Artifacts from Vardy, TN

Artifacts from Vardy, Hancock County,Tennessee

Katherine Vande Brake, Professor of English and Technical Communication

King College, Bristol, TN

The items from Vardy that E. W. King Library at King College adding to the DLA collection restate the themes so clearly outlined in Michael Joslin's introductory essay to the digital library project--community, isolation, religion, literacy, and hard work. However, these photographs, records of the Vardy Presbyterian Church, and other documents also expand the collection in an important way. Many of the people who lived in the Vardy community were descendants of the Melungeons and can trace their family lines back to the first Melungeons in Tennessee--Vardiman Collins, Shepherd Gibson, and Irish Jim Mullins who came to take up land grants in what was then Hawkins County shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War. So the Vardy artifacts provide an opportunity to see and understand how a significant Appalachian minority group lived and worked in the first half of the twentieth century. They also show the effect of missionary work in the southern mountains
Vardy, named after early settler Vardiman Collins, is a narrow valley between Powell Mountain and Newman's Ridge just north of Sneedville, Tennessee, the county seat of Hancock County. "

Katherine Vande Brake is also the author of How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia


How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia ( Melungeon Series)