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Moving cotton through the upcountry
In the decade after the Civil War the new Air Line Railroad connecting Charlotte and Atlanta was laid through upcountry South Carolina. Two Confederate veterans saw an opportunity to create a new town...
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Hang down your head Tom Dula
Hang down your head Tom Dooley Hang down your head and cry Hang down your head Tom Dooley Poor boy, you’re bound to die. It’s the most famous murder ballad in American folk music history. And chances...
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Inaugural Address of WV Gov. Henry D. Hatfield
March 14, 1913 (portion) Our state, situated as it is in one of the richest mineral zones in the world – outside of the precious mineral class – contains more bituminous coal than Ohio, Pennsylvania...
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Magyars in Morgantown
Great numbers of Hungarian immigrants came to the United States around the turn of the century. The wave of immigration from 1880 to about 1915 was called the ‘Great Economic Immigration’ for...
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Pleased to be getting a mural, though not sure what they are
FDR’s government established several agencies to give relief to unemployed artists during the Depression. The Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture (later known as The Section of Fine...
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Hickory chickens are underfoot this month
‘Hickory chickens,’ or ‘dry land fish,’ don’t have anything to do with chicken, fish or hickory. They are morel mushrooms and they’re in season right about now. Look for 3 varieties throughout...
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The Kentucky Cave Wars
Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave is not only the largest known cave in the world; it has the distinction of being the oldest touring cave. Formal guided tours were started here in 1816. It remained in private...
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But the nights belonged to youth
“[After the end of the Spanish American War] Mt. Savage resumed its gay pleasures, which led to many courtships. There was nothing better to further this cause than a long bicycle ride. “The Sunday...
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Hobo Nickels
Coin collectors today consider the hobo nickel a numismatic treasure, a tribute to long- forgotten folk artists who often literally carved for their supper. The Buffalo nickel debuted in 1913, but it...
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Miss America 1924 drives a Dagmar
Long before the well-endowed Hollywood starlet of the 1950’s, there was a Dagmar car, built from 1922-1926 in Hagerstown, MD by the M. P. Möller Motor Car Company. This luxury sedan was named for the...
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The buck flies would just eat you up
“My parents farmed. Well, it’s a good life, but it’s a hard life. They raised cattle, sheep, and hogs for a living. [Their farm] had a lot of…… It wasn’t much level land, it was more rolling hills and...
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Operator, ring me up
In 1879, just 3 years after Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone, the Behrens brothers established West Viriginia’s first telephone line, connecting two of their grocery stores in...
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The Guineas of West Virginia
In American culture, if you can’t prove you’re 100% white or ‘pass’ for such, you get lumped into the minority by default. This is a cultural bias the Chestnut Ridge People (CRP) of West Virginia have...
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Stearns KY emerges out of the Big Survey
Louis Bryant and Justus Stearns needed each other, and it’s surely no accident that their worlds finally intersected. Bryant, a bright young mining engineer, had moved into what is today McCreary...
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The Supine Dome flops in a NC field
It was the centerpiece of the Montreal Expo of 1967: Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome, a vaulted structure made of lightweight materials that form interlocking polygons. Nineteen years before that...
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Daring young men in their flying trapezes
By the end of his long career, John Paul Riddle (1901-1989) had received the British Empire award and been inducted into the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame and the Florida Aviation Historical Society....
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Wedding in an amusement park
It’s June, and what better place to hold a June wedding than next to a roller coaster? Chester, WV in the early 20th century didn’t have 6 amusement parks to choose from, the way nearby Wheeling did....
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The Cherokee Booger Dance
The annual Cherokee Gourd Artists Gathering just convened last weekend in Cherokee, NC. Gourd design today mainly encompasses the arts and crafts world of vases, pots, and plates, but it has a...
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How Carnival Games Cheat Customers
By Sam Brown Modern Mechanix June 1930 issue Did you ever wonder why you came home from the carnival empty handed? Remember how you tried to ring the bell by hammering the catapult or how you tossed...
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Ollie Ollie In Come Free!
It probably started out as All-ee, all-ee, outs in free, a call from the person who was it letting those hiding children (the outs) know it was safe to come back to base in the children’s game of...
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