Appalachian History

Please welcome guest blogger Nathan W. Murphy, a professional genealogist and currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. Raised in Kentucky, he’s fascinated by the early settlers of the area.  And for his dissertation he needs your input, dear reader! “Many of us have family traditions that an ancestor came to frontier Kentucky [...]

Weston Hospital in Lewis County, WV, officially named the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane upon completion of the facility shown here in 1880, was typical of the many that were established throughout the country. Its design reflected the Kirkbride plan in action. Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride’s theory centered on what he referred to as [...]

Chattanooga Times Free Press, 11/24/08: A state wildlife biologist predicts a record number of black bears will be taken during the current hunting season. There are two periods during which dogs can be used to hunt bear — one in mid-November, the other during the first two weeks of December. “Him and his brother-in-law one [...]

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 County, KY at the beginning of the 1890s to consolidate mineral and land holdings acquired there by his father. But while the Bryant family [...]

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, exercised an enormous impact on the direction of George Pollock’s Skyland resort in Stony Mountain, VA from the moment she swept into Pollock’s life. [...]