Appalachian History

It's an important part of the local religious landscape.

That's probably the easiest way to sum up Fields of the Wood in Murphy, North Carolina. If you leave my hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee, headed east on U.S. Transcontinental Highway 64, you'll go through Polk County (the southeastern most county in Tennessee) and then cross over into North Carolina. And, soon, you'll see the turn-off to Fields of the Wood.

Fields of the Wood was started by Bishop Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson in the early 20th Century. He was a preacher from Indiana who came to Western North Carolina to pass out tracts to the mountain people. He and a few of his followers decided they wanted to start a church, one that would be the true way to Christ. So, one day, he hiked up one of the local mountains and prayed. When he returned, he claimed God had showed him what kind of church it should be. And, thus, the Church of God of Prophecy was born.

Fields of the Wood in 1945. Note form of the two tablets outlining the 10 Commandments center of photo.

When his church formed, Bishop Tomlinson decided its birthplace would be a good place to mark. The church bought 210 acres, including the mountain where Tomlinson went to pray, and it was named Fields of the Wood.

The centerpiece of the park is the world's largest display of the Ten Commandments. The letters are 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. When Bishop Tomlinson died in 1943, the letters were spelled out in lime. In 1945, the letters were upgraded to white-painted concrete.

Since Tomlinson died, the park has developed. Now, it includes the world's largest altar, an 80 foot concrete structure where Tomlinson prayed. There is also the world's largest New Testament; it's 30 feet tall and 50 feet wide. And, the park holds the world's largest cross, measuring 115 feet wide and 150 feet long.

Original caption: Brother Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson prays at the site of his June 13, 1903 prayer in Fields of the Wood.

In addition, the park includes: Prayer Mountain, Psalms of Praise, puppet shows, the Solid Rock Café, the 1 Fold 1 Shepherd Marker, the Arise, Shine Marker, the Baptismal Pool, the Bethlehem Star, the Chapel, the Duck Pond, the Golgotha replica, the Gospel Theatre, the Hidden Treasures Gift Shop, the replica of Joseph's Tomb, nature trails, a pavilion, and picnic areas.

Meanwhile, the Church of God of Prophecy has grown to over 700,000 members in 115 countries.

There's something about the park, though, that bugs me. Heaven forbid I come between anyone and what gets them through the night. But, the whole Ten Commandments thing makes me wonder.

The premise of the church is to "find the true way of Christ." But, the Ten Commandments listed are not the happy ones; they're the "Thou shalt not" collection. In Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

But, those aren't listed in the world's largest display of the Ten Commandments.
And, at the Last Supper, Jesus said, "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

I didn't find that there, either.

But, hey, what do I know?

TWH

[Sources: http://fieldsofthewoodbiblepark.com
www.westernncattractions.com/fieldsof.htm
www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2613]



Church+of+appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Ambrose+Jessup+Tomlinson God+of+Prophecy Fields+of+the+Wood Murphy+NC

It calls into question the definition of civilization.

Hollywood and pop culture would have you think that Native Americans are poor, uneducated, lazy, shiftless relics of a bygone era who can't handle their firewater and are dependent on the federal government for a hand-out. But, one look at the Chief Vann House and all of that goes out the window.

The Chief Vann house is located on Spring Place Road, three miles west of Chatsworth, Georgia, at the intersection of Highways 225 and 52-A. It is one of the oldest remaining buildings in North Georgia, featuring beautiful hand carvings, a 12 foot mantle, and a cantilevered 'floating' staircase that left me speechless, when I first saw it as a kid on a school trip. It is one of the few buildings in the Southeast Tennessee/North Georgia area that I would feel comfortable in calling a mansion.

In the 1790s, Chief James Vann, a half-Scots/half-Cherokee leader and instrumental force in the Cherokee Renaissance, created the largest and most prosperous plantation in the Cherokee Nation, covering 1,000 acres of what is now Murray County. He was "feared by many and loved by few." But, at the start of the 19th Century, he was one of the richest men in the Western Hemisphere and a member of the Cherokee Triumvirate. He was responsible for bringing in the Moravian missionaries, to teach the children Christianity. In 1804, he finished building his 2½ story Federal-style brick home that has been called "the Showplace of the Cherokee Nation."

Chief James Vann had three wives and five children. After he was murdered in 1809 for killing his brother-in-law in a duel a year earlier, his eldest son, Joseph, inherited the mansion and plantation, and eventually became even wealthier than his father. In 1819, "Rich Joe" entertained and lodged President James Monroe at the house.

After the Georgia Gold Rush, Joseph hired a white man to run the plantation, unknowingly violating a new Georgia law forbidding whites from working for Cherokees without a permit. The Georgia Guard tried to take over the house. Spencer Riley claimed he won the house in the Land Lottery of 1832 and the Vanns were caught in a struggle between Riley and the Guard. Col. Bishop, of the Guard, threw a smoldering log on the cantilevered steps and smoked Riley out of the house.

The Vanns were eventually forced out of the house in March, 1835. That November, Col. Bishop imprisoned John Howard Payne (the composer of Home, Sweet Home) for 13 days on the grounds, charging him with sedition for supporting the Cherokee over the state of Georgia.

The rest of the story, though, is that Chief James Vann also owned approximately 200 slaves. According to the house's tour guide, the house had two rooms in the basement. One served as a wine cellar. The other served as a torture chamber for misbehaving slaves.

And, this brings us back to our original issue-- what does it mean to be civilized?

Two hundred years later, it's still a beautiful house. It is filled with items that scream refinement. You cannot walk through the house and claim the Vanns were barbarians.

But, they owned other people. And, when those people didn’t act like they wanted them to, they tortured them.

And, I've got a problem with that.

I try to tell myself, "He was a man of his time." I walk around the house and I say to myself, "This wasn’t just a mansion; it was early 19th Century siegecraft."

But, I can't get past the irony, that underneath the house was a universal symbol of refinement and opulence, as well as a universal symbol of tyranny and evil.

TWH


[Sources: http://www.gastateparks.org/info/chiefvann/; http://ngeorgia.com/ang/Chief_Vann_House_Historic_Site; http://chieftainstrail.com/sites/chief_vann_house.html; http://www.northga.net/murray/vann.html; http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2726]


Chief+Vann+House +Cherokee+leaders Chatsworth+GA James+Vann Murray+County+GA appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Sometimes, you see something and it's so far removed from what you expected, that all you can mutter is, "Huh?"

That was my reaction, the first time I hiked back through the woods, to see "The Wall" at Fort Mountain State Park, atop Fort Mountain, just east of Chatsworth, Georgia. It’s part of the Chattahoochee National Forest, close to the Cohutta Wilderness area, at the southwestern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The park and mountain gets its name from a mysterious stone wall that's been sitting on top of the mountain since before the Cherokee moved into the region. It's built without mortar and made from large non-native rocks. It’s 855 feet long and varies from 2 to 6 feet in height. It runs east to west and lines up with the Winter Solstice. And, the Native Americans who were there before the Cherokee claimed it was built by moon-eyed people.

Feel free to cue up "The Twilight Zone" music.

I'm a lifelong military history buff and I can't, for the life of me, see any defensive application to the structure. It's sitting in the middle of the woods. That's just not how forest fighting is done.

It has what looks like pods, for lack of a better term, kind of like stone foxholes. Or, maybe they were used as a base for beams for a larger structure. One theory is that honeymooners spent the night in the pods.

I don’t know.

The whole thing baffles me and everyone who visits it.

The best archeological guess is that it was built between 500 B.C. and 1500 A.D., with the highest probability that it was built around 500 A.D. One leading theory is that the moon-eyed people were followers of Prince Madoc, a Welsh adventurer who showed up in Mobile Bay around 1400 A.D. and presumably moved north. Some petroglyphs support the legend, but apparently there is nothing conclusive, yet.

And, it just sits there, mocking us, defying everything we think we know about pre-Columbian history. It sits quietly, serenely, not really caring whether we figure it out or not.

That's why I call it The Poor Man's Stonehenge. It's just as mysterious. It raises just as many questions. It's just as mesmerizing. It just hasn't had the hype.

It's one of North Georgia's best kept secrets, in more ways than one.

TWH

[Sources: http://www.gastateparks.org/info/fortmt/; http://ngeorgia.com/ang/Fort_Mountain_State_Park]


The+appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Chattahoochee+National+Forest Poor+Man's+Stonehenge Fort+Mountain+State+Park

It was 1925 and the world was coming unhinged.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx had gotten people to thinking. Albert Einstein had turned science on its ear. Sigmund Freud had brought up topics previously considered taboo. White kids were starting to pay attention to black kids' music, that thing called Jazz. The temperance folks' noble gesture had turned into the best thing that ever happened to organized crime. The War to End All Wars hadn’t. The Lost Generation was hanging out on the Left Bank of the Seine.

And, Little Chucky Darwin had dropped a bomb on the world that was, at the same time, profound and beautiful. After thousands of years of recorded history, it had finally dawned on him that things adapt to their surroundings.

Well, duh.

The problem behind all of these new-fangled ideas was that it meant a shift in power. If you were on the up-side of that power curve, life was good. But, if you were on the losing end, the only thing left to do was fight.

And, that’s what put Dayton, Tennessee on the map.

Dayton is just northwest of Cleveland, my hometown, across the Tennessee River. And, in 1925, as a publicity stunt and boon for tourism, the locals engineered for John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, to teach evolution in his classroom, in direct violation of the Tennessee law prohibiting it. It drew a tsunami of press coverage and national attention, as two of the top lawyers of the day argued the role of science and religion in schools and, by extension, public life. Clarence Darrow argued for science; William Jennings Bryan argued for religion.

William Jennings Bryan (seated, left, with fan) and Clarence Darrow (standing, center, with arms folded) at an outdoor courtroom during Scopes trial in Dayton, TN.

Rhetorically, Darrow kicked Bryan to the curb. But, Darrow also knew he was playing a game rigged against him. So, Darrow stooped to conquer. He asked the jury to find his client guilty, so the thing could be appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. And, sure enough, a year later, the court overturned the lower court's ruling and dismissed the case.

Science won the day.

In the trial's wake, we now have the stage play Inherit the Wind and Dayton has a conservative college, Bryan College, named after the loser-- William Jennings Bryan.

But, as you've probably noticed, the debate permeating the Scopes Monkey Trial has not gone away. The Religious Right, which is neither, has repackaged creationism as Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design contends the world is too complex to understand and, thus, a conscious being (translation: the Angry Sky Dad of the Old Testament), must be behind it.

Well, the universe may be too complex for fundamentalists to understand, but the rest of us are making pretty good headway with science.

See, religion and science are not in opposition to each other. Religion addresses a who question and science addresses a how question. The who question may be answered by the Divine Sugar Daddy of the New Testament or Ahura Mazda or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Brahman or the Tao, to name a few. But, science addresses the nuts-and-bolts issues of how the creative force (whoever/whatever it is) did the job.

The short version of the impact of the Scopes Monkey Trial is that it all boiled down to power. Unquestioningly, the Bible holds some of the greatest wisdom ever shared with mankind. But, when fallible mortals twist that wisdom into a tool for social control, people suffer. When the few use religion to scare the masses, to threaten people with eternal damnation if they don’t tow the line, bad things happen. When leaders reward people for not thinking and questioning long-held assumptions simply because they’re long-held assumptions, our future generations are doomed.

But, for one brief shining moment, common sense prevailed. The ability to use those lovely bio-computers between our ears was recognized. And, on a hot summer day, just across the river, we got the chance to get to know ourselves a little better.

TWH

[Source: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm]


Scopes+Monkey+Trial Clarence+Darrow William+Jennings+Bryan Dayton+TN appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history John+Scopes

Hi, everybody. While Dave's on a much-needed vacation, I'll be pinch-hitting for him here at AppalachianHistory.net. I'll be doing a piece each day this week, about a place near and dear to my heart-- Southeast Tennessee. Some of the topics may be familiar to you; some may be brand new. But, either way, I hope you have fun getting to know my Southern Appalachia, my neck of the woods.

Today, I thought I'd start us out with a discussion about one of the most significant events in Southeast Tennessee history and the park that has sprung up as a result of it.

Red Clay State Historic Park sits in the southwest corner of Bradley County, Tennessee, just north of the Tennessee-Georgia line. And, it was at Red Clay that the Cherokee nation held its government-in-exile, its last councils, before embarking on the Trail of Tears.

Until 1832, the capital of the Cherokee nation had been at New Echota, Georgia, about an hour’s drive south of Red Clay, on Spring Place Road. But, a variety of factors caused the State of Georgia to outlaw the assembling of Cherokees in Georgia, except for the purpose of signing treaties that gave away their land. The discovery of gold in Dahlonega, just a couple of counties over, was not among the least of those factors.

Anderson and Meacy Hooker, the author's paternal great-grandparents. She's a full-blooded Cherokee.

So, from 1832 to 1838, the Cherokee nation held eleven general councils at Red Clay, with attendance upwards of 5,000 people. Various factions within the tribe argued the fate of the Cherokee people. But, in the end, the Cherokee nation split.

And, that's where Red Clay gets personal for me.

I could tell you about "Cry of the Owl," the play about the last council meeting. It premiered with the park's opening. I was in it.

I could tell you about my prior girlfriends who I've taken on the hiking trail at the park. But, let's not go there.

No, Red Clay gets personal for me because, in a very tangible way, the Cherokees never left Red Clay. The official story is that the western band of the Cherokee made the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma and the eastern band stayed in the western Carolina mountains, forming what is known today as Cherokee, North Carolina. But, then, there are the rest of us.

Harriet Frazier Walker, the author's maternal great-grandmother, a
full-blooded Cherokee.

I don't know a native-born Southeast Tennessean who isn't at least partially Cherokee. On my father's side, my great-grandmother was Meacy Louisy Kanzada Jane Hughes Hooker and she was a full-blooded Cherokee. On my mother's side, my great-grandmother was Harriet Frazier Walker and she was a full-blooded Cherokee, too. Doing the math, that makes me a quarter Cherokee. And, I'm as proud of that heritage as I am the remaining English on my father's side and the remaining Scots-Irish on my mother's side.

And, my lineage isn't that unique for this area. In fact, it's rather common.

So, we're left with a really nice state park. It covers 263 acres. It has a natural landmark, the Blue Hole Spring, which feeds into Mill Creek, which feeds into the Conasauga River and Coosa River systems. It has a picnic pavilion that holds up to 100 people. It has a park-ranger station, where you can learn more about the Cherokee nation and all the stuff that went on at the park.

And, Red Clay State Historic Park holds an irony. It's a tribute to those who left and a reminder for those of us who didn't.

TWH


Sources: http://tn.gov/environment/parks/RedClay/
http://state.tn.us/environment/parks/RedClay/features/historic.shtml]


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Red+Clay+State+Park Trail+of+Tears Blue+Hole+Spring Conasauga+River Coosa+River Cherokee+nation

I'm taking a little vacation next week, folks. But I'll tell you what, I'm leaving you in the capable hands of blogger Tim Hooker, who runs the very delightful Sushi Tuesday blog out of Cleveland, TN. If he can't get you through the worst dog days of August, well then you'll want to get a new dog or a new calendar. Please make him feel at home while I'm out goofing off!

Starting in 1925 she logged in nearly 65,000 miles exploring the trees and shrubs of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Her resulting 1950 book, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America, laid the foundation for the measurement and evaluation of all future ecological changes in the hardwood forest. The book has been reprinted three times already, and is still used for reference today.

Dr. Lucy Braun (1889-1971) was one of the pivotal influences in the developing field of ecology. She contributed mightily to the fields of vascular plant taxonomy, plant geography, plant ecology, and land conservation. Braun expanded on the theory that the southern Appalachians were the center of the survival of plants during the glacial era, and from there the forest communities spread. She was the first ecologist to identify the mixed mesophytic forest as a coherent system.

"I have attempted, first, to portray what is (or was) present in any geographic area and to reconstruct the pattern of original forest insofar as the fragments permit," said Braun in the preface of her most well known book, "second, to give data on composition and aspect of forest communities in all parts of the deciduous forest; and third, to trace through geologic time the development of the present pattern of forest distribution.

"As the years go by, it becomes increasingly difficult to form any concept of the original forest cover. The virgin forests have been cut, the land is either cleared and farmed or is clothed with second-growth forest which may in no way suggest the original forest. In many sections no single tract of virgin forest remains today."

Braun's commitment to conservation led to the eventual preservation of over 10,000 acres in Ohio. Much of this land was carefully studied by Braun and her students at the University of Cincinnati, and the plant life cataloged for posterity.

Lucy Braun spent her entire academic career at that school, starting as an assistant in geology (1910-1913) and progressing to associate professor in botany (1927-1946). An early study compared the plant life of the Cincinnati area in the 1920s and 1930s to plant life in the same area 100 years earlier. This work provided a model for analyzing the changes in a plant system over a specific time period, and was one of the first such studies in the United States.

Braun was made a full professor in plant ecology in 1946. She held the position for only two years, retiring early so she could devote the remainder of her career to research involving field studies. From 1934 to 1963 Braun drove her own car on her field excursions, never shying away from difficult backwoods roads. Her sister accompanied Lucy on her travels; Annette studied moths while Lucy observed plants.

During the 1940s Braun described four species and four varieties of vascular plants, all from Kentucky, and one hybrid, a fern from Adams County, OH, as 'new to science.' In 1950 she was named president of the Ecological Society of America.

From 1943 to 1967 Braun published several noteworthy books. An Annotated Catalog of the Spermatophytes of Kentucky appeared in 1943. She published The Woody Plants of Ohio (1961) and The Monocotyledoneae: Cat-tails to Orchids (1967) toward the end of her career.

They were written as part of a project, undertaken by the Ohio Flora Committee of the Ohio Academy of Science, to do a comprehensive study of the vascular flora of Ohio. Braun also edited Wildflower, the journal of the Cincinnati chapter of the Wildflower Preservation Society, which she founded. In all Dr. Braun published more than 180 works.


Sources: Women in the Biological Sciences: A Biobibliographic Sourcebook, by Louise S. Grinstein, Carol A. Biermann, Rose K. Rose, 1997, Greenwood Publishing Group
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/chronob/BRAU1889.htm
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761582587/Braun_(Emma)_Lucy.html#461521747


Dr.+E.+Lucy+Braun Deciduous+Forests+of+Eastern+North+America plant+ecology appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Feedsack fashion officially got its start in 1924. Oh, thrifty farm wives nationwide had known for years that this common cotton bag--- fondly nicknamed chicken linen, 'pretties,' or hen house linen---was a great source of utilitarian fabric for dish cloths, diapers, nightgowns, curtains, pillowcases and more.

But in the 2nd quarter of the 20th century manufacturers came up with a fresh way to turn this fact to their additional advantage. Plain sacks were a commodity, but by offering sacks in various prints and solid colors manufacturers could differentiate themselves from the competition and create loyalty. It would take three identical sacks to make a dress, four to make a bed sheet, and the farmer just might be induced to buy more that way.

Double chain quilt made of cotton and feedsack prints, circa 1920, Southern Ohio. Quilted with 10 stitches per inch. It has a thin batting, white back and a narrow white binding. 72" x 87"

And so U.S. Patent #1611403, filed on October 29, 1924 by Asa T. Bales, states in part:
"One of the objects of this invention is to provide a package having a sack, the cloth of which is adapted to be used for dress goods after the product has been removed or consumed.” Bales assigned the patent to Geo P. Plant Milling Co. in St Louis. Crescent Flour and Feed Company of Springfield, MO, was the first to market their products in the bright printed bags.

About the only patterning on the earliest feedsacks, dating from about 1840, was the brand name printed on the bag’s side. In order for women to use these bags they first had to remove the label. Recipes for doing this were treasured and exchanged wherever woman gathered. Housewives used such methods as soaking the brand in kerosene or rubbing it with unsalted lard, then washing it with lye soap. Later they’d use Fels-Naptha soap and Chlorine bleach.

As late as the 1880s barrels were still the preferred storage unit, but by WWI they had all but disappeared. And once the feedsack became the default, it certainly wouldn’t have taken long for the typical farmer to acquire plenty of feedsack material. Flour, sugar, feed, seeds, rice, and fertilizer were all packaged in the sacks. The quality of the cloth varied with the item it carried. Sugar sacks, for example, were much finer in weave.

Once feedsack prints appeared on the scene, magazines and pattern companies were quick to take notice of their popularity and publish patterns to encourage novel use of the prints. The bag manufacturers themselves also wrote ‘how-to’ pamphlets. Nothing was overlooked: one could even use the strings from feedsacks in knitting and crocheting.

By the thirties, thanks to the enforced frugality of the Great Depression, feedsack mania hit an all time high: textile designers were hired by feedsack manufacturers, sacks were produced with pre-printed patterns for dolls, stuffed animals, appliqué and quilt blocks, and feedsacks were sold and traded by women looking to get the perfect print. Matching fabrics and even matching wrapping papers were available, too.

Some sacks were printed as a series, such as the 1935 Sea Island sugar doll series; the entire doll series included Uncle Sam [shown], Scotty scotty dog, Uluk Eskimo doll, Minka Russian doll and Gobo, Indian doll.

Many sacks had themes. Some of the more collectible sacks now are those with Walt Disney themes (Davy Crockett, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy), movie themes (Gone with the Wind), comic book themes (Buck Rogers) or nursery rhyme themes (Little BoPeep, Humpty Dumpty).

By 1941 thirty-one textile mills manufactured bag goods. Bemis Brothers (MN), Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills, and Cottons Mills of Atlanta had their own textile mills. Other major bag manufacturers and suppliers were Chase, Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, Staley and Lone Star. A 1942 estimate showed that three million women and children of all income levels were wearing print feedbag garments.

After WWII, technological innovations provided more sanitary and effective packaging made of heavy paper and plastic containers. It was cost effective, too. A cotton bag cost 32 cents to make, as opposed to 10 cents for the paper bag. By 1948 this new industry cornered more than half of the bag market and the era of feedsack fashion drew to a close.


sources: “Identification and Value Guide to Textile Bags,” by Anna Lue Cook, 1990, Krause Publications
www.quilthistory.com/feedsacks.htm
http://thelibrary.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/su77f.htm
www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/feedsacks.htm
http://www.fabrics.net/joan301.asp
archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/BACKTOTHEPAST/2004-03/1080396620



Feedsack+clothing chicken+linen hen+house+linen appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

The July 29, 1806 letter was the thing that undid the Burr Conspiracy.

Harman Blennerhassett had been a moderately well off Anglo-Irish aristocrat prior to his becoming involved with Irish revolutionaries in the last decade of the 18th century. Fearing that British authorities might arrest him, he sold his property in Ireland and bounded for the United States with his wife Margaret.

In 1799 Blennerhassett bought half the island that now bears his name, an island on the Ohio River below the mouth of the Little Kanawha River, located near Parkersburg, WV. Blennerhassett and his wife proceeded to build a mansion on the island, where they entertained neighbors and any notables that came by.

In May 1805 Aaron Burr, former Vice President of the United States, and victor in the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, visited the Blennerhassett home.

After the visit Blennerhassett wrote to Burr:
"I should be honored in being associated with you, in any contemplated enterprise you would permit me to participate in....Viewing the probability of a rupture with Spain,...I am disposed, in the confidential spirit of this letter, to offer you and my friends' and my own services in any contemplated measures in which you may embark."

Using the 300 acre island as a staging ground, Burr aimed to form a new country fashioned from the Louisiana Purchase territories. He also proposed to conquer Texas and the rest of Mexico to add to this western nation. Apparently Burr found a friend in Blennerhassett---during one conversation the Irishman told Burr he would be King Aaron I of Mexico and his daughter Theodosia would be a princess.

By the end of August 1806, Burr returned to Blennerhasset's Island, making final preparations for his expedition. Burr brought with him to the island a force of less than fifty men, which he planned to be the nucleus of a conquering army. He contracted to purchase fifteen boats capable of carrying 500 men, and a large keel boat for transporting provisions. He made orders for huge quantities of pork, corn meal, flour, and whiskey. Burr and his men planned to head down the Mississippi to confer with James Wilkinson, the U.S. Army’s ranking general and one of Burr’s oldest friends, then in New Orleans.

In early October, a ciphered letter sent by Burr reached Wilkinson in New Orleans.

I have obtained funds, and have actually commenced the enterprise. Detachments from different points under different pretenses will rendezvous on the Ohio, 1st November-- everything internal and external favors views--protection of England is secured.

T[ruxton] is gone to Jamaica to arrange with the admiral on that station, and will meet at the Mississippi-- England---Navy of the United States are ready to join, and final orders are given to my friends and followers--it will be a host of choice spirits. Wilkinson shall be second to Burr only--Wilkinson shall dictate the rank and promotion of his officers.

Burr will proceed westward 1st August, never to return: with him go his daughter--the husband will follow in October with a corps of worthies. Send forthwith an intelligent and confidential friend with whom Burr may confer. He shall return immediately with further interesting details--this is essential to concert and harmony of the movement....

[T]he project is brought to the point so long desired: Burr guarantees the result with his life and honor--the lives, the honor and fortunes of hundreds, the best blood of our country. Burr's plan of operations is to move rapidly from the falls on the 15th of November, with the first five hundred or one thousand men, in light boats now constructing for that purpose--to be at Natchez between the 5th and 15th of December--then to meet Wilkinson--then to determine whether it will be expedient in the first instance to seize on or pass by Baton Rouge.

On receipt of this send Burr an answer--draw on Burr for all expenses, &c. The people of the country to which we are going are prepared to receive us--their agents now with Burr say that if we will protect their religion, and will not subject them to a foreign power, that in three weeks all will be settled.

The gods invite to glory and fortune--it remains to be seen whether we deserve the boon.... --29th July.

But Wilkinson saw the new army’s dark future. British Prime Minister William Pitt had recently died and Wilkinson learned of Charles Fox taking over the government. This would end British support for the expedition and ultimately drive it to the ground. He panicked, and dropped out of Burr’s conspiracy.

Wilkinson instead rushed troops to the Mississippi Valley and ordered troops in New Orleans to be on alert for an attack. He sent Burr's ciphered letter (in decoded form), together with one from another co-conspirator, to President Thomas Jefferson.

A militia detachment of thirty men caught up with Burr when he and his expedition of between sixty and hundred men were camped across from Natchez, on the west bank of the Mississippi. Burr was handed a letter from the Governor of Mississippi demanding his surrender. Burr responded to the letter by denouncing Wilkinson, whose "perfidious conduct" had "completely frustrated" his "projects."

Meanwhile Ohio and Virginia militias were sent to stop boat traffic on the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers and seize the Blennerhassett home. Blennerhassett escaped down the river, and his wife, after much difficulty with the invaders, followed him with their three children. The mansion was heavily damaged by the militiamen, who were no doubt frustrated by the elusive Blennerhassett. But when Blennerhassett tried to return to recover some of the furnishings he too was arrested.

The government had no problem proving that Burr raised money and men on Blennerhasset Island. The only problem was that they could not work the evidence into anything higher than a misdemeanor charge. As a result the trial, conducted by Chief Justice John Marshall, resulted in acquittal of both men on the grounds that Burr had never committed an overt act, as required by the constitutional definition of the offense.

The Blennerhassett mansion burned in 1809.

During the 1980s, the mansion was reconstructed on its original foundations. Today the island is the site of Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park.


sources: www.blennerhassettislandstatepark.com/history.html
www.wvculture.org/HISTORY/notewv/blenner.html
www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/burr/burraccount.html
www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=655



Blennerhassett+Island Aaron+Burr Burr+Conspiracy Harman+Blennerhassett appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

GO to Mystery Hill at Blowing Rock, NC! SEE people stand on 45-degree angles! WATCH water roll uphill! Mystery after mystery!

America loves Mystery Spots. Irish Hills, MI, also has a Mystery Hill. Lake Wales, FL, has Spook Hill. California has the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. Mystery spots of land, often known as gravity hills ---they seemingly pull objects uphill--- are found throughout the United States. The story behind each one is similar. Gravity doesn't work in them. People grow smaller, can't stand up straight and can barely walk.

Promotions may boast that strange forces in the spots trump the laws of physics. In reality, however, the Mystery Spot is an example of clever optical illusions paired with good old fashioned capitalism. Mystery spots sprang up throughout the country during the Great Depression, a period when the American public was anxious for a little sensationalism to distract them from their daily reality.

The House of Mystery in the Oregon Vortex, Gold Hill, OR was the first one built, in 1930. The attraction proved popular enough to spur imitators, and other anti-gravity houses started appearing, each identical in construction, appearance, and presentation of effects. In 1948, North Carolinian William Hudson encountered an article in LIFE magazine about the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. He and his wife traveled out to research it, and in 1949 opened Mystery House at Blowing Rock, NC.

"Broomsticks appear to stand on end with no means of support," gushed his brochures. "Balls seem to roll uphill. The museum contains the Hall of Mystery — an ample collection of well-known and obscure optical illusion displays including the Spooky Spigot, Magic Light bulb, holograms and the Flying Mirror."

And just how does the Mystery Spot illusion work? First of all, notice the strange tilt when you enter a Mystery Spot house. All references to the true horizontal are removed from your sight. This is always true whether you are just outside the house or inside it. For example, there is always an opaque fence around the house to remove any significant comparisons to the true horizontal.

The Mystery Spot house is actually built at an angle of 25° off the true horizontal. This will explain every effect seen. Once in the area of a Mystery Spot house you are always comparing the effects to what you are used to -- normal-level floors and walls that are perpendicular to the ground.

On the diagram you see the actual tilt of the house to the true horizontal.

Both people are perpendicular to the true horizontal. On the bottom, you see the situation as it is perceived by the people inside the room.

They have no access to the true horizontal, and are judging their surroundings by a horizontal that is created by the room. This causes one to have an internal change of reference frames, which causes the people to appear as they are actually leaning off the walls.

Secondary cues to horizontal orientation, such as inner ear and other bodily sensations of gravity, appear to become less functional in the tilted condition, leaving visual context as the dominant cue.

We like to tease reality, to lose the security of familiar spatial references for a brief time. No wonder so many people still consider mystery spots to be a premium ticket.


sources: www.mysteryhill-nc.com
www.sandlotscience.com/MysterySpots/Mystery_Spots_1.htm
http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/mystery_spot.html
www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0909/spot.html
A Guide for Spiritual Travelers in North Carolina, by Timothy Whittaker, 2005, Dueces Wild



mystery+spots Mystery+Hill+NC Blowing+Rock+NC optical+illusions appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Asheville, NC
July 25, 1923---Fire down at the Emporium Department Store just outside of Pack Square. Photo looking towards Biltmore Avenue (south).


Ashville+NC firefighting appalachia appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history

She wrote about 1500 hymns in all, over a 37 year period. In her lifetime her songs were translated and sung in Africa, India, China, and Korea. Her best known songs, 'Nearer, Still Nearer,' and 'Let Jesus Come Into Your Heart' (both penned 1898), and another, 'Sweet Will of God,' (1900) can still be found in hymnals today.

Born in Pennsville, OH on April 15, 1862, Leila Naylor Morris grew up in Malta and McConnelsville, OH. She was quite young when her father died, so her mother started a millinery shop to support the five children. There young Leila learned to knit, sew, crochet and darn. When she started piano lessons she practiced at a neighbor’s house because the family could not afford an instrument.

"When I was ten years old I was led to give my heart to God. It was not a form of giving my heart to God. I knew then that I needed a Savior. Three different years I went forward to the altar and prayed and prayed, until a man came and laid his hand on my head and said 'Why, little girl, God is here and ready to forgive your sins'." Leila began playing the organ for prayer meetings when she was just 12 years old.

In 1881, Leila married Charles H. Morris. She transferred her membership to her husband’s church, the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Morrises actively supported their congregation. Leila served as a choir member and a leader in the Sunday school, the Epworth League, and the missionary society.

Until she was thirty Leila thought she'd be spending the rest of her life sitting behind a sewing machine making dresses for women in McConnellsville. But ten years after she got married she became interested in writing gospel songs. Her husband said that she always kept a pad of paper handy so that if she got the inspiration for another hymn she could write it down. She composed her work in the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, where she'd learned to play the organ. This congregation was formally established in McConnelsville in 1826 and is that town's oldest denomination.

Many well known hymns, including "Sweeter As the Years Go By," "Nearer, Still Nearer," and "Let Jesus Come Into Your Heart," were composed in Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church by its organist, Mrs. Leila Morris.

Evangelists quickly began using Leila's songs. Many would visit in her home when they were in Ohio. If Leila was attending a camp meeting or revival service, she often would be invited to sit on the platform. Leila relished the opportunity to be in these services because she frequently was inspired to write songs after returning home from the meetings.

In 1913, Leila's eyesight began to fail. For awhile she used a twenty-eight foot black board that had the music staff lines on it that her son made for her. Within a year she was completely blind. Despite her lost sight she continued to write gospel songs with the help of devoted friends. She would simply remember the songs until her daughter Fanny came for an annual visit. Leila would dictate dozens of songs as her daughter wrote them down, both words and music.

Leila's daughter Mary and her husband were missionaries to China. "A great many persons have said [Mary] should be at home with her blind mother. . . . I have been so happy to receive her letters in which she tells of being able to give a message for the first time to those darkened minds and hearts. I think you will agree with me that this is the best thing I have ever done."

Leila Naylor Morris died on July 23, 1929.


sources: www.preparingforeternity.org/hymn_stories/let_jesus_come.shtml
www.morgan.lib.oh.us/Morgan_County_History_Stories.doc
www.whwomenclergy.org/booklets/satisfied.php
The Complete Book of Hymns: Inspiring Stories about 600 Hymns and Praise, by William J. Petersen, Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.



Leila+Naylor+Morris Trinity+Methodist+Episcopal+Church McConnellsville+OH appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Leo Lambert (1895-1955), though trained as a chemist, was an avid cave enthusiast. He was the first person to explore the Tennessee Cave on Mount Aetna (now known as Raccoon Mountain Caverns), and at one time managed the Nickajack Caverns in Marion County, TN. He moved to Chattanooga because his fiancée Ruby Eugenia Losey moved there with her family; they were married in 1916.

It had been 11 years since the Southern Railway had built a railroad tunnel along the face of Lookout Mountain and through some portions of the mountain for one of its lines, a construction project that had permanently sealed a well known natural opening to Lookout Mountain Cave.

Given his knowledge of Tennessee caves, Lambert surely would have been aware of the cave’s colorful history: used first as a campsite by Native Americans, later a hideout for outlaws. During the Civil War, the caverns were used by both Confederate and Union troops. Many soldiers wrote their names and units on the walls. Southern Railway had left in its wake a business opportunity. Lambert decided in 1923 to drill open the cave and become a tour operator.

He formed Lookout Mountain Cave Company and purchased land above the cave. He planned to make an opening further up the mountain than the original natural opening and transport tourists to the cave via an elevator.

In 1928 Lambert selected a site for an elevator shaft into the original cave and began drilling. Midway into drilling the 400-foot elevator shaft, on December 28, a worker operating a jackhammer discovered a void in the rock and felt a gush of air. A small crevice was opened, about 18 inches high and five feet wide.

Lambert and other corporate officials immediately decided to investigate it and spent 17 hours on this first exploration trip. A passage opened into a falls cave. They came back with a description of a cave with beautiful formations and an amazing 145-foot waterfall, located 260 ft inside Lookout Mountain. The falls flow into a landing pool which drains into the Tennessee River. On his second trip Lambert was accompanied by his wife Ruby. On this trip he named the waterfall - after her - Ruby Falls.

Lambert decided to develop both caves and to offer two cave tours. After 92 days of work, day and night, the elevator shaft reached the original cave. The elevator was installed, paths were prepared, and the original cave opened to the public in 1929. The entrance building, Cavern Castle, looks like a 15th century Irish castle. It was constructed from limestone excavated from the elevator shaft. Development continued in the new cave and in 1930 the second tour to Ruby Falls was opened to the public.

At first the two caverns were shown on separate tours, but the popularity of the falls far exceeded that of the lower cave and that trip was discontinued in 1935.

After years of financial struggle during the Great Depression, the Lookout Mountain Cave Company declared bankruptcy. New ownership launched an aggressive advertising campaign, based on roadside signs, and made Ruby Falls into what is today one of Chattanooga's major tourist attractions.

Ruby Falls is the largest underground waterfall open to the public in the United States. It and the larger Lookout Mountain Caverns complex have been designated a National Historic Landmark.


Sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=R060
www.rubyfalls.com
www.showcaves.com/english/usa/showcaves/RubyFalls.html
www.lookoutmountain.com/pages/fun_sites.html



Chattanooga+TN Ruby+Falls Leo+Lambert Lookout+Mountain+Cave appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

“I don’t know anything else. You see, I was born in North Georgia, in Dalton, the town that has figured in my books as ‘Darley,’” explained novelist Will N. Harben to a reporter in a 1905 interview. “So that while I am not one of the people about whom I write—for there is the sharpest line drawn there between the townspeople and the true countrymen still, my childhood and most of my life was spent amid such scenes as I have attempted to portray. Those people and the customs and conditions of their lives are as real to me as your own family life is to you. I cannot help writing about them, because I am thinking of them all the time.

“I get more and more out of it the further I go. And the deeper I go into the lives of these simple people the more I find to wonder at and admire and the deeper I want to go. It is an absorbing study, and my thoughts are so much bound up in it that my life is passed not so much in New York as in North Georgia. You have no idea of the depth of emotion of which these people are capable. You might know them a long time and never guess at the passion slumbering deep down in their souls until some chance occasion revealed to you the storm of feeling that had been sleeping concealed from all the world.

“They are a taciturn people, little given to demonstration, making light alike of their sufferings and their pleasures, but feeling with the full force of an ardent Southern temperament all the time. And their pride, especially their family pride – it is astounding. They are a clannish people, and you would be amazed to find the social distinctions which they observe among themselves. In their way these distinctions are far more fixed and more potent than those of the outside world. They have much ambition, but it is often asleep---lulled into content by the easy life that has been followed by generation after generation. Of course, in the towns this is not so true, and once the ambition of one of these North Georgians is aroused it is a mighty force.

“Yes, we have plenty of moonshiners, and among them are some of the best people there. But you cannot convince those people that they are doing any wrong. They really believe they have a perfect right to make whisky if they wish to, not only a moral right, but a legal right. You see, their sense of justice is absolute, and they believe they are fully within their rights as citizens. They are good people, too; kind, hospitable, and generous. I know them, because I have dealt with them.

“A keen sense of humor is one of their chief characteristics. It is the shrewd humor in these characters that make them so lovable. A group of North Georgians never comes together without this trait becoming apparent. Their conversations overflow with a canny mirth that is irresistible.

“[Abner Daniel] is a type only, a very common type in North Georgia. You can meet possible Abner Daniels sitting around on benches and cracker boxes all through this region. I have listened to the conversation of such men by the hour.”

Will Harben (1858-1919) was one of the most popular novelists in America during the first two decades of the twentieth century. In his thirty books and numerous short stories Harben portrays the mountaineers of his native North Georgia with authenticity and color, though his reputation today suffers from his use of a sentimental romanticism demanded by readers of his day.

“Abner Daniel (1902) made a wide appeal, North as well as South, and really laid the foundation stone of Mr. Harben’s reputation as a delineator of character,” commented critic Annie Booth McKinney in the Library of Southern Literature. “Crude, whimsical, sarcastic, yet good-natured, droll, witty, human, Abner Daniel stands quite apart, and it unlikely that his creator will ever surpass this creation. No one can read carefully any of his stories and fail to be impressed by their underlying sincerity, or fail to rejoice in the crisp humor that seems to be as much a part of old Abner and Pole Baker as the blue is of the sky.”


Sources: North Georgia’s Quaint Folk as a Novelist’s Type, Vivian M Moses, NY Times, August 13, 1905, http://snipurl.com/31fos [query_nytimes_com]
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1233
Library of Southern Literature By Edwin Anderson Alderman, Joel Chandler Harris, Charles William Kent, 1909, the Martin & Hoyt Company


Dalton North+Georgia Will+N.+Darden appalachian+authors appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"I went up to Wise that night along with my cousin and not meaning no harm,” testified Edith Maxwell at her murder trial. “Along in the evening Raymond Meade came along and said he would give me a lift back to my house in Pound. There was some more people in the car with him but we let them out down the road a piece and Raymond Meade says to me: 'Let's go to the Little Ritz and get something to eat.' "

"The Lonesome Pine Girl," accused of killing her father Trigg on July 20, 1935, attracted the attention and support of newspaper, magazine, and radio reporters, as well as women's organizations, across the United States and Canada. Her nickname is a reference to a well known 1908 John Fox novel, The Trial of the Lonesome Pine, that portrayed the lifestyle of mountain residents in a rather one-dimensional manner.

So
 popular was the tale with the American public that a third production of it--
this one in sound and color--was being filmed, with considerable publicity,
even as Edith Maxwell faced the first of two trials in the Wise County, VA courthouse.

The media coverage the case received for nearly 
two years rivaled that given to the Scopes "monkey trial" of the 1920s. By the end of Maxwell's ordeal, even Eleanor Roosevelt had gotten involved.

Why the national spotlight? The Maxwell case was a clash between modernity and tradition, between "women's rights and reason against bigotry and fanaticism.” On the side of bigotry and tradition was the "code" of the Virginia mountains, where women and children had to obey and submit to the father, even when he physically abused them.

Edith had left home for two years of teacher's college, highly unusual for a young woman of her circumstances. After attending Radford State Teachers College (later Radford University), Maxwell reluctantly returned to Pound, where she associated with the "bright young set," tested the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and became frustrated by the limitations of small-town life.

Raymond Meade tried to get her to drink some liquor, Edith continued in her November 1935 court testimony, but all she took was some potato chips and a glass of ginger ale. She told him it was getting late and she had better be starting for home because she was going blackberrying next morning. When she got home around midnight her little sister, Mary Catherine, warned her: "Your bed covers is in Pappy's room but don't go in there. He's drunk and he's going to run Ma out of the house tomorrow." But Edith went in anyhow. Pappy woke up.

'I'm goin' to whip you," he said.

"Pappy, don't you do it," said Edith.

Pappy chased her out of the bedroom and grabbed a carving knife. "Pappy, don't you cut me," said Edith.

"I'll show you I can whip you," said Pappy.

Edith fell to the floor and fumbled for a pair of old high-heeled shoes she had given her Ma. She flailed out with one of them. Pappy fell back. Edith, half-naked from the fight, caught up a covering, ran out of the house. She could hear Pappy moaning: "Jesus, Jesus, why can't a man whip his own child?" Trigg was soon dead, allegedly from the beating Edith gave him.

The prosecutor tried to show that Edith was a fast filly who had saddened her honest mountaineer father with her late hours and citified ways. But he could not shake her story of the fight. It was further corroborated by Edith’s 11-year-old sister Mary Catherine who, when twitted by the prosecutor for forgetting certain details, leaned out of the witness chair and yelled: "And you wouldn't remember so good either if you had been as scared as I was that night with Pappy a-yellin' and a-cussin' and Edith a-tryin' to outrun him!"

Edith, argued her lawyers, had exercised no more than her "God-given right of self-defense." But that did not impress the jury, which, after less than an hour's deliberation, returned a guilty verdict.

Despite expert medical testimony that Trigg's wounds could not have caused his death and that he had probably died of a stroke or heart attack, rumor and innuendo were enough to send Edith to jail for five years of a 25 year sentence.

She was pardoned by Gov. James H. Price in December 1941 – thanks, in part, to a letter written on her behalf by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Upon her release, Edith changed her name to Ann Grayson and eventually made a new life for herself in Jacksonville, Fla., after marrying Otto Abshier, the owner of an Indianapolis trucking company.

The day after Trigg Maxwell died, his wife Ann, along with their daughter, had been indicted, but never brought to trial. Was Trigg Maxwell hit by Edith? Or was it Ann? Or was he hit at all?


Sources: www.blueridgecountry.com/FavoriteArticles/EdithMaxwell_MA06/index.html
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/VALib/v52_n2/reviews.html
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,848229,00.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_199512/ai_n8723473
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14615437&BRD=1283&PAG=461&dept_id=158544&rfi=6



appalachia Radford+State+Teachers+College Eleanor+Roosevelt Edith+Maxwell womens+suffrage Wise+County+VA John+Fox+Jr appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

During the July 27, 1941 race at the Daytona Beach-Road Course he suffered a crushed chest, broken pelvis, head and back injuries, and severe shock. He raced his two brothers and his sister in the July 10, 1949 race at the same course, the only NASCAR event to feature four siblings. And years later, after all the track dust settled, he died on July 15, 1972. You could say July tended to be an eventful month for NASCAR pioneer Truman Fontell "Fonty" Flock.

The Ft. Payne, AL native delivered moonshine as a teenager on his bicycle, and a few years later he was making trips in his car from Atlanta to Dawsonville, GA hauling moonshine. Fonty once said that he would seek out the sheriff and get him on a chase because he had a faster car. Fonty would send off to California and get the best parts for his car and the sheriff couldn't keep up with him and loved to tease him. The sheriff didn't have the sources to get the parts to make his car keep up with Fonty's.

He ran some of the semi-organized races before World War II broke out, winning a 100-mile race at Lakewood Park in Atlanta in 1940. By the time he was 20 in 1941, Flock was regarded as one of stock car racing's best drivers. After running the dirt tracks in Georgia for a couple of years he made his way to Daytona Beach, Florida searching for the high speed excitement of the Beach-Road courses.

He got plenty of it and more in the July 27, 1941 race mentioned above, where he landed the pole position alongside Roy Hall. Flock took a narrow lead in the opening lap, but the relentless Hall was nipping at his heel all the way down the long but narrow blacktop backstretch. As the pair wheeled into the South turn, the cars banged together. Flock's Ford darted to the high side of the corner, climbed the outer edge of the track and spiraled end-over-end and side-over-side into a clump of palmetto bushes. The seat belt had snapped in one of the early turnovers and Flock's limp body was flopping around inside the car. Flock was rushed by ambulance, to the Medical Center in Daytona Beach. He lived, barely.

Five months after Fonty's wreck the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and auto racing was banned until 1945. Fonty missed the 1945 and 1946 seasons because of his injuries and the '47 season was well under way when he was healed enough to race again. Despite the late start he was crowned the champion of the 1947 National Championship Stock Car Circuit, the forerunner to NASCAR. He finished second in the 1948 NASCAR standings and won the 1949 Modified title. Flock won 34 races in a few more than 100 starts.

During the early 1950s, Flock drove mostly in Grand National events. He finished second in the point standings in 1951, fourth in 1952, fifth in 1953, and tenth in 1955. Fonty quit NASCAR early in the 1954 season and campaigned in a Midwestern stock car series. He returned to NASCAR in 1955 and won three races, including a March 26, 1955 event that gave Chevrolet its first NASCAR Winston Cup victory in a 200-lap, 100-mile dirt-track race at Columbia (S.C.) Speedway.

He had established an insurance agency in Nashville and raced only part-time beginning in 1954.

In 1957 he entered only the beach-road race at Daytona, though he also drove in the Darlington 500 as relief for Herb Thomas, who'd been injured in a practice crash. The car was in bad shape: it blew a tire on the sixth lap and got hit by two other cars. On the 28th lap, the car escaped his control and spun at the entrance of turn three. Split seconds later, Bobby Myers and Paul Goldsmith smashed full-bore into the idle Flock. Flock and Goldsmith were seriously hurt. Bobby Myers was killed instantly. Flock announced his retirement from a hospital bed.

Fonty Flock was inducted into both the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association and the Talladega-Texaco Walk of Fame in 2004.


Sources: www.gonascargo.com/drivers/fonty-flock.php
www.decadesofracing.net/FontyFlock.htm
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/fonty-flock.htm
www.legendsofnascar.com/Fonty_Flock.htm
www.livinglegendsofautoracing.com/drivers_pages/drivers_flock.html


Fonty+Flock NASCAR Ft.+Payne+AL appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Listen to Eleanor Steber sing intro to 'Knoxville:Summer of 1915'


She was the most celebrated American soprano of the 1940s and 1950s. She went on from there to become head of the voice department at the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1963 to 1972, to teach at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, the American Institute of Music Studies in Graz and at her alma mater, the New England Conservatory of Music.

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.

By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night. May god bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

After a while I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

Composer Samuel Barber adapted the text for his vocal work from the introduction to A Death In The Family, James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography. It is a rhapsodic childhood memory, summertime in Tennessee, enjoying the family, sitting on the porch, watching life in the town go by your street, an idyllic time unaware of the war raging in Europe. "That was exactly my childhood in Wheeling, West Virginia," said Steber, who premièred Knoxville with Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony in 1948.

Steber's father, mother and both sets of grandparents were part of Wheeling's large German-American community, in which music played a major role. After winning the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in early 1940, Steber returned to Wheeling for a concert in the Virginia Theater on May 1, a concert that was repeated the next evening in Madison School auditorium.

For this homecoming concert, West Virginia Governor Homer Holt came from Charleston to join all the local dignitaries honoring her. This was the first of sixteen annual homecoming concerts which she presented in Wheeling. Throughout her long career she never forgot Wheeling, where she was born July 17, 1916.


sources: http://www.wvculture.org/HISTORY/journal_wvh/wvh52-10.html
http://www.pictures.eaglefreeenterprises.com/famous_west_virginians.htm
http://www.virginia.edu/music/pressrelease/06-07/cuso100706.html
http://wheeling.weirton.lib.wv.us/people/hallfame/1980steb.htm



Eleanor+Steber arts+in+appalachia Wheeling+WV James+Agee appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

The town boomed when the railroad came through in 1856, and so in 1872 a former Confederate surgeon named Dr. Charles T. Pepper started a soon-to-be-thriving business dispensing patent medicines in a brick pharmacy in Rural Retreat, VA. He also spent time mixing mountain herbs, roots and seltzer into a fizzy brew.

One local story goes that the doctor's daughter fell in love with Wade Morrison, Pepper’s assistant. The doctor wasn't too pleased about that, so he sent her off to school. And he fired Morrison. "This story is probably not true,” says Mary Kegley, author of Wythe County Bicentennial Book, "because within the time frame, Dr. Pepper's daughter would only have been around 5 at the time Morrison left.

"Dr. Charles T. Pepper also had a son, Louis or Louie, an optometrist who was also known as Dr. Pepper," Kegley continues. "He worked part time in his father's drug store and also claimed to have developed the formula for the drink."

Morrison meantime moved to Texas and set up a pharmacy of his own, the Old Corner Drug Store at Fourth and Austin streets in Waco. He went on to fame and fortune, taking credit as the creator of the best-selling American soft drink we know as Dr Pepper. Charles T. Pepper got neither fame nor fortune out of the bargain.

The Dr Pepper Museum site credits Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Wade Morrison's drug store, with being the inventor of the now famous drink. The Old Corner Drug Store customers called the drink a "Waco" soda, and it became quite popular at the soda fountain. Morrison began selling batches of the mix, drugstore to drugstore in 1885, and promoted it as a tonic until 1891, when he opened a bottling plant. When he began marketing the syrup to area drugstores, Morrison renamed the drink after his old boss in Rural Retreat. Or not.

"Dr Pepper is named after Dr. Charles T. Pepper, an 1855 graduate of the University of Virginia Medical School," concurs James A. Ball, the Sr. V.P. Corporate Communications for Dr. Pepper/Seven-Up Companies Inc. of Dallas. "Who practiced medicine at his pharmacy in Rural Retreat, VA in the late 1800s. The entire history of Dr Pepper was published in 1995 by author Jeffrey Rodengen. His book, authorized by me, is entitled The Legend of Dr Pepper/Seven-Up."

Not everyone associated with the soft drink business agrees with that view.

"What we found was that according to the US Census, Morrison lived in the town of Christiansburg, VA and worked as a pharmacy clerk," says Milly Walker, the Collections Manager/Curator for the Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co. Museum in Dublin, TX. "In that same census on the next page (if I remember correctly) is another Dr. Pepper and he has a daughter, Malinda or Malissa, who is only 16 to Morrison's 17.

"If you understand that the census takers walked from house to house, you can tell they were near neighbors. This makes much more sense to me than Dr. Charles T. Pepper, 40 miles away in Rural Retreat. There is not one piece of evidence that Morrison ever worked for Dr. Charles T. Pepper in Rural Retreat, VA," she says.

The remains of Dr. Charles Taylor Pepper rest with those of his wife and several children in Mountain View Cemetery overlooking the town he lived and worked in. He died in 1903 in his 73rd year. And his pharmacy? Despite its brush with greatness, it never became a tourist draw. It finally closed in 1994. "Nowadays, if you're not big business, you're not in business," said W. Baynard Barton 3d, Rural Retreat's last pharmacist.


sources: "Delve into Dr Pepper's Origins in Rural Retreat" The Virginian-Pilot, September 1, 1996
"Rural Retreat Journal; Store Closes, and a Way of Life Is Just a Memory" NY Times April 16, 1994
http://www.wythevilleva.com/drpepper.htm
http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-06-05/news/boot-legging-dr-pepper/2
http://www.freenewyork.net/dpfaq.html
http://www.wiw.org/~chris/drpepper/


Charles+T.+Pepper Wade+Morrison Dr+Pepper Rural+Retreat+VA appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history