The West Virginia Humanities Council Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Legends Of Lore Marker Dedicated To Banjo Player Aunt Jeanie Wilson

Aunt Jeanie Wilson was recently honored with a Legends of Lore sign in Chief Logan State Park.

Aunt Jeanie Wilson was usually playing her banjo somewhere along the road in Logan County, surrounded by a crowd of neighbors.

Her granddaughter Beverly Smith was part of that crowd as a young girl. Recently, at the age of 73, she stood with dignitaries in Chief Logan State Park for the unveiling of the Aunt Jeanie Wilson Legends of Lore sign.

Smith said, while growing up, her grandmother’s house was like a never-ending holiday, where friends and family were always coming and going.

“Her door was open to anyone,” Smith said. “The kids that grew up down there, where we lived on Crooked Creek, would hear her music play. And she would be on her front porch in the swing, playing her banjo. You would hear the music all over the neighborhood. She invited all these artists and different people to come and sit on the front porch and play with her anytime they wanted to.”

Smith flew in with her husband to attend the dedication. She said flying was something her grandmother was very afraid to do, and turned down an invitation to be on the Jack Paar show because she did not want to fly. However, when invited to the United Mine Workers Convention in Denver she decided to fly because she so strongly supported the union.

*Credit: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Smith grew up singing and dancing along to her grandmother’s music. She said anywhere Wilson played there would be a crowd.

Roots of Blues

Wilson played old mountain music — which predates bluegrass music. Old mountain music is a blend of Scottish and English ballads and African Dance and hymnal music from the enslaved African people.

The Claw hammer style of playing originates from enslaved African American musicians who made the earliest banjos out of hollowed out gourds with animal hyde as strings.

Kim Johnson plays the banjo claw hammer style.

*Credit: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The music was distinctive of early southern Appalachian mountain music. It’s different from a bluegrass banjo style, where the strumming hand of the player is pulling upward.

Claw hammer got its name from the claw-like shape the player makes with their strumming hand while playing. The banjo player strums downward, often using the tips of their fingers and nails.

“She always just used your fingernails and she trimmed up like you would for a harp. It was a very unique style,” Smith said.

West Virginia Woman

Friends said Wilson was a mountain woman through and through. She would hike up into the mountains to find poke and creasy greens, and mushrooms to feed her family. She was a sharpshooter with a shotgun and hosted big dinners at her house every Sunday.

Bobby Taylor met Wilson at the 1950 Mountain State Art and Craft Fair in Ripley, where Wilson had become a regular. They played together often after meeting.

“She just did what was pure and old from the mountains,” Taylor said. “I always considered her tops as far as the heritage,and the music. She had the most beautiful right hand on the banjo, smooth as a ribbon.”

Bobby Taylor plays the fiddle.

*Credit: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

West Virginia Suffering

Wilson married at age 18, and had four children with her husband James Dewey Wilson. In 1939 she lost her seven-year-old child to pneumonia and later that year her husband died in a coal mining accident.

“You had to suffer to be able to play the music and have the feeling and soul in it like she had. There’s real feeling and real soul,” Taylor said.

He said her understanding of pain and true sadness is what made her such an enlightened musician.

“People that really suffered. You can feel the chill in the music. All of that comes through. The sorrow, the pain — but also the good times. The light, the dancing. It’s beautiful,” Taylor said.

Legend and Lore

Wilson went on to play for Ronald Reagan in the White House, and often played for Arch Moore, the former governor, who wrote her letters from prison after he was convicted for mail and tax fraud, according to her grandchildren.

Smith said Wilson changed her political affiliation from Democrat to Republican after meeting Ronald Reagan.

Wilson won the 1984 Vandalia award.

*Credit: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

She became a fixture at festivals around the state, appeared on the show “Real People.”.

Wilson died at age 92 at Logan General Hospital. Her family members said she was playing the banjo with friends and family up until her last days.

Now, nestled in Chief Logan State Park sits Aunt Jeanie Wilson’s legends and lore marker.

The marker was created with help from Logan County Chamber of Commerce, West Virginia State Parks, the National Coal Heritage Authority, and the West Virginia Folklife program at the West Virginia Humanities Council.

W.Va. Humanities Council Offering Grants Up To $20,000

The West Virginia Humanities Council is offering grants ranging from $1,500 or less up to $20,000.

The council is especially interested in projects that address civic engagement and civics education, it said in a news release.

The deadline is Feb. 1. The categories are major grants, up to $20,000 awarded twice a year; fellowships of $3,000 awarded annually for scholarly research projects; and minigrants, $1,500 or less awarded four times a year.

Major grants are for public programs that may include lectures, school projects, symposia, panel discussions and other events.

Eligible fellowship projects include history, theory and criticism of the arts; ethics; history; and other topics.

Minigrants support small projects, single events, lectures, small museum exhibits and other work. Minigrant deadlines are Feb. 1, April 1, June 1 and Oct. 1.

More information is available at www.wvhumanities.org.

Marshall University App Brings History To Life In West Virginia And Beyond

The recently renovated Coin Harvey House on Third Avenue in Huntington is a beautiful old building with a double staircase and glass windows. It easily stands out from its modern-day surroundings, which include a fast food joint across the street and an auto body shop next door.

“I am from this area, and I have lived and played in Huntington since I was little,” said Amanda Shaver, a Cabell County native and a graduate student at the Marshall University history department. “I remember seeing this house. It has such a unique look and feel to it, that once you see it, you won’t forget it. It looks like it belongs in New Orleans, or somewhere not Huntington.”

For a long time, the house was boarded up and abandoned, trapping much of its past inside and making its story nearly inaccessible to the public.

The historic Coin Harvey House is located on Third Avenue in Huntington, West Virginia.

Today, learning that history is as easy as pulling up an app on your phone — the Clio app, to be precise, which was developed about seven years ago by Marshall University’s history department.

Clio is a free website and mobile application that guides users through walking tours of historical and cultural sites created by volunteers, interns and students.

“Just the opportunity to research something I had seen so many times growing up, and to actually know the history of it, and why it’s here, and what it means to the community really inspired me,” Shaver said. She worked on a Clio entry about the Coin Harvey House’s history earlier this year.

In September, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced Clio was making some serious upgrades, thanks to several donations and grants, including $81,398 from the NEH grant and a $60,000 NEH matching grant.

Shaver’s entry on the Coin Harvey House showcases some of those upgrades. In addition to a standard five-paragraph account of the history behind the house, she also included 360-degree images from inside, and an interview with Jim St. Clair, a local who most-recently renovated the house.

The Coin Harvey House was built in the late 1800’s for William Harvey, a local lawyer and advocate for the “free silver” idea, which supported backing American money with silver, at a time when money was mostly backed by gold. Years after Harvey died in the 1960s, the house became a hub for local motorcyclists, until it fell into disrepair.

According to Shaver’s interview with St. Clair, the Harvey House is the last residence standing out of several large, historic homes that had once occupied Third Avenue.

Clio was first created by Marshall professor David Trowbridge seven years ago as an engagement tool. He said the program is about showing students that history is everywhere.

“I wanted to show them that history wasn’t just something that happened on the East Coast and cities like Boston, but was all around them,” he said.

David Trowbridge is a history professor at Marshall University. He developed Clio about seven years ago.

Every semester he offers students the opportunity to create entries of a historical site of their choosing for Clio. With the aforementioned grants — including support from the Whiting Foundation, the Knight Foundation and the West Virginia Humanities Council — Trowbridge said his students and other contributors can incorporate more multimedia, like interviews and images.

Still, the process of researching a site’s past remains the same.

“They become people who are not content to simply Google it, or accept the first few hits that Google gives them,” Trowbridge said. “They become savvy consumers of information in an information age, when people oftentimes struggle to find valid sources online.”

Steven Straley, a graduate student at Marshall University, stands next to a statue of John Marshall, fourth chief justice of the United States, for whom Marshall University is named. Straley wrote about Marshall for the history-focused travel app, Clio.

Today, Trowbridge reports Clio has been used in more than 100 universities and 300 historical hubs throughout the country. It houses 600 walking tours nationwide.

Not only are there more entries, but there’s more people uploading them. Through donations and grants, Trowbridge said the Clio Foundation has offered a few paid opportunities for interns and volunteers to create entries.

Emma Satterfield recently moved to Huntington from Texas to work on Clio through the Preserve West Virginia AmeriCorps program.

“I love the sort of public aspect that Clio has, and how [it’s] not just looking at a book or going straight up to the monument and looking at a sign,” Satterfield said. “It’s looking personal stories, sometimes, and the way that [they] really connect to actual people.”

Clio is most popular in its home state of West Virginia, where Trowbridge said there are about 80 Clio tours. He and Eric Waggoner, Executive Director of the West Virginia Humanities Council, call the app a great tool to highlight the state’s “heritage tourism,” in which people travel to learn more about a place’s history and culture.

“The great benefit of Clio, I think, is that it turns the world into a museum,” Waggoner said. “It connects historical properties and historically significant sites and locations with the user directly through phone technology. And it allows people in their travels … to go on what amounts to basically a walking tour of historically significant sites, with information.”

Emma Satterfield works from Marshall University on creating West Virginia Clio entries through AmeriCorps and Preserve West Virginia.

Yet, West Virginia also can be one of the trickiest places to use Clio, where some rural areas still lack broadband infrastructure and reliable cell service. Trowbridge said he’s hoping Clio will one day get a grant to address that.

“One of the things we’re trying to apply [for], are grants for some kind of a system that would make it possible to download a walking tour in advance, and then it could just use your phone’s GPS,” Trowbridge said.

For now, Clio users can download PDFs of tours before traveling.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

From Corn Liquor to State Pride – Origins of ‘West by God Virginia’

re at West Virginia Public Broadcasting we’ve been asking listeners what they wonder most about West Virginia. The latest question that won out in an online poll came to us from St. Albans resident Trish Hatfield. She asked “Where does the phrase ‘West by God Virginia’ come from?” WVPB reached out to experts across the state and discovered one of the first times the phrase was found in a publication — and we have a good idea why it has stuck around.

Here at West Virginia Public Broadcasting we’ve been asking listeners what they wonder most about West Virginia.

The latest question that won out in an online poll came to us from St. Albans resident Trish Hatfield. She asked “Where does the phrase ‘West by God Virginia’ come from?” WVPB reached out to experts across the state and discovered one of the first times the phrase was found in a publication — and we have a good idea why it has stuck around.

“West by God Virginia” is an idiom many West Virginians know well, but its exact origins have traditionally been less well-understood.

West Virginia University linguistics professor Kirk Hazen did some digging for us into the phrase. The earliest printed version he found was in a Virginia magazine published in 1926 called “The Virginia Spectator.” It reads:

“And it is, we believe, the only way that corn can be mixed and presented to a girl — except the iron plated ones from West (by God) Virginia.”
The Virginia Spectator, 1926

The article was written by students at the University of Virginia who, in the middle of the prohibition, are likely alluding to making alcohol, Hazen said.

He said the quote is basically saying West Virginia women can hold their liquor.

“And the implication here is that they are accustomed to drinking homemade corn liquor,” he explained. “So, they can handle it without having to mix it up in certain concoctions.”

Hazen discovered this publication with the help from a Google Books application called Ngram Viewer. It’s an online tool that sifts through a massive digital database of millions of publications in several languages.

This screenshot of Google’s Ngram Viewer shows a peak in the published phrase “West by God Virginia” in the early 1960s — perhaps due to the centennial celebration of West Virginia in 1963. *Courtesy of Kirk Hazen*

Hazen said the phrase likely appeared in written form earlier than 1926, but to confirm that it would take months of sifting through physical documents, such as newspaper clippings, journals, books and magazines.

Hazen found another early publication of the phrase in 1939 in an academic article published by WVU’s English department. The phrase is found in a footnote written by Harold Wentworth. The quote explores the possible history behind “West by God Virginia.” It reads:

“Among phrases so formed is the well-known ‘West by God Virginia.’ But the expletive insertion here is more syntactical than morphological. One story of the origin of this phrase, true or not, is that a native West Virginian, irked at being called a Virginian, retorted with an intonation that can only be suggested here, ‘not Virginia, but West by God Virginia.’”
Harold Wentworth, WVU Department of English, 1939

The exact origin of “West by God Virginia” as a spoken phrase is difficult to pinpoint.

Hazen points out how most spoken language is almost a living organic thing — not something that’s tracked, monitored, sorted or in databases.

But Hazen and other experts say there’s a good chance the phrase made its first oral appearance sometime after West Virginia became a state in 1863. But they say this is educated guesswork.

WVU Linguistics Professor Kirk Hazen. Hazen found one of the earliest uses of “West by God Virginia” in a publication from 1926 about corn liquor. *Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

We spoke with another expert from West Virginia University. Associate Professor Rosemary Hathaway specializes in American folklore and literature.

Hathaway has been working on a book that explores the cultural history of the term “Mountaineer.” She points to parallels between the origins of “Mountaineer” and the phrase “West by God Virginia.”

“The first time the term Mountaineer shows up as a synonym for West Virginian is before statehood,” she noted.

Hathaway said before we separated from Virginia, there was a legislator from Harrison County who sent a letter to a newspaper in Richmond expressing annoyance that his region, western Virginia, was not being fairly represented in the Virginia Legislature.

And when he signed that letter?

“He signed it, not with his name, but as a Mountaineer,” Hathaway explained. “So, I sort of see that as being parallel to the phrase ‘West by God Virginia’ in the sense that it’s just kind of a way of reminding both ourselves and outsiders that we are distinct from Virginia, and we have a unique identity and a unique history as West Virginians.”

WVU Associate English Professor Rosemary Hathaway. *Credit: Jesse Wright/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

But none of this answers the underlying question — why did people start inserting “by God” into the name of West Virginia?

The use of “by God” in language dates back to the Anglo-Saxons, but it became common place in the 1600s, according to Eric Waggoner, the executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Waggoner is also a retired history of English teacher.

Waggoner said “by God” has always been used as a way to emphasize something. He sees the inclusion of it in “West by God Virginia” as an expression of pride, when so much of the world perceives West Virginia in a negative light.

“There’s been a sort of narrative about West Virginia that focuses on illness; it focuses on poverty; it focuses on hard times; it focuses on this sort of thin, cultural, and educational infrastructure; a lot of things that are here that need attention and that people who live here know intimately,” Waggoner explained.

He said many West Virginians are tired and fed up with this negative narrative, and by adding “by God” into our state name, our identity, it allows us to reclaim our image.

“There’s a kind of expression of pride, not just in place, but in being a person who is from this place, that ‘West by God Virginia’ seems to articulate in a very handy, in a very positive way,” he said.

Even though the exact origin of the spoken phrase may be difficult to find, Waggoner and others said today it’s often used to illustrate West Virginia as unique and separate from Virginia – that, by God, we are here, we exist, and we have our own identity as West Virginians.

Lady D Passes On Love of the Blues

Doris Fields, an R&B, soul, and blues musician and songwriter, also known as Lady D, is the daughter of a coal miner. Her dad moved to West Virginia from Alabama at 10 years old and spent 50 years in the mines. She currently lives in Beckley.

Fields explained that music has been in her blood since she was a young girl, growing up in Cabin Creek, West Virginia.

“I’ve always wanted to be a singer. I remember being three years old and literally, every Saturday me and my grandmother would watch ‘American Bandstand’. And I knew that’s what I want to do. Of course, I started out singing in church like just about everybody else, but R&B was always what I loved growing up,” she said.

As part of her devotion and exploration of blues music, Fields authored a one-woman play about Bessie Smith. Smith was the most popular female blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, earning her the nickname the “Empress of the Blues”. Fields has now been doing her one-woman show for 17 years.

“I love Chicago blues, and I talk about classic blues a lot because that was the Bessie Smith era in the 20s and 30s when women were really out front in the blues. They wore the fancy costumes and everything,” Fields said. “I learn new things about Bessie all the time. And she’s a great inspiration to me. We’ve been together all this time and we are sort of interchangeable. She is me and I am her.”

Fields loves to share the connections between the blues and modern styles of music, like R&B and country, or even rock ‘n’ roll. She often makes presentations for school groups, and says she enjoys explaining to them that popular music today has its roots in the blues.

“The first thing I usually ask kids is what kind of music do you listen to? And of course, in this area is usually country they say they like that they listen to country, they like rock ‘n’ roll, or they like hip hop. And then when I say, ‘well, this all came from blues,’ they don’t believe me. And then we’ll get to talking. we’ll do a couple of exercises around how blues was created, and then…they get it right away,” she said.

She breaks down songs to show students chord progressions and rhythms from blues songs and show them how the same riffs show up in rock, pop and country music.

Fields participated in the West Virginia Humanities Council’s Folklife Apprenticeship Program, which connects emerging artists to mentors in their tradition. She was paired up with gospel singer Xavier Oglesby of Beckley.

She said that, at one time, Christians called music like the blues the “devil’s music” because of its secular themes. But Fields and Oglesby often found more similarities than differences between gospel and the blues. Revisiting some of the old songs they learned in church growing up, they found reminders and refrains of the so-called “devil’s music.”

“It wasn’t so much me teaching Xavier anything about blues, but we were sort of reminding each other about where we both came from. He’s a great gospel singer. He comes from a family of ministers. And he’s a minister himself. But his family has owned juke joints. We don’t see a lot of that distinction that people make, you know, between blues is the Devil’s music and gospel is God’s music. It’s all God’s music,” she said.

This story is part of an Inside Appalachia episode about folklife, and how our traditions evolve as they pass from person to person.

Program on Journalism Set Next Month in West Virginia

The West Virginia Humanities Council is presenting the last of its series on journalism and informed citizens next month in Shepherdstown.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eric Eyre of The Charleston Gazette-Mail and National Public Radio newscaster Giles Snyder will discuss the importance of pursuing complex stories and creating context for them.

Former West Virginia Public Broadcasting Eastern Panhandle bureau chief Cecelia Mason will moderate the free, public program on Sept. 6.

Eyre received a Pulitzer last year for his series on painkillers. Snyder is a former West Virginia Public Radio employee and an alumnus of Marshall University.

The program is the last of three public presentations produced with funding through the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” initiative administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils.