Jean Thomas was born Jeanette Mary Francis de Assisi Aloysius Narcissus Garfield Bell in Ashland, Kentucky in 1881. As a teenager, she attended business school to learn stenography, defying convention, giving her the nickname, “The Traipsin’ Woman”. She went on to become a court reporter, traveling by jolt wagon to courts across the mountains of East Kentucky. Along the way, she was exposed to the folkways traditions of the mountain people, learning their music, dialect, and clothing. She became very interested in folk songs that were rooted in England.She founded the American Folk Song Festival, hosted it at her home near Ashland, Kentucky from 1930 to 1972. She is credited in shining a light on Appalachian folk music for the first time. She took pictures and collected quilts of the talented mountain folks along the way. She wrote Devil’s Ditties (1931), The Traipsin’ Woman (1933), and The Sun Shines Bright (1940) along with many papers, about Appalachian folkways. She made recordings of the musicians she became familiar with which can be found in the Smithsonian Folkways collection. Some of those recordings were put on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music which is said to be the most influential compilation in the history of recording music.
"In 1926 Jean Thomas met William Day, a blind fiddler from Rowan County. Using the skills she had acquired as press agent and manager, she changed his name to Jilson Settles, secured recording contracts and booked him (as the “Singin Fiddler from Lost Hope Hollow”) in theaters. Day eventually played in London’s Royal Albert Hall. He was the subject of Thomas’ first book, Devil’s Ditties (1931)."
She died 1982, living to be 101.
