After decades of meticulous research, John David Preston has produced a comprehensive list of Union and Confederate soldiers from the eight county Big Sandy River region of eastern Kentucky. The list of more than 6,000 soldiers includes pertinent information about the service of each soldier, including census data, and a list of more than 200 soldiers who served on both sides. 2022, 81/2x11, paper, 316 pp

The Big Sandy River and its two main tributaries, the Tug and Levisa forks, drain nearly two million mountainous acres in the easternmost part of Kentucky. For generations, the only practical means of transportation and contact with the outside world was the river, and, as The Big Sandy demonstrates, steamboats did much to shape the culture of the region. Carol Crowe-Carraco offers an intriguing and readable account of this region's history from the days of the venturesome Long Hunters of the eighteenth century, through the bitter struggles of the Civil War and its aftermath, up to the 1970s, with their uncertain promise of a new prosperity. The Big Sandy pictures these changes vividly while showing how the turbulent past of the valley lives on in the region's present.

"By closely studying the strategic blend of land ownership, subsistence agriculture, and commerce, Weise reveals how white male farmers in Floyd County attempted to achieve and preserve patriarchal authority and independence - and how this household localism laid the foundation for the region's development during the industrial era. By shifting attention from the actions of industrialists to those of local residents, he reconciles contradictory views of antebellum Appalachia and offers a new understanding of the region's history and its people."--Jacket.

A guide to the historical coal towns of the Big Sandy River Valley that provides brief histories of each town, descriptions of the buildings and structures that remain, and insight into the town's residents.

The history and genealogy of the people of the Big Sandy Valley.