Appalachian History

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 overview of Old Harp, or [...]

The scent of locust wood smoke and the sound of crackling fires permeated the early morning scene on hog butchering day. Guided by the predawn glow of a flickering lantern, Daddy lit the kindling wood under the scalding tank. He fed the fire until the water almost reached the boiling point, then built more blazing [...]

Liner notes for 1951 Folkways record ‘Old Harp Singing,’ featuring the Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee, by Sidney Robertson Cowell— continued from yesterday… The anthem section frequently includes fuguing tunes (sometimes spelled, and often pronounced, “fudging tunes”). Almost all of these books were printed in one or another of the various systems of shaped-notes, [...]

Liner notes for 1951 Folkways record ‘Old Harp Singing,’ featuring the Old Harp Singers of Eastern Tennessee, by Sidney Robertson Cowell— ‘Singers in the Harp’ number many thousands of people through the South and West who sing religious folksongs and fuguing tunes.  They are accustomed to meet on one or two Sunday afternoons a month, [...]

In Grantsville district quite a number of water power mills were erected between the years 1835 ~ 1855, but there are now only two or three within the same limits. Steam power mills have taken their places. In 1837, a man by the name of Williams, from Pennsylvania, built the first steam saw mill on the [...]