Celebrating Women’s History Month. Singer, musician and storyteller Maggie Hammons Parker was one of the nine Hammons family members inducted posthumously into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2020. Local musician Dwight Diller took this photograph of Maggie in October 1972 at her home at Stillwell, near Marlinton. Diller had become friends with the Hammonses and began a long examination of the family, its history and their music. His photographs, field recordings and interviews contributed to a study of the family and a double album recording “The Hammons Family, The Traditions of a West Virginia Family and Their Friends” produced by the Library of Congress in 1973.
The legacy of the Hammons Family may have been best described by Heather Niday in her July 2020 report for WV Public Broadcasting. She wrote, “The Hammons Family were musicians and singers performing songs about hard times and love lost. They were storytellers who talked about everyday life in riddles, poems and funny tales. And they shared their wisdom and humor with anyone willing to listen.”
Maggie A. Hammons was born in a log house on the Williams River in Pocahontas County on September 15, 1899. She was one of 10 children born to Paris Anderson Hammons and Charlotte Margaret “Lottie” Roberts Hammons. In 1930, she married Nathan Parker, an equipment operator who had found timber work in West Virginia. Nathan Parker died in 1965, and Maggie Hammons Parker died July 26, 1987. They are buried in Cochran Cemetery at Onoto near Edray, West Virginia. (Hammons Family-Diller Collection, Courtesy of Dwight Diller; ID: PHP005559)
Access the Hammons Family-Diller Collection in the “Preserving Pocahontas” Digital Library at www.pocahontaspreservation.org/omeka
If you have historical records or photographs to be scanned for the county Historical Archive contact Preservation Officer B. J. Gudmundsson at 304-799-3989 or email info@pocahontaspreservation.org Prints of photographs are available.
