Appalachian History

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The Kraft Pulp Mill Construction
2008-03-06 14:30:00
Report on Construction Products Plant, Mar 6, 1920West Virginia Pulp and Paper CompanyCovington Va"Herewith picture taken 3:15 p.m. 3-4-20 of construction grounds taken from a point lower down on the sand cliff as the one taken 1:30 p.m. 2-26-20."You can notice hardly any difference in it from last week’s picture. This picture shows all the building walls for the Soda Mill run except a short piece south end of Digester Room which we expect to run Monday; and the wall between Pan Room and Screen Room which is still under the track used for loading pyrites cinder, and Mr. Lamb is doing all in his power to push this along."For the Evaporator Building we dug a trench 3 feet wide (18 inches on each side of centre line of bolts, being about the width of foundation required for this wall. This gave us good information as to the condition of soil for Mr. Wadleigh. That is, we found good, solid clay all around the wall at about El. 8’00”, and the entire inside of the building has ab...

All the machinery stopped and the lights went out
2008-03-05 14:30:00
Before the days of T.V.A. and large power companies, electricity was supplied to rural areas by such imaginative and pioneering men as Arthur Abernathy Miller. In 1925, Miller, a brilliant self-educated electrical engineer, built the first hydroelectric dam in north Alabama --- the DeSoto dam in Ft Payne, AL. Miller had furnished electrical power for two towns in Virginia and one in West Virginia before coming to Fort Payne from Chattanooga in 1921. He knew he had found an ideal location for his plant at this picturesque spot atop Lookout Mountain. His initial goal was to help supply power to his Little River Power Company, later sold to Alabama Power Company, which he constructed below the falls on the west side of the gorge. After he decided to build his electric plant at DeSoto Falls, Miller's first problem appeared to be the area's inaccessibility. There were no roads at all and Miller's heavy Lincoln mired deeply in the muddy log trail on several occasions before he and...
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The Sistersville Ferry
2008-03-04 14:30:00
The Sistersville Ferry is the longest continuously working mode of transportation in Monroe County, OH, operating since 1815. It crosses the Ohio River between Fly, Ohio, and Sistersville, West Virginia, which is the apex of the longest straight stretch on the Ohio River. This section of the river is called the "Long Reach," which runs about twenty miles in length. At the "Long Reach," one can see Beavertown seven and a half miles to the south, and in the other direction Sardis can be spotted five miles north. The Sistersville Ferry is located near the site George Washington encamped during a survey trip to the west on October 25, 1770.There are only four ferries left along the 981-mile long mighty Ohio River, with the Sisterville Ferry being the only one along the 277 mile stretch of Ohio River that shares its border with West Virginia.source: http://www.pbase.com/gshamilton/image/508 06746Fly+OH Sisterville+Ferry Sisterville+WV Ohio+River appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+...

Magyars in Morgantown
2008-03-03 14:30:00
Great numbers of Hungarian immigrants came to the United States around the turn of the century. The wave of immigration from 1880 to about 1915 was called the 'Great Economic Immigration' for Hungarians, and it drew about 1.7 million Hungarian citizens, among them 650,000-700,000 real Hungarians (Magyars), to American shores. These immigrants came almost solely for economic reasons, and they represented the lowest and poorest segment of the population. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 halted mass migration, but by 1922 7,300 Hungarian-born Magyars had found their way to West Virginia. The exclusionary U.S. immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 pushed the Hungarian quota down to under 1,000 per year.Many Hungarian immigrants came hoping to make money and then return to their home country with enough capital to make themselves into prosperous farmers. Few of them achieved this goal---25% of Hungarian immigrants returned to Hungary---and virtually all of them became unskilled or semi...

Theirs was a hardy race
2008-02-29 14:30:00
"Practically all Melungeons preferred a care-free existence with members of their own clan. For many generations they seldom married outsiders, and virtually all families in each area were related. Nearly all Melungeons, young and old chewed tobacco. They lived largely on bacon, corn pone, mush, and strong coffee. In early spring they gathered crow's foot from the woodlands, and bear's lettuce from spring branches, and ate them raw with salt. They liked wild fruits and berries to eat from the bush, but cared nothing for canning and preserving them. The holiday for Melungeon men was a week in late summer, after the crops were laid by, to be used for a ginseng expedition. No camping equipment was taken along except a water pail, knives, and a frying pan. They slept under the cliffs."No fisherman could compete with the Melungeons. He simply waded into the stream, shoes and all, and searched with his fingers for fish hiding under stones. It no time he emerged with a nice string of fis...
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Lots of people thought I was an idiot
2008-02-28 14:30:00
"I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I only clucked and motioned for what I wanted. Lots of people thought I was an idiot because I could not talk. I may have looked like one, for I was a little old country boy that never cut my hair in those days only about twice a year, and I wore a big checked cotton shirt and old jeans pants made by my mother and old yarn socks, and 70-cent stogie shoes with brass toes. This was my winter suit and my summer suit was only a big yellow factory shirt and no hat or shoes."At the age of ten I was taken by my mother and uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, Ky., the county seat of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. We rode an old mare named "Kate," without any saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an idiot sure enough. "So when Judge H. C. Lilley opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken me before the judge. The judge ordered old Black Shade Combs, then the s...
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Tell me that riddle or I’ll smash yer nose!
2008-02-27 14:30:00
These riddles, collected in the North Carolina mountains, belong to a familiar pattern, the seemingly obscene question with an innocuous reply. Texts from Ralph S. Boggs, "North Carolina White Folktales and Riddle s," Journal of American Folklore, XLVII (1934), pp. 320-21.The ole man shook it an’ shook it; The old woman pulled up her dress an’ took it.A man shook apples out of a tree, and his wife caught them in her dress.The ole lady pitted it an’ patted it; The ole man down with his breeches an’ at it.She made up the bed, and he undressed and got into bed.When it goes in, it’s stiff an’ stout;When it comes out, it’s flopping about.Cooking a cabbage.Big at the bottom, an’ little at the top,An’ a little thing in the middle that goes pippity pop.A churn.Little Jessie Ruddle,Asettin’ in a puddle,Green garters an’ yaller toes;Tell me that riddle or I’ll smash yer nose! A duck in a puddle of water.About six inches long, an’ a might pretty size;Not a lady...
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Liza Jane
2008-02-26 14:30:00
When I go a-courtin',I'll go on the train.When I go to marry,I'll marry Liza Jane .Chorus:O Law', Liza, po' gal,O Law', Liza Jane,O Law', Liza, po' gal,She died on the train.The hardest work I ever didWas a-brakin'on a train;The easiest work I ever didWas a-huggin' Liza Jane.When I went to see her,She met me at the door;Her shoes and stockings in her hand,And her feet all over the floor.When I went to see her,She wrung her hands and cried;She swore I was the ugliest thingThat ever lived or died.I ask little Liza to marry me-What do you reckon she said?Said she would not marry me,If everybody else was dead.Goin' up the mountainTo raise a patch of cane,To make a barrel of sorghumTo sweeten up Liza Jane.Whisky by the barrel,Sugar by the pound,A great big bowl to put it in,And a spoon to stir it round.I wish I had a needle and a threadAs fine as I could sew,I would sew all the girls to my coat-tail,And down the mountain I'd go.Old corn likker's done made,Still's tore out an...

Worst industrial tragedy in WV history
2008-02-25 14:30:00
The Fayette Journal (WV) reported on February 24, 1933 that 130 of the 3,000 men working on the Hawks Nest Tunnel at Alloy had already died from silicosis, caused from inhalation of silica rock particles, and that 350 others were afflicted with it. The tunnel, built by the New-Kanawha Power Company between 1930-35 in conjunction with the Hawks Nest Dam, harnessed the hydroelectric potential of the Gauley River, initially to provide power for the Electro Metallurgical Company, a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation.The excavation work had been contracted to the firm of Rinehart and Dennis of Charlottesville, VA, which received much of the blame for failing to take proper precautions after it was found that workers were blasting through silica rock. The two hour period between shifts to allow dust to settle was laxly enforced, even though the contractors were aware of the danger of silicosis. Acute silicosis kills within a few years of exposure to silica dust, after as little ...
More About: History , Tragedy , Industrial

He treed the coons in the cliff
2008-02-22 14:30:00
Back in nineteen and thirteen me and my brother coon hunted lots [in the] Smokies. We had a dog named Track. He was a good one. We went to Flat Creek one evening, built up a camp fire, and stayed till two o'clock the next morning. We left and went in on Stillwell, and old Track, he struck. Right up Stillwell he went, and us right after him. About ten o'clock in the day it begin to snowing. We followed old Track about a hour, and the snow was about twenty-two inches deep. We turned back to the camp. About two o'clock in the evening old Track come back, and we had a big campfire. Chunks had rolled down, and old Track come in and set down by the fire, and directly he retched down and got a chunk of fire in his mouth, and right out the door he went. We was right out after him, went back in on Stillwell, and we was a-trackin' him. He'd run off and left us. Right up Stillwell he went and us right after him, and about a mile above where we'd turned back, why, we found o...
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The Russell House
2008-02-21 14:30:00
William Ganaway Russell had the good fortune to buy a farm exactly halfway between Walhalla SC and Highlands NC.In 1849 an industrious group of Charleston German businessman were looking for a suitable parcel on which they could create a new settlement in SC, and formed the German Colonization Society to do so. Their plan was simple: they would buy a large fertile expanse of land, subdivide it, and resell it to immigrants who they would recruit from Germany. After much deliberation, the Society purchased from Colonel Joseph Gresham 17,000 acres in Pickens District near the base of the Appalachians (in the center of modern day Oconee county.) They named the town they laid out Walhalla –‘paradise’ in German-- and within two years, the first settlers arrived and began to clear & farm the land. The Society took an active role to insure that the new Blue Ridge Railroad ran from Anderson, SC to the new town, thereby providing the last leg of a solid rail connection all the way t...
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Sweet, sticky maple wax
2008-02-20 16:08:00
"Sugar making time was looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by the young people," writes George Benson Kuykendall in a family geneaology published in 1919. His uncle, Isaac Kuykendall, purchased a 670 acre farm near Huttons, Garrett County, MD in 1881. "It came along in the early spring when there were clear days and frosty nights and pretty hard freezing, but the days were warmer, with sunshine that started the sap flowing. In the groves of 'sugar trees' was the sugar camp, where the sugar makers camped and boiled down the sap. When 'sugar weather' came around, the trees were tapped by boring auger holes in them."Tubes or spiles were then inserted to conduct the sap to the sap trough. The sap trough was made by cutting a small green maple log or stick of wood into lengths two feet long and splitting them through the middle, then digging out the wood on the split side with an axe and adze. These troughs were set under the drip of the spiles to catch the 'sugar water....
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You were likely to encounter everybody you ever met
2008-02-19 14:30:00
"[My father] started one trend that horrified all the old friends. He put the kitchen on the front of the house. This was a thing unknown, inconceivable to the local populous. You didn't put the kitchen on the front of the house. People built houses on Montford Avenue where there was a superb view in the back of the house, with porches that had the whole Pisgah range...the whole Cold Mountain, Pisgah, Spivey, Eagle's View panorama...in those days it was just clear as crystal all the time, that view. In those days you could see it, but now all that stuff is just a crick in a particulate fog. "Anyway, they put a streetcar track on Montford Avenue, and there was a certain amount of traffic, and a certain amount of streetlights. People had porches on the front of their houses, where they could see nothing but whatever went on on Montford Avenue. This is entertaining, I think, because it illustrates the standards and mores of the period, and I guess of the people. The interest...
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Now don't tell a soul I told you this...
2008-02-18 14:30:00
"Why--it's taken for granted that women are gossips by nature, by instinct and by training," said the Sparrow. "Women ought to deny that charge every time they hear it, too!" she exclaimed. "It's just one of the many accusations men have repeated over and over until they have come to believe it." The birds are used to hearing warm debates spring up between the Sparrows, shriek and flutter and prance for a while, and die amicably away. Their part is usually to provide a fair field and no favor, but when it comes up they sometimes listen, knowing that no marital infelicities can be brought about among settled Bird couples."If you would listen better to street conversations," the Sparrow declared, "you would have found out long ago that it's the women who talk scandal and start idle rumors." "They're not a bit worse than men! I tell you more than half the mischievous talk is retailed by some married woman, who heard it from her husband, who got it, of course, at his clu...
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The Waldensians in North Carolina
2008-02-15 14:30:00
The largest Waldensian colony in the world outside of Italy--Valdese, NC--was officially incorporated as a town on February 17, 1920.The Waldenses, or Waldensians, are a Christian sect founded in the 12th century by Peter Valdo (hence Valdese = Waldensian), a merchant of Lyons, France who lived only a short time before St. Francis. For many years the group was confined to a rugged area in the Cottian Alps along the boundary between Italy and France. King Louis XIV was determined not to let Protestant beliefs seep into Catholic-driven France and persecuted the Waldensians mercilessly. Not until the Edict of 1848 did the sect finally receive freedom to worship as they wished. Toward the later part of the 19th century many Waldenses emigrated to North and South America to form missionary colonies—no longer because of religious persecution but because their small strip of land in the Alps had become overcrowded. They migrated to New York City, Chicago, Missouri, Texas and Utah, as wel...
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You can send me pretty flowers, you can send me valentines
2008-02-14 14:30:00
You can send me pretty flowers you can send me valentinesSend me letters every day but it won’t payLeap to my desire, nothing else will doIt’s goodbye and so long to youYou can hang around and love me you can hang your head and cryHang my picture on the wall but I won’t fallKiss me when you’re dreaming, no good that will doIt’s goodbye and so long to youYou can give me your affection you can give all your loveGive me all the things I’ll crave but I’ll be braveAll the things you offer, make me sad and blueIt’s goodbye and so long to youYou can call me your own darling you can call me what you mayCall me on the telephone I won’t be homeKeep your old love letters, I’m all through with youIt’s goodbye and so long to you"Its Goodbye and So Long to You"recorded by the Osborne Brothers with Mac WisemanThe Essential Bluegrass Album, 1979Famed for his clear and mellow tenor voice, Mac Wiseman (b. 1925) has recorded with many great bluegrass bands, including those of Mol...
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Virginia outlaws marijuana
2008-02-13 14:30:00
By 1937, when "Drug Czar" Harry Anslinger, then Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, introduced the Marihuana [sic] Tax Act to Congress, lurid testimonies were being introduced that cannabis caused "murder, insanity and death." And just the year before, the film now known as cult classic Reefer Madness was financed by a church group and made under the title Tell Your Children. This highly exaggerated exploitation film revolved around the tragic events that follow when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marihuana:" wild parties with jazz music lead to a hit and run accident, manslaughter, suicide, rape, and descent into madness.But despite the national media hype, most states passed anti-drug laws without much scientific study or debate and without attracting public attention. In Virginia , for example, the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act passed the House 88-0 on February 16, 1934, and was approved 34-0 by the Senate on February 22. Although the Act as passed in ...
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A racy book, full of the thrill of mountain adventure
2008-02-12 14:30:00
In winter one must draw the little hickory split chair close to the hearth, for most of the heat from the great glowing fire goes up the chimney. The house may have a small window-sash immovably built in. Often there is none. The woman cooks breakfast before sun-up, and supper after dark, by the smoky light of a tiny kerosene lamp with no chimney. It is difficult to carry lamp chimneys long distances in saddle-bags. There are many homes where even the moderate luxury of kerosene is not found. A sliver of pine knot gives an even more smoky light, and occasionally a “ladle” is used. It is preferably made by a blacksmith, an iron saucer with a handle to hang it by. Narrow strips of cotton cloth, twisted or plaited together, are laid in the ladle in grease. The end of the rag is hung over the edge and ignited. Its illumination is not measured in candle power.The Land of Saddle-bags by James Watt RaineThe Land of Saddle-bags is one of the three most important books from the...
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Let it snow, let it snow!
2008-02-11 14:30:00
[Eastern Kentucky, 1920s] Caption reads: Two boys, wearing knit caps and short pants with long socks, and a little girl, wearing a fur coat, play with a dog and a sled in the snow.Caption reads: Children Building a Snow Fort at Arthurdale, W. Va.Snow Battle at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, winter 1932-33. Caption reads: First suitable snow in three years, therefore, three classes ('34, '35, and '36) were in it. It was a big one.sleds snowball+fights snow+forts Arthurdale+WV Blacksburg+VA Virginia+Tech appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

The accidental town
2008-02-08 14:30:00
There is a town in Maryland’s westernmost county of Garrett that got its name from a happy accident. In 1750, Maryland settler George Deakins was granted 600 acres of land as a payment of a debt from England’s King George II. Deakins sent out two corps of engineers, each without knowledge of the other, to survey the best land in this area. When the two crews presented their findings, to their surprise and to Mr. Deakins’ satisfaction, they had both marked the same oak tree as their starting and returning points. Doubly vindicated that this land was prime, Mr. Deakins had it patented "The Accident Tract."The town was eventually settled by the Dranes. James Drane moved to the area in 1803 from Prince George’s County, which was part of the Maryland tobacco belt. Apparently Drane intended to turn his farm into a tobacco plantation. However, the climate of Garrett County proved unsuitable for growing tobacco, and he turned to normal farm crops. The Dranes lived in a log cabin b...
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Carter G Woodson, father of Black History Month
2008-02-07 14:30:00
February is Black History Month (if you’re in the UK and reading this, make that October!). West Virginia educator Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves, was pivotal in its development. Woodson (1874-1950) was a graduate and later principal of Douglass High School in Huntington, WV, a dean at West Virginia State, and was the second African American to earn Harvard Ph.D. (1912).Dr. Woodson authored numerous scholarly books and magazine articles on the positive contributions of blacks to the development of America. He reached out to schools and the general public through the establishment of several key organizations, and founded Negro History Week (precursor to Black History Month). On September 9, 1915, Woodson and four others organized the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The purposes of the organization, in Woodson's words, were "the collection of sociological and historical data on the Negro, the study of peoples of African blood, the publishing of bo...
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Ah, how poets sing and die!
2008-02-06 14:30:00
Black Man o' Mine,If the world were your lover,It could not give what I give to you,Or the ocean would yield and you could discoverIts ages of treasure to hold and to view;Could it fill half the measure of my heart's portion . . .Just for you living, just for you giving all this devotion,Black man o' mine. Black man o' mine,As I hush and caress you, close to my heart,All your loving is just your needing what is true;Then with your passing dark comes my darkest part,For living without your love is only rue.Black man o' mine, if the world were your loverIt could not give what I give to you.Poet Anne Spencer, of Bramwell WV, was born on this date in 1882. Many of Spencer's poems convey a romantic concern with the human search for beauty and meaning in a disgusting world, as well as people's wasted attempts to enforce order on God's earth. While attending Lynchburg's Virginia Seminary Spencer penned her first poem, The Skeptic (1896), and also met her future husband, Edward. Th...
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Sixty years of change in Ironton Ohio
2008-02-05 14:30:00
Los Angeles, February 6, 1934 Editor Tribune: Sixty years have passed since the writer answered an advertisement in the columns of The Tribune's honored predecessor, The Ironton Register, resulting in his employment as a boy in the Register office. That was on February 6, 1874. I remained in the service of the Register twenty-seven years, until moving to Chicago.What changes have come about in sixty years? Then, the "Old Brick" school in Ironton was standing, on the Kingsbury site. The high school had one teacher, and afterward two. Part of the time, its principal was also the school superintendent. Superintendents changed frequently. Saul Wood and Jos. Le Sage were successively long time janitors. They suffered more devilment from the kids than did the school heads. "East Ironton" then had a few scattered houses not many blocks ("squares" we called them) beyond Adams Street. The direction is now known as south because of the confusing diagonal position of Iron...
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We need a certain class o’ people workin’ in the mine
2008-02-04 14:30:00
Black Mountain, near the town of Lynch in Harlan County, is Kentucky's highest point, rising 4125 feet above sea level. It runs along the border of Harlan and Letcher counties, and also along the Kentucky -Virginia border.Thousands of families, most of them Eastern European immigrants, streamed into the shadows of Black Mountain between the World Wars to mine coal. "I come to this country in 1938. I started workin' the mine when I was 19 years old. And United States Steel, they got a d.v. job in the mine before even I come to this country, and I work for United States Steel for 30-some years. We come over here and my Dad was workin' in Lynch, my brother, my cousins—my Daddy, even his grandfather was working Tom’s Creek back in the 1800s. "Back in the days it was a different company. They’d recruit. They’d recruit the Italian fellas because most of them was rock masons. They was rock masons, see, and all these big companies like Lynch [The Benham and Lynch Company]...
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Time for a skate!
2008-02-01 14:30:00
Ice skaters glide on the frozen Jackson River at Covington [VA] in 1897No wonder these skaters look so carefree! The 1890's brought economic boom to Covington, VA. Population jumped from 704 in 1890 to 2,950 at the turn of the century. The railroad ran fourteen passenger trains daily through Covington and the city was the fourth largest freight paying station on the entire C&O Railroad after Chicago, Cincinnati and Richmond. The first industries included the Covington Iron Furnace in 1891 (in Sunnymeade) which produced 110 tons of pig iron daily, the steam powered Deford Tannery (near present Superior Concrete Plant) in 1892, the E.M. Nettleton planing mill, and the Covington Machine Shops, which produced coke extractors for use in furnace cleaning in the steel making process. The town also boasted two flour mills, two brick yards and the Alleghany Pin and Bracket Company. source: www.allhighlands.org/area_history.htmJack son+River Covington+VA ice+skating appalachia appalachian+hi...
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The Lincoln Memorial, the NY Stock Exchange, and Tate, GA
2008-01-31 14:30:00
Small marble quarries had been active in north Georgia since the discovery in the 1830’s of the rare, bright pink marble that the area is famous for. But under the 3-generation dynasty of the Tate family, the Georgia Marble Company, begun in 1884, rose to monopoly status.Georgia Marble Company stone can be found in monuments and public buildings around the world, including New York’s Stock Exchange annex, the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, the Lincoln Memorial and the twenty-four columns of the east front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.Sam Tate (1860-1938), the son of Stephen C. Tate and grandson of founder Samuel Tate took the firm to prominence in Georgia's marble history. Previously involved in the company's store operation, Sam Tate became president and general manager of Georgia Marble Company in 1905 (at the urging of his predecessor Henry C. Clement). With the help of family and friends, he acquired 6,791 shares of the stock. He immediately added equipment, ch...
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I were tellin’ some mount’n stories
2008-01-30 14:30:00
Jane Gentry -- piano teacher, Appalachian folk-music historian, weaver -- was an inspiration for the movie Songcatcher. She was born Jane Hicks in 1863, the first child of Ransom and Emily Hicks, in Watauga County, NC. "My pappy were a minister, name of Ransom Hicks. Mammy were always peckin' me over the head with a stick. She were turrible ill and cross, pore woman! I were that foundered with the peckin' that I declar'd that I would never whup ef God sent me childern. You'll whup as much into `em as you whup out o' em." And later, Jane said of her life growing up, "Twere like a three-legged cat's. They didn't show me till I were nine yur old. I used to walk miles and miles bar'foot in the snow." She was twelve years old when the family moved to the Meadow Fork section of Spring Creek in Madison County. At sixteen, Hicks married Jasper Newton Gentry, though her parents were against the marriage because of her age. Around 1912, the Gentry family bought 'Sunnybank' in the ...
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Lengthiest murder trial in WV history begins
2008-01-29 14:30:00
When non-union miners in Mingo County, WV went on strike for the right to join the United Mine Workers in the spring of 1920, mine guards from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency evicted miners from their company-owned houses. After twelve Baldwin-Felts men arrived in Matewan, chief of police Sid Hatfield encouraged townspeople to arm themselves. The situation exploded into a gunfight in which seven detectives and four townspeople were killed, including Matewan’s mayor, Cable Testerman.One week after the shootings, Hatfield and Testerman's widow, Jessie, were caught in a Huntington hotel and charged with "improper relations." Having already bought a license, the couple was married upon their release from jail the next day.The trial of Sid Hatfield and twenty-two other defendants for the murder of one of the detectives, Albert Felts, began on January 28, 1921. Some forty armed Baldwin-Felts agents lined the streets of Williamson that morning to influence the pro-union jury. At tria...
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We cannot believe Christ would use tobacco in any form
2008-01-28 14:30:00
"A discourse on The Use of Tobacco was delivered by evangelist M.S. Lemons and discussed by others. After due consideration this assembly agrees to stand, with one accord, in opposition to the use of tobacco in any form. It is offensive to those who do not use it; weakens and impairs the nervous system; is a near relative to drunkenness; bad influence and example to the young; useless expense, the money for which ought to be used to clothe the poor, spread the gospel or make the homes of our country more comfortable; and last we believe its use to be contrary to the teaching of Scripture, and as Christ is our example we cannot believe that He would use it in any form or under any circumstances."We further recommend and advise that the ministers and deacons of each church make special effort to use their influence against its use, deal tenderly and lovingly with those in the church who use it, but insist with an affectionate spirit that its use be discontinued as much as possible. ...
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George W. Christians, American fascist
2008-01-25 14:30:00
It is the privileged role of the Art Smiths, the William Pelleys, and the George Christians to lay only the cornerstone of fascism. It is in their rudimentary organizations that the petty bourgeoisie receives its first elementary schooling in dictatorship. It is from the Smiths and the Pelleys that it learns to scrap its democratic scruples, to hate the Jew as the Mephistopheles responsible for depressions and to detest the Communist as the companion creation of the Devil. It is in their lecture rooms that the small shopkeeper and the petty officers avidly absorb the bombastic emotional rantings of the would be American Hitlers who intoxicate their listeners with glorious hallucinations of the past and still more glorious visions of the future under the aegis of fascism. Religious animosity is of course, stressed more than anything else.--Class Struggle, Vol 4, No 3 March 1934 (http://www.weisbord.org/FourThree.htm)Te nnessean George W . Christians, chief officer of the fascist Crus...