The industrialist and the mountaineer : the Eastham-Thompson feud and the struggle for West Virginia's timber frontier / Ronald L. Lewis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lewis, Ronald L., 1940- author.

Series:

West Virginia and Appalachia

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Eastham, Robert--Trials, litigation, etc.

Eastham, Robert.

Thompson, Frank, -1897--Trials, litigation, etc.

Thompson, Frank.

Thompson, Frank, -1897.

Trials (Murder)--West Virginia.

Trials (Murder).

History.

West Virginia--History--19th century.

West Virginia.

Physical Description:

x, 301 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Morgantown : West Virginia University Press, 2017.

Summary:

"In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia. The Eastham-Thompson feud pitted a former Confederate against a member of the new business elite who was, as a northern Republican, his cultural and political opposite. For Lewis, their clash was one flashpoint in a larger phenomenon central to US history in the second half of the nineteenth century: the often violent imposition of new commercial and legal regimes over holdout areas stretching from Appalachia to the trans-Missouri West. Taking a ground-level view of these so-called "wars of incorporation," Lewis's powerful microhistory shows just how strongly local communities guarded traditional relationships to natural resources. Modernizers sought to convict Eastham of murder, but juries drawn from the traditionalist population refused to comply. Although the resisters won the courtroom battle, the modernizers eventually won the war for control of the state's timber frontier"-- Provided by publisher.

"In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

The incorporation of West Virginia

Modernizing the law

Robert W. Eastham, the early years

Eastham in West Virginia

Who were the Thompsons?

Setting the stage for trouble

The struggle for control

The shoot-out and "Lawyers by the dozen"

Jury selection and the appeal

On trial for murder.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-295) and index.

ISBN:

9781943665518

1943665516

9781943665501

1943665508

OCLC:

958781665