The Great Cholera Outbreak
In 1873, there was a world-wide cholera epidemic. One of the worst hit places in the Appalachian region was the East Tennessee town of Greeneville, which saw 90 percent of its population either die or...
12 Apr 201611min
The Greenbrier Ghost
In 1896, Elva Zona Heaster met and married Edward Shue, a drifter who had just arrived in Elva’s hometown of Greenbrier, West Virginia, to work as a blacksmith. In less than a year, she would be dead ...
9 Apr 201612min
The Last Public Hanging in West Virginia
When there is a public execution, one expects a somber affair. That wasn’t the case with John Morgan of Ripley, whose hanging on December 16, 1897, for a grisly triple murder had more of a carnival at...
5 Apr 201614min
John Brown
In the summer of 1859, as the country was rapidly coming apart over the issue of slavery, a man slipped into the Appalachian town of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia under an assumed name and began preparing ...
29 Mar 201614min
The Hermit of Big Bald Mountain
On today’s episode of Stories, Steve tells the story of David Grier, who spent his adult life atop Big Bald Mountain, just above Flag Pond, Tennessee on the North Carolina border. You might call him t...
26 Mar 201610min
The English Doctor
Up until the end of the nineteenth century, most “doctoring” in the rural parts of Appalachia was done by folk healers or “granny-women,” who used old time roots and herbs and traditional treatments. ...
22 Mar 201611min
The Dictator
In the mid-19th century, American “filibusters” descended on Latin America with an eye on extending the United States’ influence over the area. The most notorious of these men was William Walker of Te...
19 Mar 201615min
The Appalachian Trump
At one time, Buchanan County, Virginia, was the home of the largest number of millionaires in the Commonwealth of Virginia, due to the money to be made mining coal. Probably the best known of these “o...
12 Mar 201619min
