Hillsboro Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

March 6, 1973: Author Pearl S. Buck Dies

Author Pearl Buck died in Vermont on March 6, 1973, at age 80. She was born in 1892 at her maternal grandparents’ home at Hillsboro in Pocahontas County. Buck grew up with Southern Presbyterian missionary parents who traveled around the world. To her, the family home at Hillsboro—now a museum—represented “security and peace.”

At an early age, she spent time with her parents in China and learned to speak Chinese almost as early as English. She later visited small Chinese farming villages, which would provide settings for her most popular novels.

Her literary career began with the book East Wind: West Wind in 1930, followed by The Good Earth, which won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize. Over the next four decades, Buck wrote more than 100 works of fiction and nonfiction and, in 1938, became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Perhaps her most lasting legacies are the Welcome House, which she founded in 1949 to oversee the adoption of mixed-race children, and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, established in 1964 to care for Amerasian children in their home countries.

November 6, 1863: Battle of Droop Mountain

The Battle of Droop Mountain opened with nearly six hours of artillery fire, musketry, and hand-to-hand combat. Averell’s infantry finally broke through the Confederate left. The Rebels retreated, and the battle turned into a Union rout.

On November 6, 1863, one of the most important Civil War battles in West Virginia occurred in Pocahontas County. In August of that year, Union General William W. Averell had launched a series of raids to disrupt the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad in southwestern Virginia.

During his second raid, Averell hatched a scheme to trap Confederate troops around Lewisburg. His overall plan failed. But, he was able to attack some 1,700 Confederates under General John Echols at Droop Mountain, just south of Hillsboro. The battle opened with nearly six hours of artillery fire, musketry, and hand-to-hand combat. Averell’s infantry finally broke through the Confederate left. The Rebels retreated, and the battle turned into a Union rout.

At first glance, the battle might not have seemed that significant because Echols’s forces managed to escape. Plus, Averell failed to achieve his ultimate objective. However, Droop Mountain marked the last large-scale battle of the war fought on West Virginia soil. It was also the last time the Confederacy made a push to control the new state. The site of the battle is now preserved as a state park.

Pearl S. Buck Grapevine Travels to Michigan

A grapevine clipping from the home of Pearl S. Buck, a world renowned author with West Virginia roots, just arrived in Michigan and soon will be planted at a high school literary garden.

It began as an idea last summer. Jennifer McQuillan teaches literature at West Bloomfield High School in Michigan, and she wanted to give her students something that would get them off their phones- and become better connected to the writing in decades old books.

“There are gardens that are devoted to Emily Dickinson or to Shakespeare, but there’s not been a garden in a secondary school setting that brings together important plants from American authors like this anywhere, to our knowledge,” said McQuillan.

Since last August, the garden has grown. Thirty-four plants have been sent from the homesteads of American authors, including Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway and Alice Walker.

McQuillan says she wasn’t quite sure if the students would connect the garden with the literature she was teaching them.

“The turning point came around December, when we were reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Buds and Bird Voices”. And he writes about a lilac bush out of his window. And we had that lilac bush growing in the literary garden. And that was the moment when the kids went, ‘oh my gosh, we have something really special here.’”

Fast forward to this summer. McQuillan’s garden will soon include a clipping from a 120-year-old grapevine that drapes across the front entrance to the birthplace of writer Pearl S. Buck

Kirk Judd, a board member for the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation, says Buck wrote about the grapevine. “She remembers being 9 years old, sitting on the upper level porch, reading her Charles Dickens, and eating grapes from the grapevine.”

Grapevine at Stulting House, Pearl S. Buck’s grandparents’ home where she was born,

Judd says that even though she spent most of her childhood abroad, Pearl S. Buck always thought of West Virginia as home.

Born at her grandparents’ home in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the first American woman awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and her bestselling novel The Good Earth won the Pulitzer Prize.

She passed away in 1973. But the grapevine that she remembered so vividly from her West Virginia birthplace is very much still alive.

Jennifer McQuillan says it’s the first plant they’ve received from West Virginia. She teaches Pearl Buck’s writing in both her American and World Literature classes. McQuillan says she’s really happy to add Buck to the literary garden- both as an American and a world author who wrote extensively about China, her other home away from West Virginia.

“Because she’s sought both as a native author and as an author who is making her mark in another country as well. So I think that’s a really compelling story and I’m really excited to share that story with my students this fall.”

McQuillan will be working with her students to connect Buck’s writing to the grapevine they’ll be planting this summer, with the help of master gardeners in Michigan. She hopes both the grapevine, and a love for literature, will take root and grow.

Nov. 6 1863 Battle of Droop Mountain

On November 6, 1863, one of the most important Civil War battles in West Virginia occurred in Pocahontas County. Union General William W. Averell launched a raid, to trap Confederate troops around Lewisburg. He was able to attack some 1,700 Confederates under General John Echols at Droop Mountain, just south of Hillsboro. The battle opened with nearly six hours of artillery fire, musketry, and hand-to-hand combat. Averell’s infantry finally broke through the Confederate left. The Rebels retreated, and the battle turned into a Union rout.

How We Chose the Eight West Virginia Contestants For "Turn This Town Around"

“Turn This Town Around” is a unique and groundbreaking project to select two West Virginia communities to receive training, coaching, and technical assistance to help them achieve success in revitalizing their communities.

“Turn This Town Around” is a feature of West Virginia Focus, in partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting and the West Virginia Community Development Hub.

You are encouraged to vote right now for the two towns from a selection of eight contestants: in the north – Grafton, Hundred, Petersburg, and Rowlesburg; and in the South – Alderson, Hillsboro, Matewan, Pineville.

Lots of folks are asking how the eight “Turn This Town Around” contestants were selected. Most commonly, they ask because they want their town to have a shot at this opportunity.

We think that’s great. We wish we could provide that opportunity to every West Virginia community that steps up.

That being said, by my count there are 149 incorporated municipalities and 2,941 unincorporated communities in the state. In this first round of Turn This Town Around, we have the capacity to devote our resources to two communities.

So how were the eight contestants selected? There were several considerations. We knew we wanted to focus on one northern and one southern community. We thought selecting the two out of a field eight would narrow the focus and increase the competition. So we selected four northern and four southern communities.

Some of the thinking that went into the selection included:

· Where could we really make a visible difference in the course of a year?

· Where we did not already have a strong presence or relationships?

· We wanted towns that represented some geographic diversity.

· Which towns had attracted our attention as communities with potential that hadn’t been realized?

Yes, the selection of the eight was fairly arbitrary.

But here’s the point: Turn This Town Around is an experiment – a very exciting one that we believe has huge potential – but an experiment nonetheless. This is its pilot year. This will be a great learning experience for all of us, one that we hope will help us improve and expand the process in coming years.

And unlike some community development initiatives, Turn This Town Around will be very well documented. Tools, tips and techniques will be openly shared. The lessons learned will be made available to any West Virginia community that is interested.

If you want to revitalize your community, but weren’t selected for Turn This Town Around, pay attention, because you can do this at home! Learn from Turn This Town Around and apply those lessons to your town!

While the Hub and the many service providers in the WV Community Development Network will be providing whatever assistance we can to the Turn This Town Around communities, it is a central principle of community improvement that the community must determine and drive the process. Mobilize your community and get to work – don’t wait for us!

We’re exploring ideas about how we might open the process up next year to give your community an opportunity to join the Turn This Town Around campaign. Stay tuned!

VOTE: Which Two West Virginia Towns Should Get "Turned Around"?

It’s been a rough month in West Virginia, with the water crisis and all the negative, stereotypical coverage of Appalachia around the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty.

Let’s take all our anger and frustration and turn it into something positive. Let’s “Turn This Town Around.”

We’re partnering with West Virginia Community Development Hub and New South Media, Inc. to inspire two West Virginia towns – one north, one south – to develop their own solutions.

It starts with YOUR vote – you get to choose which two towns (out of eight candidates) will be part of this effort. Then, the community will take over. They’ll receive training and other resources to complete a project that builds on their efforts to revitalize their town.

As publisher Nikki Bowman of New South Media wrote in “West Virginia Focus” magazine:

The two towns you select will become living laboratories. Our goal is to help ignite change, to rally the community with a set of goals and deliverables, to showcase the successes and failures, to identify challenges, and to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The West Virginia Community Development Hub, a leader in community development, will coordinate the effort. The Hub will connect the two communities with training on civic engagement, leadership development, and project management; provide a community performance coach; help them assess their strengths and vulnerabilities; develop a community vision and plan; and link them to technical assistance providers in key areas like civic engagement, the local food movement, community sustainability, and organizational development.

You can (and should) read more of Bowman’s article here, which includes detailed information about each town.

You can check the current voting standing on the West Virginia Focus Twitter and Facebook pages.