He received the NC Folklore Award in 2004, and an honorary doctorate by Western Carolina University in 2008. Last year he was awarded the North Carolina Literature Award….the highest honor awarded by the NC Arts Council to an individual.

On a cold Saturday morning in Dillsboro, NC (December 30, 1882), an accident occurred  which the Raleigh Observer would call “the most awful that has happened in any of the public works of this state.”

It involved the drowning of 19 convicts in the Tuckaseigee River. Prior to the accident, 30 convicts had been assembled on the  eastern bank of the Tuckaseigee River to await transportation across the stream to the Cowee Tunnel, where they had been working for several months.

Western North Carolina chain gang. No date. Courtesy Gary Carden.

The boat, flat-bottomed and capable of holding 50 passengers, had been pulled up on the bank, and the convicts, all shackled and chained, moved into the boat prior to being ferried across the river to their work site. These convicts were part of a large work force, which varied from 150 to 500 workers, that had been “leased” from the prison in Raleigh by the Western North Carolina Railroad which, in turn, was operated by the Richmond and Danville Railroad Company.

Many of these leased prisoners were veterans, having worked  on “the road” for the past three years, and had probably participated in the construction of one or more of the seven tunnels in Swannanoa, prior to the move across the Balsams and down into Jackson County. The convicts working at the Cowee Tunnel were under the supervision of Mr. J. M. McMurray and Mr. E. B. Stamps, who supervised all convicts in the state.

Following the drowning, Stamps was ordered by Governor Jarvis to make a “complete examination of the occurrence.”  Stamps’ report concluded that the drownings were not the fault of anyone. Regardless, the disaster was a great blow to the governor and all of the state authorities who were in charge of “leased prisoners.” In addition, Governor Jarvis had just returned from an inspection of the railroad the week prior to the accident; Jarvis had reported that he was pleased with railroad’s progress.

According to the two guards who were supervising the prisoners, a sturdy steel cable spanned the river at this point, and the daily journey was easily accomplished by a combination of poling and maintaining contact with the cable.

However, it had rained the night before and the bottom of the boat contained a sludge of ice and rain water. As the boat moved into the river, the trapped water flowed into the stern of the flatboat, frightening several convicts and causing them to shout that the boat was sinking. As a result, the prisoners  panicked and rushed to the front of the boat.

Although the guards shouted that the boat was not sinking, the convicts continued to press toward the prow, causing the stern to rise and capsize.  All of the passengers were cast into the icy waters, where they struggled vainly to swim.  Since the convicts were shackled and chained together, they became a tangled mass, locked in a deadly embrace.

According to later accounts, a large number of eyewitnesses stood helplessly by, unable to save the drowning men. A future investigation would note that the river is narrow at the point where the accident occurred and  it runs “still and deep.” A widely circulated newspaper account of the disaster stated that the witnesses stood helplessly “listening to the cries of drowning men and the gasping of able swimmers.”

However, there were 12 convicts and one guard who were swept down river and survived, either because they were not shackled, or they were pulled from the water by their unshackled brothers. Even so, the chilling effects of the water quickly rendered most of them unconscious. Indeed, many, if not all of the survivors, would have died had it not been for the vigorous efforts by guards and other convicts to revive them.

According to a senior thesis submitted by Homer S. Carson III (University of North Carolina at Asheville) several acts of heroism occurred.

Carson’s research of state records and documents revealed that William J. “Fleet” Foster, one of the guards aboard the boat, was pulled ashore by Anderson Drake, a young black prisoner. Normally, this was an act that would have justified a pardon for Drake; however, it was later discovered that Drake had stolen Foster’s wallet during the rescue – as a result, Drake received a lashing (10 strokes with a leather strap) which was administered by a “duly elected officer of the penitentary.”

According to the official investigation of this event by North Carolina’s Governor Jarvis, Drake also received “a small reward.”  In addition, another prisoner, Sam Pickett, “was credited with saving several men from drowning, and was given a full pardon from Governor Jarvis, and a gift of $100.” (The official records indicate that only one of the drowning prisoners was saved.)

The Cowee Tunnel disaster received extensive coverage in newspapers throughout the Southeast. Accounts in papers as varied as The Raleigh Observer, the Augusta Chronicle and the Huntington Gazette in Huntington, AL all dutifully repeated the basic facts, but with occasional mistakes.  The number of victims varied from 18 to 20, and several articles noted that the drowned convicts were not removed from the river for several days; others noted that the retrieval and burial occurred on the same day.

According to most accounts, the burial took place “above the tunnel in a mass grave,” while local oral history says that the unmarked graves (three of them) are located on a hill near the tunnel.

There is a poignant tragedy here.  Not only do we not know the location of the gravesite; there is no appropriate marker to indicate where and why 19 human beings died building a railroad through our county…we do not have their names. Those 19 men have been erased as though they never lived.

A standard response might be that while their deaths are unfortunate, they were, after all …criminals.  Were they? An investigation into who they were and how they came to be standing on the banks of the Tuckaseigee on a cold winter morning in 1882 reveals some disquieting details about chain gangs.

For example, three significant books – one that has been developed into a film by PBS – have much to say about how easy it would be to end up on a chain gang in 1882.  ’Slavery by Another Name,’ by Douglas Blackmon, reveals how southern states managed to create a replacement for slavery.  In effect, the chain gangs enabled people (and railroads) who were in need of a cheap (or free) labor force. After the Civil War large numbers of African Americans were rootless, confused and struggling to adjust to their new-found freedom.

There were numerous misdemeanors, such as larceny, vagrancy, loitering  … laws that if strenuously enforced, could pack the prisons. At some point, an agreement was reached in the majority of Southern states. Prisons entered into profitable agreements with farmers, plant owners and town governments.  They would “lease” workers.

‘One Dies, Get Another,’ by Matthew J. Mancini,  is a brutal account of how chain gangs were housed, fed and exploited. It is a shameful history of a practice that was prevalent throughout North Carolina. ‘Worse Than Slavery,’ by David M. Oshinsky, provides accounts of chain gang abuses with an emphasis on the worst offenders – especially Mississippi’s Parchman Farm.

So, who were those nineteen convicts?  Well, after a bit of determined research, I contacted Matt Bumgarner, who is currently working on a book on the Western North Carolina Railroad.  He sent me the following list:

NAMES            COUNTY                AGE
Moses Brown        Warren                25
Oren Brooks        Orange                22
Charles Eason        Martin                15
Sampson Ward        Onslow                55
Allen Tillman        Anson                18
Robert Robinson        North Hanover            27
Thomas Miller        Chesterfield, S. C.        30
James Fisher        Polk                    18
Nelson Bowser        Hertford                30
John Newsom        Hertford                20
George Tice        Iredell                21
Jerry Smith            Wilson                33
George Rush        Richmond                44
David Dozier        Edgecomb                52
Jim McCallum        Gaston                18
Albert Cowan        Rowan                22
Louis Davis        Vance                29
Alex Adams        Washington            25
John Whitfield        Wayne                20

The average age of the victims is 28.  All had been charged with the same crime – larceny, which is defined as the taking someone else’s property.

According to local legend, the Cowee Tunnel has always been plagued by disaster. Cave-ins were prevelant during construction. The interior is dark, and even today, moisture continues to drip from the ceiling, giving rise to the imaginative idea that this persistent dripping is the tears of convicts who died in the Tuckaseigee River.

At the present time, the Liars Bench, which operates out of the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University, is developing a series of programs that deals with the history and folklore of western North Carolina. The Cowee Tunnel disaster will be the subject of a program in the near future. The topic of all Liars Bench programs are developed with storytelling, music and poetry.

Stay tuned.

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Convicts present: 16, 3 of them being trusties. All negroes. Camped about three miles from Seneca. The average daily population on this gang for the past two and a half years has been approximately 12. We found this camp just locating at a new site, which was fairly well chosen and well cleaned off.

A Southern chain gang, between 1900 and 1906.

The men were washing ticks and blankets in a nearby stream under the direction of the foreman. Since our last inspection the Commissioners have provided new bedding for the convicts and have gotten slip covers for the cotton pads as previously recommended.

The pads have been in use over six months but they are clean and apparently new due to the use of these slip covers with which the foreman is very much pleased. The use of these slip covers has increased the score of the gang this year.

The absence of white men from the gang has further raised the score there being now no question of separation of the races either at work or in camp. The foreman stated to us that the authorities have decided to work no more whites on the chain gang but to send them to the Penitentiary or allow them to serve their sentences in jail. This is a wise decision.

The mule fly is badly torn and we recommend that the Supervisor purchase a new one. The Supervisor should keep in his office a careful record of the convict population showing the name, age, race, date of commitment, length of sentence, date of discharge and reason for the discharge; and finally, more medical attention to the gang should be provided for by paying the county physician a salary for, and requiring him to make, a physical examination of each new convict within 24 hours of his commitment to the gang, to vaccinate against smallpox when indicated, and to make weekly inspections of the convicts food quarters and especially the sanitary arrangements of the camp.

Oconee County Cage, used to house SC chain gangs in early 20th century.

We recommend that the foreman have the blankets washed regularly every month, washing the ticks on the pads, at the same time that water and oil be put into the sewerage buckets every night when they are put into the cages; that the fecal matter thrown into the pit daily be covered immediately with about three inches of dirt and that this pit be burned out weekly with straw and oil, that the manure from the mule pen be raked up and piled daily and hauled away from camp weekly and scattered over a field, that kitchen slops be kept covered at all times, that every new convict be given clean blankets upon which to sleep and finally that the foreman secure a good book and keep a complete record of the convicts, showing in the book all the information asked for in the recommendation made above to the Supervisor, and in addition showing a description of the men with notes on characteristic scars, etc. which would help to locate or identify him should he escape.

The Quarterly bulletin, Volume 4 By South Carolina. State Board of Charities and Corrections

The Oconee County Chain Gang Report
Made July 13 1920

The Oconee County chain gang is not in as good condition as it was last year. Some of the reasons for the decreased score, however, are only temporary departures from the usual methods of the camp. Two sick men were confined in the cages at the time of this visit so that the beds could not be made up or properly aired. Foreman Cobb had also departed from his usual custom of having a pit for disposing of the sewage and was emptying the soil buckets out on the mountainside.

For the improvement of the camp it is suggested that a soil pit be dug that the buckets be emptied into it each day and that the waste be covered with at least three inches of earth, that the kitchen be screened to protect the food from flies, that each prisoner be given a separate tub of water to bathe in, that more washable covers for the mattresses be purchased and that the practice of allowing the prisoners to initiate new convicts be abolished in order to prevent bad blood among the men, as well as to avoid unwarranted punishment.

Quarterly Bulletin, Volumes 1-2 By South Carolina. State Board of Public Welfare

During the early twentieth century, it was not possible to return prisoners doing work in the most distant parts of Oconee County to the county jail at Walhalla every night.

The solution was the Oconee County Cage, or “Jail on Wheels,” a prison pulled by a team of horses.

While this treatment of prisoners seems horrible by today’s standards, it was hardly unusual for the early 1900s, and it was certainly far better than the treatment many prisoners received during the years before 1900.

Interior of Oconee County Cage, used to house SC chain gangs in early 20th century.

Although the cage is only fourteen feet long, eight feet wide, and seven feet high, there were four metal bunk beds of three tiers each inside for a total of twelve beds. A small metal barrel in the center of the floor was used for a fire on cold nights, and canvas covered the sides of the cage to protect the men from cold winds.

The men who worked on the roads in the county and who slept in the cage at night were often serving short sentences of less than two months. On weekends, their families sometimes visited them and brought small baskets of food from home. One man, who remembers visiting a relative assigned to the cage while performing county work, remarked that everyone including the guards would have lunch together on Sunday and talk about friends and local happenings.

In 1915, when the prisoners were working on the Oconee Station Road, they were fed fried bacon, biscuits and syrup, and coffee for breakfast; cabbage, bacon, and cornbread for lunch; and fried bacon, biscuits and syrup for supper. This diet was probably standard at that period.

After the county acquired gasoline powered trucks and machinery in the 1930s and built a county stockade (prison), the cage ceased to be used. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Sources: The Quarterly bulletin, Volume 4 1918 By South Carolina. State Board of Charities and Corrections
The Quarterly bulletin, Volume 1-2 1920 By South Carolina. State Board of Charities and Corrections

http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/oconee/history/FCH-11.txt

http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/oconee/S10817737009/index.htm

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Miners at Blue Diamond Mines, Hazard, KY. 1922. Courtesy http://kycoal.homestead.com/

“So this was probably as efficient a hand-loaded mine as you could have. Looking back, it probably wasn’t terribly efficient, but still … for its time it was highly efficient. The secret to hand-loading was to have good haulage. If you could deliver the cars to the hand-loader, and he was reasonably productive. Now, there were certain areas where the people just didn’t like to work particularly, but up around Hazard, they were very motivated people, and they would do very well….

“At that time, most of the people were on piecework. The haulage people weren’t, but the preparation of the coal—what they’d do is they would send the preparation crew in and they would cut, drill, and shoot the coal, … and they would start on the—they would use black powder in that mine and it brought out tremendous lumps of coal, the size of these chairs. And that was where the market was. People wanted lump coal, and … they gave them nothing like the stuff that they burn in power plants today, which is where most of the market is.

“Some of it was given away. It was just sold for nothing. So they made their money on the big chunks of coal. But anyway, what they would do is they would start on the ventilation system at the exhaust end and they’d move on up the current of fresh air so that the black powder smoke would always be blowing away from them. So they would cut, drill, and shoot the thing, and the cutting crews would go in about two o’clock in the afternoon, and they’d be through work by six o’clock that night…. Instead of working an eight hour shift, they would get it done in about four hours. That was the advantage of piecework. You know, they got paid so much for each place they cut, and so … they cut a lot of coal that way. The hand-loaders got paid based on the amount that they loaded, and they were very productive that way.”

G. Gordon Bonnyman
(1919- 2004)
born Knoxville, TN

interviewed for the Veteran’s Oral History Project

Center for the Study of War & Society

Department of History

University of Tennessee at Knoxville

online at http://tinyurl.com/2hj624

G.+Gordon+Bonnyman Blue+Diamond+Mine Harlan+KY appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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We open today’s show with the most astonishingly successful journalistic hoax of the early 20th century. In 1917 H.L. Mencken wrote a colorful history of the bathtub, published in the New York Evening Mail. Mencken’s history quickly became the accepted wisdom. Chiropractors cited it to prove that traditional medicine often stood in the way of progress. Cincinnati advertised itself as the birthplace of the American bathtub thanks to the article. The problem was, not a word of Mencken’s writing was true.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

In the days leading to the Civil War, goes the story, a local politician seceded Dade County from the state of Georgia, and thus the Union, rather than wait for Georgia to secede. This created the Independent State of Dade. It makes for a compelling tale. But it’s not quite accurate as history.

On June 15, 1934 it all officially came together at long last. Congress’ act dated that day noted that an area of 400,000 acres within the minimum boundary of the park had been acquired, and therefore it established the Great Smoky Mountains as a national park with sufficient land for administration, protection, and development.

Next, we’ll listen in on a portion of the Congressional hearings before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, held in May of 1942. The House Representatives focused on the workings of a bag loading plant in Talladega County, AL in order to understand the consequences of interstate migration caused by the national defense program.

We’ll wrap things up with a piece of tobacco history from the city of Wheeling, WV. The pack was expensive at 20 cents, but you got the first menthol-infused cigarette, ancestor to Kool, Salem and others. Why was it called Spuds?

And, thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive, we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Don Richardson in a 1916 recording of Durang’s Hornpipe.

So, call your old Plott hound up on the porch, fire up your corncob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

The post Listen Here: Appalachian History Weekly podcast posts today appeared first on Appalachian History.

“He experienced a terrible shock of surprise when a sudden voice—a voice he had never heard before—cried out sharply, ‘Hello there! Help! help!’

“As he pressed tremulously forward, he beheld a sight which made him ask himself if it were possible that Alf Coggin had sent for him to join in some nefarious work which had ended in leaving a man—a stranger—bound to the old lightning-scathed tree.

“Even in the uncertain light Tom could see that he was pallid and panting, evidently exhausted in some desperate struggle: there was blood on his face, his clothes were torn, and by all odds he was the angriest man that was ever waylaid and robbed.

“‘Ter-morrer he’ll be jes’ a-swoopin’!’ thought Tom, tremulously untying the complicated knots, and listening to his threats of vengeance on the unknown robbers, ‘an’ every critter on the mounting will git a clutch from his claws.’

“And in fact, it was hardly daybreak before the constable of the district, who lived hard by in the valley, was informed of all the details of the affair, so far as known to Tom or the Traveler,—for thus the mountaineers designated him, as if he were the only one in the world.”

—from The Young Mountaineers / Short Stories, by Charles Egbert Craddock, with illustrations by Malcolm Fraser, 1897

Tennessee author Mary Noailles Murfree (1850-1922), better known as Charles Egbert Craddock, was born in Murfreesboro, TN. For fifteen years she spent her summers in the Tennessee mountains among the people of whom she writes.

“Miss Seawell might have written her stories from anywhere, but that is not true of the greatest woman writer in the South, Miss Mary Murfree,” commented Anna Leach in Literary Workers of the South (1895).

“It is her delineations of mountain character, and her descriptions of mountain scenery, that have placed her work in the place it holds. Her style is bold, full of humor, and yet as delicate as a bit of lace. To Mary Wilkins’ gift of giving exact pictures of homely life, Miss Murfree unites great power of plot and a keen wit. The little old woman who sits on the edge of a chair in one of her novels, has added stores to America’s proverbs. ‘There ain’t nothin’ so becomin’ to a fool as a shet mouth,’ has taken its place with its older kindred.”

“Her work was published by a well known Boston editor for several years before he discovered that she was not a man. Her handwriting is very heavy and black, and it was Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s joke to say, ‘I wonder if Craddock has taken in his winter supply of ink, and can let me have a serial.’

“One day a card came to Mr. Aldrich bearing the well known name in the well known writing, and the editor rushed out to greet his old contributor, expecting to see a sturdy Tennessee mountaineer. When a slight, delicate little woman arose to answer his greeting, it is said that Mr. Aldrich put his hands before his face, and simply spun around without a word, absolutely bewildered by astonishment.”

“The sensation in the Atlantic office spread everywhere and gave tremendous vogue not only to the book but to the type of short story that it represented,” observed the Cambridge History of English and American Literature in retrospect. “No one had gone quite so far before: the dialect was pressed to an extreme that made it almost unintelligible; grotesque localisms in manners and point of view were made central; and all was displayed before a curtain of mountains splashed with broad colours.”

Murfree’s critical reputation has not fared well more recently. “Her fiction has been consistently criticized for its stereotyping of the mountaineer and for its overblown, highly romanticized descriptions of the landscape,” says Allison Ensor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Almost every reader notices the wide gap between the tone and vocabulary of the narrator and the mountain dialect of her characters. Like many other local color writers, she felt it necessary to provide as narrator a cultured, sophisticated intermediary, someone like the reader she hoped to reach.”

sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=M131
Literary Workers of the South, by Anna Leach, Munsey’s, 1895 at www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/murfree.htm
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21) VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20365/20365-h/20365-h.htm#pallid

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Only a few hundred Dagmars were built over the course of six years at prices upwards of $6,000.00. By comparison, the autos produced by Ford and Chevrolet during the same era sold for approximately $500.00. Dagmar models included the Petite, which soon became known as the “Baby Dagmar.” One of the most unusual features was its all-brass trim, instead of the more usual nickel.

In 1924, Möller presented a Dagmar to Ruth Malcomson, of Philadelphia, who won the Miss America title that year. Curvaceous fenders appeared on the Dagmar for the first time in the 1925 line—coincidence? Even so, Dagmar sales skidded after that high point; the last car Dagmar ever built was for Mr. Möller himself. It was an enormous 7-passenger limo that was shipped back to his native Denmark for his personal use.

With the 1923 purchase of a 250,000 square foot Hagerstown building originally built for the Crawford Bicycle Company in 1891, Möller entered the field of producing taxicabs and shifted the focus away from luxury cars. Over the course of the ensuing years, more than a dozen models of taxis and trucks were built. The taxi make was dependent on the design and specification of the large taxi companies that sub-contracted the manufacturing to Möller. The best known of his taxicab lines was the Luxor; others included the Blue Light, Super Paramount, Astor, Five-Boro and Twentieth Century.

These names were either chosen for the operating company, as with Five Boro, or simply because the promoters thought a stylish new name would increase sales. Möller vehicles became commonplace on the streets of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and numerous other cities. Growth of the car works reached a peak in 1927 with 125 taxis rolling out of the Hagerstown facility each week.

The only goods vehicle made by the Möller company was the Elysee panel delivery (produced from 1929-1932).  They were made in four models, the Band Box, Fifth Avenue, Courier and the Mercury. These were stylish vehicles intended for the delivery of high-class goods to wealthy homes.

During the early 20th century the Möller name in the auto industry truly commanded respect as being builders of upper end motor cars both private and public. Taxicabs and trucks remained the thrust of the firm until the death of Dr. Möller in 1937 at which point the company was closed.

Sources: www.coachbuilt.com/bui/w/woonsocket/woonsocket.htm
www.autopasion18.com/HISTORIA-MOLLER.htm
www.coachbuilt.com/bui/m/moller_mp/moller_mp.htm

M.+P.+Möller+Motor+Car+Company luxury+cars the+Dagmar Mathias+P.+Möller Hagerstown+MD Ruth+Malcomson appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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Dolwyddelan Castle in Gwynedd, Wales; the birthplace of Madoc.

This wondrous new land is believed to be what is now Mobile Bay, Alabama. The choice of Mobile Bay as Madoc’s landfall and the starting point for his colonists is grounded in two main areas. One is the logical assumption that the ocean currents would have carried him into the Gulf of Mexico. Once there and seeking a landing site, he would have been attracted to the perfect harbor offered in Mobile Bay, as were later explorers Ponce de Leon, Alonzo de Pineda, Hernando de Soto, and Amerigo Vespucci.

The second, and more convincing reason, is a series of pre-Columbian forts built up the Alabama River, and the tradition handed down by the Cherokee Indians of the “White People” who built them. Testimony includes a letter dated 1810 from Governor John Sevier of Tennessee in response to an inquiry by Major Amos Stoddard. The letter, a copy of which is on file at the Georgia Historical Commission, recounts a 1782 conversation Sevier had with then 90-year-old Oconostota, a Cherokee, who had been the ruling chief of the Cherokee Nation for nearly sixty years. Sevier had asked the Chief about the people who had left the “fortifications” in his country.

Cunne Shote, also known as Oconostota, painted by Francis Parsons in 1762.

The chief told him: “they were a people called Welsh and they had crossed the Great Water.” He called their leader “Modok.” If true, this fits with the known history of 12th century Welsh Prince Madoc. He further related: “It is handed down by the Forefathers that the works had been made by the White people who had formerly inhabited the country. . .” and gave him a brief history of the “Whites.” When asked if he had ever heard what nation these Whites had belonged to, Oconostota told Sevier that he “. . .had heard his grandfather and father say they were a people called Welsh, and that they had crossed the Great Water and landed first near the mouth of the Alabama River near Mobile. . ..”

Three major forts, completely unlike any known Indian structure, were constructed along the route settlers arriving at Mobile Bay would have taken up the Alabama and Coosa rivers to the Chattanooga area. Archaeologists have testified that the forts are of pre-Columbian origin, and most agree they date several hundred years before 1492. All are believed to have been built by the same group of people within the period of a single generation, and all bear striking similarities to the ancient fortifications of Wales.

The first fort, erected on top of Lookout Mountain, near DeSoto Falls, Alabama, was found to be nearly identical in setting, layout, and method of construction, to Dolwyddelan Castle.

DeSoto Falls, Alabama.

The situation of the forts, blended with the accounts given by the Indians of the area, has led to a plausible reconstruction of the trail of Madoc’s colonists. The settlers would have traveled up the Alabama River and secured themselves at the Lookout Mountain site, which took months, maybe even years to complete. It is presumed the hostility of the Indians forced them to move on up the Coosa River, where the next stronghold was established at Fort Mountain, Georgia. Situated atop a 3,000 foot mountain, this structure had a main defensive wall 855 feet long, and appears to be more hastily constructed than the previous fort.

Having retreated from Fort Mountain, the settlers then built a series of minor fortifications in the Chatanooga area, before moving north to the forks of the Duck River (near what is now Manchester, Tennessee), and their final fortress, Old Stone Fort. Formed by high bluffs and twenty-foot walls of stone, Old Stone Fort’s fifty acres was also protected by a moat twelve hundred feet long. Like the other two major defense works, Old Stone Fort exhibits engineering proficiency well beyond the skills of the Indians.

A section of the ancient wall at Fort Mountain, GA.

The trail of the settlers becomes more speculative with the desertion of Old Stone Fort. Chief Oconostota, in relating his tribal history, tells of the war that had existed for years between the White people who had built the forts and the Cherokee. Eventually a treaty was reached in which the Whites agreed to leave the area and never return. According to Oconostota, the Whites followed the Tennessee River down to the Ohio, up the Ohio to the Missouri, then up the Missouri “. . .for a great distance. . .but they are no more White people; they are now all become Indians….”

Chief Oconostota’s testimony has been very thoroughly followed up by later historians, and several points have been corroborated with other reports of “bearded Indians” and their trek upriver in retreat from hostile natives. Throughout the years “. . .there was abundant evidence. . .that travelers and administrators had met Indians who not only claimed ancestry with the Welsh, but spoke a language remarkably like it.”

It must be assumed that the remaining settlers were eventually assimilated by Indians, and that by the early eighteenth century very few traces of their Welsh ancestry remained.

source: “A Consideration: Was America Discovered In 1170 by Prince Madoc Ab Owain Gwynedd Of Wales?” by Jayne Wanner, Barstow Community College, Barstow, CA, 1999
online at http://www.tylwythteg.com/fortmount/Ftmount.html

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During the early 1880s, switchboards and lines were installed in Parkersburg, Moundsville, and Clarksburg. By the turn of the century, much of northern West Virginia had been linked to the major cities of surrounding states.

Telephone technology developed more slowly in southern West Virginia. Although Charleston and Huntington had telephone exchanges by the early 1880s, long distance service did not begin until 1897. To accommodate southern West Virginia’s growing population and expanding industry, Charleston became the hub of the state’s communication services in the early 1900s.

Below left: Late 19th and early 20th-century telephones, including the tombstone (rear left), battery box wall model (rear center), and Strowger dial phone (right front). This group of telephones shows the changing design of instruments from the late 19th through the early 20th century. Note that the earlier telephones have no dials. Dialing a number only became possible after automated equipment was developed to make connections originally handled by human operators.

Almost all telephone operators were women. But not all women could be operators. To be an operator, a woman had to be unmarried, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six. She had to look prim and proper, and have arms long enough to reach the top of the tall telephone switchboard. Much like many other American businesses at the turn of the century, telephone companies unfairly discriminated against people from certain ethnic groups and races. African American and Jewish women were not allowed to become operators.

Because women were generally discriminated against, operators’ wages were low. And operators seldom got the respect they deserved. The typical operator earned about $7 per week — a small salary even in 1900. She worked ten or eleven hours a day, six days a week. If necessary, she also worked nights and holidays. An operator who got married was forced to leave her job. To many early telephone users — most of whom were wealthy — the telephone operator was just another household servant.

Photograph of a female telephone operator at switchboard by traveling photographer Albert J. Ewing, likely taken in southern Ohio or West Virginia, ca. 1900-1910.

Still, the operator was the heart of the telephone system. She watched over a switchboard containing up to 200 phone lines, listening in with her clunky metal headset. Her main job was to plug callers’ phone lines into the phone lines of the people they wanted to speak to. But she often acted as the town’s information source, too. Operators were also expected to inform customers of election results, streetcar breakdowns, storms, train arrivals, and much more.

In 1900, the life of the rural operator was very different from her peers in the city. The telephone was a big hit with the farm families who could afford one. But there were rarely enough calls to tie a rural operator to her switchboard. To help pass the time, some women attached long cords to their headsets. That way, they could walk around their homes doing chores while they waited for the phone to ring. Rural operators enjoyed a lot of independence.

Sources: pbskids.org/wayback/tech1900/phone.html
www.wvculture.org/History/timetrl/ttmay.html

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The league reformed in 1921 with six teams: Bristol; Cleveland; Greenville, Tenn.; Johnson City; Kingsport, Tenn.; and Knoxville. That incarnation of the league managed five seasons, before again closing up shop midway through 1925.

In 1937, the Appy League, as many called it, was restarted with the Elizabethton Betsy Red Sox in Elizabethton, Tenn.; the Johnson City Cardinals in Johnson City; Newport, Tenn.; and the Pennington Gap Lee Bears (league champs that year) in Pennington Gap, Va. During World War II, while most other minor leagues ceased operations, the Appalachian League played on. It continued right up until 1955. The league’s current incarnation got underway again in 1957 after one inactive year.

On May 13, 1952, while playing for the Class-D Appalachian League Bristol Twins, pitcher Ron Necciai struck out 27 batters while pitching a 7-0 no-hitter against the Welch Miners.

“After the game, [catcher] Harry Dunlop said, hey, you had 27 strikeouts,” Necciai says. “I just assumed it had been done before. It wasn’t till the next morning when the phone started ringing that I understood it hadn’t.” By the next morning Ron Necciai was a celebrity, soon to be the subject of a feature article in The Sporting News. Necciai’s accomplishment remains without parallel in baseball history.

The league’s season starts in June, after major league teams have signed players that they selected in the annual amateur draft, and ends in September. The league is divided into an East Division and a West Division.

sources: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=l120

http://www.appalachianleague.com/

http://www.blueridgecountry.com/necciai/

Related posts: “Baseball legend Hack Wilson”

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We open today’s show with a look at the WV family that brought us Mother’s Day. It took the individual effort of each Jarvis, mother and daughter, over two generations to forge the holiday we recognize today. And it’s a story with a twist.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

Nothing about Kentucky born Baseball Hall of Famer Earle Combs was commonplace except his throwing arm; that seemed ordinary only because he shared the Yankee outfield with Bob Meusel and Babe Ruth, both exceptional and accurate throwers. Combs was a dangerous hitter, a fleet, graceful outfielder, and the best leadoff man baseball had yet seen. In the annals of “Murderer’s Row” he is celebrated as first in line of that wrecking crew.

It was the Chesapeake & Ohio’s first luxury passenger train – the Fast Flying Virginian, or F.F.V. It debuted on May 11, 1889, shortly after the Ohio River Bridge between Covington, KY and Cincinnati opened, and it ran daily between New York, Washington, and Cincinnati. Any Virginia aristocrat of the era would’ve instantly recognized C&O’s not-so-veiled reference to the “First Families of Virginia.”

Today, it’s Tennessee’s largest historic district. During the Great Depression, the Cumberland Homesteads community came into being as part of a nationwide New Deal agrarian movement to create subsistence farm communities to aid out-of-work, rural residents. Cumberland Homesteads was one the first of 33 similar communities built between 1934 and 1938, and eventually consisted of 250 homes, a school, a park area, as well as a stone water tower and governmental buildings.

We’ll wrap things up with the story of the Russell farmstead and inn. William Ganaway Russell had the good fortune to buy a farm exactly halfway between Walhalla SC and Highlands NC.
 There was no railway service between Walhalla and Highlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Travelers would have to ride horseback or via stagecoach on the Highlands Highway for two days to get to Highlands, 30 miles away. And waiting for them at the end of their first day’s ride, along the banks of the Chattooga River near the old Cherokee settlement of Tsatugi, sat the Russell farmstead and inn.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Blue Ridge Institute Archives at Ferrum College, we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by the Wheat Valley String Band in a 1984 recording of Black Mountain Rag.

So, call your old Plott hound up on the porch, fire up your corncob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

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There were 6 children in her family, 3 boys and 3 girls, and she is the lone survivor. Mrs. Robinson says all of her education was received in the Maple Grove, one room, log school located in the Entsminger hollow near where the New Hope Baptist church now stands.  Her first teacher was Mrs. John L. Pain and is remembered by Mrs. Robinson as a very kind person.

A small country store on an early path of Rt. 11 near Fancy Hill, in Rockbridge County, VA. Photographed by Arch Tolley about 1920.

On one occasion there was a hole between the logs in the ante-room, which was used as a clothes closet, and some of the boys pushed a plank through which they were using as a seesaw. Mrs.Pain said “Children, what will people passing by think?”  That was all that was necessary; the plank came out.

Her second and third teachers were Mr. Ed Harrington and Miss Margaret Ayers.  Schoolmates she recalled were Miss Drewry Entsminger, Mrs. Emma Conner, Mrs. Rebecca Nicholson, Rucker, Oak, Carter, Minnie and Maude Entsminger and the John Entsminger family.

In those days children didn’t get to Sunday school until they were good size because most people had to walk.  But Mrs. Robinson said the catechism was always taught in the home.  Her early Sunday school days were at the Rough and Ready school House which was on the turnpike going over North Mountain.  It was some walk from her home, but she thoroughly enjoyed it, with the crowd composed of:  her family of 6, 4 boys and 4 girls from the John Entsminger family, 3 girls from the Clinton Entsminger family and Miss Emma Hayslett.

They traveled across the hill, over fences, across the creek, through a muddy lane. The one great occasion in Mrs. Robinson’s life was when she was converted. Rev. E. C. Root conducted a revival at the Rough and Ready school and she was one of the 18 converts, who were baptized in the creek in front of Mr. Bill Knick’s house, which is now owned by the Supervisor Herbert Chittum.  Of this group there are only three living; Mrs. Drewery Entsminger, Mrs. Emma Conner, and Mrs. Robinson.

When the New Hope Baptist church was built Mrs. Robinson moved her membership there, where it has remained through the years, even though she attends the Baptist church here in town most of the time.

Mrs. Gussie says she can remember when her mother cooked on the fireplace and later when they bought their first cooking stove. Like every other girl of that day she learned to cook but much preferred working in the corn fields with her brothers.  Of course there were not as many different means of entertainment as we have today but the youngsters got together on different occasions.

What she enjoyed most was the taffy pulling which always followed molasses making from the sugar cane her father raised. Laughing, Mrs. Robinson said, “the children of today raise cane—but of a different kind.”

Another annual affair was in the fall when the young people of the community gathered in the home of Mrs. P. I. Huffman to help her and her two daughters—May, who later became the wife of Dr. H. R. Coleman, Sr.—and Lucille, who married Ernest Armstrong.  As a reward Mrs. Huffman always treated them to hot apple pie, honey, preserves and hot biscuits.

At the age of 14 Mrs. Robinson became interested in boys.  Jordan Entsminger was her special friend, and she said they courted for 7 years, going places together with the crowd.  But, finally they were married on November 20, 1894 by Rev. E. T. Mason, Sr., in her home.  Their attendants were Cynthia and Eliza Entsminger and Sam and Emmett Robinson.  Her wedding dress was of a tan worsted material, Basque waist, high collar, long sleeves, and the skirt touched the floor. Her matching felt hat was trimmed in darker tan ribbon.

They started housekeeping two weeks later at Long Dale mines, where they lived for 13 months. To this union there was one daughter, Mrs. Gilmore Reid. Mrs. Robinson now has 3 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

In spite of her 80 years she is planning ahead just like a young person. She says she expects to go dewberry picking this summer and wants to pick enough to can 8 quarts and some for jelly and preserves like she did last summer.

When asked what she attributed her long life to, Mrs. Robinson said she didn’t know, but she thanked God for giving her good health through the years. If you don’t know Mrs. Robinson it would be worth your while to meet her and learn how she lives—always in a good humor and ever ready with something worth while to talk about.

Lexington [VA] Gazette, June 1, 1955, “Past 80 Club”
online at http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/rockbridge/newspapers/pst80clb.txt

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Imagine: you’ve piled the family into the car and are driving south for a Florida vacation. You’re traveling along U.S. Highway 41 in northwest Georgia, when suddenly both sides of the road become flanked by row after row of clotheslines chock full of stunning chenille bedspreads. Congratulations! You’re in the thick of “Peacock Alley.” And most likely you’re in downtown Dalton, GA as well. 1930s travelers often stopped and bought these bedspreads, and of the many designs adorning the spreads, the most popular among tourists was the peacock. Hence the nickname.

Sometimes the bedspread buyers believed their purchases to be examples of authentic American folk crafts, when in fact by that decade a well organized industry had formed around the tufted beauties. Catherine Evans (later Catherine Evans Whitener) revived the handcraft technique of tufting in the 1890s near Dalton. Tufted bedspreads consisted of cotton sheeting to which Evans and (later) others would apply designs with raised “tufts” of thick yarn. These tufted bedspreads were often referred to as chenille products. Chenille, the French word for “caterpillar,” is generally used to describe fabrics that have a thick pile (raised yarn ends) protruding all around at right angles.

By the 1920s merchants had organized a vast “putting out” system to fill the growing demand. They established “spread houses,” usually small warehouses (or homes) where patterns were stamped onto sheets. Men called haulers would deliver the stamped sheets and yarn to thousands of rural homes in north Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Families then sewed in the patterns. The hauler would make another round of visits to pick up the spreads, pay the tufters (or “turfers,” as they sometimes called themselves), and return the products to the spread houses for finishing. Finishing involved washing the spreads in hot water to shrink them and lock in the yarn tufts. The tufted spreads could also be dyed in a variety of colors.

The participation of farm families in this industry provided badly needed cash incomes and helped these families weather the Great Depression. It also produced fortunes for some. Dalton’s B. J. Bandy (aided by his wife, Dicksie Bradley Bandy) was reputedly the first man to make $1 million in the bedspread business by the late 1930s, but many others followed.

Also in the 1930s such companies as Cabin Crafts began to bring the handwork from the farms into factories. The bedspread manufacturers sought greater productivity and control over the work process and were also encouraged to pursue centralized production by the wage and hour provisions of the National Recovery Administration’s tufted bedspread code. These new firms also began mechanizing the industry by adapting sewing machines to the task of inserting raised yarn tufts.

Today, Dalton remains the tufted bedspread capital of the world.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/2yvllg

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