"Located one block south of Main Street...the Depot Square Historic District began taking shape around 1856 when the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad extended the first railroad through Abingdon and constructed a depot. The advent of the railroad made…
When she died in 2008, Mrs. Hall’s children, Jack Hall, Eleanor Hutton and Marilou Preston, donated her papers and other effects to the library to be used as an archive for those interested in her life and the life of the community she loved and…
"After military service in the 1930s, [Miller] graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a master's degree in chemistry and worked as a chemist with the Food and Drug Administration. He then went to the U.Va. School of Medicine, where he…
"The reception in Abingdon was grand, with people filling the train station platform, leaning over the rope lines, reaching out to wave at Mrs. Roosevelt with their hands, hats, and handkerchiefs."
["A First Lady in a False Kingdom," p. 189]
"Mrs. Roosevelt's arrival on the last day (of the 1933 festival) boosted the crowd beyond all records (by some estimates as many as 22,000 people attended). She arrived at noon and attended the special folk music program given by some of the contest…
"The idea to invite Eleanor Roosevelt to the festival came from the event's founder and director, Annabel Morris Buchanan...
"In February 1933 she wrote to the soon-to-be first lady: 'I think you and President Roosevelt might find the mountain, with…