Appalachian History

There was a class that were ignorant and no-account. They never had much of a chance; you've got to say that for them. Once in awhile, one of them would sort of pull himself up by his bootstraps and make something of himself. He'd work hard enough and not give everything to his no-account relatives. But there was a class, and they were the poor white trash---well, up there above my grandmother's, the people who lived further up the mountain, they'd raise a garden, can the beans, then open the cans of beans instead of going out to the garden and picking them, because it was easier.

They'd kill a hog, eat every bit of it right away, never try to keep any of it. They just wouldn't go to enough trouble to have anything, because you could have things if you'd go to the trouble to. And the thrifty colored people and the people who tried to help themselves could make a very good living, take care of things by themselves. But you had to conserve, you had to be thrifty, and you had to go to extra trouble.

It just wasn't worth it for them, so they lived on the verge of starvation; they inbred---they had all sorts of deformities due to the inbreeding---and while they never had much of a chance---it wasn't that they never had a chance, it was just that they weren't willing to take advantage of a chance when it was given to them. And they had all sorts of devious ways to try to get things from other people. One man, for several years, worked in different sections of the country on the fact that his wife had just died. She always died under very bad circumstances which left him in dire need. He made a lot of money that way.

And they were always ready to sell their votes at election time---and they did very well at selling their votes---they'd get cows, and sometimes they'd pay as high as a hundred dollars for a vote, I've heard. When it was close, every vote counted, and they would go down and hang around the polling places until the end of the day, and regardless of the fact that the vote was by secret ballot, it was pretty well known how it was running by the end of the day, and then they’d just get higher and higher in the bidding for the votes.

There were some sheriffs who, if I could remember their names, I wouldn't---the one who sent his constituents candy boxes with five dollar gold pieces under each piece of candy---as I say, it’s not new.


Mrs. Mary J. Jones
(b. 1910 in Clifton, NC)
Interviewed June 7, 1976
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville
Online at http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SHRC/jones_mary.html

"Late fall we'd start getting up the wood for the winter. You couldn't believe it would take that much wood. You would see wood from here, well, say a hundred feet long. You would think, well, golly, that's a lot of wood! But it didn't take long to get rid of that much wood in the winter. The winters were rough and it was cold back then.

"Oak was our better wood. We had plenty of wood and plenty of water.

"We had a two-story home. We had one large bedroom, Daddy and Mother's bedroom, downstairs. We had a large kitchen, a large living room, and they called the other room at that time, a parlor. That was for guests or visitors. There was the parlor. When the preacher came, he goes in the parlor. Then, upstairs we had four bedrooms. The two rooms downstairs on either side had fireplaces.

"We had a fireplace on the south side and one across on the north side across the hall, and we had a large hall. We had a large hall that came through with some closets and then the upstairs. No heat upstairs, but the heat would come up from the fireplaces. I mean, the heat goes up.

"It was colder, but we used featherbeds. You would sleep on a featherbed. One time Mother came up, it was real cold in the winter, and put a featherbed over us for the cover over top. Golly, you would just perspire!

"My brother and I would open a window. When it would be zero, we would crack a window. We always liked a little fresh air. We were used to it. We didn’t know about all of these new-- modern things then. It's what you were used to, I imagine.

"There was a lot of snow. There's nowhere to go, but you could get on a horse and go to the store, the country store, which was something like a mile away, if you had to. But you could get along fine. We would get our big fireplaces going. Had apples. Now, we would eat apples. We would always have a basket of apples in the living room. We’d all eat apples. Maybe before bedtime have an apple, peel an apple and have some apple.

"The children didn't have many things to do, but they would get together and have candy pullings in the winter, and games, different kinds of games. The ladies would get together in the winter time and make quilts; they’d have quiltings; they had the frames that had the spikes in them. They'd make some beautiful quilts.

"But the boys didn't have too much a-going. When the New River would freeze over we would go skating. We would skate on top of ice. It would stay frozen over for maybe two months! The river was almost in sight of where we lived. It was about one-fourth of a mile to New River. It starts up in Ashe county; they call it the head of the river. You can step over it two feet there. Today you could go there. The north fork of New River starts in Ashe County. It sure does.

"Mother would have something special, cook up something special for Christmas, like cakes. We always had cake. For Christmas you didn't get much. There wasn't much. One little country store close by. There were more in the county, but they had nothing for children. We would get some oranges (they had oranges for Christmas) and some candy. I know stick candy. They had these boxes of stick candy, different flavors. But we thought it was great, whatever we got! We didn't know about these other things like they have nowadays. Oranges were something special. Of course we had apples. You know, apples, oranges, candy.

Lenci doll on display at the Angela Peterson Doll and Miniature Museum, High Point, NC. Tag in case reads: "Lenci Doll Circa 1920. Designed by Madame de Scavini. The name "Lenci" came from a pet name given to Madame de Scavini by her husband. The designer was known for the mischievous look in the eyes of her dolls."

"We had plenty to eat, and we would get something to wear for Christmas, like a new shirt or a new pair of pants or a new pair of shoes. One neighbor (his name was John Eller), made my brother and me a little mill, and it had a crank on it. You would turn it by hand.

"You would take it down along the creek, and we would run sand through it and have a lot of fun with that. We would use sand. It was like a little gristmill, or like you were grinding some kind of grain. We thought that was wonderful.

"We had no toys; however, there were dolls. As I remember they did have little dolls for the girls. My father and mother would get the girls a little doll."


---excerpt from oral history by Gwynn Jones
(b. 1908 in Warrensville, NC)

Interviewed June 22, 1976
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville
Online at http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SHRC/jones_gwynn.pdf

The vast majority of the 86,000 North Carolinians called into service during World War I served willingly, but four thousand of their number did desert during the war. Discontentment with conditions in training camp or bad news from home was the most likely reason for young recruits to go "AWOL" (absent without leave) long enough to earn the technical distinction of deserter. Most were either caught or voluntarily returned to face their punishment.

In Ashe County in June 1918, however, a group of forty deserters decided to hide out in the hills for the duration of the war. "The Ashe County Case" consists of a series of telegrams exchanged between officials in Ashe County and Governor Thomas W. Bickett on the crisis. When Bickett received the first telegram, the renegade band had just held off an armed civilian delegation that had tried to apprehend the deserters. One member of the posse had been shot and killed.

In an effort to avoid further bloodshed, Governor Bickett went to Jefferson, the county seat of Ashe, to address the anxious townspeople. He ordered the local draft board to "send notices by special messengers to every nook of Ashe County, especially the disaffected districts" about his upcoming speech. Bickett stressed, "I especially want all friends and relatives of delinquents notified."

Before Bickett began to speak, one of the deserters presented himself to the Governor. Bickett, in turn, gave the lad a letter to present to his commander at Camp Jackson in South Carolina in which the governor vouched for the deserters' loyalty and urged leniency on their behalf.

In his oration, Bickett pledged to "save wayward and willful boys from the sad and certain consequence of ignorance and sin." He expressed his belief that the deserters were not cowards but were somehow ignorant of the purpose of the war and the details of the draft law. He also commended Ashe County's patriotic heritage and discussed the war and the draft.

Bickett's justification of U.S. involvement in the war is a prime example of wartime patriotic rhetoric. He first emphasized America's peaceful nature, stressing that the nation only reluctantly joined the conflict after German aggression made neutrality impossible. He then cast the war as a contest between American democratic civilization and the despotic German Kaiser and the brutal German "Hun."

After Bickett returned to Raleigh, the rest of the deserters turned themselves in and asked to be reinstated. The Ashe County case was commented about in the North Carolina press for weeks afterward, but the county disputed any reputation it might have gained for disloyalty. In all, 536 Ashe County men served in the military in World War I, 461 draftees and seventy-five volunteers. The statewide draft evasion rate was 2.7 percent; Ashe County's was less than 1 percent.


Source: 'Public Letters and Papers of Thomas Walter Bickett, Governor of North Carolina, 1917-1921,' Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1923; summarization by Michael Sistrom, at Documenting the American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/bickettashe/summary.html



appalachia appalachian+history Army+deserters Ashe+County+NC history+of+appalachia World+World+I

North Carolinians for many decades thought of them as the Lost Provinces. Prior to the early 20th century, Ashe, Alleghany, and Watauga counties were hemmed in and separated from the rest of the state by the Eastern Continental Divide--- average elevation 2,500 to 3,000 feet--- which forms their eastern and southern borders. Lowlanders joked that the only way to get there was to be born there. Commerce and society were forced to circulate between these three counties and Grayson and Smyth Counties, VA to the north, and Johnson and Carter Counties, TN to the west.

Archibald D. Murphey (1777-1832), a lawyer and judge remembered for his vision of how the state’s internal affairs could be improved, was far ahead of his generation in his comments about the region’s transport: “The roads have been badly laid out; they are badly made, and the population in many parts is too weak to keep the roads in even tolerable repair. All these roads should be made at the public's expense.”

The idea of getting state aid in building roads finally took hold in 1887. Up to then citizens worked on the roads on a rotating basis. A road out of Ashe County to meet the Wilkes road system was impractical at that time because of the sheer difficulty and cost of such a road. Instead county officials decided to build, with the help of state convicts, a road from Jefferson, past Healing Springs, to the nearest railway terminal, in Marion, VA.

The upper New River Valley continued to remain extremely isolated into the early part of the 20th century. In 1911 the Blowing Rock Turnpike began construction. It effectively connected the High Country with Lenoir and its prosperous network of farmers' markets and railroad depots. The Blowing Rock Turnpike not only served cars but horsedrawn wagons and could be used, free of charge, for Watauga County residents bringing their goods to market.

The High Country’s first railroad appeared in1914. It connected Ashe County with Abingdon, VA, to facilitate the region’s short timber boom. The first narrow gauge railroad line rolled through in 1918, and followed the pattern: it came not east from the Piedmont but rather from Tennessee to the west.

Photo caption reads: First train in West Jefferson, NC. January 2, 1917

Beginning about 1920 Ashe County undertook a local road building program, during which approximately $1,500,000 in bonds were issued. The expected number of resulting county roads never materialized, however, due to the high prices at which contracts were let for the construction of these roads, and the fact that most of the county projects were later taken over by the state.

North Carolina's 1921 General Assembly finally established the state highway system. Early on there was official recognition of the need to "rescue the hillbillies." Frank Linney, D.D. Dougherty, and Mary Martin Sloop were prominent High Country influences in the political scramble to develop roads. The Assembly approved a $50 million road bond, paid for by a one-cent tax on gasoline, and the brand new Highway 16 finally connected the central piedmont with Ashe County.

Robert Doughton, of Alleghany County, U.S. Representative from 1910 to 1953, was a key player in creating road access into the region. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1933 to 1953, he was the major force in promoting the construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which further opened the former Lost Provinces to jobs and tourists.


sources:www.mountaintimes.com/history/1920s/roads.php3
www.mountaintimes.com/history/1911s/roads.php3
www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/goodroads.cfm?RenderForPrint=1
www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/collateral/articles/s04.travel.railroads.car.planes.1920s.pdf
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05252006-153954/unrestricted/ENTIRETHESIS.pdf
www.newrivernotes.com/nc/asheed1.htm
The Papers of Archibald Murphey, Vol. 2, William Henry Hoyt, Editor (1914)



appalachian+history Lost+Provinces Robert+Doughton Ashe+County+NC Alleghany+County+NC Watauga+County+NC Archibald+Murphey appalachia appalachian+mountains+history,

Shepherd Youth Killed
Accidentally By Father

Accident Occurred As
Father and Son Were
Out Hunting

Ashe County [NC] Journal, May 29, 1929--- Blaine Shepherd, a youth of the Crumpler-Grassy Creek section of the county, was shot and accidentally killed by his father Wednesday morning of last week. The accident took place near the mouth of Helton Creek about 8:30 in the morning.

The youth and his father, Grover C. Shepherd, who is a well known citizen of that community, had gone out squirrel hunting early in the morning, and were going through a densely wooded section of a nearby forest. Father and son seperated and Mr. Shepherd thought that his son had gone in an opposite direction.

1927 photo: James Wilburn Shepherd (at age 16), on the left, and Blaine is believed to be the boy on the right at about age 12.

Mr. Shepherd saw leaves shaking several feet from the ground and then saw a gray object nearer the ground, which he thought was a squirrel. He fired his gun and heard the youth scream. He ran to him and asked him where he was shot. The dying lad told him: "I'm shot all over." He died in about five minutes. Forty-eight shot hit him over the body, the main charge striking just above the heart.

The little fellow had climbed up an old tree lap about four feet above the ground, causing the leaves in the trees above to shake.

Robert Blaine Shepherd was born Dec. 28, 1915, and was 13 years, 5 months and 1 day old. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Grover C. Shepherd, both of who survive him. He is also survived by two sisters, Edith and Ralph Shepherd, and four brothers, Ralph, Mont, and Walter Shepherd, of this county, and Willborn Shepherd, of Detroit, Mich.

An impressive funeral service was conducted from Fairview schoolhouse where the Shepherd boy attended school. It was conducted by Revs. J.O. Spencer, S.C. Blackburn, J.C. Childress, Franklin Barker and William Blackburn. A large concourse of people attended the service.

Beautiful floral offerings were carried by Blaine's schoolmates. The youth was popular with his young acquaintances and all were grief-stricken over the tragic occurence.

Following the service, the body was laid to rest in the Shepherd cemetery near the schoolhouse.

The pallbearers were R.M. Phipps, J.E. Sexton, Keys Garris, Nola West, A.J. Blevins and T.C. Hurley.


source: www.danielprophecy.com/blaine.html


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Ashe+County+NC Helton+Creek+NC hunting+accidents