Appalachian History

The Kingsport TimesKingsport, TNSunday, March 24, 1935“Pork Pie” is the Newest Style Note in Hats The fabled phoenix, that marvelous bird endowed with the power to rise from its own ashes, finds a match in the pork pie hat. Some twenty years or so ago this hat was a favorite among the young ladies. For [...]

By the mid 1920s Appalachia, land of farms and farmers, had been crisscrossed by railroad tracks and dotted with mill villages, and the Piedmont had eclipsed New England as the world’s leading producer of yarn and cloth. But along with the promise of new jobs came intense competition in the decentralized textile industry, depressing wages, [...]

It’s Valentine’s Day. We know lovers everywhere are preoccupied, but what about everyone else? Here’s a day in the life as reported in the February 14, 1930 edition of the Clinch Valley News in Raven, VA: “A delicious and exquisite birthday dinner was served by Mrs. Parson at her home in North Raven at 7:30 [...]

“I like to garden and travel . . . I’m an outdoors person,” says Lura Stanley. “And so I don’t quilt in the summertime. Winter, when you have to stay in, when the roads are bad and the weather’s bad. That’s when I do my quilting . . . I sometimes quilt all day long [...]

Ring out the old Ring in the new Ring out the false Ring in the true. New calendar today; get out your Farmer’s Almanac and check the heavens for a preview of the year ahead. Only once in a blue moon there is one on New Year’s Eve. Revelers ringing in a new year haven’t [...]