Appalachian History

“I don’t know anything else. You see, I was born in North Georgia, in Dalton, the town that has figured in my books as ‘Darley,’” explained novelist Will N. Harben to a reporter in a 1905 interview. “So that while I am not one of the people about whom I write—for there is the sharpest [...]

“Am I to understand that our good brother was married four times?” “You shore air,” said Len. “There lays four of as good wives as a man ever had. Them tombstones don’t tell no lies. They’s all ’fore my time, savin’ Aunt Lindy, his last ’un, but I’ve hearn enough to know what they wuz.” [...]

An article written about 1926 by Peter L. Livengood of Salisbury, PA, appearing in the ‘Meyersdale Republican’ that year, gives the following account of Grantsville, Maryland’s oldest inn: Little Crossings (still standing and now known as Penn Alps Restaurant & Craft Shop.) On one occasion while Mr. and Mrs. George Matthews kept tavern at Little [...]

“THE autumn in the Hills is but the afternoon of summer. The hour of the new guest is not yet. Still the heat lies on the earth and runs bubbling in the water. The little maid trots barefoot and the urchin goes a swimming in the elm hole by the corner of the meadow. Still [...]

The habits of these folk, as I remember them when I was a child, were generous and hospitable. There was much rivalry between women in household matters. Certain recipes in pastry and pickles and medicine were handed down in families from generation to generation. There were few formal dinners, but cover for the accidental guest [...]