out the old cow horn and from then on spread fertilizer as his father and grandfather had spread it.

This same cousin also had a row with a pig. This pig refused to eat when he came down to feed it. It pawed the ground and ran to the other side of the sty. "All right, said our cousin, "you either get some manners and eat when I feed you or you’ll perish to death."

He came to the sty the second day with a bucket full of buttermilk mash, and again the pig pawed and ran away. On the third day he said to the pig: "All right, damn you, you can just perish." On the fourth day, however, the pig ate ravenously as soon as my cousin put the bucket down, and from then on my cousin and this pig understood each other.

We slopped the pigs; we spread fertilizer and mixed fertilizer; and about us were the cotton fields and the fine blue hills, and on the walls of our houses were shotguns.

We drove into town to swap butter and eggs for coffee and sugar and black pepper; we swapped smoked hams for tobacco and cloth. We wasted opportunity, we wasted chance, but we held on to an attitude of living that some people had lost who did not waste opportunity and chance. We weighed and balanced many intangible things. We made up our minds about how we wanted things and where we wanted them.

I remember once my Uncle Wade saying to us he had decided when he was twenty-one years of age that he didn't choose to live more than two days’ drive from the Southern Railroad – he didn't intend to live any farther south than Greenwood nor any farther north than Pickens.

And I remember a great-uncle who started off to Texas and then returned, saying he found out in Mississippi that old Mr. No Account was moving right along with him, and he decided if old No Account had to hang on to him, he had rather deal with the scoundrel in South Carolina than 'way out in Texas. We talked about great rains and great winds and great droughts --- about all kinds of wonders. Once I remember Mary telling us she had seen an infidel. He was a Georgian, a fine-looking man, and he did not believe in God. Mary said to us Georgia was a wild place ---preachers drank whisky in Georgia.

We discussed ultimate destinies --- the asylum, the poorhouse, the graveyard, the jail. We considered chance and the power of faith over chance, and how strange and hidden was chance. We were caught by it like fish in nets and like birds snared in traps. And the race in our valley no more went to the swift than it had in Ecclesiastes, nor did the battle go to the strong, nor did riches come to men of understanding. When our time would arrive, it would arrive.


---Red Hills and Cotton, an Upcountry Memory, by Ben Robertson, University of South Carolina Press, 1943



Pickens+County+SC Ben+Robertson Red+Hills+and+Cotton appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

The following article was originally written for the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia under the title "Still Fighting the Battle of Blair Mountain," by C. Belmont Keeney. Keeney reprinted the article on his blog, The Appalachian Scholar, on 7/31/09. "I'm an author, historian, musician, professor, and mountaineer," he says. "I have published two books, To Live Again, a classical myth set in contemporary Appalachia, and Defending the Homeland, a collection of essays on radicalism and national security."


On August 7, 1921, just one week after Sid Hatfield had been murdered on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse, Frank Keeney, the president of the UMWA District 17, gave a stirring speech to thousands of miners on the capitol grounds in Charleston. He told the crowd that there was no justice in West Virginia and declared, “The only way you can get your rights is with a high powered rifle!” He then told the miners to go home and await the call to march.

And march they did. Over 10,000 miners carved a path of rebellion from Charleston to the doorstep of Logan County. We all know what happened next. Mine guards and miners fought it out until federal troops intervened. Over 500 “rednecks” were charged with treason, murder, and conspiracy to commit murder. The state used coal company lawyers in the prosecution, and our own governor testified against the miners. Among those charged, of course, were the leaders of the movement: Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, and Bill Blizzard.

Author C. Belmont Keeney

Frank Keeney was my great-grandfather. I learned about the Mine Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain at family cookouts and around my grandparents’ fireplace. My family has a long history in these mountains—I was proudly told. The Keeneys settled in the Greenbrier Valley in 1751 and even have a few rapids on the New River bearing the family name. However, in the decades after Blair Mountain, you did not want to walk into Charleston with the last name Keeney. The name meant treason.

For many years, restaurants refused to serve Frank Keeney, but in the working class pubs he never had to buy a drink. Unfortunately, I never learned about any of this in school. In fact, my eighth grade West Virginia history teacher had never even heard of Frank Keeney. But, naturally, she had no trouble naming all of the counties in alphabetical order. As a teenager, I was left to wonder if anybody remembered or even cared what had happened in the coal fields of southern West Virginia.

Thankfully, with the inclusion of Blair Mountain on the National Register of Historic Places, we have another means of remembering and we know that some people care. Remembrance without action is pointless. We are indebted to those who have worked to preserve this historic landmark and save Blair Mountain from becoming another casualty of a coal operator’s greed. To strip mine Blair Mountain is to strip us of our own history, and this cannot be allowed.

Blair Mountain reminds us of who we are as West Virginians. I believe Frank Keeney summed it up well when he said, “I am a native West Virginian and there are others like me in the mines here. We don’t propose to get out of the way when a lot of capitalists from New York and London come down and tell us to get off the earth. They played that game on the American Indian. They gave him the end of a log to sit on and then pushed him off that. We don't propose to be pushed off." Blair Mountain reminds us of a time when West Virginians refused to be pushed off the log.

Blair Mountain also reminds us that the fight is not over. In a speech to a crowd of striking miners, Keeney reassured them that the cause for which they suffered was not in vain. “One day there will be no more tent colonies, no more gunmen, because right now you people are going through what you are.” He was right. Today, there are no more tent colonies, and the mine guards are now found only in books or pieces of fiction.

But the absence of these things does not signify that the conflict over coal, people, and history in West Virginia has ended. As recent events clearly demonstrate, there are some who would have us forget Blair Mountain. There are those who are fighting to have it taken off the National Register so that the mountain can be open for strip mining. They must be reminded that we will still not be pushed off the log.

A friend of mine once asked me in a joking manner, “You think if Frank Keeney were alive today that he’d have a Friends of Coal bumper sticker?” I responded that Frank Keeney was no Friend of Coal, but he was a friend of coal miners. There is a big difference. If we are to be friends of the miners who stormed Blair Mountain so many years ago, we must keep it on the National Register of Historic Places. If we give up on this fight, then we give up on the ideals of the Redneck Army of 1921. If Frank Keeney were alive today, I believe he would still be fighting.


References

C. Belmont Keeney, “Rank and File Rednecks: Radicalism and Union Leadership in the West Virginia Mine Wars,” Defending the Homeland: Historical Perspectives on Radicalism, Terrorism, and State Responses, Melinda M. Hicks and C. Belmont Keeney, eds. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007): 20-43.

C. Belmont Keeney, “A Republican for Labor: T. C. Townsend and the West Virginia Labor Movement, 1921-1932,” West Virginia History, Volume 60, 2004-2006: 1-23.



Battle+of+Blair+Mountain appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Bulletin of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration,
published in Richmond, distributed statewide
July 1921, Bulletin No. 166, p. 74

“Have you studied this subject seriously—the nervous child?”

Should there be one rigid rule for the training of all children? I am convinced that there should not. And if there is one exception it is for the over-sensitive, over-nervous child about being put to bed.

The average country child gets too little sleep. This is partly due to living in few rooms, to busy mothers and to lack of understanding of what sleep means to children. The very nervous child should have even more sleep than the average child, but it is not always easy to get her to sleep.

In the first place, she resists going to sleep with every fiber of her being and this makes people think her cross. The more she resists the more nervous she becomes until she is in a perfect quiver. To whip her then, the natural impulse of worried adults, is to give her a shock from which she might never be quite the same again.

The over-wrought child requires the quiet methods of one who has herself under control. This is easier said than done, I grant you, but who will say that a little child’s welfare is not worth any effort of self-control? Not you and not I. When she screams take her in your arms gently and smilingly; keep a soft old blanket around her, particularly around her feet and rock her slightly, singing a low tune as soon as she quiets a little.

“But you object to rocking a child to sleep,” some one will say. The well, sturdy child, yes, but there is something about the movement of rocking that will often tempt the sick, overwrought child to slumber.

Regularity is one of the important factors in training a nervous baby to go to sleep easily. Have her bed comfortable, with sheets and all-wool covers. Quilts are heavy and overburden her.

Then lie down beside her every night and tell her stories, not exciting ones about bears and bad men, but tell her about the quiet affectionate lamb you had when you were a little girl, about its fleece and how funny it looked.

Never give her more than one story a night, string the same one out if need be. Then when she is over her nervous spell in a week or two, talk to her reasonably and explain to her that you must darn some socks for Daddy that night and you want her to see what kind of stories she can tell herself.

If often helps to wrap a soft blanket around her feet when you lay her down. Remember that the brain requires blood to think and blood that is in the feet is not in the brain. Sometimes if she has not eaten much and is restless, a glass of warm milk or a cracker or two will attract the blood from the brain to the stomach.

A soft doll is a real comfort to the nervous, restless child, especially if you do not seem to listen to her when she talks aloud to it. Some children like to hold a flower. I know one mother who sometimes puts a single drop of violet water on the baby’s pillow, and she lies there so long smelling it that she drops off to sleep.

New-born babies should sleep nearly all the time; children of about four should sleep about thirteen hours; of seven, twelve; of eight or nine, eleven; of twelve, ten. A child sleeping in the open air can get best development with a little less than this, but one with her head in the corner of a room requires a little more sleep.

Things to be avoided are:

1) Teasing.
2) Tickling.
3) Tossing.
4) Anger.
5) Great fear.
6) Terrifying stories.
7) Violent rocking.
8) Bright sunlight in unshaded eyes.
9) Glaring windows.
10) Hard white walls.
11) Places of public gathering.
12) Food difficult to digest.



child+raising motherhood 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 an Appalachian folktale with the curious name of “Sody Sallyraytus.” Saleratus appeared on the market in 1840, replacing pearlash as a baking ingredient to produce rising in dough. By the start of the 1860s baking soda in turn replaced it. For a short time some people called the new baking soda ‘saleratus.’ This story, then, probably dates from that period when both terms were used simultaneously: “soda/saleratus.”

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

One day in February 1909 the building’s landlord suddenly died. The Children’s Mission Home orphanage in Knoxville TN,
after 19 years in the same location, and with nowhere to move, stood on the edge of the extinction. “Friends came to sympathize, enemies to sneer,” recounts Rev. JR Lauritzen, the superintendent. “They said to me, ‘You’re in a bad fix now; what are you going to do?’ I told them I was going to do nothing, but to trust in the Lord, and the Lord would provide.”

Ever heard or used the expression duke's mixture? It has nothing to do with royalty, unless you consider the tobacco titans of the nineteenth century to be such. In this next piece we’ll go back to the Reconstruction era in North Carolina and follow the footsteps of Washington Duke. His tobacco products, in particular the brand known as “Duke’s Mixture,” rose to national dominance by 1900.

Her schools earned plaudits from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin Roosevelt. The Boys Industrial School motivated communities throughout the South to begin educating their young people in earnest, blazing a trail for the establishment of an agricultural and mechanical school in each of Georgia’s congressional districts. As a result of her 40 years of work in education, Martha Berry---the Sunday Lady of Possum Trot--- is among Georgia's most prominent women of the first half of the 20th century.

By 1914, the art of manually hewing a log into a finished board was already dying. The author of our next piece explains step by step how the pioneer artisans of old made their boards by that method. The Foxfire books were still decades in the future, but after reading this you’ll probably want to head out to the back lot, harvest an oak or two, and start ‘cracking’ logs.

We’ll wrap things up in this, the season of baseball, with a nod towards baseball legend Cy Young. On August 6, 1890, Young pitched his first professional game against Cap Anson’s Chicago White Stockings. Anson had scouted Young while he was with the Canton, OH minor league team and rejected him as being “just another big farmer.” Have you ever heard of the ‘Cap Anson Award’? Didn’t think so. ‘Cy,’ by the way, is short for ‘cyclone.’

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by G.B. Grayson and Harry Whitter in a 1927 recording of the traditional tune ‘Handsome Molly.’

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.

Those who never lived in a mountainous country are often surprised at the sight of what we call sleds, slides or sledges, made of the bodies of small trees with crooked ends, turning upward like those of sleigh runners, though much more clumsy and heavy.

As these runners wore down they were "shod" by tacking split saplings under them. Sleds can be hauled on steep hill-sides where wheeled vehicles would turn over or get beyond control going down hill. Our "Union" carpenters of this day could not build a house with the materials and tools of their pioneer ancestors, nearly all of whom were carpenters.

Modern carpenters would not know what "cracking" a log was, for instance; and yet, the pioneer artisans of old had to make their boards by that method. It consisted in driving the blade of an ax or hatchet into the small end of a log by means of a maul, and inserting wooden wedges, called "gluts." On either side of this first central "crack" another crack was made, and gluts placed therein.

Photo caption reads: "Mr. Stewart, cross-tie maker, working a log in Brasstown, NC." (about 1932)

There were usually two gluts placed in each crack and each was tapped in turn, thus splitting the log uniformly. These two riven pieces were next placed in a "snatch-block," which were two parallel logs into which notches had been cut deep enough to hold the ends of these pieces, which were held in position with "keys" or wedges. The upper side of this riven piece was then "scored" with a broad ax and then "dressed" with the same tool, the under edges being beveled.

The length of these pieces, now become puncheons, was usually half the length of the floor to be covered, the two ends resting on the sleeper running across the middle of the room. The beveled edges were placed as near together as possible, after which a saw was run between them, thus reducing the uneven edges so that they came snugly together, and were air tight when pinned into place with wooden pegs driven through augur holes into the sills and sleepers.

Hewed logs were first "scalped," that is the bark was removed with an ax, after which the trunk was "lined" with a woolen cord dipped in moist charcoal, powdered, which had been made from locust bark. This corresponded to what is now called a chalk line. Then four of these lines were made down the length of the log, each pair being as far apart as the hewed log was to be thick-usually four to six inches-one pair being above and the other pair below; after which the log was "blocked" with an ax, by cutting deep notches on each side about four feet apart. These sections were then split from the sides of the log, thus reducing its thickness to nearly that desired. Then these sides were "scored" and then dressed till they were smooth.

The block on which the "Liberty Bell" of Philadelphia rests still shows this "scoring" or hacks made by the broad-ax. Houses were framed on the ground by cutting the ends of the logs into notches called "saddles" which, when placed in position, fitted like joiner work--each log having been numbered while still on the ground. When the logs were being placed in position they were lifted into place on the higher courses by means of what were called "bull's eyes." These were made of hickory saplings whose branches had been plaited into rings and then slipped over the logs, their stems serving as handles for pulling.


source: Western North Carolina, A History (1730-1913), by John Preston Arthur, published by National Society Daughters of the American Revolution of North Carolina, Edward Buncombe Chapter, 1914



carpentry sleds appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

On August 6, 1890, baseball great Cy Young pitched his first professional game against Cap Anson’s Chicago White Stockings. Anson had scouted Young while he was at Canton and rejected him as being “just another big farmer.” When Cy beat the White Stockings 8-1 and allowed only three hits, Anson strove to purchase him from Cleveland.

Over the course of his 22-year career, Young won at least 508 games (511 is the generally accepted number) and averaged more than 23 victories per season. Young set Major League records for most wins all-time, most losses all-time, most innings pitched all-time, most games started all-time, and most complete games all-time. His accomplishments and records can be attributed to his longevity, durability, and consistency.

Denton True Young was born on a farm in Gilmore, OH, on March 29, 1867. While pitching for the Canton (Ohio) club of the old Tri-State League in 1890, Mr. Young was nicknamed Cy. "I thought I had to show all my stuff" he recalled years later, "and I almost tore the boards off the grandstand with my fast ball. One of the fellows called me 'Cyclone,' but finally shortened it to 'Cy,' and it's been that ever since."

Cy Young played for the Cleveland Spiders from 1890 until 1898, spent the next two years with St. Louis, and then signed with the Boston Americans (renamed the Red Sox in 1908) in the American League. Young's final season was 1911, which he split between the Cleveland Naps and the National League's Boston Rustlers. Continuing to follow the game closely after retiring to his farm near Peoli, Ohio, Young felt wounded when he was passed over in the initial Hall of Fame election in 1936. The oversight was rectified the following year, however, allowing him to be among the original group of inductees in 1939.

Shortly after Young’s death on November 4, 1955, commissioner Ford Frick originated the Cy Young Award, an annual honor bestowed upon the pitcher deemed most valuable.


sources: memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/aug06.html
www.baseball-almanac.com/deaths/cy_young_obituary.shtml
entertainment.howstuffworks.com/cy-young-hof.htm



Cy+Young major+league+baseball appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Ever heard or used the expression duke's mixture? It has nothing to do with royalty, unless you consider the tobacco titans of the nineteenth century to be such.

Washington Duke of North Carolina was a serious and thrifty man. By the start of the Civil War he’d attained a 300-acre farm four miles north of Durham, NC, and four children: Brodie by his first wife; Benjamin, Mary and James by a second.

A widower, Duke did not enter the Confederate army until 1863; he was captured in the retreat from Richmond before Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. In 1865 the forty-five-year-old veteran was released from Libby Prison and sent to New Bern, North Carolina, 137 miles from home.

He walked the 137 miles, having only 50 cents in hard cash, obtained from a Federal soldier in exchange for a five-dollar Confederate bill. The farm had been ransacked by Federal troops, except for a little Bright tobacco leaf and some flour. To raise working capital Duke sold his land and rented back a few acres of it. After sending for his children, whom their grandparents had kept, he pulverized and cleaned the tobacco in a small log barn. Packed in muslin bags labeled Pro Bono Publico, it was loaded onto a wagon drawn by two blind mules.

Reins in hand, Duke rattled east toward Raleigh, sleeping by the roadside at night and cooking his own food in a frying pan-bacon, corn meal, sweet potatoes. The expedition was a success. Duke exchanged his flour for cotton, which he sold in Raleigh; part of the proceeds went into a present for his children---a bag of brown sugar. (Buck, the youngest, ate so much of it that he lost his "sweet tooth" for the rest of his life.) More important, the tobacco found a ready cash market, and yielded enough money to buy a supply of bacon.

By 1889 the loose, or 'granulated' roll-your-own tobacco, Pro Bono Publico, now renamed Duke's Mixture as a challenge to Blackwell's Bull Durham, had become the Duke Tobacco Company's top brand. Production jumped from 3,600,000 to 5,500,000 pounds between 1896 and 1897, and even after 'the Bull' was brought into American's brand stable, Duke's Mixture continued to grow, topping the 11,000,000 pound mark by 1900.

'The granulated business of the American Tobacco Co. between 1896-1910 was almost entirely made up of medium and low price brands, of which Duke’s Mixture was by far the most important," states the Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Tobacco Industry, published in 1915 by the Department of Commerce. "The granulated business of Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co, a subsidiary of the American, averaged much higher in price than that of the granulated business of the American Tobacco Co proper and was also made up very largely of a single brand, namely, Bull Durham."

The public snickered that Duke's Mixture brand, because it was low end, was a thrown together stew of tobacco odds and ends, and this led early on to the phrase duke's mixture we sometimes still hear used today, to mean a hodge-podge of something. Here's a September 5, 1917 diary entry from North Carolina doughboy William Bradley Umstead:

"Sept. 5, 1917.

Came out to camp to stay on Monday Sept 3.

First drafted men came in today. Regular Duke's mixture as I expected. Men from all social castes, professions, and walks of life, brought together for a common purpose which many of them do not understand."


Sources: Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Tobacco Industry, 1915, Department of Commerce
Diary of William Bradley Umstead, 1895-1954, Academic Affairs Library, Call number SHC #4529, Manuscripts Dept., Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Cigarette Pack Art, Dr. Chris Mullen, 1979, Galley Press



duke's+mixture tobacco Washington+Duke appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Since my last annual report the Children’s Mission Home has moved its location; we are now located at No. 120 West Cumberland St. For seventeen long years we were located at 918 State St. in the house which is now known as the Old Mission Home. Twenty-five dollars per month I paid for many years out of the scanty income the Mission Home ever had.

In the year 1903 I took the Home and the church grounds on a lease for ten years and from then I paid only twenty dollars rent per month for the Home, and some more money on the grounds on which we had built the church. It was hard work for me to find money enough for provisions, clothes and shoes for twenßty-five to thirty-five inmates, and then to find also twenty dollars per month to pay rent.

But we did succeed in doing this for nineteen years in all without faltering and the Mission Home had no debts at no time and to nobody than to live and to do good to our neighbors. But the load we had to carry was keenly felt as the years passed on and on.

One day in February 1909 the unexpected news came to us that the owner of the house had suddenly died. This meant for us that the lease might become void and that the Old Mission Home might be sold at any time, and that we had to move. As soon as we heard the news, I said, “Praise the Lord I am now done paying rent. If this work is worth anything, it will be worth a free house.”

Friends came to sympathize, enemies to sneer. They said to me, “You’re in a bad fix now; what are you going to do?”
I told them I was going to do nothing, but to trust in the Lord, and the Lord would provide. They went away sneering. But we people of the Mission went together to the Lord in prayers, and told him to give a home to his orphan children, a home where we would have to pay rent no more.

New mission home at 120 W Cumberland Avenue.

I was well acquainted with one philanthropist of Knoxville, Mr. Rush B. Strong, who had been one of our supporters from the very beginning of this work. I knew he had a large and well built brick house in a very good location of the city, which he had designated for charitable purposes. It was just now empty. I earnestly prayed to the Lord while on the way to see Mr. Strong about that very house. As soon as I had told him what I wanted he said with the greatest friendliness, “Why sure, Mr. Lauritzen, why did you not come to ask for it long ago? As far as I am concerned you shall have the use of the house but for the repairs, free of charge.”

And now, we want you to rejoice with us, dear reader, and give praise and thanks to the Lord, who has enabled us to carry on this blessed work for twenty years of the past.

Most sincerely yours,
REV. & Mrs. J.R. Lauritzen, superintendants
20th Annual Report of the Work of the Children’s Mission Home
at Knoxville, TN


source: http://idserver.utk.edu/?id=200700000001621


orphans mission+homes Knoxville+TN appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

A long time ago there was an old woman and an old man and a little girl and a little boy and their pet squirrel sitting up on the fireplace. One day the old woman wanted to bake some biscuits but she needed some sody. So she sent the little boy to the store to buy some sody sallyraytus. The little boy went running down the road singing, “Sody, sody, sody sallyraytus.” He ran across the bridge and on to the store to get the sody sallyraytus. Then he went running back home. When he got to the bridge a mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I’LL EAT YOU UP – YOU AND YOUR SODY SALLYRAYTUS!” And he swallowed the little boy – him and his sody sallyraytus.

The old woman and the old man and the little girl and the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited but the little boy didn’t come back. Finally, the old woman asked the little girl to find the little boy and see what was taking him so long. The little girl went a’skipping down the road – a’skip a’skip a’askip. She skipped across the bridge and to the store. The storekeeper told her that the little boy had already been there and left, so she started a’skipping back home – a’skip a’skip a’skip. When she got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!” And she swallowed her down.

Well the old woman and the old man and the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited, but the children didn’t come back. Finally, the old woman asked the old man to go find the little boy and the little girl. He walked down the road – Karumpf! Karumpf! Karumpf! and across the bridge until he came to the store. The storekeeper told him that both the little boy and the little girl had already been there and left. “Hmmm….they must have stopped somewhere to play,” the old man thought. So he started a'walking back - Karumpf! Karumpf! Karumpf! When he got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I ATE A LITTLE GIRL AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!” And he swallowed him down.

Well, the old woman and the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited but the old man and the little boy and the little girl did not come back. So finally, the old woman went a’hunchety-hunching down the road – A’hunchety-hunchety-hunchety-hunch! She crossed the bridge and went into the store. The storekeeper told her that the old man and the little boy and the little girl had been there and left. So the old woman started back A’hunchety-hunchety-hunchety-hunch! When she got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I ATE A LITTLE GIRL AND AN OLD MAN AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!” And he swallowed her down.

1884 logo for the Arm & Hammer brand soda or saleratus. Saleratus appeared on the market in 1840, replacing pearlash as a baking ingredient to produce rising in dough. By the start of the 1860s baking soda in turn replaced it. For a short time some people called the new baking soda ‘saleratus.’ This story, then, probably dates from that period when both terms were used simultaneously: “soda/saleratus.”

Well, the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited. He was running back and forth on the fire place mantel and he was getting hungrier and hungrier. Finally, he jumped down off the fireplace and onto the floor. He shook out his tail and went a’frisking down the road – A’frisk a’frisk a’frisk a’frisk! He frisked across the bridge and into the store. He stood up tall on his hind legs and asked the storekeeper if he had seen the little boy or the little girl or the old man or the old woman. “Yes – they’ve all been here. Surely they didn’t all stop to play.” So the squirrel stretched his tail out behind him and frisked back. When he got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, " I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I ATE A LITTLE GIRL AND AN OLD MAN AND AN OLD WOMAN AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!”

The pet squirrel stuck his tail up in the air and chirred at the bear. By the time the mean old bear lunged at him, the pet squirrel was already halfway up a tree. The mean old bear went clamoring after him. The squirrel scurried out on a limb and the mean old bear started after him. Then the squirrel jumped onto a limb in the next tree. “SURELY IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THAT FAR ON YOUR LITTLE LEGS, I CAN MAKE IT ON MY BIG LEGS!” the bear bellowed. The mean old bear tried to jump but he didn’t quite make it. He tumbled down down down and hit the ground with a thud! As soon as he hit the ground, out came the old woman, the old man, the little girl and the little boy. The old woman looked at the little boy and said, “Well, where’s my sody sallyraytus?” “Here,” said the little boy and handed it to her.

So they all walked back to the house singing, “Sody, sody, sody sallyraytus.” When they got back, the pet squirrel climbed back up on the fireplace mantel and curled his tail around him while he watched the old woman until she took the biscuits out of the oven. They each had a biscuit – the little boy, the little girl, the old man and the old woman. The old woman broke off a piece of a biscuit and handed it to the pet squirrel. He turned it over and over in his paws and nibbled until it was gone. Then he chirred for more. He was so hungry that the old woman had to feed him pieces until he’d eaten almost two whole biscuits!


http://childrensprogrambank.pbworks.com/
http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/sodysal.htm



saleratus appalachian+folktales 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 the story of Daintry Allison’s first experience teaching school in the second decade of the 20th century. She’d been trained in Old Fort, NC to use the switch liberally with unruly students in her nearby Catawba Falls schoolhouse. Trouble was, the daughter of the town bully figured that rule didn’t apply to her. And the girl’s father had run more than one teacher off the mountain.

"Drifting" on the Ohio River was a great pastime for those who owned a skiff or johnboat. There was always something floating down stream. In the early days many things of value could be caught, logs, railroad ties worth a dollar, new sawed lumber, boat and barge planks, frames of small buildings. If there came a sudden raise in the river - the better the drifting.

Odis Isaacs started working for the mines when he was 12 and worked in Moore Hollow, KY until Howard Smith got killed in Marlow’s mine in 1946. Smith ran a motor in the mine when the accident happened and Odis was coupling at the end of the cars that Smith was pulling. It was the last trip of the day and Smith wanted to get out as much as he could so he was pulling 22 cars, which was way too many.

Your mouth will water when you hear Olga Hardman of Clarksburg WV discussing the sumptuous French style cooking of her extended family. At one of her noon meals with Aunt Clarice and Uncle Augie, she has her first encounter with frog legs. As she watches the muscles of the frog legs contract and appear to jump in the pan, she becomes quite reluctant to try them.

We’ll wrap things up by tagging along on the road with Miss Lester, a Boone, NC district nurse. Her job involves traveling up and down the hollers in search of local granny women, and encouraging them to come into town clinics to get additional medical training.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by the Wheat Valley Bluegrass Band in a 1984 recording of the traditional tune ‘Alabama Gals.’

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.

So everything went along pretty calm, until Thursday of the third week. It clouded up to rain; the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed. Afternoon recess came and we were going strictly on schedule: afternoon recess at two-thirty. I heard those wagons coming up the road and I saw these big girls: one of them was Mr. Taylor's girl and the other one was named Annie. And they giggled at each other, and shook their skirts and yonder they went through the woods to those wagon drivers.

I built up a pretty good head of steam after I pitched one inning for the ball team; I went and rang the bell. No girls appeared. The other children: "Miz Graham, didn't we have our fifteen minutes play period?"

I said, "No, we're going to have eight minutes of it the next pretty day. We have to get our lessons over with now, because it looks like it's going to rain and get the river up and wash away all of the footlogs. We have to hurry and get home before it rains. We have to have spelling."

So I marched the little children in and I had Fourth Grade spelling and we corrected the papers. No girls appeared. Fifth Grade spelling; no girls appeared. Then it was time for Seventh Grade, and they were Seventh Grade spellers, because I didn't have any Sixth Grade. Here they came in, just a struttin' and a giggling, and a shaking their skirts and a laughing and twisting.

I said, "Where have you girls been?"

"Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh."

I said, "Look a here, didn't I tell you not to leave this schoolground without permission?"

"Huh, I go where I please, when I please, and Pappy don't allow no schoolteachers to scold me."

Boy, believe you me, they'd just as well have lit that chip on my shoulder right then. I grabbed one of those dogwood switches and I went for her and I cut her shirtwaist on the bias. I don't know how I did it; but the switch did it. I was putting every bit of pep I had…now if those two girls had double-teamed on me they could have probably pitched me out of there. Maybe, I don't know. But, I whipped that girl.

Rural One-Room School, P. R. Young and pupils, Transylvania County, NC, 1903, right half of photo.

I just kept saying, "Sit down, sit down, sit down," like a needle in a broken record of a phonograph, "sit down, sit down." When I wore out one switch, the little children began running under the benches and trying to hide, because pieces of that switch were flying all over that room.

I reached for another dogwood switch, and boy, she sat down. I sat down, too. I waited until I could get my voice absolutely calm before I opened my mouth, because at St. Catherine's we had been taught, besides carrying a book on your head without dropping it, because you walked properly, that if you controlled your voice, you controlled the situation. That you could not control the situation and you should not speak until your voice was absolutely its normal self.

So I sat there about four or five minutes and got calm again. I said, "Now look a here, I told you girls not to go through the woods to meet those wagon drivers, and I'm going to stay up here these five months, and you're going to obey me, and everybody else is, that comes to this school, and when you don't, I'm going to give you a whipping, and you'd just as well know it."

I said, "Annie, come up here."

"You ain't a going to whip me like you done her!"

Annie came at me like a piledriver, sideways. She was going to knock me off my feet. I just very gracefully stepped aside and let her just about take the whole end out of that building, because she landed against it with every bit of power she had. All of the power that she had intended for me. She was a great, big, tall albino girl; one of the few albinos that I've taught: absolutely white hair, white skin, almost white eyes.

She flew at me like she was going to skin me. I just grabbed her and began to whip her and I repeated the same thing: "Sit down, sit down, sit down," because all teachers had been taught to treat them alike, and I said the same thing. Well, I didn't hit her but five licks until she sat down, and that gave me the right to quit.

I said, "All right. Now I want you girls to get ready to write your spelling, but remember that I'm boss here for five months."

So I gave out spelling, and when I dismissed that school every child cleared out every article that he’d owned that was in that building. Everything went home.

Finally, one little third grader that had charge of the home-made baseball and the home-made ball bat (that was all that we could afford then in the line of athletic equipment) was standing there knocking the ground with that ball bat. "Miss Graham," he said, "you know how to shoot. Now, I know you do. I done heard about it. Go over yonder to Mr. Kelly's where you board and get your gun. Champ Taylor will be down here directly and he'll want to cut you up with that old hawkbill knife of his, and the thing to do is to kill him."

Story continues here (go to p. 48)


Daintry Allison
(b. 1896 in Old Fort, NC)
Interviewed July 24, 1975
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville



Old+Fort+NC Daintry+Allison education+in+Appalachia one+room+schoolhouse appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Part 1 of 2

Five miles out from Old Fort, up near Catawba Falls; that was my first school. No teacher ever stayed there five months. Usually, they'd stay five or six weeks.

All right. The regulations were that your dress had to come down to your ankle bone. That's what you had to wear while you taught. I made me three of those happy little items, and I wore them in time of school just like stage clothes, and then when I got out of there and went over to my boarding place, I put on my regular clothes, which barely covered my knee caps, and I dressed like I was clothed and in my right mind.

There was one man in there that tore up the school every year. People put a chip on my shoulder and they just as well put a rich pine on there when I first went in there. "Don't you talk to his children."

Now I'm not going to call that man's name. I’m going to call him Champ Taylor, because that wasn't his name. "Don't you scold Champ Taylor's children. You be good to them. Kinda pet 'em along. Maybe he'll let you stay the five months. We like you; we like this school. We don't want you to have to go away."

"Well, what does Champ Taylor do to the other teachers?"

"He comes with his old hawk bill knife and makes them run back to Old Fort, and they have to get out of here. Why, that there man last year, the last time they sent a man in this school he was the third teacher they'd sent, and he had to leave his suitcase back there in my back bedroom where he boarded here, and leave out of here and have the man that runs the river barn in Old Fort come back up here and get it; Champ Taylor had him on the go."

They said, "He had to run out of here in the dark."

Rural One-Room School, P. R. Young and pupils, Transylvania County, NC, 1903, left half of photo.

And people would say to me, "Miss Graham, when Champ Taylor gets after you, air you gonna run? Watcha gonna do? He don't let no teacher say in here no length of time."

I said, "Oh, I don't know. I'm no good at running. Maybe I'll have to wait and see what I'll do. I just don't know, but I'll meet that situation when it comes."

Right up the road above the school house there was a sawmill. The year before that, four of the bigger girls had got pregnant with illegitimate children, supposedly by those wagon drivers that were comers and goers, and they were driving wagons out of there to haul that lumber to Old Fort for sale, for shipping on the railroad.

I laid the law down the first day of school. I said, "Now, let me tell you: nobody's going off of this schoolground after you get here until time to go home. You've got to wait until three-thirty before you leave here. Nobody is going to that road to talk to these old wagon drivers, and if you do, I'll thrash you."

We thought a switch was good for everything but the toothache, then, and we didn't hesitate to use them. I had three, already dried, that my Committeemen furnished me, and put them up in the schoolroom; up in one corner. They were dogwood. So we weren't "Woodman spare that tree" people then. Things went along calmly.

Teachers had to spend one night in every home that sent them children. I wondered what I'd do when it came to going to Champ Taylor's, but I figured that if that was part of the prescription, I'd take it. So I began to visit every Tuesday night and every Thursday night, but mostly on Tuesday night, because on Monday I walked up there from Old Fort, and on Friday I walked back home those five miles after teaching all day, so visiting was confined mostly to Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

I divided it up and made my list, so that the children knew when I was coming to each home. They kept saying, "Are you going to Peachy Carson's house?" That's another name I've changed. "Teachers never did go up to Peachy Carson's. They don't stay here long enough to get up there. Peachy lives in the very last house, way up Carson's Flats.

Peachy, by the way, had a beautiful peaches complexion. One of the most lovely that I ever saw, but here hands were terrible. She hoed. She had the awfullest corns on her hands. They felt like somebody's that played golf eighteen rounds every two hours.

But Peachy could pick up a hundred pounds of cottonseed meal and just toss it into a wagon as easy as I could pick up ten pounds of sugar. Peachy's house was way back. Well, I didn't know whether I was going to get to Peachy's house or not, but I firmly resolved that I'd go there, and I left it for next to the last place. Champ Taylor's was the last place on my list. I was going there last of all.

End of part 1
Continues tomorrow


Daintry Allison
(b. 1896 in Old Fort, NC)
Interviewed July 24, 1975
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville



Old+Fort+NC Daintry+Allison education+in+Appalachia one+room+schoolhouse appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

A great many people in Ekeyville owned their own small boat, a skiff or johnboat. The johnboat is a flat bottomed affair with one set of oar locks and square in the stern. The skiff comes to a sharp bow and a gradual tapering to the stern and generally has two sets of oar locks.

There were many versions of these boats tied along the river bank, all being homemade.

"Drifting" on the Ohio River was a great pastime for those who owned a skiff or johnboat. There was always something floating down stream. In the early days many things of value could be caught, logs, railroad ties worth a dollar, new sawed lumber, boat and barge planks, frames of small buildings. If there came a sudden raise in the river - the better the drifting - for people up stream lost things that were not securely tied up or nailed down.

Usually two men would go together, one to row the boat the other to stand up in the boat with the spar pole to spear the objects floating, fasten a rope securely and then tow to shore.

Example of a johnboat. Caption reads: "Clarence Sidney Willis rows a johnboat on the Licking River [KY], with Mae Martin and another woman, Sept. 14, 1919"

Ed and Dave McCoy were a team to drift. During the Depression when there was no work and plenty of time many men worked at the drifting. Some of them were Lou Thomas, Charlie Dunlap, Andy Prosko, Wilber Ekey, Frank and Shorty Byers.

John Ekey was a qualified drifter. He could tell at a distance of 10 to 15 ft. if the object was worth towing to shore. In his younger days he often took a younger man or teenager with him to manage the boat. Captain Ekey held a pilot's license for more than twenty years for the river district between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Gilbert VanDyne always had great pleasure and fun going drifting many trips with Cap Ekey.

There were four times in Cap Ekey's life when the object caught was a body - and this was unpleasant.


source: "The Stratton Village [OH} Story/A Community History 1880-1976," by Mary Ekey Robinson, published by the Stratton Village Bicentennial Committee, p. 53, at www.digitalshoebox.org



drifting johnboat Ohio+River appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Moore Hollow boomed during 30's and 40's

By Lois Kleffman
Jackson County Sun [KY]
Date Unknown

What was it like in Moore Hollow after the mines got started?

Luther Powell of Sand Gap says, “It was booming. New York didn’t have any more business than Moore Hollow. You could sell any piece of coal you could get out. There was plenty of coal, there was plenty of work.”

Luther started working in 1933 first for the Penningtons, then the Sand Gap Coal Company, then the Jackson County Coal Company whose owner M.K. Marlow bought out Scrivener and Moore. At the peak of production in Moore Hollow, Marlow ran three shifts averaging about 3,000 tons per day, and trucks would be lined up from the hollow clear to Sand Gap waiting to be loaded.

Powell walked every day from Kerry Knob to earn $1.50 per day as a weigh man. He says, “Everyone came to the Gap and Moore Hollow to loaf on weekends and evenings.”

Odis Isaacs of Sand Gap recollects, “You could get anything there from whiskey to a woman."

The Little Brothers and “Boss” Marcum had licenses to sell alcohol in the Gap and there was a bootlegger in the hollow.
Odis remembers the pool hall and restaurant run by John Johnston. He remembers that little Johnny Johnston would “spit your eye full of tobacco juice and he smoked cigars when he was five or six years old.”

The larger mines paid their employees with scrip good for buying at their company store. Odis still has a copper scrip coin issued by the Jackson County Coal Company in 1939 that was “payable in merchandise only “ at the company commissary.

Odis started working for the mines when he was 12 and worked in Moore Hollow until Howard Smith got killed in Marlow’s mine in 1946. Smith ran a motor in the mine when the accident happened and Odis was coupling at the end of the cars that Smith was pulling.

This 1935 pie chart from ‘Geology of Kentucky’ indicates leading Kentucky coal producing counties. Harlan, Pike, and Letcher Counties lead the pack. At the other extreme counties Boyd, Breathitt and Magoffin each produced about 1/2% of the state total that year. Jackson County, for all the hustle bustle of this article, is not even on the chart!

It was the last trip of the day and Smith wanted to get out as much as he could so he was pulling 22 cars, which was way too many. Coming down a hill, apparently the hot sand that was used to slow down the motor couldn’t do the job and Smith hit a snag with so much speed that the motor and seven cars jumped the track.

Odis remembers Smith as a “fine man.” That day Smith had given Odis a ham sandwich for his lunch. After Smith’s death, Odis left Moore Hollow and went to Travis Creek.

Where did the miners live when they came to Jackson County from Manchester, Hazard, Beattyville and other places?

Outside of Moore Hollow toward the Gap, there was a group of two and three room, flat roofed plank houses called “Slack Town” because the slack coal, too fine to sell, was dumped there. In Sand Gap there was another shantytown near the sand bank.

And right in Moore Hollow, in 1934 Caroline Isaacs kept boarders in a big boarding house built by her brother Charley Pennington on his property, which was like a bunk house. Mostly Caroline cooked for the truck drivers and miners for two years there.

Then N.U. Bond built a modern motel in the hollow in 1939 and Caroline ran it for him. The motel had a lobby downstairs and a big long dining room and it had hot and cold running water. The motel averaged 11 boarders full time and kept five reserved bedrooms for truckers from out of town who would spend just one night there waiting to get their trucks loaded.

It is rumored that women visited the men in their trucks at night, but Caroline maintains that no women were allowed with the men in the motel.

“I never saw any fights,” she says. “The miners were very good people. There never was a truck driver that came here that was out of the way.” Sheriff Joe Pence searched the drivers to see if they were bringing whiskey in or out of the hollow.

And according to Caroline, “The men were just as clean as they could be, they never went to bed without taking a shower. One man tried to sleep with his clothes on and I had to get rid of him.”

Caroline remembers that “the roads were awful. We had to cover the plates to keep the coal dust off. We had the front and back porches screened but the dust still came in.”

The saddest remembrance of her experiences in the hollow was an accident on Big Hill in which Johnny Brockman, a truck driver, was killed. Earlier in the day, Johnny had ordered eggs, bacon and country biscuits from Caroline and told her “Lady, I haven’t got any money to pay for this.” Caroline said, “Well you eat this, you looked tired.” Caroline feels that his death taught her “to be good to people.”


sources: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kycoalmi/coalTOWNstory.html
‘Geology of Kentucky,’ by Arthur C. McFarlan, University of Ky, 1943



coal+mining Jackson+County+KY scrip company+store appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Aunt Clarice was an excellent cook. I'm sure she and my mother got their special culinary education in French cuisine from their mother, Maria.

Since my Uncle Augie was a company man and wasn't on a time clock for the Rolland Glass Plant, he had an hour for lunch at noon. The glass plant was only a few blocks down the street, so he came home for lunch every day. I was frequently invited to join them for lunch, which I often did. My father was a glass cutter at Adamston Glass Plant and was paid for each piece he produced; his time was of the essence. He carried his noon meal to work and took only 1/2 hour for lunch. Hence, we had our big family meal in the evening when my father returned from work.

I have always been at least a few pounds overweight---I presume my weight problem started during these early years, when I ate a big meal at noon at Aunt Clarice's and another big meal at home in the evening.

Clarissa Amelia Caussin (1889-1948) and August Aristide Malfregeot (1885-1950).

At one of these noon meals with Aunt Clarice and Uncle Augie, I had my first encounter with frog legs. The dish in the center of the table was a turkey platter heaped high with frog legs.

As I watched the muscles of the frog legs contract and appear to jump in the pan, I was quite reluctant to try them. However, being aware of just how delicious everything that Aunt Clarice cooked was, I did relent.

I don't remember that you could buy frog legs in grocery stores in those days, but I do remember our fathers and uncles going out at night to "gig" frogs.

We always had lettuce salad with our big meal and after the lettuce was washed it had to be dried so the dressing would cling to each leaf. There was a small porch off the Malfregeot kitchen door and Aunt Clarice could frequently be seen standing there shaking water drops in the grass below as she swung the wire basket to and fro.

Turtle soup was a monumental French culinary delight. The men in French families often "felt" for snapping turtles in local streams. "Feeling for turtles" simply meant that you waded in the stream as you felt beneath the water for submerged turtles. The only problem was that on occasion one might grab at the wrong end of the turtle and encounter a vicious and sharp beak.

On one such outing, Uncle Augie raised his hand from the stream, a huge snapping turtle hanging from one of his fingers. There was an old wives’ tale which proposed that if a snapping turtle bit you, it would not let go until the sun went down. Imagine my chagrin when I contemplated Uncle Augie with that ugly beast holding onto his finger until nightfall. Many of the turtles I saw were large, ugly, vicious and very frightening to a child.

I often watched as my father and uncles cleaned snapping turtles in the basement of our house. First they teased the turtle with a stick until the turtle latched onto it with fury, then the holder of the stick stretched the neck out while someone else chopped off the head. The turtle was then skinned in much the same way as the hide of wild game is removed from the body. After the ordeal, when my father carried the meat to the kitchen, the meat was a pinkish white and looked very much like chicken. It was delicious, either fried, or cooked in soup.


Olga S. Hardman
Clarksburg, WV
source: www.olgaswritings.com/ClarAug.htm



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

We open today's show with WV evangelist John William Harris’s account of his first time at a summer revival in 1897. Revival organizers had warned attendees to be alert to horse thieves on the grounds. Sure enough a group of them descended on Harris’ horse and buggy. Hiding in a cluster of nearby bushes, the young, slightly built man managed to project a menacing voice at the gang, which scared them off and surprised Harris no end.

Byron Herbert Reece never did graduate from Young Harris College in North Georgia because he refused to take mathematics or French. That didn’t hinder him from going on to a successful writing career that included 4 volumes of poetry and 2 novels. But the same dark shadow that haunted his parents haunted him, and he chose to end his life at the age of 41.

Actress Tallulah Bankhead was no stranger to politics. As you’ll hear in this next piece, she says “There were Alabama Bankheads in one or another of the houses of Congress for sixty consecutive years.” She uses her considerably barbed wit to skewer candidate Thomas E Dewey in a 1948 political rally speech for Harry Truman.

Until Earl Shaffer actually did it, experts believed that a hike of the entire Appalachian Trail in one continuous trip was impossible. 

On July 10, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History opened "Earl Shaffer and the Appalachian Trail," an exhibition that focuses on the fulfillment of Shaffer's childhood goal of hiking the Trail. We’ll give you a quick preview of the exhibit, which runs through October 30.

The Wheeling, WV native was the most celebrated American soprano of the 1940s and 1950s. But one of Eleanor Steber's most important contributions to the world of opera was to commission and bring to life a 16-minute song that luxuriates in the calm of an earlier America, a contented, rocking-chair America. Composer Samuel Barber adapted the text for “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” from the introduction to A Death In The Family, James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography.

We’ll wrap things up with the love story of a young couple in Scott County, VA at the turn of the 20th century. It seems the girl’s father wasn’t in favor of this romance. More than once the young man came to her home in order to ask her father for her hand in marriage. The old man always spied him coming from a distance and managed to make himself unavailable. The course of true love never did run smooth.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Jimmy Smith in a 1926 recording of ‘Mountain Blues.’

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

They first met at the Point Truth Primitive Baptist Church near Nickelsville, VA. Charles Nickels was the clerk there, and Mary Louvinia 'Lula' Burke came up on Sundays from her family's home in Grassy Creek, just across the Russell County line.

Isaiah 'Zur' and Sarah Burke didn't encourage their daughter's budding romance. Charles and Lula were not allowed to be alone while they were courting. They had to sit in the room with her parents, but occasionally managed to hold hands when the older folks weren't looking.

Charles Franklin Nickels (1881-1948)

On a number of occasions, Charles rode to Grassy Creek with the intention of asking for Lula's hand in marriage. Having figured out the young suitor's intentions, when Zur saw Charles coming, he would feign a headache or some other ailment so he could go in the house and avoid talking to Charles.

Charles Nickels was not a wealthy man: he was a traveling photographer by trade. He'd begun to operate The Rural Studio in 1903 while still living at his parents' home. Charles traveled as far as Georgia to take pictures. When he returned home, he developed the negatives and printed the photographs. His cameras used negatives made of glass coated in various chemicals to obtain the image, and so developing the final image was a rather tedious and dangerous procedure. Finally he printed the picture on a penny postcard and mailed it to the customer. All of this for a dollar!

Mary Louvinia "Lula" Burke (1887-1962)

Could Charles Nickels' humble profession have been a contributing factor to Zur Burke's reluctance to encourage the couple?

On the third trip to Grassy Creek, Charles called out after Zur that there was no use going inside, because this was going to be the day he asked for Lula's hand. Finally the old man relented and gave his permission for them to be married. Charles was so excited he wrecked his buggy on the way home.

Charles and Lula were married on January 12, 1907 in Scott County, VA. They went on to have 9 children together—Pearl, Gilbert, Blanche, Madge, Mary, Henry, Jim, Charles Harold, and Mildred. All reached adulthood except Mildred, who died at just over a year old.


source: www.clinchmountainhome.com/Nickels/charlesbio.html



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