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Title The Industrialist and the Mountaineer : the Eastham-Thompson Fued and the Struggle for West Virginia's Timber Frontier.

Publication Info. Morgantown : West Virginia University Press, 2017.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (313 pages).
text file
Series WEST VIRGINIA & APPALACHIA
WEST VIRGINIA & APPALACHIA.
Contents Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments ; Introduction ; 1. The Incorporation of West Virginia ; 2. Modernizing the Law ; 3. Robert W. Eastham, the Early Years ; 4. Eastham in West Virginia ; 5. Who Were the Thompsons? ; 6. Setting the Stage for Trouble ; 7. The Struggle for Control; 8. The Shoot-Out and "Lawyers by the Dozen" ; 9. Jury Selection and the Appeal ; 10. On Trial for Murder ; Epilogue ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index.
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"-- 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. 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.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Thompson, Frank, -1897 -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Thompson, Frank, -1897.
Eastham, Robert -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Eastham, Robert.
Trials (Murder) -- West Virginia.
Trials (Murder)
West Virginia.
West Virginia -- History -- 19th century.
History.
Chronological Term 19th century
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Other Form: Print version: Industrialist and the Mountaineer : The Eastham-Thompson Fued and the Struggle for West Virginia's Timber Frontier. Morgantown : West Virginia University Press, ©2017 9781943665501
ISBN 9781943665532 (electronic book)
1943665532 (electronic book)
1943665516
9781943665518