Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land. Sharecropping occurred extensively in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). The South had been devastated by war; planters had ample land but little money for wages or taxes. At the […]
After the election of President Lincoln, citizens of Charleston, South Carolina held nightly meetings to decide the possibility of secession. Great mass meeting to endorse the call of the legislature of South Carolina for a state convention to discuss the question of secession from the Union, held at Institute Hall, Charleston, S.C. on Monday, Nov. […]
*Note: Some of the language below may be a little antiquated because its excerpts and transcriptions from a the book -Transcription from Historic Houses of New Jersey By Weymer Jay Mills .J. B. Lippincott Company – written in 1902 = The original words provide a unique glimpse of the people and early times in New […]
Nestled in the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, is the county of Rockingham. The county is also known as “North Carolina’s North Star.” Created on December 29, 1785 from Guilford County, it was named after Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, the British Prime Minister from 1765 and again in 1782. […]
My Venture Into The Art/Business of Tattooing by Hylott L. Armstrong, Jr. At a very early age I became fascinated with tattoos. I don’t know and can’t explain why, but I was. I marveled at the images that never wore off of the skin of some people. How did they do that? How does it […]
A comic strip created a national phenomenon across the America in the late 1930’s that is still celebrated today. Women inviting men out on a date is more accepted today, but this was almost unheard of before 1937. Alfred Gerald Capp’s was the writer for a popular hillbilly comic strip, Li’l Abner in the 1930s. […]
Children living in the coal mining town of Kempton, Maryland-West Virginia had difficulty finding a place to play as these photographs taken May 1939 by photographer John Vachon reveal. Children playing in street of company town. Kempton, West Virginia Children playing in street of company town, Kempton, West Virginia. Note open ditches Children playing in […]
Can you believe that sometimes children as young as twelve worked in coal mines? When photographer John Vachon visited the coal mine town of Kempton, Maryland-West Virginia in May 0f 1939, he took outstanding photographs of the people in the small company town, including these of some of the coal miner’s children. They give us a […]
The Kempton, Maryland-West Virginia coal mine has been abandoned. None of the miners were expecting it In early April 1950 a notice was placed in the window at the company store that the mines would close in a week. None of the miners were expecting this. “At midnight April 15, 1950, the Buxton & Landstreet […]
In May, 1939, photographer John Vachon visited the coal-mining town of Kempton, Maryland-West Virginia when the miners were on a 30 day strike before their annual contract was renewed. The song below, We Done Quit, was sung by Sam Johnson and recorded by George G. Korson at the Scott’s Mine in West Virginia in 1940. […]
