Appalachian History

Black Mountain, near the town of Lynch in Harlan County, is Kentucky’s highest point, rising 4125 feet above sea level. It runs along the border of Harlan and Letcher counties, and also along the Kentucky -Virginia border. Thousands of families, most of them Eastern European immigrants, streamed into the shadows of Black Mountain between the [...]

The following post ran yesterday at the White Oak Attic site. “I’m Lisa Isbell and I run the place.  White Oak Attic is a blog about hobbies including genealogy, shabby chic decor and making a cozy homelife.” Reprinted here with permission. Kelly’s Creek Colliery, as I understand it, was the primary coal mining company in [...]

Upon his father’s small farm [in Carroll County, VA], George L. Carter, the first of nine children, was born not long before the war; and though apparently physically unfitted to endure the labors of the field, he had the resolution of his father, and during the spring, summer and autumn worked on the farm, and [...]

My father was a coal miner back in the…well, he went into the coal mine when he was 12 years old, and he came out when he was 47. And he worked through the First World War, well he worked, that’s all he ever done, ’till he came to the farm. But he worked through [...]

In this excerpt from interviews of coal miner Joseph Ozanic, Sr. (1895-1978), Ozanic discusses the conflict between the Progressive Miners of America (of which he was president) and John L. Lewis’ United Mine Workers of America. Interviews conducted by Rex Rhodes, 1972; Barbara Herndon and Nick Cherniavsky, 1974, and now in the collection of Norris [...]