A Look Back

By William “Skip” Deegans The above photo shows a group of West Virginia African American World War I draftees. When the United States entered the war, southern Democrats opposed the conscription of African Americans. They feared that soldiers who fought for democracy in Europe would return home feeling entitled to...

By William “Skip” Deegans Shown above is a photo from the 1950s of a raid by U.S. Treasury officials known as “revenuers” or “revenooers” on a moonshine whiskey distilling operation in Summers County. Making illegal moonshine has long been a cottage industry in this area of West Virginia. Settlers to...

By William “Skip” Deegans In the spring of 1956, President Eisenhower convened a meeting of the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico at The Greenbrier. Called the Summit of the Americas, the conference was something of a subterfuge. Eisenhower rode from Washington, DC to White Sulphur Springs...

By William “Skip” Deegans Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian wheat fields and grain storage facilities and resulting world shortage of wheat is somewhat reminiscent of another time in recent history. At the outset of World War I, Americans and the British had developed a penchant for white bread. The war led...

When Sonora Webster Carver, the dare devil horse diving rider, came to the West Virginia State Fair in 1937 spectators were treated to one of the country’s most popular state fair attractions. From a height of 40 feet, Carver would jump on a galloping horse and dive into a tank...

By William “Skip” Deegans Performing at the 1937 West Virginia State Fair was Winifred “Winnie” Colleano who was, at the time, one of the world’s most accomplished aerial artists. She pioneered the heel and toe catch on the trapeze as described by Mark St. Leon: “swinging on her trapeze as...

By William “Skip” Deegans Shown in this photo from the early 1900s is one of two terminuses of the Lewisburg & Ronceverte Railway (L&R) that linked Lewisburg to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway’s main line in Ronceverte. In the background is the Williams-Neely building (Ted Knight’s law office). A ticket...

  By William “Skip” Deegans Shown above is an undated photo of Greenbrier County’s Issac Thomas Mann who, in short order, became one of West Virginia’s most successful entrepreneurs. Born in 1863 and the son of Mathew and Elizabeth Mann, he was raised on a farm in the Fort Spring...

By William “Skip” Deegans Shown in the above 1907 photograph at Harpers Ferry’s Storer College are members of the Niagara Movement. The photo is significant as it shows some of the first women to participate in this civil rights movement. In 1905, Harvard-educated W. E. B. DuBois, an African American...

By William “Skip” Deegans Pictured above on a Piedmont Tobacco baseball card is Jack Warhop, one of the first players from southern West Virginia to break into the Major League. Warhop grew up on Powley Creek near Hinton. He was a locomotive fireman on the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Railroad...