Unspoken Heroes of Blair Mountain: Women & Families

Items

• A logging crew along the Little River, near Bartow, Pocahontas County, WV.
  Working six days per week, often ten or more hours a day, crews of workers known as “wood hicks” cut and prepared hundreds of logs each day for transport to a sawmill. At the peak of West Virginia’s timber boom in 1909, men with job titles like choppers, sawyers, swampers, and knot bumpers earned between $1.75 and $2.00 per day.
• Maggie Hammons Parker at home in Stillwell, near Marlinton, Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
  The influence of the Hammons family on West Virginia folk life spans generations. However, wide recognition of their songs, stories, and traditions did not come until the 1970s when local musician Dwight Diller became closely acquainted with the Hammonses. Diller learned their music, practiced their traditions, and studied their history. His relationship with the Hammonses triggered interest among other musicians and folklorists, and his field recordings and interviews contributed to a study of the family produced by the Library of Congress in 1973. The Hammonses are recognized as central to the preservation of authentic musical styles and culture in the region. Recordings of their music have been released by WVU Press, the Library of Congress, Rounder Records, Dwight Diller, and the Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College. Pictured here, Maggie Hammons Parker was a matriarch of the family and one of five Hammonses inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2020.
• Pete, Paris, and Neal Hammons
  Taken in 1906 along the Williams River in Webster County, this photograph features members of the Hammons family—brothers Pete, Paris, and Neal—posing with a fiddle, gun, and phonograph. Known for their distinctive old-time musical sound, their knowledge of mountain lore, and their traditional way of life, the Hammons family embodies the culture and sound of the West Virginia frontier. According to folklorist and musician Gerry Milnes, “The three brothers seem to be making a calculated statement by holding items of importance and usefulness.” Milnes notes that the inclusion of the phonograph “belies any argument that this family was musically isolated from the rest of the world,” contradicting the stereotype of mountaineers as culturally secluded from the rest of the world.
• Subscription School Students and Teachers, West Virginia.
  Though often viewed by the popular press as backward and isolated, historians have consistently shown that Appalachia was connected to the broader national economy and culture. Often following the lead of middle-class reformers, many residents came to believe that both education and industrial development were essential to the advancement of the region. As part of their pursuit of education, some rural communities offered subscription singing schools where adults and children could learn to sing using a form of written music called “shape notes.” Families paid a subscription fee to compensate a traveling music teacher for group lessons that ran about two weeks.
• Logging Camp, Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
  Notice the loggers holding banjos at this Pocahontas County logging camp. Fiddles and banjos were the most common instruments in traditional Appalachian music for many decades; guitar accompaniment did not become popular until the twentieth century.
• Map of the Allegheny Highlands and Greenbrier River Valley of West Virginia
  Two overlapping, regional designations play essential roles in this history of West Virginia’s timber industry. Home to a magnificent variety of hardwoods and softwoods, the Allegheny Highlands include the highest peaks in the Allegheny Mountains. Today, much of this area is part of the Monongahela National Forest. The counties of the Allegheny Highlands are fed by multiple river systems, one of which forms the Greenbrier River Valley. The river systems, and later railroads, connected the Greenbrier Valley with the Allegheny Highlands, forming a transportation and trade network that also linked the region to neighboring counties, such as Braxton and Clay.
• Lana Harlow, oral history interview
  Interview with a woman named Lana Harlow, who lived through the mine wars as a child
• Families Transport Food
  Image 2 of The Washington times (Washington [D.C.]), September 1, 1921, (FINAL HOME EDITION) This text features an article detailing how women and children manned the kitchens during the strikes, supplying miners with food.
• Miners Have Woman Spy
  This excerpt from the Washington Times details rumors of a woman being responsible for aiding the striking miners with inside intelligence to use to their advantage. In other words, this article is proof that women were unsuspected contributors to the fight at Blair Mountain.
• AFL CIO Seal, West Virginia
  Seal of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
• Miners Camping at Blair
  Image of miners camping at Blair Mountain
• "In Union is Power" poster
  Picture of poster UMWA 1897-1983, Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.
• Local Miner with Rifle
  Local miner with rifle photograph.
• Sheriff and 11 Others are Killed in Fight at Mine Near Wellsburg, The West Virginian Front Page 7.17.1922
  The West Virginian. (Fairmont, W. Va.), 17 July 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
• Non-Union Men Working at Top Speed in W. VA, The West Virginian 7.17.1992
  This newspaper, The West Virginian, of Fairmont, W.V., main title describes a standoff between 500 miners and the authorities of Brooke County. The Sheriff H.H. Duvall and eleven miners were killed in the gunfight near Cliftonville. The date is July 17, 1922.
• 421 West Virginia Coal Mines with Big Output Still Working, [insert name of newspaper]
• Coal Operators Willing to Negotiate, Front Page of The Wheeling Intelligencer 11.3.1919
  Front page of The Wheeling intelligencer. Vol. LXVIII, No. 61 (Wheeling, W. Va.), 03 Nov. 1919. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
• Women and children refugee tell of mine army gathering
• Striking Miner's Families Outside Barracks
  Portrait of children and some women and men gathered outside a barracks