The Widow Combs

The Widow Combs

Ollie Combs was the sort of tough Appalachian woman that all of us who live here can recognize. She was born in 1904, in Knott County, deep in the Kentucky coalfields. We know little about her early life, but we can speculate. Like other women born in the Appalachian coalfields in that time, she witnessed…

Dr. Harriet B. Jones

Dr. Harriet B. Jones

Harriet B. Jones was born in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania in 1856. However, her family later moved to Terra Alta, West Virginia, where she was raised. At the age of 12, her father enrolled her in the Wheeling Female College. The school’s aim was to provide women with a liberal arts education, not to mimic the presumably…