Where Does Appalachia Lie Geographically?

 I have thought from time to time that I should add blog posts to this blog about as many of the counties in Appalachia as I can reasonably write in the limited time I have.  Whenever I think about Appalachia, I always think in terms of the area of Central and Southern Appalachia or, as I prefer to describe it, the portion of the area which is variously called Appalachia which can be clearly identified as being a repository of the Appalachian Culture, or what is commonly called Central and Southern Appalachia, and never do I think of the greater geographic area which includes all of the Appalachian Mountains.  I also never think of Appalachia in the geographic terms which the Appalachian Regional Commission uses to designate as Appalachia.  That last area, as arbitrarily designated by the Appalachian Regional Commission, is an artificially created political designation and many counties are included in it which are not remotely Appalachian in their dominant, and sometimes even in their minority cultures.  Often those counties have been designated by the Appalachian Regional Commission and members of congress purely to enable those people to pull together enough votes in congress to pass funding bills.  Congress members love nothing better than to find ways to gain blocks of federal money for the areas which they theoretically represent.  

In Kentucky where I was raised and have lived most of my life, there is a governmentally created and funded designation, with primary objectives which are economic, called Appalachia Proud.  This name allows designated farmers, crafters, and other local producers to sell their products with the label Appalachia Proud attached to them.  In September 2019, 17 counties were added to the Appalachia Proud region in Kentucky.  Those newly designated Appalachia Proud counties range from Fleming, Robertson, and Nicholas counties in Northeastern Kentucky to Edmonson County in Western Kentucky in an area which is really much more a portion of the Midwestern United States.  I admit that I have never done any in depth cultural analysis of Edmonson County but I have ridden a horse across the county in the time when I worked for the Vision Quest Wagon Trains as the Advance Scout for the program.  In that capacity, I dealt with local landowners, public officials, and business owners on a daily basis wherever the Wagon Trains traveled and I can assure you I never saw any evidence of Appalachian Culture in Edmonson County.  I generally say that, in my professional opinion as an Appalachian scholar and writer, that the area of Central and Southern Appalachia ends in its western boundary along a line roughly equivalent to the line of Interstate 65.  If I am asked to say which county I believe is the westernmost in Central and Southern Appalachia, I generally say that I believe it is Adair County, the county seat of which is Columbia, Kentucky, the home of my alma mater Lindsey Wilson College.  

I also generally dispute the frequently expressed idea that 32 counties in Southern Ohio are in Appalachia.  I cannot think of a more convincing geographic and cultural boundary than the Ohio River.  I sometimes tell proponents of the concept of Appalachian Ohio that they should go stand in the middle of the Ohio River and convince that little puddle that it is not a cultural and geographic boundary.  I freely admit that this response generally does not please those people.  But I also freely and wholeheartedly accept the notion that Cincinnati, Ohio, doe have a sizeable population of Appalachian people living there.  But they are all migrants from Central and Southern Appalachia.  I also believe wholeheartedly that the cultural area of Appalachia does not extend farther north and east than the general area of Western Maryland.  

Yes, I know some of my readers will not like what I have said here.  That's fine with me and it's not my problem. 

"The Law Of Pine Mountain" by Phillip K. Epling--Book Review

This book was referred to me by a friend after I had inquired about information about Bad John Hall, the former gun-happy police chief of Wheelwright, Kentucky, which is a whole other story.  The book was written by someone named Phillip K. Epling and the edition I have in my possession was printed by what I assume was a vanity press created by the author known as E & E Publishing Company, Elkhorn City, KY 41522. 

But I have also found other editions of the book under imprints including Overmountain Press McClain Printing, and Reformation Publishers.  The book is about a man named John Wright, known widely as both Bad John Wright, Devil John Wright and several other nicknames related to his ability with a gun and willingness to use it. He was born in 1844 and died in 1931 at the age of 86 which was a very ripe old age for a gunslinger in the early twentieth century.  He had a reputation for honesty despite his well known propensity for killing other men. He served several years as  a deputy sheriff in Letcher County Kentucky along with one term as a magistrate.  He was often used to hunt down wanted men and one story in this book claims he once chased a horse thief out of Kentucky, across the Ohio River into Ohio, then back across the Ohio into West Virginia, all the way into Virginia, and then killed the man and recovered the high priced race horse not far from Cumberland Gap before bringing the horse back to the rightful owner.

The book is poorly written, highly fictionalized, and questionable as to truth. I am sure it also had some influence in the ongoing defamation of Appalachian people as gunslingers, killers, and other less desieable elements of civilized society.   But, if you are into reading about  legends of the Appalachian mountains, especially those legends which involve such men, you might find the book worth reading.  For me the best, and most likely most accurate story in the book concerns the fact that Bad John Wright was a cousin to a man who was known as The Kentucky River Giant, Martin Van Buren Bates, who was nearly eight feet tall, married a woman of equal size from Nova Scotia, spent their lives traveling with circuses, and retired to Seville, Ohio where they are buried.  The book claims that Wright spent a few years traveling with his cousin and working in the circuses before returning to Cynthiana, Kentucky, where he married his own wife, Martha Wright.  After a few year in Cynthiana, the Wrights returned to Letcher County for most of their lives but he is buried in Wise County Virginia.

In addition to the weaknesses I have listed in the preceding paragraph, the edition of the book which my friend loaned me also contains several photographs and a letter written by Martha Wright which appear to have been copied on some low quality, older version of a copier which rendered them virtually useless for a reader.  But if you are dying to know more about Bad John Wright, you might enjoy the book. 

"...And Ladies Of The Club" by Helen Hooven Santmeyer--Book Review

When this epic novel was published in 1982, the author Helen Hooven Santmeyer was 87 years old and living in an assisted living facility in her southern Ohio hometown.  The book made Santmeyer an overnight success at a time when most of her childhood friends were long dead. It covers life in a small,fictional Ohio town from 1868 to 1932.  The book rocketed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and made Santmeyer famous long after her previously published four books had amounted to almost nothing in sales or public acclaim.  One other book was published posthumously and one biography has been written, "Early Promise, Late Reward" by Joyce Crosby Quay. 

Helen Hooven Santmeyer Photo by G.P. Putnam Publishers

I initially bought but never finished a copy of the book in the 1980's after it made the best seller lists.  At the time, I read a few chapters and thought "this is a well-written book but it is just a women's book" which is nowhere near the truth.  I finally read it this time, nearly forty years after it was published, following a conversation with my wife and we read it together.  The book is a sweeping story about the fictional town of Waynesboro, Ohio, and begins shortly after the Civil War.  It follows the lives of the town and its people until the Great Depression.  It is filled with the members of nearly a dozen families who figure prominently in the life of the town and the characters are woven around and into the life of the Waynesboro Womens Club which is formed in the first chapter and continues for the life of the entire novel.  The families live in close proximity in a small Midwestern town and intermingle, intermarry, live, reproduce, die, and generally accomplish admirable lives.  Only one or two characters ever fail to amount to something useful and nearly all of them are striving to become somebody the world would be proud to know.  This is truly an epic novel in every sense of the word and is just as important in the overall story of American Literature as "The Grapes Of Wrath", "East Of Eden", or Frank Norris' Wheat Trilogy of "The Octopus", "The Pit", and "The Wolf".  At the last possible moment, Santmeyer managed to take a well deserved place in that group of American novelists including Frank Norris, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl S. Buck who have produced great epic novels by grinding on day after day, week after week, year after year in the pursuit of an epic. 

When we ask ourselves "what is an epic novel", we sometimes come up with wide ranging and contradictory opinions of exactly what the term means.  After a diligent search on the Internet, I still wonder exactly what the term means.  One definition I found and like says that "an epic novel [is] one that is epic in scope and theme -- a text that covers a vast expanse of space and time in its quest to uncover answers to the deepest questions of human existence".  In fact, most definitions of epic seem to revolve more around poetry than novels.  It actually appears that even literary people cannot pin down a precise definition of an epic novel.  In my mind, an epic novel must cover a large span of time, let's say at least fifty years, and be centered around the lives of a fairly sizeable group of characters who go about the daily business of living.  Santmeyer's novel definitely fits that definition. 

The primary characters are the members of the Waynesboro Women's Club, their husbands, children, grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren.  The two most important families in the novel are the Gordon's, with Anne Gordon as the matriarch, and the Rausch's with Sarah "Sally" Rausch as the matriarch.  By the end of the novel, nearly every major character has lived and died.  Some of the deaths, including one suicide of a minor character, are  notable.  Some are ordinary and as simple of falling dead over an unlit kerosene heater due to a heart attack.  The Rausch patriarch, Ludwig, is a German immigrant and Civil War veteran.  His best friend, John Gordon, is the patriarch of the Gordon family.  If there is a major hero in the story, it is Ludwig Rausch although other characters live somewhat heroic lives, both male and female.  The story flows naturally through marriages, unrequited love affairs, adultery,  childbirth, epidemics, floods, and fires.  There is rarely a dull moment and the novel is well worth the number of hours the average reader will need to commit to completing it.

I tend to believe that many, if not all, of the female characters are partial presentations of Santmeyer herself who never married and worked most of her life as a librarian in a small private college.  Some of these women marry and produce long lines of progeny which Santmeyer never did.  But each of them tends to show some aspect of the life of a well-read, intelligent, self-assured, working woman which Santmeyer was to the very end of her long and productive life.  There is a young female writer working to produce good books.  There are more than a few female librarians and one or two spinsters.  The males are generally well respected and the only real villain is a woman.  At times, the novel does use some archaic terms to depict African Americans and yet one of the few women who survives the entire epic is a black housekeeper who has been totally devoted to her employing family all her life.  Ludwig Rausch is also quite loyal to his black employees just as he is to his white workers. 

This novel is well worth reading and has even led me to believe that, if I ever  find the time, I would like to read more of Santmeyer's books.