MANSFIELD – Willie Davis, Mansfield resident and author of a two-volume historical fiction novel documenting the history of Olive Hill, Ky., was invited to the city recently as a guest speaker at two venues.
Davis spoke to Olive Hill high school students, and also at an inaugural community forum about how this small Kentucky town contributed to our nation’s industrial growth. In addition, Davis was invited to meet the general public at Olive Hill’s annual fall festival.
“Kentucky lost about 400,000 of its sons and daughters in the 40s and 50s to the industrial
north,” says Davis. “My family migrated in 1959 to Manfield when I was 12. When I began researching Olive Hill history in the 1990s I discovered a wonderful creation story that few people knew, including many Mansfielders and Olive Hillians. I became committed to telling that story in the future, which culminated in my historical fiction novel, Olive Hill.”
Carter County, Kentucky was blessed with an abundance of diverse natural resources, including timber, iron ore, coal, and limestone. During the Industrial Revolution, Olive Hill became the center of a 600 square-mile hotbed of fireclay, a unique heat-resistant clay used to make firebricks. 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. They did this for decades.
“Without steel, there would be no skyscrapers and no rail lines,” says Davis. “Without the trains and ships, there would be no movement to expedite a growing nation. Olive Hill firebricks helped make this possible. Olive Hill and its people gave all that it had in a time it was most needed until a time it was needed no more.”
Davis expressed his belief that the study of history is important. A person cannot choose where they were born, or how they were raised, but they can choose how they live. He told the two venues that the past causes the present and the present causes the future. To better live in the present and plan for the future, people need to better understand how the world has, has not, is, and is not working.
“History is great storytelling. History well told builds individual identity, enhances self-worth, inspires personal growth, and generates a connection to something larger than oneself,” says Davis. “Understanding one’s local and family history is a path that can lead one to who they are, where they are, and where they can go.”
For further information contact Willie Davis at willied@neo.rr.com.