Tunnel between Twin Branch and Davy in the coal fields of WV

I had been chatting with Patty Ament about her mother's memory of having walked through the tunnel from Twin Branch to school.  It struck a chord with me because I remember hearing my mother-in-law's story about the same thing.  Yesterday my mother-in-law had a very good day and we spent the afternoon talking about her years in the coal fields.  I asked her about the tunnel.  She said that there was a tunnel between Twin Branch and Davy.  It was a long way to go around the mountain to get from one town to the other.  The tunnel made the walk MUCH shorter!  So she would put her ear down to the train tracks to listen for a train, and if she didn't hear one, she would walk through the tunnel.  Here is what I wrote yesterday after chatting with Sue about the tunnel:

So I asked her about the tunnel today while I sat with her.  She was very lucid, so I believe that her memory on this is OK.  She said that there were two tunnels.  One was between Twin Branch and Davy.  The other was between Twin Branch and Maryville.  She used the tunnel between Twin Branch and Davy quite often.  She said that when she was growing up, the mine that was owned by Fordson Coal Company was called the Twin Branch Mine.  It was good work….plenty of work and the miners prospered.  They would go to Davy to spend their money and there was a row of stores in Davy including several women’s ready wear stores.  So Davy was the “big town” while Twin Branch was more of a place where people lived and worked.  She thought that perhaps Davy had 5000 people….we can probably look that up.  Sue’s family lived in Twin Branch.  Her grandmother whom she loved very much lived in Davy right along the railroad tracks.  Sue said that there was a road along the tracks and then houses all along the road across the road from the tracks.

Sue used the tunnel to visit her grandmother.  She also said that she used the tunnel on the way home from her afterschool job.  She was a babysitter and cook at a very early age for a man who was an electrician in the mine.  She would go home with his kids and watch them until he got home from work and have dinner on the table when he arrived.  

Sue said that sometime in her teenage years the union went on strike at the Twin Branch Mine.  The owners just shut the mine down permanently and the work was gone as well as the money.  I will try to blog this this week…..if you have anything to add, I am happy to add your remembrances.  I will look for a map and photos to add to the post.  marsha

Rucci Grocery store in Welch WV

My mother-in-law has a bit of dementia.  I am sitting with her today.  Yesterday we spent the afternoon looking at old photos so that she could identify some of the people in the photos for me.  So when I walked in today, her brain was reminded of her life in the coal fields in the early to mid 1900s.  Her first comment after we made small talk and had some Colonel Sanders was:  "I don't know why I got this notion in my head.  But I was thinking that Mrs. Rucci is closing her store.  I always get a lot of what I need from this store. " After quizzing her a bit, I figured out that she was talking about Welch WV.  She said that her mother bought a lot from the store as well.  So, of course, I googled the Rucci store and she agreed that that was definitely the place!



I found the photo of Mr. Rucci in his store on-line.  Someone had posted it on Ancestry.  Sue said that the store was close to where she lived and was in a large building of some sort.  Sue said that she he liked most of all to sell authentic Italian food that he bought from special dealers.

Later in the day, Sue added that her mother went in one day for a piece of pie.  Apparently they also served food in the store.  She said that two of the waiters were arguing and one of the waiters through a pie right into the face of the other waiter.

Painted Caves in France

I am listening to a book called Before the Dawn tonight that is about DNA and the earliest beginnings of man.  I like the book.  I am listening to a chapter that mentions the painted caves in France and I wanted to make a note.  The earliest caves that have been discovered are:

The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of Chauvet Cave in France. These paintings date to earlier than 30,000 BCE (Upper Paleolithic) according to radiocarbon dating.

The cave has been sealed off to the public since 1994. Access is severely restricted owing to the experience with decorated caves such as Lascaux found in the 20th century, where the admission of visitors on a large scale led to the growth of mold on the walls that damaged the art in places. In 2000 the archaeologist and expert on cave paintings Dominique Baffier was appointed to oversee conservation and management of the cave. She was followed in 2014 by Marie Bardisa.

Caverne du Pont-d'Arc, a facsimile of Chauvet Cave on the model of the so-called "Faux Lascaux", was opened to the general public on 25 April 2015.^[26] It is the largest cave replica ever built worldwide, ten times bigger than the Lascaux facsimile. The art is reproduced full-size in a condensed replica of the underground environment, in a circular building above ground, a few kilometres from the actual cave.^[27] Visitors’ senses are stimulated by the same sensations of silence, darkness, temperature, humidity and acoustics, carefully reproduced.^[28]

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/may/26/prehistoric-cave-art-dordogne

https://archaeology-travel.com/thematic-guides/cave-art-in-france/

Scotch-Irish and Clendenin

I found this map on-line one day and it has sat on my desk top.  I wanted to file it so that I could find it again.  But couldn't decide where that would be....so here it is on my blog.


With the research that I have done on the Clendenin family, I find that

One of the versions of the Clendenin massacre begins with this information: Archibald Clendenin lived in this valley (Calf Pasture) before moving to the lower Cowpasture where he died in 1749.  Archibald Jr was the most conspicuous victim in the Greenbrier massacre of 1763.  Charles, another son, gave his name to the capital of WV.  Morton “Rockbridge Co. VA. p. 89”  (don’t know if this is true or not.  Needs some research “someday”.  

and

 Archibald, Jr. a son by the first wife, moved to Greenbrier and was murdered by Indians in 1763.  His wife was a Ewing.  Five of his six children were also killed, but the wife escaped to the Cowpasture.  George and Charles seem to have been other sons.  The latter gave his name to the capital of West Virginia.