Appalachian History

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Horace Kephart, champion of the Smokies
2008-04-03 14:30:00
On April 2, 1931 Horace Kephart was killed in an automobile accident near Ela, NC along with fellow author Fiswoode Tarelton. Kephart (1862-1931) was a travel writer and librarian who published hundreds of articles during his lifetime, but became especially renowned for his classic works 'Our Southern Highlanders' and 'Camping and Woodcraft.'In one of Poe's minor tales, written in 1845, there is a vague allusion to wild mountains in western Virginia "tenanted by fierce and uncouth races of men." This, so far as I know, was the first reference in literature to our Southern mountaineers, and it stood as their only characterization until Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") began her stories of the Cumberland hills.Opening of 'Our Southern Highlanders,' by Horace KephartIn 'Our Southern Highlanders,' published in 1913 and expanded in 1922, Kephart argued that the rest of America knew almost nothing of a people set apart "from all other folks by dialect, by customs, by cha...
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Chattanooga woman strikes out Babe Ruth
2008-04-02 14:30:00
On April 2, 1931, world famous New York Yankees sluggers Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were struck out by a 17 year old female pitcher named Virnett 'Jackie' Mitchell in Chattanooga, TN. "I don't know what's going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball," grumbled Ruth off-field. "Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day."Joe Engel, owner of the Southern Association's AA Chattanooga Lookouts, had recently signed Mitchell after spotting her in a baseball camp in Georgia. Engel, a former big league player who scouted for the Washington Senators after his playing days, was known for his innovative, entertaining, and often zany promotional stunts. The local papers were full of stories about the first woman to ever play in the minor leagues, though Jackie Mitchell was actually the second woman to sign a minor-league contract. In 1898, Lizzie Arlington played one game, pitching for Reading (PA) against Al...
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Had to furnish my own horse; bought one from the coal company
2008-04-01 14:30:00
John Holt (1870-1918), a coal miner in Murray City, OH, kept a journal of his daily life.John Holt and the coal miners he worked with outside of the mine in Murray City.April 1907- "The miners here geting 57 cts per ton for screened coal and two dollars and fifty six cents per day for day work inside of mine 236 for outside work 8 hours to be one days work. I went to work day work in mine no 2 but onely work a short time when I got contract of picking up coal at mines no 1, 2, and 3 had to furnish my own horse bought one from the coal company Paid $60 dollars for him and he was well worth it as he is a vary good horse but old. “Also bought a cow a young one first calf for $30 dollars. She is vary good. Later in September I think, I bought a two seated surray for one horse or I paid $50 dollars for it later I bought a one horse wagon and buggy or runabout of John ???? for $25 dollars 2 get 90 cts per ton that being Pick price for picking up coal and cleaning tracks. I made $70 doll...
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Mountain songs and sayings have living reality
2008-03-31 14:30:00
The convenient and pithy term for the mountain people of Kentucky, "our contemporary ancestors," does not indicate the origin of the customs, beliefs, and peculiarities which persist among them. For they too had ancestors. These were, for the most part, British, and of the soil. Just as today many a mountaineer has never been ten miles from his birthplace, so also his forebears remained at home. They were sturdy men and women, steeped in traditional ways, independent and as little humble as possible. The mountaineer is that way too. He cares neither for ease nor for soft living. He is hospitable. "Welcome, stranger, light and hitch," is the salutation, and the stranger is bidden to take "damn near all" of whatever the table offers. A hunter by race, he is first of all a poacher, in arms against such as would deny him the right to take game where he may find it, a trait dating back to the time of Robin Hood in England. His speech is reminiscent of this older land and people...
More About: Living , Reality , Songs , Mountain

The King of Stink
2008-03-28 13:30:00
Ramps are the first green thing of spring in Appalachia, and certainly the smelliest. Mountain folks have traditionally looked forward to the return of the ramp after a winter of eating mostly dried foods, often believing the ramp to possess the revitalizing power of a spring tonic (not unreasonable: they are high in vitamins A & C.)The "little stinkers" are typically served with ham, bacon, fried potatoes, brown beans, cornbread, and a dessert. If you’re a serious aficionado of allium tricoccum, you know it’s an acquired taste: take garlic and multiply that intensity by about ten. The mere scent of those who have recently eaten a mess of ramps has been known to clear a room."id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_51825494630179 51426" />The Ramps & Rainbow Festival takes place tomorrow at the Cherokee Indian Fairgrounds in Cherokee, NC, kicking off a month and more of festivals celebrating the most loved bulb in Appalachia. The high points of these community fundraisers include the Ramp Festiv...
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Water ran rippling and singing a merry song
2008-03-27 13:30:00
Not far from the towns of Boone, Blowing Rock, and Asheville, deep inside Humpback Mountain below the Blue Ridge Escarpment, lie Linville Caverns, North Carolina’s only publicly accessible caverns. For 30 million years, as the nearby Catawba River ate away at the valley between the Humpback and Linville mountains, the water-filled caverns have slowly drained from the top. Linville Caverns were discovered by Henry E. Colton and his local guide, Dave Franklin, in 1822. Mystified by what appeared to be fish swimming out of the mountain, they followed their pine-knot torches into the opening. "Having procured a guide, a little after 9 o'clock we entered the cave, and after proceeding about a quarter of a mile, came to water," said Colton of the experience in Mountain Scenery, published in 1859."Previous to this, nothing of a very remarkable nature had met with, but now began the wondrous splendors of that hidden world. Stooping through a low passage, in which the coldest of water ra...
More About: Song , Water , Merry , Singing

The Scottsboro Boys
2008-03-26 13:30:00
On March 25, 1931, local authorities in Paint Rock, AL arrested nine black youths on a freight train after receiving word about a fight between blacks and whites on the train. They discovered two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, dressed in men's overalls on the same train and subsequently charged the nine young men with rape. The doctor who examined the girls found proof that they had been having sexual intercourse but no reason to conclude that they had been roughly handled, except for a small bruise on one of them which might well have been caused by riding on gravel. This was not Victoria Price’s version of the story: "There were six to me and three to her....It took three of them to hold me," she recalled under oath. "One was holding my legs and the other had a knife to my throat while the other one ravished me." Four of the "Scottsboro Boys ," Roy and Andy Wright, Eugene Williams, and Heywood Patterson, had grown up in Chattanooga, Tennessee; the Wrights were the...

The boldest indecent passages I have ever seen
2008-03-24 13:30:00
Publishers' Weekly 145 (March 25, 1944): "Strange Fruit banned by Boston booksellers"Says a Cambridge adage: "Banned in Boston is the trademark of a good book." On this date in 1944 Cambridge Police Chief Timothy J. O'Leary, Boston's Police Commissioner Thomas F. Sullivan, and the Boston Bookseller's Association all joined in squashing the sale of Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith's recently published controversial novel about Southern racial problems, miscegenation and lynching. "The boldest indecent passages I have ever seen," said Sullivan. The group asked the author to delete three lines of "sexual phraseology," thereby adding the novel to the long list of Boston's hallmarked books.Smith, for many years director of the Laurel Falls Camp for girls in Clayton, GA, achieved national fame with the publication of Strange Fruit, which tells the story of the forbidden romance between a white man, Tracy Dean, and a black woman, Nonnie Anderson. Commissioner Sullivan insisted that he ...

The true pork pie hat
2008-03-24 13:30:00
The Kingsport TimesKingsport, TNSunday, March 24, 1935"Pork Pie" is the Newest Style Note in HatsThe fabled phoenix, that marvelous bird endowed with the power to rise from its own ashes, finds a match in the pork pie hat. Some twenty years or so ago this hat was a favorite among the young ladies. For some reason this vogue passed, leaving no more trace than the lost continent Atlantis.Found! The Pork PieLast summer, Americans traveling abroad noticed many of the summer dressed Englishmen wearing the bi crowned hat. They were quick to take the revived style back to America. It made its first appearance in the famous Eastern tennis matches. From there it traveled to the East-West polo matches and then on to the Eastern universities. This spring it is meeting with an enthusiastic reception from coast to coast.But Why "Pork Pie"?Many stories have sprung up concerning the origin of this odd name. It's really very simple. It resembles in shape the round everyday pork pies that ...
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Happy Eostre!
2008-03-21 13:30:00
One can hardly talk about Easter traditions in Appalachia without referencing German traditions, since the region is so heavily settled by immigrants from that country. The first known reference to the Easter hare and its eggs appears to be German, in a book dating from 1572: "Do not worry if the Hare escapes you; should we miss his eggs, then we shall cook the nest." The Easter hare (or Osterhase), was once regarded by the Germans as a sacred animal.The Easter basket tradition also has its roots in the German folklore of the Easter hare. The day before Easter some German children in Swabia make little nests of straw, moss or twigs, known as the "Hare's Garden" (Hasengärtle), so that the Easter hare will know where to leave his eggs when he makes his deliveries during the night. Residents of Odenwald put a miniature house covered with moss in the garden and children are told that the Easter hare will come & put colored eggs in it.In German households there is spring cleaning and...
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Voice from the Queen City of the Alleghenies
2008-03-20 13:30:00
Sara Roberta Getty (1880-1973) served as Woman’s Editor for the Cumberland [MD] Daily News from 1924 to 1942. She wrote four books of poetry, including Little songs of every day, (1924) and Maryland Melodies, (1930), the latter dedicated "to the Queen City of the Alleghenies and her warm hearted people who to me have been a never failing source of encouragement and inspiration." Photo: from the program of the Cumberland Sesquicentennial in 1937. Sara was among the Board of Directors.Her husband, Charles, was not overly fond of the idea that Sara worked. Despite this, she continued her career. After her husband's death in 1917, she moved to Wellersburg, PA where she again became a columnist, this time for the Somerset Daily American. Sara continued to work until she was 88 years old, regardless of the fact that she was hit by a car in 1965 and broke her hip. During this time she raised her two surviving daughters (her twin sons both died within a year of birth) as a single, worki...
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True to my love, my love's been true to me
2008-03-19 13:30:00
Please welcome guest blogger Kevin Bannister. Kevin was born in Pike County, Kentucky in 1958 and raised in Mingo County, West Virginia till he was 18. These days he runs Liberty Graphix, a graphic design studio in Atlanta. His favorite quote? "I started with nothing and have most of it left."Granny---that's what we called my great grandmother---and what a wonderful and complex woman she was; so full of life, love, lore, stories and song. For several years in the late 1950's Granny had the honor of participating in the American Folk Song Festival in Ashland, KY hosted by Jean Thomas, the "Traipsin' Woman." Here's a photo of my Granny (on the far right), with Jean Thomas the "Traipsin' Woman" (seated) at the 1959 American Folk Song Festival. Her oldest daughter, my Great Aunt Polly, is slightly behind her on her right.Lula Maynard Curry was born October 15, 1890. She had already lived sixty-eight years before I came along. I only knew her for 17 years before she died, but I'm...
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"Que te parece! Now I believe in the egg!"
2008-03-18 13:30:00
"Benito Fernandez, known by all the Spaniards as Benito El Tuerto because he couldn’t see out of his left eye, lived just two houses away from our house on Ashton Lane. His wife, Cristina, was a short, heavy woman who spent most of her time sitting in a rocking chair and saying her rosary beads. She always had a small bag of asafetida o a string around her neck and did little of anything except keep her daughters, Juliana, Felipa and Marta busy with the cooking, washing, miling and other household work. She was very religious and sent her daughters to church regularly, while the padre would come to see her every Friday morning to give her communion."On St. Joseph’s Eve, she would never forget to perform the egg-in-a-glass ritual and would be the first one in the morning to hurry to the window to see what had taken place in the glass during the night. For this custom, a fresh-laid egg (it would have to be laid on the eve of the Saint’s Day) would be broken just before midni...

Cead Mile Failte, says Kentucky
2008-03-17 13:30:00
Kentuckians have long shared, among other things, their love for horses, whiskey making and music with the Irish. Listen carefully to Eastern Kentucky ’s fiddlers and you‘ll hear the refrains of Irish jigs and reels. And Kentucky’s buck dancing, or clogging, is a particularly vigorous and often undisciplined cousin to the Irish jig.Indeed, more than 696,286 people of Irish ancestry live in Kentucky. That’s second only to the descendants of Germans. They have been there for hundreds of years, even before the great migration caused by the potato famine of 1845-6.And so March 17 is not just any ordinary day in Kentucky. It’s time for Eastern Kentucky vs. State, corned beef and cabbage, and of course parades.Ole St Patrick wasn’t always named that. When he was born in ancient Britain, his name was Maewyn Succat. At 16, he was kidnapped by pirates, taken across the sea to Ireland and sold as a slave. Patrick escaped after six years and went to a monastery to become a Roman C...
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Inaugural Address of WV Gov. Henry D. Hatfield
2008-03-14 13:30:00
March 14, 1913 (portion)Our state, situated as it is in one of the richest mineral zones in the world - outside of the precious mineral class - contains more bituminous coal than Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia combined, and ranks second in coal production but thirty-fourth among the states in the value of its manufactured products. It is a daily occurrence that a great bulk of raw material, shipped out of the state, is returned from the manufacturers of other states to be sold to our citizens after having been converted into finished products. Again, we see train-loads of our coking and by-product coal shipped into other states to supply the great iron and steel industries, at prices that are not remunerative to our operators, and at the same time fixing a standard of wages for the miner that is an injustice to him, by reason of the long railroad haul to market.Statistics will show that the coal industry of this state is anything but prosperous under present conditions. As a matter...
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Tennessee murder tale
2008-03-13 13:30:00
I heared my brother-in-law tell a tale about his, about a man a-drivin' mules and horses to South Carolina. He come to a place and called to stay all night, and this, he got to stay all night there. And in the, in the night when he went to bed, why, they was a man under the bed with his throat cut, and they come upstairs to kill this man, and he, they knocked him in the head, and they said he wasn't a-bleedin'. He had took the man out from under the bed and crawled under the bed hisself, and so next morning he come downstairs, and they had tied silk cords around a jack's legs till he couldn't walk, and it surprised them kindly when he come walking down the stairs. So he went on to another place and told them. They axed him how he could, how he ever got away from there, axed him where he stayed all night, axed him how he ever got away from there. Never had been a man [that] went there and stayed all night, but what he never was heared tell of no more, and he told them how ...
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The CCC boys has been giving away the buildings
2008-03-12 13:30:00
In May of 1926, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill authorizing the establishment of a 521,000-acre Shenandoah National Park. The bill stipulated that no federal funds could be used to acquire the land for the park. The job of obtaining the land therefore fell to the Commonwealth of Virginia. In order to avoid the slow and painful process of negotiating prices with each landowner, Virginia in March 1928 passed the Public Park Condemnation Act. The Act allowed the state to acquire the necessary land by filing a single condemnation suit in each of the eight affected counties, and purchasing the land by right of eminent domain. In effect the state simply confiscated all the lands that would make up the park. Officials then formed a three-man committee to assess the value of each property to be paid its owner. Once the condemnation had been signed into law, the next task was to remove the inhabitants. Complicating matters was the fact that many residents did not own proper title to...
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We got along well with them. Of course, we knew our limitations
2008-03-11 13:30:00
"My parents were share croppers. My mother and dad separated in, I guess it may have been '36 that they separated, and my daddy continued to work on the farm, and my mother went to Richmond and stayed and took care of babies and she got a job in Fayette County where she was called a nanny to a white family of children. "We lived with our grandparents. Grandpap John and my step-grandmother Gilmer. Because mother’s mother died when she was five years old. We were in an integrated neighborhood. There was some well-to-do white people that lived in our neighborhood and there was some poor whites that lived in that neighborhood And we were sort of mixed in with all of them. My granddad owned 86 acres that ran back, and his land kind of connected with a well-to-do white man that had oh, I guess he had 300 acres back in there. "They’ve always been in my family. My grandmother did laundry for these people, and my granddaddy killed hogs for them in the fall, and one of my uncles worked...

Zelda Fitzgerald dies in hospital blaze
2008-03-10 13:30:00
Late on the night of March 10, 1948, a fire started in a kitchen of the main building of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Spreading rapidly through a dumbwaiter shaft, flames reached every floor, and, in spite of efforts by hospital staff and local fire fighters to evacuate everyone from the building, nine patients died. Among the victims of the fire, identified only by her slipper, was Zelda Fitzgerald, who with her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, represented for many the talent, sophistication, glamour and excess of American life of the 1920s.Highland Hospital, originally known as "Dr. Carroll's Sanatorium," was founded in 1904 by Dr. Robert S. Carroll, a distinguished psychiatrist. His program of treatment for mental and nervous disorders and addictions was based on exercise, diet and occupational therapy, and attracted patients from all over the country. The hospital was relocated from downtown Asheville to the northern end of Montford Avenue in 1909, an...
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The Blood Verse
2008-03-07 14:30:00
Please welcome guest blogger Timothy W. Hooker, author of the Sushi Tuesday blog. Tim teaches English at Cleveland State Community College [TN], is a "Point of View" moderator for WDEF-TV 12, and is the author of several works, including: "Rocket Man: A Rhapsody of Short Stories," "Duncan Hambeth: Furniture King of the South," and "Looking For A City."I don't pretend to know how or why it works; I just know it does.Among the Appalachian people, it's known as the Blood Verse and it is probably the most controversial aspect of hillbilly witchcraft. I don't feel comfortable calling it a spell. But, it is something my analytical, scientific, humanistic mind can't rationalize away.Simply put, the Blood Verse stops hemorrhaging on sentient beings when nothing else will. And, by sentient, I mean it will work on animals just as quickly and effectively as it will on humans. I've seen others use it. I've used it myself.And, up until now, I've been very hesitant to talk about it.B...

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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