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Heritage Center to host book signing by Mary Jane Queen
By Lynn Hotaling
A local legend has written down her life’s story and will autograph copies of her book this weekend.
Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center will host a book-signing event honoring Jackson County musical matriarch Mary Jane Queen to celebrate the publication of “The Life and Times of Mary Jane Queen.”
Local legend Mary Jane Queen, 91, looks over a copy of her recent book Monday at her Johns Creek home. She will read and sign copies Sunday, Jan. 8, from 2 until 4 p.m. at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center. – Herald photo by Lynn Hotaling
The book signing will be from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, at the MHC, which is located on the ground floor of WCU’s Robinson Building. Queen, 91, will read passages from her book and sing, but she won’t play her banjo due to the arthritis that’s stiffened her fingers.
Supported in part by a grant from the Jackson County Arts Council and the North Carolina Arts Council, the book chronicles Queen’s life in Cullowhee’s Johns Creek community.
Queen credits Winston Hardman with giving her the idea to write the book and said her daughter Dorothy Connor of Sylva helped her with editing and finding photographs. Blue Ridge School English teacher Diane Gholson, who met Queen several years ago through a school project, transcribed Queen’s manuscript and arranged the text and illustrations.
Mountain musical matriarch Mary Jane Queen, who will turn 92 in February, has written her first book, “The Life and times of Mary Jane Queen. She will read and sign copies this Sunday, Jan. 8, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center.
“I’m proud of it,” Queen said of the 87-page volume published by Catch the Spirit of Appalachia. “It’s true – I lived it.”
The paperback includes several firsts. There’s the first time Queen rode in a truck, which also happened to be the first time she visited Sylva.
“Bill Nicholson was the first on Johns Creek to get a truck,” she said. “He came over to the school and took my class to Sylva, and that was the first time I’d ever been there.”
That ride occurred when she was around 12 years old in the mid-1920s, and she remembers that Sylva’s sidewalks were made of planks and the main road was dirt.
The Queens didn’t have electricity until 1945, and she didn’t get her first washing machine, a wringer model, until 1950.
Queen also writes about the community fairs held at what she calls the “old” Johns Creek School, which was located above the Johns Creek Baptist Church. She also attended the “new” school, which is now the Caney ForkCommunity Center.
Born in 1914, Queen says with a laugh that she was “a Prince before she became a Queen.” She was born into the Jim Prince family in the Caney Fork community and into a culture of music. Her father was a talented claw-hammer banjo player and her mother, Clearsie, was a singer, while brothers Alvin, Shirley, Marion, Ernest and Early were accomplished musicians in their own right.
“Folks used to come from miles around most every Saturday night to the house or to the barn dances where my dad would play,” Queen said. “He’d play and sing all night long and never play the same song twice!”
Queen, a self-taught musician, said she learned to play by watching her father pick his banjo.
When Mary Jane Prince married Claude Queen (who also played the banjo but with a two-finger up-picking style), the two moved into the Queen family home built in 1912 on Johns Creek. All eight of their children were born there and grew up playing music together. As music styles changed, the Queen family preserved the old-time way of “making music,” and continued to value their heritage and culture.
It wasn’t until Claude Queen died almost 20 years ago that Mary Jane Queen began to accompany her children to performances with the Queen Family Band.
“The children didn’t want me to stay home, so I began to sing a few gospel songs, bluegrass, mountain music and ballads to the crowds. They sorta enjoyed it. I did, too. I also thoroughly enjoyed going to the schools and talking to the children about the old days, and reciting my poetry.”
In addition to the story of her life, Mary Jane Queen’s book includes many family photos as well as some of her paintings and poetry. According to the author, she began drawing and painting in much the same way she learned to play music.
“I learned from looking at things,” she said Monday. “I used to carve too – I wore Claude’s pockeknife out doing that.”
Queen has been honored for her work in many publications, including The Boston Globe and National Geographic, and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1993 and four awards from the Asheville Dance and Folk Festival. Along with the family band, she received Western’s Mountain Heritage Award in 1999 and the Brown-Hudson Folklore Award in 2001.
Stories based on Queen’s life have been chronicled in a Phillip Morris production of a play, “On Blue Mountain,” performed at Town Hall in New York City. Also, characters based on Queen and her son Henry were included in the 2001 movie “Songcatcher.”
For more information about the Jan. 8 book signing and other MHC events, call the center at 227-7129 or visit online at www.wcu.edu/mhc.
Another book-signing event for Queen is planned at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva on Saturday, Feb. 18.
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