Appalachian History

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The Good Doctor Walker
2007-06-26 23:23:00
Originally posted at Hillbilly Savants by Eric Drummond Smith The Route of the 1750 Expedition of Dr. Thomas Walk er(Image from the The National Park Service)I want to introduce another explorer from the age before America was America and before (all) the eastern native American peoples had been driven from their homelands. I first heard his name in association with the geography near my home in Bluefield, attached to two mountains. To the south, defining the edge of what, to my youthful consciousness, was the hinterland of a sort of "Greater Bluefield" was a great old mountain named Big Walker which separates Bland and Wythe Counties in Virginia. Big Walker Mountain, along with nearby Little Walker, is a truly beautiful pile, and is host to a tremendous, if relatively short, scenic byway. Well, as so often with geography (especially on our home turf) I never thought to ask anyone, hey, what or who are the Walker Mountains named after? It was only recently, after a conversation ...
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Knoxville: Old Gray Cemetery
2007-06-26 23:20:00
Originally published at Hillbilly Savants by John KernsThe entrance to Old Gray Cemetery in Knoxville , Tenn. The historical marker reads: "Old Gray Cemetery, incorporated in 1850, is the resting place of William G. Brownlow, Tennessee Governor and U.S. Senator, as well as two other U.S. Senators, eight U.S. Congressmen, 26 mayors of Knoxville, and numerous ambassadors, judges, editors, artists, authors, educators, military leaders, physicians and industrialists."Any history buff just has to get a kick out of Knoxville, Tenn. Its past is much like the rest of southern Appalachia: Rich, weird and elusive, which of course makes it all incredibly interesting. Many of the characters that created that history now lie in a hilly, craggy old graveyard that sits just north of downtown called Old Gray Cemetery. Named after English poet Thomas Gray, who wrote "Elegy in a Church Courtyard," the gentle slopes of Old Gray lie between what is now an adult bookstore and a cabinet manufacturer. ...
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Barns of our past, still in the present
2007-06-26 23:17:00
Originally posted at Hillbilly Savants by ByronLike old dinosaurs lurking in the background, these dilapidated buildings of our ancestors sit in various states of disarray throughout all of Appalachia. Some still being used, small repairs visible, keeping out the rain. My grandfather would question any man's worthiness that didn't own a barn. Many a country boy and girl has spent a good portion of their childhood inside these clapboard fortresses. Cows, horses, pigs, and even us Hillbillies found shelter and comfort in their confines. If these old buildings could talk, what a tale they would tell!All of the above pictures were taken by me and were all within a 5 mile radius of my house in Corryton, TN. Click on this link to see all of the barns that I photographed today.
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Appalachia's Sunken City
2007-06-24 19:55:00
Originally posted at Hillbilly Savants by Mike MasonIn 1939, the Hydro-Electric boom in the Appa lachian Mountains was reaching it?s peak. Rural hollers (a steep valley, for our non-resident readers) throughout the region were being flooded to bring modern technologies, jobs and, ironically, flood control to the Southern Appalachians. I?ll leave the debate for whether or not organizations such as the Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Appalachian Power have served the region for the greater good to others with more introspective opinions on the subject. I want to focus on one community, lost under seventy feet of water of the New River. The place is know as Dunkard's Bottom today but to the residents of the community, it was Mahanain. It?s kind of ironic given the Biblical history of the city that shares this name, meaning ?Host?, would see similar fate.John Buchannan, agent for the Wood's River Company and assistant surveyor of Augusta County, made his exp...
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The Blue Fugates of Kentucky
2007-06-24 19:48:00
Originally posted at Hillbilly Savants by Eric D. SmithLorenzo & Eleanor Fuga te(Image from Hazard, Kentucky & Perry County: A Photographic History)Around the world there are legends of human beings who have skin of a unusual shades, folk whose skin color wasn't some variation on brown or pink. These people, as they are remembered by their neighbor's descendants, were usually of a supernatural ilk - elves or gods or some other genre of sentient being. More often than not, these legends have been explained in our oh-so-enlightened civilization as the product of imaginative storytellers, bad translations, and artistic flourishes. Yet, in the relatively recent past, in the hills of eastern Kentucky, there was a clan of folk who seem to have shared a genetic anomaly that, in effect, rendered them blue.That's right blue.Okay, well, maybe not entirely blue - but definitely a blueish tint.Let me explain. Once, not so long ago, the only blue men I'd ever heard of were an off-Broadway-to-...
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Gone Fishin'
2007-06-22 15:41:00
I'll be on vacation June 25 - June 29. While I'm away please welcome guest blogger Eric Drummond Smith, of Hillbilly Savants. He'll be serving up some tasty posts for your consideration!
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?I could eat soup even it was made over a lizard?
2007-06-22 14:35:00
?I?ve been all over Europe, Stirrup, Asia, Africa and parts of Hell, but Braxton County is the best God damned state in the university.? (said after he returned from the longest trip of his life, to the 1893 Chicago World?s Fair).?Bread is potato?s mother.??I could eat soup even it was made over a lizard.??It?s just my luck that if it was raining soup, I?d have a fork instead of a spoon.??In the old days we did everything by hand-power and awkwardness.??They say that money talks, but all it ever said to me was goodbye.??I?ve been as lucky as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking!??You have to believe in yourself, even if you know you?re wrong.?Shelt Carpenter was an early 20th century fixture as a guide to fisherman on WV?s Elk River. He also entertained at the fishing camps with his fiddle and his tales. He was well known by the professional class of doctors and lawyers from Charleston who brought him to their fishing camps. He showed them where to fish, when to fish, and what bai...
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Last of the packet boats
2007-06-21 14:30:00
Probably the most famous boat ever built at Clarington, OH was the Liberty, being the last in the line of packet boats of that name (a packet boat is generally described as a steam boat for conveying cargo, mail, and passengers on a regular schedule.) Way?s Pack et Directory 1848-1994 lists an earlier Liberty built in 1857 at Wheeling, WV but "snagged and lost at Twelve Pole Creek, WV, Dec 27, 1862."The final Liberty was built in 1912 to run from Clarington to Wheeling. It made a round trip a day and whistled each morning about 5:00 AM so that prospective passengers would get up and board the craft for a day's shopping. The Liberty remained in Wheeling several hours each day and brought its passengers back home in the evening. A change in the Liberty's route marked the decline of packet boating. As people traveled more by rail, then by motor car, the vessel's route was lengthened from this short daily run to a weekly trip between Pittsburgh, PA, and Charleston, WV. At the last, i...
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They made their money on the big chunks of coal
2007-06-20 14:35:00
?Coal is like layers in a layer cake. And where you?ve got it cut by erosion by the valleys, why, it?s just in fingers, and these fingers went miles and miles back in there. Six or seven miles to the back side of the property. And then they retreated the mine back almost to the drift mouth, to the entrance of the mine, so [the Blue Diamond Mine, near Hazard, KY] was quite a successful. We left it hand-loaded, because you know the old say saying, 'If it ain?t broke, don?t fix it.' ?So this was probably as efficient a hand-loaded mine as you could have. Looking back, it probably wasn?t terribly efficient, but still ? for its time it was highly efficient. The secret to hand-loading was to have good haulage. If you could deliver the cars to the hand-loader, and he was reasonably productive. Now, there were certain areas where the people just didn?t like to work particularly, but up around Hazard, they were very motivated people, and they would do very well?. ?At that time, most of th...
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You scream, I scream, we all scream for...
2007-06-19 14:30:00
Get the ice cream maker out! It?s summer, and there?s nothing so fine as freshly made rock salt ice cream. Just make sure you gather every kid in the neighborhood to take a turn cranking the dang thing.In 1843 Nancy Johnson developed the first hand-crank ice cream maker (her basic design of the freezer is still used today), and received Patent No. 3254 for it. Much of the confusion (and lack of credit) to Ms. Johnson comes from the fact that she sold her rights to William Young for just $200 (still a pretty good sum in those days.) He at least had the courtesy to call the machine the ?Johnson Patent Ice-Cream Freezer.?Johnson?s invention simplified the process of making ice cream, marking a revolution in the history of the dessert. From this time on, anyone could make the very best quality ice cream at home (especially since rock salt, which came to be commonly called "ice cream salt" until the early 20th century, had became a cheap commodity).The inner can was placed in the out...
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June bride? Time for a shivaree!
2007-06-18 14:37:00
Shivaree was a nineteenth and early twentieth century Appalachian custom (originally dating back to sixteenth-century France) of teasing a married couple on their wedding night or shortly thereafter. The bride was carried around in a tub at times, and the groom was ridden on a rail. In Tennessee the custom was more commonly called ?serenading,? and in West Virginia and western Virginia the term ?belling? also referred to this raucous, spontaneous celebration."One of the things that people really looked forward to was when a couple got married, they would have what they called shivaree. Everybody that was going to take part in it, they would slip right easy, and nobody would know they was anywhere about until the guns went to shootin'. They would just march around the house shooting guns one right after another. When they would go so many rounds around the house shooting their guns, and then they would go to the door and stick a fence rail through the door and the man would get on t...
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Decoration Day
2007-06-15 14:30:00
An important tradition symbolic of the vital place of family in Appalachian life is Deco ration Day, usually held on a Sunday in June. Families gather at rural churches and cemeteries to honor the memory of deceased family members. A few days earlier, neighbors and kin gather to mow the cemetery grass, clean the graves, and prepare flowers. Homes are opened to accommodate family members returning from far and wide, communal meals are prepared, and folks gather to make a little music. On Decoration Day, special preaching and church singing pay homage to the dead and bring families and communities closer together. The service is followed by "dinner on the grounds," with large quantities of food cooked by local community members. Graves are decorated with flowers, visited, and stories told of humor, love, and remembrance about family members buried there.Timing of the event reflects Appalachia's agrarian heritage. Mid-June was a time when crops were planted and growing, but long before...

The Jack Tales. Not just beanstalks.
2007-06-14 14:35:00
ONE TIME away back years ago there was a boy named Jack . He and his folks lived off in the mountains somewhere and they were awful poor, just didn't have a thing. Jack had two brothers, Will and Tom, and they are in some of the Jack Tale s , but this one I'm fixin' to tell you now, there's mostly just Jack in it. Jack was awful lazy sometimes, just wouldn't do ary lick of work. His mother and his daddy kept tryin' to get him to help, but they couldn't do a thing with him when he took a lazy spell. Well, Jack decided one time he'd pull out from there and try his luck in some other section of the country. So his mother fixed him up a little snack of dinner, and he put on his old raggedy coat and lit out. ?--from Jack in the Giants' Newground!Remember ?Jack and the Beanstalk?? There?s more where that came from! Jack Tales are part of a cycle of folk stories that revolve around a central character named ---wait for it!--- Jack. The tales originated in Europe, with American Jac...

Supporting her family
2007-06-13 14:30:00
Caption to the photo reads: "Pike County, Kentucky . Mother of two children (husband is tubercular and bed ridden) supports her family and buys necessary medical supplies with her WPA wages."Goodman-Paxton Photographic Collection, 1934-1942University of KentuckyDigital ID: kukav:64m1:833Pike+County Kentucky WPA +appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia
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The shack out back
2007-06-11 14:35:00
Tennesseans called it the ?la-la.? Elsewhere known as the john, the shanty, the shack, the throne, the shed, the relief office?it was the humble outhouse. The little buildings "out back" were as important as any building built before indoor plumbing. This was the building you located as soon as possible when you came to visit, and if your guest was the preacher, you invited him outside on some pretext so he could spot "the necessary room" without asking.During the 1930s the WPA built thousands of outhouses across America. Three-man teams would spend an average of twenty hours on the construction of each one. Where possible the farm family receiving the new outhouse would pay for the materials (about $17 per outhouse), while the WPA supplied the labor free. These were outhouses like America had never seen before. The American Red Cross developed the basic design. This design featured an enclosed, vented pit for the waste, was fly and vermin proof, and afforded a standard of clea...
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Did the early polio vaccine cause cancer??
2007-06-08 14:30:00
In October 1960, Dr. Bernice Eddy gave a talk to the Cancer Society in New York without warning her employer, the National Institutes of Health, in advance. She startled the attendees by announcing that she had examined cells from monkey?s kidneys in which the polio virus to be used in polio vaccines was grown, and had found they were infected with cancer causing viruses. She had decided on her own initiative to test extracts by innoculating newborn hamsters, since these animals developed tumors with a type of virus she and Dr. Sarah Stewart had previously discovered in mice and named polyoma virus (one of the early known cancer-causing viruses, it was later named the SE (Stewart-Eddy) Polyoma Virus in their honor.)The inoculated hamsters developed tumors similar to those induced with polyoma virus. Her inference was clear: There were cancer-causing monkey viruses in the polio vaccine. She warned an epidemic of cancer in America was in the making. When the word got back to her NIH ...
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A good room cost $1.50 a night and a corner room $3
2007-06-07 14:30:00
?The T. stands for Taliaferro. I was named after Booker T. Washington. My people came from Sherrill's Fort in Catawba County, NC. I was brought up by my mother, but in 1920, came to Asheville to live with my father. I went to high school at Bennett in Greensboro, NC and two years at Livingston College in Salisbury. I was sorry I couldn't finish but went into the hotel work. Booker T. Washington's philosophy was ?drop your bucket wherever you are,? and I have done well.?Asheville was hit hard by the Depression. Work was hard to find, but I worked in the Langren Hotel from 1930-1933 and the Battery Park from 1934 until it closed in 1972. When I worked at the Battery Park for 38 years, blacks couldn't go in the front door - now I am living here!?I had a ?hotel reputation.? During those times there weren't many jobs open to blacks - chauffeuring, working at Oteen or in hotels. It was hard getting work in the railroad unless one had good connections. Many blacks were on WPA but...
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A pleasant drink of medicinal value
2007-06-06 14:30:00
Ahhhh, dandelion wine! The popular name comes from dent de lion, French for "lion's tooth," referring to the teeth on the leaves. Wine is made from the heads. Choose dandelions from an open field far from any insecticide spraying. Pick early in the season when the leaves of the plant are still tender. Flowers that have just opened are best.To make dandelion wine: "Four good quarts of dandelion blossoms, four pounds of sugar, six oranges, five lemons. Wash dandelion blossoms and place them in an earthenware crock. Pour five quarts of boiling water over them and let stand 36 hours. Then strain through a muslin bag, squeezing out all moisture from dandelions. Put the strained juice in a deep stone crock or jug and add to it the grated rind and juice of the six oranges and five lemons. Tie a piece of cheese-cloth over the top of jug and stand it in a warm kitchen about one week, until it begins to ferment. Then stand away from stove in an outer kitchen or cooler place, not in the cell...
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Indian tales told by firelight
2007-06-05 14:30:00
"Here are some of the Indian tales I have heard. I don't remember the names of any of the whites or Indians involved in these stories. The old folks used to tell us children these tales while we sat before the fireplace at night."In Indian times, the whites would put pickets out about the camp or fort to keep the Indians from slipping upon them. At one place, several of the pickets had disappeared. The officers placed a man on duty on night, with orders to shoot anything he saw moving. Pretty soon he noticed an old sow rooting in the leaves under the trees and it came closer and closer. He hated to shoot an old sow that would later make good meat. But he had his orders to shoot, which he did. At the crack of his rifle, the saw r'ared upon its hind feet and feel over backwards. It proved to be an Indian in an old sow's skin, and this was the way the Indians had been slipping up and killing and carrying away the other pickets."Another Indian story was often told to us by t...
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You've been fooling me, baby
2007-06-04 14:30:00
I don't want you any more, mama Ain't no use in you hanging around For I found another mama, And now I am Chicago bound You've been fooling me, baby You've been telling me your lies When I thought you were an angel Just sent down from the skies Sing those parting blues to me, sweet Nell When you leave you'll leave me sad 'Cause my daddy's gone and left me I just wouldn't treat him right You've been fooling me, baby You've been telling me your lies When I thought you were an angel Just sent down from the skies I wouldn't give him much loving Wouldn't stay home at night Now I hear the train a-coming He has gone out of sight You've been fooling me, baby ...
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Just settin'
2007-06-01 14:29:00
?Such things as shelling peas or shucking corn took place on the front porch when friends and relatives came over to help. During the hottest time of the summer, some front porches that were screened, contained beds to sleep in. These were called "sleeping porches." The residents of the home would escape the heat of the upstairs bedrooms by sleeping on the porch in the summer.?Families spent time on porches in the evenings watching other people going for strolls, or waiting to see if someone would drop by. Everyone knew who their neighbor was. If someone moved in, neighbors knew who they were, who their kin were, and where they were from. New neighbors expected the old neighbors to drop by and would have felt very unwelcome if they didn't.?You could tell who was visiting who and who was courting who, by walking past the front porches of the houses. Some people think that the arrival of the automobile moved socialization from the front porch to the front seat of a car, and caused th...

Busy as a...
2007-05-31 14:30:00
They?ll have plenty of time to regroup during the slow months of July and August, but right now it?s the end of the spring honey flow, and apiarists throughout Appalachia are knee-deep in the golden goo. Beekeeping is an age old, and surprisingly little changed, ritual. Here?s an early 1930s ad for AG Woodman Co. that could?ve easily appeared in Grit newspaper or the Farmer?s Almanac of that era. The beekeepers reading this ad would have been almost as familiar with the smokers, supers and frames we use today as they would?ve been with bee equipment from 75 years prior to their own time. That?s because the really big innovations that moved bee culture from hunting to cultivating all clustered around the 1850s & 1860s. The ?father of modern beekeeping,? Rev LL Langstroth, published ?The Hive and the Honeybee? in 1853. In it he explained how his patented movable frame hive took advantage of the principles of Bee Space. That "magical space" is defined as "greater than 1/4 inch, ...
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"Poverty pays unless you're poor" -Don West
2007-05-30 14:35:00
Home-Coming (1946)And I've come back to you,Mountain Earth--Come to laughAnd sorrowAnd sing--To dig my songs upFrom your soilAnd spin a melodyOf corn blades,Top-fodder,Crab-grass,And a clean-plowed furrow.I've come to sing and grope--With a people who knowDeep songs,Who stumble upA long crooked road....I've come becauseYour great silent agonyEchoed everywhereAnd the weary foot-stepsOf my old DadStill sound upon the mountainWhere his sweat dripped downTo water your dirt....Don West achieved success as one of the foremost southern regional poets of the twentieth century. He was at different times a labor organizer, political radical, preacher, progressive educator, and outspoken spokesperson for human equality in the generation before the civil rights movement. Although he is best known for his literary works, West was also an effective proponent of the Social Gospel, embraced by some of the South's most dedicated religious reformers.Born in 1906 in Devil's Hollow, near Ellijay i...
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The Legend of Uktena
2007-05-29 14:30:00
"Long ago -- hilahiyu jigesv -- when the Sun became angry at the people on earth and sent a sickness to destroy them, the Little Men changed a man into a monster snake, which they called Uktena, "The Keen-Eyed," and sent him to kill her (the Sun). He failed to do the work, and the Rattlesnake had to be sent instead, which made the Uktena so jealous and angry that the people were afraid of him and had him taken up to Galunlati, to stay with the other dangerous things. He left others behind him, though, nearly as large and dangerous as himself, and they hide now in deep pools in the river and about lonely passes in the high mountains, the places the Cherokees call "Where the Uktena stays."Those who know say the Uktena is a great snake, as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright blazing crest like a diamond on its forehead, and scales glowing like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length, and can not be wounded except by shooting ...
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US of Appalachia in paperback
2007-05-25 19:05:00
The United States of Appa lachia is now in paperback!"Biggers has fashioned a masterpiece of popular history."--Citizen-Times, North Carolina?Jeff Biggers opens a new window on the complex history of the region called Appalachia. He takes a hard but affectionate look at both the myths and the facts, and what he finds is by turns sobering and thrilling. Drawing on the contradictions, layers, and range of what is known as mountain culture, he shows that nothing is quite what it seems, and that to understand American history it is essential to know Appalachian history. Biggers tells his story with verve and vivid detail, a story that will at once provoke and inspire.?-- Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Brave EnemiesExcerpt: The United States of Appalachia:How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Cultureand Enlightenment to America (Shoemaker and Hoard)by Jeff Biggers INTRODUCTIONAppalachia needs no defense?it needs more defendersBeyond its mythology as a quaint backwater in...
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Hometown wisdom in time of war
2007-05-24 14:30:00
Colonel Ruby Bradley (1907-2002) was the US Army?s most highly decorated nurse. She was born on a farm outside of Spencer, WV and taught four years in one-room schools in Roane County before she became an Army nurse in 1934. Bradley served in the Philippines in 1941 where she was captured by the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and was a POW until February 1945. While a prisoner of war she continued to work as a nurse in the prison camp assisting with 230 operations and 18 births.?In spite of all the preventive measures, the number of dysentery cases increased to such an extent that a small cottage was obtained to house these patients. This cottage became the camp hospital. There were usually more patients than beds, so the less acutely ill were treated in the barrack, while the acutely ill and contagious cases were treated in the camp hospital. ?All bed linen and clothing used by patients was boiled and exposed to the sunshine for two hours after the drying period. When soap becam...
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Amaze your friends and irritate your enemies with it.
2007-05-23 14:35:00
It?s the whispering foil, the flexatone, or simply, the musical saw.Some consider the musical saw an American folk musical instrument believed to have gotten its start somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains in the 19th century (oh, I suppose we can allow that carpenters and lumberjacks all over the world have discovered that their tool could make sounds, but still?.) The region has a rich history of improvised instruments and the peculiar melodic nature of the saw would tend to lend itself quite nicely to mountain music. Instruments always have a grouping of other instruments that work particularly well as a musical blend. For the musical saw, it would be those we traditionally identify with the music of Appalachia: Harmonica, fiddle, dulcimer, and various rhythm instruments.To create a note, the player (or ?sawyer?) bends the blade into an S-curve. The parts of the blade which are curved are dampened from vibration, and do not sound, while at the center of the S-curve a section of...
More About: Friends , Enemies , Ends

That looked like a BIG possum!
2007-05-22 14:30:00
?There's a big old . . . there's a big old boar possum come in here. I . . . I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what it was. And it come in here and in four days, I believe, three or four days, he killed . . . in my chickenhouse out there he killed sixteen big hens. He come out there and he'd knock 'em off of the roost and all the . . . all he got was the head. ?And I couldn't figure what it was, you know. I thought it was a . . . I thought it must be a weasel or . . . so one night I backed my truck down there . . . I backed my truck out there and backed down there where I could see and I . . . I was sitting out there in the back of the truck a laying for him. ?And he come around the barn, come in there. He went in there, buddy, and he knocked two of them chickens off of that roost. He come around that barn so fast I couldn't . . . I couldn't tell . . . I looked . . . I said, "That looked like a big possum." Well, this dog was there and by time I come around he got gone...
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Leo Finkelstein. Pawnbroker. Mensch.
2007-05-18 14:30:00
Temple Beth-Ha-Tephila, Asheville, NCLeo Finkelstein 's father came to Asheville, NC in 1903; Leo was born in 1905. ?Kosher food and orthodox cooking was family tradition until my father died. I attended camp in Brevard and canoed on the French Broad to Arden. I left my lunch behind and ate the bacon and eggs with the rest - despite the Jewish rules. I used to take a car from the square to Biltmore and fish in the Swannanoa. The Asheville Power and Light ran an open air street car and rides cost 5 cents each way.? ?My father gave me a job in his pawn shop for 50 cents a week - out of this I was to save 25 cents. Because of the serial movie on Saturday, I did not work Saturday morning.? Finkelstein was in the 1922 class of what is now Asheville High School. His high school principal called him into his office and said ?You?re wasting tax payer's money - go out and get a job!??When I graduated from high school I inspected watches for the railroad. Railroad workers' watches co...
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What in tarnation?
2007-05-17 14:30:00
"Tarnation!" reads the title at the bottom of the Aug 1922 National Sportsman cover."What in tarnation?" is one of a wide variety of euphemistic expressions of surprise, bewilderment or anger that arose in 18th and 19th century America. Perhaps due to our Puritan legacy, Americans were, during this period, especially creative in devising oaths that allowed us to express strong emotions while still skirting blasphemy. Such inventions as "heck," "drat," "darn," "gosh," "jiminy," "gee-whiz" and "goldarn" were all devised to disguise exclamations that would have been considered shocking in polite society. "Sam Hill," for example, is simply an early 19th century euphemism for "hell" (and while there have been many people named Sam Hill throughout history, the expression does not come from the name of any particular Sam Hill). "Tarnation," which dates back to the late 18th century, is an interesting example of this generation of euphemisms because it's actually two euphemis...