Ernest Stoneman

Ernest Van "Pop" Stoneman (May 25, 1893 – June 14, 1968) ranked among the prominent recording artists of country music's first commercial decade.

Born in a log cabin in Monarat (Iron Ridge), Carroll County, Virginia, near what would later become Galax, Stoneman was left motherless at age three and was raised by his father and three musically inclined cousins, who taught him the instrumental and vocal traditions of Blue Ridge mountain culture. He became a singer and songwriter, and proficient musician on the guitar, autoharp, harmonica, clawhammer banjo, and jaw harp.