Appalachian History

When the dark clouds of war were gathering in the South in the spring of 1861, not everyone embraced the new cause. While some were eager to fight for a secessionist government, many others considered the impending war a wicked, treasonous undertaking and wanted no part of it.

Indeed, a majority in the hills of Northwest Alabama, mostly poor yeomen dirt farmers, saw little value or reason in taking arms against the federal government. They recognized quite early that this was not their fight, but that of the landed gentry. It was obvious to the hill folk that the plantation owners and their political spokesmen were fanning the war flames and talked the loudest about separation.

James B. Bell, of Winston County, AL, had six children: Robert, John, Henry, Eliza Jane, Francis, and James T., all Union Loyalists except for one son, Henry.

Henry joined the Confederacy and moved to Mississippi. Henry's brothers, sister, and father all tried to convince Henry to rethink his feelings, but to no avail. There are seven known letters sent to Henry, who turned them in to the authorities in his community. They were then sent to Governor Moore on July 10, 1861 with a letter signed by A.W. Irvin from Lodi, MS:

"Dear Sir, Enclosed please find a treasonable correspondence from Kansas P.O. Walker Co., Ala. to a citizen of our community, Mr. Henry Bell, signed by James B. Bell, John Bell, and Robert Bell which the undersigned regard as dangerous and forward the same to Your Excellency in order that you may be advised of the existence of such sentiment in your State and to enable you to investigate or take such cause in the premises as your judgment and duty may dictate. Mr. Henry Bell to whom the ___ documents were written ___ ___ these individuals reside in Black Swamp Beat in Winston Co. Ala but the Kansas Walker Co. is their P.O."

Robert died in Andersonville on August 3, 1864 (a prisoner of war), John died on August 17, 1864 in Rome, GA, Henry died March 24, 1863, James T. died on July 24, 1864, and James B., their father, died September 15, 1862. Francis was the only male who survived, and his descendants can still be found in Winston County. These letters have little punctuation, gaps, and blanks, and were written to Henry trying to convince him to come home and change his ways.

Letter Seven:

Robert Bell to his brother, Henry Bell in Choctaw County Mississippi

June 10th 1861

State of Alabama Winston County Dear brother it is this one time more that I take my pin in hand to try to right you a few lines to let you no that I am tolebral well and I hope that when this Comes to hand that it may findes you all well and that you aught to bee when I say what you aught to bee is to not bee and rebel nor a fool the way you hair bin righting hear you air one or the other and you cant deniy it nor you nead not to try to deniy it to mee your side has not got a foundaution that is eney sounder than a soft bull tied in the spring of the year you have not I suppose from the way you have bin riting seen nor heard nothing but disunion secession confederate confederated and confederation and you all haive Swollode it down like Sweet milk and Softe peaches I say hurrow for lincol it has ben Said that lincol was a going to free the negros that is a ly I will say that it seames to me like congress has something to say aboute it first it has bin said that the union men was traitors that I say is a ly again I am a heap freader of the disunions with their helish principals than I am of lincol. he has not said that he was a going to free the negros he has bin beging far peas ever since he was elected he has offered the south more than I wood have dun he has offerd the south eney thing they wood ask for if they would stay in [One full line is unreadable because of fold.] bee as it was with Joseph and his brothers if the south will not do eney thing that is right and fair it is said by you or some of you dis union party that lincol was elected by a large negro vote that is not so and you now it two when I say you I mean you all on the dis union side and all hoo the shoe may fit Can ware it. theair was something said a bout a company being sent out here to do something with the union men Send them on when you git redy and it will bee a too hand again I am not afeard in to it my self come on and you will mete with your uncle feddys theair is no dainger of you a coming or sending on that bysness there is too mutch meanness at the bottom of the disunion party to soot me one man in this county said that he wood live fat among the (women) if the war cum on and he has left the County and I heard of a nother one being shot or shot at for trying to force a woman to it.

I am a union man my self and a union principal and all the rest of the con nect tion here there is not ceding 15 rebels in our beat and I say hurrow for lincon and the union party the dis union party has committed treason You say that lincon was elected by a large negro vot that will not do if that bee the case why did not you brake the election at the start it looks to me like he was lawfully elected when he beat the others all to gether you all had better try to keep your negros as for mine they may go I do not like to smell them so will Rebel is one who opposis lawful authority. Rebel to rise in opposition against lawful authority Rebellion insurrection against lawful authority Secede to withdraw from fellowship secession the act of with draw ing from union the act of joining concord.

this is what I am in for I was bornd and Raised in the union and I exspect to dy with the union principal in mee I will Dy before I will take an oath to support the Southern confedersa when ever lincoln dus eney thing Contray to the Constitution I am then ready and willing to help put him a way from their so i ad no more. Robert Bell


source: http://wcgs.ala.nu/bellletters.htm

During the Depression the Federal Writers' Project provided wages for unemployed clerks, writers, editors, lawyers, teachers, librarians, and similar workers, and sought to compile anthologies of oral history, folklore, and music, as well as state, local and specialized guidebooks.

The Virginia Writers' Project (VWP) was the state-sponsored segment of the Federal Writers' Project. The VWP collected over 3,850 items from 62 counties between mid-1937 and mid-1942.

In 1991 Thomas E. Barden published 150 of the pieces from the VWP Collection (now housed at the University of Virginia) in ‘Virginia Folk Legends,” from which this oral history was taken.


Montague and Duck Moore
‘An unknown informant, interviewed by Raymond Sloan in Rocky Mount, Franklin County VA, no date

A family moved into Franklin County about thirty years ago, or rather, “appeared” in Franklin County, settling in a little cabin on a farm near the foothills of the Blue Ridge in the western section of the county. No one seemed to know where they might have come from. Evidently just wanderers, Montague Moore and his wife, known only as “Duck,” were a peculiar acting couple. And they both dressed oddly and shabbily. No more than paupers really, and without any education or skill, they must have struck a likely place to remain---for they did remain, and fared well.

Living near the Moores were several families that were very superstitious, and it wasn’t long before reports began to be circulated that the Moores were witches. Soon proofs of the accusations were forthcoming in the death of livestock from strange causes. Any strange happening was soon attributed to Montague and Duck Moore.

On being approached concerning their ability to hex, to make it stranger still, both freely admitted the fact. Yes, they were witches, but Montague stated that although he had the ability to bewitch, his greatest accomplishment was the ability to “take off the spell.” It was his wife Duck, he affirmed, who did all the hexing. It was not very difficult for Montague to follow this up and make it profitable, for in her visits to the neighborhood, Duck often threatened those who displeased her with a “spell.” Dismayed, the superstitious neighbors were relieved, next day, when Montague appeared and announced that he would gladly remove the “spell” for a bushel of potatoes or other household necessities.

In this manner, Montague and Duck continued their racket. Duck was occult in manner and professed to know many secrets in gaining good fortune and preventing bad luck. This information she dispensed for articles of clothing, food, and even money. The “spells” were of many types. Duck would suggest causing everything from a headache to rheumatism in the line of common ailments, and often would vent her powers on livestock.

Children were especially afraid of her and Montague, and would not pass near the little shack in which they lived. Even now, years after their death, many are superstitious about the little shack in which they lived, and especially wary of the two mounds on the hill, the graves of Montague and Duck Moore.

Possibly the greatest accomplishment attributed to Duck was the spell she put upon a young man in the neighborhood. He began to act very strangely and his family thought he was under her spell. What Montague could do for him didn’t help and he went off in the woods and killed himself.

When they had just died neighbors that had never dared to cross their doorsill came in crowds to ransack the place. Only a few crude pieces of furniture were in the little hovel, but a large cave in the hillside nearby was filled with stuff---tribute they’d got from their neighbors to ward off their witchery.

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the left side of your screen. If you'd rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here:



We open today's show with a look at the childhood forces that shaped Roy Rogers before he became Roy Rogers. One of Hollywood's most famous cowboys wasn’t raised on a western ponderosa. Leonard Slye grew up west of Lucasville, OH on a small farm in Duck Run.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

The Dust Bowl crisis of the early 1930s for the first time brought national attention to the acute dangers of soil erosion. Southern Appalachian farms, for their part, suffered from poor soil conditions and erosion as a result of practices that maximized the short-term potential of corn, tobacco and cotton cash crops at the expense of the soil’s long-term health. But in early 1938 South Carolina became the first state in the nation to implement a farm conservation plan to combat these imbalances.

Next, we’ll hear a leg stretcher of a yarn from one Fess Whitaker, of Letcher County, KY. Whitaker had been elected county jailer in 1917 and decided to run for county judge in 1921. But while on the campaign trail he got caught up in a street fight, a disturbance of the peace that led to his incarceration in the very jail he supervised, and earned him the nickname "The Jailed Jailer." While imprisoned, Whitaker continued his campaign and was eventually elected.

William Ganaway Russell had the good fortune to buy a farm exactly halfway between Walhalla SC and Highlands NC.
 There was no railway service between Walhalla and Highlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Travelers would have to ride horseback or via stagecoach on the Highlands Highway for two days to get to Highlands, 30 miles away. And waiting for them at the end of their first day’s ride, along the banks of the Chattooga River near the old Cherokee settlement of Tsatugi, sat the Russell farmstead and inn.

Benjamin Parks is credited with being the person who discovered gold in Georgia in 1828, west of the Chestatee River in Lumpkin County. He made some money from his find, but the man he sold his prospecting lease made even more. “That is the peculiarity of gold mining,” he observes in this 1894 interview in the Atlanta Constitution. “You will go day after day exhausting your means and your strength until you give it up. Then the first man who touches the spot, finds the gold the first opening he makes. It is just like gambling; all luck."

We’ll wrap things up with the story of the largest Waldensian colony in the world outside of Italy--Valdese, NC. The Waldensians are a Christian sect founded in the 12th century by Peter Valdo, a merchant of Lyons, France who lived only a short time before St. Francis. For many years the group was confined to a rugged area in the Cottian Alps along the boundary between Italy and France. King Louis XIV was determined not to let Protestant beliefs seep into Catholic-driven France and persecuted the Waldensians mercilessly. Toward the later part of the 19th century many Waldenses emigrated to North and South America to form missionary colonies—no longer because of religious persecution but because their small strip of land in the Alps had become overcrowded.

And, thanks to blogger Jeremy Stephens of Jeremy’s Saggy Record Cabinet we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Wade Mainer in a 1937 recording of “Starting Life Anew with You.”

So, call your old blue-tick hound up on the porch, fire up your corn-cob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

"Why--it's taken for granted that women are gossips by nature, by instinct and by training," said the Sparrow.

"Women ought to deny that charge every time they hear it, too!" she exclaimed. "It's just one of the many accusations men have repeated over and over until they have come to believe it."

The birds are used to hearing warm debates spring up between the Sparrows, shriek and flutter and prance for a while, and die amicably away. Their part is usually to provide a fair field and no favor, but when it comes up they sometimes listen, knowing that no marital infelicities can be brought about among settled Bird couples.

"If you would listen better to street conversations," the Sparrow declared, "you would have found out long ago that it's the women who talk scandal and start idle rumors."

"They're not a bit worse than men! I tell you more than half the mischievous talk is retailed by some married woman, who heard it from her husband, who got it, of course, at his club."

"Nonsense! Men talk politics and business; it's the women who are always saying to each other, 'Now don't you ever tell I told you this,' and 'Isn't it terrible about Mrs. Wood Knott Wearen,' and 'Have you heard the story they are telling about Miss Geewotta Peeche'--huh! you can't deny it, women will gossip! Mind must have something mischievous to take up when they are idle."

"Then the thing to do is to give 'em something better to think about," said the arch-peacemaker, the White Pigeon. "Maybe the movies--"

Her little attempt was foredoomed to failure; the Sparrows were facing each other with open beaks and wings.

"I'll bet you a flaxseed there isn't a married man between here and the river that isn't full of exclusive information about his neighbors, unless his wife is deaf and dumb."

"How do you know that, I wonder! If their minds are so full of the weighty affairs of the city and the nation that they never gossip, how do you find out that they are full of scandalous information received from their wives?"

"Well----" The Sparrow was somewhat disconcerted. "They may occasionally help to spread a rumor, but --"

"They start them, too--by a turn of expression or a change of countenance; by a sneer or a gesture. And the man-gossip does vastly more harm than the woman; the malice of his tales is accented because it sounds smart."

The Sparrow seemed at last to have run out of replies, and the Gray Pigeon commented: "It is said that Wisconsin has a law against gossiping. Offenses are punishable with a fine of not more than $250, or imprisonment not to exceed a year in jail."

"All gossips ought to be jailed," said the Sparrow, perking up. "The everlasting 'Now don't you ever tell I told you this' ought to place the speaker on a level with a fellow that carries brass knucks or a sling-shot."

*****

From April - June 1924 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write "Fountain Square Conversations." The "Conversations" cleverly combined her naturalist's knowledge and her social commentary. They featured birds and other creatures on the square conversing under the shadows of the human statues. Miles (1879-1919) is remembered primarily for "The Spirit of the Mountains" (1905), the first comprehensive study of Southern Appalachian culture.





sources: www.phoebeclaire.com/miles/fsc20.htm
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/documents/pdf/fall_2005/emmabell_miles.pdf


Emma+B.+Miles Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history

"The gold," he mused; "yes, I will come to that. It was just by accident that I came across it; the site is now that of the Calhoun Mine. I was deer hunting, one day, when I kicked up something that caught my eye. I examined it, and decided that it was gold. The place belonged to Rev. Mr. Obarr, who, though a preacher, was a hard man, and very desperate.

Engraving of gold miners in Georgia. Artist unknown. From "Gold-Mining in Georgia," Harper's New Monthly Magazine,(June to November 1879): p. 519.

"I went to him, and told him that I thought I could find gold on his place if he would give me a lease of it. He laughed, as though he did not believe me, and consented. So a lease for forty years was written out, the consideration of which was that I was to give him one fourth of the gold mined. I took into partnership a friend in whom I had confidence. I went over to the spot with a pan, and turning over some earth it looked like the yellow of an egg. It was more than my eyes could believe.

"The news got abroad and such excitement you never saw. It seemed within a few days as if the whole world must have heard of it, for men came from every State I had ever heard of. They came afoot, on horseback, and in wagons, acting more like crazy men than anything else. All the way from where Dahlonega now stands to Nuckollsville there were men panning out of the branches and making holes in the hillsides. The saddest man in the county was Preacher Obarr from whom I had leased the land. He thought the lease was a joke but now he found out that it was in earnest.

"One day he came to me and said:

"'Mr. Parks, I want your lease.'

"' But I will not sell it to you,' I replied.

"'Why not?' he asked.

"'Well,' I answered, 'even if I were willing, it is now out of my power, for I have taken a partner, and I know he would never consent to it. I have given him my word and I will keep it.'

"'You will suffer for this, yet,' said Obarr, menacingly, as he went away.

"Two weeks later I saw a party of two women and two men approaching. I knew it was Obarr's family, intent upon trouble. Knowing Obarr's fondness for litigation, I warned my men to hold their own, but to take no offensive step.

"'Mr. Parks,' were Obarr's first words, 'I want that mine.'

"'If you were to pay me ten times its value.' I replied, 'I would not sell it to you.'

"'Well, the longest pole will knock off the persimmon,' he said threateningly.

"At that moment Mrs. Obarr broke the sluice gates to let out the water. A laborer was in the ditch and the woman threw rocks in the water in order to splash him. Failing to make him aggressive, she burst into tears; when her son advanced to attack him I caught him by the collar and flung him back.

"Then the party went off, swore out warrants against us, and had us all arrested. All this was done for intimidation, but it failed to work, and the next thing I heard was that Obarr had sold the place to Judge Underwood, who in turn sold it to Senator John C Calhoun of South Carolina, and then I lost a fortune.

"Senator Calhoun wanted to buy my lease, and I sold it for what I thought was a good price. The very first month after the sale he took out 24,000 pennyweights of gold, and then I was inclined to be as mad with him as Obarr had been with me. But that is the peculiarity of gold mining. You will go day after day exhausting your means and your strength until you give it up. Then the first man who touches the spot, finds the gold the first opening he makes. It is just like gambling; all luck."


---Benjamin Parks, from an 1894 interview in the Atlanta Constitution. Parks is said by some to be the person who discovered gold in Georgia in 1828, west of the Chestatee River in Lumpkin County.


source: "A preliminary report on a part of the gold deposits of Georgia, Bulletin No. 4-A," by William Smith Yeates and Samuel Washington McCallie, Geological Survey of Georgia, 1896

William Ganaway Russell had the good fortune to buy a farm exactly halfway between Walhalla SC and Highlands NC.

In 1849 an industrious group of Charleston German businessman were looking for a suitable parcel on which they could create a new settlement in SC, and formed the German Colonization Society to do so. Their plan was simple: they would buy a large fertile expanse of land, subdivide it, and resell it to immigrants who they would recruit from Germany.

After much deliberation, the Society purchased from Colonel Joseph Gresham 17,000 acres in Pickens District near the base of the Appalachians (in the center of modern day Oconee county.) They named the town they laid out Walhalla –‘paradise’ in German-- and within two years, the first settlers arrived and began to clear & farm the land. The Society took an active role to insure that the new Blue Ridge Railroad ran from Anderson, SC to the new town, thereby providing the last leg of a solid rail connection all the way to Charleston. They expected Walhalla to grow into a major railroad center as the train route eventually snaked west towards Cincinnati. That reality never materialized.

Meantime, by the end of the 19th century The Blue Ridge Railway was regularly taking vacationers escaping from South Carolina’s coastal heat as far as Walhalla. But Walhalla wasn’t their final destination. They were headed to Highlands NC, a summer resort founded in 1875 by Samuel T Kelsey and Clinton C. Hutchinson. The historic Highlands Inn, where generations have rocked afternoons away on the Main Street porch, was built there in 1880 (and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.) By 1931, Highlands' year-round population of 500 swelled to as many as 3,000 in the summer. Also in the 1930s the town became a golfing mecca when Bobby Jones of Atlanta and some of his well-heeled golfing buddies founded the Highlands Country Club.

There was no railway service between Walhalla and Highlands. Nineteenth century travelers would have to ride horseback or via stagecoach on the Highlands Highway for two days to get to Highlands, 30 miles away. And waiting for them at the end of their first day’s ride, along the banks of the Chattooga River near the old Cherokee settlement of Tsatugi, sat the Russell farmstead and inn.

William Ganaway Russell (1835-1921) purchased the property in 1867 and built most of the buildings, including the main house. Family tradition says that Russell paid for the property with a fortune he made driving cattle to feed California gold miners.

The large house was gradually expanded to provide rooms for travelers. That frame two-story building, dating from the 1880s, expanded to include a projecting rear two-story ‘L’ added around 1890. A two-story front porch was also added later. The inn could accommodate as many as 80 people per night. In the early twentieth century numerous prominent Georgians and South Carolinians spent the night at the Russell’s, or shared meals there.

William Russell died in 1921 and his wife died in 1935, but the family continued to operate the establishment into the 1950s. In 1970, the federal government purchased the property. Although the main Russell house was burned by arson in 1988, enough of 28 outbuildings (barns, spring house, root cellar, etc.) remain to give a good idea of what a thriving working farm and stagecoach stop this once was.


sources:www.oconeesc.com/history.html
www.vergie.com/walhalla_sc.html
www.fs.fed.us/r8/fms/forest/about/russell.shtml
Backroads of South Carolina, By Paul M. Franklin & Nancy Mikula, Voyageur Press, 2006


Walhalla+SC Highlands+NC Russell+House William+Ganaway+Russell Chattooga+River German+Colonization+Society appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Roy Rogers wasn't always Roy Rogers, and one of Hollywood's most famous cowboys wasn’t raised on a western ponderosa either. Leonard Slye grew up west of Lucasville, OH on a small farm in Duck Run.

In the early 1950’s, journalist Elise Miller Davis wrote "The Answer is God," the authorized biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, which became a national best-seller, from which this selection is taken.


Much has been told of the hardships suffered by poor people trying to eke out a living from poor land, and the Slye family seemed destined to suffer them all. Finally when the sugar bowl on the pantry shelf became empty not only of cash but of sugar too, Andy returned to his city job. Mattie and the four children remained on the farm to run it as best they could.

Left as the man of the family, most of the dawn-till-dusk chores of farm life fell on Leonard's small shoulders, "I simply had to learn," he was to say later, "that no matter if the sun was scorching hot or rain was falling in sheets or snow was up to my knees, a cow was still a cow. She had to be fed and milked. Eggs had to be gathered. Chicken houses had to be cleaned. And hogs had to be slopped."

Roy Rogers boyhood home in Duck Run OH.

By the time he was barely tall enough to reach the handles, the boy was behind a plow almost every day. But the thing the neighbors talked about most was his ability to handle the large, ornery mule.

"Leonard just seemed born being good with and good to animals," his sister Mary says. "We kids finally decided he knew a secret magic. Several times I saw him capture a queen bee in a box and quietly bring the whole swarm back to our farm. Never once was he stung. When I tried it one day, I was bitten so badly I developed a high fever. He had four pet skunks that he named and taught to answer his call. For him they showed complete self-control. One day Pop spoke to one of them and Mom had to burn his overalls."

Leonard had a trained rooster that he carried around on his shoulder. And in high school he taught a ground hog to sit patiently while he practiced playing the clarinet.

"One day the boy smuggled the ground hog to school," his mother says. "And when it came time for assembly, Leonard put the animal in his desk. Soon, however, the pet heard Leonard's clarinet tooting in the auditorium. She crawled out and followed the sound until she found her master. When the ground hog interrupted the program by climbing into Leonard's lap, he expected a scolding. But the band leader was so impressed that instead he tried to buy the animal. The few dollars would have meant a lot to us then, but Leonard wouldn't sell."

Leonard Slye (left rear) was part of the local Sunday School and church choir. This is a closeup of a photo of the Sunday school choir boys.

Mixed with the endless hard hours of plowing and felling trees and splitting logs to keep the wood box full were the good times.

Spring and summer brought picnics and hikes over the Ohio hills, swimming and fishing in the two creeks near the farm, every outing increasing the boy's knowledge and love of nature. There were singsongs around summer campfires and the square dancing his parents loved. "Leonard called a square dance well by the time he was ten,' Andy Slye remarks. "And if folks are amazed today at the way he hits clay targets with his fancy guns, they should have seen him with a homemade slingshot and beans for ammunition.

“He was so crazy about hunting, and so good at it with his bow and arrow and slingshots, I got him a rifle for his twelfth birthday."

Andy received his pay every two weeks in those days, and they provided occasions for him to visit his family, loaded down with gifts for all. The time he brought home Babe, a black mare that had seen better days as a sulky racer, was a memorable event in the boy's life.

"All he'd ever had to ride was the old mule," Mattie recalls.

Hoot Gibson movie poster.

"And although we were never able to buy him a saddle for Babe, he soon was learning to sit and ride with grace. Many a time I saw him working away, trying to teach that mare some of the very tricks that Trigger performs today.'*

Occasionally Leonard was allowed to ride Babe into Portsmouth to visit his father, and on rare Saturday afternoons he attended a motion picture. The youth fell head over heels in love with cowboy star Hoot Gibson. Many years later when he met and became close friends with Hoot, he told him about the small darkened theater where, to the twangy whine of the player piano, midst the smell of popcorn, damp feet, and cheap deodorant, a little wide-eyed boy had sat spellbound for wonderful hours in the world of cowboys and Indians.


Source: "The Answer Is God: The Inspiring Personal Story Of Dale Evans And Roy Rogers," By Elise Miller Davis, McGraw Hill, 1955 online at http://www.archive.org/stream/answerisgodthein012119mbp/answerisgodthein012119mbp_djvu.txt