Q 01/05

Besides Appalachia, which US upland region is most closely associated with the word "hillbilly"?

A) The Adirondacks

B) The Ozarks

C) The Black Hills

D) The Poconos

Answer · why

B) The Ozarks

The term spread north and west with the people who left both regions during the Great Depression.

Q 02/05

In the Scottish origin story for the word, "billy" meant what?

A) Comrade

B) Hill

C) Whisky

D) Goat

Answer · why

A) Comrade

"Hill-folk" were people who kept apart from society; the combined term was applied to Covenanters hiding in the southern Scottish hills.

Q 03/05

The earliest known printed use of 'hillbilly', in 1892, was in a journal for which industry's workers?

A) Steel

B) Coal mining

C) Textiles

D) Railroads

Answer · why

D) Railroads

An 1899 photograph labelled "Camp Hillbilly" and a 1900 New York Journal definition followed.

Q 04/05

A 1900 New York Journal definition called a "Hill-Billie" a free and untrammeled white citizen of which state?

A) Kentucky

B) West Virginia

C) Alabama

D) Tennessee

Answer · why

C) Alabama

He supposedly "drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him".

Q 05/05

One theory ties the word to Scottish 'hill-folk' Covenanters who followed which Presbyterian preacher?

A) Andrew Melville

B) Richard Cameron

C) Alexander Peden

D) John Knox

Answer · why

B) Richard Cameron

His followers, the Cameronians, fled to the hills of southern Scotland in the late 17th century to avoid persecution.