Denton volunteered for Company B (Monroe County, TN), 3rd Tennessee Regiment of Confederate Volunteers in Knoxville, TN on May 23, 1861 and fought at Manassas. We know he was still present for duty as of February 1862, but on May 7, 1863 he switched sides and enlisted for three years at Lebanon, KY in Company D, 11th Tennessee Cavalry, Union Army Volunteers.

That didn’t last long. By July Denton was listed as a deserter from Camp Nelson, KY. The following month’s muster rolls reported Private John Denton absent from recruiting duty.

“While on leave (from Union Army) in Monroe County he was captured by a band of Confederate guerillas or bushwackers from the area,” begins a letter found in Cocke County, Tennessee’s Stokely Memorial Library.

“They stripped Uncle John, tied a rope around his neck, threw it over a tree limb and pulled him off the ground until he about choked. They’d let him down and then repeat the process. While this amusement was going on word came that a Union patrol was in the area.

“Two men were assigned to take Uncle John deeper into the woods and shoot him. When they arrived at a rail fence Uncle John managed to push one of his guards over the fence and knock the other one down and run away.

“Instead of hiding in the deep woods he managed to get to a lightly wooded section and cover himself with leaves while the search for him went on in the more heavily forested area. Subsequently he managed to get to the cabin of a couple of Union women whose husbands were gone away to serve in the Union Army. They dressed him in women’s clothes, put a bonnet on his head and managed to smuggle him through the lines.

“Some time after the war, knowing some of his captors, they being from the same area, he killed a couple of them and was sent to prison for a few years until pardoned.”

On April 10, 1864, Denton, his brother Charles, their cousin William Click, and another associated family member, Pink Gentry, murdered Patrick T. Trotter. The men hung Trotter by the thumbs and severely beat him, before shooting him in the presence of his elderly mother.

Several months later, on the 4th of July, brothers William Riley and David Burton Curtis had headed home on leave from the Confederate Army. They arrived just in time to discover one of the women in their family being raped by bushwackers. The attackers had the element of surprise in their favor, and they shot and killed the two brothers before they even got past the front porch.

Family members “dressed in women’s clothing” waited across the river for the escaping offenders. Jackson Denton, Grief Ragsdale, and William Hartsell were later charged with this murder, but historians think John Denton also may have been involved.

John & Charles Denton were arrested by Union troops on October 3 in Roane County, but by February 1865 they’d been released at Knoxville. In May 1866 the two brothers, William Click and Pink Gentry were indicted for their role in Trotter’s murder; that September the sheriff was directed to arrest them and bring them to court. The ensuing trial was moved to Blount County, where the two were convicted of 2nd degree murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

However, they filed an appeal with the Supreme Court over the change of venue, the conviction was overturned on a technicality, and the case was sent back to Monroe County for further disposition in 1869.

After numerous delays and postponements, Charles and John Denton were brought to trial in 1872 in Monroe County and found guilty of 1st degree murder. They again filed an appeal, but it never transpired. John Denton went to prison from 1873 till 1880. His brother fled to Missouri and apparently was never apprehended.

John Denton filed for a government pension in late summer of 1890, but was rejected in 1891 because he’d served less than the required 90 days of service, and because he did not have an honorable discharge.

He died on Aug 12, 1912.

Sources: Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, by Thomas Harvey Coldwell, Tennessee Supreme Court, publ. S.C. Mercer, 1870
www.flickr.com/photos/21734563@N04/2198268918
http://members.aol.com/atsissie1/page/index.htm
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/DENTON/1997-08/0871781476
www.gentryjournal.org/archives/jgg0307.htm

Monroe+County+TN John+Denton civil+war+veteran appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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1. One of the oldest Confederate veterans

Just had the two horses. They worked the horses out, and they didn’t have any tractors. So they worked the horses and that’s what they farmed with. Well, a horse kicked my father; he lived about a week and then he died.

The horses was in stables and this one horse got to kicking at the other horse, so he went into . . . they was real gentle, you know, and he didn’t think about them hurting him, and he went in to get the horse’s foot out of the . . . it had got hung in the partition, you know, . . . and when he got the horse’s foot out, of course, it thought it was kicking the other horse and it kicked him.

So my mother raised the seven of us. Of course, back then girls was taught to work, you know. They helped . . .whatever was to do, they helped do it. If they was working in the garden, they helped work in the garden. If they canned, they helped can the . . . you know, the food. And, of course, my brothers was little at that time, so they wasn’t big enough to really help my dad, you know.

And it wasn’t like it is now. See, now if a widow’s left, why they draw a lot of welfare and stuff like that, but there wasn’t nothing like that then. She seen a hard time. You might know she did because the seven children. But we got by, I guess. She lived to be ninety-five years old.”

Deva Mullins
Born 1920
Chapel Ridge, KY
Interviewed June 10, 1991 for
Family Farm Oral History Project
University of Kentucky

Source: http://tinyurl.com/2g6vpo

appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture history+of+appalachia appalachian+mountains+history

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1. I guess he was right pretty. But just setting there all day

Originally known simply as ‘Farmers Almanac,’ it issued long-range weather forecasts, based on obscure interpretations of natural phenomena, long before any weather service existed, and generations of farmers have planted and harvested according to its advice. First published by Robert B. Thomas in 1792 (for the year 1793), it went on to outlast dozens of competitors. And like an early Reader’s Digest, it hasn’t tampered too much over the years with its winning formula of long-term weather predictions, planting schedules, astronomical tables, astrological lore, recipes, anecdotes, and sundry pleasantries of rural interest.

“One particular fascination I have observed since the days of my youth is how the elders of the community will gather and discuss the coming of spring and make plans around the farmers almanac. My grandfather was one of these people who always had the free Farmers Co-Op calendar hanging on the wall with all the important information printed on it. Things like moon phases, astrological signs, sunrise, sunset how much rain to expect and of course the predicted highs and lows for the day.

“Everybody seemed to have their own tried and tested sure fire method of beating Mother Nature at her own game. ‘Papaw’ seemed to be pretty decent at getting his crops out at just the right time of the season. He was a professional farmer you might say. This is what he did for a living back before corporate farming became the standard.

“Being an amateur weather man is just one aspect of being a farmer but it is a very important skill that is cloaked in secret and involves mysterious practices that can only be done in private and on occasion can involve a brotherhood of weatherman/farmers that must come together during a particularly difficult weather predicting season to pool all their resources and make decisions that have the potential to devastate and embarrass even the most weathered agricultural engineer. I’m not sure which would have been worse, a lost crop or the embarrassment of a bad weather prediction that didn’t hold water.”

March, 2006

http://blueridgegazette.blogspot.com/

Sources:

http://www.answers.com/topic/farmer-s-almanac

appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture history+of+appalachia appalachian+mountains+history

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1. Happy New Year!

We open today’s show with a saga of science and political cover-up. In October 1960, Dr. Bernice Eddy gave a talk to the Cancer Society in New York without warning her employer, the National Institutes of Health, in advance. She startled the attendees by announcing that she had examined cells from monkey’s kidneys in which the polio virus to be used in polio vaccines was grown, and had found they were infected with cancer causing viruses. This talk cost Dr. Eddy her career.

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.

Lillian Exum Clement was nominated as a Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s House of Representatives two months before the 19th Amendment, granting the vote to women, was ratified in August 1920. She won the general election in November and, on January 5, 1921, took her seat in Raleigh, becoming the first woman elected to the North Carolina General Assembly.

During the 1930s and 1940s Rose Thompson worked as a home supervisor with the Farm Security Administration in Georgia. While she worked with farmers and their wives — teaching them to put up preserves, make cotton mattresses, and build chick brooders — she listened to the stories they told. Thompson spent some time during the summer of 1946 in Clayton, in Rabun County GA, where an elderly black preacher told her the tale of Fiddler’s Mountain.

The architectural landscape of Tennessee’s rural areas, small towns, and large cities is comprised of hundreds of historic buildings designed and built by African Americans. One rural county in East Tennessee has an extraordinary history of African-American builders. Established in 1794 along the North Carolina border, Sevier County has never featured a large black population; however, black builders constructed nearly every important late nineteenth and early twentieth century private and public building in the county.

We’ll wrap things up with a short appreciation for ‘the shack out back.’ Tennesseans called it the “la-la.” Elsewhere known as the john, the shanty, the shack, the throne, the shed, the relief office—it was the humble outhouse. The little buildings “out back” were as important as any building built before indoor plumbing.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Juneberry78s.com, we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from Dilly and his Dill Pickles in a 1929 recording of Bust Down Stomp.

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

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Fasnacht is the most famous city and canton in Switzerland’s Basel Stadt. And Helvetia is the Latin name for Switzerland. In West Virginia’s Helvetia, homes are decorated with scary figures to frighten Old Man Winter away. These after all are the Rauhnächte (rough nights), the nights between winter and spring, when evil ghosts are supposed to go around.

This photo of musicians in Helvetia is undated; prior to the construction of the Star Band Hall in 1910 Fasnacht celebrations took place in homes, with the musicians off to one side of the parlor as in this photo.

Helvetians decorate the community hall in colorful ribbons and Swiss lampions (paper lanterns with candles), and hang a gruesome Old Man Winter by the neck in the middle of the dance floor. And they create elaborate masks.

At dark on the Saturday night before Ash Wednesday, the villagers and guests don their masks and congregate at Star Band Hall. This plain rectangular frame structure, built in 1910, was for many years home of a quite famous brass concert and marching band.

“The Helvetia Star Band will rank favorably with the best in the State,” declare the authors of ‘The Story of Helvetia Community,’ an undated article most likely from the early 1920s. “This band is frequently asked to play for occasions at various distant points over the State.

“There is band practice twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and in this way the players are always able to measure up to the expectations of those asking them to perform. Several of the members of the band served their country as buglers or musicians in the bands of the respective branches to which they belonged while in the army.” The Star Band was active for 65 years.

The assembled parade marchers light the lampions, then proceed up the road Mardi Gras style to the Community Hall where they parade around the dance floor as their masks are judged. They dance schotisches, waltzes, polkas, and squares until midnight, when the fiddler announces the hour to burn Old Man Winter. The prettiest maiden then mounts the shoulders of the tallest man and cuts down the ghoul. He is dragged out into the snow, roughed up and cursed, then thrown onto the bonfire amid shrieks and applause.

A group of Swiss immigrants from Brooklyn, NY calling themselves ‘the Gruetli Verein’ settled the tiny community of Helvetia in 1869. The members had agreed that they would all emigrate to another section of the country together when the time was right.

A member of the society named Isler surveyed large swaths of the eastern West Virginia mountains for a Washington-based firm, and reported back to the society on the richness of the country. A committee of six men was assembled, and left Brooklyn by rail on October 15, 1869. They arrived at Clarksburg and began the difficult work of traveling by foot over the mountains.

At one time there were three Swiss colonies in Randolph County: Helvetia, Adolph, and Alpina. In the early 1900s Dr. Hanz Gruber was Helvetia’s village doctor for about ten years. He was a nephew of Franz Gruber who wrote for his Austrian church choir the much loved carol “Silent Night, Holy Night.” Dr. Gruber’s house still stands.

Sources: ‘The Story of Helvetia Community,’ by Eugene Daetwyler, Annie Teuscher, and E. Metzner at www.wvculture.org/history/agrext/helvetia.html
Helvetia, West Virginia : a study of pioneer development and community survival in the Appalachia, by Atje Partadiredja, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1978
One’s own hearth is like gold : a history of Helvetia, West Virginia, by David H Sutton, New York: Peter Lang, 1990
www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/wv/fasncht_1
www.timeswv.com/entertainment/local_story_042191843.html
www.wvhumanities.org/fasnacht.htm
www.wvculture.org/history/agrext/helvetia.html

Many thanks to Elvira Niles of Lithia, FL for her input on this article.

appalachia appalachian+history Fasnacht Helvetia+WV history+of+appalachia Randolph+County+WV

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The ‘Panic of 1907’ caused nationwide bank failures, timber prices collapsed, mine operations ceased, railroads stopped running, a rash of bankruptcies occurred, and a dramatic loss of confidence and a nasty economic downturn sank in for the next year. Although not as severe as many in the past, the Panic made clear the need for national legislation to protect bank depositors.

The First National Bank, of White County, TN was one of the few banks in that state which was able to keep open through the Panic. The Tennessee Bankers Association (TBA) took notice of that fact. They sought to craft a proposal to the state’s legislature that would emulate many of that company’s best practices.

Customers inside of the First National Bank in Jackson, TN, 1900.

The TBA’s lobbying activities were in fact responsible for the state’s 1908 legislature passing banking bills of very minor importance. The TBA made every effort to prevent what it considered undesirable legislation until it could present a bill satisfactory to banks as well as offering sufficient protection to depositors.

At each succeeding annual association convention many bankers increasingly felt that depositor protection legislation was inevitable. However, the legislative committee of the association found it very difficult to prepare a bill that met the approval of all the bankers in the state.

In 1911 the association convention resolved: “supervision is desirable and examination made by and under the authority of the State of Tennessee would strengthen confidence in state banks and prevent failures.”

When the convention of 1912 was held the legislative committee was able to present a bill which had almost unanimous support of the association members, and this bill was presented to the legislature of 1913.

On February 13, 1913, five years after the Panic of 1907, the legislature finally passed the Banking Act of 1913, which greatly strengthened the state’s ability to oversee bank operations. It stated: [Section 1] “There is hereby created a Banking Department of the State of Tennessee, charged with the execution of all laws relating to corporations, firms and individuals doing or carrying on a banking business in the State of Tennessee. The chief officer of the Banking Department shall be known as the Superintendent of Banks, and he shall be appointed by the Governor upon the recommendations of the Tennessee Bankers Association, and his term of office shall be four years or until his successor is appointed in the manner aforesaid.”

The act required that every state bank within Tennessee should be examined by the superintendent or his examiners at least twice each year, or more often if he deemed it necessary.

The act established minimum capital requirements for banks: at least $7,500 in towns of less than 1,500 inhabitants on up to $50,000 in cities over 100,000 in population. It prohibited any bank from reducing cash on hand and due from banks or bankers below ten percent of demand deposits.

Loans could not be made to officers or employees except on approval of the directors or finance committee. Loans to one person or interest could not exceed fifteen percent of the capital, surplus and profits, except on approval of approval of a majority of the executive or finance committee.

Loans on or the purchase of the company’s own stock was prohibited, unless to prevent loss on previously contracted debts, in which case the stock had to be disposed of within six months.

On the national level, Congress was determined to create a central bank that provided a vigilant monetary policy, price stability, a more elastic currency and more careful supervision over the nation’s banks, and so the panic of 1907 led directly to the development of the Federal Reserve Act.

Sources: The Development of Banking in Tennessee, by Warren P. Gray, Capricorn House Publishers, 2007 (orig. publ. 1948)
Trust Companies, by Clay Herrick, Bankers Publishing Company, 1915
The Panic of 1907, by Robert F. Bruner, Sean D. Carr, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007

banking+history Panic+of+1907 appalachia appalachian+history appalachia+history

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In winter one must draw the little hickory split chair close to the hearth, for most of the heat from the great glowing fire goes up the chimney. The house may have a small window-sash immovably built in. Often there is none. The woman cooks breakfast before sun-up, and supper after dark, by the smoky light of a tiny kerosene lamp with no chimney. It is difficult to carry lamp chimneys long distances in saddle-bags.

There are many homes where even the moderate luxury of kerosene is not found. A sliver of pine knot gives an even more smoky light, and occasionally a “ladle” is used. It is preferably made by a blacksmith, an iron saucer with a handle to hang it by. Narrow strips of cotton cloth, twisted or plaited together, are laid in the ladle in grease. The end of the rag is hung over the edge and ignited. Its illumination is not measured in candle power.

The Land of Saddle-bags
by James Watt Raine

The Land of Saddle-bags is one of the three most important books from the early twentieth century that, according to Dwight Billings (a contributor to the 1997 reprint), have “had a profound and lasting impact on how we think about Appalachia and, indeed, on the fact that we commonly believe that such a place and people can be readily identified”. Originally published in 1924, it was advertised as a “racy book, full of the thrill of mountain adventure and the delicious humor of vigorously human people.”

James Watt Raine provides eyewitness accounts of mountain speech and folksinging, education, religion, community, politics, and farming. In a conscious effort to dispel the negative stereotype of the drunken, slothful, gun-toting hillbilly prone to violence, Raine presents positive examples from his own experiences among the region’s native inhabitants.

In 1906 Raine became an English instructor at Berea College in Kentucky, where one of the courses he taught was on English and Scottish ballads. He eventually submitted several course proposals – all apparently denied by the college – that would have allowed him to grant credit upon a student’s successfully collecting a certain number of ballads from the student’s home territory. However, Raine persisted in his ballad collecting activities.

Raine – an actor, playwright, and author – ultimately headed Berea’s English and drama departments. He was much in demand as lecturer for cultural entertainment programs on through to his retirement in 1939. He died on February 12, 1949, age 88, in Berea, Kentucky.

source: www.berea.edu/hutchinslibrary/specialcollections/saa06.asp
The Land of Saddle-bags, by James Watt Raine, 1997, University Press of Kentucky

appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Berea+College Berea+KY James+Watt+Raine The+Land+of+Saddle-bags

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During the 1930s, Brock introduced its own chocolate covered cherries, which quickly became a nationwide favorite. That particular candy not only helped the company survive the lean Depression era but would remain one of its biggest sellers for the next 60 years.

By 1930, William E. Brock had already been in the candy making big leagues for more than two decades. Born in North Carolina, he’d been a traveling salesman for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. when, in 1906, he decided to settle down in Chattanooga, TN. He borrowed money and invested with some associates in a small wholesale grocery shop, which also held a candy shop, the Trigg Candy Company.

1952 photo of the Brock Candy Company in Chattanooga. Here chocolate covered cherries receive the bottom coat of chocolate.

Brock continued the candy making operation, which consisted of handmade penny and bulk candies, peanut brittle, peppermints, and fudge. Using the experience and connections he had made as a traveling salesman, he sold primarily through former clients in small country stores.

Three years later, he bought his partners out and reincorporated the company as Brock Candy Company.

Sugar rationing during World War I hampered the business, but in 1920 the company introduced a five-cent peanut stick that became a big seller. In the early part of that decade it modernized its factory, installing automatic moguls (a starch molding machine).

Next, Brock eliminated all slab confectionery items, such as peanut brittle and fudge, which were products already produced by many manufacturers, making that area extremely competitive. Instead, Brock concentrated on launching new lines of jelly and marshmallow candies, using the new automated moguls. Also during the 1920s, Brock worked with the DuPont Company to develop and test the packaging of candy in cellophane bags. His company was one of the first candy makers to use cellophane bags, and it influenced the entire candy industry.

Brock found innovative ways to deal with the problems presented by the Depression. When the bank moratorium of 1933 made it impossible for Brock workers to cash their paychecks, Brock collected his daily receipts from local retailers of his candies and paid his employees in cash.

In addition to his prosperous candy manufacturing, William E. Brock also had involvements in insurance and banking interests. He became a trustee of the former University of Chattanooga, now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Emory and Henry College, and also Martha Washington College.

Undoubtedly because of his high visibility in the public affairs of Chattanooga, Brock was appointed U.S. senator by Tennessee Gov. Henry Horton in September 1929, after the death of Sen. Lawrence D. Tyson in a Philadelphia sanitarium. Sen. Brock Sr. was elected for a short term in 1930 and served until March 1931. He was considered a Woodrow Wilson Democrat.

His son, William, Jr., succeeded him to head the company. By the time of his death in 1950, Brock Sr. had built his family-run company into the South’s—and Appalachia’s—largest candy maker.

sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=B088
http://utpress.org/appalachia/EntryDisplay.php?EntryID=017
www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Brach-and-Brock-Confections-Inc-Company-History.html

Brock+Candy+Company William+E.+Brock Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachia+history history+of+appalachia

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They’re a treasure trove for both genealogists and historians. For example, here’s a simple entry in the Lampton family Bible, which was carried from southwest Virginia as the household migrated to eastern Kentucky: “Jane Lampton, born 1803, married John M. Clemens” Lampton and Clemens were the mother and father of Samuel L. Clemens –Mark Twain.

More often than not, the family Bible was the only written record of births, marriages and deaths of loved ones. In addition, between the leaves of this precious possession one could expect to find a wealth of newspaper clippings, letters, photos, and other ephemera pressed for safekeeping over generations of forbears.

It was understood that the book was to be carefully guarded and passed along: “1960 — This Bible goes to Mary Rose. after I am done with it. Momie [sic] Promised it to her. Dad” And: “I wonder how old this old Bible is. Gert gave it to me sometime after Mother Hawkins died. Someday it will be yours. Love, Mother.”

Most family Bibles present dates without any embellishment, but every now and again a quirky personality shines through. The transcriber of Thomas Snelling’s death entry seems obsessively precise in noting the time: “Thomas C Snelling died Dec 25, 1884 half past 1 o’clock and burried ten minuts of 12 the 26″ [original spellings].

It was illegal for any printer in the Colonies to produce the English Bible. Publication of the King James Version of Scripture was controlled by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses as well as other printers licensed by the king.

In response, Colonial printers created a ‘family Bible’ with the addition of record keeping ability to circumvent the copyright restrictions of English law. They frequently included blank pages for multi-generational notes and commentary, as well as engravings and illustrations. These Bibles were sold in inexpensive serial editions.

After the Revolutionary War, the budding American legislature wasn’t any more friendly to Bible printers. “An effort was made in its first Congress to restrict the printing of the [Bible] to licensed houses,” says the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.

However, this political attempt to continue regulated distribution “was cut short by the first amendment to the Constitution, and the book was thrown into the hands of the trade at large, with anything but a beneficial effect on its general integrity.”

Isaac Collins Bible from 1782; one of only two surviving copies.

England refused to send its former colonies any more Bibles, so demand for the Good Book was high and supply was low. Isaac Collins rose to the challenge in his Trenton, NJ print shop. He pre-sold 3,000 copies before the project was even begun, and by the time the presses stopped, 5,000 copies awaited eager hands.

Rag cotton linen paper was a precious commodity in early America, which forced Collins to resort to wood-pulp paper. His choice of stock was somewhat thicker than that used for books today. The resulting folio had the unintended benefit of more heft, greater durability, and a therefore a built-in likelihood of arriving at heirloom status.

Isaac Collins produced the most influential American Bible from the late 1700’s until the mid 1800’s, originating the “Family Bible” format we’ve come to know today.

source: “Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in the Victorian Market” (review): English Studies in Canada – Volume 32, Issue 2-3, June/September 2006, pp. 203-206
The First American Bible, by Margaret T. Hills, American Bible Society, 1968
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, edited by John M’Clintock and James Strong, Vol. I, pg. 563, Baker Book House, 1981
www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bible-leaves/collins-leaf.html
www.biblerecords.com/news.html

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We open today’s show with the story of Walter & Minnie Gassaway, whose mansion in Greenville, SC is still the largest house in the upstate at 22,000 square feet. “Walter L. Gassaway is one of the very well known bankers and financiers of Upper South Carolina,” according to the 1920 book History of South Carolina, Volume 4. “He is president of three banks, including the American Bank of Greenville, and is also extensively engaged in cotton manufacture.” Walter Gassaway went on to become Greenville’s most successful stockbroker and speculator in the 1920s. The mansion was completed just before the 1929 stock market crash. But then disaster struck.

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.

It’s Valentine’s Day this week. We know lovers everywhere are preoccupied, but what about everyone else? In this next segment we’ll observe a day in the life as reported in the February 14, 1930 edition of the Clinch Valley News in Raven, VA.

“The convenient and pithy term for the mountain people of Kentucky, ‘our contemporary ancestors,’ does not indicate the origin of the customs, beliefs, and peculiarities which persist among them,” states the WPA Guide to Kentucky, published in 1939. “For they too had ancestors. These were, for the most part, British, and of the soil. Just as today many a mountaineer has never been ten miles from his birthplace, so also his forebears remained at home.”

They specialized in unusual photographs, many of which depicted historic and religious themes. Their best known photograph was the “Knaffl Madonna” (1890), which won praise at the Photographer’s Association of American Art Convention in Lake Chatauqua, NY, in 1899. James Henry Brakebill partnered briefly with photographer William J. McCoy at the turn of the 20th century in Knoxville. But by the end of that first decade he merged his business with the Knaffl brothers to form Knaffl & Brakebill. Knaffl & Brakebill went on to receive widespread acclaim for their photographic work in the early decades of this century.

We’ll wrap things up with the story of Arizona Houston Hughes (1876-1969), who taught elementary school in Avery County, NC for 57 years. In 1953 she was honored by the state, receiving the North Carolina Teacher of the Year award at the annual North Carolina Teacher’s Conference in Asheville. She “was selected as honor teacher because of her record as the State’s active teacher with the longest continuous record,” reported the Asheville Citizen.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Library of Appalachia, we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music from the Skirtlifters in a 1990 recording of The Fox Chase.

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

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“At the age of ten I was taken by my mother and uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, Ky., the county seat of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. We rode an old mare named “Kate,” without any saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an idiot sure enough.

“So when Judge H. C. Lilley opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken me before the judge. The judge ordered old Black Shade Combs, then the sheriff, to summon twelve jurors and two doctors. One doctor thought I had been born an idiot, and Dr. S. S. Swaingo, of Jackson, held out that I was all right of mind, and so the case was put off until 10 a. m. Tuesday.

“Then Dr. Swaingo got old Dr. McCray and gave me a thorough examination. The doctors found by examining my neck, where the small tits in one’s neck are, that the tit in my neck had grown together. After the doctors cut the tit loose in my neck I began to talk and to have a good joke. The doctors took me to a one-horse barber shop and had my hair cut and fixed me up and presented me on Tuesday morning to Judge Lilley, and he was surprised beyond reason that I was Fess.”

History of Corporal Fess Whitaker
Louisville, Ky, The Standard Printing Co., 1918.

Whitaker’s claim to fame is his run for U.S. Congress in 1926, in which he was narrowly defeated. Fess Whitaker (1880-1927) began his career as a politician in 1917, when he was elected county jailer in Letcher County, KY. He likely held this office until 1921, when he decided to run for county judge. The New York Times reported that sometime around 1921 Whitaker participated in a street fight, a disturbance of the peace that led to his incarceration in the very jail he supervised and earned him the nickname “The Jailed Jailer.” While imprisoned, Whitaker continued his campaign and was eventually elected. In 1922, Whitaker was again jailed, this time for possessing and transporting whisky for illegal sale. Nevertheless, he was re-elected Letcher County jailer in 1925. He died in a car crash in 1927.

source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/whitaker/whitaker.html

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The verb debunk means to expose or ridicule the falseness or hollowness of a myth, idea or belief. It is made up of the prefix ‘de-’, meaning to remove, and the word ‘bunk’.

On February 25, 1820, the Missouri Question, whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state, was being hotly debated in Congress. Near the end of the debate and amidst calls from the floor to have a vote, Felix Walker, representative from Buncombe County, NC, rose to speak. And speak. Did I mention that Felix Walker spoke?

When asked by other members to desist, he replied that he was bound ‘to make a speech for Buncombe,’ and continued to hold forth.

Walker was elected as a Republican to the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Congresses, serving from 1817 to 1823. One can only wonder if his long-windedness got him hounded out of North Carolina, for he moved to Mississippi in 1824.

But he left in his wake a masterful symbol for empty talk that could not be ignored by the speakers of the language, and buncombe, actually spelled bunkum in its first recorded appearance in 1828 in “Niles’ Weekly Register,” must have been widely used. Bunkum, noted that journal, was said to be a ‘very useful and expressive word, which is now as well understood as any in our language.’ And “The Wilimington Commercial” referred in 1849 to ‘the Buncombe politicians — those who go for re-election merely.’

In George Ade’s 1900 book “More Fables in Slang” the –um ending has been dropped: “he surmised that the Bunk was about to be handed to him.’

The term debunk originated in a 1923 novel “Bunk,” by American novelist William Woodward (1874–1950), who used it to mean to take the bunk out of things. And H. L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore and a connoisseur of the American language, entitled one of his books “A Carnival of Buncombe.”

sources: www.ncmarkers.com/Results.aspx?k=Search&ct=btn
www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/feb2004/feb.html
Safire’s Political Dictionary, by William Safire, Random House, 1978
Word Myths, by David Wilton, Ivan Brunetti, Oxford University Press US, 2004

Felix+Walker Bunscombe+County+NC appalachia history+of+appalachia appalachian+history

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