Archive

A look at the battle over mountaintop removal coal mining.

Genealogy. The word conjures up images of dusty libraries, dry courthouse records, endless hours with microfilm and crumbling documents. But talk to anyone researching his or her family and you’ll find an excitement that suggests otherwise.

In 1935, Edith Maxwell, a 21-year-old schoolteacher, became an overnight celebrity – for patricide she may or may not have committed. Seventy years later, residents still resent the backwoods image the newspapers printed of rural Wise County, Va..