Click on the images to see a larger version and a description of what you’re looking at., Then click the arrows in the upper left corner to enjoy the slide show.
More text is on the way! Be sure to subscribe for updates about upcoming events at the museum and our new audio virtual tour!
Meeting Table, Scrip, Quilts
Mill Stones
Antique Medical Tools
Display Cases
Antique Tools and Display Cases
Statue Made of Coal and Moonshine "Thumping Keg"
Antique Household Items
Salt Cauldron and Bellows, Local Quilts
Mural of Regional History
Carpenter's Travel Kit
CC&O Construction Images
Regional Reference Materials
Examples of Scrip and Mining Company Stickers
Antique Mining and Farming Tools
Historic Postcards and Photos
Historic Images from Our Region
Framed Photos
Photos and images
UMWA Collection
Sewing Machine and Shaving Horse
Antique Typewriter and Maps
Antique Loom and Coverlet
-
Meeting Table, Scrip, Quilts
This antique oak table is for small group meetings or researchers examining the many books and other publications available at the museum.
All artifacts and pictures in the museum are owned by Frank Kilgore and on loan to Mountain Heritage for display unless otherwise indicated.
-
Mill Stones
At the museum's outside entry sits two massive hand sculpted mill stones used to grind meal and flour from corn and wheat grown by our ancestors. Powered by water these types of mills dotted the countryside in most populated communities and many times were located near country post offices that were housed in general stores and sometimes in private homes. -
Antique Medical Tools
These medicine bags, forceps, and shin guards were tools of the trade for a turn of the century country doctor who was legendary for delivering almost every baby in the communities of St. Paul, Castlewood, and Dante. Dr. Robert Meade dedicated his life, first on horseback then by Model T, to treating rich and poor alike. -
Display Cases
The large glass display cases are LED powered to show off railroad memorabilia on the top shelf, coal mining artifacts one shelf down, and a mixture of Civil War era firearms, local paper money, and incidentals.
Below that and to the right are regional mineral samples. Next is a sampling of Native American items including a very unusual pipe and a hand drilled medicine tube found in Lee County used by shamans to suck blood and venom from snake bite wounds, apply herbal medicines to injured skin, or to inhale a variety of incense or powder herbs for lung treatments or recreation.
The floor level shelf holds a McClellan saddle donated by Bick Gibson, old woven baskets from the region, and publications by Mountain Heritage, Inc., Mountain Peeks Magazine, and Spiral Publishing, Ltd.
-
Antique Tools and Display Cases
-
Statue Made of Coal and Moonshine "Thumping Keg"
Next to the coal miner statue made of coal is a "thumping keg" used on moonshine stills to force steam through the copper coil (worm) and create grain alcohol. To learn more about moonshine, visit the site below. -
Antique Household Items
This nook hosts a china cabinet filled with antique medicine and "pop" bottles, many from local manufacturers. Also displayed are churns, crocks, tinware, old toys and more. Look but don't touch. Broken artifacts are serious business. -
Salt Cauldron and Bellows, Local Quilts
The mountain hand-stitched quilts on the wall range from 75 to 200 years old and represent how our ancestors wasted nothing by sewing together scrap pieces of materials for warmth in the winter and clothes for themselves and their many children. The large cauldron on the floor and nearby large bellows are from Saltville and were used to evaporate salt water into life giving salt for humans and their animals. Saltville was attacked repeatedly during the Civil War due to the Confederacy's limited sources of salt to fuel its armies. -
Mural of Regional History
-
Carpenter's Travel Kit
-
CC&O Construction Images
These enlarged images in the museum foyer are of the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio (CC&O) Railroad's arrival in and near St. Paul during construction of the present day CSX line.
The panoramic views are particularly rare and allow us to see an early railroad and river town boom in growth and importance due to the existing Norfolk Western track (1895) joining the new line from St. Paul to Dante then onto Elkhorn City, KY along the most expensive per mile rail project in the history of the nation.
Numerous tunnels and trestles were necessary to access some of the richest coalfields in the Appalachians. Today CSX has largely discontinued its use of this 110 year old marvel as coal has "petered" out and natural gas and renewables are replacing coal fired power plants much faster than anyone ever imagined.
Job losses reign and St. Paul, along with many other coalfield communities, are transitioning to outdoor recreation, technology and small businesses that tend to stay and grow.
-
Regional Reference Materials
This section displays an old phonograph machine which mostly plays Carter Family albums. To the right is a display of Dante's old Moose Club memorabilia. My Papaw, for whom I am named, was a member during the 43 years he hand loaded coal. To the left is our library filled with Southwest Virginia and Appalachian books about our social and natural history and literature, plus national parks and incredible outdoor photography. -
Examples of Scrip and Mining Company Stickers
These wall displays comprise coal scrip from companies in all seven mining counties of Southwest Virginia. This coal company issued "money" was redeemable at the company stores.
The cut marks in the coins allowed non English speaking immigrant coal miners to identify which store to use.
Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit single "I Owe My Soul To The Company Store" was based upon the never ending cycle of debt miners and families owed the employers after paying rent for company housing, electric bills to company community power plants, and for food, work clothes and mining gear, purchased at the company general store. The company stores were a one stop shopping center for everything except vehicles and livestock.
The mining stickers above the scrip were used by miners for the past few decades to adorn their mining hats, usually to tout their company loyalty and many times their UMWA locals. -
Antique Mining and Farming Tools
This display of old farming, mining, railroading and lumber tools adorn hand hewn poplar logs from a Civil War era house previously built on Jewell Ridge in Tazewell County.
Coal drilling breast augers, saws, wood drills, railroad spike pullers, corn planters and cutters, leather aprons for sawmill work, saddle bags, moonshine still parts, and many items in between depict the very hard hand labor required of our ancestors as they forged a living on mountain farms and earned money through back breaking work in lumber mills, coal mines and on the railroad. -
Historic Postcards and Photos
These moving walls hold old postcards, photos, movie ads, yearbooks, letterheads, etc of St. Paul and the rest of Wise County then Dante, Castlewood and the remainder of Russell County. Read the captions and letters, they offer a glimpse into earlier mountain life and prose now gone by. -
Historic Images from Our Region
This wall starts on the left with glass plate negative photos of the N&W track coming to St. Paul in 1895. To the right of that panel are photos and enlarged postcards of Dante and Wise County. Then further to the right is a mix from the rest of the region, including beautiful 100 year old panoramas of Burke's Garden and a huge Ritter Lumber Company operation in Dickenson County. Take your time, many of these photos are rare and very representative of our region a century or so ago.
To see these images and more historic items, you can take home a copy of Far Southwest Virginia: A Postcard and Photographic Journey. For more information and for buying online, visit the site below.
-
Framed Photos
This part of the gallery showcases framed photos of Southwest Virginia natural landscapes, events, and historical sites. -
Photos and images
-
UMWA Collection
This United Mine Workers of America display is one of the nation's best. The UMWA fought for over a century to improve miners' safety and better wages and benefits.
Violence reigned in the coalfields as coal companies hired security forces to break the union while union organizers recruited European and Slavic immigrants, African American sharecroppers and indigenous Appalachians into a cohesive "one-for-all, all-for-one" powerful labor and political force.
At one time nearly a million people made up UMWA households. After the 1989 Pittston strike in Southwest Virginia, with St. Paul, Castlewood and Carterton being major rallying points, the union and Appalachian coal industry in general entered into a steady decline as coal seams were being worked out, natural gas production increased and carbon fuels became more regulated.
John L. Lewis was not the first UMWA president but he was the most famous, turning the organization into a powerful political force that drastically improved the most dangerous workplaces in America while at the same time irking the country's industrial stakeholders and anti-union politicians.
Our law firm represented 1300 UMWA members and supporters in 3,000 criminal charges that arose from the Pittston strike. Pittston subsequently went out of business and very little union coal is presently mined in Appalachia compared to the heydays of 1900-1980. -
Sewing Machine and Shaving Horse
Old sewing machine and a century old "shaving horse" which was used by carpenters and homesteaders to hold pieces of wood in place from a sitting position so that one person could shape them with a drawing knife. -
Antique Typewriter and Maps
This small study center with a primitive oak desk is our natural history corner, replete with a paleo geologist's rendition of Pangea 350million years ago when the Appalachian Mountains were on the rise near the equator.
Prior to that time the massive shallow sea trough that supported multiple ancient forests in endless swamps became peat bogs, then over tens of millions of years of successive layers of water borne sand and silt layers that covered and compressed intermittent underlying peat layers into today's bituminous coal seams.
To the left is a raised relief map of the Appalachian mountains, valleys and plateaus that were eroded over millions of years to become the most ancient mountain chain of significance on present day earth. These mountains we call home were at their zenith taller than the Himalayans.
Mammals, including Homo sapiens, are just a blip on the geologic scene. -
Antique Loom and Coverlet
This 200 year old loom was donated by the family of Marvin E. Cox in Castlewood. The bed coverlet on top of the loom is a 1849 sample of what these intricate machines could produce in the hands of the highly skilled homemakers whose families ate what they grew, wore what they made and said what they meant.