Stories of Appalachia

This week we tell the story of the Wright-Reynolds feud and the legendary figure at its center: a man folks often called “Devil”:  John Wesley Wright. Riding through the rugged mountains of eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia, Wright forged a reputation as a fierce lawman, detective, and feudist whose very name struck fear into outlaws and rivals alike. At the turn of the 20th century he also...

This week Steve and Rod share the true survival story of Captain Robert A. Ragan. A schoolteacher and Union supporter from Cocke County in East Tennessee, Ragan was forced into hiding for 18 months after Confederate soldiers dragged him from his classroom. Living as a fugitive in the mountain wilderness, Ragan survived close encounters with rebel patrols, a brutal foot injury, and near-executions....

Before Robert Fulton, there was James Rumsey, an inventor who defied his skeptics and the power of the Potomac River at Shepardstown, in what’s now West Virginia. Today we tell the story of how a chance encounter with George Washington led to Rumsey’s water-jet propelled steamboat twenty years before Robert Fulton’s Claremont and a patent war with another inventor. Subscribe to the Stories podcast...

Before Elkmont became a tourist destination and eventually a ghost town, it was home to Levi Trentham, a mountain landowner, businessman, hunter, guide, and unofficial mayor. As railroads, lumber companies, wealthy tourists, and then the Great Smoky Mountains National Park transformed the Smokies, Levi watched the world he knew disappear. He also fought against the stereotypes outsiders used to po...

In 1906, escaped convict Will Harris arrived in Asheville, North Carolina, and unleashed one of the most violent crime sprees in the city’s history. After killing several men, including police officers, Harris fled Asheville, sparking a massive manhunt involving hundreds of armed citizens. This is the story of Will Harris, the outlaw who claimed he came straight from hell… and brought hell with hi...

Richard Trotter was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, leaving behind his wife, Anne. Instead of living quietly, raising their son, she became a scout and courier on the Appalachian frontier, earning the nickname “Mad Anne” for her fearless rides through dangerous territory before marrying another man she met on the frontier. Her life was full of adventure, including the often told st...

For decades a preacher would come to the Bristol, Virginia, train station to meet the incoming trains, looking for couples who’d come to the city to elope.  He claimed to have married 5,142 couples, over 10,000 people, in a matrimonial career that included rival preachers, angry fathers, runaway couples, a “matrimonial hotel,” and even a plea to the state of Tennessee for a state pension based on...

In 1794, thousands of federalized militia marched into western Pennsylvania to put down an uprising by American farmers. Their crime? Making whiskey and refusing to pay a federal tax on it. The Whiskey Rebellion was the first major test of the new federal government's authority, and George Washington personally accompanied the troops sent to suppress it. But why did a tax on whiskey bring the youn...

Dillion “Old Dill” Asher was one of the early pioneers of southeastern Kentucky, a frontier soldier and farmer who became the toll keeper at the Cumberland River ford at what’s now Pineville, giving him a front row seat to the early settlement of the state. In this episode, we tell Old Dill’s story, from his connection to the first settlers in what became Tennessee, his military service, his journ...

In 1779, on the Georgia frontier, a group of armed Loyalist soldiers forced their way into Nancy Hart's cabin, demanding a hot meal from a helpless woman and her daughter. Instead, they found themselves face to face with one of the American Revolution's toughest and fiercest patriots. Join us as we tell the story of Nancy Hart, whose courage, quick thinking, and daring stand against soldiers loyal...

The infamous Killing Rock massacre ended with the deaths of a moonshiner and his wife and several of their friends on a mountain along the Virginia-Kentucky border.  It began years earlier with a lawsuit, a bitter rivalry, and two determined men on opposite sides of the law. This week, we trace the feud between lawman Doc Marshall Benton Taylor and moonshiner Ira "Bad Ira" Mullins, and the long ro...

In the winter of 1789, Cherokee war leader John Watts made a daring decision. Instead of returning to the Chickamauga towns as he usually did for the winter, he established a hidden winter camp deep in the mountains, at what’s now the Lamar Alexander Rocky Fork State Park in Unicoi County, Tennessee, so he and his men could attack the frontier farms when it was least expected.   When John Sevier l...

In the late 1780s a man from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, William Hewitt, crossed the Ohio River seeking to find solitude in the Appalachian wilderness after heartbreak changed his life forever. Living alone in caves and rough dugouts for nearly fifty years, Hewitt lived in peace alongside the Shawnee, served as a scout during the War of 1812, and became a legend across southeastern Ohio.  But th...

In September 1894, a routine drilling operation on a Tyler County, West Virginia, farm broke into a massive natural gas pocket, unleashing one of the most powerful and uncontrollable wells the world had ever seen. For nearly a year, the Big Moses well defied human engineering, triggered massive fissures in the ground, survived two separate lightning strikes, and wasted billions of cubic feet of ga...

Vincent “Clawhammer” Witcher became one of the most feared Confederate guerrilla leaders along the Virginia/Kentucky border in the Civil War.  As the leader of what was called “Witcher’s Boys, he operated from the Ohio River in what’s now West Virginia down into northeast Tennessee, bringing brutal violence to both friend and foe alike.  This week we tell his story, including notorious incidents i...

The early settlements along the Watauga and Holston Rivers in what’s now Tennessee were the very beginning of "The Wild West." While names like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and William Bean filled the history books, another man was standing right beside them at nearly every major turning point—yet his story has been lost to time.   In this episode, suggested by one of our listeners, Steve and Rod te...

In 1781, as the American Revolution raged, Appalachian settlers in what’s now West Virginia rose in armed rebellion against the Virginia government. Angry over crushing taxes, forced military service, and wartime demands, John Claypool led an Appalachian backcountry revolt that sparked panic across the Shenandoah Valley. This is the little-known story of Claypool’s Rebellion, another one of the St...

Quill Rose was a Confederate veteran, bear hunter, blacksmith, storyteller, and moonshiner who lived deep in the Smoky Mountains along Eagle Creek. In this episode of Stories of Appalachia, we tell his story, from Cades Cove in the 1840s through war, family life, isolation, to his illegal whiskey-making in the mountains. Along the way, Quill became a figure known not just for survival, but also fo...

This week we have not one, but two episodes for you! For this story, we travel back to December of 1908, when people in Russell and Adair counties in Kentucky were shaken after 12-year-old Mamie Womack failed to return home from school. Her disappearance that winter afternoon triggered a desperate search, as neighbors, family, and bloodhounds followed a trail through the woods that uncovered a hor...

This week we have not one but two podcast episodes for you! In this one, we go to Glen Ferris, West Virginia, a town at the falls of the Kanawha River, to tell the story of the Glen Ferris Inn, a place that hosted presidents, businessmen, Civil War generals and even, it’s said, a ghost!  If you’ve not done so already, be sure to subscribe to the Stories podcast so you don’t miss any of our stories...

In the late 1600’s, Dr. John Lederer, a German immigrant to the Virginia colony, became one of the first Europeans to explore the Appalachian region. Between 1669 and 1670, Lederer made three trips into the Blue Ridge Mountains, traveled west and south through Native territories in Virginia and the Carolinas, and searched for a passage west through the Alleghenies. Along the way he encountered wol...

The highest mountain valley in Virginia is Burke’s Garden, also referred to as “God’s Thumbprint” for its bowl-like shape. It was here that something began killing sheep in the winter of 1952.  Night after night, farmers woke to fresh losses, and no one could agree on what was responsible. Was it a wolf, a panther, or something stranger and unexplainable?  This week we tell the story of Burke’s Ga...

This week we tell the strange and little-known story of the Mountain Cove Community, a spiritualist commune founded in the mountains of what’s now West Virginia in the early 1850s. Led by Reverends Thomas Lake Harris and James L. Scott, the group believed they could communicate with spirits, build a new Eden in Appalachia, and create a perfect society apart from the corruption of the outside world...

In 1948, a small town in West Virginia became the center of a growing national fear over the perceived evil influence of comic books.  There, in the town of Spencer, a schoolteacher and her students gathered thousands of comic books and set them ablaze in a bonfire, starting with one featuring the Man of Steel, Superman.  What led to this dramatic moment? In this episode, Rod and Steve tell the st...

George Washington Kirk was a carpenter from Greene County, Tennessee. He was also a feared and hated Union soldier/bushwhacker during the Civil War, operating in the mountains along the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.  Kirk and his band of Unionists known as Kirk's Raiders were hailed as heroes by some and denounced as nothing but savages by others. From the audacious raid on Camp Vance an...