Appalachian History

James Camak started his career as a professor at University of Georgia, left to make a fortune in banking, and went on to become president of Georgia’s first railroad company, a respected newspaper editor, a professor at University of Georgia (again!), and a Trustee of the college. One thing he was not though, was an accurate surveyor. In 1818, early in his career, he was appointed by the state to help survey the boundary line between Georgia and Tennessee. He botched the job. Twice.

When the State of Tennessee was created by an act of Congress in 1796, the state’s southern boundary (and thus the corresponding northern boundary of Georgia, already a state for eight years) was decreed to be the 35th degree of North latitude. At the time, the western boundary of Georgia was the Mississippi River.

In 1802, partly as a result of political maneuvers following the Yazoo Land Fraud, Georgia gave up all possession of what was then known as the Mississippi Territory (currently the States of Alabama and Mississippi). The Articles of Agreement and Cession described the new western boundary of Georgia to be, in part, "...thence in a direct line to Nickajack, on the Tennessee River; thence crossing the said last mentioned river, and thence...along the western bank thereof to the southern boundary of the State of Tennessee."

On June 1, 1818, James Camak, who was then teaching mathematics at the University of Georgia in Athens, joined with James Gaines, a mathematician hired by Tennessee, to survey the line between the two states. The survey began at a stone, two feet tall, that supposedly marked the corner of the states of Georgia and Alabama and on the 35th parallel, the southern boundary of the state of Tennessee. The stone was described as being “one mile and twenty-eight poles from the south bank of the Tennessee River, due south from near the center of the old Indian town of Nick jack”.

The accepted method of the day was to calculate one's position on the surface of the Earth by observing specific heavenly bodies at specific times of day and comparing their positions in the sky with published tables called ephemerides.

The survey results were only as good as the charts being used, as well as the apparatus employed. Camak expressed doubts about his astronomical tables, stating they "were not such as I could have wished them to be".

To compound that problem, the governor had refused Camak's requests for a ‘Zenith Sector,’ a state-of-the-art surveying instrument, so they were making do with a nautical sextant. Sextants, being primarily for marine use, only get you close to your destination.

The zenith sector, the tool Camak wanted to use, but didn’t. It pointed straight and directly overhead. A telescope rotated on a pivot and allowed astronomers to measure the zenith distances (the angle between the star and the highest point in the sky) of celestial bodies. This also necessitated aligning the instrument in the meridian (a line through the poles). Since the graduated scale was so low to the ground, the astronomer usually had to lie on his back or a special reclined seat in order to effectively make observations with the zenith sector.

The first session placed them anywhere from 11 miles north to 11 miles south of the target line. Wisely, the group decided to dispense with that particular instrument and all calculations to date. Camak observed for 10 more days and nights, finally to arrive at the conclusion to place the corner stone "...one mile and 7 chains [about 5700 feet] from the Tennessee River and about one quarter of a mile south of Nickajack Cave."

Only 26 days after they had begun, the survey party ended their task atop Unicoe Mountain, 110 miles east of the point of beginning. On July 13, 1818 Camak, along with appointed representatives of both states, met in Milledgeville, GA to certify the survey as correct.

Eight years later, after new observations for latitude had been taken, Camak ran the line again and discovered his original line was almost one mile south of the true 35th parallel in several places.

He again made ten days of celestial observations. This time, he determined that the northwest corner of Georgia was marked 37.9 chains (about 2500 feet) south of the 35th parallel. So that year, the "Camak Stone" was pulled up and moved north to its current, and still inaccurate, location.

If his original placement had been as accurate as we now could make it using GPS, the State of Georgia would include a section of the Tennessee River and the Nickajack Reservoir.

No one in Georgia seemed to care about the location of the border for more than 70 years. But the rapid growth of the rebuilt Atlanta changed all that. Because of typographical errors in a book of mathematical tabulations and use of the wrong measuring tools, the nearly infinite supply of water in the Tennessee River was not available to the citizens of Georgia. Atlanta depends upon Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River for its water, while the Tennessee River flows just out of reach with 15 times greater flow than the Chattahoochee.

2007 aerial photo with state borders superimposed shows just how close the Tennesssee River lies to the Georgia border.

Starting in 1887, the Georgia legislature began raising the border issue in the form of resolutions. In 1905, 1915, 1922, 1941, 1947, 1971, and again just last year, the state called for discussions between Tennessee and Georgia to resolve boundary issues.

Each time Tennessee did little or nothing to achieve any change. In 1947 Georgia went so far as to form a borderline committee and authorized it to look into the matter and the Attorney General of Georgia to bring suit to the Supreme Court if the committee could not resolve the dispute. Yet the border remained the same.

The long-held legal principle is simple, says modern day border expert Louis DeVorsey: The decisive fact is not where surveyors meant to draw the line -- it's where people have accepted the line to be over time.

"It's where people adjusted their lives to," said the retired University of Georgia geography professor.


Sources: www.amerisurv.com/content/view/4637/153
www.davidrmay.com/Related/gatnborder.php
www.math.uga.edu/about_us/history.html
Savage Historical Surveys at bit.ly/3B72lT
chat.augustachronicle.com/stories/2008/03/04/met_189638.shtml
www.tba.org/sections/EnvironmentalLaw/newsletters/enews_062008.htm
www.maconnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2171&Itemid=34
www.tba.org/journal_new/index.php/component/content/article/71

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 excerpt from Handling Serpents: Pastor Jimmy Morrow's History of His Appalachian Jesus' Name Tradition. “Service got started with the congregation singing,” he explains about his style of worship. “Then they had prayer request and there was prayer. They also had special singing. About that time Mullins from Virginia carried up front a big black rattlesnake in a box and set it next to a box with two copperheads in it.”

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.

Dr. Harriet B. Jones well deserved the laurels she earned as West Virginia's first woman physician, as the first woman to serve in the State Legislature, as the founder of numerous hospitals and welfare institutions, and as a vigorous pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis. In 1937 the Morgantown Post gave its readers an extensive overview of her long career.

Moses Cone learned men. He learned how to win them.
And by doing so he rose from being a traveling drummer in NC for his family’s grocery business to being the head of Cone Mills Corporation, which became a leading manufacturer of denim. His company was a major supplier to Levi Strauss and Company for nearly a century. In 'Moses Cone Remembered,' Josephus Daniels (Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson) describes the neighbor who he summered near in the Blowing Rock area.

Nationally recognized herbalist Tommie Bass (1908-1996) was the subject of scholarly and popular books, television features, a front-page essay in the Wall Street Journal. The Alabama native was also wickedly funny in his offhand observations of life lived. In this excerpt of a transcript from a 1993 documentary, Bass sums up his view of being pitched to vote for one or another politician.

In March 1782, Timothy Dorman and his family, white settlers of Fort Buckhannon (in modern day Upshur County, WV) were captured by Shawnee Indians. One hundred years later novelist Charles McKnight envisioned the party’s abduction from Mrs. Dorman’s point of view in "Simon Girty : "The white savage"; A romance of the border." Her sufferings will chill you to the bone.

We’ll wrap things up with a brief appreciation for the dried apple stack cake, one of the most popular southern Appalachian cakes. At holidays and weddings, early mountain settlers traditionally served stack cake in lieu of more fancy, and costly, cakes. Neighbors would each bring a layer of the cake to the bride's family, which they spread with apple filling as they arrived. It was said that the number of cake layers the bride got determined how popular she was.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by the band Wry Straw in a 1970s recording of the classic old-time fiddle tune “Kitchen Girl.”

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.

Nationally recognized herbalist Tommie Bass (1908-1996) was the subject of scholarly and popular books, television features, a front-page essay in the Wall Street Journal, and numerous articles in newspapers and magazines. Bass lived almost his entire life in the Tennessee Valley and Ridge section of Alabama, primarily in Cherokee County.

"I don't ever get a letter, but what I answer it. One way or the other. And generally speaking, some of them sends a self-stamped envelope, but some of, a lot of them don't. But when you answer around a hundred letters for twenty-five dollars, twenty-five cents a letter, that runs into money (chuckles). But I answer 'em anyway.

[Looks through junk mail] "Most everybody gets something like that. And, course, this one here is from the Baptist Church at Centre, their bulletin. And this one here is a-wantin . . . this here is a politician they want me to send money to help me get along, you know, I get ‘em from the Democrats and Republicans, regardless of who they are, and I even get letters from the Catholic priests wanting me to help ‘em, you know, along.

Photograph of Tommie Bass by Tom Rankin, 1983.

"Course this is one of them get rich letters here this make you a million dollars in just a few days, you know, send five people five dollars apiece and then when your name gets to the top, why you'll go a-getting the five dollars -- but don't try it buddy it won't work.

"Course this here one, here's another politician. I get ‘em . . . when they's running here in our state from the Democrats, I'd average two or three letters a day, and then the same way about the Republicans, you know, it just didn't make no difference just so they can get some money. (chuckles) But I didn't give ‘em none. I figured . . . the fact of the business is a fellow running for office, a man or a woman, I'm like the little boy was about the peckerwood.

"Peckerwood pecked a hole in a hollow tree and he went over in there, and the little boy he drove a peg in behind it. Somebody said to him, “Son,” said, “you shouldn't of done the little bird that way.” He said, "Well the son-of-a-gun pecked in, now let him peck out.

"And so I'm that way about a politician. If he wants to get into office, let him get in there (chuckles), but I ain't gonna try to help him. Course, if he's a good guy, I'd talk for him, but as far as paying him in there, I don't go along with that."

---excerpt from 'Tommie Bass A Life in the Ridge and Valley Country,' 1993 video produced by Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Cherokee County Historical Society


sources: www.folkstreams.net/pub/ContextPage.php?essay=154
www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2166

It was in the late 1870s that merchants of this section of the state came to know a young Hebrew grocery drummer who traveled the mountains on horseback soliciting orders for the Cone wholesale grocery firm doing business in Jonesboro, TN. He was an attractive and interesting young drummer who had genius as a merchant. People just could not resist his selling qualities. When Moses Cone came into their places of business their selling resistance vanished.

They tell us poets are born. So are great merchants like John Wanamaker and A.T. Stewart. If you will study the history of the cotton mill business in North Carolina, you will see that the men who won the largest measure of success with cotton mills were men who were merchants as well as manufacturers.

The early manufacturers like the Holts and Steeles and Fries and Chathams, to mention only a few pioneers, were also great merchants. They had the genius to sell what they made. And that is true of the Cones, most of them, particularly Moses H. Cone, the oldest of a dozen children. As young Moses Cone traveled through these mountains and took orders for groceries, the lure of the heights and the valleys and the fine stuff of the people got into his blood.

He loved the bracing air, the cool water from its sparkling springs, the grandeur of the mountain peaks, the lovely and sweet meadows, and the music of the streams. They held him and went with him as later, Moses and his brothers made connections with big textile mills whose products they sold all over the country.

It was not long before Moses Cone saw that southern mills received too little because they depended chiefly on selling yarns and cheaper fabrics, and so he and his brothers resolved to construct finishing mills, which they did at Greensboro, and later at other places. It was selling before making that laid the foundations for the big Cone fortune. It was said they could sell anything they offered.

As young Moses drank in the glory of the mountains and traveled from place to place, he spent his spare moments in reading. He later said that any man could read himself into a good education. That is what he did. He had received only the sort of public school instruction which Jonesboro, TN offered in the late 1860s and early 1870s. But he had great curiosity. Everything that concerned man interested him.

He first learned men. He learned how to win them. Then he learned books. An indefatigable reader, he mastered what he read. With remarkable mind and keenness of intellect of the best of the Hebrew race, he was as keen for knowledge all his life as he was for orders in his youth as a traveling drummer. Economics, history, literature, art --- all intrigued him, and by the time he saw the possibility of the Vision of Beauty he incarnated here and made it permanent in his noble estate he had become an educated man at the age of 40.

Thenceforward, he alternated business with the development of the Moses H. Cone Manor. He came here for his health after he became rich. The early lure held him fast. He purchased 3,000 acres of mountain and valley and meadow and set about developing it. He first bought land and started to build on the beautiful land that looks toward Lenoir. Later he caught the vision of Flat Top and Rich Mountains, and the farm which he converted into orchards of thousands of apple trees and into beautiful lakes.

Biltmore, near Asheville, is known the world over. Comparatively few people are familiar with the Cone Estate near here. Mr. Cone built a home that would be called a mansion in New York or a castle in the old country. It became in his last days the home of genuine and generous hospitality to his many friends and large family connections and so remains a place of delight to those fortunate enough to be friends of Mrs. Cone.

Indeed, she keeps the place as near as possible in every way to how Mr. Cone designed it, with his own constant improvements. The Cone apple orchard is one of the show places of America. Many see it. But the sight of sights on the Estate is the drive to Rich Mountains and to Flat Top.

On top of both mountains, Mr. Cone built observatories from which one can see five states on a clear day and feel literally that he is on top of the world. On Rich Mountain there are scores of haw trees---the most beautiful haw trees in all the world---and just now the red berries, to be crimson by September, are a riot of beauty and glory. Standing under the shade of such trees, you can see Grandfather and a score of other mountains.

Mr. Cone died early---soon after he had complete his home and laid off his 3,500 acre estate. He lived to see the work and to pronounce it good, and died at the comparatively young age of 50. But he achieved far more than most successful men of threescore and ten. His last days were brightened by carrying out his plans for the beautification of his Wautauga Estate. It is a memorial that will outlast his business structures, enduring as they are, and will give happiness to this and future generations.


From 'Moses Cone Remembered,' by Josephus Daniels (Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson; summered in Blowing Rock area), Greensboro Daily News, spring 1930; date not specified; online at www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blri/moses_cone_estate.pdf

As the day was coming to a close and the evening was drawing on people started to the church. They came from the hollows and mountains where they lived. That night Lester Raines took two copperheads that Blackburn had caught early that week for the church service. Lester had a hole dug out in the bank at the back of his cabin. My uncle Hastel Presnell said that he saw six rattlesnakes and four copperhead in a cage back in the bank where Lester lived.

The church was small, about 22 by 31 feet. They lighted the church with gas lamps. That night the church house was full of people from everywhere. Oscar Pelfrey, Jacky Euel Blackburn, Oll McMahan, and family all from Virginia. Also there were Alvin Hall, Carl Hall and family, Cora James, Edward Lee Turner and family. Other people at church that night were Joe Frank Turner and family, Lester Raines and family, Mary Turner and family, Ed Arrwood, Riley Arrwood and family, Sarah Turner, and Della Mae Turner. Leote Wilford was also there with her children, Lepolian, Sarah Mae, Ruby, Maggie, Leon, Frances, and James. Several more families were there.

Caption reads: "Handling serpents at the Pentecostal Church of God. Company funds have not been used in this church and it is not on company property. Most of the members are coal miners and their families. Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky." Taken Sept 15, 1946.

Service got started with the congregation singing. Then they had prayer request and there was prayer. They also had special singing. About that time Mullins from Virginia carried up front a big black rattlesnake in a box and set it next to a box with two copperheads in it. Jacky Euel Blackburn, Lester Raines, Oscar Pelfrey, Oll McMahan, and Mullins were sitting up front.

Someone moved the serpent boxes and set them on the piano bench. Johnny Raines was singing "Jacob's Ladder" when Blackburn went to the serpent box and got the two copperheads out. After he handled them, he put the copperheads back in the box. He opened the box that had the big large timber-back rattlesnake in it. Gladys told me it was as big as a man's arm and over 6 feet long. As Blackburn was a handling it, he put it around Johnny's shoulder. The snake crawled down Johnny's arm. The large rattlesnake struck Johnny on the right hand.

Johnny let the serpent fall to the floor. Lester picked it up and put it back in the back. A few seconds after the serpent bit Johnny, he started to sink to the floor. He got real sick and passed out. The church member started praying for him. Still Johnny he got worse. They got him down to Valintine Shults where they talked Lester Raines into taking his son to the hospital. Johnny was only fifteen years old when he got bit.

On Monday, August 6, 1951, the ‘Newport Plain Talk’ had an article headed "Warrant Issued for Snake Handler: Lad Bitten: Reported Seriously." It said that the boy has fair chance of recovery. It went on to say that a warrant was issued this Monday morning by Esquire Walter Layman against Jacky Blackburn, a so-called preacher from Virginia, charging him with handling and displaying poisonous snakes to the endangerment of lives and health of others.

Officers were requested to destroy the rattlesnake if it was still in the county. The officers went to the Sand Hill Church of God in Jesus' Name and found the two copperheads and the big rattlesnake behind the church in the weeds. They got them and put them in the car and up the old 15th where they stopped at Timman Ball's store. Timman told me some thirty-five years ago there was venom all over the inside of the box. The rattlesnake that was in it would bite the box it was so mean.


excerpt from Handling Serpents: Pastor Jimmy Morrow's History of His Appalachian Jesus' Name Tradition, ed. Ralph W. Hood, Mercer University Press, 2005

The dried apple stack cake is one of the most popular southern Appalachian cakes--- no surprise considering apples are found aplenty in the mountains. Culturally it's akin to the classic European torte. It looks like a stack of thick pancakes, with apple preserves, dried apples or apple butter spread between each layer. At holidays and weddings, early mountain settlers traditionally served stack cake in lieu of more fancy, and costly, cakes. Neighbors would each bring a layer of the cake to the bride's family, which they spread with apple filling as they arrived. It was said that the number of cake layers the bride got determined how popular she was.

Kentucky lays claim to originating the dessert via Kentucky pioneer washday cake. "Some food historians say that James Harrod, the colonist and farmer who founded Harrodsburg in 1774, brought the stack cake to Kentucky from his home in Pennsylvania," observes Mark F. Sohn in Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes. "While Harrod may have brought the first stack cake to Kentucky, the cake could not have been common until more than 100 years later when flour became readily available." Tennessee proudly points to Tennessee stack cake as the first, but in fact variations of the cake abound throughout the region.

The cake is many layered, low in fat, and not sweet. It's made with layers of stiff cookie like dough flavored with ginger and sorghum and spread with a spiced apple filling. When served, the cake is tall, heavy, and moist.

Stack Cake

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 cups flour plus 1/2 cup for rolling dough

Cream shortening and sugar thoroughly. Drop in egg and beat well. Add vanilla. Sift all dry ingredients together.Add molasses; then add sifted dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk. Roll dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Divide dough into si x parts. Roll each ball of dough over the bottom of an 8 inch round cake pan. Bake in 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. When the six round layers are done, put together with applesauce or with the following:

1 (8 ounce) package dried apples or peaches
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
When the dried fruit has been cooked according to directions on the package, add the sugar and cinnamon. Put between the layers of cake. Stack the cake until all fruit and layers have been used. Let set several hours or overnight before cutting.

sources: www.tngenweb.org/tntable/tabk5.htm
http://tennessee-guide.info/food/
Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes, by Mark F. Sohn, University Press of Kentucky, 2005

On the 8th of March, 1782, William White, in sight of Fort Buckhannon [ed.-in modern day Upshur County, WV], was shot from his horse, tomahawked, scalped and lacerated in the most frightful manner by the Indians. White's companions Timothy Dorman and his wife were captured. After the killing of White and capture of the Dormans, it was resolved to abandon Fort Buckhannon. A few days after the evacuation of the fort, some of its former inmates went from Clarksburg to Buckhannon for grain which had been left there. When they came in sight, they beheld a heap of ashes where the fort had been.

“Border Settlers of Western Virginia,” McWhorter

"My story's a brief but a most painful one for a wife to tell. My husband's name is Timothy Dorman. We lived in a little cabin near Buchanan Fort in the Kanawha country.

“Just about two months ago some fresh tracks of Indians were discovered, which, on account of its being so early in the season, created great alarm among the scattered settlers. As William White, a noted and active scout , my husband and myself, this little babe and little Eddy, my only other child, a curly-headed boy of six years past, were hastening to the fort, we were set upon by a lot of savages.

“Neighbor White was shot through the hips, fell from his horse, and was then tomahawked, scalped and mutilated in the most frightful manner, and we all taken prisoners.

"We were hurried rapidly through the woods, both my children having been repeatedly threatened by our captors, because, said they, their flight was impeded. The second day little Eddy began to fret and cry on account of soreness of his feet, and finally fell behind.

“This was the last I ever saw of him. An hour later some of the Indians having joined us again, I beheld — and what a sight to a fond mother!' — and here Mrs. Dorman shuddered at the harrowing memory — "the fresh, bleeding scalp of my dear boy fastened to one of the Indian's girdles. I knew it by its jetty curls, and boldly charged the cruel savage with killing and scalping it ; but he only laughed, crying out, "No, no, only otter skin." But I knew better, and from that moment lost all heart, and was indifferent to my fate.

"Three times did I throw down a heavy kettle which I was forced to carry; closed my eyes and bent my head to receive the invited stroke of the tomahawk, but no use. Each time the kettle was replaced with angry and scolding words.

“At last, I threw it off again and refused to go one step further, when a chief, kinder than the others, said I should not be made to carry the pot and my child, too.

"My husband had all this time been making up with the captors; laughed, ate and drank with them, and was so cheerful and contented and expressed himself so anxious to become an Indian, that we were now treated well enough.

“My husband, for some years, has been much given to drink and low company, and being of a very passionate disposition when in liquor, had made a number of enemies in the fort. It is a most painful and humiliating confession for a poor wife to make; but, indeed, Timothy was once a good, kind, loving man, but lately the drink seems to have so changed and debased him, that he is more cruel and revengeful than an Indian himself, and has thrice led parties against the border settlements.

"Alas, that I, once his loved wife, and the mother of his children, am compelled to confess it; but he is becoming more and more lost to all that is good. The one fatal misstep of betraying his own neighbors seems to have turned all that was good in him to gall.

“He has lost his own self-respect, and seems ashamed to show himself before white people. He is now back in yonder woods conversing with the Indians. I sometimes think, if God will not take me, that I will have to leave him, but then, again, I have hopes that by constant love and tenderness, I may win back the free, hearty and affectionate Tim of my youth — such as he was before he took to the drink.

"We were first taken to the Chillicothe towns, and there remained during the cold weather. Then we journeyed eastward along the Ohio, and fell in with a party of Cherokees from south of that river, who had the two children with whom you saw me.

“They were educated to decoy Ohio boats to the shore, and the poor little innocents seemed perfectly skilled in the use of all the arts to simulate distress. You would be perfectly amazed to see how these little ones would cry, kneel and clap their hands and run along the shore in the most artful manner. Oh, they are smart little things, and deserve a better life.

"It was only a couple of days ago that we fell in with [Simon] Girty's large party, who, marching towards the Ohio to take vengeance for what they call the Moravian massacre, easily arranged for the transfer of the children and ourselves to them.

“The result of their arts you know well, as you and your party were the first victims; but I must tell you that I long resisted every attempt to make me a party in their miserable decoy. The Indians, knowing how much their chances of success depended on having a supposed mother with children, repeatedly ordered me to play traitor. I even refused to obey my husband's commands.

"Finally, one grim, ferocious old Shawnee, made furious by my obstinacy, snatched my babe from my breast, and threatened to brain it against a tree unless I instantly complied. I wept and screamed and implored, but all to no purpose.

Your boat was just then in sight, and while I was running along shore playing the false mother, this brutal Shawnee kept behind me in the woods the whole way, holding my precious babe by one foot ready to dash out its brains at the first sign of failure on my part to do his bidding.

"Why did I not make signs? Oh, I did, I did, but they were not seen, and when I found your boat really coming in, I fainted outright, and had to be carried back out of sight."


excerpt from "Simon Girty : "The white savage"; A romance of the border," by Charles McKnight, JC McCurdy & Co, Philadelphia, 1880 online at http://www.archive.org/stream/simongirtythewhi00mckn/simongirtythewhi00mckn_djvu.txt
McWhorter citation from: www.eg.bucknell.edu/~hyde/jackson/George.html

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 look at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1939 proclamation changing Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the 3rd Thursday in November. FDR's break with tradition was prompted by requests from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season by one week. Roosevelt had rejected the association's similar request in 1933 on the grounds that such change might cause confusion. The 1939 proclamation proved him more right than he probably would have liked.

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.

Albert Hash’s custom built instruments can today be found in the Birthplace of Country Music Museum of Bristol. The legendary fiddler was the founder and leader of the well-known White Top Mountain Band. Our next piece is a compilation of articles by his friend Muncy Gaultney, who wrote the My Ashe County Home column in the Ashe County NC newspaper “The Plow” during the 1960s-1980s.

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

Fall means that the persimmons are getting ripe and it's time to gather the sweet, pulpy fruit. The common persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is a Native American tree in the southeastern United States. Diospyros is from the Greek, and means "fruit of the gods," and many country people would agree with the meaning. The Algonquin Indians called the fruit "pessamin," or "pasiminian" and are credited with its common name, and the Cherokee Indians are the ones who first introduced persimmon sweet bread to the Europeans.

Never say never! During World War II while the Army, Navy and Civil Aeronautics Agency were constructing airports for the war effort, attempts were made to have the agencies approve a field in Kanawha County, WV. All requests were turned down because of the large amount of grading that would have to be done. 

The county then went ahead and undertook the largest grading project on a commercial airport ever attempted.

We’ll wrap things up with an excerpt from “Memoirs of a Western Historian, by B. Dwaine Madsen, a Mormon missionary in the 20s and 30s. “Everyone in the headquarters seemed to pity me for being sent to such a godforsaken place,” he says. “My own feelings at the time were mingled apprehension and anticipation, because East Tennessee District was considered the 'pits' of the mission. However, I knew that Kirkham was not trying to 'punish' me and chose to regard it instead as a test of my mettle. In retrospect, I'm actively grateful for his decision.” Let’s find out what he learned from his time there.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Ernest Stoneman in a 1928 recording of “On the Banks of the Ohio.”

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.

Rebecca Dart, a Vancouver comic book artist and animator, is turning heads this week with her fresh visualization of the old-time tune "On the Banks of the Ohio." Click on each panel to see her wonderful linework enlarged.






Says Wikipedia of this tune: "Banks of the Ohio is a 19th century murder ballad, written by unknown authors, in which 'Willie' invites his young lover for a walk during which she rejects his marriage proposal. Once they are alone on the river bank, he murders the young woman.

"The first recording of the song was by Red Patterson's Piedmont Log Rollers on August 12, 1927. The song has since been recorded numerous times, by Henry Whitter, Ernest Stoneman, Clayton McMichen, The Carter Family, Blue Sky Boys (whose version, performed in 1936, appears in the soundtrack of the 1973 film Paper Moon), Johnny Cash, Monroe Brothers, Joan Baez, Olivia Newton-John (with Mike Sammes, in 1971, her second commercial single in the United States), Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers, and Doc Watson, with slightly different lyrics when sung by a female.

"The song is similar in subject to Pretty Polly, and likely tells the same story (Both songs date from approximately the same time, tell roughly the same story, and feature a villain named 'Willie')."

"I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-third of November 1939, as a day of general thanksgiving." How appropriate that Roosevelt's proclamation was issued on Halloween, the day for tricks or treats. The average citizen was irritated and confused; big business was delighted. In the end, Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different dates that year.

At the beginning of Roosevelt's presidency, Thanksgiving was not a fixed holiday; it was up to the President to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation to announce what date the holiday would fall on. However, Thanksgiving was always the last Thursday in November because that was the day President Abraham Lincoln observed the holiday when he declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.

FDR's break with tradition was prompted by requests from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season by one week. Roosevelt had rejected the association's similar request in 1933 on the grounds that such change might cause confusion. The 1939 proclamation proved him more right than he probably would have liked. Football coaches scrambled to reschedule games set for November 30th, families didn't know when to have their holiday meals, and people weren't sure when to start their Christmas shopping.

Some folks found mirth in the situation. "Mr. President: I see by the paper this morning where you want to change Thanksgiving Day to Nov. 23, of which I heartily approve. Thanks," wrote one Shelby O. Bennett of Shinnston WV, whose letter has been saved by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. "Now there are some things that I would like done and would appreciate your approval:
1. Have Sunday changed to Wednesday.
2. Have Monday's to be Christmas.
3. Have it strictly against the will of God to work on Tuesday."

Thousands more letters, most not so lighthearted, poured into the White House. Smaller businesses complained they would lose business to larger stores. Other companies that depended on Thanksgiving as the last Thursday of November lost money; calendar makers were the worst hit because they printed calendars years in advance and FDR made their calendars out of date for the next two years.

Schools were also disrupted by Roosevelt's decision; most schools had already scheduled vacations and annual Thanksgiving Day football games by the time they learned of Thanksgiving's new date and had to decide whether or not to reschedule everything. Moreover, many Americans were angry that Roosevelt tried to alter such a long-standing tradition and American values just to help businesses make more money.

Opposition grew. While governors usually followed the president's lead with state proclamations for the same day, in 1939 some states took matters into their own hands and defied the Presidential Proclamation. Some governors declared November 30th as Thanksgiving. And so, depending upon where one lived, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the 23rd and the 30th. This was worse than changing the date in the first place because many families did not have the same day off as family members in other states and were therefore unable to celebrate the holiday together.

Twenty-three states observed Thanksgiving Day on November 23rd, twenty-three states celebrated on November 30th, and Texas and Colorado declared both Thursdays to be holidays.


sources: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/thanks/remember.html#
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/benetlg.jpg


FDR+Thanksgiving+Proclamation Shelby+O.+Bennett National+Retail+Dry+Goods+Association

Fall means that the persimmons are getting ripe and it's time to gather the sweet, pulpy fruit. But you'd better try to get to them before the woodland critters beat you to it. Raccoons, foxes, squirrels, wild turkeys, bob white quail, possums, coyotes, and even deer feast on it. Numerous birds also relish persimmons.

The common persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is a Native American tree in the southeastern United States. Diospyros is from the Greek, and means "fruit of the gods," and many country people would agree with the meaning. The Algonquin Indians called the fruit "pessamin," or "pasiminian" and are credited with its common name, and the Cherokee Indians are the ones who first introduced persimmon sweet bread to the Europeans.

Persimmon pulp can be used in many different baked goods including pudding, sweet bread, and cookies, and it makes a delicious ice cream topping or candy treat. Wine or beer made from persimmon is the poor relation of champagne--with the advantage that nobody is ever the worse for drinking it. And persimmon seeds can be roasted, ground, and used as a hot beverage, reminiscent of coffee.

It's best to get the ones that have already fallen to the ground, or ones that fall off the tree easily, when shaking the tree. If the fruit falls to the ground easily, it is ripe. Wait until the first frost has kissed the persimmons, as the frost takes away their puckering quality, making them as sweet as honey.

According to weather folklore, persimmon seeds can be used to predict the severity of winter weather. When cut into two pieces, the persimmon seed will display one of three symbols. A knife shape indicates a cold icy winter (where wind will cut through you like a knife). A fork shape means a mild winter. A spoon shape stands for a shovel to dig out of the snow.

The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore lists a number of cures and folk beliefs involving the persimmon:

Tie a knot in a piece of string for every chill that you have; then tie the string to a persimmon tree.

Briar root bark, persimmon tree bark, grapevine root bark, and green sage boiled into a tea with alum and honey is cure for yellow thrash.

Wild cherry, oak, and persimmon bark tea with enough whiskey in it to keep it from souring makes a good tonic.

Ground persimmon sprouts are good for poulticing.

To cure Bright's disease, put into a half -gallon of apple brandy a handful of cherry bark, persimmon bark, red holly bark, and dogwood root, and drink the solution.

To cure chills and fever, make a band, or large thread, of black wool, from a black sheep, or black spotted sheep, fasten it around the waist, next to the body of the sick one, then let the person walk around a persimmon tree as many times as he has had chills. This is supposed to be a sure cure.

Cut a persimmon twig, cut as many notches in it as you have warts, bury the twig, and when it rots the warts will disappear.

If the husband or wife should stray, burn seven sprouts of persimmon in the fire and the unfaithful one will have seven severe pains and return home.

A girl eating nine persimmons in a row will turn into a boy in less than two weeks.


sources: The Frank C. Brown Collection of NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE online at www.archive.org/stream/frankcbrowncolle06fran/frankcbrowncolle06fran_djvu.txt
http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint/touchstone/AppalachianFolkMed-Stone.htm
www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/spring_tonics_and_appalachian_herbals/issue/151
www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/a/persimmon-seeds-widen-the-lead-cold-winter-predicted-to-win
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/nature_sketches/78439/1

During World War II while the Army, Navy and Civil Aeronautics Agency were constructing airports for the war effort, attempts were made to have the agencies approve a field in Kanawha County, WV. All requests were turned down because of the large amount of grading that would have to be done.

The county then went ahead and undertook the largest grading project on a commercial airport ever attempted.

In October 1944, in Charleston, W. Va., the contract for the nation's heaviest airport grading job was awarded to Harrison Construction Company of Pittsburgh, PA by the Kanawha County Court. The citizens of Kanawha County voted a $3,000,000 bond issue for the construction of the terminal and road access from the business section of the town. Later Congress appropriated $2,750,000 to supplement the County fund to assure the completion of the airport.

The project required removal of approximately 9 million yards of material, 40% was rock. The airport is located on a series of ridges, whose area and direction made it ideal for the construction of three runways. For all other sites investigated, the topography was such that the construction of runways of adequate length was impractical or land damages excessive.

In the early stages shovels worked on ledges that were 300 feet or more above the lowest ravine filling levels. Due to layers of pan materials between stone strata there was little opportunity for scrapers to load downhill. Early stage haul roads for both stone and dirt were among the steepest ever encountered by the contractors. Temporary roads employed up to 40% descending grades for scrapers and 25% for dump trucks.

The rock excavation was hauled by nine 1-3/4 yard to 2-1/2 yard shovels loading a fleet of twenty- three 10-yard rear dump trucks and eight 11-yard and 12-yard bottom dump trailers. The earth excavation was handled by ten 25-yard tractor-drawn scrapers and sixteen 12-yard scrapers. Seven pushers with the help of four rooters served the scrapers. With this equipment the contractor averaged from 20,000 to 27,000 cubic yards of earth and rock a day.

Alternate rock and shale layers created a situation favorable to horizontal drilling and blasting. This method was used for all but small special pockets, where six wagon drills were employed, powered by five 365 cu. ft. compressors.

To level the mountain, over 1,000,000 pounds of dynamite were used; a typical blast consisted of 2,500 pounds of dynamite placed in nine parallel 45 foot holes.

Kanawha Airport was formally dedicated on November 3, 1947. President Truman sent his plane, the "Independence;" the presidents of all the participating airlines were on hand, as were many governmental officials. Though a cold, rainy day, the event was attended by an estimated 10,000 people. The first night landing at the port was made shortly after 10 the evening before by the president of American Airlines.

Dedication of Kanawha Airport, Charleston WV.

Col. John Alison, assistant secretary of commerce for air, lauded the people of the city and county on their perseverance and refusal to allow the many obstacles created by rugged terrain to keep them from realizing a project deemed essential to the welfare and growth of the community. He thought it quite significant that the county should have undertaken what the Army would not tackle.

"The record shows that the county of Kanawha has spent more money per capita on airports than any other county in any state in the country," Col. Alison said. "In addition, $125,000 was voted by the county for an access road to the airport. Other funds were made available for the purchase of land.

"These accomplishments are a fine commentary on the judgment of the 195,619 people of the county and their elected officials."

At the conclusion of the special ceremonies, the crowd was admitted to the taxi strips to visit planes of Capital, Eastern and American airlines. Chief interest seemed to center about Capital's "Flying White House," the DC-4 in which the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to the historic Casablanca conference.


Sources: "Dedication of Kanawha Airport," Charleston Gazette
November 4, 1947 online at http://www.wvculture.org/history/transportation/kanawhaairport04.html
"The Nation's Heaviest Airport Grading Project," The Kanawha Valley Airport online at http://www.wvculture.org/history/transportation/kanawhaairport03.html

compiled from My Ashe County Home column by Muncy Gaultney in Ashe County NC newspaper “The Plow” (1960s-1980s)

"I like to forgot I was supposed to talk about old time music and I guess Albert Hash and the Whitetop Mountain boys are next on the list. Albert is known far and wide for his woodworking and instrument making. He is a shy retiring kind of feller, but let the boys and girls get together and he ain’t a bit shy with a fiddle. He is known all over, so I’ll put him head of the class, even if he don’t’ play 'The Walls of Jericho' or 'Granny, Will Your Dog bite?'

"I could talk about Albert for a week and not do him justice. We both come up the hard way. It was root hog or die. No jobs. So what you had was to make do or do without. He made his first fiddle with a pocket knife. He is a very adept wood carver.

"Well, I guess I also need to talk about the ones that help him make music---Thornton Spencer, a violinist and guitarist and a top musician; his wife, Emily, who is a number one guitarist; and Flurry Dowe, a clawhammer banjo player. Thornton is a very fine person and should be rated among the best of the old time fiddlers.

Banjo built by Albert Hash for Edward Lee Blevins on display at Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, VA/TN.

"I was at Thornton’s store the other Saturday and there was more fiddles, banjos and guitars than Carter had Liver Pills. There was a lot of good music. Albert Hash played “Pretty Patty,” which is one of my favorites. I tried to accompany him on the 5-string banjo but I guess I made a mess of it.

"Some of the old Brushy Mountain Boys came in the other day. We had a good time with Doc Watson and Charles Francis, two old clawhammer banjo players. Charlie is 80 years young but he can still play. His mother taught me what little I know about a banjo.

"The Helton Music Festival was finally pulled off. It was a grand event to me---meeting old friends and listening to the music. I love to try to play. I don’t want anything out of it, no money, no praise, just a feeling of peace, enjoyment and to be among friends. There is nothing more enjoyable than mountain music. Old Sage once said “Music soothes a savage beast.” He must have been an old time fiddler.

"It looks like Albert Hash is going to have to spur up as Ms. Emily Spencer is coming along on the Old Time fiddle. She is a wonderful person, and by gosh, I’m going to have to do sump’in cause my fiddling is gitten stale. I guess it’s because I’m gitten old maybe because I never could fiddle too well. I haven’t got it figgered out. Anyway, I think everyone that attended the convention had a good time. Helton is a wonderful little community. A good place to live.

"Now, you’uns be good and come see us when you can. Get all your roots and yarfs together, Granny, she’s a goin’ to be a cold ‘un this winter.”


sources: http://whitetopmountainband.tripod.com/id6.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/albert-hash
http://www.unctv.org/folkways/musicfthills/ahash.html
www.myspace.com/alberthashmemorialfestival

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 look at a mysterious mountain creature. In Missouri they call it a Gallywampus; in Arkansas it's the Whistling Wampus; in Appalachia it's the just a plain old Wampus. A half-dog, half-cat creature that can run erect or on all fours, it's rumored to be seen just after dark or right before dawn all throughout the Appalachians. But that's about all everyone agrees on.

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.

Alice Jane Meek (1877-1961) could trace her roots to members of pioneer families in Eastern Kentucky. Her resourcefulness emerged early when, amid serious competition, she wooed and wed a teacher from a one-room schoolhouse in Van Lear who had been her instructor. Alice went on to contribute greatly to the rise and success of the man who became the wealthiest man in Kentucky by the time of his death.

Call it the American Custard Apple or the West Virginia Banana, but it’s neither apple nor banana. It’s the paw-paw (Asimina trilob), the largest native fruit of North America, and it grows throughout Appalachia. Let’s step out into the woods for a bit and take a closeup look at the paw paw.

Next up, a guest post by Charles Wykes of viewfromheremagazine.com He reviews Ron Rash’s ‘Serena,’ a novel set in the Appalachian Mountains that follows the fortunes of the eponymous central character and her husband as they create a timber barony in 1930’s America. Some of the book’s characters, Wykes tell us, “are in turn awed and cowed by Serena and what she represents. Some strive to do her bidding, some seem to venerate her and some rightly fear her. None it seems can fathom where she came from or what drives her on. In this she is like the great eagle she trains to hunt snakes; beautiful and terrible and utterly unafraid.”

Glass 'bottle trees' originated in ninth century Kongo during a period when superstitious Central African people believed that a genii or imp could be captured in a bottle. Legend had it that empty glass bottles placed outside, but near, the home could capture roving (usually evil) spirits at night, and the spirit would be destroyed the next day in the sunshine. One could then cork the bottles and throw them into the river to wash away the evil spirits.

We’ll wrap things up with ‘The Legend of the Haunted Depot.’ During the Civil War, two brothers from Ringgold, GA head off to war. After serving heroically in a number of far off battles, in an ironic twist both are killed within miles of home. The wife of one brother hangs herself in the local depot when it becomes clear what’s happened on the battlefield. The souls of all three people allegedly dwell in that same depot. The city of Ringgold sponsors tours of the depot each Halloween.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Frank Blevins & His Tar Heel Rattlers in a 1927 recording of “Sally Ann.”

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.

The following review by Charlie Wykes appeared October 29, 2009 in the online publication viewfromheremagazine.com

When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.

So opens Ron Rash’s Serena, a novel set in the Appalachian Mountains that follows the fortunes of the eponymous central character and her husband as they create a timber barony in 1930’s America. From the cover art on my paperback edition, you might be forgiven for thinking that what follows Rash’s wonderful opening lines will be a novel of romance and tribulation. How delighted was I to find something far more engrossing; both in content and style.

What Rash has created here is grand theatre, in the best possible sense. He quotes Marlowe on the cover page and I was struck by just how this novel follows the form of Elizabethan drama. It soon becomes apparent that Serena is no heroine as she ruthlessly pursues her ambition. Nor is Pemberton, her equally ambitious husband, heroic. Whilst he has faint qualms about some of Serena’s methods he is not one to let concern for his workers or his business partners stand in their way.

In keeping with Marlowe and Shakespeare a cast of supporting characters are introduced; some major, some minor, some serving to shed light on the characters of the Pembertons and others to provide commentary on their actions. Some are comic, others menacing and yet others heroic in ways the Pembertons will never be. Apart from Rachel, the young girl who has borne Pemberton a child, we are seldom privy to their thoughts, just as we know little of what the Pembertons may be thinking. This is not a novel that presents its characters from within; rather we know them through their deeds and judge them accordingly.

And when their deeds are as remarkable as Serena’s a novel less assured than this might rightly be met with some head shaking. Rash however is a very accomplished writer indeed. His work as a poet and his detailed knowledge of Appalachian history, which he teaches as Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina, allow him to write with power and grace and so detail a time and place where such things seem not only possible but entirely right.

He clearly has a deep love for the land and the history of the peoples who have tried to shape it and it is perhaps not going too far to say that in some sense, that Rash has characterised the land itself as locked in struggle with Serena; who embodies the destructive nature of human progress. As she cuts down both trees and people to turn a profit, so the mountains and trees cut down people in their turn. In contrast Rachel is accessible to us, we learn of her thoughts and fears for herself, her son and her way of life. She in a sense is the positive aspect of humanity that is diametrically opposite to Serena.

As for the workers and businessmen, some of the supporting cast I mentioned before, they are in turn awed and cowed by Serena and what she represents. Some strive to do her bidding, some seem to venerate her and some rightly fear her. None it seems can fathom where she came from or what drives her on. In this she is like the great eagle she trains to hunt snakes; beautiful and terrible and utterly unafraid.

In writing the above I am conscious that I have yet to discuss plot. Again, rather like the Elizabethan drama, Rash uses plot as a canvas upon which to paint his scenes and to comment upon the actions of mankind. That said, the story is entirely satisfying and centred upon Rachel who can bear a child and so sustain a future and her struggle with Serena who is barren and can leave no legacy save through destructive force of will. In parallel with this, the book details some of the events surrounding the establishment of the National Park in the region and the impact this had upon business and livelihood.

This second narrative is also concerned with sustainability versus profit, industry versus nature and is as relevant today as it was then. It is not however the reason you should read this book. Instead read it for its remarkable sense of time and place and Rash’s wonderfully vivid recounting of people and events set in a hostile yet magnificent landscape. By all means reflect upon how man and nature may come together and for what purpose but at the same time simply enjoy what I found to be one of the most engrossing and substantive books I have read for a long long time.

In Missouri they call it a Gallywampus; in Arkansas it's the Whistling Wampus; in Appalachia it's the just a plain old Wampus (or Wampas) cat. A half-dog, half-cat creature that can run erect or on all fours, it's rumored to be seen just after dark or right before dawn all throughout the Appalachians. But that's about all everyone agrees on. In non-Native American cultures it's a howling, evil creature, with yellow eyes that can supposedly pierce the hearts and souls of those unfortunate enough to cross its path, driving them to the edge of sanity.

Cherokee folklore, which is filled with tales of evil spirits lurking in the deep, dark forests that surrounded their villages, offers a different view of the Wampas cat.

An evil demon called Ew'ah, the Spirit of Madness, had been terrorizing the village of Etowah (or Chota, depending on the version you hear) in what is today North Carolina. The village shamans and warchiefs called for a meeting. The wise shamans told the warchiefs that sending the braves to hunt and kill the Ew'ah was surely going to be the end of the tribe, for the Ew'ah had the terrible power to drive men mad with a glance. The warchiefs argued that the Ew'ah could no longer feast on the dreams of the Cherokee children, and that something must be done. Together they agreed that their strongest brave would go alone, and bring great honor to his family and tribe by killing the mad demon.

Standing Bear (or Great Fellow, depending on the story version) was the strongest, fastest, sneakiest, smartest, and most respected brave in all the Cherokee nation, and he was chosen to do battle with the demon. As he walked from his village, the shamans blessed him, and the warchiefs gave him many fine weapons with which to slay the beast, and on the edge of town, his wife, Running Deer, bid him a final farewell. She would never see him the same way again.

Weeks went by, and there was no word from Standing Bear. Suddenly, late one night, the stricken brave came running back into camp, screaming, and clawing at his eyes. One look, and Running Deer knew. Her husband was no more. With time, he would be able to pick berries and work in the fields with the young girls and the unmarried widows, but he would never be any good as a husband again, and by Cherokee law, that meant he was dead. Standing Bear's name was never again mentioned, but Running Deer had loved her husband, and she wanted revenge.

Running Deer went to the shamans, and they gave her a booger mask, a bobcat's face, and they told her that the spirit of the mountain cat could stand against the Ew'ah, but she must be the one to surprise the demon. The warchiefs gave her a special black paste, which when rubbed on her body, would hide her scent as well as her body. She kissed her former husband on the forehead, his blank eyes staring, and headed off to seek her revenge.

Running Deer knew the woods as well as she knew the village, and she ate sweet berries to keep up her strength over the many days, but still she came across no sign of the Ew'ah. Then, late one night, she heard a creature stalking down by the stream. As she crept slowly towards the creek, she heard a twig snap behind her. She spun, and just as suddenly realized how quickly it could have been the end of her. Behind her a wily fox darted across the pathway. "If that had been Ew'ah, I would be mad now..." the widowed Cherokee woman thought to herself, as she continued towards the creek.

At the edge of the creek, she saw footprints which did not belong there, and her former husband’s breastplate lay at the edge of the water. As she followed the prints upstream, she saw the demon. Its hulking form lurched hideously over the water, drinking from the pristine mountain spring. The Ew'ah hadn't seen her! Running Deer crept ever closer, and just as she felt she could bring herself no closer, she sprang!

The Ew'ah spun, and saw the Cat-Spirit-Mask, and began to tear at itself as the spirit of the mountain cat turned its powerful magic back on itself. The Ew'ah tumbled backwards into the pool, and Running Deer immediately turned on her heel and ran as fast as she could back to the village, never once looking back.

When she arrived home, she sang a song to herself---a quiet song, of grief for her husband, but also of joy for the demon's banishment. The shamans and warchiefs declared Running Deer the Spirit-Talker and Home-Protector.

Some say that the spirit of Running Deer inhabits the Wampas cat, and that she continues her eternal mission of watching her tribe's lands to protect them and their peoples from the demons that hide in the dark and lost places of Tanasi.


sources: Cherokee version above related by Enrique de la Viega, of Powder Branch, TN, on 7/11/03, posted to Ex Libris Nocturnis forum at http://bit.ly/2FmX4f
www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/tn3.html
http://themoonlitroad.com/the-wampas-mask-story-background/
Mysterious Knoxville, by Charles Edwin Price, 1999

The city of Ringgold, GA sponsors tours of its train depot each Halloween based on 'The Legend of the Haunted Depot:'

Clem and Will Jackson grew up in Ringgold doing all the things brothers did, swimming in the Chickamauga Creek, hunting in the woods, and generally enjoying the pleasures of young men in the Old South.

The boys were very close and never imagined the War would separate them. However; Clem, the younger brother, was anxious to join the fighting, but his father refused him permission. In order to join in the Confederate fight, Clem ran off to Alabama and joined the 33rd Alabama Regiment. The 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment was officially organized and outfitted in Pensacola, Florida in April 1862.

After dismounting heavy artillery from obsolete Fort McRee, the Regiment was sent to Corinth, Mississippi, arriving just after the Battle of Shiloh. Its baptism under fire occurred at Perryville, Kentucky in October, 1862 where it captured a battery, but suffered heavy casualties, including every field officer.

The next month the Army of Tennessee was organized, and the history of this great army is the history of the 33rd. The Regiment was placed in General Patrick Cleburne’s Division, and contributed to his reputation of possessing the best assault troops in the Army of Tennessee. The 33rd drove the enemy before it in Hardee’s dawn assault at Murfreesboro; it prevailed against the 6th Indiana at Chickamauga; it helped hold the flank at Missionary Ridge; and it helped bring the Federal pursuit to a bloody end at Ringgold Gap.

In the three years Clem was gone, Will fell in love and married Sarah Johnson, a great friend of Clem’s. Although newly married, because the Confederate cause became so desperate, Will felt compelled to enlist under the command of General Patrick Cleburne.

Sarah corresponded with Clem throughout the War and wrote him telling about her marriage to Will and of his enlistment. The two brothers were reunited during the War, but were both tragically killed at the Battle of Ringgold Gap, so close to home. Their bodies were never properly buried, so their spirits were doomed to roam the earth forever.

Unaware that her beloved had been so close, Sarah waited and met every returning troop train hoping to be reunited with her husband and her friend. Upon hearing the news of their death, Sarah took her own life by sneaking into the Depot in the dark of the night and hanging herself. Because she had taken her own life, Sarah also was doomed to roam the earth without rest. The three restless spirits of Sarah, Will, and Clem finally found each other and made the Depot their home.

More than a hundred years had passed when construction workers found Clem’s body at Ringgold Gap and gave him a proper burial, freeing his spirit to ascend. Left behind, the spirits of Sarah and Will roam the streets of Ringgold in search of Clem. Legend has it that on a dark moonlit night Sarah can be seen standing on the back deck at the Depot watching for the brother that Will refuses to leave.


Source: http://ringgoldhaunteddepot.com

Call it the American Custard Apple or the West Virginia Banana, but it’s neither apple nor banana. It’s the Paw-paw (Asimina trilob), the largest native fruit of North America, and it grows throughout Appalachia. There are about seven other members of the genus Asimina, all growing in the southeastern U.S. Mature pawpaw trees produce fruits 2" wide by 10" long, which turn from green, to yellow, and then black as they ripen in the fall.

Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Come on, boys [or girls, or kids], let's go find her,
Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Pickin' up paw-paws, puttin' 'em in her pockets,
Pickin' up paw-paws, puttin' 'em in her pockets,
Pickin' up paw-paws, puttin' 'em in her pockets,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

---The Paw Paw Patch
Traditional folk song

Paw-paw fruits are rich in minerals such as magnesium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, potassium, and phosphorus. The fruit also contains abundant concentrations of Vitamin C, proteins, and their derivative amino acids. The Peterson Field Guide mentions that the seeds, along with being an emetic, have narcotic properties.

The paw-paw pulp may be eaten raw, made into ice cream, baked, or used as a pie filling. Some Appalachian cooks make a custard out of "Poppaws." Seed them, mash them, add milk, a little sugar, an egg and some allspice. Pour the batter into custard cups and set those in a bread pan with some water in the bottom of the pan. Bake at a medium heat. Stick a broom straw or toothpick in, and when it comes up clean it’s done. Paw-paw also makes an excellent dry, white wine. It can be made from fresh or canned fruit.

The paw-paw is sensitive to ultraviolet light, thus, paw paw seedlings may not grow back after forests have been clear cut, and there are very few virgin forests left in the United States. Paw-paws can be found growing there abundantly, but once the forests are harvested, the paw paw will not usually re-establish.


sources:www.fred.net/kathy/pawpaws.html
http://kentuckyhighlands.net/agriculture/trees/history-of-the-pawpaw-tree.html


American+custard+apple West+Virginia+banana paw+paw appalachia +appalachian+culture appalachian+history

Alice Jane Meek (1877-1961) could trace her roots to members of pioneer families in Eastern Kentucky. Her resourcefulness emerged early when, amid serious competition, she wooed and wed a teacher from a one-room schoolhouse in Van Lear who had been her instructor.

She bore John C.C. Mayo ---“Calhoun” to her--- two children, John C.C. 2nd and Mary Margaret. A highly focused woman, Alice contributed greatly to the rise and success of the man who became the wealthiest man in Kentucky by the time of his death. He was a pioneer in the development of the coal industry in the Big Sandy Valley.

Mrs. Mayo traveled with her husband as he met with local landowners to acquire their coal interests. She would often speak with the wives and work out deals for the interests behind the scenes. Her nicknames of “Alkie Jane” and “Alka” were well known, and Mr. Mayo named a steamboat after her that was misspelled as “Thealka” rather than “The Alka.” When the steamer was built in 1899, Alka Mayo became president of the Paintsville and Catlettsburg Packet Co., which operated the boats.

The Thealka, classified as a batwing boat due to the position of her paddle wheels. Instead of a single stern paddle wheel, she was equipped with two smaller side wheels, set well towards the stern of the boat. Photo undated.

In 1906 the North East Coal Company had created Muddy Branch, an unincorporated community in Johnson County, but in 1911, renamed it "Thealka" after the steamboat.

Alka worked hard to develop the public relations of Calhoun’s enterprises and helped to get railroads to Pike County to move the coal to market. From 1905 to 1912 she spent a great deal of time directing construction of the couple’s new three-story mansion in Paintsville, KY.

By 1913 the Mayos were comfortable enough to take a lengthy tour of Europe. They’d already traveled together to New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago and Minneapolis. Soon after their return from Europe, however, Mr. Mayo learned that he had Bright’s Disease, which in 1914 was incurable. He consulted physicians in Cincinnati, where he was briefly hospitalized. He was eventually moved to New York City in search of the most eminent doctors, but to no avail, and he died in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on May 11, 1914.

After her first husband’s death in 1914, a distraught Alice moved to Florida. In 1916 she met Dr. Samuel P Fetter of Portsmouth, OH when he was recuperating from an illness in Palm Beach, where she frequently visited. He was a bachelor several years her junior, whose “mother presides over his household.” The couple married at his friend Cyrus Preston's home, and moved to Ashland, KY in 1917. They purchased a Victorian home there, but due to war rations, were not allowed to build a new house.

Alice received permission to “remodel” and henceforth rebuild almost the entire house. During this period she became a director of the Mayo Companies. Before the marriage, she had formed the Mrs. John C.C. Mayo Company, transferred all the property of the estate to this corporation, and divided the stock between her children. She donated the Mayo home and land to Sandy Valley Seminary. In 1918 the grounds and buildings of Sandy Valley Seminary were acquired by the Methodist Episcopal Church/South, and its name changed to John C. C. Mayo College.

The marriage to Dr. Fetter only lasted 4 years. He was 37 when he died. Like his predecessor, he had gone to New York just months before his death in hopes of finding a cure for his illness, but was similarly diagnosed as incurable. Alice, “for business reasons related to the administration of the properties and enterprises inherited from the late John C. C. Mayo,” changed her last name legally back to Mayo, reported the Paintsville Herald in 1927.

After years of financial struggle the Methodist Church Conference reluctantly closed Sandy Valley Seminary in 1928. A bitter legal battle promptly erupted between the Conference and Mrs. Mayo over ownership of the properties; she claimed that “the purposes having failed, title to the lands had reverted to and was vested in her as the surviving donor;” the Conference disagreed. Mrs. Mayo eventually won ‘Board of Missions of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Mayo’ and received undisputed title to the school property in 1936.

She then sold the house and property to E. J. Evans, a friend and employee of John Mayo. Mr. Evans leased the mansion and other buildings. In 1938, Paintsville bought the Mayo College property and the Kentucky General Assembly created and opened the Mayo Vocational School.

In 1945, Mr. Evans sold the mansion and grounds to the Most Reverend William T. Mulloy, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Covington, KY, and his successors in office. Under the guidance of the Sisters of Divine Providence from Melbourne, KY, Our Lady of the Mountains was opened in October, 1945. It is currently under the auspices of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, KY. Alice Meek Mayo died in Ashland on Sept 5, 1961 and was buried behind the Mayo mansion in Paintsville.


sources: The Kentucky Encyclopedia, by John E. Kleber
www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/education/sandy.html
http://home.catholicweb.com/OurLadySchool/index.cfm/NewsItem?ID=9376&From=Home
www.pikevillerotary.org/newsletter/2007-2008/news020608.pdf
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/r/e/Clara-Preston-OH/GENE11-0169.html
Ashland Daily Independent, Front Page September 5, 1961
Board of Missions of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Mayo
CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, SIXTH CIRCUIT, OHIO, 1936
A standard history of the Hanging Rock iron region of Ohio: an ..., Volume 2 edited by Eugene B. Willard et al.
New York Times, March 19, 1921, page 11, “Samuel P Fetter Dead”

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 a 1930s wonder drug that was never tested before being marketed. Dr. S.E. Massengill said of his company’s Elixir of Sulfanilimide: "My chemists and I deeply regret the fatal results, but there was no error in the manufacture of the product. We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part." The firm's head chemist apparently did not share this feeling; Harold Watkins committed suicide after learning of the 100 deaths his concoction had caused.

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.

North Carolinian forest ranger William Nothstein “had a movie projector and a trunk about that high, and old silent movies and a screen and film and mending kit, and all that sort of thing, and I went around and showed motion pictures, fire prevention movies, and also game protection pictures; wild life protection.” In this oral history excerpt he tells us about an elderly widow who offered to sell him a homemade suit while he was in the line of duty.

When asked by Federal agent Melvin Purvis about the Kansas City Massacre, he snapped, "I won't tell you anything, you son-of-a-bitch." Depending on whose version is more accurate, these may well have been Charles Arthur Pretty Boy Floyd's last words. October 22, 2009 is the 75th anniversary of the shoot-out death of the career bank robber who just three months earlier had been designated "Public Enemy No. 1" by J. Edgar Hoover.

In our next piece we’ll hear the description of court case in Fentress County, TN, in which a man by the name of Stout was arrested for bewitching the beautiful daughter of a Mr. Taylor, who lived on the Obeds River. The courthouse guards weren’t taking any chances; before entering the courtroom they took the precaution of remove the lead bullets from their guns and replacing them with silver bullets, just in case the defendant tried anything out of the ordinary.

The decision of a county to change its county seat doesn’t seem like front page news. But let’s peek in on a late nineteenth century power struggle set in Randolph County WV. Timber rich, today much of it is in the Monongahela National Forest. And that wealth of natural resources set the stage for the Courthouse War of the 1890s between the towns of Beverly and Elkins.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at the origin of the phrase ‘jack o lantern’. It has to do with an old Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack who succeeded several times in tricking the Devil. But of course you can’t go around tricking the Devil without, well, hell to pay later on!

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by A.A. Gray & Seven Foot Dilly in a 1930 recording of “Streak of Lean, Streak of Fat.”

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.