May 14, 1901

John Quincy Wolf Jr. was born in Batesville (Independence County). Young Wolf attended public schools in Batesville and graduated from Arkansas College (now Lyon College) before obtaining an MA from Vanderbilt University and, later, a PhD. A college professor whose academic expertise was Romantic poetry, Wolf is best remembered for his intrepid collecting and recording of folk music and folklore. He is credited with discovering and encouraging such performers as Almeda Riddle, Ollie Gilbert, and Jimmy Driftwood. After his death, Memphis State University professor F. Jack Hurley, along with Wolf’s widow, published Wolf’s collected recollections of his father’s tales of growing up in the Ozarks after the Civil War under the title Life in the Leatherwoods.