Appalachian History

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T for Texas, T for Tennessee
2007-08-02 14:36:00
I said T for Texas T for Tennesse e Oh, yeah, I said T for TexasT for TennesseeSaid, T for old ThelmaThe gal who made a wreck out of meWell, if you don't want me mommaYou sure don't have to startAh, if you don't want me mommaYou sure don't have to start'Cause I can get more women Than a passenger train carYeah, I said T for TexasT for TennesseeWhoa, T for TexasT for TennesseeI said, T for old ThelmaThe gal who made a wreck out of meI'm gonna buy me a pistolJust as long as I am tallI'm going to buy me a pistolJust as long as I am tallI'm gonna shoot down old mean ThelmaJust to watch her jump and fallI said T for TexasT for TennesseeI said T for TexasT for TennesseeT for old ThelmaThe gal who made a wreck out of meGonna buy me a shotgunWith a great long shiny barrel, oh yeahI'm gonna buy me a shotgunWith a great long shiny barrelGonna shoot down that rounderThat stole away my girlI'm going where the waterTastes like cherry wineYeah, I'm going where the waterTastes like cherry ...
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How Tinkertoys got started
2007-08-01 14:30:00
Before there were Transformer action figures, digital cameras, or Playstations, there were Tinkertoys. These and a host of other construction toys in the early 20th century, including Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets, helped kids throughout Appalachia learn by exercising what we now think of as "spatial intelligence." Charles Pajeau, a stonemason from Evanston, Illinois invented Tinkertoy Construction Sets. He proposed the idea in 1913 on a commuter train to Chicago Board of Trade trader Robert Pettit, and together they started The Toy Tinkers Company. Pajeau designed his first set in his garage. Inspired by watching children play with pencils, sticks and empty spools of thread, Pajeau developed several basic wooden parts which children could assemble in a variety of three dimensional abstract ways. They consisted of spools with eight holes around the edge and one through the center to fit quarter-inch diameter rods of different lengths.With high hopes, the duo displayed the toy at ...

I ain't caught no babies come two month tomorrow
2007-07-31 14:30:00
"Nancy Ward, where are you?" It's getting late. A sudden turn in the road and we've reached the place; the cabin is on the right across this rocky ditch. And on the narrow porch sits Nancy herself, most venerable of midwives, respected by all because of her calling.The old woman rises with the quiet dignity of the hill people. Pride, sorrow, mirth, are written in her rugged features. Her skin might be envied by many a Park Avenue debutante. Her soft black eyes glow with pleasure. A ten-cent store red necklace graces her neck. On her feet are men's shoes, much too large. On her head is a red felt hat."Come in, sweetheart. Hist youreself right over my doorstep and gab a spell." She greets Miss Lester. "Now I ain't caught no babies come two month tomorrow. I aims to quit my traipsing round and set my bones by my own fire. But let me try to quit and some woman's man will come arunning from yan way, and afore I knows it I'm a'tagging at his heels to help, jest like Jake's old hou...
More About: Babies , Caught , Tomorrow , Babi , Month

That old-time tent revival
2007-07-30 14:30:00
It?s tent revival season throughout Appalachia! Last week the Voice of the Word Ministries tent revival took place in Johnson City, TN. Later this week the Blue Ridge Foothills annual tent revival kicks off in Wolftown, VA. You can bet there are hundreds more throughout the region ? the region that invented the tent revival.The first camp meeting took place in July 1800 at Gasper River Church in southwestern Kentucky. A much larger one was held at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in August 1801, where between 10,000 and 25,000 people attended, and Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist ministers participated. It was this event that stamped the organized revival as the major mode of church expansion for denominations such as the Methodists and Baptists, who were newly converted by the teachings of John Wesley. ?The significant and most recurring theme in mountain preaching,? according to Deborah McCauley, author of Appalachian Mountain Religion, ?is that of a broken heart, tenderness of heart, a...
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They'd get up and swing around on the trapeze
2007-07-27 14:30:00
?Well I'll tell you I came from up in Washington County. Washington County, Ohio. Lived up in the country there with my grandmother. My mother died when I was a little fellow and I lived with my grandmother. Lived up there in the country and all you could see was the steamboats. There was nothing else up there to look at except the trees and the farms, and one thing and another. So I lived there until I got to be sixteen years old. Watched the boats and went down when the boats landed. I got acquainted with some of the fellows on the boat and after awhile I got a job on the boat ..."... The man never made any money out of [the water circus]. Well, I?ll tell you, he went down the river, we followed the river down here, made all the river towns aware, that there were any justified to stop at. Got out of Paducah and after he got to Paducah he decided he didn?t want to go down the river any farther, he wanted to come back. He lived at Ironton and he didn't want to get too far away fr...
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The Appy League: play ball!
2007-07-26 14:30:00
Pitcher Cole Rohrbough continued his dominance over the Appalachian League with five hitless innings yesterday as Danville VA's Braves shut down the Burlington (NC) Royals 1-0.The A ppalachian League was born in 1911 with teams in Asheville, N.C.; Bristol, Va.; Cleveland, Tenn.; Johnson City, Tenn.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Morristown, Tenn. That first version of the league lasted just four years, with the league disbanding in the middle of the 1914 season when Morristown and Middlesboro, Ky., folded on June 17. The league reformed in 1921 with six teams: Bristol; Cleveland; Greenville, Tenn.; Johnson City; Kingsport, Tenn.; and Knoxville. That incarnation of the league managed five seasons, before again closing up shop midway through 1925. In 1937, the Appy League, as many called it, was restarted with the Elizabethton Betsy Red Sox in Elizabethton, Tenn.; the Johnson City Cardinals in Johnson City; Newport, Tenn.; and the Pennington Gap Lee Bears (league champs that year) in Penningt...
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I heard rumors about the blind fish
2007-07-25 14:30:00
Claude W. Hibbard was the first naturalist at Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park (June 1, 1934 to August 22, 1935). His job was to evaluate the area and record the types of wildlife he found in this region. Hibbard was to look at various habitats in this region and evaluate them to help determine what should be included in the new national park. Journal Entry- Area 2July 25, 1934The first day that I arrived at the park, May 31, I heard rumors about the blind fish, especially that no authentic record was known of blind fish from Mammoth Cave and the Park area; though all roadside stands have blind fish to sell. At present the owners of the stands are paying local men and boys $1. per inch for blind fish and selling them for $2.50 to $5.00 apiece. While working at Stockholm I came in contact with Mr. W. E. Constant who had always lived in this region and had collected arrowheads, other Indian material, and digging up graves for Indian bones, and collecting blind fish to sell to to...
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We spoke just Italian at home
2007-07-24 14:30:00
?My parents were Italian immigrants, and they settled in West Virginia, where my father came over at the age of seventeen, where he was a bookkeeper. He came over as a bookkeeper for an Italian, Mr. Fucci [sic], who was building a railroad through a great part of West Virginia at the time. [ed. note: Joseph ?Col. Joe? Fuccy (1857-1922) was for forty years one of West Virginia?s prominent railroad builders and contractors. He was involved in the construction of half a dozen different lines in West Virginia and the Ohio Valley.] ?Mr. Fucci knew my father, because he came from the same little town in Italy many years before. He knew about my father's background, and he needed a bookkeeper, so he asked him to come over, which he did. My mother came a few years--came from another small town in Italy. She came about a year or two later. She settled in Pittsburgh with some relatives; she was only fourteen when she came over. ?My father was eighteen, seventeen or eighteen, and they were i...
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Dark as a Dungeon
2007-07-23 14:30:00
Oh come all you young fellers so young and so fineSeek not your fortune in a dark dreary mineIt'll form as a habit and seep in your soulTill the stream of your blood runs as black as the coalWhere it's dark as a dungeon damp as the dewdanger is double pleasures are fewWhere the rain never falls the sun never shinesIt's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mineIt?s a-many a man I have seen in my day,Who lived just to labor his whole life away.Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine,A man will have lust for the lure of the mines.And pray when I'm dead and my ages shall rollThat my body would blacken and turn into coalThen I'll look from the door of my heavenly home and pity the miner digging my bones.The midnight, the morning, or the middle of day,Is the same to the miner who labors away.There the demons of death often come by surprise,The fall of the slate and you?re buried alive.It?s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,The danger is double and pleasures are few,Wher...
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If I couldn't talk I'd bust
2007-07-20 15:18:00
"Yes, I am working on a part time job as cook, but you don't need to ask what I'm doing the rest of the time. What don't I do? I get up early and sometimes wash out clothes or clean house. You'd be surprised at the dirt these roomers bring in; they never think of wiping their feet on the mat. My mammy gets dinner ready for the girls when they come home from the mill, but she won't wash up the dishes. She leaves them for me to wash when I come home. And then the family expect me to get supper. Sometimes I find my mammy and my youngest sister--they always sleep together and are just like twins--layin' on the bed waitin' for me to git 'em somethin' to eat. After supper me and another sister go out and work the garden until dark. So you see I don't have time to git lonesome."I hardly get time to go to church either. My family was Lutherans in the old days, but there ain't no Lutheran church here and we are all mixed up; we go to different churches--when we go at all. One of m...
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If I couldn't talk I'd bust
2007-07-20 14:30:00
"Yes, I am working on a part time job as cook, but you don't need to ask what I'm doing the rest of the time. What don't I do? I get up early and sometimes wash out clothes or clean house. You'd be surprised at the dirt these roomers bring in; they never think of wiping their feet on the mat. My mammy gets dinner ready for the girls when they come home from the mill, but she won't wash up the dishes. She leaves them for me to wash when I come home. And then the family expect me to get supper. Sometimes I find my mammy and my youngest sister--they always sleep together and are just like twins--layin' on the bed waitin' for me to git 'em somethin' to eat. After supper me and another sister go out and work the garden until dark. So you see I don't have time to git lonesome."I hardly get time to go to church either. My family was Lutherans in the old days, but there ain't no Lutheran church here and we are all mixed up; we go to different churches--when we go at all. One of m...
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And he finally murdered her. Just murdered her brutally.
2007-07-19 14:30:00
?I'll tell you, Mrs. Higher was right down here on the corner. As you go down over the hill and go to town. She was right on the corner. That corner building was where she was. And she was a mighty good old lady. She kept all the loggers, you know, the woodsmen came and she took care of them and was good to them. And she set a good table. And then she married this... she'd been married to Magan. And he was a drunkard, you know, she was married to him and he died. And then she married this old Higher... Frank Higher. And he finally murdered her. Just murdered her brutally.?I was working in Elkins when that happened. He just beat her up and stood on her and mashed her insides out and everything else. And he dragged her back into the little back room... it's not there now, its tore down, and he put her in the bathtub they thought he was trying to revive her. And as he drug her out she lost her teeth and they were found after she was buried.?And so... he was hanged in Mo...
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Drop a stone upon her grave and make a wish
2007-07-18 14:30:00
Ten miles north of Dahlonega, GA, at the intersection of US 19 and State Road 60, is a stone pile in a triangle where the roads cross, known as the Stone Pile Gap. ?This pile of stones marks the grave of a Cherokee princess, Trahlyta,? reads the Georgia Historical Commission marker standing guard. ?According to legend her tribe, living on Cedar Mountain north of here, knew the secret of the magic springs of eternal youth from the Witch of Cedar Mountain. Trahlyta, kidnapped by a rejected suitor, Wahsega, was taken far away and lost her beauty. As she was dying, Wahsega promised to bury her near her home and the magic springs. Custom arose among the Indians and later the Whites to drop stones, one for each passerby, on her grave for good fortune. The magic springs, now known as Porter Springs, lie 3/4 miles northeast of here.?Twice the Georgia Department of Highways has attempted to move the grave during road construction. Both times at least one person died in an accident while mov...
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A curious middle name
2007-07-17 14:30:00
Please welcome guest blogger Bob Sloan.My grandfather, William Baldwin Sloan, was born in 1877, in Rowan County, Kentucky. I was thirteen when he died, young enough far too many questions went unasked.Like, how'd a mountain kid born on an isolated Appalachian ridge get the name "Baldwin?" I never met another man named "Baldwin." The name's on a lot of pianos, but not many birth certificates. But every question has an answer. The trick is finding someone who knows it. When I happened to ask the oldest surviving member of my father's family about the name, Uncle Charlie replied, "Pap was named after an old Jewish peddler." Then he told me why: In the 1870's, a tinker, peddler, and jack-of-all-trades regularly traveled through Holly Fork, on what passed for roads back then. When the route was passable, every few weeks he'd come by the cabin where my grandfather was born. He sold bolts of cloth, offered needles and thread, could hone scissors or patch the hole in an o...
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A town dies, a park is born
2007-07-16 14:30:00
Today the former town of Elkmont, TN in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a magnet for lovers of the synchronous firefly display, which just ended several weeks ago.But in the early 1930s nature's display was being outshone by political sparks flying in all directions. The previously bucolic summer haven for the socially prominent and wealthy members of Knoxville, Maryville, and Chattanooga was about to be changed beyond recognition, and tempers were high. There were two sides on the issue--one wished for a national park and one wanted the area to be preserved as a national forest. Colonel David C. Chapman was the driving force behind the national park; he wanted roads and facilities erected so all Americans could enjoy the area. He also believed the visitors would bring in money for local businesses."On the way to Silers Bald from Elkmont by way of Buckeye Gap."August 17, 1929 -- photo by Albert Gordon (Dutch) Roth, 1890-1974James Wright, a Knoxville lawy...
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He is now in the C.C. Camp
2007-07-13 14:30:00
?Andy Orville Bozzel is the son of Mr. And Mrs. George Bozzel. He was born in Andover, VA in Wise County, November 24, 1922. His education is limited, he having completed the fourth grade. He quit school in 1937 on account of lack of money to send him on. He lives a mile from school. He has lived in Appalachia [the town in VA] for the past five years. He seems to be a bright youth but not anxious to study in order to succeed.?He is now in the C.C. Camp and is receiving thirty dollars per month. Of that amount twenty two is sent home to his parents. He got to go to the C.C. Camp by his mother taking him to the welfare office and asking that he be signed up. Since going to camp he is completely self supporting. He has been there only a short time. I received this information from his mother. His mother told me that she asked him if signed up to go to night school in Camp and he answered, ?You know I did for I want more education.??His mother has completed the ninth grade i...

First thing we got rid of were the oil lamps
2007-07-12 14:30:00
My dad worked most of his adult life at Coal, Feed and Lumber Company ?hardware? in downtown Marshall, NC. He delivered products. I remember for many years, Coal, Feed sold a lot of coal, which was pretty prominent. Dad drove a truck delivering coal, and I can remember him coming home in the fall and winter after having spent all day in the basement loading coal, taking it out and unloading it. They didn't have dump trucks or any kind of equipment to load that coal other than shovels. So, he shoveled a lot of coal.At that time there were several independent coal haulers in this county. A lot of fellows had trucks that they drove to Kentucky and Virginia, and brought coal to this county that they delivered to homeowners. Coal was a pretty predominant heating fuel for a great number of years.There was some wood burned, but the transition was not from wood to oil, it was from wood to coal to oil. [I remember as a child my dad getting home from work and being covered with coal.] Absol...
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Keep your eye on the black snake over the door
2007-07-11 14:30:00
The Spring House was a common site at many farms in the past. It was a pre-electricity version of a refrigerator ? a crude structure built into the side of a hill with a spring running through it. Cool waters helped the farmer to keep milk, cheese, eggs and other perishables fresh.Under the best of circumstances it was built over a spring where the water was coldest as it bubbled up to the surface. Otherwise a small stream was diverted from a nearby creek which ran through the building. ?We had a well that was close to the house and my father built a spring house by the back door. We could pump water through the spring house to cool the milk or any other thing that was stored there. Sometimes we would pump the water a couple of times aday to cool the milk especially when my mother wanted to churn the milk for buttermilk and butter.? --Jo Byrd Sammons (Her mother was from Craig Co. VA and her father was from Bland Co. VA)?We had no electricity nor running water so we stored milk and...
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Doc Brown the Grave Robber
2007-07-10 14:30:00
Please welcome guest blogger Bob Sloan.This is about a man who's a legend where I live, a man who once walked the same ground as the rest of us, but left such a track more than seventy years after his death in 1935, people still talk about him. When I was a boy it was common to be entertained, especially around Halloween, by tales about "Doc Brown the grave robber." My grandma could scare the water out of a porch full of kids, describing this mad monster from a time that back then wasn't all that distant. She'd point down the hill to Open Fork Road, and tell us Doc Brown could had sometimes been spotted riding that very trail toward a graveyard, his passage lit by a kerosene lantern bobbing the rhythm of his mule's gait. Shovel tied to his saddle, sometimes with an anonymous assistant riding behind, everybody knew he was off to dig up some newly buried corpse. And not only did he dig up dead bodies, my grandma said he cut 'em up, sliced 'em to pieces right there besid...
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Lived alone, suffered alone, died alone
2007-07-09 14:30:00
July 22 will mark the 84th anniversary of Nick Grindstaff?s demise. His gravestone reads: ?Lived alone, suffered alone, died alone,? but in the 1870?s he was one of Johnson County, TN?s most colorful residents. Grindstaff was born on December 26, 1851. By the time he was three years old both his mother, Mary Heaton Grindstaff, and his father, Isaac Grindstaff, had died. Nick and his three orphaned siblings lived with relatives until Nick was 21 years old, at which time the parents? farm was divided equally among the children. Nick built a house on his portion and began to farm the land. After five years of farming Nick sold his farm and decided to go west.He was an adventurer, and like so many young men of that era, smelled his fortune in California gold. While there he met, fell in love with, and married a young woman. The woman died.On his way back to Johnson County, legend says Grindstaff was coaxed into the rear of a saloon by a ?lovely lady,? whose partner in crime robbed him...
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Daddy's mother, my grandma
2007-07-06 14:28:00
Please welcome today's guest blogger Debra S. YoungbloodThis article is an edited version; original post is here.Grandma was born in the late 1800's. She was kicked out of her father's house when her mother died and he remarried. She was seven years old. She found a place to work, cleaning and cooking, and lived there until she was 14, when she met my Grandpa. They were married, and she bore him 9 children that lived. A set of twins died shortly after birth, and, from what I was told, she had a miscarriage while cooking supper. As it was told to me, she "shoved it aside with one foot and kept on cookin".She always chewed tobacco, grown by my Grandfather, picked by the grand boys and hung to dry in the huge barn. Don't know if she drank corn liquor, but I do know that my dad had many stills that dotted the countryside during the 20's and 30's. He did tell me his father came upon one of his stills by the banks of the Coal River and promptly threw it into the middle of the river....
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Tossing the caber
2007-07-05 14:30:00
If you missed the Gatlinburg (TN) Scottish Festival & Games back in May, or can?t wait till November for the Scottish Clans of the South to gather in Hendersonville, NC, don?t panic. The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in Linville, NC is the largest assembly of Scottish clan society members in the world, and it?s coming up July 12-15.Scottish-Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Scots and would-be Scots converge each year on two rock-strewn pastures, known as MacRae Meadows, in the shadow of the tallest peak in the Blue Ridge chain, the 5,964-ft. Grandfather Mountain.Dancing, running, throwing large poles and bragging about one's Scottish ancestry-it's all part of a day's work at highland games.The centuries old Scottish tradition of staging competitions at cattle fairs continued when Scottish immigrants came to North Carolina in the 18th century. The newcomers felt at home in the North Carolina mountains, and descendants of these pioneers continued to speak Gaelic into the ea...
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Open this skyscraper or I'll jump!
2007-07-04 16:00:00
The much anticipated grand opening of Lynchburg, VA?s first true skyscraper had been scheduled for July 4, 1931, but a last minute political twist changed the Oppenmeyer Tower?s fate forever. Joseph J. Oppenmeyer, a newly-transplanted European diamond mogul, commissioned the building's design and construction in 1929. Construction had been steadily progressing for three years and was only two weeks from completion, when the Federal Land and Buildings Commission passed a national ordinance that required any building over four stories tall to include an elevator.The final design for Oppenmeyer?s seventeen-story building, unbelievable by today's sensibilities, did not include an elevator. The Elevator Ordinance, as it was later referred to, infuriated the cash-strapped Oppenmeyer, who was badly in need of tenant income, as his fortune had been in slow but sure decline since the onset of the Depression. No amount of last-minute political lobbying in Washington D.C. could secure a gr...
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Our own swimming hole
2007-07-03 14:30:00
"We had our own fun. We swang on grapevines and we had a seesaw. And we made our own merry-go-round. We went fishing. We fixed our own pond and had our own swimming hole. Of course we had to work hard before we could play. "[One game played back then that nobody knows about now is] Antknee Over. Somebody would get on one side of the house and somebody on the other and you had to catch that ball before it hits the ground and you run around the house and tag them. You holler "antknee over." And then we played whip-crack. You line up in a line and the person on the end really got it. You run with them and you come around and snap them. When we was in the boggle school, we was little then, and we used to play in the leaves. "We had ballgames, and jack rocks. We read a lot. We read anything we could get our hands on. Mother didn't allow us to read funny books. Mother didn't think we should read funny books, but we'd hide them and read them. There was a series of mystery books that...
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Black raspberry season!
2007-07-02 14:30:00
July. Hottest, most humid month of the year. So put on your highest boots, long pants, and a long shirt, and head for the woods. Because July is also black raspberry season, and you?re not going to find those sweet sweet delights any other way (oh, I guess you could plant a couple of rows in the garden, but where?s the adventure in that?) In much of Appalachia, black raspberries are simply called blackberries, even though they are not. Call them Rubus occidentalis if you?re of a scientific bent; Black cap, or Scotch Cap if you?re not. The black fruit makes them look like blackberries, but the taste is unique and not like either red raspberry (Rubus idaeus) or blackberry (Rubus fruticosus).Don?t be fooled by the red berries on the plants. They are not the same as the red raspberry, but simply unripe berries. They?ll be a lot harder to pull off than the ripe berries anyhow, so why fight? You?ll have sore thumbs & index fingers by day?s end.The two raspberries DO share the disti...
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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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