“Pa and Ma both worked hard and were good managers. They raked and scraped and saved all they could, and didn’t waste anything. Pa was a great hand to set out fruit trees, so naturally he had an apple orchard. They canned apples in fruit jars, dried apples over a kiln, and made apple butter. Of course there were other fruit trees on the place, such as a cherry tree, several peach trees and some pear trees. They made use of all the fruit. When apples were ripe, they would peel a couple of bushels at night by kerosene lamplight, then they would work them up the next day.

“Pa was intelligent and he had about fifth grade education at three or four months per school term. Women in those days rarely attended school as it was considered useless as a woman’s place was in the home. So naturally Ma could neither read nor write. Pa taught her to read, write and count. He used a blue-backed speller as a textbook. Ma would practice writing or printing the words from the speller, and soon she could read her bible and the mail order catalog.

“Ma was an intelligent woman and had great pride in her manners, cleanliness and character. She always had a smile for every one and never downed people. They seemed to prosper right along, and they vowed they would send their children to school and educate them. This they did.

“Bertha completed eighth grade, took six weeks of high school, took a Normal Course Examination and received her certificate to teach school. She taught school for three years on Brushy Fork of John’s Creek. Orrison completed high school at Pikeville, and went to the University Of Kentucky at Lexington, where he graduated with a Law degree. He was admitted to the Bar in Kentucky, and set up his practice in Pikeville. John completed high school in Pikeville, and was an outstanding basketball player. After high school, he went into business with Garfield Blackburn, selling White Sewing Machines.”

TELLING IT LIKE IT WAS
By Ireland Everett Layne
(1919-1990)
Coon Creek, KY
source: http://pikecounty.potterflats.com/layne.htm

Pikeville+KY Apple+harvesting appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+culture appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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Born in Lincoln County, TN in 1868, the girl with the incredibly rare condition spent most of her childhood in Blount County, AL. The tiny body of her twin was only fully developed from the waist down and even then it was malformed – tiny and possessing only three toes on each foot. Myrtle was able to control the limbs of her sister but was unable to use them for walking and she herself had a difficult time getting around as she was born with a clubbed foot. Technically, the ‘Four-Legged Woman’ only had one good, usable leg.

Myrtle became an exhibit at thirteen. Her first promotional pamphlet (Biography of Myrtle Corbin, 1881) describes her as “gentle of disposition as the summer sunshine and as happy as the day is long.”

Myrtle was a popular attraction with P.T. Barnum, and later with Ringling Bros. and at Coney Island. Her popularity was likely linked to her showmanship – she would often dress the extra limbs with socks and shoes matching her own and this gave her a truly surreal appearance. Myrtle was so popular that she was able to earn as much as $450 dollars a week, a handsome sum in that era.

Myrtle’s younger sister, Willie Ann, married Hiram Locke Bicknell in 1885. Hiram’s brother Dr. James Clinton Bicknell proposed to Myrtle shortly afterward, and the two were wed in June 1886.

It’s clear that James Bicknell married Myrtle for love, and not for money, for upon their marriage he insisted she leave show business. It was then that other aspects of her bizarre anatomy became evident. It seems that her twin sister was also fully sexually formed – thus Myrtle possessed two vaginas.

James, Myrtle & daughter Lillian in 1915.

In the early 1890’s, James & Myrtle moved their family from Blount County, AL to Johnson County, TX, settling near and finally moving to Cleburne City. The farming couple lived happily and over time produced a brood of eight children, half of whom died in infancy. The 1900 census for Johnson County states that Myrtle was the mother of five children, only three then living. The 1910 census for the same county states that she had had eight children, four then living. The surviving Bicknell children were Nancy Estelle, Francis Clinton, Ruby, and Lillian J.

It has been rumored that three of Myrtle’s children were born from one set of organs and two from the other. Whether this is true or not, it is medically possible. In ‘Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine,’ by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle it was observed that both vaginas menstruated – thus indicating both were possibly sexually functional.

We don’t know the specifics of the Bicknell family’s economic situation, but it must have deteriorated severely. Showpeople like Myrtle came out of retirement simply because they needed the money. Just so, the Four-Legged Girl from Cleburne, TX was back in the business appearing at Huber’s Museum in New York in 1909 at age 41.

The family no doubt intended this new turn of events to be temporary. But then 1910 turned into 1915: Dreamland Circus Sideshow, Coney Island. Riverview Park, Chicago. Myrtle worked the circuit and Myrtle made money. It had been more than 20 years since she last exhibited. She appears to have finally stopped exhibiting around 1915.

In 1928 Myrtle developed a skin infection on her right leg. When it failed to heal she finally went to a doctor in Cleburne. He diagnosed her as having erysipilas – a streptococcal skin infection. These days, a simple round of antibiotics would have eliminated the problem and Mrs. Bicknell would be on her way. Unfortunately, Myrtle lived in those days.

On May 6, less than a week after being diagnosed, Josephine Myrtle Corbin-Bicknell was dead.

sources: http://thehumanmarvels.com/?p=118
www.phreeque.com/myrtle_corbin.html
www.quasi-modo.net/Myrtle_Corbin.html
Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, by Robert Bogdan, University of Chicago Press, 1990

Myrtle+Corbin Blount+County+AL four-legged+woman appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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But, strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes — sometimes half-hours — when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one. Slowly — slowly — for no reason that he knew of — he was “coming alive” with the garden.
—The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) left an indelible mark on children’s literature, providing a path to the secret garden in all of us that is often lost in adulthood. But her own childhood was far from idyllic. Frances’ widowed mother Eliza moved with her five children from England to Knoxville, TN in 1865 where her brother had earlier moved and was struggling to keep a dry goods store going. He next moved Eliza and the children to New Market, where he had a cabin.

This was a dramatic shift for the Hodgson family. Frances had been born in Cheetham Hill, outside of Manchester. In late 1849 Manchester was a thriving textile center fueled by the success of the cotton mills. Edwin and Eliza Hodgson had a successful home furnishings business, providing customers with such products as chandeliers, ironwork, and brass door fittings.

But it all changed dramatically in 1854 when Edwin died at age 38 of a stroke. Eliza tried to keep the business going but the start of the Civil War in the United States affected cotton imports and the textile industry experienced a tremendous rate of unemployment.

And so the Hodgsons were hurled from upper middle class comfort in Manchester to hard scrabble poverty in New Market, now often going to bed hungry. And yet the move from industrial England to rural America was for young Frances a journey to the green, natural world that would become a central theme in many of her later works, including ‘The Secret Garden.’

The move would also prove instrumental in Frances’ development as a writer. Although she had always been obsessed with storytelling and often amused her schoolmates by acting out tales of adventure and romance, the financial strain of the emigration caused her to turn to writing as a means of supplementing the family’s income.

The Hodgson’s neighbors were Dr. John and Lydia Burnett and their son Swan, whose great-grandfather was Adam Peck, the earliest settler of what would become Jefferson City. Frances and Swan would spend much time together and would begin a relationship that would lead to marriage in 1873.

Frances Burnett’s first published story, “Miss Carruthers’ Engagement,” appeared in a magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1868. Her paper and postage-stamps for the venture had to be earned by picking and selling wild grapes. She began to write five or six stories each month, for $10 apiece and supported her family by writing. As stories began to be published in Harper’s, Atlantic, Scribner’s Monthly, and Peterson’s Ladies’ Magazine, she earned enough money to move her family back to Knoxville in 1869.

After the death of her mother in 1872, the family became increasingly dependent on Frances’ writing income. She accelerated her career as a popular writer. Swan, whom she married the following year, was preparing to specialize in the treatment of the eye and ear. He wished to further his specialty by studying in Europe, and Frances financed his wish, once again becoming responsible for the bulk of her family’s income. After the birth of their first son Lionel on September 20, 1874 in Knoxville, they left Tennessee, never to return.

Over the course of her life, Burnett wrote more than forty books, for both adults and children. While her adult novels are considered to be quite sentimental, her children’s books have withstood the fickleness of literary fashions. ‘The Secret Garden,’ the story of how Mary Lennox and her friends find independence as they tend their garden, has been described as one of the most satisfying children’s books ever written.

Sources: http://library.cn.edu/speccoll/burnett.html

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/secret_garden.html

http://www.tickledorange.com/FHB/Biography.html

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You can go to the Statistical Portrait of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States, 1960-2013 and see it for yourself; for now, these are some highlights:

There were a record 41.3 million immigrants living in the U.S. in 2013, making up 13.1% of the nation’s population. This represents a fourfold increase since 1960, when only 9.7 million immigrants lived in the U.S., accounting for just 5.4% of the total U.S. population.

—A fourfold increase in the immigrant population is striking, but we’re willing to bet that if you asked most Americans what percentage of the U.S. population is made up of immigrants, they would guess something a *lot* higher than 13%. The time and fury spent on immigration in this country would lead anyone to believe that the immigrant population must be at least 30%. And most people would likely say that 90% of the immigrant population is made up of illegal Mexican immigrants, so these two facts are important:

About one-quarter of the U.S. foreign-born population are unauthorized immigrants, while the majority of the nation’s immigrants is in the U.S. legally. Naturalized citizens account for the largest portion of the foreign-born population (41.8%).

…As recently as 2008, immigrants arriving within the past year to the U.S. who were born in Asia have outnumbered those born in Latin America. In the early 2000s, the number of newly arrived immigrants from Latin America greatly outnumbered those arriving from Asia. But with the Great Recession, Latin American immigration slowed sharply, especially from Mexico. The number of new immigrants from Latin America has been about steady since then, but the number of newly arrived Asian immigrants has continued to rise.

—So only one-quarter of 13% of our population is made up of illegal immigrants. The graph is worth a couple hundred words:

What we see is that there are 42.5 million immigrants in the U.S., and 11 million of those came here illegally. The vitriol about “illegals” usually offered by Republicans and Tea Party members claims there are 30 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.; we see that this not true.

We also see that Asian immigration is fast out-pacing Latin American immigration, and it stands to reason that there are illegal Asian immigrants in that 11 million number, but you never hear about that from politicians; they are only ever concerned about Mexico. We can’t tell you exactly why, but if the Asian immigration trend stays on track, we wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next 10 years, you start to hear lots of negative stereotypes about “illegal Asians” and closing ports on the west coast.

The share of immigrants who are proficient in English has declined since 1980, though it has increased slightly in recent years. This decline has been driven mostly by those who speak only English at home, which fell from 30% of immigrants ages 5 and older in 1980 to 16% in 2013. The share who speak English “very well,” meanwhile, has increased slightly, from 27% to 34% over the same time period.

—Anti-immigration people tend to blame Latinos for this, claiming they won’t speak English. But as Latino immigration falls, and Asian immigration rises, it is far more likely that people who are not speaking English only are speaking Chinese, not Spanish. In fact, Latino immigrants’ children are far more likely to switch to all-English than Asian immigrants’ children.

Check out the whole report and know the facts about the ever, ever-changing U.S. demographic.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store

‘Sixteen Tons’
Tennessee Ernie Ford

Until the late 1950’s, when changes in federal and state laws, along with changing economic realities doomed the practice, many companies issued tokens, or scrip, for use by their employees in company run stores. This was especially widespread in the coal fields of Appalachia, where many miners also lived in company owned towns. In these company towns, or “coal camps,” the only store in town was usually owned or run on behalf of the coal company.

In theory, scrip was an advance against unearned wages and usable only by the employee to whom it was issued. In practice, many miners were never able to fully retire their debt to the company store and scrip became the unofficial currency of the community, even being placed in the collection plates of some coal town churches.

Tierney Mining Co., Inc. Stone, Ky. Insurance Credit System

Scrip in the very beginning was more a trade credit or demand deposit at the single local general store. Ledger credit scrip, however, gave way to scrip coupon books, which eliminated the tedious bookkeeping chores involved in over the counter credit – transactions that must be followed by ledger entries.

The institutions that supplied coupon scrip were companies already in business printing tickets, tokens, and metal tags for various other kinds of enterprises. They advertised extensively in mining catalogues during the first half of the twentieth century touting the advantages of their own scrip systems.

The Allison Company of Indianapolis, for example, noted that when one of its coupon books was issued to an employee, he signed for it on the form provided on the first leaf of the book, which the store keeper tore out and retained for the company time keeper, who deducted the amount from the man’s next time-check. Then when the employee bought goods from the company store, he paid in coupons, just as he would pay in cash.

Other scrip producing ticket companies emphasized the safety of the scrip coupon system in coal mining communities where little or no police protection was available.

The Arcus Ticket Company of Chicago advertised a list of advantages of scrip for both the employer and employee, one of which for the employer was the fostering of employee good-will by eliminating misunderstandings on charge accounts. The advantages to the employee included keeping the head of the house better informed as to the purchases made by his family from day to day. This frequently put a check on extravagance and debt. Local scrip of this type was very similar to modern day traveler’s checks.

The transaction costs of coupon scrip eventually encouraged the increased use of metal scrip. This medium became cheaper overall than coupon scrip, in spite of metal’s higher initial costs, largely due to the invention and development of the cash register after 1880. Pantographic machines also were instrumental in reducing the unit costs of metal tokens.

In addition to metal tokens, there exist numerous examples of tokens made from “compressed fibre,” a paper-like substance, most issued during World War II to save the metals for the war effort.

Miners and their families gather around the company store and office. Lejunior, Harlan County, Kentucky. Sept 12, 1946.

Scrip was usually denominated in the same values as U.S. currency. However, at least two companies issued a piece denominated three cents. The largest tokens were most frequently $1.00 face value. Pieces with a higher face value are very common. Special tokens, called “exploders,” were used to facilitate the issuance of blasting powder, caps, and dynamite.

The obverse of the token usually indicated the name of the company or store issuing the scrip, and the value of the piece. A place name frequently appeared, not always where the token was used. Sometimes, the location of the general offices of the coal or store company appeared instead.

The reverse of the scrip usually contained the name and logo; designs changed fairly frequently. Other information, such as value and name of the issuing company is sometimes added. Pieces with no manufacturer identification exist in abundance and are termed “unattributed.”

sources: www.moreheadstate.edu/library/collections/index.aspx?id=2516
www.nationalscripcollectors.com/ScripStories/AHistoryofScrip/tabid/1332/Default.aspx

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And no figure from American folklore personifies the spread of the apple into the heartland like Johnny Appleseed, aka John Chapman. Not a great deal is factually known about him, and by now the tall tale spinners have probably entirely obscured the full reality of the man himself. He was a strict vegetarian. He also primarily wore discarded clothing or would barter some apple saplings for used clothes. He walked alone in the wilderness, without gun or knife, slept outdoors, walked barefoot and ate berries. Stories that he wore a cooking pot as a hat, however, seem to have been stitched on at a later date.

Reproduction of an illustration depicting John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, published in A History of the Pioneer and Modern Times of Ashland County From the Earliest to the Present Date by H. S. Knapp, 1863.

One thing is clear: he was as his legend suggests a man who moved around a great deal. Born in Leominster, MA, on September 26, 1774, John became a Christian minister who beginning in 1802 and for 43 years thereafter planted apple orchards from western Pennsylvania, across central Appalachia into Kentucky, and on throughout Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. While doing so, he spread the word of God as a self-appointed missionary for the mystical Swedenborgian church.

Legend says Chapman’s first seed scatterings were culled from the orchards he frequented as a child. It’s said that he gathered canoe-fulls of apple seeds from western Pennsylvania at cider-making time as he headed westward.

It’s easy to forget that Chapman, painted as a romantic mystic, was a level-headed, if eccentric, orchard businessman. For example, he owned more than 1074 acres of land in fifteen different tracts in Ohio. He sold his seedlings for three cents each, or planted an orchard for six cents a tree, earning about three dollars a day (compared to laborers in Philadelphia who earned about a dollar a day.) One of Johnny Appleseed’s authenticated varieties, the Albemarle Pippin (also known as the Newtown Pippin) is today one of the premier mountain varieties.

There are no records to indicate John Chapman had a wife or children, but according to the Johnny Appleseed Education Center & Museum in Urbana, OH Chapman had a sister and a brother. His brother died in infancy and mother soon after. Chapman’s father remarried and had an additional family, thus giving Chapman ten half brothers and sisters. Visits to them help document his whereabouts at various points in his life.

We know, for example, that in 1816, while visiting family members in Center Township, OH he planted at least one orchard in Bristol Township for a Mr. Fuller.

Chapman’s last Ohio visit, in 1842, included a trip to Moscow Mills in Center Township in Morgan County to see his brothers Nathaniel and Parley and sister Sally Whitney, who lived there. In March 1845, Johnny Appleseed passed away at age 70 in Fort Wayne, IN.

Sources: www.morgan.lib.oh.us/Morgan%20County%20History%20Stories.doc

http://www.a-spi.org/tp/tp50.htm

www.urbana.edu/appleseed/museum.htm
www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=94

John+Chapman Johnny+Appleseed appalachian+folklore appalachia +appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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