Appalachian History

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. Check us out on the Stitcher network, available on mobile phones, in-car dashboards and tablets worldwide. Just click below to start listening: We open today’s show with a look at how ‘Home Guards’ led to post Civil War feuds in Fentress County, TN. [...]

Wheeling Daily Register January 20, 1894 All Were Murderers Four Men Suffer the Extreme Penalty for Their Crimes John Hardy Hanged at Welch, McDowell County, for Killing Thomas Drews Last Spring… Special Telegram to the Register. WILD E, W. VA., January 19. – “John Hardy, for killing Thomas Drews, both colored, was hung at 2:09 [...]

In that back country in the 1870′s money was very scarce. Just how scarce we people of this day can hardly realize. Most trade in the store was exchange of goods for farm produce – eggs, butter, poultry, hides, feathers, ginseng, yellow root, etc. In order to get some real money Father went to the [...]

When Gertrude Dills McKee of Jackson County took her seat in the North Carolina Senate on January 7, 1931, she became the first woman in the state’s history to serve in that chamber. She was sworn in ten years after Lillian Exum Clement of Buncombe County became the first female member of the state House. [...]

Daddy got caught the first time in about 1916 or ’17. The law was paying informers to tell on people. They put his bail bond at fifty dollars. That was on a Friday, and we didn’t have any money, so the next morning Mama gets me to hitch up the mule and we loaded up [...]