Virgil Preston

Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson

Virgil Preston was born in a coal camp in Johnson County, Kentucky; but unlike most of the sons of miners who stayed in the coalfields, he didn't go into the mines. At his mother's insistence, he got an education and became a schoolteacher. His first major adventure outside the mountains was a car trip to the Chicago World's Fair in 1935. His second was World War II. After the war, he and his wife, who's from Pulaski County, settled in Cincinnati, where they've lived ever since.  

"I'll always think of my home being in Appalachian Kentucky. That's where I was born and reared. And I never got out of there until I was twenty-four or twenty-five. And I still go back every year." 

Perceptions of Home: The Urban Appalachian Spirit ©1996 The Urban Appalachian Council (now Urban Appalachian Community Coalition)

Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson; Interviews ©1996 Don Corathers

Photographs digitized by the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. Genealogy & Local History Department.