Appalachian History

The term “Hill-Billies” is first encountered in documents from 17th century Ireland, according to Wikipedia. Roman Catholic King James II landed at Kinsale in Ireland in 1689 and began to raise a Catholic army in an attempt to regain the British throne. Protestant King William III, Prince of Orange, led an English counter force into [...]

While independent food stores were still common during the Depression era, the chain store boom of the 1920s had already changed the face of retail forever. The Great Atlantic & Pacific (A&P) food store chain led the pack. In 1936 it opened the first “supermarket,” a 28,125 sq ft store in Braddock, PA. By the [...]

“Hog killing was a value for rendering out your lard and make your cracklings and we use the scraps to make soap out of. The way we made lye was everybody had an ash hopper. It’s a big square box and you put all your ashes in it that you take out of the fireplace. [...]

“The Mountain dulcimer, also known as the Appalachian dulcimer, lap dulcimer, or fretted dulcimer, is basically a fretted zither which was derived from the German shieltholt. “The word dulcimer is believed to have originated centuries ago. It was derived, it is thought, from the greek word “dulce” (which means sweet) and the Latin word “melos” [...]

“Physicians simply cannot make a living in these sections because the livelihood of the individual home maker is so meager and the dispersion of population so great and the ability to go from one home to another so runabout and tedious of accomplishment that a livelihood from the practice of medicine here is a physical [...]