Madeline Ricks

Madeline is a 2024-2025 AmeriCorps member with the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area serving at the Augusta Heritage Center as the Collection Preservation Coordinator. She'll be working on digitizing Augusta's vast archive, writing blog posts on traditional music and other elements of West Virginia culture, and planning more projects to leave a lasting impact on Augusta and the surrounding community. Madeline comes from Indiana and Montana, but has a unique love for West Virginia as her mom grew up in Charleston and most of her maternal side of the family still lives in the area. She has a BA in English Literature from Gonzaga University and a MRes in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

There are a Wild Boar in These Woods

5 Comments / Augusta Live, Folk Culture, Lift Your Voice Choir, Music History / December 10, 2024 / #wildboar, Appalachia, Folklife, Folklore

Cover Photo: “A particularly savage wild boar (Sus scrofa) fighting with another over the females behind. Engraving” (Wikimedia Commons 2024) […]

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Join our Jolly Wassail! – December 7th, 6pm at The Kump House

2 Comments / Augusta Events, Folk Culture, Lift Your Voice Choir, News / November 22, 2024 / #AugustaEvents, Folklife, Folklore, Wassail

Cover Photo: “Hedingham Fair’s first Wassail design; ‘Joy come to our Jolly Wassail’, 1997 (Cater 2013:4). As we begin planning

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Tunes on the Tracks: My Time at the October Old-Time Retreat

Leave a Comment / Augusta Live, Folk Culture / October 28, 2024 / #AugustaEvents, #Cass, #octoberoldtimeretreat, #oldtime, #squaredance

Last weekend my senses were flooded by the sound of fiddles, the sight of flatfooting, and the exhilaration of square

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The Rise of the Banjo: Part Two of the West Virginia Instrument Anthology

2 Comments / Folk Culture, Music History / October 11, 2024 / #banjo, #banjohistory, #musicculture, AugustaArchive, bluegrass, oldtime

Cover Photo: Horace Weston standing with banjo from 1884 or earlier (Horace Weston 2024). Welcome back to the West Virginia

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Apple Butter Amateur

2 Comments / Folk Culture, Food Culture / September 26, 2024 / #AppleButter, #CommunityMaking, #TraditionalFood, #WestVirginiaFood

Cover Photo: ‘Making Apple Butter the Old Fashioned Way, Webster Co., WV’, 1964 Photograph (WV History OnView 2024). With fall

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African Origins of the Banjo: Part One of the West Virginia Instrument Anthology

3 Comments / Folk Culture, Music History / September 18, 2024 / African Banjo History, Banjo, Folk Culture, Music History

Cover Photo: “Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893, oil on canvas, 49×35 1/2 inches. Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia”

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