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Abstract Cratis Dearl Williams grew up in rural Lawrence County, Kentucky, where he began to study the speech, tales and songs of mountain folk, and taught in a one-room school. He became known for his presentations of Appalachian singing styles and dialects. His first wife (m. 1937), Sylvia Graham, came from the same area and attended both Berea Academy and Morehead State Teachers College (BA, 1937). A poet and teacher, her health was fragile. In 1942 Sylvia was diagnosed with tuberculosis and...