The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

In 1908, John Fox, Jr. (1862-1919), wrote his best-selling book, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, a romance novel set in the Appalachian region amid two fictional feuding families, the Tollivers and the Falins. Outsider John Hale wants to transform the area by mining the coal and bringing prosperity to the community and to himself, but he finds himself falling for the young and lovely June Tolliver, complicating his ambitions. 

Fox was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where Nelson and Lucy Jane Hyder and family were living at the time the book was published. During our honeymoon, my wife and I visited John Fox's house, which is now a museum. We also attended a stage version of the novel performed at the Barbara Polly Theater in Big Stone Gap.

In 1913 Harry Carroll (1892-1962) and Ballard MacDonald (1882-1935) wrote a popular song based on the novel. It was sung in the recording posted below by Albert Campbell (1872-1947) and Henry Burr (1882-1941). Although the novel was set in Kentucky, the song brings the action to "The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia," located somewhat to the east of Big Stone Gap. The girl's name is June in the song. June was also the name of one of Nelson and Lucy Jane's younger daughters (1916-2001), who was born in Michigan on the first day of June.

The Beans of Tennessee, Virginia, and Scotland

Russell Bean's headstone

My generation's 2nd great-grandmother, Mary Hyder Shepherd (1844-1925), was the daughter of Jacob Hyder (1814-1881) and Elizabeth Bean (1812-before 1868). We know rather a lot about her Hyder ancestors going back to the American War of Independence and to 16th-century Germany.

Mary's mother's family has origins extending back to the first European settlements of Tennessee and before that to 17th-century Inverness, Scotland. Elizabeth's father was named William Russell Bean, or Russell Bean (1769-1829), and her mother was Rosamond Robertson (1770-1850), reputed to be "the first white child born in Tennessee."