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The Foxfire Series #4
Foxfire 4
This fourth volume celebrates the home life and creative heritage of Appalachia, featuring sections on fiddle making, springhouses, horse trading, sassafras tea, berry buckets, knife making, wood carving, logging, cheese making, and gardening.
Table of Contents:
Etta and Charlie Ross Hartley
Knife Making
Wood Carving
Fiddle Making
Thomas Campbell, Plow-stock Maker
Wooden Sleds
Gardening
Bird Traps, Deadfalls, and Rabbit Boxes
Annie Perry
Horse Trading
Making Tar
Logging
Aunt Lola Cannon
Water Systems
Berry Buckets
Cheese Making
Rev. A. Rufus Morgan
Table of Contents:
Etta and Charlie Ross Hartley
Knife Making
Wood Carving
Fiddle Making
Thomas Campbell, Plow-stock Maker
Wooden Sleds
Gardening
Bird Traps, Deadfalls, and Rabbit Boxes
Annie Perry
Horse Trading
Making Tar
Logging
Aunt Lola Cannon
Water Systems
Berry Buckets
Cheese Making
Rev. A. Rufus Morgan
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
16 people are currently reading
648 people want to read
About the author
Eliot Wigginton
88 books71 followersEliot Wigginton (born Brooks Eliot Wigginton) is an American oral historian, folklorist, writer and former educator. He was most widely known for developing the Foxfire Project, a writing project that led to a magazine and the series of best-selling Foxfire books, twelve volumes in all. These were based on articles by high school students from Rabun County, Georgia. In 1986 he was named "Georgia Teacher of the Year" and in 1989 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Wigginton was born in West Virginia on November 9, 1942. His mother, Lucy Freelove Smith Wiggington, died eleven days later of "pneunomia due to acute pulmary edema," according to her death certificate. His maternal grandmother, Margaret Pollard Smith, was an associate professor of English at Vassar College and his father was a famous landscape architect, also named Brooks Eliot Wiggington. His family called him Eliot. He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from Cornell University and a second Master's from Johns Hopkins University. In 1966, he began teaching English in the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, located in the Appalachian Mountains of northeastern Georgia.
Wigginton began a writing project based on his students' collecting oral histories from local residents and writing them up. They published the histories and articles in a small magazine format beginning in 1967. Topics included all manner of folklife practices and customs associated with farming and the rural life of southern Appalachia, as well as the folklore and oral history of local residents. The magazine began to reach a national audience and became quite popular.
The first anthology of collected Foxfire articles was published in book form in 1972, and achieved best-seller status. Over the years, the schools published eleven other volumes. (The project transferred to the local public school in 1977.)
In addition, special collections were published, including The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery, Foxfire: 25 Years, A Foxfire Christmas, and The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys and Games. Several collections of recorded music from the local area were released.
Wigginton was born in West Virginia on November 9, 1942. His mother, Lucy Freelove Smith Wiggington, died eleven days later of "pneunomia due to acute pulmary edema," according to her death certificate. His maternal grandmother, Margaret Pollard Smith, was an associate professor of English at Vassar College and his father was a famous landscape architect, also named Brooks Eliot Wiggington. His family called him Eliot. He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from Cornell University and a second Master's from Johns Hopkins University. In 1966, he began teaching English in the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, located in the Appalachian Mountains of northeastern Georgia.
Wigginton began a writing project based on his students' collecting oral histories from local residents and writing them up. They published the histories and articles in a small magazine format beginning in 1967. Topics included all manner of folklife practices and customs associated with farming and the rural life of southern Appalachia, as well as the folklore and oral history of local residents. The magazine began to reach a national audience and became quite popular.
The first anthology of collected Foxfire articles was published in book form in 1972, and achieved best-seller status. Over the years, the schools published eleven other volumes. (The project transferred to the local public school in 1977.)
In addition, special collections were published, including The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery, Foxfire: 25 Years, A Foxfire Christmas, and The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys and Games. Several collections of recorded music from the local area were released.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 13, 2016
Foxfire 4: Water systems, fiddle making, logging, gardening, sassafras tea, wood carving, and further affairs of plain living (The Foxfire Series #4) by Eliot Wigginton (Editor), Foxfire Students (Anchor Press 1977) (917.58). More transcribed interviews by the students at Rabun County High School in Georgia with their rural elders (See The Foxfire Book). My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1977.
April 17, 2022
The book is excellent, especially the information and social living concerning logging - even if I will never ever be logging - you get a sense of time and place what with these high school students from their English class going out to interview elders in lower Appalachia.
After receiving this book, however, I learned that the editor, Wigginton, is a convicted pedophile. This doesn't mean the material in this book - gathered with effort from his students, is suddenly invalid. Second-hand and library resources are also good for finding this book. And the Fund started up and which continues, has no connection now with him.
These books contain a lot of information that by today would really have been lost. Useful for homesteaders and the explorers of old ways of plain simple living in the not so distant past.
After receiving this book, however, I learned that the editor, Wigginton, is a convicted pedophile. This doesn't mean the material in this book - gathered with effort from his students, is suddenly invalid. Second-hand and library resources are also good for finding this book. And the Fund started up and which continues, has no connection now with him.
These books contain a lot of information that by today would really have been lost. Useful for homesteaders and the explorers of old ways of plain simple living in the not so distant past.
January 31, 2024
“ I hope everyone is fortunate enough to have a special place to go to-a place they’ll always remember, a place that involves a trek down a tree-covered hill, across a creek, and up the opposite hill, just for a short visit. A place where you can always smell something cooking, even before you get to the house. And in that place is the person one will never forget. “
This quote from this book pretty much sums up the Foxfire series. It’s a walk in the past with your ancestors telling us how they survived.
This quote from this book pretty much sums up the Foxfire series. It’s a walk in the past with your ancestors telling us how they survived.
September 1, 2025
From fiddle making to gardening and much more, this book gives verbal histories and how to’s. I particularly enjoyed the sassafras tea, the lumber industry, and the use of cattle. Being from West Virginia, it gives me an idea of how my ancestors survived. These arts are being lost, even more so today than when the book was written. I remember much but my grandfather and grandmother couldn’t teach me everything. Love it.
October 28, 2018
I loved this book--and the whole Foxfire series!
I love the people telling their stories, the history, the how-to directions,
and the fact that this all began as a high school assignment to learn about the people
who lived in the hills around these students!
Highly recommend this series to whomever is interested in history, societal change,
family values, or even survival skills!
I love the people telling their stories, the history, the how-to directions,
and the fact that this all began as a high school assignment to learn about the people
who lived in the hills around these students!
Highly recommend this series to whomever is interested in history, societal change,
family values, or even survival skills!
January 14, 2023
These books seem to get better as they go along, and I found this the best of the first four. The instructions, for the most part, were easy to follow. Using the directions in this volume, I think I could make a serviceable knife from a sawblade, if I'd a mind to. The writing was also more even than in previous volumes.
May 11, 2022
I really enjoyed the logging chapters, read the book for the personal interviews, they didn't disappoint.
February 4, 2016
I love this series and am collecting them one-by-one. While I don't hail from Appalachia, I come from nearby and hail from stocky, rural, holler kin. Eliot Wigginton did us all a favor with this pervasive collection of knowledge from Appalachian mountain folk.[return][return]One day I hope to cozy up with this series and learn something new. I love reading the stories from the community elders. They are so great!
Merged review:
I love this series and am collecting them one-by-one. While I don't hail from Appalachia, I come from nearby and hail from stocky, rural, holler kin. Eliot Wigginton did us all a favor with this pervasive collection of knowledge from Appalachian mountain folk.returnreturnOne day I hope to cozy up with this series and learn something new. I love reading the stories from the community elders. They are so great!
Merged review:
I love this series and am collecting them one-by-one. While I don't hail from Appalachia, I come from nearby and hail from stocky, rural, holler kin. Eliot Wigginton did us all a favor with this pervasive collection of knowledge from Appalachian mountain folk.returnreturnOne day I hope to cozy up with this series and learn something new. I love reading the stories from the community elders. They are so great!
May 6, 2012
This is a great series of education books. I admit sometimes the material isn't always my "cup of tea", but I love knowledge. I also love to see people preserving the knowledge of older folk that think that what they have to share is no longer important in the modern world. Because they are wrong. The old ways are just as important as the new... Often, more so... just because when the new ways don't pan out, as they are sometimes prone to do. The old ways are tried and true.
April 28, 2011
A Great Series on how on people use to do thing when they were mostly self sufficient, and not store dependent different volumes cover everything from snake handling. to log cabin building to planting by the seasons, a must for DIY'ers and survivalists. Check out amazon.com for individual contents.
February 25, 2008
The series continues. Again, another volume full of fascinating and practical living history, a collection of glimpses into how people lived in Appalachia for hundreds of years, folkways that are now in danger of being lost. A great project.
December 15, 2008
Not something I've read cover-to-cover. It's simply something I have that is worth picking up now and again. Remedies, guides, folklore of the eastern mountains. The original The Firefox Book is also a good find should you come across it.
July 9, 2014
A collection of oral history from the Appachalian Mountain region of the south. Many old time rural skills are preserved thru this work.
July 16, 2012
Must admit I skipped around and read what interested me. Read these books long ago and enjoy the "people" stories more than the hoe to's.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews