Aunt Jennie Wilson

Virginia Myrtle Ellis "Aunt Jennie" Wilson (February 9, 1900 – March 2, 1992) was a traditional clawhammer banjo player from Logan County, West Virginia.

Life and music Aunt Jennie Wilson was born on February 9, 1900, near Henlawson, West Virginia. She was the youngest of eleven children of Hugh Bryant "Doc" Ellis and Cinderella Lockhard Ellis, who owned a farm overlooking present-day Chief Logan State Park. She began playing the banjo at age nine, learning from her brother's boyfriend Delpha Maynard. She also began signing, learning child ballads and other traditional songs. She played at square dances and other events, sometimes playing with musicians like Frank Hutchison and Dick Justice who would later become famous. Decades later, she described her first square dance: "I never seen such fightin' in all the days of my life...Knives a-flashing everywhere and people – men and women – fightin'"

In 1918 she married James Dewey Wilson, a coal miner. She gave up the banjo for a life of hard domestic labor in coal mining camps which were at the center of the West Virginia coal wars of the 1910s and 20s. In 1939, J. D. Wilson was paralyzed by a slate fall and lingered in a hospital, with financial support from the United Mine Workers, for three months before he died.

Awards and honors She received the Vandalia Award, a lifetime achievement award for contributions to West Virginia culture, in 1984. The annual Aunt Jennie Music Festival at Chief Logan State Park is named for her.