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.
Sculptor Gladys Tuke was born in Pocahontas County on November 19, 1899. After studying art in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, she returned to West Virginia in the 1930s. She took up residency at The Greenbrier resort’s Art Colony and became well known for her sculptures of horses. During World War Two, Tuke taught sculpture and pottery to soldiers who were recovering at The Greenbrier, which had been converted into an army hospital. She set up her own studio in White Sulphur Springs after the war.
In 1956, Tuke reopened The Greenbrier’s Art Colony. She was assisted by Jeanne Eleanore Coyne, a pictorial artist and teacher at the Greenbrier College for Women. The Art Colony’s tradition continues today as skilled artisans craft woodwork, clothing, jewelry, pottery, and other items on site.
Over the years, Gladys Tuke’s sculptures were featured at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Woodmere Art Gallery in Philadelphia, the All-American Exhibition of Sculpture at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. She died in Denmar Hospital in 1982 at the age of 82.
Credit e-wv, The West Virginia Encyclopedia online. / Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park, General William Averell, General John Echols, Pocahontas County, Lewisburg, Civil War
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Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park, General William Averell, General John Echols, Pocahontas County, Lewisburg, Civil War
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.
A large wooden sign that says “Yew Here” greets visitors as they drive into the Yew Mountain Center. Nestled in the woods of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, the property for years operated as a farm. A few years ago, a group of community members sought to repurpose the land to create a place for outdoor education.
“It was really a neighborhood effort to turn this property into something that would preserve the land and also serve the community,” said Erica Marks, the center’s director.
Marks explained that when the farm property came up for sale, a group of neighbors wanted to buy it but the price was out of their range. A third party purchased the land and leased it back to the group to use for educational outreach.
Three years ago, the Yew Mountain Center opened its doors. The nonprofit creates educational experiences for groups of children and adults in a natural setting.
During a recent visit, students from the kindergarten class at Marlinton Elementary ventured into the woods to see the story “The Gruffalo,” by Julia Donaldson, come to life.
In the story, a mouse fends for his life using his wits to survive. He has to outwit a snake, a fox and an owl. The kids took owl and snake-themed hikes and participated in a fox activity that included a game and craft making.
“I really like to just kind of step back a little bit and let the children explore and show interest in what they’ve been able to find out themselves in the woods and what they can do on their own,” Marks said.
Credit Eric Douglas / WVPB
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WVPB
Students from the Kindergarten Class at Marlinton Elementary School use microscopes on a recent nature tour at the Yew Mountain Center.
Although these activities were created for young children, the science and natural elements weren’t simplified. The kindergarten students used microscopes to look at a snake skin, visited a pond to see frogs and even watched a volunteer dissect an owl pellet to learn what the owl had eaten.
Abigail, a thin, blonde-haired five-year-old enjoyed the microscope.
“I saw a spider web. It looked stringy like string that you would like tie stuff on,” she said.
For Marks, introducing kids to science in the natural world helps bring science to life.
“We’re listening in the forest. We’re smelling things and by using microscopes, they’re seeing this detail that they’ve never appreciated before,” she said. “These kids are 4 and 5 years old, and they’re learning to use this pretty high-tech equipment.”
The volunteers at the Yew Mountain Center make these outdoor programs available to all the local schools in Pocahontas County at no charge and offer experiences appropriate to various age ranges. The program relies largely on donations and fundraising.
Students from Marlinton Elementary School trek off to a pond as part of their recent nature experience at Yew Mountain.
Marks said she prefers to offer programs like this early in the school year because it helps teachers understand how individual students learn.
“The outdoors are great because teachers and students and the family members that are here, they’re interacting with the children in a different way than they do in the school and they can strengthen their relationships with the kids,” she said.
She explained that some students learn well in a traditional classroom. Others learn with worksheets and on the computer.
“I feel like this is a way for students who don’t learn well that way to come out in nature and show that they’re really good at a different way of learning,” Marks said.
Astronomers using the Green Bank Telescope in Pocahontas County have discovered a massive neutron star. Scientists believe this is the largest neutron star ever discovered.
Neutron stars, sometimes called pulsars, are the compressed remains of stars that have exploded into a supernova. Supernovas occur when stars reach the end of their life and explode into a powerful burst of light and energy.
Neutron stars are one of the most dense objects in the universe, second only to black holes. But little else is known about the interior of one of these stars. Just a single sugar-cube worth of neutron star material would weigh 100 million tons on earth. That’s about the same as the entire human population.
The recently discovered star is about 4,600 light years from earth. According to a press release from the Green Bank Observatory, this neutron star approaches “the limits of how massive and compact a single object can become without crushing itself down into a black hole.”
Astronomers at the W.Va. telescope plan to continue studying this particular neutron star, and what it might reveal about the nature of spacetime.
On September 12, 1861, the Battle of Cheat Mountain was fought near the Randolph-Pocahontas County line. Taking place just five months into the Civil War, the battle was a significant loss for the Confederacy.
General Robert E. Lee—at the time commander of the Department of Northwestern Virginia—was trying to protect railroad lines in Western Virginia while keeping what would become northern West Virginia in Confederate hands, thereby thwarting the young statehood movement.
Before the battle, Lee’s subordinate, William Loring, gathered his forces on Valley Mountain. Brigadier General Joseph Reynolds, commander of the U.S. forces, had his headquarters at Elkwater and a strongly fortified post atop Cheat Mountain in Randolph County.
Continual rainfall bogged down the Confederate attack, which was foiled further by the discovery of Southern troops by Union pickets. Lee abandoned his original plan and ordered an advance against Elkwater. The Confederate troops, who were described as being “too wet and too hungry to fight,” were easily repelled.
Colonel John A. Washington, Lee’s aide-de-camp and the last owner of Mount Vernon, was killed while scouting for Lee at Elkwater.
