Stories of Appalachia

In 1755, the frontier settlement of Draper’s Meadow was shattered by a brutal Shawnee raid in which many settlers were killed and the survivors captured. Among those taken prisoner was Mary Draper Ingles, a young wife and mother.  The group was forced into a grueling march north to a village in the Ohio country. Separated from her children and facing a winter in the wilderness, Mary made a choice...

James Harrod was a soldier, a longhunter, an explorer and the man who founded Kentucky’s first permanent pioneer settlement. But in February 1792, the legendary Colonel Harrod walked into the woods and never returned. Today we tell the story of the man who founded Harrodsburg, Kentucky and the many theories surrounding his mysterious disappearance, including a possible connection to the fabled Swi...

Roger Tandy Quisenberry had every advantage in life: wealth, education, and opportunity, but chose a path few could understand. From the California Gold Rush to a dangerous expedition in Nicaragua, his early years were filled with adventure. But when he returned home to Kentucky, something had changed. He withdrew from everybody, lived alone in a crude cabin, and became known for his extreme isola...

In the spring of 1895, a sudden wage cut swept through the Flat Top-Pocahontas coal fields along the Virginia/West Virginia border, touching off one of the earliest large-scale labor confrontations in that part of Appalachia. What began as a wildcat strike quickly shut down mines along the Norfolk and Western Railroad, disrupted coal shipments to Norfolk, and brought state militia into the company...

Born aboard a ship of immigrants in the Atlantic Ocean, Kasper Mansker became a longhunter, venturing out to explore the wilderness of Kentucky and Tennessee from his home in what’s now West Virginia. From those longhunts to building Mansker’s Station and helping shape the Cumberland frontier, his life is part of the story of those who moved west on the Appalachian frontier.   If you enjoy our sto...

Daniel Ellis of Carter County, Tennessee was a wagon maker who became one of the most successful guides of the Civil War. Living behind Confederate lines in East Tennessee, Ellis created a secret route through the Appalachian Mountains to Union territory at Cumberland Gap. Traveling mostly at night and avoiding Confederate patrols, Ellis made about twenty journeys through East Tennessee and Southw...

This week, Rod and Steve tell the story of Ray Vaughn Shores, better known as Von Shores, an Appalachian aviator and popular aerial daredevil in Southwest Virginia and Eastern Kentucky during the 1920s and ’30s, who, it’s said, once crashed his airplane near Pound, Virginia He was a favorite at local airshows and fairs and it’s also said he ran whiskey for Al Capone during prohibition. Be sure to...

This week, we tell a story from the lawless mountain border between western North Carolina and east Tennessee during the Civil War. As great battles raged elsewhere, outlaws and deserters came to the mountains to hide, to rob and to turn old trails and creek crossings into killing grounds. At the center of this story is John Jackson Kirkland and his gang, whose violence touched soldiers, civilians...

This week, Steve and Rod tell the story of Granville “Stick” McGhee and Walter “Brownie” McGhee, two brothers from East Tennessee whose music helped shape American blues and early rock ’n’ roll. Born in Knoxville, the McGhee brothers took the music they heard growing up and used it to launch themselves onto the national stage. Be sure to subscribe to the Stories podcast wherever you get your favor...

In 1730, seven Cherokee leaders traveled from their Appalachian home to the heart of London. Hand-picked by a Scottish adventurer named Alexander Cumming, they were presented to King George II as "Kings" of a new empire. Today we tell the story of that voyage and how these Native Americans navigated their way through the streets of the city at the center of the British Empire, all while securing a...

The Big Bull Tunnel in Wise County, Virginia looks like any other railroad tunnel, just a simple cut through a hillside.  Looks, though, can be deceiving, as the tunnel’s history is packed with accidents, strange noises, deaths, and a chilling encounter that turned a routine inspection into a bit of Appalachian folklore. In this episode, Steve and Rod tell the story of the tunnel’s difficult const...

Today we tell not one but two stories, both involving the same community in Fannin County, Georgia.  In 1864 two men, brothers-in-law Elisha Stanley and Evan Hughes, became the victims of a gang of violent bushwhackers who terrorized the area during the Civil War, leaving their families to pick up the pieces. Forty years later, in 1906, the Tilley Bend massacre occurred in the same area, causing a...

This week Rod and Steve tell the story of a gang of robbers who cast a long shadow over Ashe County, North Carolina in the unsettled years after the Civil War. One by one they fell, until only Linville Eller remained. He, too, met his fate in 1890 after a massive manhunt.   This is the story of the Eller Gang, led by brothers Linville and Henry Eller, the North Carolina high country’s most notorio...

This week’s story is the bizarre true tale of Leila Davidson Hansell, known as "The Sunshine Woman," and the controversy surrounding her final resting place in Hendersonville, NC. Leila's final wish upon her death in 1915 was to be buried above ground in a unique mausoleum topped with 147 squares of prism glass, designed to let the sun shine down on her remains. For over two decades, her glass-top...

Born in Blount County, Hut Amerine grew into one of East Tennessee’s most notorious moonshiners. After the Civil War, federal whiskey taxes ignited a bitter conflict between mountain distillers and revenue agents. Accused in the fatal shooting of a federal officer, Amerine became the target of an intense manhunt, spoke publicly in his own defense, escaped jail twice, and ultimately vanished. It’s...

James Faye Hall, better known as Roy Hall, was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, in 1921.  He died in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee in 1984.    Between those dates is a story about a hillbilly boogie pianist who played for Uncle Dave Macon in a traveling version of the Grand Ole Opry as a child, formed his own hillbilly/R&B band. He found success in Detroit, worked as a session musician for such Nashvi...

We’ve told the story of labor conflicts from Harlan, Kentucky to Blair Mountain, West Virginia. This week, we tell a story that’s not set in the Kentucky or West Virginia coalfields, but in Western North Carolina. It’s the story of the 1906 “Tally War,” a violent clash between Italian railroad laborers and company officials of contractors for the South and Western Railroad, which was building thei...

A once thriving lumber and mill town in the mountains of western North Carolina, Mortimer rose fast, becoming prosperous…until it was washed away twice in massive flooding events. Shortly after a 1916 wildfire burned large tracts of timberland in the mountains,  two hurricanes struck the area back to back, causing historic floods not seen again in the area until Helene in 2024, nearly wiping out t...

This week Steve and Rod tell the story of a Christmas morning that ended in heartbreak instead of celebration. In 1882, a passenger train and a freight engine collided near Millboro, Virginia, killing six crewmen and scalding the lone surviving passenger. How this tragedy occurred, the story of the men who paid the price along with that of the injured passenger, is another one of the Stories of Ap...

John Pemberton Gatewood was a notorious Confederate bushwhacker/guerrilla leader.   Born in Fentress County, Tennessee, in 1844, Gatewood's life took a dark turn after a Union attack on his family led him to abandon the Confederate army and become a guerrilla fighter. Leading his own unit in north Georgia and known as the long-haired, red-bearded beast, Gatewood was driven by his thirst for reveng...

Major Lewis Redmond’s story sounds like it comes from a 19th century dime novel.  He was a Carolina moonshiner, an outlaw and, thanks to actually being in some of those dime novels after the Civil War, a folk hero.   His killing of a U. S. Marshal led to a life on the run across North and South Carolina, making Redmond a legend.  Today we tell his story.   Be sure to follow the Stories of Appalach...

In 1955, at the age of 67, Emma Gatewood became the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine. In this episode, Steve and Rod tell the story of her remarkable journey from a childhood in rural Ohio, through years of hardship and abuse, to the day this grandmother stepped onto the trail with nothing but a sack, a showe...

In 1909, a Johnson City businessman named A.J. Slagle was lured by promises of buried Spanish gold hidden in a Cocke County house. What began as a desperate bid to recover from business losses ended in a murder, the body tossed into the French Broad River. Join Steve and Rod as they tell a true story of greed, deception, and a treasure that never existed, a case that shocked East Tennessee and bec...

Four years after the Hillsville courthouse shootout shocked Virginia, another one of the Allen brothers met a violent end. Jack Allen, brother of Floyd Allen, and once a constable in that Carroll County courtroom, was shot and killed in 1916 at a roadhouse near Mt. Airy, North Carolina. His killer, 24-year-old Will McCraw, claimed self-defense and was acquitted. But the story doesn’t stop there. M...

After the Civil War, thousands of defeated Confederates refused to live under the Union flag. Instead, they packed up their families and headed for new lives in South America in a Confederate exodus from the United States. One of them was Ezekiel B. Pyles, a young man from the mountains of north Georgia, who rode with General John Hunt Morgan’s raiders, fought across East Tennessee and Southwest V...