New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Think about someone in your family (history) that you are the closest to or feel the strongest connection with. Got it? Who is it? As we get older and understand those folks better…we see their wisdom, sense their humanity, we often desire…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard We sat a spell with Jinny in our last Appalachian Moments post, but today we get to know her beloved husband Jim, my great-great Grandfather and a prime example of the generational transition from his subsistence farming to a new way of…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Her name was Virginia, named in part because her father was in Virginia with the Confederate Army coinciding with the time of her birth. Jinny, as she was called, could truthfully claim pioneer ancestry. Her mother’s family included hunters and trappers who…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Arguably the most famous Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, were born in 1811, in what it today Thailand. The brothers were joined at the sternum, an area of the chest, by a small piece of cartilage. Eighteen years later, Robert Hunter, a…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Well, it’s true that a variety of minerals have been mined in the mountains of North Carolina. People have dug for gold on Grandfather; silver on Beech Creek; lead from the Linville Falls area; clay from Linville; Copper from Ore Knob in…
As the county seat for Carter County, Elizabethton grew steadily throughout the 1800s, but the town fathers ran into a problem. The town was hemmed in by Lynn Mountain and the Watauga River, while the flood prone Doe River lay to the East. To continue growing the landlocked town, it…
New Appalachian Moments blog post by Scott Ballard Did you ever wonder what we did before funeral homes? Well, in Appalachia there were several traditions and rituals involved when someone passed away. First of all, there was not a ready made supply of caskets. So, when someone died, a custom…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard Author Roberta Estes states the first mention of term Melungeon was in 1810, listing them as neither Black nor Indian, but as “foreigners.” The adjective most often attached to them is mysterious. An awesome alliteration: the mysterious Melungeons, with their dark, Mediterranean…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard History has told us all too little of this young woman who married Daniel Boone in North Carolina. She had been nearly as tall as Daniel and very attractive with black hair and dark blue eyes that made an immediate impression on…
New Appalachian Moments Blog Post by Scott Ballard When I say the term bushwhacker, it’s not some high powered garden tool…I’m going back to the Civil War and attempting to clear up some confusion…the confusion exists because the term was used to describe both Union and Confederate partisans…it just depended…
