Saturday, July 30, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
Benefit Singing in Blackwater
There's an ad for a Benefit Singing in today's Powell Valley News...
Osborne Chapel Church in cooperation with Blackwater Volunteer Fire Co. will sponsor a benefit singing for the family of Amber Anderkin, fifteen-year-old cancer patient of Blackwater who will be traveling to St. Jude Hospital, Memphis, on August 4 for extensive surgery and treatment. The benefit singing will be held at the Blackwater Volunteer Fire Co. building on Saturday, July 30 at 7PM. All area churches, gospel groups, and individual singers are invited to participate. Food will be available beginning at 6PM.
Anyone wishing to donate, who cannot attend the benefit singing, may send donations to: Mrs. Joyce Neeley, Clerk & Treasurer, Osborne Chapel Church, (Amber Anderkin Fund), 164 Neeley Drive, Blackwater VA 24221. For more details or information, please call Mary Ruth Davidson (346-1539), Katie Osborne (346-3026) or Mitzi Jones (346-1731).
Osborne Chapel Church in cooperation with Blackwater Volunteer Fire Co. will sponsor a benefit singing for the family of Amber Anderkin, fifteen-year-old cancer patient of Blackwater who will be traveling to St. Jude Hospital, Memphis, on August 4 for extensive surgery and treatment. The benefit singing will be held at the Blackwater Volunteer Fire Co. building on Saturday, July 30 at 7PM. All area churches, gospel groups, and individual singers are invited to participate. Food will be available beginning at 6PM.
Anyone wishing to donate, who cannot attend the benefit singing, may send donations to: Mrs. Joyce Neeley, Clerk & Treasurer, Osborne Chapel Church, (Amber Anderkin Fund), 164 Neeley Drive, Blackwater VA 24221. For more details or information, please call Mary Ruth Davidson (346-1539), Katie Osborne (346-3026) or Mitzi Jones (346-1731).
Blackwater to be featured on Internet Talk Radio
Blackwater, Virginia will be one of the topics to be featured on the "Appalachian Knowledge Economy" talk radio show on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 9AM (Eastern time). To listen to the live broadcast, go to www.voiceamerica.com and click on "Business."
The talk radio show will include interviews with the following Guests:
THEME: Arts, crafts, festivals & heritage
GUESTS:
9:02am - Jack Goins www.jgoins.com Melungeon Researcher, Rogersville TN – The VA/TN Melungeons
9:18am - Lindy Turner www.vacationaqt.com The Appalachian Quilt Trail, TN/VA – a back roads barn-hopping tour
9:33am – Nancy Garrettson www.abingdonartsdepot.org The Arts Depot, Abingdon VA – artisans, year-round studios
9:48am - Debby Loggans www.roundthemountain.org ‘Round the Mountain, Abingdon VA – artisans and crafts
Date: August 2, 2011 – 9:00AM EST
Episode Title: Arts, crafts, festivals & heritage
Episode Description:
Sustainable development community models often begin with community arts, crafts, culture, music and heritage celebrations. These festivals can help to nurture a shared sense of place, build pride in heritage, and expand civic engagement. Current ecommerce offers instant access to global markets for artisans, crafters, and musicians. Could future kcommerce offer better global markets for historians, bloggers, and poets? What if the emerging Appalachian knowledge economy could create community knowledge centers as valued community assets? Like festivals, could that also encourage a shared sense of place and pride in heritage? Join the dialogue and tour through Appalachia. We will begin in Blackwater, Virginia with fiber to the home, the Melungeons, and the dulcimer. We will travel the back roads on a barn hopping tour. We will visit down home festivals and even an artisan gateway. Come, get a taste of authentic Appalachia and imagine the emerging Appalachian knowledge economy.
For more information about the Appalachian Knowledge Economy Internet talk radio show, go to www.voiceamerica.com and click on "Business." Then scroll down and click on "Shows." Then scroll down and click on "Appalachian Knowledge Economy."
In addition to the live broadcast, VoiceAmerica will post an archived file of the show on their website, so that people can listen to the show afterwards, at their own convenience.
Joan
www.blackwaterva.org
The talk radio show will include interviews with the following Guests:
THEME: Arts, crafts, festivals & heritage
GUESTS:
9:02am - Jack Goins www.jgoins.com Melungeon Researcher, Rogersville TN – The VA/TN Melungeons
9:18am - Lindy Turner www.vacationaqt.com The Appalachian Quilt Trail, TN/VA – a back roads barn-hopping tour
9:33am – Nancy Garrettson www.abingdonartsdepot.org The Arts Depot, Abingdon VA – artisans, year-round studios
9:48am - Debby Loggans www.roundthemountain.org ‘Round the Mountain, Abingdon VA – artisans and crafts
Date: August 2, 2011 – 9:00AM EST
Episode Title: Arts, crafts, festivals & heritage
Episode Description:
Sustainable development community models often begin with community arts, crafts, culture, music and heritage celebrations. These festivals can help to nurture a shared sense of place, build pride in heritage, and expand civic engagement. Current ecommerce offers instant access to global markets for artisans, crafters, and musicians. Could future kcommerce offer better global markets for historians, bloggers, and poets? What if the emerging Appalachian knowledge economy could create community knowledge centers as valued community assets? Like festivals, could that also encourage a shared sense of place and pride in heritage? Join the dialogue and tour through Appalachia. We will begin in Blackwater, Virginia with fiber to the home, the Melungeons, and the dulcimer. We will travel the back roads on a barn hopping tour. We will visit down home festivals and even an artisan gateway. Come, get a taste of authentic Appalachia and imagine the emerging Appalachian knowledge economy.
For more information about the Appalachian Knowledge Economy Internet talk radio show, go to www.voiceamerica.com and click on "Business." Then scroll down and click on "Shows." Then scroll down and click on "Appalachian Knowledge Economy."
In addition to the live broadcast, VoiceAmerica will post an archived file of the show on their website, so that people can listen to the show afterwards, at their own convenience.
Joan
www.blackwaterva.org
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Blackwater Melungens
Blackwater Melungens
This article, a reprint in 1948, talks about “black-water Springs,” an area which is known today as Blackwater. There have been many references by various Melungeon researchers over the years to this article. I have copied a portion of the article below and have listed the website where Joanne Pezzullo has posted the article with a helpful introduction.
“It was reprinted from the Knoxville Register September 6, 1848 quoting from the Louisville Examiner. (We are sorry to have lost the name of the southern paper from which this is taken.)
We give to-day another amusing and characteristic sketch from a letter of our intelligent and sprightly correspondent, sojourning at present in one of the seldom-visited nooks hid away in our mountains.
You must know that within ten miles of this owl's nest, there is a watering-place, known hereabouts as 'black-water Springs.' It is situated in a narrow gorge, scarcely half a mile wide, between Powell's Mountain and the Copper Ridge, and is, as you may suppose, almost inaccessible. A hundred men could defend the pass against even a Xerxian army. Now this gorge and the tops and sides of the adjoining mountains are inhabited by a singular species of the human animal called MELUNGENS.
The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this. A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women--who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form of government.
These people made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed, as they were from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own creation, trampling on the marriage relation, despising all forms of religion, and subsisting upon corn (the only possible product of the soil) and wild game of the woods.These intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently their descendants (after the advances of the whites into this part of the state) with the negros and the whites, thus forming the present race of Melungens.
They are tall, straight, well- formed people, of a dark copper color, with Circassian features, but wooly heads and other similar appendages of our negro. They are privileged voters in the state in which they live and thus, you will perceive, are accredited citizens of the commonwealth. They are brave, but quarrelsome; and are hospitable and generous to strangers. They have no preachers among them and are almost without any knowledge of a Supreme Being. They are married by the established forms, but husband and wife separate at pleasure, without meeting any reproach or disgrace from their friends. They are remarkably unchaste, and want of chastity on the part of females is no bar to their marrying. They have but little association with their neighbors, carefully preserving their race, or class, or whatever you may call it: and are in every respect, save they are under the state government, a separate and distinct people. Now this is no traveller's story.
They are really what I tell you, without abating or setting down in aught in malice. They are behind their neighbors in the arts. They use oxen instead of horses in their agricultural attempts, and their implements of husbandry are chiefly made by themselves of wood. They are, without exception, poor and ignorant, but apparently happy.”
http://www.historical-melungeons.com/littels.html
This article, a reprint in 1948, talks about “black-water Springs,” an area which is known today as Blackwater. There have been many references by various Melungeon researchers over the years to this article. I have copied a portion of the article below and have listed the website where Joanne Pezzullo has posted the article with a helpful introduction.
“It was reprinted from the Knoxville Register September 6, 1848 quoting from the Louisville Examiner. (We are sorry to have lost the name of the southern paper from which this is taken.)
We give to-day another amusing and characteristic sketch from a letter of our intelligent and sprightly correspondent, sojourning at present in one of the seldom-visited nooks hid away in our mountains.
You must know that within ten miles of this owl's nest, there is a watering-place, known hereabouts as 'black-water Springs.' It is situated in a narrow gorge, scarcely half a mile wide, between Powell's Mountain and the Copper Ridge, and is, as you may suppose, almost inaccessible. A hundred men could defend the pass against even a Xerxian army. Now this gorge and the tops and sides of the adjoining mountains are inhabited by a singular species of the human animal called MELUNGENS.
The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this. A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women--who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form of government.
These people made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed, as they were from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own creation, trampling on the marriage relation, despising all forms of religion, and subsisting upon corn (the only possible product of the soil) and wild game of the woods.These intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently their descendants (after the advances of the whites into this part of the state) with the negros and the whites, thus forming the present race of Melungens.
They are tall, straight, well- formed people, of a dark copper color, with Circassian features, but wooly heads and other similar appendages of our negro. They are privileged voters in the state in which they live and thus, you will perceive, are accredited citizens of the commonwealth. They are brave, but quarrelsome; and are hospitable and generous to strangers. They have no preachers among them and are almost without any knowledge of a Supreme Being. They are married by the established forms, but husband and wife separate at pleasure, without meeting any reproach or disgrace from their friends. They are remarkably unchaste, and want of chastity on the part of females is no bar to their marrying. They have but little association with their neighbors, carefully preserving their race, or class, or whatever you may call it: and are in every respect, save they are under the state government, a separate and distinct people. Now this is no traveller's story.
They are really what I tell you, without abating or setting down in aught in malice. They are behind their neighbors in the arts. They use oxen instead of horses in their agricultural attempts, and their implements of husbandry are chiefly made by themselves of wood. They are, without exception, poor and ignorant, but apparently happy.”
http://www.historical-melungeons.com/littels.html
Thursday, July 21, 2011
cemeteries, coon hunters & snake chaps
There's a little team of folks working on creating online Blackwater cemetery directory this month. I'm out taking photos in Blackwater. I call it "cemetery hopping." We're gathering GPS coordinates, and writing down directions. We are using all available information from the Lee County Historical Society Cemetery Directory series and the courthouse deeds records. There are atleast 63 cemeteries in Blackwater. We are learning that one cemetery can have more than one cemetery name. For example, the Sarepta Cemetery is also known as the Tomlinson Family Cemetery. The panoramic views from these scattered cemeteries are stunningly beautiful... I am enjoying the adventure across the valley. I've learned that local coon hunters know where old cemeteries are located up on the ridges. I've also learned that should I venture up the mountain with a coon hunter guide, that I might need to be wearing "snake chaps." I've never heard of "snake chaps." Apparently, as they were described to me, they are leather and you wear them over your jeans/boots, so that when a snake does bite you when your walking in the woods, it can't get through the outer leather layer. Well, I've never said that the cemetery directory could become a comprehensive list. I am not going to produce a photo of every tombstone in Blackwater. However, with some snake chaps and a coon hunter tour guide, I'd certainly enjoy the hiking and taking photos in some of Blackwater's forgotten cemeteries, high up on the ridges. Wonder if the farmers coop store, Southern States, in Jonesville sells "snake chaps." I do LOVE living in Lee County. :) www.blackwaterva.org
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Blackwater book available
At the reunion, I saw a very nice book available for sale. It is styled like an annual for the Blackwater High School Class of 1961. The book was put together this year and includes some 2011 photos from around Blackwater. The book project, which began as a gift for an older relative, was put together by DeBord Photography. For more information, contact leann@debordhome.com or call (423) 276-0649.
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