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She came rollin’ down the mountain
Some know the song as “Nancy Brown,” others as “The West Virginia Hills,” but according to The Frank Gullo Music Sheet (sic) Collection at Millersville University, “She Came Rollin’ Down the Mountain”...
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That’s old Hide-an’-Taller, the best gun ever seen
I was beginning to get a bit worried about Good ‘Lige, since I hadn’t seen him for some three weeks. It was with a feeling of relief when I knocked at his door last Sunday to hear his cheery voice call...
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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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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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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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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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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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Petticoat Politics
On June 8, 1948, the town election in Clintwood, VA drew national and international attention when the voters elected an all-female town council and mayor. The Petticoat Government consisted of Mrs....
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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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Summer pastimes
Albert J. Ewing (1870-1934) was a traveling photographer who worked on a floating studio aboard the Water Queen showboat that cruised the Ohio River. Way’s Packet Directory, 1848 – 1994 indicates that...
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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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Water ran rippling and singing a merry song
Not far from the towns of Boone, Blowing Rock, and Asheville, deep inside Humpback Mountain below the Blue Ridge Escarpment, lie Linville Caverns, North Carolina’s only publicly accessible caverns. For...
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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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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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He’d seek out the sheriff and get him on a chase
During the July 27, 1941 race at the Daytona Beach-Road Course he suffered a crushed chest, broken pelvis, head and back injuries, and severe shock. He raced his two brothers and his sister in the July...
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The Sunday Lady of Possum Trot
Her schools earned plaudits from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin Roosevelt. The Boys Industrial School motivated communities throughout the South to begin...
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You were likely to encounter everybody you ever met
“[My father] started one trend that horrified all the old friends. He put the kitchen on the front of the house. This was a thing unknown, inconceivable to the local populous. You didn’t put the...
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Why not Skyland?
She was the only woman to take part in the negotiations that brought about the creation of Shenandoah National Park in 1935. Addie Nairn Hunter, an accomplished, independent divorcee from Washington,...
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