This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. New collections in regional repositories: Buncombe County Special Collections, Asheville University of North Carolina Asheville University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Buncombe County Special Collections, Asheville Mary Mitchell Westall Large Collection on Westall Family History (1905-2016), additional accrual, MS294. Materials in this collection represent five generations of the family of Asheville builder James Manassas Westall (1861-1943). With the 1914 marriage of his son “Jack” to Mary Mitchell Wiley, the “hillbilly” Westall clan was united with the Tennessee business roots of Asheville hotelier Newton…
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Charles Neville Buck’s The Call of the Cumberlands: The Importance of Multiple Editions of the Same Book
This article appeared in the Volume 4, Issue 3 Winter 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. By Stewart Plein, Curator, Rare Books, Printed Resources, Appalachian Collection, West Virginia University In my role as curator of rare books and the Appalachian book collection at WVU, I’m always on the lookout for books that add research value to our collections. One of my favorite go to resources is often referred to as Appalachian Local Color Literature, popular during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I consider this time period to be of exceptional importance to Appalachian Studies as a documentation of a…
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Urban Appalachian Story Gathering Project
This article appeared in the Volume 3, Issue 3 Winter 2022 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. by Pauletta Hansel, Project Director; Urban Appalachian Community Coalition Core Member The Urban Appalachian Story Gathering Project is an activity of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, a small nonprofit which formed in 2014 when the decades old Urban Appalachian Council was disbanded. UACC traces its origin to the 1964 founding of Cincinnati’s Main Street Bible Center, which served Appalachian migrants chiefly in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. The Urban Appalachian Council was established in 1974 and provided services for forty years to urban Appalachians and their descendants…
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Featured Collection, Origin Story Edition: Special Collections at the University of North Carolina Asheville
By Gene Hyde, Head of Special Collections & University Archivist, UNC Asheville This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. For this issue of the Appalachian Curator, we take a look at the origins of Special Collections at UNC Asheville. Established in 1977 (and opening its doors in 1978), UNCA’s Special Collections were originally founded as the Southern Highlands Research Center. The 1970s was a fertile decade for Appalachian Studies, Appalachian research, and Appalachian special collections and archives. Much was afoot: the Appalachian Journal was started in 1972, the Appalachian Consortium published the…
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Ginseng, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and Appalachian archives
By Trevor McKenzie, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. It is exactly the wrong time of the year to dig ginseng, making it the perfect time to dig into the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection’s holdings concerning “The Divine Root.” This summer, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, held June 24-28 and July 1-5, celebrates the traditions and folklore surrounding American ginseng, one of Appalachia’s oldest natural exports. The event will bring together a wide array of people, ranging from ginseng gatherers still using time-tested traditions…
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Curating Appalachian Futures: an interdisciplinary, collaborative project
By Sally Brown Deskins, Exhibits Coordinator, West Virginia University Libraries This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Curating Appalachian Futures, an interdisciplinary project spearheaded by myself, Exhibits Coordinator for West Virginia University Libraries, was a complex, collaborative project including contributions and partners region wide. This article will take a look at the process of creating the broad, tremendous exhibit with 50 artistic, scholarly and community contributors and the mini-conference that stemmed from it, further contextualizing and giving impact to the idea beyond the walls. Appalachian Futures is the main exhibit developed by…
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Northern Appalachian History Digital Storytelling Archives
By Christina Fisanick, California University of Pennsylvania and Robert Stakeley, Senator John Heinz History Center This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. Christina Fisanick, an associate professor of English at California University of Pennsylvania, began seeking an opportunity to integrate digital storytelling in her honors writing classes since she completed her Certificate in Digital Storytelling from the University of Colorado at Denver in 2010. Robert Stakeley, the Education Outreach Coordinator at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had been searching for additional ways to showcase the collections from the Heinz History Center…
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Community Archiving Profile: Community-driven Archives Programs in the Buncombe County Public Library System
By Katherine Calhoun Cutshall and Zoe Rhine This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. The staff of the North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library, located in downtown Asheville, NC, is always on the lookout for new ways to engage the public in our work. Until 2009, when the collection first moved into a space of its own, (separate from adult reference) there had not been much in the way of these efforts. Searching for inspiration, staff encountered Archives Alive: Expanding Engagement with Public Library Archives and Special Collections by Diantha Dow…
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Community Archiving Profile: Continuing the Story: Oral Histories Shape Arthurdale’s Legacy
By Meredith Dreistadt, AmeriCorps Member and acting archivist at Arthurdale Heritage, Inc. This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. In the height of the Great Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady to the newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt, left affluent Washington, D.C. to travel to one of the most impoverished communities in the country: the coal mining towns along Scotts Run in northern West Virginia. There she saw firsthand how horrifically affected families were by both the ripples of the Great Depression and the greed of coal companies that ruled over the…
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Community Archiving Profile: Mountain People, Mountain Lives Oral History Project
By Elizabeth McRae and Alex Macaulay, Department of History, Western Carolina University This article appeared in the Volume 1, Issue 3 Winter 2020 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue. For the past five years, history faculty at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, have collaborated with students at a local high school on the Mountain People, Mountain Lives Oral History Project. Beginning each January, Drs. Elizabeth McRae and Alex Macaulay conduct a series of workshops, preparing students at Smoky Mountain High School to research, organize, and conduct oral interviews with a wide range of local people. In May, the participants scatter throughout…
