Appalachian History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

"16 KNOWN DEAD IN FLOOD"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related article on Konnarock School here.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

MAY 7 AND 8, 1942
Huntsville AL


Concerning CHILDERSBURG BAG-LOADING PLANT
TALLADEGA COUNTY, ALA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

I am an average woman of the United States, a married women with two children and an income of—well, I’m not quite sure what it is, but I know it is not enough to live on as we ought to live. But, small as it is, our church has been trying to get me to budget (horrid word, isn’t it?). We have a person called by a disagreeable name, Stewardship Secretary, going around and giving lectures on how we ought to spend our money. It’s easy for her to talk about budgeting. She gets her money paid regularly, while I have to get mine in dribs, just as I can beg, scold, and wheedle it out of my husband.

I’m very economical, I can tell you that. I don’t keep account of every penny I spend. In the first place, you understand, we must have a roof over our heads, and rents are simply awful. It’s even worse if you try to own your own home and keep up insurance, repairs, and taxes and pay the interest on the money you borrowed to buy the house with. I cannot tell you offhand what we do pay for rent---sometimes more and sometimes less.

Then, there is food. We must have three meals a day, and you know how men are about food. I always say that none of my family shall ever be reported for being undernourished, with delicatessen shops so close. I can always send one of the children over at the last minute for anything I want. It’s hard to say exactly how much we spend on food---sometimes more and sometimes less---but I’m sure you can form a good idea from what I’ve told you as to just what we do spend.

And clothes! I’m a good manager, and I never expect to be a back number when it comes to styles. Cut off for clothes just about what most people spend, but remember that mighty few women get the good results I do for the money I put into clothes.

We spend practically nothing on amusements---nothing worth mentioning. The only thing we do is go to the movies, unless you’d call our trips in our car amusement. I think trips of that sort are a real necessity.

I am sure I give all the unaccounted-for part to the Church. The money goes somewhere, and I always give the children a penny or a nickel apiece for Sunday School---whenever we get up in time to start them off. You look as if you thought I ought to give more! Well, charity begins at home, I think.

---excerpt from ‘Short Pagaents for the Sunday School,’ by Laura Scherer Copenhaver, Doubleday, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929

Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver (1868-1940) wrote fiction, poetry, and dozens of church pageants, many in collaboration with her younger sister, Katharine Killinger Scherer Cronk. One of Copenhaver’s poems, "Heralds of Christ," became a well-known hymn.

Copenhaver taught at Marion Junior College in Smyth County, VA and assumed positions of leadership in the Lutheran church and on the Marion social scene. Her father, Dr. John Jacob Scherer Jr., had served as pastor of Marion’s Lutheran church before moving on to the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church in Richmond, presidency of the state synod, and a place on the Inner Missions Board of the national church.

At the 1922 meeting of the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church, Copenhaver presented an address titled “Mountain Folk in the South” which spurred the organization to create a mission school near the lumbering community of Konnarock.

The Konnarock Training School aimed “to tram the mountain children into true Christian womanhood and manhood,” and provided elementary-level academic and religious education for Smyth County children who did not have access to other public schools.

At the Smyth County Centennial on May 27, 1932, members of Marion College, county high schools, and local citizens presented a historical play written by Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver. Miss Smyth County, Eleanor Fairman, spun the wheel of time and scenes from local history were acted out.


sources: The human tradition in the New South, by James C. Klotter
http://openlibrary.org/details/MN41756ucmf_4
Smyth County, by Kimberly Barr Byrd, Debra J. Williams
http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Smyth/086-0027_Konnarock_School_1997_Final_Nomination.pdf
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2007/copenhaver.htm



Laura+Lu+Scherer+Copenhaver Smyth+County+VA appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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

We open today's show with a dark chapter from Virginia history. For much of the 20th century, the social movement known as Eugenics---the belief that information about heredity can be used to improve the human race---dictated medical ‘treatment’ of society’s undesirables. Between 1927 and 1979, the state sterilized 8,300 residents thought unfit for general society, including blacks, Native Americans, the feeble-minded, the promiscuous and the poor.

If you’ve ever been through Dalton, GA you’ve probably noticed it bills itself as the bedspread capital of the world. In the early part of the 20th century vacationing families headed towards Florida on US Highway 41 found the roadsides in and around Dalton—‘Peacock Alley’---clustered thick with family stands hawking chenille bedspreads and quilts of all sorts. Big business came rolling in by the late 1930s. Dalton's B. J. Bandy was reputedly the first man to make $1 million in the bedspread business.

Next, take a ride with us on the longest running narrow gauge railroad in Ohio. The Bellaire, Zanesville, and Cincinnati Railway served a vital role in Monroe County life, but was constantly defaulting on its construction bonds and entering into receiverships. Its 300 trestles and bridges were expensive to maintain, and frequent landslides amidst the steep terrain didn’t help one bit.

And you thought your work week dragged on? Lucille Thornburgh went to work at age 16 in a Knoxville cotton mill that demanded 10-12 hour work days, 6 days a week. Thornburgh and seven of her coworkers weren’t willing to accept that treatment, and they drew up a union charter. In this oral history excerpt, Thornburgh tells you how Cherokee Mills workers joined textile workers across the South in a general strike known as the Uprising of 1934.

Jean Thomas called him the "first primitive, unlettered Kentucky mountain minstrel to cross the sea to fiddle and sing his own and Elizabethan ballads in the Royal Albert Hall in London." She presented to the American public a man she said spent his life in the mountains, never to come into contact with the modern world, still retaining vestiges of his English ancestry. Folks in Ashland, KY had a different view of the situation: they knew J.W. Day as an itinerant town beggar who made money not by performing ancient ballads, but by playing a mix of topical songs of his own composition. Pull up a chair; this story just gets more convoluted from there.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at the get-rich sales pitches of the Wilson Chemical Company. By 1937, two generations of Wilsons had perfected the art of what was then a most unusual sales technique. The company recruited young children nationwide via advertisements in comic books and newspapers to sell their White Cloverline Brand Salve door-to-door, stating in the ads that the salesperson could keep a certain amount of the profit or collect premiums listed in a catalog. An attractive offer to rural children in Appalachia during the Depression, when money was scarce.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from Pap’s Jug Band in a live 1940s recording of “Old Indians Never Die.”

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.

It was Ohio's longest-lived narrow gauge railroad.

Monroe County's rugged terrain hindered commerce and communication during the 1800s. In the early 1870s Woodsfield businessmen, led by banker Samuel L. Mooney, promoted a narrow-gauge railroad to connect to the Baltimore and Ohio at Bellaire.

Narrow gauge railroads were popular during this boom era because they cost less to build and operate than standard-gauge lines and could traverse sharp curves and steep terrain. The Bellaire and Southwestern Railway was completed through Armstrong's Mills and Beallsville to Woodsfield in December 1879, giving Monroe County a welcome modern link to the rest of the country.

Its initial success prompted its extension westward, and it was soon renamed the Bellaire, Zanesville, and Cincinnati Railway, reaching Zanesville via Caldwell in late 1883.

While it served a vital role in the Monroe County life, by 1886 the BZ&C had defaulted on its construction bonds and entered the first of many receiverships. Its 300 trestles and bridges were expensive to maintain; frequent landslides added to operating costs.

Original caption reads: The Woodsfield ceremony for the OR&W's last run. Mayor Clyde Merskel is speaking from the top of the box car. A George Kampheffner photo. (Gerald Seebach Collection)

Only the coal and oil booms of the 1890s, along with convoluted financing schemes, kept the railroad operating into the 20th century; a benefit for the people of Monroe County if not its stockholders. Reborn as the Ohio River and Western (locally called the "Old, Rusty, and Wobbly") in 1902, it continued to operate at a loss until the Great Depression. The Village of Woodsfield had staged a ceremony for the first narrow gauge train to arrive in town Tuesday December 2nd, 1879. Similarly, a ceremony was held on Memorial Day May 30, 1931 for the last train. Hundreds turned out. The BZ&C had lasted 52 years.


Source: www.pbase.com/gshamilton/image/68697306
www.narrowtracks.com/minibunch/articles_prototype/Views_Along_OR&W/2004-06-OhioBicentennialMarkerDedication.htm

In 1924, when I was 16 years old, I started workin' at the Appalachian Mill as a cone winder operator. Now on that machine, that was a long machine, it had about 50 spindles on it and I was windin' threads from a cone up to a spool. There wasn't a clock in the room. I didn't have a watch and I didn't know what time it was. So about 9 o'clock I thought it must be time to go home. That was the longest day that I can ever remember. And I remember, very definitely, eating my lunch at 10:30 because I thought it must be lunchtime. It wasn't lunchtime.

I still had to continue on until 12, until the whistle blew and most of us carried our lunch. And that was the shortest 30 minutes you've ever had, too. We would go outside the mill and sit on the steps and eat our lunch, but that was a long day. And when I started to thinkin' about that, "From now till 4:30, can I make it, can I make it?" But I did make it and, of course, each day that got a little easier, you know.

Did I know what I was doin' when I went into the cotton mill? No, I did not. It was just a way to, ah, help earn a living for the family. I had no ideas at all about, ah, ah, union labor. Now I had heard of the railroad strike in 1921, but there were—there wasn't any railroad workers living around where we were and there was very little in the papers about it. But I didn't know that they were even in the union. I thought they just quit work. I—I had no way of knowing anything about the labor movement.

It was the last thing in the world that my parents wanted, for us to go into cotton mills. They wanted us to all continue going to school. My mother had visions of us going to university and college and graduatin' and becoming doctors and lawyers and all that. And that was a dream that was never realized, because of the Depression there and there was no way.

My father couldn't make a livin' workin' in a butcher shop and in food markets around. And he had no other skills either. And my mother had been a—a cook and a dressmaker and they had no way of makin' a livin'. So it was up to us children to do that. We—we had to. We had to go to work.

Boys and girls at Bemis Cotton Mill in Bemis, TN, 1905.

The—at the Cherokee Spinnin' Company there in 1933, where I was still working as a winding machine operator, but the end of my machine was near a window and right around the corner from that was the weave shop. And I looked out there one day and here's all these weavers sittin' out there in the afternoon—it wasn't their lunch hour—they were sittin' out there on a pile of lumber, just sitting there. And we all—I told everbody to run to the window and looked at 'em and we all wondered, "What are—what are they doing?"

And we still didn't quite understand it, but I think now that they did gain something from that strike.

Oh, yes. That's—that's when we got the 8 hours. When the NRA came in, we got 8 hours then and our wages went up to $12.40 a week.

That was great, but you know what an argument here in Knoxville was and it was in all the newspapers. What—wasn't that gonna cause a crime wave or wasn't something gonna happen with those people with all that leisure time on their hands? In fact, a newspaper reporter—I don't think that's in my scrapbook anywhere, but a newspaper reporter came out to my house one day to ask, "What do you do with all this leisure time?" We—that was time that we hadn't had before and they were really afraid of it, that we had that leisure time. And then we were off on Saturday. See what a break that was there? We got the 40-hour week.

Lucille Thornburgh

----

In 1933, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Recovery Act, which included provisions that protected the right of workers to organize, Lucille Thornburgh and seven coworkers drew up a union charter. With the help of a local union organizer, they signed up all 603 employees at Cherokee Mills.

In 1934 Cherokee workers joined textile workers across the South in a general strike known as the Uprising of 1934. Knoxville workers remained out for eight weeks, but the strike collapsed following the sudden death of owner Hal Mebane, an event Thornburgh says workers interpreted in religious terms. When the workers returned, Thornburgh was blacklisted, and other mill owners refused to hire her.

In 1995 Thornburgh was featured in the PBS film Uprising of '34, which documented the general textile strike.


Source: Lucille Thornburgh interview, edited, from WORK 'N PROGRESS: Lessons in the History of American Labor at Archives, Library and Information Center, Georgia Institute of Technology www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll/Labor/wnp/wnpdocument/uprising34/uprising34.pdf

commentary by Connie L. Lester, Mississippi State University/Tennessee Historical Society/Tennessee Encyclopedia

Jean Thomas called him the "first primitive, unlettered Kentucky mountain minstrel to cross the sea to fiddle and sing his own and Elizabethan ballads in the Royal Albert Hall in London." She presented to the American public a man she said spent his life in the mountains, never to come into contact with the modern world, still retaining vestiges of his English ancestry.

James W. Day (1861-1942), from Rowan County and Ashland KY, went by many names in his life... known in childhood as Willie, then later as "Blind Bill Day" because he was blind. He often went by J.W. Day as an early adult, but after he was 'discovered' by Jean Thomas, who became his agent, he became best known by his stage name of Jilson Setters, the Singin' Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow.

The left-handed Setters played his fiddle for many years in the American Folk Song Festival held in Ashland, composed tunes such as 'The Rowan County Troubles,' a popular local ballad, and recorded on the RCA Victor label in the late 1920s. He also recorded in the 1930s for folklorist John A. Lomax, whose collection is now in the Library of Congress.

In February 1930 Jean Thomas, who said she was a circuit court stenographer, wrote "Blind Jilson: The Singing Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow" for American Magazine. The article describes how Thomas arranged for an operation that gave him sight, and how he appeared on a radio broadcast from New York City. It ends: "Jilson Setters, whose Elizabethan ballads broadcast over a hook-up from coast to coast and relayed half way around the world, delighted millions last night…Jilson Setters is a modern survival of the ancient minstrel. Who knows but that his primitive turnes have paved the way for American grand opera."

In 1931 Thomas took Setters to London, where he performed in the Albert Hall at a folk song festival. On his return, Harvard professor George Lyman Kittering pronounced Setters' composition "London Town" 'a classic of American folk song.' By 1934 Thomas was affecting Elizabethan garb, and Setters had become the featured performer at the National Song Festival organized by Thomas under the umbrella of her American Folk Song Society, which included on its board Carl Sandberg and Ida M. Tarbell.

Thomas had first asked another Kentucky fiddler, Ed Haley, to take on the persona of a character she was creating, Jilson Setters. When Haley refused, Thomas turned to J.W. Day. He wasn't blind from birth as she'd said, but his sight had failed while he was young, and Thomas had arranged to have the cataracts removed from his eyes.

There's no such place in Kentucky as Lost Hope Hollow. Day was an itinerant town beggar who made money not by performing ancient ballads, but by playing a mix of topical songs of his own composition. And Thomas was not a circuit court stenographer, but a Hollywood scenario writer---albeit an amateur folklorist.

Accompanied by songwriter/guitarist Carson Robison, Day recorded ten traditional songs for RCA Victor in NYC in February 1928 using the Setters name. But there is no record of him ever appearing on live country music shows, or performing with other authentic Kentucky musicians on the radio. Jean Thomas had him under contract and wanted him to be represented as an Elizabethan relic, so too much exposure might have threatened the careful image she had crafted.

Maybe folk music fans didn't buy the image and therefore the records? Certainly Kentucky newspapers weren't paying him much notice.

"When he arrived in Manhattan to sail his baggage consisted of one extra shirt, a quilt his grandmother had made, a gourd for a drinking cup, a corncob pipe and his fiddle wrapped in an oilcloth poke," said TIME magazine. "He came, he said, from Lost Hope Hollow and he was going to see the King. Ashlanders have since said that there is no such place as Lost Hope Hollow, that Jilson Setters' real name is William Day, and that he was never much of a mountaineer, but an oldtime beggar."

So anxious were various forces in American society to find something that represented their vision of what was really American that Setters was heralded as the genuine article. Thus, William Wolff, in a 1939 article entitled "Songs that express the soul of a people" in the left-wing The People's World, noted of Jilson Setters: "He has probably never heard of Marx or Lenin, but there can be no doubts about where his roots lay, as he sings."

One of the things that seems to have really set people off in Kentucky about Jilson Setters, says genealogist Steve Green in a thread at Ancestry.com, was when Jean Thomas got carried away with her remarks in the early 1930s about how Jilson Setters (who was traveling with her at the time) was disappointed he wouldn't be able to be back in his cabin in the Kentucky mountains to celebrate Old Christmas on January 6. Many people did not like her portrayal of eastern Kentucky as a backward place-- for some reason, they felt that the references to Old Christmas were ludicrous and were harmful to the image of the region.

In a slew of letters to newspaper editors around the state, they fervently declared that people in Kentucky celebrated Christmas just as it was everywhere else, on December 25. What's interesting is that most of the people who wrote in protest were unaware that there was in fact an "Old Christmas" that was indeed celebrated by some grassroots people. Nevertheless, the whole thing caused a brief public controversy, and along with Miss Thomas' continual claims about the supposed Elizabethan ancestry of mountaineers, it generated quite a few skeptics.


Sources: Constructing Country: Fakery and "Strictly American" Music, by Kevin Yuill, Reconstruction 8.4, 2008
Old-time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes, By Jeff Todd Titon
Creating Country Music, By Richard A. Peterson
Big Sandy, By Jean Thomas
Time magazine, Traipsin' Woman, Monday, Jun. 18, 1934
Steve Green on Jilson Setters thread at Ancestry.com---
http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.kentucky.counties.wolfe/1122.1120.1124.1125.1127/mb.ashx

By the time George Wilson Jr. became president of the Wilson Chemical Company in 1937, two generations of Wilsons had perfected the art of what was then a most unusual sales technique. The company recruited young children nationwide via advertisements in comic books and newspapers to sell their White Cloverline Brand Salve door-to-door, stating in the ads that the salesperson could keep a certain amount of the profit or collect premiums listed in a catalog. An attractive offer to rural children in Appalachia during the Depression, when money was scarce to begin with.

The money raised by selling the heal-all ointment actually went to the adult who recruited the children. The children, meantime, received points which could be spent on prizes. And oh, were the pictures of those wonderful prizes eye-catching! One could win yo-yos, dolls, baseball gloves, bats and balls. The more you sold the bigger and better the prize; "Daisy" air rifles, "Radio Flyer" wagons and even bicycles could be won. Through the eyes of that era’s children, this was a great opportunity to get toys they otherwise could not have.

There were plenty of adults who were quite willing to take advantage of that fact, and the children were ripe for the taking. By the mid-1930s 300,000 young salesmen had signed on, endeavoring to sell the salve to anyone with a door on which to knock. To aid sales the company provided its sales force a beautiful 8”x10” religious print to give away with each 25-cent can. In order to handle the large volume of requests for Cloverline, the Wilson plant soon had to open it's own postal substation at Cloverline Terrace, near its Tyrone, PA headquarters.

The lid of Cloverline Salve’s tin container had an art nouveau design motif around the edge with a green four-leaf clover in the center. "Apply freely, and repeat as often as needed for temporary relief of the minor irritations of the skin mentioned below." The petroleum-gel product promised to remove wrinkles, heal cuts and burns and give your skin a glowing complexion. If you got chapped skin, you rubbed it in, and if you had a cold, you rubbed it on your chest or your nose, and you rubbed it on any sores you had.

In 1967 the Wilson Chemical Company was dealt a crushing blow by the Federal Trade Commission, which decided that the Company's advertising method of luring young salesmen had to stop.


sources: www.tyronehistory.org/faq_WCCo.html
http://irvsukelele.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-child-labor-laws.html
http://mywilson.homestead.com/old_jules.html



Cloverline+Salve Wilson+Chemical+Company appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture history+of+appalachia,

Some of the things I learned at Biltmore would be hard to find in any text book published then or later — things, that as I look back over my 44 years as a forester, have proved fully as potent for good as any of the technical disciplines of the profession.

The good Doctor taught us the value of relaxation in good company, when with song and stein the whole school and faculty would make merry and stretch lusty harmony and a keg of beer well into a starry Saturday night. Such carryings-on made for an espirit de corps and a strong bond of brotherhood that somehow seems to have lasted all thru the decades that have gone by.

He possessed and passed on to us his love of the woods and all that in them is. To hunt and fish, he taught by word and deed, is the especial privilege of the forester and a soothing ungent for a soul often wearied and harassed by over much fire fighting.

He preached that an appreciation of the birds, the beasts and the fishes, the flowers, the glamorous smells of bay swamps and spruce thickets and the shape and texture of foliage covered hills were all a part, and often the larger portion of a foresters compensation.

A great forester, a masterful teacher and a strong and lovable character, our good Doctor Schenck can look back from his quiet home in Lindenfels and know that he lives not only in the affectionate hearts of his "boys" but as well in the forestry of America he helped in the borning.

Inman F. Eldredge
from a May 29, 1950 Reunion Speech to the Alumni of Biltmore Forest School, Asheville NC
Biltmore ‘06

In 1895, German forester Dr. Carl A. Schenck accepted George Vanderbilt’s offer to come to North Carolina to manage and restore his vast woodland properties.

Schenck oversaw thousands of acres dotted with several hundred houses and abandoned farms. In 1898, he established the Biltmore Forest School, the first forestry school in the United States, using Vanderbilt’s forests as a campus.

Photo caption reads: "Lecturing at the Fiber Plant. Canton, N.C. 1911. Class is in session for Biltmoreans at the Champion Fibre Company's plant in Canton, North Carolina, 1911."

Students in Schenck’s twelve-month curriculum split their time between classroom lectures and fieldwork. Combining theory with practice, the students gained experience in the physical side of forestry, including the care of nurseries, transplanting seedlings, timber selection, felling, logging, and sawing.

They also studied forest finance and economics, dendrology, botany, fish and game, and the machinery associated with forestry. The campus was located at the site of a sawmill and gristmill formerly owned by Hiram King, a leader of the Pink Beds farming community.

Schenck’s operation was quite successful in its first years, but Schenck had a falling out with Vanderbilt and left the estate in 1909. He established the school’s winter headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. The Biltmore Forestry School was headquartered in the town of Sunburst, N.C. from 1910 to 1913. Sunburst is located on the Pigeon River, just west of Mount Pisgah.

The Champion Fibre Company constructed the village prior to their beginning logging operations in the area. Reuben B. Robertson, manager of the company, offered the use of the facilities to Dr. Schenck and his students. Schenck was particularly excited about the location because it offered the students the opportunity of direct observation of hardwood and spruce forests, logging operations, sawmills under construction, different types of log chutes and flumes, splash dams in operation and an up-to-date pulp mill.

Schenck struggled to maintain the school as a traveling entity in America, but enrollment dwindled as new forestry schools emerged. Schenck’s final class, who numbered more than 300, graduated in 1913. Many became prominent and successful foresters for both federal and state agencies as well as private forest industries.

Sources:
www.biltmore.com/explore/then/forestry.shtml
www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections/forestry/schenck/series_vii/forest_school/school_sunburst/school_sunburst.html
www.ncmarkers.com/Results.aspx?k=Search&ct=btn
www.foresthistory.org/Research/Biltmore_Project/Flowers.pdf


Carl+A.+Schenck Biltmore+Forest+School Biltmore Pink+Beds Sunburst+NC Champion+Fibre+Company appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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

We open today's show with the details on Kentucky’s cave wars of the 1920s. Mammoth Cave is not only the largest known cave in the world; it has the distinction of being the oldest touring cave. And because Mammoth had showed the tremendous profit potential in cave tourism, competitors mushroomed. And they weren’t very neighborly.

South Carolinians have known about the mineral springs of Glenn Springs, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Spartanburg, for centuries. You’ll enjoy the story of how it went from being a deer lick to, by 1931, providing the official water of the United States Senate.

Next, guest blogger Beth Kephart will share a personal view of her famous great grandfather, Horace Kephart. He did public good (his librarianship, his camp craft, his anthropological Our Southern Highlanders, his passion for preserving the Great Smoky Mountains). But he also did private harm (leaving a wife and their six children behind to live the life he knew would save him).

Are you a scrapbooker? If so you’ll be able to relate to Stewart A. Cody, who worked as the Jackson County, WV County Agent in the early 1900s. The West Virginia Historical Photograph Collection possesses 36 images which were pulled from a photo album of his dated 1912.

As County Agent, Cody spent a great deal of time with the local chicken farmers, and the captions of these 36 photos, taken as a whole, provide a detailed insight into the practices of that time.

Have you noticed the soundtrack on the new PBS series about Appalachia? Will Benson, Assistant Professor of Music at Tennessee’s Cleveland State Community College, has. We’ll sit in on his professional insights as he reviews the new companion CD to the series, titled “Appalachia: Music from Home.”

We’ll wrap things up with a look at the paintings and writings of Ruth Bear Levy. In her book about growing up in Lonaconing, MD, Levy (1898-1994) wrote about how "all the pastel colors could be rolled out of the tubes for the pink, green and brown syrups covering fruits and ices in the ice cream parlors." Mmmmm….that canvas looks good enough to eat!

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from The Skirtlifters in a 1990 recording of the early 20th century classic “Lindy Lou.”

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.

On May 18, 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, creating the TVA. The aim was to provide river navigation, flood control, electric power, employment and improved living conditions in the seven states cradling the Tennessee Valley region. Much of the public welcomed the TVA as one of the most visionary of FDR’s New Deal innovations. Displaced farmers and the region’s power companies were not among them.

“They started a new deal program that would help everyone and improve everyone's life. They formed a group called the Tennessee Valley Authority. These were the biggest idiots of all. They come strolling in here thinking they're all good giving people cheap electric power, but they don't think of the farmers.

“Where do you think they got their power from? They got it from the rivers. The rivers I used to irrigate my land with. But it was all gone then. They formed dams, and stopped up the water. My poor apples were gone then. My sisters still had their business, but they too were unhappy with what the TVA was doing to the farm that my father had started.

“That was it for me. I couldn't produce any more apples with those darn TVA people doing what they wanted with the water. I was then forced to move into town to try to get a factory job. I took all the money that I had, and all my clothes, and I was off to see what this New deal was all about.

“Wendell Wilkie, president of the Commonwealth and Southern Company, led the fight against the TVA. He had many followers, but there were also men that disagreed with him and they liked the idea of having the Tennessee Valley Authority.”

Michael Smith
Orchardist
Interviewed November 11,1934
Raleigh, NC
Source: http://www.ncsu.edu/ligon/am/teddy/tva.htm

“There is just one phase of this program to which we object most seriously, and that is the Federal Government spending the taxpayers' money for the erection of power plants which, as we feel, are not needed for the very simple reason that generally, throughout the country, there is an abundance of power capacity, and particularly in the Tennessee Valley region there is already an excess of capacity. We are at a loss to understand how the power generated at Government-built plants can be disposed of except to take the place of privately owned power plants now supplying that community.”

John D. Battle
Executive Secretary of the National Coal Association
Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs
House of Representatives (74th Cong., 1st Sess., 1935)
Source: http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/coal.htm

Representative Joe Martin of Massachusetts stated that the TVA was "patterned closely after one of the Soviet dreams." As a subsidiary of the federal government, the TVA enjoyed numerous advantages that private power enterprises did not: from the onset it paid less than one fifth of the equivalent total Federal taxes paid by investor owned power companies. The authority did not pay any interest on funds appropriated to it from 1933 to 1959.

Not surprisingly, Wendell Wilkie’s Commonwealth and Southern, and various other power companies as well, filed a total of thirty four lawsuits against the TVA by 1937. Three of those challenged the very constitutionality of the act before the Supreme Court. The TVA remained intact throughout.

Between 1933 and the end of World War II, the TVA directors managed the biggest construction project on Earth, helping bring the people living in the region into the modern industrial and agricultural era. But not without a fight.


Sources: http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/fall_97/swain/Controversies.htm
http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva17.htm
www.spiritus-temporis.com/tennessee-valley-authority/
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=T072
http://cog.kent.edu/lib/OlsonFairExchangePaper.pdf


TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, Wendell Wilkie, appalachia, appalachian history, mountains

Stewart A. Cody worked as the Jackson County, WV County Agent in the early 1900s. The West Virginia Historical Photograph Collection possesses 36 images which were pulled from a photo album of his dated 1912.

As County Agent, Cody spent a great deal of time with the local chicken farmers, and the captions of these 36 photos, taken as a whole, provide a detailed insight into the practices of that time.

The greatest interest in poultry, Cody tells us, is shown by the farmers living in the 'runs' and 'forks.’ On a typical 'ridge' farm, the farm land is rougher and the farms are further apart. More incentive to raise poultry than crops.

Cody undoubtedly knew all the players countywide: from Mr. O. M. Stone in Cottageville, “the largest as well as the most profitable poultry farm in Jackson County,” on down to Mr. W. L. Ball, who built his poultry house out of logs.

The Stone’s residence was built from the proceeds of the farm’s egg sales. The two girls, Cody noted, “add $100 to the family purse by washing and grading the eggs.” Mr. Stone’s laying house number 2 held 300 hens, and was ten feet wide and 100 feet long, a bit wider and far longer than the average area laying house. It cost $125 to build.

O. M. Stone Feeding his Chickens

We learn that local farmers commonly used three types of poultry houses adapted to the county. The first, a ‘Tolman house,’ was a simple shed roof house with either a paper or tin roof and open front, with a packed dirt floor covered with sand. One caption gives the length and width as 7' x 30'; another is 10' x 31'. Mr. J. R. Backer’s shed roof house had a tin roof, and three openings in the front 2'10" x 7'4". The use of galvanized roofing on poultry houses as well as other farm buildings was general throughout the county. It seemed to have the preference over paper roofing with the majority of farmers.

Cody felt C.D. Rice’s two-storied poultry house was “worthy of being used as a model by others in Jackson County desiring this type of house.” The birds are fed on the first floor in the winter. The nests are also on this floor while the perches are on the second floor. Very often Cody found nests on the outside of the houses, “undoubtedly the preference of the hens.”

The third type was a T-shaped house, whose roosting room intersected a scratching room. Cody describes a scratching room that is 14'6" x 8', and observes nest boxes, home-made hoppers, and sliding windows in it. Joining this at the middle of the side is a roosting shed 12' x 40'. Mr. T. H. Snider’s T-shaped house held 100-150 pure-bred Barred Rocks.

Reading across the various captions gives us a sense of the average density of birds in Jackson County poultry houses: Mr. W.A. McMurray housed 35 fowls in a 10’x 12’ house, Mr. W.R Glovers housed 27 in an 8’x13’ shed, and Mr. C.D. Rice housed 150 in his 12’x 24’ space.

Cody must’ve come across an awful lot of tumble down chicken coops, for he notes in one caption “This farm [in Jackson Run] stands out from its neighbors because of its neatness. Notice the trim, white washed poultry house.” Frank McPherson’s small brooder house also stood out in Cody’s descriptions: it had a universal hover, a type of colony brooder “considerable above the average.”

And what about earnings from poultry farming? Mr. W. H. Melhorn and Mrs. Hartley each marketed a case of eggs during the spring months. C.D. Rice’s total income for 1913 was $259.25; T. H. Snider’s 1912 sales amounted to $104.87. Almost as an aside, Cody observes that farmers did not consider the value of the poultry manure as a marketable fertilizer. “This is a general condition in certain parts of the county,” he said.

We learn that farmers who lived within one or two miles of the country store would take their poultry to market pulled in a small wagon by hand, if they didn’t own a horse, or get one of the children to carry a pail of eggs in, often “hauled several miles in the hot sun over rough country roads.”

Abe Price was a major county merchant to whom the farmers brought their products. His store in Cottageville handled from ten to forty cases of eggs a week, in addition to several coops of chicken. The town of Evans was another central dropoff point for farmers.

Wholesale buyers such as H.E. Beegle, of Ravenswood, would purchase cases at Evans, then haul the still uninspected eggs by wagon 7 miles to the railroad. From there the cases were shipped 10 miles to the Ravenswood storage facility. Once candled, the eggs would be loaded to a refrigerated train car for shipment to Pittsburgh.


source: West Virginia Historical Photographs Collection/West Virginia University Libraries