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The King of Stink
Ramps are the first green thing of spring in Appalachia, and certainly the smelliest. Mountain folks have traditionally looked forward to the return of the ramp after a winter of eating mostly dried...
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Sassafras tea – THE spring tonic
My mother was a great sassafras drinker. And every spring we had to have sassafras along with our poke salad (that was a wild green). The mountain people particularly gathered a lot of wild greens to...
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News bee been by?
Sweat flies, Russian hornets, sand hornets, and Japanese hornets are some of their common nicknames. Warm weather’s here, and that means they’re starting to come back. In both Appalachian and Ozarks...
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A dreadful cyclone that came this way
It was the greatest disaster ever known to this Western Virginia mountain village. On May 2, 1929, the unusually violent storm slammed into the little community of Rye Cove, VA in the mountains of...
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First forestry school in the USA
Some of the things I learned at Biltmore would be hard to find in any text book published then or later — things, that as I look back over my 44 years as a forester, have proved fully as potent for...
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Yeahoh, Yahoo or Bigfoot?
Long before it became the brand of a search engine, the creature whose uttered cry gave it a name haunted Kentuckians. Daniel Boone told tales of “killing a ten-foot, hairy giant he called a Yahoo,”...
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Old Man Wright rides into exile
Sunday Magazine–St. Louis Post Dispatch–May 9, 1926 OLD MAN WRIGHT RIDES INTO EXILE So as to Git Away From Trouble, This Settler of the Hills–Fighter and Killer–Sits Astride His Mare and Goes Slowly...
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She had 9 husbands and 10,000 pieces of glassware
This widow of the South accumulated 9 husbands & 10,000 pieces of glass! Anna Safley Houston (1876-1951) single-handedly amassed thousands of pitchers, creamers, lamps, flasks, jugs, china, tea...
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He is still laughing over that checkers game
Fort Payne [AL] Journal May 28, 1941 Mr. Driskill’s ancestors on his father’s side were three Irishmen who settled in Maryland. His mother’s ancestors were English. Charles Driskill was born March 15,...
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He was bitten by a Rattler, and they sent for Ira
“From his father, my father Ira Jacob Butts learned how to mix certain roots and leaves of grass together for a cure for snakebites. He never told which weeds and roots he used, and I would not attempt...
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Picnic in a coal mine
Sometimes the official stories that make it into museum collections just don’t shed enough light on the complete context of an event. Take this photo, titled “Picnic in a Coal Mine, Mount Savage, 1889,...
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Prohibition comes to Alabama. Again.
On July 1, 1915, statewide prohibition went into effect in Alabama, for the second time, five years before the federal prohibition amendment was ratified under the Kilby administration. Between 1907...
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The Devil danced on Fiddlers Mountain
During the 1930s and 1940s Rose Thompson worked as a home supervisor with the Farm Security Administration in Georgia. While she worked with farmers and their wives — teaching them to put up preserves,...
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A family spat among the Baptists
Alabama’s oldest Baptist congregation will be 208 years old this year. Or not, depending on whom you ask. Elder John Nicholson led the first worship on October 2, 1808 at the home of James Deaton in...
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The June beetle – capturing a living music box
“From some long-forgotten source, I heard that June beetles made a sweet sound while flying around. I loved music, and the method to acquire this living music box was to fasten a long thread to one of...
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The man who gave his life to name NC’s highest peak
One of the first geologic explorers of North Carolina’s Black Mountains, Elisha Mitchell, gave his name to the region’s highest peak, the one that claimed his own life on June 27, 1857. The Connecticut...
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World’s oldest man — Kentuckian John Shell
He never wore shoes much and chewed tobacco inveterately. He grew 3 sets of teeth during his long life, he claimed. And when he died on July 5, 1922, his oldest child was 99 years old and his youngest...
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Revenuers or spies
Kephart: “People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger...
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Defendant is amused at the plaintiff’s charges that he was not in love with her
From the divorce case between Walter E. McDaniels and Anna C. McDaniels, Knox County [TN] Fourth Circuit Court, filed July 1926 HIM: “Plaintiff met defendant in Philadelphia while stationed there and...
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Women, booze, dice and cards
It began as a coal and railroad center at the turn of the 20th century in an area fabulously wealthy in natural resources. The only way in and out of the town of five hundred hardy souls was via the...
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