Appalachian History

“Coal is like layers in a layer cake. And where you’ve got it cut by erosion by the valleys, why, it’s just in fingers, and these fingers went miles and miles back in there. Six or seven miles to the back side of the property. And then they retreated the mine back almost to the [...]

The Appalachian League was born in 1911 with teams in Asheville, N.C.; Bristol, Va.; Cleveland, Tenn.; Johnson City, Tenn.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Morristown, Tenn. That first version of the league lasted just four years, with the league disbanding in the middle of the 1914 season when Morristown and Middlesboro, Ky., folded on June 17. The [...]

Calhoun, Ga. 1934. Mrs. Ralph Haney poses for a photograph in her kimono. The peacock design was made of chenille. 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 [...]

West Virginia entrepreneur Donald F. Duncan (1892-1971) had never heard of the yo-yo until 1928, when he encountered Pedro Flores on a business trip to California. Earlier that same decade, Flores had immigrated to America from the Philippines, and initially worked as a bellhop at a Santa Monica hotel. Carving and playing with wooden yo-yos [...]

At Easter, kids would hide eggs. Go around to hen nests and get a egg or two every day and hide them so you’d have some for Easter. Well, Papa had about twelve or fourteen old Rhode Island Red hens. And Papa said, “I know good and well them hens ain’t laying.” Well, I’d go [...]