West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers:
Echoes from the Hills
by Fawn Valentine
Ohio University Press
Tucked away in the mountains of West Virginia, preserved for generations, handmade bed quilts—family legacies created with needle and thread—reveal cultural influences and material circumstances affecting the lives of their makers. In addition to their intrinsic beauty, these quilts illuminate domestic, state, and regional history.
Between
1990 and 2000, the members of the West Virginia Heritage Quilt
Search organized a statewide network and gathered information
on more than 4,000 quilts made before 1940. Their work has culminated
in this richly illustrated book, which includes a wide variety
of quilts—from extravagant display textiles to rudimentary
covers stitched from recycled fabrics. The study reveals the
effects of population settlement patterns, ethnic heritage, and
prevalent economic systems on the creation of these utilitarian
and ornamental bed coverings. Detailed descriptions of quilt
designs, patchwork patterns, fabrics, and sewing techniques combine
with personal biography to present a new and sometimes surprising
view of the past.
Among the findings that author Fawn Valentine brings to light is an original interpretation of Scotch-Irish design aesthetics that offers a fresh perspective on the people who played a prominent role in settling the American frontier. She notes that quilts made before the Civil War evoke the prosperity and fashionable tastes of a western Virginia that was neither isolated nor impoverished. And, early in the 20th century when much of the United States had turned to reliance on commercial manufactures, many Mountain State quilts were still carefully constructed of handwoven fabric and filled with sheep's wool.
This comprehensive book includes 169 color photographs of selected quilts, a database analysis of the statewide survey, and a complete listing of registered quiltmakers. Oral histories and interviews with descendants of quiltmakers describe how girls and women learned to sew and quilt, the motivations for women to work together on quilting projects, and the importance of quiltmaking within the family and the community.
Like the quilts it presents, this extraordinary book depicts the beauty, skill, relationships, and values of a unique heritage. What was initially preserved in fabric and stitching is now available in word and image as well.
Memphis Tennessee Garrison:
The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman
edited by Ancella R. Bickley
and Lynda Ann Ewen
Ohio University Press
Ancella Bickley is a retired professor of English and vice president for academic affairs at West Virginia State College. During her retirement, Bickley has spent time researching and writing about the history of blacks in West Virginia. Originally from Huntington, Bickley earned a bachelor's degree in English from West Virginia State College, a master's in English from Marshall University, and a doctorate from WVU.
The
daughter of former slaves, Memphis Tennessee Garrison moved with
her family to McDowell County, West Virginia, at an early age.
The coalfields of McDowell County were among the richest in the
nation, and Garrison grew up surrounded by black workers who
were the backbone of West Virginia's early mining workforce—those
who laid the railroad tracks, manned the coke ovens, and dug
the coal. These workers and their families created communities
that became the centers of black political activity—both
in the struggle for the union and in the struggle for local political
control.
Memphis Tennessee Garrison, as an influential teacher and youth leader, as a political organizer, and ultimately as vice president of the National Board of the NAACP at the height of the civil rights movement (1963 to 1966), was at the heart of these efforts.
Based on transcripts of interviews recorded in 1969, Garrison's oral history is a rich, rare, and compelling story. It portrays African-American life in West Virginia in an era when Garrison and other courageous community members overcame great obstacles to improve their working conditions, send their children to school and then to college, and otherwise enlarge and enrich their lives.
Dismal Mountain
by John Billheimer
St. Martin's Minotaur
This is the third in a series of mystery novels built around the character Owen Allison, a fictional expatriate West Virginian created by author John Billheimer, a real-life expatriate West Virginian who lives in Portola Valley, California. The books are set in West Virginia's mining communities, and they offer interesting perspectives on the people and lifestyles of the Mountain State. "In Billheimer's hands, West Virginia may become a favorite destination," wrote a reviewer in the San Jose Mercury News about the second novel in the series, Contrary Blues.
The
prologue of Dismal Mountain relates a pivotal incident
involving a character named Lizzie Neal, who—shotgun at
the ready—is protecting her home from impending burial underneath
tons of debris left over from a mountaintop-removal project.
She ponders her situation: "They dynamited Dismal Mountain.
It made the hairs bristle on her arms just to think about it.
Imagine leveling a mountain just to get a place to put a shopping
mall. It wasn't enough that they strip-mined half the state for
coal. Now they were lopping the tops off mountains just to get
a place to put Space-Mart and Sears and the same stores you could
find in Charleston or Barkley or Contrary or half a dozen other
locations. But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was,
they were about to dump the debris from the mountain right here
in Doubtful Hollow, where the Neals had lived for generations."
The shotgun goes off later in the prologue, setting off events that sweep up the visiting Owen Allison, come home to West Virginia on business as a transportation consultant. Lizzie Neal is Allison's aunt, and he sets about finding out who really pulled the trigger on her shotgun, killing a trucker trying to deliver a load of debris to her hollow. Did Aunt Lizzie really do it, as she claims? Can Doubtful Hollow be saved? Pour yourself a cool drink, find a comfortable seat in the shade, and read Dismal Mountain to find out.
Under the Shade of the Trees:
Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson's Life at Jackson's Mill
by Dennis Norman
Mountain State Press
While many volumes have been published about General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, the great tactician of the Confederate Army who was raised near Weston, West Virginia, little attention has been given to young Tom Jackson during his formative years. Tom Jackson was orphaned at an early age, was awkward, shy, and labeled by some as slow to learn. This book is the story of the exceptional boy who, through determination, hard work, and a little good luck, overcame his disadvantages to become the legendary General Stonewall Jackson, an honored leader of men.
Author
Dennis Norman was born in Weston, not far from Jackson's Mill,
where Thomas Jackson spent much of his boyhood. He currently
lives near the mill, which is operated by the WVU Extension Service
as a statewide conference center, 4-H camp, and museum.
This 136-page volume offers a chronological account of Jackson's boyhood life at the mill. Norman gives due credit to historian Roy Bird Cook, whose 1924 study, The Family and Early Life of Stonewall Jackson, was a major source of background information for this new book. The book opens in December 1831, with the death of Jackson's mother, 33-year-old Julia Beckwith Neale, who had been married to the late Jonathan Jackson, Tom's father, for nine years. It closes in July 1846, with a visit to Weston by the newly commissioned 2nd Lt. Thomas Jackson, fresh from graduation at West Point.
Readers may be interested, too, by the inclusion of "Jackson's Maxims," words of wisdom and guidance attributed to the famous soldier and teacher. These include one to which the author gives special attention, as it speaks to the subject at hand: "You may be whatever you resolve to be." The orphan boy from Jackson's Mill resolved to be great, and he succeeded.
Non Campus Mentis:
World History According to College Students
by Anders Henriksson
Workman Publishing
In this very funny book, the term papers and essay examinations of real college students tell a history of the world that varies a bit from the standard interpretations offered by history professors and texts. Take, for example, these bloopers written by students struggling unsuccessfully to get the facts straight: "Joan of Arc was famous as Noah's wife." "The airplane was invented and first flown by the Marx brothers." "The Berlin Wall was built somewhere in Europe."
Anders
Henriksson, a professor and chair of the History Department at
Shepherd College, first documented his students' errors in "College
Kids Say the Darndest Things," an essay for the Wilson
Quarterly almost 20 years ago. Since then, he has collected
enough additional mistakes and bloopers to compile this book,
whose chapters include samples of woeful ineptitude by two generations
of American and Canadian college students.
Although the author and his publisher present the book as a work of humor, not as evidence of a decline in students' appreciation of the past, Henriksson does offer an explanation for the wacky things these students have written: "A World History or Western Civilization course can be a daunting swirl of unfamiliar names, places, and events for those who start from near ground zero. It's so easy to get them all jumbled. Add to this a dose of distracted note-taking, last-minute cramming, and limited vocabulary. The result is the kind of bizarre free associations that have Roman senators exchanging togas for tubas, Caesar perishing on the Yikes of March, and monotheism originating with a God named Yahoo."
Readers who wish to test their own knowledge can take a brief quiz presented at the end of the book, which is based on information college students would be expected to know upon completion of World History 101. Can you define "anarcho-syndicalism"?