Appalachian Figures James and Virginia Vinson welcomed their son, Frederick “Fred” M. Vinson, on January 22, 1890. He was born in a small brick house located directly across from the Lawrence County jail, where his father worked as the local jailer. Vinson attended school in Louisa, Kentucky, before enrolling at Kentucky Normal School.

Appalachian History Within the coalfields of Appalachia, the mountains rise like folded hands and every hollow carries the memory of a miner’s working breath. Life here has always been shaped by the mines — by what they give, what they take, and what they demand of the people who live beneath their shadow. The Daughters of Mother Jones knew this, and bravely stood beside the miners.

Appalachian Figures On the hill that Hazard folks call Graveyard Hill, traffic hums along Broadway while an older story sits behind chain link and weeds. In that fenced patch of ground the stones of General Elijah Combs, his clerk son Jesse, and their kin overlook the parking lots and streets that grew up around them.

Appalachian Figure Drive the back roads of southern Wayne County and you will still see the Kelsay name on cemeteries, land records, and in local memory. It is a name that began on the Appalachian frontier, then followed the old migration routes through Tennessee into Kentucky and on toward Missouri and the Pacific coast.

Appalachian Figures On a Sunday morning in south central Kentucky it is easy to find a worn red or brown shape note songbook on a church pew. Open to the right page and you may see a familiar chorus like “Peace Like a River,” “Tell It Everywhere You Go,” or “What Is He Worth To Your Soul,” with a small credit line at the bottom for W. B. Walbert.

Appalachian Figures In the early 1980s, readers of the Whitley Republican opened their weekly paper to find a new feature tucked in among courthouse news and local advertisements. The column carried a plain but evocative title: “Legend and Lore of Whitley County.” Its author signed himself simply as Judge Pleas Jones, a retired jurist from Williamsburg who had spent decades on county benches and, finally, on Kentucky’s highest court.

Appalachian Figures On a February night in 1954, the old Textile Hall in Greenville shook like a mountain gym during district finals. Furman was beating Newberry so badly that the score hardly mattered. What people remember is the number beside one name on the scoreboard. Selvy 100. It was the first live college basketball broadcast in South Carolina, beamed out by WFBC.

Appalachian Figures If you drive into Middlesboro after dark and happen to look up, a lighted cross still glows on the ridge above Cumberland Avenue. Local memory ties that landmark to a coal miner from nearby Fork Ridge who spent most of the twentieth century trying to preach with concrete, corrugated metal, and whatever scrap he could scavenge.

Appalachian Figures On an overcast Monday in early spring 1985, two people cutting through a familiar dumping spot along U.S. 25E near Gray, Kentucky, noticed an old refrigerator lying on its side off the road at a place locals call Gilliam Hill. When they opened it, they did not find scraps or empty jars. Inside was the body of a small red haired woman, folded into the cabinet and left among the trash.

Appalachian Figures When you drop the needle on Big Joe Turner’s “Chains of Love” or Ruth Brown’s “5-10-15 Hours,” it is easy to imagine New York bandstands, neon bar signs, and late night subway rides. It is harder to imagine Bell County, Kentucky or a Harlan County rooming house.

Appalachian Figures In the spring of 2014, a small crowd of musicians and local historians gathered at Somerset Cemetery in Pulaski County, Kentucky. They were there to unveil a grave marker for a fiddler who had lain in an unmarked plot since 1951: Leonard Rutherford. Regional news coverage and musician forums described the ceremony as a long overdue tribute to a man many old time players rank among the finest fiddlers ever captured on record.