Introduction
The Ashe County Oral History Project began as a joint undertaking between the Ashe County Historical Society and the Ashe County Public Library. Historical Society member and librarian Clarice Weaver led the project. Over the course of two years, between 1980 and 1982, Weaver and other volunteers sought out a variety of individuals to capture the varied history and culture of Ashe County through extended interviews. These original interview tapes, after being stored at the public library for over two decades, were eventually digitized by Appalachian Studies students at Ashe County High School.
This website is an effort to finally make these highly significant and interesting interviews available to the general public. Currently, over forty complete interviews have been added. Many currently feature supplementary materials, like photographs and newspaper articles. Many others include indexes that give a precise breakdown of the contents of the interviews, making them easier to manipulate and listen to selectively. This site is a work in progress, we hope to eventually have indexes available for each interview, and we are still accumulating supplementary material to add more depth to each interview page.
Due to the varied quality of the original tapes, some of these interviews are difficult to hear and understand; they have still been included for the benefit of the curious.
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