Appalachian History

We spent Sunday night before the case opened in studying it, and then Ewing said to me : “Well, you have this case remarkably well in hand. This is the greatest opportunity of your life. You must conduct the proceedings on our side. You examine the witnesses, argue points as best you can. Gradually unlimber [...]

I began to practice as a young lawyer in an adjoining county and about sixty miles from George A. Ewing’s home. Up to that time I had never met him, nor did I know any of his immediate family. An older man, he was at the time a lawyer of wide reputation, and regarded as [...]

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.

Report on Oconee County Chain Gang Mr. Newton Kelly Foreman: Visited July 11 1918 by Assistant Secretary Broyles 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 [...]

“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 [...]