It was the farthest north they had ever been. It being Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They being George Washington Cline and Henry Lafayette Marcum of Mingo County, Virginia, which bordered Kentucky in the southwestern part of the state. Most people there in Mingo County were related to each other. George and HenryContinue Reading

I spy my love   along the ridge,   a silhouette   in shadows of black. I stand with my heart   a breakin’   ‘fore I fear   he’s not coming back. We were to be married   this autumn   but the war broke out   in June. With brothers at odds   in the fighting,   I fearContinue Reading

Earlier this year, Appalachia Bare’s Tom Anderson attended a bare-hands baseball game hosted by the Historic Ramsey House. He wrote an article about the experience you can find here. Subsequently, Ramsey House invited us to cover the Celtic and Appalachian Music Festival. We felt so honored to be there. TheContinue Reading

Welcome to our continuing series about Appalachian hauntings. In this post, we’ll be journeying to Georgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Enjoy the history and the goose bumps. Georgia Barnsley Gardens – Bartow County Background: Godfrey Barnsley (1805-1873) was an Englishman who came to America in 1824 and soon became one ofContinue Reading

Hauntings are everywhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Whether one believes in such things or not, a person cannot deny the shivers in the darkness when an owl hoots a soothing sound of wisdom, or the early morning sounds of a house “settling” as it pops and cracks at one endContinue Reading

**With Correction – Thank you, reader Linda, for helping to keep our Appalachian stories accurate! I came upon “Aunt Jenny” by doing a little research about paranormal events in Appalachian states. I was quite flabbergasted after reading her story. On one hand, she was a venomous and unforgiving woman (understandablyContinue Reading

Tennessee Williams was one of the foremost playwrights in the 20th century. He wrote close to 40 plays, 70 one-act plays, and several screenplays, achieving great success with The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947; Pulitzer Prize winner), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955; Pulitzer Prize winner),Continue Reading

White trash have been with us since colonial times – though they often went by other names. That’s the contention of historian Nancy Isenberg in White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Isenberg also destroys assumptions about America’s allegedly class-free society in which all one needed wereContinue Reading

The myth of the Old West exerts a tremendous influence on the popular imagination. Zane Grey pulp novels, countless TV series, and iconic Western films ensure that the cowboy remains a uniquely American archetype representing in one writer’s words, “movement, isolation, change, and new beginnings.” Of course, the outlaw isContinue Reading

One of my greatest joys is visiting museums. I love museums of all kinds but I’m particularly fond of author museums. It should come as no surprise that my bias leans toward Southern authors. (And, if I break it down further, I’d say, I’m even fonder of Appalachian authors.) AContinue Reading