"They called him Uncle Doctor," he says. "He was from Carter County and he came to Knoxville and practiced all his life, just him and his little black bag. Here it is."

The accounts book is surrounded by 19th-century scalpels, forceps and tweezers. Its carefully lettered entries describe a way of life in a largely rural area more than 100 years ago. One man paid with a basket of eggs, another with preserves, a third with a ham.

Until Irwin spotted the buggy in the barn of one of Uncle Doctor's descendants, its owner had been all but forgotten. But Uncle Doctor, who died early in this century, soon will live on as a part of Irwin's Hall of Fame, the latest addition to his Museum of Appalachia here.

"That's what I like to do," Irwin says of his buggy and its owner. "When I get ahold of 'em, I like to dig 'em up." Since the early 1960s, Irwin has been going about his digging, combing the Appalachian mountain areas of Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and South Carolina for relics.

Sixty-three years old, a thatch of silver hair emphasizing his bright blue eyes, Irwin exhibits the careful intensity of his mountain heritage. He always seems to be taking in everything around him, not missing anything - then rooting out its story.

"Artifacts are only interesting to me if I can find out their history," he says, tapping on a rough-hewn coffin about 7 feet long. "This fellow named Bill Black - he was a big man - built it for himself, but when he got sick and told his wife, Minnie, she'd better get his coffin ready, she told him she was going to bury him in something a lot nicer than that.

"So when he died she got him a fine casket, and I got the one he'd made for himself."

At first, Irwin stored his discoveries wherever he could find room on his small farm. Then, in 1968, he acquired, moved and reassembled a log cabin and filled it with period acquisitions.

In 1969, as more people stopped by to look at the relics crowding his yard, he decided to turn the collection into a museum.

Today there are more than two dozen reassembled buildings on the 65- acre spread, ranging from a humble "two-holer" privy to a cantilever barn. Between are a hen house, a log church, the Big Tater Valley School House, an underground dairy, a smokehouse and a blacksmith shop.

The oldest is the Arnwine cabin, built about 1800 on the Clinch River, 40 miles north of the museum. It's on the National Register of Historic Places.

The newest is the Hall of Fame, which was opened four years ago. Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Alvin York has a place, as do Nobel Peace Prize honoree Cordell Hull and mandolin player Red Rector. But so do people whose only fame was in their communities.

Musical instruments adorn the walls and display cases, testaments to pioneer ingenuity. Fiddles, guitars and banjos are made from gourds, ham cans, a toilet seat, a tobacco box, a hubcap. There's the one Irwin calls the "ukeweewee," made from a bed pan.

Beyond the Hall of Fame is the Main Display Barn, which contains more than 250,000 items ranging from whiskey stills to a homemade tool for pulling mule's teeth.

Much of Irwin's childhood was spent in learning farm ways from his grandparents. "I was profoundly impressed by (grandfather Rice's) sense of history and his knowledge and understanding of the past," he says.

He went on to become an educator, spending more than 25 years teaching and serving as principal and school superintendent until turning his full-time attention to preserving the region's history.

His efforts have been rewarded with many honors, including, in 1989, a fellowship grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He's using the $345,000 award to add to the museum.