Podcast
Hometown History
Hosted by Shane Waters · EN
Discover forgotten stories from small-town America that never made it into history books. Hometown History is the podcast uncovering hidden American history—overlooked events, local mysteries, and untold tragedies from communities across the nation. Every week, meticulous research brings pre-2000 small-town stories to life in 20-minute episodes. From forgotten disasters to local legends, hidden chapters to pivotal moments, each episode explores a different town's overlooked history. Perfect for history enthusiasts seeking forgotten American stories, small-town history, and local history that shaped our nation. Respectful storytelling meets educational depth—history podcast content for curious minds who want to learn about America's hidden past without hour-long episodes.
23episodes
Episodes
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The Gainesville Tornado: 203 Dead in 3 Minutes
1w ago00:15:52Tap to summarizeOn April 6, 1936, two tornadoes merged over Gainesville, Georgia, and in just three minutes, killed 203 people, the deadliest tornado in a single building in American history. This is the haunting story of the Cooper Pants Factory disaster and how one catastrophic afternoon changed building codes forever.Gainesville, nestled in the Blue Ridge foothills, was thriving during the Great Depression. Known as the "Queen City of North Georgia's Mountains, " this manufacturing hub of nine thousand residents had managed to weather the economic crisis better than most American towns. Cotton mills, poultry plants, and garment factories provided steady work for families desperate for income. At the corner of West Broad and Maple Streets stood the Cooper Pants Factory, a brick structure built in 1893 where approximately 125 workers, mostly young women and girls, stitched trousers for meager wages that nonetheless kept families fed.But the building had a fatal flaw: one staircase. One entrance. One exit. For 125 people.The morning of Monday, April 6th began like any other. Sewing machines hummed to life. Thread was loaded. Workers settled into their shifts with no knowledge that a meteorological catastrophe was forming in the mountains to the west. Just the day before, an F5 tornado had devastated Tupelo, Mississippi, killing over 216 people, the fourth deadliest tornado in American history. The same storm system that spawned that destruction was now pushing eastward, producing a dozen tornadoes across the Southeast in less than twenty-four hours.Gainesville had no warning system. No sirens. No weather radar. Two separate storm cells were forming in the hills west of town, moving inexorably toward each other on a collision course with fate.Among those who would experience the disaster firsthand was C.F. "Stubby" Fiammett, a tobacco salesman attempting to drive to town when the unthinkable happened. As the two tornadoes merged directly over the city, the Cooper Pants Factory, that building with one staircase for 125 people, became a death trap. The structure collapsed in on itself, trapping workers under tons of brick and twisted steel. Fiammett found himself pinned under the wreckage, conscious and listening as the screams of trapped factory workers echoed through the ruins around him. For nearly three hours, he lay there, trapped, as the sounds of human suffering grew fainter. Not because rescue was arriving, but because the women were dying.This episode explores the meteorological perfect storm, the architectural failures that amplified the tragedy, and the survivors' harrowing accounts of those three minutes of hell. We'll examine how this single disaster forced America to completely rethink building safety codes, fire exits, and structural standards. The Gainesville tornado became a watershed moment in American disaster history, proof that sometimes it takes unimaginable tragedy to force systemic change.Join us as we walk the streets of this Georgia town and uncover the human stories buried in the rubble of industrial America. This is Hometown History: where local stories changed the world. Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history Episode 202 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane WatersAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Jacksonville, Florida: The 1888 Yellow Fever Epidemic That Built Public Health
2w ago00:22:12Tap to summarizeIn the sweltering summer of 1888, a Tampa saloon keeper named R.D. McCormick stepped off a train in Jacksonville, Florida, carrying something far deadlier than luggage. Within weeks, the disease known as Yellow Jack would transform America's booming winter playground into a quarantined city of the dead, sending refugees fleeing north only to be met with armed guards, locked gates, and threats of gunfire. Of the roughly fourteen thousand people who stayed, one in three would contract yellow fever. Four hundred and twenty-seven would never recover.Jacksonville in 1888 was no ordinary Southern city. A progressive coalition of working-class whites and African Americans had swept the previous year's election, seating five Black council members, a Black municipal judge, and twenty-three Black police officers. The epidemic shattered that experiment in biracial governance. As elected officials fled, civilian leaders stepped forward. Colonel J.J. Daniel organized the Jacksonville Auxiliary Sanitary Association, hiring hundreds of doctors and nurses before the fever claimed his own life. Dr. Alexander Darnes, Jacksonville's first African American physician, stayed to treat patients from both communities. A woman known as Mrs. A.B. Anthony went house to house delivering milk to the sick at her own expense.Timeline of Key EventsThe 1888 Jacksonville yellow fever epidemic unfolded with terrifying speed across five months, from a single diagnosisto a city-wide catastrophe.July 28, 1888: R.D. McCormick diagnosed as first confirmed yellow fever caseAugust 10, 1888: Board of Health officially declares epidemic; Jacksonville Auxiliary Sanitary Association formedSeptember 3, 1888: Acting Mayor J.W. Archibald evacuates the cityLate September 1888: Peak week, 944 new cases and 70 deaths in seven daysNovember 25, 1888: First hard frost kills mosquitoes and effectively ends the epidemicDecember 15, 1888: National and state quarantines officially lifted Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history Episode 201 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane WatersAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Bessemer City, North Carolina: The Ballad Singer the Mill Bosses Couldn't Silence
3w ago00:20:26Tap to summarizeBessemer City, North Carolina. September 14th, 1929. A flatbed truck kicks up Red Carolina dust on a back road outside Bessemer City. The boards rattle beneath 22 pairs of feet. No one in the truck bed carries a weapon. They are textile workers heading home from a roadblock that turned them around. They did what they were told. They turned back, and the cars behind them kept coming. In that truck bed, gripping the wooden side rails, a 29-year-old woman feels the September heat press against her skin. TIMELINE 1900: in the southern Appalachian Mountains. 1929: A flatbed truck kicks up Red Carolina dust on a back road outside Bessemer City. 1935: and ran as a non-union shop until it closed in 1993. 1986: North Carolina proposed a historical marker near the Loray Mill. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Bessemer City is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 200 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters If you liked this: Episode 168 (Hickory, North Carolina) Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Forsyth County, Georgia: The Town Georgia Tried to Bury Twice
4w ago00:25:01Tap to summarizeSeptember, 1912, Forsyth County, Georgia, 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, farming country, red clay roads, pine forests thick enough to block out the afternoon sun. The air sits heavy. It smells like turned earth and wood smoke. More than a thousand black Americans live here. They own land. They go to church. William and Ida Bagley own 60 acres. Grant Smith preaches on Sunday. Children walk to school along dirt paths worn smooth by generations of feet. TIMELINE 1912: stayed all white for 75 years, and then drowned the evidence under a lake. 1913: a grand jury drops all charges against Tony Howell. 1920: census recorded 30 black residents, where there had been more than a thousand. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Forsyth County is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 199 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Carrollton, Mississippi: The 1886 Courthouse Massacre That History Forgot
Apr 2800:22:19Tap to summarizeJanuary 1886, Carrollton, Mississippi, a Saturday afternoon. Two brothers are hauling jugs of molasses from a wagon into a saloon. Heavy earthenware vessels, maybe 20 pounds each, slick with condensation. Ed and Charlie Brown, part African American, part Native American, working men making a delivery. The doorways narrow, someone's coming out as they're going in. Bodies shift, a jug tilts, and thick brown molasses drips down a white man's sleeve. The brothers stop, apologize. TIMELINE 1834: and named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland. 1876: Gray-white brick, tall windows, a cupola on top. 1886: Carrollton, Mississippi, a Saturday afternoon. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Carrollton is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 198 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Dover, Delaware: The Poisoned Chocolates That Changed American Law
Apr 2100:22:03Tap to summarizeAugust 1898, Dover, Delaware. The heat of the day has broken, and the air smells of cut grass and warm earth. On the porch of the Pennington family home, Mary Elizabeth Dunning opens a package from the afternoon mail, a box of chocolate bonbons, a Cambric handkerchief, and a note. With love to yourself and baby, Miss C. She passes the candy around. Her sister Ida takes one. Her daughter takes one. Friends gathered on the porch reach in. The evening is warm. The chocolate is sweet. TIMELINE 1683: The old state house, built in 1791, still opens its doors to visitors. 1787: making Delaware the first state in the Union. 1887: to 1891, and a former attorney general of Delaware, Pennington was one of the most respected men in Kent County. 1898: the package arrived at the Pennington home. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Dover is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 197 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Brattleboro, Vermont: The Asylum Tower Holding a Century of Secrets
Apr 1400:20:12Tap to summarizeIn the woods above Brattleboro, Vermont, a 65-foot stone tower has stood since the 1890s. It was not built by architects or hired masons. It was built by the patients of an insane asylum, stone by stone, under the direction of their doctors who believed that breaking rocks could fix broken minds. But some patients found another use for the tower they had built with their own hands. They climbed it one last time. In 1938, officials sealed the door shut. At the base of that tower sits a cemetery holding more than 650 burials, many marked only with numbers.This is the story of Anna Hunt Marsh, the daughter of Vermont's Lieutenant Governor, who watched her husband's patient die from ice water submersion and forced opium comas in 1806. She spent twenty-eight years turning that grief into action. When she died in 1834, her will contained a single sentence that would change Brattleboro forever: ten thousand dollars left for the purpose of building a hospital for the insane in Windham County. She became the first woman in American history to found a mental health institution. Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Waterbury, Vermont: The Asylum That Turned a Towns Name Into a Warning
Apr 700:23:02Tap to summarizeYou're standing on Route 100 in Waterbury, Vermont, in November 1891. The air smells like wood smoke and coming snow. Behind you, the last maples hold on to their copper leaves. Ahead on a hill that commands the entire valley, workers are laying the final stones on a building that will change everything. The Vermont State Asylum for the Insane. Four stories of red brick, 200 windows catching the afternoon light, italianate towers that look, from certain angles, almost welcoming. TIMELINE 1891: The air smells like wood smoke and coming snow. 1900: it houses 400 patients. 1925: Every third person you pass works at the asylum. 1947: electroconvulsive therapy. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Waterbury is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 195 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters If you liked this: Episode 184 (East Montpelier, Vermont) Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Riceville, Maine: The Ghost Town Whose Plague Never Happened
Mar 3100:16:06Tap to summarizeRiceville, Maine. Somewhere in the forest of eastern Maine, there's a town that no longer exists. It's a summer morning, sometime in the early 1900s. A traveler makes his way down a rutted logging road through dense strands of hemlock and spruce. He's headed for Riceville, a company town built around a tannery on Buffalo Stream. He knows the place. Maybe a hundred people live there. Workers, families, children who attend the schoolhouse at the north end of town. But when he arrives, something is wrong. TIMELINE 1880: census records show just 10 people living there. 1883: money, that's an almost incomprehensible sum. 1890: Riceville had exploded to 136 residents. 1898: James Rice and his brothers Francis X and John took full control, forming the Hancock Leather Company. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Riceville is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 194 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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Prudence Island: The Keeper Who Relit the Light After Losing Everything
Mar 2400:18:04Tap to summarizeIn a lighthouse keeper's cottage on Prudence Island, Rhode Island, six people huddle on the floor. It's September 21st, 1938. Outside, a wall of gray-green water is racing across Narragansett Bay, 16 feet of churning ocean pushed by winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. George Gustavus, the lighthouse keeper, stands with his wife Mabel, his 12-year-old son Edward, and three neighbors who came seeking shelter. They'd climbed upstairs when the water started rising. TIMELINE 1823: on Goat Island in Newport Harbor, it was dismantled and moved stone by stone to Prudence Island in 1851. 1933: 28 years he'd spent here. 1937: George Gustavus has finally arrived at his new posting. 1938: it's become a summer colony, though the year-round folks remain tight-knit. WHY THIS MATTERS The story of Prudence Island is a reminder that the events that shaped America didn't always happen in the biggest cities. What unfolded here left marks on the community that are still visible today. The full story is more complicated, and more human, than the version most people know. Episode 193 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters If you liked this: Episode 192 (Watch Hill, Rhode Island) Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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