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“For those who responded to me about Olive Hill, Volume 1, thank you for your kind words.”
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Olive Hill, Kentucky gave all that it had in a time it was most needed until a time it was not. More people need to know the Olive Hill story. Olive Hill, Volume 1 is the story of the first America, the land of opportunity. In May 1800, where Volume 1 begins, America was a few million souls clinging to the eastern edge of a vast continent. People were moving west and opening up a vast new wilderness. Olive Hill, Volume 2 is the story of the second America, the land of progress. Industrial might. World power. Olive Hill, Kentucky played a little-known, but important role in both Americas.
Olive Hill Volume 1 and Volume 2 Overview
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Carter County, Kentucky was blessed with an abundance of diverse natural resources, including timber, iron ore, coal, and limestone.
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During the Industrial Revolution one of its towns, Olive Hill, became the center of a 600 square mile hotbed of fireclay, a unique heat-resistant clay used to make firebricks.
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For decades, thousands of hard-working Olive Hillians dug, moulded, and fired that uncommon clay into hundreds of thousands of firebricks per day to line open hearth steel furnaces, locomotive fireboxes, and steamship boilers.
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Without the steel, there would be no skyscrapers and no rail lines. Without the trains and ships, there would be no movement to expedite a growing nation. Olive Hill firebricks helped make this possible. This one small Kentucky town can lay claim to help building the greatest nation on earth.
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Olive Hill Volume 1 follows the Reed family from May, 1800 thru September, 1884. From Virginia to Kentucky to other historical places and events… Olive Hill Volume 2 continues to follow the Reed family from September, 1884 to June, 1959. History is alive in both volumes.