Kate Peters Sturgill

Katherine O'Neill Peters Sturgill (March 3, 1907 – ) was an Appalachian singer and musician. She collected folk songs and some of her own songs were collected and are in the collections of the Library of Congress.

Early life Kate Peters Sturgill was born on March 3, 1907, in Wise County, Virginia. One of thirteen children, she took to music early, playing parlor organ by age seven and mastering the guitar as a teenager. In her teens, she married coal miner Sidney Peters. In 1927, she and some neighbors formed the string band Lonesome Pine Trailers.

In 1937, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded the construction of the Country Cabin on the Powell River near Norton, Virginia. It served as a community gathering place where she and her sisters taught traditional music, performance, and crafts, and served meals to impoverished schoolchildren. While the original Cabin fell into disuse over the years, it was resurrected in 1978 as Country Cabin II and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. She herself was recorded by Herbert Halpert of the WPA in 1939, credited as Mrs. Kate Peters.

From 1947 to 1954, she and Meadie Moles performed a biweekly show as the Cumberland Valley Girls on WNVA radio. In 1968, she was recorded by folk song collector Mike Seeger, brother of musician Pete Seeger.

After the death of Sidney Peters, she married another coal miner, Archie Sturgill.