Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
"I do therefore offer a reward of Fifty Dollars to any person who will produce to me his head, severed from his body; provided he is shot in being taken or making his escape when called on to surrender."
- Benjamin Smith
Wilmington Gazette
, 28 May 1803
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From the wood shop at Ft. Loudoun, Tennessee.
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Although we usually discuss runaway slave adverts involving banjo players, the overwhelming majority of the musicians described in these ads are fiddlers. Here's a particularly revealing one from the The Wilmington Chronicle date 17 August 1795:
"Whereas my negro fellow Abraham, a carpenter, hath for some time past made it a practice to go about at nights fiddling and drinking, whereby he has contracted a loose idle habit, and much injured his health. He has lately eloped from my service, and is now supposed to be lurking about the country among his acquaintances, or gone off to the southward. I do therefore offer a reward of Ten Dollars to any person who will apprehend him and deliver him to me at my plantation near Wilmington, or to the gaoler in Wilmington. He is about five feet, ten inches high, speaks rather hoarse, but plain, and extremely plausible. He carried off a blanket, and his fiddle, and some other things â I tend to out-law him if he is not taken in ten days. - C. Burgwin"
Abraham, a skilled worker, evidently enjoyed privileges that would conflict with most modern readers' concept of slavery. It's also noteworthy that he's thought to have "gone off to the southward," as opposed to traveling north where slavery had been outlawed since about 1780. The fiddle, which Abraham might've built himself, is described as _his_ fiddle.
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The Williams family (1906). My grandmother, Selma Agnes (Watson) Hicks, called this photo "The Grim Group!" When she gave this to me in the late 1990s, she sat at her dining room table, flipped it over, and wrote their names on the back. She also told me stories about each person. Her mother, my great-grandmother), Pattie (Williams) Watson (1883-1953), stands center left. Seated are my great-great-grandfather, William Fleming Williams, Sr. (1842-1913), who served in the 4th Virginia Cavalry from 1862 to 1865. Selma told me that, although a private, he was through family connections personally acquainted with both Lee and Stewart. Although many southern grandmothers tell their grandsons "tall tales," I suspect it may be true. Seated beside William, his wife, Corinah Georgie (Sledge) Williams (1850-1933), who personally owned two servants before and during the war. Interestingly, Georgie was descended from the prominent Bass (Basse) family who are Nansemund Indians. Seated at the right of the photo is my great-great uncle, Robert Edward Lee Williams (1887-1966), the only man in the family to have four names! Robert once fell from the roof of a barn, causing his left arm to be amputated; they purposely hid his stump out-of-frame. Standing behind Robert is his brother, Thomas Howard Williams (b. 1878), a notorious drunkard who was found floating (dead) in the Baltimore Harbor on the day his first child was born. Beside Howard stands Will, Jr. (1874-1965). The other standing man is George S. Williams (b. 1872), who was named after his grandfather (Georgie's father), a wealthy planter and slaveowner named George R. Sledge (1819-1883). Seated at the far left (out-of-frame) is my great-great-aunt, Selma Locket Williams (1876-1957), after whom my grandmother was named.
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Typical Appalachian family photo! The banjo's homemade, fretless neck is fitted to a factory rim. Its bridge is centered on the head, and the woman holding it is a two-finger picker. The soldier (Marine?) holds a shotgun & tobacco in his mouth. Man seated center shows his automatic pistol. Young lady on the right appears, to me, to be wearing a wedding dress.
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"The Musical Barber Shop" by Thomas Hicks (1866)
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Drawing up some black walnut tuning pegs. These are from a stack of old boards that were laying in our early 1900s barn in Georgia when we bought the place.
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"Nearby, on the same level, an Indian has built his shack, or rather his house, as
it looks much like all the houses of the poor around here. The main difference is that the latter are a bit squatter and a bit smaller and instead of selecting good thick trunks for construction, they took thin ones and small, because they were less trouble to cut down and transport. They stuff the chinks with a mastic made of earth and sand, as our peasants do [Their roofs too are like our peasants,â with stones laid on strips of bark, as in Switzerland and on all wooden houses]. The door is extremely narrow, but high enough to enter without stooping.
"The fire was at one end of the room in a fireplace like our own, and the beds, made of slats laid the
long way and covered with blankets, stood against the long wall. This Indianâs house is in a very pretty
setting; stretching out before him he has a vast green carpet that ends in wooded hills, and on the
horizon mountains that distance has tinted blue. To his left he looks out at the river, flowing so
serenely that it seems a lake, the island nearby, and the sloping riverbank."
- Louis Philippe (Tennessee, 3 May 1797)
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On this day in 2003, an 18-year-old Clifton Hicks arrives at Fort Knox, Kentucky, eager to âfight for his country.â Over the coming years, several young men in this photograph will be killed in action. One of them is the best soldier in our platoon, and my best friend in the world. His name is Dennis J. Miller, Jr. of La Salle, Michigan. In 2005, at Ramadi, he will suffer a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade. His remains will fall through the loaderâs hatch into the turret of an M1 Abrams tank. As the vehicle is consumed by fire, Dennisâ crewmates will be forced to abandon itâand himâto the flames.
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Banjo #30 progress. Red oak neck, Purple Martin gourd sound chamber.
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Clifton Hicks is a banjo player, songwriter, and anthropologist known for his work in American folk music. He was raised in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas before settling in Tennessee. His musical performances and teaching often emphasize the colonial American origins of the banjo.
Clifton is an accomplished folk artist, having built dozens of banjos based on historical examples. His builds are entirely handmade, using only locally sourced hardwood, bone, and other materials.
Hicks enlisted in the U.S. Amy in 2002 at the age of seventeen, serving as a tank driver and machine gunner in Germany and Iraq. After two combat deployments, he applied for and was granted full conscientious objector status. He was honorably discharged in 2005.
In 2013, Hicks graduated from Appalachian State University with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. His academic studies were concentrated in the archaeology and history of the southeastern United States, which remains his chief area of interest.