Perry, Lisa and the Wheelwright Historical Society: Images of America Floyd County (Charleston, SC, Arcadia Publishing, 2010)
While this book is wonderful in many ways for the person who is researching the history of Floyd County Kentucky or its coal camp towns, it falls short in being a comprehensive photographic history of the county. I tend to believe that since it is a product of the Wheelwright Historical Society it was focused primarily on Wheelwright, coal mining, Left Beaver Creek, and the other coal camp towns in the county. There are some wonderful photographs in this book and the best of those came from the collections of the National Archives, Alice Lloyd College, the Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, and the Wayland Historical Society where I have also done extensive research and written about in this blog on at least three occasions. The photos from the National Archives are from the wonderful body of work by Russell Lee which are a part of the permanent collection at the archives in Washington, DC. Lee shot most of his photographs which appear in this book over several days in the fall of 1946. His work alone is well worth the price of the book. His photographs in the book include shots of the major buildings in Wheelwright at the time, in the mine during work hours, and in the homes, churches, and recreation sites of the Wheelwright miners. I do not laud Lee's work so heavily because I believe his work is the only above average work in the book. I laud his work because it is generally exceptional by any professional photography standards. The compilers of this book did a wonderful job of selecting most of the photographs. But they also failed to include anywhere near enough photos from the northern section of the county in a book intended to bear the name of the entire county. Perhaps such photos were just not available although I suspect the archives of the Floyd County Times could have produced a wide selection. After having said all this about this book, I realize that the superficial reader of this blog post might jump to the mistaken conclusion that I don't like the book. That is the farthest thing from the truth.
Like most other readers of the book who have any connection to Wheelwright, Floyd County, or coal camps in Eastern Kentucky, I found one or two connections to my own past in the handful of photographs taken at the Wheelwright public swimming pool. When I was in my second summer of the Upward Bound Program at Alice Lloyd College, we students would be taken once a week by bus from Pippa Passes to Wheelwright for an afternoon of swimming in that pool which was the closest pool to the Alice Lloyd Campus large enough for the entire group. I still have fond memories of that pool. There are also a few good photos from Wayland in the period between 1920 and about 1950 which also stirred memories for me.
This book is well worth the price of admission if you are a former coal camp kid, former or current coal miner, or just someone who has become fascinated by the company towns which are widely spread across the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Western Virginia, and East Tennessee. Buy it! Read those two or three paragraph introductions to the individual chapters! Bask in whatever memories you have of the coal camp towns on both Left Beaver and Right Beaver in Floyd County.
Like most other readers of the book who have any connection to Wheelwright, Floyd County, or coal camps in Eastern Kentucky, I found one or two connections to my own past in the handful of photographs taken at the Wheelwright public swimming pool. When I was in my second summer of the Upward Bound Program at Alice Lloyd College, we students would be taken once a week by bus from Pippa Passes to Wheelwright for an afternoon of swimming in that pool which was the closest pool to the Alice Lloyd Campus large enough for the entire group. I still have fond memories of that pool. There are also a few good photos from Wayland in the period between 1920 and about 1950 which also stirred memories for me.
This book is well worth the price of admission if you are a former coal camp kid, former or current coal miner, or just someone who has become fascinated by the company towns which are widely spread across the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Western Virginia, and East Tennessee. Buy it! Read those two or three paragraph introductions to the individual chapters! Bask in whatever memories you have of the coal camp towns on both Left Beaver and Right Beaver in Floyd County.
No comments:
Post a Comment