Coal-Mining in Appalachia and Growing Wheat in Kansas: Reconnecting a Family Tree

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This story is from Emma Jane Wright James, submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear.

Dear MOTHER EARTH NEWS,

I am just wondering if anyone in your area (the older ones) knew of my maternal grandfather and his family. My Grandfather, Ari Lee Smyth, married a woman named Emma Tritt in their home town of Appalachia,Va. After she died, he married her sister, Lula Brown, and they moved to a wheat farm in Cawker City, (or Beloit), Kan., leaving his Appalachian home to my parents, Maurine Ada and C.J. Wright, Jr., and their baby daughters. My Grandfather, and his son Roland Keith Smyth, moved back to Appalachia in the 1950s after Lula died.

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