The Old German Baptist Brethren
The Old German Baptist Brethren

Author: Charles D. Thompson Jr.

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0252092651

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since arriving nearly 250 years ago in Franklin County, Virginia, German Baptists have maintained their faith and farms by relying on their tightly knit community for spiritual and economic support. Today, with their land and livelihoods threatened by the encroachment of neighboring communities, the construction of a new highway, and competition from corporate megafarms, the German Baptists find themselves forced to adjust. Charles D. Thompson Jr.'s The Old German Baptist Brethren combines oral history with ethnography and archival research--as well as his own family ties to the Franklin County community--to tell the story of the Brethren's faith on the cusp of impending change. The book traces the transformation of their operations from frontier subsistence farms to cash-based enterprises, connecting this with the wider confluence of agriculture and faith in colonial America. Using extensive interviews, Thompson looks behind the scenes at how individuals interpret their own futures in farming, their hope for their faith, and how the failure of religiously motivated agriculture figures in the larger story of the American farmer.

Franklin County
Franklin County

Author: James A. Nagy

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0738592641

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Be it Moonshine or Country Music, Franklin County has something for everyone and a story to entertain anyone In the fall of 1785, the Virginia General Assembly voted to create a new county in the southwestern part of the state. The new county, named after Benjamin Franklin, was formed from parts of Bedford and Henry Counties. In January 1786, the first court in Franklin County convened and the county government was established. Native sons who have risen to national prominence include African American educator Booker T. Washington and the only Confederate commander to lead an attack on Washington, DC, during the Civil War, Gen. Jubal A. Early. With an area of 712 square miles, the county includes the communities of Ferrum, Endicott, Sontag, Glade Hill, Snow Creek, Henry, Penhook, Union Hall, Burnt Chimney, Callaway, Wirtz, Redwood, Scruggs, Sydnorsville, and the town of Boones Mill. The county seat of Rocky Mount was incorporated after Rocky Mount and another village, Mount Pleasant, combined in 1873. Having acquired the title of the Moonshine Capital of the World during Prohibition, Franklin County is also the eastern anchor of Virginia's music heritage trail, the Crooked Road.

Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South
Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South

Author: Diane Miller Sommerville

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2005-10-12

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0807876259

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Challenging notions of race and sexuality presumed to have originated and flourished in the slave South, Diane Miller Sommerville traces the evolution of white southerners' fears of black rape by examining actual cases of black-on-white rape throughout the nineteenth century. Sommerville demonstrates that despite draconian statutes, accused black rapists frequently avoided execution or castration, largely due to intervention by members of the white community. This leniency belies claims that antebellum white southerners were overcome with anxiety about black rape. In fact, Sommerville argues, there was great fluidity across racial and sexual lines as well as a greater tolerance among whites for intimacy between black males and white females. According to Sommerville, pervasive misogyny fused with class prejudices to shape white responses to accusations of black rape even during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, a testament to the staying power of ideas about poor women's innate depravity. Based predominantly on court records and supporting legal documentation, Sommerville's examination forces a reassessment of long-held assumptions about the South and race relations as she remaps the social and racial terrain on which southerners--black and white, rich and poor--related to one another over the long nineteenth century.

Historic Photos of Virginia
Historic Photos of Virginia

Author:

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2008-08-01

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1618586998

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

More than 250 years passed from the founding of the first English colony in the New World at Jamestown in Virginia until the beginning of the American Civil War, and nearly a century and a half more has passed since the Civil War ended. As distant as such milestones of history may seem today, Virginians are fortunate to be able to see the physical evidence of great events, people, and places everywhere in the Old Dominion. Historic Photos of Virginia showcases many of the state’s important places as well as events both great and small, beginning with the Civil War and carrying forward to the momentous changes that took place during and after the Second World War. While historic sites such as Monticello, Hampton Institute, and Arlington National Cemetery are featured, so too are the everyday city streets and rural countryside where Virginians lived and worked. These black-and-white images tell the story of Virginia, its people and places, with a vividness only historic photographs can offer.

Historic Photos of Greater Hampton Roads
Historic Photos of Greater Hampton Roads

Author:

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2007-10-01

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1618586351

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From an area that boasts itself as America's First Region from the first settlement of Jamestown in 1607, the Greater Hampton roads area is steeped in American history. The area is mostly known for seven main cities that surround one of the world's largest natural harbors and has the mouth of two rivers, Elizabeth and James, that empty into the Chesapeake Bay heading out to the Atlantic Ocean. There are also several independent cities and counties that make up this beautiful coastal area. With around 200 photographs, many of which have never been published, Historic Photos of Greater Hampton Roads shows the historical growth from the mid-1800's to the late 1900's of the area in stunning black and white photography. The book follows life, government, events and people important to Hampton Roads history and the building of this unique area. Spanning over two centuries and two hundred photographs, this is a must-have for any long-time resident or history lover of the Greater Hampton Roads!

A Murder in Virginia
A Murder in Virginia

Author: Suzanne Lebsock

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780393326062

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Recounts the events surrounding the dramatic post-Civil War trial of a young African American sawmill hand who was accused of ax murdering a white woman on her Virginia farmyard and who implicated three other women in the crime.

Spirits of Just Men
Spirits of Just Men

Author: Charles Dillard Thompson (Jr.)

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2011-04-20

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 025207808X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Following the end of Prohibition in 1933, demand for moonshine remained high due to taxes imposed on large liquor producers. Seeking to answer this demand were the distillers of Appalachia who, having established illegal networks of moonshine distribution under Prohibition, continued their activities and effectively skirted the federal liquor tax scheme. Spirits of Just Men chronicles the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935, held in Franklin County, Virginia, a place that many still refer to as the "Moonshine Capital of the World." While the trial itself made national news, Thompson uses the event as a stepping-off point to explore Blue Ridge Mountain culture, economy, and political engagement in the 1930 illustrating how participation in the moonshine trade was a rational and savvy choice for farmers and community members struggling to maintain their way of life amidst the pressures of the Great Depression and pull of the timber and coal-mining industries in Virginia. Through Thompson's prose, local characters come alive as he pays particular attention to the stories of a key witness for the defense, Miss Ora Harrison, an Episcopalian missionary to the region, and Elder Goode Hash, itinerant Primitive Baptist preacher and juror in a related murder trial. Thompson explores how local religious belief both clashed with and condoned the moonshine trade and how stills and the trade enabled a distinctive cultural formation in the region that goes far beyond the hillbilly stereotype alive today. Not only is his work is based on extensive oral histories and local archival material, but Thompson himself is from the area and his grandparents were involved in not only the moonshine trade but the trial as well"--Provided by publisher.