Jean Thomas (4)

American photographer and folk festival promoter, who specialized in the music, crafts, and language patterns of the Appalachian region of the United States (November 14, 1881 – December 7, 1982). She was born Jeannette Bell in Ashland, Kentucky to William George Bell and Catherine S. Bell, a retired engineer and a schoolteacher, respectively. She earned the nickname “Traipsin’ Woman” when, as a teenager in the 1890s, she defied convention to attend business school, learn stenography, and become a court reporter, traveling by jolt wagon to courts in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Using money saved from her court reporter wages, Thomas moved to New York, where she attended Hunter College and the Pulitzer School of Journalism. She married accountant Albert Thomas in 1913, a marriage which lasted only one year. She then held a variety of jobs, including work as a script girl for Cecil B. de Mille’s The Ten Commandments, as secretary to the owner of the Columbus Senators of the National League and as press agent for Ruby “Texas” Guinan, the notorious entertainer and owner of prohibition-era speakeasies. Her exposure to the musical traditions, dialect, folkways, and costumes of the mountain people she encountered, combined with her later work in "show business," led to her avocation as a popularizer of mountain music and as proprietress of the American Folk Song Festival, staged in and near Ashland, Kentucky, from 1932 to 1972. The first American Folk Song Festival was held in 1932 at Jean Thomas’ home town of Ashland, and featured 18 acts. During the early years of the American Folk Song Festival, Jean Thomas carried a camera wherever she went as she sought out musicians who would perform at the annual event. With the exception of the years 1943-1948, the American Folk Song Festival was held annually until failing health forced Thomas to retire in 1972.