As a historian I have the tendency to read, and not just read, but to really dive deep into a topic. The more I grew to love history, the more I wanted to know about my own Appalachian mountain community. Over the years everything from the Great Depression, tobacco farming,…
The Family Treasure Copyright 3-4-19 I am fortunate in that my family has preserved a good deal of our family history down through the years, the artifacts and stories that reveal at least to some extent the people that came together to give me my life. It…
Nina Moo is what we called my mother’s mother, my Grandmother Hale. Of course, that wasn’t her real name. Her real name was Nina Mae Keys Hale, and she arrived July 15, 1913, the second of five children born to Orgel Ralph and Addie Mae Shanks Keys. Like her husband,…
Each year at Christmastime, my mom’s side of the family would get together at my Aunt Oria and Uncle Ivan’s house in Johnson City, Tennessee. Aunt Oria and Uncle Ivan lived in the historic Tree Streets neighborhood, on Maple Street, and they were gracious hosts. Their house was about a…
“Young lady, now don’t go gettin’ above your raisin’!” I heard this quite a few times as I was growing up and most of the time it was when I had my “sassy pants” on and my smart mouth was running. The phrase was usually met with rolling eyes, crossed…
Growing up in a secluded mountain valley in Southwest Virginia everybody talked alike. I never knew there was even a difference in “accents” until I was older and traveled out of the valley and started noticing that other people didn’t talk like me. When I say “it sure is bright…
Just up the road a piece from Gray Station, Tennessee, is the Sulphur Springs community. Sulphur Springs, in Washington County, is where my mother went to school—she graduated top of her class from Sulphur Springs High School in 1961. Sulphur Springs is now a K-8 school, and area high school…
I love the holiday season and decorating the Christmas tree with ornaments that our family has collected over the years. My favorite types of Christmas trees are those that feature a hodgepodge of ornaments, serving as a kind of scrapbook of family memories—the ones that hold a story for each…
I’ve shared a few memories about my Great Aunt Edith already—including one about her volunteer work as a living history interpreter at Rocky Mount State Historic Site and also how she attended camp-meeting services at Sulphur Springs for more than 80 years. She was such an interesting woman, and I…
For this Thanksgiving week’s article I started going through old pictures which always send me sailing down memory lane! So I decided to do a list of the things that I am most thankful for growing up in Comers Rock. I am thankful for being able to spend my childhood…
