Appalachian History

“Oh, to return once more to the days when they made real country sausage and souse meat! Where grandpa and grandma smoked their long-stemmed clay pipes and would light them by dipping a live coal from the old fireplace. “Let’s go into the big house and sit by the fire and see the old-fashioned dog-irons [...]

On November 25,1950, the so-called “storm of the century” hit the eastern part of the United States, killing 353 and causing millions of dollars in damages. Also known as the “Appalachian Storm,” it dumped record amounts of snow in parts of the Appalachian Mountains. Record low temperatures were recorded in Tennessee and North Carolina even [...]

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the right side of your screen. If you’d rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here: We open today’s show with an excerpt from the 1913 book [...]

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 traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from almost any laurel thicket that he [...]

“I went on to Columbia University, as I had planned. I was just a year late. But Mother promised that I could go on and do graduate work. So, I went on up to Columbia University. I did work in Bacteriology. “And then, I hadn’t known much about hospitals or laboratory work, but then I [...]