Appalachian History

I closed my eyes and bent my head to receive the stroke of the tomahawk

2009-11-09T05:00:00.001-05:00

On the 8th of March, 1782, William White, in sight of Fort Buckhannon [ed.-in modern day Upshur County, WV], was shot from his horse, tomahawked, scalped and lacerated in the most frightful manner by the Indians. White's companions Timothy Dorman and his wife were captured. After the killing of White and capture of the Dormans, it was resolved to abandon Fort Buckhannon. A few days after the evacuation of the fort, some of its former inmates went from Clarksburg to Buckhannon for grain which had been left there. When they came in sight, they beheld a heap of ashes where the fort had been.

“Border Settlers of Western Virginia,” McWhorter

"My story's a brief but a most painful one for a wife to tell. My husband's name is Timothy Dorman. We lived in a little cabin near Buchanan Fort in the Kanawha country.

“Just about two months ago some fresh tracks of Indians were discovered, which, on account of its being so early in the season, created great alarm among the scattered settlers. As William White, a noted and active scout , my husband and myself, this little babe and little Eddy, my only other child, a curly-headed boy of six years past, were hastening to the fort, we were set upon by a lot of savages.

“Neighbor White was shot through the hips, fell from his horse, and was then tomahawked, scalped and mutilated in the most frightful manner, and we all taken prisoners.

"We were hurried rapidly through the woods, both my children having been repeatedly threatened by our captors, because, said they, their flight was impeded. The second day little Eddy began to fret and cry on account of soreness of his feet, and finally fell behind.

“This was the last I ever saw of him. An hour later some of the Indians having joined us again, I beheld — and what a sight to a fond mother!' — and here Mrs. Dorman shuddered at the harrowing memory — "the fresh, bleeding scalp of my dear boy fastened to one of the Indian's girdles. I knew it by its jetty curls, and boldly charged the cruel savage with killing and scalping it ; but he only laughed, crying out, "No, no, only otter skin." But I knew better, and from that moment lost all heart, and was indifferent to my fate.

"Three times did I throw down a heavy kettle which I was forced to carry; closed my eyes and bent my head to receive the invited stroke of the tomahawk, but no use. Each time the kettle was replaced with angry and scolding words.

“At last, I threw it off again and refused to go one step further, when a chief, kinder than the others, said I should not be made to carry the pot and my child, too.

"My husband had all this time been making up with the captors; laughed, ate and drank with them, and was so cheerful and contented and expressed himself so anxious to become an Indian, that we were now treated well enough.

“My husband, for some years, has been much given to drink and low company, and being of a very passionate disposition when in liquor, had made a number of enemies in the fort. It is a most painful and humiliating confession for a poor wife to make; but, indeed, Timothy was once a good, kind, loving man, but lately the drink seems to have so changed and debased him, that he is more cruel and revengeful than an Indian himself, and has thrice led parties against the border settlements.

"Alas, that I, once his loved wife, and the mother of his children, am compelled to confess it; but he is becoming more and more lost to all that is good. The one fatal misstep of betraying his own neighbors seems to have turned all that was good in him to gall.

“He has lost his own self-respect, and seems ashamed to show himself before white people. He is now back in yonder woods conversing with the Indians. I sometimes think, if God will not take me, that I will have to leave him, but then, again, I have hopes that by constant love and tenderness, I may win back the free, hearty and affectionate Tim of my youth — such as he was before he took to the drink.

"We were first taken to the Chillicothe towns, and there remained during the cold weather. Then we journeyed eastward along the Ohio, and fell in with a party of Cherokees from south of that river, who had the two children with whom you saw me.

“They were educated to decoy Ohio boats to the shore, and the poor little innocents seemed perfectly skilled in the use of all the arts to simulate distress. You would be perfectly amazed to see how these little ones would cry, kneel and clap their hands and run along the shore in the most artful manner. Oh, they are smart little things, and deserve a better life.

"It was only a couple of days ago that we fell in with [Simon] Girty's large party, who, marching towards the Ohio to take vengeance for what they call the Moravian massacre, easily arranged for the transfer of the children and ourselves to them.

“The result of their arts you know well, as you and your party were the first victims; but I must tell you that I long resisted every attempt to make me a party in their miserable decoy. The Indians, knowing how much their chances of success depended on having a supposed mother with children, repeatedly ordered me to play traitor. I even refused to obey my husband's commands.

"Finally, one grim, ferocious old Shawnee, made furious by my obstinacy, snatched my babe from my breast, and threatened to brain it against a tree unless I instantly complied. I wept and screamed and implored, but all to no purpose.

Your boat was just then in sight, and while I was running along shore playing the false mother, this brutal Shawnee kept behind me in the woods the whole way, holding my precious babe by one foot ready to dash out its brains at the first sign of failure on my part to do his bidding.

"Why did I not make signs? Oh, I did, I did, but they were not seen, and when I found your boat really coming in, I fainted outright, and had to be carried back out of sight."

excerpt from "Simon Girty : "The white savage"; A romance of the border," by Charles McKnight, JC McCurdy & Co, Philadelphia, 1880 online at http://www.archive.org/stream/simongirtythewhi00mckn/simongirtythewhi00mckn_djvu.txt
McWhorter citation from: www.eg.bucknell.edu/~hyde/jackson/George.html

Listen Here: weekly Appalachian History podcast posts today

2009-11-07T13:53:00.002-05:00

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

We open today's show with a look at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1939 proclamation changing Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the 3rd Thursday in November. FDR's break with tradition was prompted by requests from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season by one week. Roosevelt had rejected the association's similar request in 1933 on the grounds that such change might cause confusion. The 1939 proclamation proved him more right than he probably would have liked.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

Albert Hash’s custom built instruments can today be found in the Birthplace of Country Music Museum of Bristol. The legendary fiddler was the founder and leader of the well-known White Top Mountain Band. Our next piece is a compilation of articles by his friend Muncy Gaultney, who wrote the My Ashe County Home column in the Ashe County NC newspaper “The Plow” during the 1960s-1980s.

Breaks Interstate Park, located astride the SW Virginia/eastern Kentucky border along the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River, is one of only two interstate parks in the nation. Perhaps the scale of the 5-mile-long, .25-mile-deep gorge that forms the park's centerpiece cannot rival that of the Grand Canyon, but the 250 million year old "Grand Canyon of the South" IS the largest gorge east of the Mississippi.

Fall means that the persimmons are getting ripe and it's time to gather the sweet, pulpy fruit. The common persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is a Native American tree in the southeastern United States. Diospyros is from the Greek, and means "fruit of the gods," and many country people would agree with the meaning. The Algonquin Indians called the fruit "pessamin," or "pasiminian" and are credited with its common name, and the Cherokee Indians are the ones who first introduced persimmon sweet bread to the Europeans.

Never say never! During World War II while the Army, Navy and Civil Aeronautics Agency were constructing airports for the war effort, attempts were made to have the agencies approve a field in Kanawha County, WV. All requests were turned down because of the large amount of grading that would have to be done.   The county then went ahead and undertook the largest grading project on a commercial airport ever attempted.

We’ll wrap things up with an excerpt from “Memoirs of a Western Historian, by B. Dwaine Madsen, a Mormon missionary in the 20s and 30s. “Everyone in the headquarters seemed to pity me for being sent to such a godforsaken place,” he says. “My own feelings at the time were mingled apprehension and anticipation, because East Tennessee District was considered the 'pits' of the mission. However, I knew that Kirkham was not trying to 'punish' me and chose to regard it instead as a test of my mettle. In retrospect, I'm actively grateful for his decision.” Let’s find out what he learned from his time there.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Ernest Stoneman in a 1928 recording of “On the Banks of the Ohio.”

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

'On the Banks of the Ohio'---an old murder ballad

2009-11-06T05:00:00.000-05:00

Rebecca Dart, a Vancouver comic book artist and animator, is turning heads this week with her fresh visualization of the old-time tune "On the Banks of the Ohio." Click on each panel to see her wonderful linework enlarged.

Says Wikipedia of this tune: "Banks of the Ohio is a 19th century murder ballad, written by unknown authors, in which 'Willie' invites his young lover for a walk during which she rejects his marriage proposal. Once they are alone on the river bank, he murders the young woman.

"The first recording of the song was by Red Patterson's Piedmont Log Rollers on August 12, 1927. The song has since been recorded numerous times, by Henry Whitter, Ernest Stoneman, Clayton McMichen, The Carter Family, Blue Sky Boys (whose version, performed in 1936, appears in the soundtrack of the 1973 film Paper Moon), Johnny Cash, Monroe Brothers, Joan Baez, Olivia Newton-John (with Mike Sammes, in 1971, her second commercial single in the United States), Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers, and Doc Watson, with slightly different lyrics when sung by a female.

"The song is similar in subject to Pretty Polly, and likely tells the same story (Both songs date from approximately the same time, tell roughly the same story, and feature a villain named 'Willie')."

The year with two Thanksgivings

2009-11-05T05:00:00.000-05:00

"I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-third of November 1939, as a day of general thanksgiving." How appropriate that Roosevelt's proclamation was issued on Halloween, the day for tricks or treats. The average citizen was irritated and confused; big business was delighted. In the end, Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different dates that year.

At the beginning of Roosevelt's presidency, Thanksgiving was not a fixed holiday; it was up to the President to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation to announce what date the holiday would fall on. However, Thanksgiving was always the last Thursday in November because that was the day President Abraham Lincoln observed the holiday when he declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.

FDR's break with tradition was prompted by requests from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season by one week. Roosevelt had rejected the association's similar request in 1933 on the grounds that such change might cause confusion. The 1939 proclamation proved him more right than he probably would have liked. Football coaches scrambled to reschedule games set for November 30th, families didn't know when to have their holiday meals, and people weren't sure when to start their Christmas shopping.

Some folks found mirth in the situation. "Mr. President: I see by the paper this morning where you want to change Thanksgiving Day to Nov. 23, of which I heartily approve. Thanks," wrote one Shelby O. Bennett of Shinnston WV, whose letter has been saved by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. "Now there are some things that I would like done and would appreciate your approval:
1. Have Sunday changed to Wednesday.
2. Have Monday's to be Christmas.
3. Have it strictly against the will of God to work on Tuesday."

Thousands more letters, most not so lighthearted, poured into the White House. Smaller businesses complained they would lose business to larger stores. Other companies that depended on Thanksgiving as the last Thursday of November lost money; calendar makers were the worst hit because they printed calendars years in advance and FDR made their calendars out of date for the next two years.

Schools were also disrupted by Roosevelt's decision; most schools had already scheduled vacations and annual Thanksgiving Day football games by the time they learned of Thanksgiving's new date and had to decide whether or not to reschedule everything. Moreover, many Americans were angry that Roosevelt tried to alter such a long-standing tradition and American values just to help businesses make more money.

Opposition grew. While governors usually followed the president's lead with state proclamations for the same day, in 1939 some states took matters into their own hands and defied the Presidential Proclamation. Some governors declared November 30th as Thanksgiving. And so, depending upon where one lived, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the 23rd and the 30th. This was worse than changing the date in the first place because many families did not have the same day off as family members in other states and were therefore unable to celebrate the holiday together.

Twenty-three states observed Thanksgiving Day on November 23rd, twenty-three states celebrated on November 30th, and Texas and Colorado declared both Thursdays to be holidays.

sources: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/thanks/remember.html#
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/images/benetlg.jpg

FDR+Thanksgiving+Proclamation Shelby+O.+Bennett National+Retail+Dry+Goods+Association

Wait until the first frost has kissed the persimmons

2009-11-04T05:00:00.002-05:00

Fall means that the persimmons are getting ripe and it's time to gather the sweet, pulpy fruit. But you'd better try to get to them before the woodland critters beat you to it. Raccoons, foxes, squirrels, wild turkeys, bob white quail, possums, coyotes, and even deer feast on it. Numerous birds also relish persimmons.

The common persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is a Native American tree in the southeastern United States. Diospyros is from the Greek, and means "fruit of the gods," and many country people would agree with the meaning. The Algonquin Indians called the fruit "pessamin," or "pasiminian" and are credited with its common name, and the Cherokee Indians are the ones who first introduced persimmon sweet bread to the Europeans.

Persimmon pulp can be used in many different baked goods including pudding, sweet bread, and cookies, and it makes a delicious ice cream topping or candy treat. Wine or beer made from persimmon is the poor relation of champagne--with the advantage that nobody is ever the worse for drinking it. And persimmon seeds can be roasted, ground, and used as a hot beverage, reminiscent of coffee.

It's best to get the ones that have already fallen to the ground, or ones that fall off the tree easily, when shaking the tree. If the fruit falls to the ground easily, it is ripe. Wait until the first frost has kissed the persimmons, as the frost takes away their puckering quality, making them as sweet as honey.

According to weather folklore, persimmon seeds can be used to predict the severity of winter weather. When cut into two pieces, the persimmon seed will display one of three symbols. A knife shape indicates a cold icy winter (where wind will cut through you like a knife). A fork shape means a mild winter. A spoon shape stands for a shovel to dig out of the snow.

The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore lists a number of cures and folk beliefs involving the persimmon:

Tie a knot in a piece of string for every chill that you have; then tie the string to a persimmon tree.

Briar root bark, persimmon tree bark, grapevine root bark, and green sage boiled into a tea with alum and honey is cure for yellow thrash.

Wild cherry, oak, and persimmon bark tea with enough whiskey in it to keep it from souring makes a good tonic.

Ground persimmon sprouts are good for poulticing.

To cure Bright's disease, put into a half -gallon of apple brandy a handful of cherry bark, persimmon bark, red holly bark, and dogwood root, and drink the solution.

To cure chills and fever, make a band, or large thread, of black wool, from a black sheep, or black spotted sheep, fasten it around the waist, next to the body of the sick one, then let the person walk around a persimmon tree as many times as he has had chills. This is supposed to be a sure cure.

Cut a persimmon twig, cut as many notches in it as you have warts, bury the twig, and when it rots the warts will disappear.

If the husband or wife should stray, burn seven sprouts of persimmon in the fire and the unfaithful one will have seven severe pains and return home.

A girl eating nine persimmons in a row will turn into a boy in less than two weeks.

sources: The Frank C. Brown Collection of NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE online at www.archive.org/stream/frankcbrowncolle06fran/frankcbrowncolle06fran_djvu.txt
http://home.wlu.edu/~lubint/touchstone/AppalachianFolkMed-Stone.htm
www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/spring_tonics_and_appalachian_herbals/issue/151
www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/a/persimmon-seeds-widen-the-lead-cold-winter-predicted-to-win
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/nature_sketches/78439/1

The largest grading project on a commercial airport ever attempted

2009-11-03T05:00:00.000-05:00

During World War II while the Army, Navy and Civil Aeronautics Agency were constructing airports for the war effort, attempts were made to have the agencies approve a field in Kanawha County, WV. All requests were turned down because of the large amount of grading that would have to be done.

The county then went ahead and undertook the largest grading project on a commercial airport ever attempted.

In October 1944, in Charleston, W. Va., the contract for the nation's heaviest airport grading job was awarded to Harrison Construction Company of Pittsburgh, PA by the Kanawha County Court. The citizens of Kanawha County voted a $3,000,000 bond issue for the construction of the terminal and road access from the business section of the town. Later Congress appropriated $2,750,000 to supplement the County fund to assure the completion of the airport.

The project required removal of approximately 9 million yards of material, 40% was rock. The airport is located on a series of ridges, whose area and direction made it ideal for the construction of three runways. For all other sites investigated, the topography was such that the construction of runways of adequate length was impractical or land damages excessive.

In the early stages shovels worked on ledges that were 300 feet or more above the lowest ravine filling levels. Due to layers of pan materials between stone strata there was little opportunity for scrapers to load downhill. Early stage haul roads for both stone and dirt were among the steepest ever encountered by the contractors. Temporary roads employed up to 40% descending grades for scrapers and 25% for dump trucks.

The rock excavation was hauled by nine 1-3/4 yard to 2-1/2 yard shovels loading a fleet of twenty- three 10-yard rear dump trucks and eight 11-yard and 12-yard bottom dump trailers. The earth excavation was handled by ten 25-yard tractor-drawn scrapers and sixteen 12-yard scrapers. Seven pushers with the help of four rooters served the scrapers. With this equipment the contractor averaged from 20,000 to 27,000 cubic yards of earth and rock a day.

Alternate rock and shale layers created a situation favorable to horizontal drilling and blasting. This method was used for all but small special pockets, where six wagon drills were employed, powered by five 365 cu. ft. compressors.

To level the mountain, over 1,000,000 pounds of dynamite were used; a typical blast consisted of 2,500 pounds of dynamite placed in nine parallel 45 foot holes.

Kanawha Airport was formally dedicated on November 3, 1947. President Truman sent his plane, the "Independence;" the presidents of all the participating airlines were on hand, as were many governmental officials. Though a cold, rainy day, the event was attended by an estimated 10,000 people. The first night landing at the port was made shortly after 10 the evening before by the president of American Airlines.

Dedication of Kanawha Airport, Charleston WV.

Col. John Alison, assistant secretary of commerce for air, lauded the people of the city and county on their perseverance and refusal to allow the many obstacles created by rugged terrain to keep them from realizing a project deemed essential to the welfare and growth of the community. He thought it quite significant that the county should have undertaken what the Army would not tackle.

"The record shows that the county of Kanawha has spent more money per capita on airports than any other county in any state in the country," Col. Alison said. "In addition, $125,000 was voted by the county for an access road to the airport. Other funds were made available for the purchase of land.

"These accomplishments are a fine commentary on the judgment of the 195,619 people of the county and their elected officials."

At the conclusion of the special ceremonies, the crowd was admitted to the taxi strips to visit planes of Capital, Eastern and American airlines. Chief interest seemed to center about Capital's "Flying White House," the DC-4 in which the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to the historic Casablanca conference.

Sources: "Dedication of Kanawha Airport," Charleston Gazette
November 4, 1947 online at http://www.wvculture.org/history/transportation/kanawhaairport04.html
"The Nation's Heaviest Airport Grading Project," The Kanawha Valley Airport online at http://www.wvculture.org/history/transportation/kanawhaairport03.html

Albert Hash ain't a bit shy with a fiddle

2009-11-02T05:00:00.000-05:00

compiled from My Ashe County Home column by Muncy Gaultney in Ashe County NC newspaper “The Plow” (1960s-1980s)

"I like to forgot I was supposed to talk about old time music and I guess Albert Hash and the Whitetop Mountain boys are next on the list. Albert is known far and wide for his woodworking and instrument making. He is a shy retiring kind of feller, but let the boys and girls get together and he ain’t a bit shy with a fiddle. He is known all over, so I’ll put him head of the class, even if he don’t’ play 'The Walls of Jericho' or 'Granny, Will Your Dog bite?'

"I could talk about Albert for a week and not do him justice. We both come up the hard way. It was root hog or die. No jobs. So what you had was to make do or do without. He made his first fiddle with a pocket knife. He is a very adept wood carver.

"Well, I guess I also need to talk about the ones that help him make music---Thornton Spencer, a violinist and guitarist and a top musician; his wife, Emily, who is a number one guitarist; and Flurry Dowe, a clawhammer banjo player. Thornton is a very fine person and should be rated among the best of the old time fiddlers.

Banjo built by Albert Hash for Edward Lee Blevins on display at Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, VA/TN.

"I was at Thornton’s store the other Saturday and there was more fiddles, banjos and guitars than Carter had Liver Pills. There was a lot of good music. Albert Hash played “Pretty Patty,” which is one of my favorites. I tried to accompany him on the 5-string banjo but I guess I made a mess of it.

"Some of the old Brushy Mountain Boys came in the other day. We had a good time with Doc Watson and Charles Francis, two old clawhammer banjo players. Charlie is 80 years young but he can still play. His mother taught me what little I know about a banjo.

"The Helton Music Festival was finally pulled off. It was a grand event to me---meeting old friends and listening to the music. I love to try to play. I don’t want anything out of it, no money, no praise, just a feeling of peace, enjoyment and to be among friends. There is nothing more enjoyable than mountain music. Old Sage once said “Music soothes a savage beast.” He must have been an old time fiddler.

"It looks like Albert Hash is going to have to spur up as Ms. Emily Spencer is coming along on the Old Time fiddle. She is a wonderful person, and by gosh, I’m going to have to do sump’in cause my fiddling is gitten stale. I guess it’s because I’m gitten old maybe because I never could fiddle too well. I haven’t got it figgered out. Anyway, I think everyone that attended the convention had a good time. Helton is a wonderful little community. A good place to live.

"Now, you’uns be good and come see us when you can. Get all your roots and yarfs together, Granny, she’s a goin’ to be a cold ‘un this winter.”

sources: http://whitetopmountainband.tripod.com/id6.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/albert-hash
http://www.unctv.org/folkways/musicfthills/ahash.html
www.myspace.com/alberthashmemorialfestival

Listen Here: weekly Appalachian History podcast posts today

2009-11-01T11:24:00.000-05:00

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

We open today's show with a look at a mysterious mountain creature. In Missouri they call it a Gallywampus; in Arkansas it's the Whistling Wampus; in Appalachia it's the just a plain old Wampus. A half-dog, half-cat creature that can run erect or on all fours, it's rumored to be seen just after dark or right before dawn all throughout the Appalachians. But that's about all everyone agrees on.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

Alice Jane Meek (1877-1961) could trace her roots to members of pioneer families in Eastern Kentucky. Her resourcefulness emerged early when, amid serious competition, she wooed and wed a teacher from a one-room schoolhouse in Van Lear who had been her instructor. Alice went on to contribute greatly to the rise and success of the man who became the wealthiest man in Kentucky by the time of his death.

Call it the American Custard Apple or the West Virginia Banana, but it’s neither apple nor banana. It’s the paw-paw (Asimina trilob), the largest native fruit of North America, and it grows throughout Appalachia. Let’s step out into the woods for a bit and take a closeup look at the paw paw.

Next up, a guest post by Charles Wykes of viewfromheremagazine.com He reviews Ron Rash’s ‘Serena,’ a novel set in the Appalachian Mountains that follows the fortunes of the eponymous central character and her husband as they create a timber barony in 1930’s America. Some of the book’s characters, Wykes tell us, “are in turn awed and cowed by Serena and what she represents. Some strive to do her bidding, some seem to venerate her and some rightly fear her. None it seems can fathom where she came from or what drives her on. In this she is like the great eagle she trains to hunt snakes; beautiful and terrible and utterly unafraid.”

Glass 'bottle trees' originated in ninth century Kongo during a period when superstitious Central African people believed that a genii or imp could be captured in a bottle. Legend had it that empty glass bottles placed outside, but near, the home could capture roving (usually evil) spirits at night, and the spirit would be destroyed the next day in the sunshine. One could then cork the bottles and throw them into the river to wash away the evil spirits.

We’ll wrap things up with ‘The Legend of the Haunted Depot.’ During the Civil War, two brothers from Ringgold, GA head off to war. After serving heroically in a number of far off battles, in an ironic twist both are killed within miles of home. The wife of one brother hangs herself in the local depot when it becomes clear what’s happened on the battlefield. The souls of all three people allegedly dwell in that same depot. The city of Ringgold sponsors tours of the depot each Halloween.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Frank Blevins & His Tar Heel Rattlers in a 1927 recording of “Sally Ann.”

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

She's like the great eagle she trains to hunt snakes--beautiful, terrible, & utterly unafraid

2009-10-30T05:00:00.003-04:00

The following review by Charlie Wykes appeared October 29, 2009 in the online publication viewfromheremagazine.com

When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.

So opens Ron Rash’s Serena, a novel set in the Appalachian Mountains that follows the fortunes of the eponymous central character and her husband as they create a timber barony in 1930’s America. From the cover art on my paperback edition, you might be forgiven for thinking that what follows Rash’s wonderful opening lines will be a novel of romance and tribulation. How delighted was I to find something far more engrossing; both in content and style.

What Rash has created here is grand theatre, in the best possible sense. He quotes Marlowe on the cover page and I was struck by just how this novel follows the form of Elizabethan drama. It soon becomes apparent that Serena is no heroine as she ruthlessly pursues her ambition. Nor is Pemberton, her equally ambitious husband, heroic. Whilst he has faint qualms about some of Serena’s methods he is not one to let concern for his workers or his business partners stand in their way.

In keeping with Marlowe and Shakespeare a cast of supporting characters are introduced; some major, some minor, some serving to shed light on the characters of the Pembertons and others to provide commentary on their actions. Some are comic, others menacing and yet others heroic in ways the Pembertons will never be. Apart from Rachel, the young girl who has borne Pemberton a child, we are seldom privy to their thoughts, just as we know little of what the Pembertons may be thinking. This is not a novel that presents its characters from within; rather we know them through their deeds and judge them accordingly.

And when their deeds are as remarkable as Serena’s a novel less assured than this might rightly be met with some head shaking. Rash however is a very accomplished writer indeed. His work as a poet and his detailed knowledge of Appalachian history, which he teaches as Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina, allow him to write with power and grace and so detail a time and place where such things seem not only possible but entirely right.

He clearly has a deep love for the land and the history of the peoples who have tried to shape it and it is perhaps not going too far to say that in some sense, that Rash has characterised the land itself as locked in struggle with Serena; who embodies the destructive nature of human progress. As she cuts down both trees and people to turn a profit, so the mountains and trees cut down people in their turn. In contrast Rachel is accessible to us, we learn of her thoughts and fears for herself, her son and her way of life. She in a sense is the positive aspect of humanity that is diametrically opposite to Serena.

As for the workers and businessmen, some of the supporting cast I mentioned before, they are in turn awed and cowed by Serena and what she represents. Some strive to do her bidding, some seem to venerate her and some rightly fear her. None it seems can fathom where she came from or what drives her on. In this she is like the great eagle she trains to hunt snakes; beautiful and terrible and utterly unafraid.

In writing the above I am conscious that I have yet to discuss plot. Again, rather like the Elizabethan drama, Rash uses plot as a canvas upon which to paint his scenes and to comment upon the actions of mankind. That said, the story is entirely satisfying and centred upon Rachel who can bear a child and so sustain a future and her struggle with Serena who is barren and can leave no legacy save through destructive force of will. In parallel with this, the book details some of the events surrounding the establishment of the National Park in the region and the impact this had upon business and livelihood.

This second narrative is also concerned with sustainability versus profit, industry versus nature and is as relevant today as it was then. It is not however the reason you should read this book. Instead read it for its remarkable sense of time and place and Rash’s wonderfully vivid recounting of people and events set in a hostile yet magnificent landscape. By all means reflect upon how man and nature may come together and for what purpose but at the same time simply enjoy what I found to be one of the most engrossing and substantive books I have read for a long long time.

The story of the Wampus Cat

2009-10-29T05:00:00.001-04:00

In Missouri they call it a Gallywampus; in Arkansas it's the Whistling Wampus; in Appalachia it's the just a plain old Wampus (or Wampas) cat. A half-dog, half-cat creature that can run erect or on all fours, it's rumored to be seen just after dark or right before dawn all throughout the Appalachians. But that's about all everyone agrees on. In non-Native American cultures it's a howling, evil creature, with yellow eyes that can supposedly pierce the hearts and souls of those unfortunate enough to cross its path, driving them to the edge of sanity.

Cherokee folklore, which is filled with tales of evil spirits lurking in the deep, dark forests that surrounded their villages, offers a different view of the Wampas cat.

An evil demon called Ew'ah, the Spirit of Madness, had been terrorizing the village of Etowah (or Chota, depending on the version you hear) in what is today North Carolina. The village shamans and warchiefs called for a meeting. The wise shamans told the warchiefs that sending the braves to hunt and kill the Ew'ah was surely going to be the end of the tribe, for the Ew'ah had the terrible power to drive men mad with a glance. The warchiefs argued that the Ew'ah could no longer feast on the dreams of the Cherokee children, and that something must be done. Together they agreed that their strongest brave would go alone, and bring great honor to his family and tribe by killing the mad demon.

Standing Bear (or Great Fellow, depending on the story version) was the strongest, fastest, sneakiest, smartest, and most respected brave in all the Cherokee nation, and he was chosen to do battle with the demon. As he walked from his village, the shamans blessed him, and the warchiefs gave him many fine weapons with which to slay the beast, and on the edge of town, his wife, Running Deer, bid him a final farewell. She would never see him the same way again.

Weeks went by, and there was no word from Standing Bear. Suddenly, late one night, the stricken brave came running back into camp, screaming, and clawing at his eyes. One look, and Running Deer knew. Her husband was no more. With time, he would be able to pick berries and work in the fields with the young girls and the unmarried widows, but he would never be any good as a husband again, and by Cherokee law, that meant he was dead. Standing Bear's name was never again mentioned, but Running Deer had loved her husband, and she wanted revenge.

Running Deer went to the shamans, and they gave her a booger mask, a bobcat's face, and they told her that the spirit of the mountain cat could stand against the Ew'ah, but she must be the one to surprise the demon. The warchiefs gave her a special black paste, which when rubbed on her body, would hide her scent as well as her body. She kissed her former husband on the forehead, his blank eyes staring, and headed off to seek her revenge.

Running Deer knew the woods as well as she knew the village, and she ate sweet berries to keep up her strength over the many days, but still she came across no sign of the Ew'ah. Then, late one night, she heard a creature stalking down by the stream. As she crept slowly towards the creek, she heard a twig snap behind her. She spun, and just as suddenly realized how quickly it could have been the end of her. Behind her a wily fox darted across the pathway. "If that had been Ew'ah, I would be mad now..." the widowed Cherokee woman thought to herself, as she continued towards the creek.

At the edge of the creek, she saw footprints which did not belong there, and her former husband’s breastplate lay at the edge of the water. As she followed the prints upstream, she saw the demon. Its hulking form lurched hideously over the water, drinking from the pristine mountain spring. The Ew'ah hadn't seen her! Running Deer crept ever closer, and just as she felt she could bring herself no closer, she sprang!

The Ew'ah spun, and saw the Cat-Spirit-Mask, and began to tear at itself as the spirit of the mountain cat turned its powerful magic back on itself. The Ew'ah tumbled backwards into the pool, and Running Deer immediately turned on her heel and ran as fast as she could back to the village, never once looking back.

When she arrived home, she sang a song to herself---a quiet song, of grief for her husband, but also of joy for the demon's banishment. The shamans and warchiefs declared Running Deer the Spirit-Talker and Home-Protector.

Some say that the spirit of Running Deer inhabits the Wampas cat, and that she continues her eternal mission of watching her tribe's lands to protect them and their peoples from the demons that hide in the dark and lost places of Tanasi.

sources: Cherokee version above related by Enrique de la Viega, of Powder Branch, TN, on 7/11/03, posted to Ex Libris Nocturnis forum at http://bit.ly/2FmX4f
www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/tn3.html
http://themoonlitroad.com/the-wampas-mask-story-background/
Mysterious Knoxville, by Charles Edwin Price, 1999

The three restless spirits of Sarah, Will, and Clem

2009-10-28T05:00:00.001-04:00

The city of Ringgold, GA sponsors tours of its train depot each Halloween based on 'The Legend of the Haunted Depot:'

Clem and Will Jackson grew up in Ringgold doing all the things brothers did, swimming in the Chickamauga Creek, hunting in the woods, and generally enjoying the pleasures of young men in the Old South.

The boys were very close and never imagined the War would separate them. However; Clem, the younger brother, was anxious to join the fighting, but his father refused him permission. In order to join in the Confederate fight, Clem ran off to Alabama and joined the 33rd Alabama Regiment. The 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment was officially organized and outfitted in Pensacola, Florida in April 1862.

After dismounting heavy artillery from obsolete Fort McRee, the Regiment was sent to Corinth, Mississippi, arriving just after the Battle of Shiloh. Its baptism under fire occurred at Perryville, Kentucky in October, 1862 where it captured a battery, but suffered heavy casualties, including every field officer.

The next month the Army of Tennessee was organized, and the history of this great army is the history of the 33rd. The Regiment was placed in General Patrick Cleburne’s Division, and contributed to his reputation of possessing the best assault troops in the Army of Tennessee. The 33rd drove the enemy before it in Hardee’s dawn assault at Murfreesboro; it prevailed against the 6th Indiana at Chickamauga; it helped hold the flank at Missionary Ridge; and it helped bring the Federal pursuit to a bloody end at Ringgold Gap.

In the three years Clem was gone, Will fell in love and married Sarah Johnson, a great friend of Clem’s. Although newly married, because the Confederate cause became so desperate, Will felt compelled to enlist under the command of General Patrick Cleburne.

Sarah corresponded with Clem throughout the War and wrote him telling about her marriage to Will and of his enlistment. The two brothers were reunited during the War, but were both tragically killed at the Battle of Ringgold Gap, so close to home. Their bodies were never properly buried, so their spirits were doomed to roam the earth forever.

Unaware that her beloved had been so close, Sarah waited and met every returning troop train hoping to be reunited with her husband and her friend. Upon hearing the news of their death, Sarah took her own life by sneaking into the Depot in the dark of the night and hanging herself. Because she had taken her own life, Sarah also was doomed to roam the earth without rest. The three restless spirits of Sarah, Will, and Clem finally found each other and made the Depot their home.

More than a hundred years had passed when construction workers found Clem’s body at Ringgold Gap and gave him a proper burial, freeing his spirit to ascend. Left behind, the spirits of Sarah and Will roam the streets of Ringgold in search of Clem. Legend has it that on a dark moonlit night Sarah can be seen standing on the back deck at the Depot watching for the brother that Will refuses to leave.

Source: http://ringgoldhaunteddepot.com

Way down yonder in the paw paw patch

2009-10-27T05:00:00.002-04:00

Call it the American Custard Apple or the West Virginia Banana, but it’s neither apple nor banana. It’s the Paw-paw (Asimina trilob), the largest native fruit of North America, and it grows throughout Appalachia. There are about seven other members of the genus Asimina, all growing in the southeastern U.S. Mature pawpaw trees produce fruits 2" wide by 10" long, which turn from green, to yellow, and then black as they ripen in the fall.

Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Come on, boys [or girls, or kids], let's go find her,
Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Come on, boys, let's go find her,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Pickin' up paw-paws, puttin' 'em in her pockets,
Pickin' up paw-paws, puttin' 'em in her pockets,
Pickin' up paw-paws, puttin' 'em in her pockets,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

---The Paw Paw Patch
Traditional folk song

Paw-paw fruits are rich in minerals such as magnesium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, potassium, and phosphorus. The fruit also contains abundant concentrations of Vitamin C, proteins, and their derivative amino acids. The Peterson Field Guide mentions that the seeds, along with being an emetic, have narcotic properties.

The paw-paw pulp may be eaten raw, made into ice cream, baked, or used as a pie filling. Some Appalachian cooks make a custard out of "Poppaws." Seed them, mash them, add milk, a little sugar, an egg and some allspice. Pour the batter into custard cups and set those in a bread pan with some water in the bottom of the pan. Bake at a medium heat. Stick a broom straw or toothpick in, and when it comes up clean it’s done. Paw-paw also makes an excellent dry, white wine. It can be made from fresh or canned fruit.

The paw-paw is sensitive to ultraviolet light, thus, paw paw seedlings may not grow back after forests have been clear cut, and there are very few virgin forests left in the United States. Paw-paws can be found growing there abundantly, but once the forests are harvested, the paw paw will not usually re-establish.

sources:www.fred.net/kathy/pawpaws.html
http://kentuckyhighlands.net/agriculture/trees/history-of-the-pawpaw-tree.html

American+custard+apple West+Virginia+banana paw+paw appalachia +appalachian+culture appalachian+history

She donated her mansion to the church but then sued to get it back

2009-10-26T05:00:00.004-04:00

Alice Jane Meek (1877-1961) could trace her roots to members of pioneer families in Eastern Kentucky. Her resourcefulness emerged early when, amid serious competition, she wooed and wed a teacher from a one-room schoolhouse in Van Lear who had been her instructor.

She bore John C.C. Mayo ---“Calhoun” to her--- two children, John C.C. 2nd and Mary Margaret. A highly focused woman, Alice contributed greatly to the rise and success of the man who became the wealthiest man in Kentucky by the time of his death. He was a pioneer in the development of the coal industry in the Big Sandy Valley.

Mrs. Mayo traveled with her husband as he met with local landowners to acquire their coal interests. She would often speak with the wives and work out deals for the interests behind the scenes. Her nicknames of “Alkie Jane” and “Alka” were well known, and Mr. Mayo named a steamboat after her that was misspelled as “Thealka” rather than “The Alka.” When the steamer was built in 1899, Alka Mayo became president of the Paintsville and Catlettsburg Packet Co., which operated the boats.

The Thealka, classified as a batwing boat due to the position of her paddle wheels. Instead of a single stern paddle wheel, she was equipped with two smaller side wheels, set well towards the stern of the boat. Photo undated.

In 1906 the North East Coal Company had created Muddy Branch, an unincorporated community in Johnson County, but in 1911, renamed it "Thealka" after the steamboat.

Alka worked hard to develop the public relations of Calhoun’s enterprises and helped to get railroads to Pike County to move the coal to market. From 1905 to 1912 she spent a great deal of time directing construction of the couple’s new three-story mansion in Paintsville, KY.

By 1913 the Mayos were comfortable enough to take a lengthy tour of Europe. They’d already traveled together to New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago and Minneapolis. Soon after their return from Europe, however, Mr. Mayo learned that he had Bright’s Disease, which in 1914 was incurable. He consulted physicians in Cincinnati, where he was briefly hospitalized. He was eventually moved to New York City in search of the most eminent doctors, but to no avail, and he died in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on May 11, 1914.

After her first husband’s death in 1914, a distraught Alice moved to Florida. In 1916 she met Dr. Samuel P Fetter of Portsmouth, OH when he was recuperating from an illness in Palm Beach, where she frequently visited. He was a bachelor several years her junior, whose “mother presides over his household.” The couple married at his friend Cyrus Preston's home, and moved to Ashland, KY in 1917. They purchased a Victorian home there, but due to war rations, were not allowed to build a new house.

Alice received permission to “remodel” and henceforth rebuild almost the entire house. During this period she became a director of the Mayo Companies. Before the marriage, she had formed the Mrs. John C.C. Mayo Company, transferred all the property of the estate to this corporation, and divided the stock between her children. She donated the Mayo home and land to Sandy Valley Seminary. In 1918 the grounds and buildings of Sandy Valley Seminary were acquired by the Methodist Episcopal Church/South, and its name changed to John C. C. Mayo College.

The marriage to Dr. Fetter only lasted 4 years. He was 37 when he died. Like his predecessor, he had gone to New York just months before his death in hopes of finding a cure for his illness, but was similarly diagnosed as incurable. Alice, “for business reasons related to the administration of the properties and enterprises inherited from the late John C. C. Mayo,” changed her last name legally back to Mayo, reported the Paintsville Herald in 1927.

After years of financial struggle the Methodist Church Conference reluctantly closed Sandy Valley Seminary in 1928. A bitter legal battle promptly erupted between the Conference and Mrs. Mayo over ownership of the properties; she claimed that “the purposes having failed, title to the lands had reverted to and was vested in her as the surviving donor;” the Conference disagreed. Mrs. Mayo eventually won ‘Board of Missions of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Mayo’ and received undisputed title to the school property in 1936.

She then sold the house and property to E. J. Evans, a friend and employee of John Mayo. Mr. Evans leased the mansion and other buildings. In 1938, Paintsville bought the Mayo College property and the Kentucky General Assembly created and opened the Mayo Vocational School.

In 1945, Mr. Evans sold the mansion and grounds to the Most Reverend William T. Mulloy, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Covington, KY, and his successors in office. Under the guidance of the Sisters of Divine Providence from Melbourne, KY, Our Lady of the Mountains was opened in October, 1945. It is currently under the auspices of the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, KY. Alice Meek Mayo died in Ashland on Sept 5, 1961 and was buried behind the Mayo mansion in Paintsville.

sources: The Kentucky Encyclopedia, by John E. Kleber
www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/education/sandy.html
http://home.catholicweb.com/OurLadySchool/index.cfm/NewsItem?ID=9376&From=Home
www.pikevillerotary.org/newsletter/2007-2008/news020608.pdf
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/r/e/Clara-Preston-OH/GENE11-0169.html
Ashland Daily Independent, Front Page September 5, 1961
Board of Missions of Methodist Episcopal Church v. Mayo
CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, SIXTH CIRCUIT, OHIO, 1936
A standard history of the Hanging Rock iron region of Ohio: an ..., Volume 2 edited by Eugene B. Willard et al.
New York Times, March 19, 1921, page 11, “Samuel P Fetter Dead”

Listen Here: weekly Appalachian History podcast posts today

2009-10-25T13:06:00.001-04:00

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

We open today's show with the story of a 1930s wonder drug that was never tested before being marketed. Dr. S.E. Massengill said of his company’s Elixir of Sulfanilimide: "My chemists and I deeply regret the fatal results, but there was no error in the manufacture of the product. We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part." The firm's head chemist apparently did not share this feeling; Harold Watkins committed suicide after learning of the 100 deaths his concoction had caused.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

North Carolinian forest ranger William Nothstein “had a movie projector and a trunk about that high, and old silent movies and a screen and film and mending kit, and all that sort of thing, and I went around and showed motion pictures, fire prevention movies, and also game protection pictures; wild life protection.” In this oral history excerpt he tells us about an elderly widow who offered to sell him a homemade suit while he was in the line of duty.

When asked by Federal agent Melvin Purvis about the Kansas City Massacre, he snapped, "I won't tell you anything, you son-of-a-bitch." Depending on whose version is more accurate, these may well have been Charles Arthur Pretty Boy Floyd's last words. October 22, 2009 is the 75th anniversary of the shoot-out death of the career bank robber who just three months earlier had been designated "Public Enemy No. 1" by J. Edgar Hoover.

In our next piece we’ll hear the description of court case in Fentress County, TN, in which a man by the name of Stout was arrested for bewitching the beautiful daughter of a Mr. Taylor, who lived on the Obeds River. The courthouse guards weren’t taking any chances; before entering the courtroom they took the precaution of remove the lead bullets from their guns and replacing them with silver bullets, just in case the defendant tried anything out of the ordinary.

The decision of a county to change its county seat doesn’t seem like front page news. But let’s peek in on a late nineteenth century power struggle set in Randolph County WV. Timber rich, today much of it is in the Monongahela National Forest. And that wealth of natural resources set the stage for the Courthouse War of the 1890s between the towns of Beverly and Elkins.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at the origin of the phrase ‘jack o lantern’. It has to do with an old Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack who succeeded several times in tricking the Devil. But of course you can’t go around tricking the Devil without, well, hell to pay later on!

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by A.A. Gray & Seven Foot Dilly in a 1930 recording of “Streak of Lean, Streak of Fat.”

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

The Devil provided Stingy Jack with a coal

2009-10-23T05:00:00.003-04:00

If you have ever tramped around the woods after dark, you may have noticed an erie glowing substance on the forest floor. This is the light from luminescent fungi---foxfire. One of the most common fungi responsible for foxfire is Clitocybe illudens, also known as the Jack 'o Lantern mushroom. Makes complete sense that it would be named that: it’s orange, it glows in the dark. But did you ever stop to wonder where the phrase "Jack 'o Lantern" came from?

There's an old Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack." Stingy Jack was a drunken brawler who found great enjoyment from playing tricks on anyone who crossed his path. Jack also had the great misfortune of running into the Devil more than once.

Jack's first encounter with the Devil happened at a local Irish pub within the village. Obviously Stingy Jack was called "Stingy Jack" for a reason, and he wasn't about to change now in the face of the devil. Jack convinced the Devil to transform into a sixpence piece so that Jack could use him to pay for their drinks. In exchange for this transaction, the Devil would receive Jack's soul. Little did the Devil know, Jack still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

After changing into the sixpence piece, Jack quickly tossed the Devil into his pocket next to a silver cross - thus preventing the Devil from returning to his original form. Jack then bargained with the Devil to keep his soul for 10 more years - in return for the Devil's freedom. The Devil reluctantly agrees and Jack frees him. 10 years pass and Jack crosses paths with the Devil a second time. With the Devil ready to claim his soul, Jack made a last request: "I'll go, but before I do - will you retrieve an apple from that tree for me? I'm awfully hungry!"

The Devil began to climb the tree, and while the Devil was climbing to the top of the tree, Jack carved a large cross into the back of the tree. Again, the Devil had been tricked and could not get down.

Jack; being quite pleased with himself; bargained yet again with the Devil - this time for the promise that the Devil would never, ever try to take his soul again. With no way out of the tree, the Devil agreed.

Years pass and Jack finally passes away. Unfortunately for Jack, all of his evil trickery and horrible deeds - God did not allow Jack into Heaven. The Devil, still bitter at Jack and his bag of tricks, kept his word and did not claim his soul. Jack was unable to get into Heaven, and unable to get into Hell.

"Wherever shall I go?" Jack asked the Devil, confused and afraid.

"Back to where you came from!" The Devil growled angrily at Jack and sent him on his way back to earth.

Jack's journey back was very dark, and he begged for the Devil to lend him a light to help him lead the way. The Devil provided Stingy jack with a coal from the fires of Hell - which Jack then placed into a turnip he had in his pocket. The carved out turnip lead the way back to earth. Since then; Jack appears every Halloween, doomed to roam the earth in search of eternal rest - leading the way with his turnip lamp.

The Irish people began to refer to the ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," and soon: "Jack O'Lantern."

Traditionally on All Hallows Eve, many Irishmen make their own versions of Jack's lantern by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them near doors and windows to scare away the body-snatching spirits.

Pumpkins weren't actually used until the Irish immigrants brought the tradition of Jack-o-Lanterns with them to America - only to discover that pumpkins were easier to carve than their traditional turnips and potatoes. The traditional Jack-o-Lantern was a turnip!

http://www.novareinna.com/festive/jack.html

Bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd drops in a hail of 93 bullets

2009-10-22T05:00:00.000-04:00

When asked by Federal agent Melvin Purvis about the Kansas City Massacre, he snapped, "I won't tell you anything, you son-of-a-bitch." Depending on whose version is more accurate, these may well have been Charles Arthur Pretty Boy Floyd's last words. Today is the 75th anniversary of the shoot-out death of the career bank robber who just three months earlier had been designated "Public Enemy No. 1" by J. Edgar Hoover.

Believed to be returning to his home in the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma after years in hiding, Floyd and his partner, Adam Richetti, had attracted the attention of local police near Wellsville, OH. A guns-blazing chase ensued, resulting in Richetti's capture and Floyd's escape. Agent Purvis organized a three-day manhunt, which culminated on the Ellen Conkle farm when eight lawmen ended Floyd's life of violence.

Much of the interest in Floyd was due to a bloody rescue attempt in Kansas City in June 1933, which had resulted in the machine gun deaths of five persons, four of them police officers. Floyd, usually not shy about his exploits, denied any involvement, but without success.

Floyd went into hiding after the so-called Union Station Massacre. However, by October of the following year, he and Richetti, and two sisters whose inconvenient husbands had been eliminated by Floyd, decided to leave their hideout in Buffalo, New York, and return to Oklahoma.

The East Liverpool Historical Society website gives a dramatic blow-by-blow account of the gang's desperate final attempts to outrun the law in Ohio:

"In mid-afternoon on Monday, October 22, he emerged from the woods near an area known as Sprucevale, eight miles southeast of his last sighting, where he approached the farmhouse of Mrs. Ellen Conkle, a widow. A disheveled Floyd explained to her that he had gotten lost while hunting and had spent the previous night wandering through the woods. He was hungry, and Mrs. Conkle prepared a meal of spareribs, potatoes, rice pudding, and pumpkin pie, which Pretty Boy consumed rapidly and termed 'fit for a king'. He offered Mrs. Conkle a dollar for her trouble and asked to see any recent newspapers.

Ellen Conkle, with the dishes used by Floyd in what turned out to be his last meal.

"Unknown to Floyd, he had been observed walking in the area by a farmer who telephoned township Constable Clyde Birch who, in turn, relayed the report to the East Liverpool City Police. Acting on the tip, one of several already received, East Liverpool Police Chief High J. McDermott rounded up Patrolmen Chester C. Smith, Glenn Montgomery, and Herman Roth and set out. Purvis and four agents followed in a second vehicle.

"Meanwhile, having concluded his review of the papers, which detailed the capture of Richetti and the ongoing manhunt, Floyd asked for Mrs. Conkle's assistance in getting to Youngstown. She suggested that Floyd wait until her brother, Stewart Dyke, finished his work in the fields. Floyd sat in the front seat of Dyke's Model A until his return.

"When Pretty Boy explained that he wanted transportation to Youngstown or the nearest bus line, Dyke promised to take him part of the way, and they started to pull out of the farmyard. At that crucial moment, two cars came speeding down the Sprucevale Road toward the Conkle farm. Floyd, sensing danger, ordered Dyke to pull the car behind an adjacent corncrib, and saw a pair of blue-trousered legs get out of the car. As the police and federal agents approached the corncrib, Floyd made a break for the woods, holding a Colt automatic in his right hand.

"Nine officers, variously armed with pistols, rifles, and shotguns, blazed away as Floyd zigzagged across the field. Ninety-three shots were directed at the outlaw; for once, he did not shoot back. Hit, Floyd fell to his knees, then got up and continued his race for life. A second bullet knocked him down to stay.

"Not surprisingly, the accounts of the participants differ widely. Purvis later claimed that Floyd was hit by an agent armed with a Tommy gun. Patrolman Chester Smith asserted that it was his shots with a .32-20 Winchester that had dropped Floyd and, further, that the federal agents were armed only with pistols and 'couldn't have hit anything at that distance with their handguns.'

Floyd's body at the Sturgis Funeral Home morgue - note bullet wound in left torso.

"Floyd was alive when the lawmen came up to where he lay. The Colt was removed from his right hand, which had been paralyzed by a wound. A backup gun was found in the waistband of his trousers.

"When Purvis asked the criminal if he was Pretty Boy Floyd, he received the curt response, ‘I'm Floyd’. He then asked the police, 'Where's Etti?' --- presumably a reference to his captured associate. The three Liverpool patrolmen carried him to the shelter of a large apple tree where Public Enemy No. 1 died."

source: www.eastliverpoolhistoricalsociety.org/pbfloyd1.htm

My chemists and I deeply regret the fatal results

2009-10-21T05:00:00.000-04:00

Sulfa drugs held out the promise of being the wonder drugs of the 1930s: they cured bacterial infections such as pneumonia, blood poisoning, and meningitis. And so their use spread rapidly. Output of sulfa drugs in the United States in 1937—the first year of real commercial production—totaled about 350,000 pounds; by 1940, it had more than doubled. By 1942, it topped an estimated 10 million pounds.

Sulfanilamide, one of the first of the sulfa drugs, had been used safely for some time in tablet and powder form, but it was hard to swallow as a tablet and not especially palatable as an injection either. Children tended to balk at both.

In 1937, S. E. Massengill Co., a small drug formulator in Bristol, TN, sought to meet the demand for a drinkable liquid preparation. Harold Cole Watkins, Massengill's chief chemist, experimented and found that sulfanilamide would dissolve in diethylene glycol. The company control lab tested the mixture for flavor, appearance, and fragrance and found it satisfactory.

The concoction was called Elixir Sulfanilamide despite the lack of ethanol, an ingredient that was required for a preparation to receive the elixir designation. Immediately, the company compounded a quantity of the elixir and sent shipments--633 of them--all over the country. The presence of diethylene glycol was not divulged on the bottle labels. Furthermore, Massengill made no tests on its elixir before shipping from its plant in September.

One of the major points of delivery of the drug was Tulsa, OK. By early October, James Stephenson, the president of the Tulsa County Medical Society, had been notified that six local patients had unexpectedly died from renal failure after ingesting Elixir Sulfanilamide. In an October 11 telegraph to the American Medical Association, Dr. Stephenson requested the composition of the elixir. The AMA responded that they were unaware of any product from the Massengill Company and had never approved a liquid sulfanilamide preparation.

The AMA telegraphed Dr. Samual Evans Massengill, the firm's owner, requesting the composition of the elixir. Massengill released this proprietary information but urged that it be kept strictly confidential. He hypothesized that the deaths may have been caused by mixing the elixir with other drugs. Massengill and Watkins reluctantly admitted, however, that toxicity tests had not been done. To show confidence in his product, Watkins self-administered small amounts of diethylene glycol and elixir. No adverse effects were noted.

But the AMA laboratory had meantime isolated diethylene glycol as the toxic ingredient and immediately issued a warning, through newspapers and radio, that Elixir Sulfanilamide was toxic and deadly.

Walter Campbell, the chief of the Food & Drug Administration, assigned almost all of the bureau's 239 inspectors and chemists to the case, sending field agents immediately to the Massengill's headquarters in Bristol and to branch offices in Kansas City, New York, and San Francisco. They found that the firm had already learned of the poisonous effects of the liquid sulfanilamide and had sent telegrams to more than 1,000 salesmen, druggists, and doctors.

However, the telegrams merely requested the return of the product and failed to indicate the urgency of the situation or say that the drug was lethal. At FDA's insistence, the firm sent out a second wave of messages, worded more strongly: "Imperative you take up immediately all elixir sulfanilamide dispensed. Product may be dangerous to life. Return all stocks, our expense."

Dr. Massengill said: "My chemists and I deeply regret the fatal results, but there was no error in the manufacture of the product. We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part." The firm's chemist apparently did not share this feeling; Harold Watkins committed suicide after learning of the effects of his latest concoction.

Through the dogged persistence of federal, state, and local health agencies and the effects of the AMA and the news media, most of the elixir was recovered. Of 240 gallons manufactured and distributed, 234 gallons and 1 pint were retrieved; the remainder was consumed and caused the deaths of more than 100 victims nationwide.

Under the U.S. food and drug law then in place, the government seized Massengill's deadly mixture only because it was misbranded; "elixir" implied that the solvent in the bottle was ethyl alcohol. Drug dispensers were required by law to label their products accurately but not to test them for safety. The company was fined $16,800 for its false label.

The lethal mixture, however, did encourage enactment of a much-strengthened food and drug law that was then pending in Congress. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938, which overhauled the law of 1906, stipulated that manufacturers must test any new drug for safety and report the results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Some predicted that the new act would stifle research, but FDA historian Wallace Janssen says the reverse has been true: the research required by the law has stimulated medical progress.

sources: www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/122/6/456
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/tcaw/10/i06/html/06chemch.html
www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ProductRegulation/SulfanilamideDisaster/default.htm
Strauss's federal drug laws and examination review, by Steven Strauss, CRC Press, 2000

I'd trust a mountain man before I would a city man any day

2009-10-20T05:00:00.000-04:00

The [North Carolina Forest Service] offered me a job then, late that summer or early that fall. I went to work, I had a fancy title: in charge of visual education. They had a three-quarter ton International truck. They had a generator bolted down inside this panel truck. I had a movie projector and a trunk about that high, and old silent movies and a screen and film and mending kit, and all that sort of thing, and I went around and showed motion pictures, fire prevention movies, and also game protection pictures; wild life protection.

These mountain people had burned the forest religiously, for years. They had no game laws. Well, they had game laws, but they never respected them. Even to this day, many of them don't respect our game laws. So I went from one county to the other showing these movies. I went back as far as you could get. I had cable, I think, about fifteen hundred feet of cable. If I could get within fifteen hundred feet of one these rural backwoods schoolhouses I could show movies.

I'd have to give them about a twenty-minute spiel before I could show the movies, because if you showed the movies first and then talked, you didn't have an audience.

I showed movies to people fifty years old who'd seen. . . that was the first movie they'd ever seen. I got back into the Smokies as far back as people lived; as far back as you could get; all over Western North Carolina, and go from one county to another.

Later, then in the Fair season I traveled the County Fair circuit and I put up exhibits at the County Fairs. I had exhibits, and I'd stand at those exhibits and talk and try to stop forest fires. I was a preacher, I tell you. So I made the Fair Circuit; go from one County Fair to another; put up these exhibits. I did that from August until, I guess, the latter part of September, or early October, when the County Fairs started in Eastern Carolina. That was in twenty-eight. Nineteen-twenty-eight.

Photo taken December 1, 1940 for U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station Photograph Collection. Caption reads: Most distant peaks are in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about 70 miles away. Center of picture slightly south of west, from Mt. Mitchell, Black Mountain, N.C.

I would concentrate pretty much in the back woods where the forest fires originate; where the game law violations were concentrated. I've lived with mountain people most of my life. They're better [than other people]; they're more trustworthy. They’re more dependable; more reliable. They've got more character. They are different. I'd trust a mountain man before I would a city man any day. And I've. . .well, there's one or two places I even had my own place at the table.

I'd go in some places. . . and when I was showing these movies, I'd eat my evening meal at the house nearest the school house. . . cornbread and milk, sometimes, and fatback, fried potatoes, onions, leatherbritches beans. It varied considerably, and then sometimes fresh pork, if they'd killed a hog somewhere. But I did stop at one place, and an elderly widow lived alone, I stopped there for my evening meal. Of course, there wasn't a speck of paint inside or outside the house, but the floor was clean. No carpets, but if I'd dropped a piece of cornbread on the floor I wouldn't have hesitated to pick it up and eat it; it looked specklessly clean.

After we'd finished, and . . .I'd offer to pay. You insulted people if you offered to pay for your meal. Yes; you insulted them.

Usually the County Warden was with me. They had a County Fire Warden, and he knew his way around, and usually he went along. So he ran interference for me. He arranged. . . he knew where the school-houses were, and one thing and another. At one place, this elderly widow, after we'd eaten, said: "I have a suit of clothes here I made for my husband. He never wore it. I raised the sheep; I sheared the wool. I carded the wool and I spun the yarn; I dyed the yarn and I wove the cloth and I made the suit." She said, "I'll let you have it for ten dollars."

Well, like a fool, I said, "Well, if it'll fit me." I tried it on and it didn't quite fit. But that would be a collector's item today, and I could have afforded the ten dollars, but I figured, "Those things are everywhere, you know." I didn't have sense enough to recognize what I saw.

William Nothstein
(b. 1902)
Interviewed by Dr. Lewis Silveri, Southern Highlands Research Center [now in D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections], University of North Carolina at Asheville
July 1, 1976

http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SHRC/nothstein_willaim.pdf

Randolph County's Courthouse War

2009-10-19T05:00:00.001-04:00

Randolph County is the largest in West Virginia. Timber rich, today much of it is in the Monongahela National Forest. And that wealth of natural resources set the stage for the Courthouse War of the 1890s between the towns of Beverly and Elkins.

Prior to 1898 Beverly was the county seat; one of the oldest east of the Mississippi River. Beverly was a conservative rural southern town in 1890 much like any town of the South.

Beverly, WV Courthouse. Undated sketch.

But that year U.S. Senator Henry Davis, who was also a prominent coal and timber man, came to Randolph County seeking to deploy resources. He fell upon an area just north of Beverly as a site for a railroad junction from which he could center his operations. Before 1890 the area that was about to become Elkins was home to a scattered rural community known as Leadsville, where the farmers' corn was loaded on boats and floated down river.

Elkins was incorporated in 1890 and renamed for U.S. Senator Stephen Benton Elkins, Davis’ son-in-law. Senator Elkins was a man used to getting his way: he was secretary of war under President Benjamin Harrison and later chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission under President Theodore Roosevelt. (The original Davis and Elkins estates are now the site of Davis and Elkins College.)

Together Davis and Elkins promoted their agenda of business, industry, and commerce, much in keeping with Northern ambitions and enterprise, in direct contrast to Beverly, the home of the old conservative South.

The new citizens of Elkins began a campaign to have the county seat moved to Elkins. The first county wide referendum was held in 1890 and was defeated. Beverly built a new courthouse in 1894 in the hopes of hanging on to the county seat, but this building was burned down in 1897 under suspicious circumstances.

The court records were returned to the old courthouse for safekeeping. This event revived the efforts to have the county seat moved to Elkins. On the third vote the balloting was close enough to have the election referred to the courts.
A number of Elkins supporters, fearing this would cause endless delay, gathered with weapons to make a surprise assault on the old courthouse in Beverly, intending to move the records themselves.

“Bands of armed men were trained to defend their towns,” says the Elkins version of the story. “Beverly residents heard of the plan and gathered to defend the courthouse and town” is the view from Beverly.

Elkins, WV Courthouse, ca. 1915.

“At one point a special train was formed at Elkins to attack Beverly. The attack was averted, though, by a speech given by C. Wood Dailey, chief counsel for the Western Maryland Railroad,” says the Elkins narrative.

“A delegation of [Beverly] community leaders, particularly Dr. Humboldt Yokum, persuaded the Elkins faction to give up their fight and avoid bloodshed,” counters the Historic Beverly website. Beverly resident S.L. Baker, who later served two terms in the State Senate, also served as a mediator to help solve the county seat controversy.

The court ultimately ruled in Elkins' favor, and the county records were ‘peaceably’ moved to Elkins about 1899,though resistance in Beverly was still stiff.

“Explaining the struggle to control the courthouse in Randolph County, a Pittsburgh newspaper reporter observed that ‘under other circumstances a county seat war might be a mere passing event,’” notes Ronald L. Lewis in Transforming the Appalachian Countryside “but in Randolph County ‘it stood for everything.

“It was the meeting of the old and the new civilization,” a conflict between ‘tradition with all of its sentiment and modern industry with all of its disregard for tradition.’ It was a ‘collision between the young men who believed in business…and the old men who have veneration for their home and the home of their ancestors.’

"The contest was so spirited because it was ‘the ruthless assault of nineteenth century progress upon the posterity of the pioneers’ who settled in the mountains generations before.”

Beverly’s Dr. Yokum, it should be noted as a postscript, by 1912 owned not only his home at Beverly, but several lots of land in Elkins.

sources: Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, by Ronald L. Lewis, University of North Carolina Press, 1998
www.ancientfaces.com/research/story/386313
www.historicbeverly.org/bevhist4.htm
www.wvculture.org/shpo/nr/pdf/randolph/08001240.pdf
www.regionvii.com/images/Randolph_Co_Narrative.pdf

Listen Here: weekly Appalachian History podcast posts today

2009-10-18T15:05:00.001-04:00

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

We open today's show with the question: “Did Chicago mobster Al Capone ever set foot in Johnson City, TN?” During the 1920s the town was nicknamed Little Chicago. A reference acknowledging crime ties to the north? Or nothing more than an expression of local pride in the railroads, three of which ran through town?

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

His beginnings were humble; he was born the son of an immigrant Scottish coal miner in the company town of Lonaconing, MD. But John Gardner Murray (1857-1929) rose to the heights of the Episcopal Church on the national level, becoming the first elected Presiding Bishop in 1926.

Some people have dark dark secrets, like the Aunt Mary of this next segment. Hers is the story of "The Hainted House," from ‘South from Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales,’ and before its over you’ll be wanting to lock the door, close the curtains, ---and especially---check the fireplace.

Alabaman James Pinkney Pittman wasn’t a bad man, but his fondness for liquor didn’t help his community standing any. In his handwritten memoirs he tells us how he was framed for the shooting death of a buddy in a hunting accident during a 3-man outing. He was booked for the killing in the St Clair courthouse, and amazingly, was able to raise bond from a group of strangers who were sympathetic to his position. Perhaps they knew a bit more about the other remaining hunter’s reputation than Pittman did.

What parent wouldn’t be utterly terrified to have their child kidnapped, never to be heard from again? It happened to Mr. and Mrs. James Sage of Clayton County, VA in 1793. Their daughter Katy was chasing butterflies in the side yard one morning, and suddenly she wasn’t there. Sixty years passed, when an Indian agent in Kansas mentioned to Katy’s now grown brother Charles that a woman who looked remarkably like him was living among the Shawnees.

We’ll wrap things up with a look at wooly worms. You could check to see if the bees are flying low, observe the size of the acorns on the trees, or pay close attention to how foggy recent mornings have been in order to gauge what kind of a winter it'll be.   Easiest of all, you could get yourself over to Banner Elk, NC or Beattysville, KY to each town’s annual Woolly Worm Festival, where the little critters compete for the honor of proclaiming the official winter weather forecast.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia we'll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Jim Shumate and Wayne Erbsen in a 1977 recording of the traditional fiddle tune “Cumberland Gap.”

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

Which way winter? Watch woolly worms!

2009-10-16T05:00:00.000-04:00

You could check to see if the bees are flying low, observe the size of the acorns on the trees, or pay close attention to how foggy recent mornings have been in order to gauge what kind of a winter it'll be.

Easiest of all, you could get yourself over to Banner Elk, NC this weekend to the 32th Woolly Worm Festival, where more than 1,000 of the little critters will compete for the honor of proclaiming the official winter weather forecast. Beattysville, KY also hosts a Woolly Worm Festival; this year is their 20th one. At either festival, the worm that most quickly reaches the top of a three-foot piece of string gains fame and glory, makes his mark in local weather history, and wins prize money.

Mountain folk use the brown and black stripes on the woolly worm to predict winter's path. Tradition says that the black stripes predict cold and snowy weather, while brown stripes point toward milder conditions. Furthermore, the narrower the band, the harsher the winter. Woolly worms have 13 different bands of color, each representing the 13 weeks of winter from December through March.

The woolly worm is known in the scientific world as Isia Isabella. Other common names for this caterpillar are woolly bears, black-ended bears and banded woolly bears (the name approved by the Entomological Society of America). After hunkering down in a tight ball for the winter, the Isia Isabella will emerge next year as a tiger moth.

The woolly worm’s genus---Pyrrhactia---includes many different species. Some are solid black without any bands, and others have bands of varying sizes. Woolly worms go through six larval stages before entering their pupal or winter cocoon stage. In other words, the caterpillar molts six times and the color and size of its bands may change from molt to molt. Scientists say variations in their bands are linked to differences in species and larval stage, not the weather. But you can still root for your favorites at your favorite Woolly Worm Festival every fall, regardless!

Sources: www.woollyworm.com/node/7
www.mountaintimes.com/mtweekly/2004/1014/isia.php3
www.wtov9.com/weather/9535109/detail.html

woolly+worms Banner+Elk+NC weather+prediction appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history

No one will live there now: it is believed that the house is hainted

2009-10-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

This is the story of the hainted house down by Mrs. Grundy’s house.

Well children, I’ll begin the evening of the quilting bee. When John and me was first married, the married women of the neighborhood all belonged to a club called the Quilting Bee. They met the first week after we’s married and invited me to join the club.

Well, I went to the Quilting Bee and all met at Mrs. Shutt’s, Aunt Mary as everybody called her. She lived in the house that is called the Hainted House now. This was one winter evening and Aunt Mary had a great big fire in the fireplace. We was sitting around the fire piecing quilt tops as fast as fingers could fly. The talk was flying thick and fast as fingers, or faster.

Then Granny Tucker began to talk about secrets. Granny Tucker said, “No one ever kept a secret all their lives without telling hit,” and she said if one person ever knowed anything that nobody else knowed that they always told one other person, at least, before they died.

Well, Aunt Mary rose and said, “I don’t believe this, for I have kept a secret all of sixty-five year without telling hit.”
We hushed and listened to her. Everybody knowed she was wanting to say something special.

“This,” Aunt Mary went on to say, “is my secret. All you kind people remember my good husband Tom, and have wondered why he left me to make a living alone. The fact is he never left me at all. He is still here---right in this house. Fact is Tom is in this very room.”

At this the women looked nervousness around. Aunt Mary never cracked a smile. She waited a second and then went on. “No, don’t look, for you can’t see him. He hain’t alive. He is dead, for I killed him with my own hands sixty-five year ago. I have kept my secret for sixty-five year, and if it wa’n’t for you---“ pointing at Granny Tucker, “I wouldn’t have never told it. Oh, well, it makes mighty little difference anyway. I may as well tell you the rest of it.

“Tom come in one night---the very night he disappeared---and told me he was tired of living here and wanted to move west. I didn’t want to go, and then Tom told me he had a good bit of money saved. I didn’t know he had. Well, he said it amounted to about a thousand dollars in all. I was already mad, and I became very angry when he told me this. I decided, with the place and that money, I could do without Tom purty well, and before Tom knowed what I was doing I grabbed the poker and hit him over the head. He fell, and I bent over and found he was dead.

Dear Reader: Please take a close look at the original version of this photograph. You’ll notice that the blue blob you see in the fireplace is NOT something I added! Trick of the light, OR…?

“Tom had been working on the fireplace and I put him in the opening that was there, and I finished the fireplace, a little at a time. Some of you know I went to my sister’s and stayed after I told that Tom had left me, and by slipping back and fixing a little at a time I soon had Tom sealed in. He is there now. If you don’t believe me, you can open the fireplace and see for yourselves.”

The tale broke up the Quilting Bee, and the women went home and sent their husbands back to find if what Aunt Mary told was true. Part of the men dug out around the fireplace and tore it down, and sure enough, there was a man’s bones behind the jamb rock. The law come to take Aunt Mary away but when they begun to look for her they found she was gone. Finally, they found her dead in the attic. She died the night she told her secret.

People tell now that you can hear Aunt Mary and Tom fussing about midnight if you will go and stand outside the house. No one will live there now. It is believed that the house is hainted.

"The Hainted House," from South from Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales, compiled by Leonard W. Roberts, Univ of Ky Press, Lexington, KY, 1955

When the Grand Jury met, he was not there to appear against me

2009-10-14T05:00:00.000-04:00

The following was brought by my father's first cousin, Roy Hodges, to the family gathering following my uncle's funeral in 1985. It was handwritten, and in pencil. James Pinkney Pittman (1855-1946) was the grandfather of my father, Victor Randolph Pittman, Jr.

The handwritten text ended in mid-sentence on the last page of the steno pad. Obviously, there is or was at least one more steno pad like it that has been lost.

Judging from the markings on the pad, it appears to have been written some time in the late 1920s or early 1930s. I have endeavored to preserve the original misspellings. No doubt, I have added a few of my own.

---Victor Darrell Pittman, James Pinkney's great-grandson, June 1997

"I got into truble. I went hunting with two men, one was midal eag, the other was young. The young man got killed out in the woods and the other man told evry body that I killed him. Well, I was arested, tryed and put under a ten thousand dollar bond untill the grand jury met. The county seat was Ashville Ala. I did not know a sole in the town. I ask the Sharif what he was going to do with me. I dident want to be put in jale. "Can you make a bond?" "I can try."

"It w now getting dark when w come down out of the court house. Seemed I had the simpthy of older men. Went into a large store. The croud of men folowed us in. I ask the propreator if he would go on a tempry bond untill I could make bond, but when he found out how much the bond was he shook his head. One man in the crowed said he would, then another. So there was a lot of them went on the bond, a temporary bound. I gave my bond to a frend of mine from Springville to see if he could make bond in Springville for me. I wated sevrel days. So I ask the men that signed my bond if tha wood let me go to Springville and try to make my bond, that if I couldent make bond I wood come back. They told me to go.

St. Clair Courthouse, Ashville, AL

"Now there was a Mr. Wood and Miss Vick that was sumoned as witnesses at the trile. Mr. Wood had been going with Miss Vick and wanted her to mary him. So he told her that they w send me to the pen or hang him so she told him that wouldent do him no good, that she would mary me before I went. You see hur friend tryed to keep hur from maring me because I drink a little two much, but that dident do any good.

"Well, back to the bond. I made the bond and sent it in. My friends in Springville went to work on the case. They corned the man that acused me out where the young man was killed and ask him where he was standing when the young man was killed. He showed them & thay traced the shot came from on the undergroth that killed the man. So he got scared and run away. So whe the grand jury met, he was not there to appear against me. So my case w throon out of court and I was clared. You see, he was the onley wittnes. God knows I dident kill him. It was all done axedently."

Full memoir at: The Memoirs of James Pinkney Pittman

Charles saw her---his face became pale

2009-10-13T05:00:00.002-04:00

KATY SAGE
THE LOST GIRL OF GRAYSON

By Ex-Judge D. W. Bolen,
"Hillsville Advocate"
Wytheville, VA
Friday, November 5, 1897

The 11th of April, 1793, was a bright and balmy day. Early that morning James Sage went to his "clearing" to prepare his ground for crop. The day opened so bright and clear that Mrs. Sage decided to go and do her week's washing. She left her four children in the cabin and started to a little stream near by to build a fire to heat water to wash with.

As she was leaving the door she saw a number of butterflies wandering about among the shrubbery in the garden and she called her little five-year-old daughter Katy to come and look at the butterflies. The child came and went on into the garden to enjoy a better sight of the gauzy-winged creatures, while the mother went on to build the fire.

After a while the mother returned to get the clothes she intended to wash, but Katy was missing. Mrs. Sage thought the child had wandered off after the butterflies, for the last words she had heard Katy utter was her childish language talking to the pretty butterflies. She went in search of Katy but could not find her. She called her husband and they looked for Katy all day long and all night long, but they did not find her.

The next morning the neighbors for miles and miles around began to gather in and for several long weeks they searched in every direction for Katy, but in vain. After all had been done to find the child that human ingenuity could devise, the neighbors and friends gave up the search as fruitless and returned to their homes.

But James Sage began the search anew. Starting at his cabin door, he examined every square foot of ground for miles and miles around, hoping to find some rag of clothing or some mark, however dim, that might indicate to him the fate of his lost child. But he never found one trace. At last, in his despair, he heard of an old woman in North Carolina known by the name of Granny Moses, who was said to possess the power to reveal mysteries and look into and foretell all human events.

James Sage made a journey across the mountains into the Old North State to see Granny Moses. He found her and in his own way laid before her the whole story of his lost child.

The old women consulted her occult science, gathered up her faculties and told him that his Katy was still alive and well, but she added, "Katy is where you will never see her or hear of her again in this world, but your wife (Mrs. Sage) will outlive you and in her very old age she will hear of Katy but will never see her.”

With broken spirit and sick at heart the man returned home and resumed work in the forest around his cabin. Other children with bright faces and joyous prattle came to join the three that remained at his hearthstone. Other events and other transactions came into the lives of the parents, and to all outward appearances, as the years glided along, the memory of little Katy Sage became more and more like a faded dream.

But as long as the family remained together, when father and mother and children gathered around the embers that glowed between the jambs of the old fireplace on the long winter evening they talked of the missing one.

When thirty-one years had passed since Katy's disappearance James Sage was laid to sleep in a grave in the beautiful Elk Creek Valley, and the message of Granny Moses was the only tidings that had ever reached his ears of his lost child.

Mrs. Sage outlived her husband many years. Her children, as time rolled on, became widely scattered. Some remained in Virginia and others settled in different states and territories in the west. Her son Charles settled in Kansas, and in 1854 he met with an Indian agent there, who one day asked him if he had a sister or female relative among the Shawnee Indians.

Charles answered no. But on reflection he told the agent the story of his sister who had been lost or stolen more than sixty years before.

The agent said that there was a white woman among the Shawnee Indians that bore a most striking resemblance to Charles. The woman was sent for and when Charles saw her his face became pale. It seemed to him that the very image of his mother as she appeared twenty years ago, when he had left the old homestead, lived and glowed in the face and features of the strange woman. He believed her to be his long lost sister.

She could not speak a word of English, but through an interpreter she told them that she had been stolen away from her home in Virginia by a white man when she was a small child, that he took her to the Cherokee Indians and she never saw him again, that she had lived among the Cherokees awhile, and then with the Creeks, and finally with the Shawnees, that she had been three times married to distinguished Indian Chiefs and had bore one son, that her husbands had all died and she was a widow now for the third time and her son had recently died, that her name was Katy, and that she had retained that name in all her wanderings and travels through different countries and among different Indian tribes.

Charles got her to go home with him and he at once wrote to his brother Samuel, who lived in Missouri, to come and see if he could recognize her. Samuel was older and could remember Katy. Samuel came and saw the woman and heard her history and believed her to be his sister.

The brothers then wrote to their mother, who was still living at the old place on Elk Creek, and told her about the woman they believed to be their sister, and asked the mother to tell them all she could remember about Katy. The mother was then near her ninetieth birthday, but on hearing the letter read. her memory revived and she said almost instantly: "Write and tell the boys that my daughter Katy has a ginger-colored birth mark on her shoulder," and then she went on and described the mark, and the very spot described by the mother was found upon the shoulder of the woman in Charles Sage’s house.

Her identification was now complete and beyond question, and the brothers decided to take her home to their mother at once, and Katy was anxious to go. Arrangements for the journey were made, but just as they were ready to start Katy was seized with pneumonia and died, disappearing from the world just as suddenly as when a child chasing butterflies on Elk Creek.

source: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=bobbuckles&id=I05261

The boyhood attraction was there for a higher life

2009-10-12T05:00:00.002-04:00

His beginnings were humble; he was born the son of an immigrant Scottish coal miner in the company town of Lonaconing, MD. But John Gardner Murray (1857-1929) rose to the heights of the Episcopal Church on the national level, becoming the first elected Presiding Bishop in 1926.

Until the church began electing a Presiding Bishop in 1925, the fifteen previous holders of that office had automatically assumed the position by being the most senior bishop in the House of Bishops, measured by their dates of consecration.

The following ‘Tribute From a Boyhood Friend,’ published in the Baltimore Sun on October 8, 1929 shortly after Bishop Murray’s death, gives a sense of the man’s character formation at the start of his remarkable journey.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN:

Sir:
Now that the high tributes have been paid to the great leader of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the writer wishes to give a word of remembrance of the boyhood and youth of John Gardner Murray.

One year his senior, I think of him as far back as a boy’s memory can go and always with satisfaction. Born in Lonaconing, he often reminded me after he became bishop that my father was the physician that brought him into the world.

For awhile I was a year ahead of him at school, remembering back to the eighth year. He was soon in the same classes, and as the school years passed, he grew larger and stronger, and to me as a lad handsomer than any boy I knew. I found myself as a youth of 15 holding this boy of 14 before me as an ideal character, for in the mining town where boys heard on every side that one must "sow his wild oats" he had clean thoughts, clean lips and a clean life.

The day comes before me when (15 years of age) I stood with John and two other schoolmates in the vestibule of the school and we talked of having "found God," and what we should do concerning the church. I united with the church and soon went to Ohio to school. John did not join the Methodist church for some time, but as he put it to me later "I became a mule-driver in the Jackson mine." Of the right sort, I am sure.

The lines of our lives did not often meet, but when they did he seemed the older, and the boyhood attraction was there for a higher life. This summer I found a letter that I had written to my father from my first charge as a minister fifty years ago, telling him of a long letter from John, giving his plans for his lifework, asking about Drew Theological Seminary, and whether as a local preacher he could get a small church to help pay expenses. He entered Drew that October, 1879, remaining two years when he was called West to help support the family on account of the death of his father.

Portrait from 1896-1903 period, when Rev. Murray was rector of the Church of the Advent in Birmingham, AL.

It is well known what a successful businessman he was, both in Kansas and Alabama. He kept his connection with the Methodists until 1887, when he was confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church in Alabama.

When the call came in 1903 to become rector of St. Michael’s and All Angels’, Baltimore, he phoned me to come to the church and talk the matter over. He was in high spirits, for he had taken Mrs. Murray to "dear old Cony," as he called it, that he might show her the small house where he was born. He ought not have been disappointed that no one recognized the tall, handsome man as he walked through the town, but what an ovation they gave him in the store when they found out that he was John Gardner Murray!

This letter is not to call attention to the great churchman, but to tell of the influence of one boy upon another boy, the unconscious influence of a pure minded schoolmate that wrought for nobler living.

Frank Gibson Porter
Baltimore, Oct. 8, 1929