Appalachian History

Some of the things I learned at Biltmore would be hard to find in any text book published then or later — things, that as I look back over my 44 years as a forester, have proved fully as potent for good as any of the technical disciplines of the profession.

The good Doctor taught us the value of relaxation in good company, when with song and stein the whole school and faculty would make merry and stretch lusty harmony and a keg of beer well into a starry Saturday night. Such carryings-on made for an espirit de corps and a strong bond of brotherhood that somehow seems to have lasted all thru the decades that have gone by.

He possessed and passed on to us his love of the woods and all that in them is. To hunt and fish, he taught by word and deed, is the especial privilege of the forester and a soothing ungent for a soul often wearied and harassed by over much fire fighting.

He preached that an appreciation of the birds, the beasts and the fishes, the flowers, the glamorous smells of bay swamps and spruce thickets and the shape and texture of foliage covered hills were all a part, and often the larger portion of a foresters compensation.

A great forester, a masterful teacher and a strong and lovable character, our good Doctor Schenck can look back from his quiet home in Lindenfels and know that he lives not only in the affectionate hearts of his "boys" but as well in the forestry of America he helped in the borning.

Inman F. Eldredge
from a May 29, 1950 Reunion Speech to the Alumni of Biltmore Forest School, Asheville NC
Biltmore ‘06

In 1895, German forester Dr. Carl A. Schenck accepted George Vanderbilt’s offer to come to North Carolina to manage and restore his vast woodland properties.

Schenck oversaw thousands of acres dotted with several hundred houses and abandoned farms. In 1898, he established the Biltmore Forest School, the first forestry school in the United States, using Vanderbilt’s forests as a campus.

Photo caption reads: "Lecturing at the Fiber Plant. Canton, N.C. 1911. Class is in session for Biltmoreans at the Champion Fibre Company's plant in Canton, North Carolina, 1911."

Students in Schenck’s twelve-month curriculum split their time between classroom lectures and fieldwork. Combining theory with practice, the students gained experience in the physical side of forestry, including the care of nurseries, transplanting seedlings, timber selection, felling, logging, and sawing.

They also studied forest finance and economics, dendrology, botany, fish and game, and the machinery associated with forestry. The campus was located at the site of a sawmill and gristmill formerly owned by Hiram King, a leader of the Pink Beds farming community.

Schenck’s operation was quite successful in its first years, but Schenck had a falling out with Vanderbilt and left the estate in 1909. He established the school’s winter headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. The Biltmore Forestry School was headquartered in the town of Sunburst, N.C. from 1910 to 1913. Sunburst is located on the Pigeon River, just west of Mount Pisgah.

The Champion Fibre Company constructed the village prior to their beginning logging operations in the area. Reuben B. Robertson, manager of the company, offered the use of the facilities to Dr. Schenck and his students. Schenck was particularly excited about the location because it offered the students the opportunity of direct observation of hardwood and spruce forests, logging operations, sawmills under construction, different types of log chutes and flumes, splash dams in operation and an up-to-date pulp mill.

Schenck struggled to maintain the school as a traveling entity in America, but enrollment dwindled as new forestry schools emerged. Schenck’s final class, who numbered more than 300, graduated in 1913. Many became prominent and successful foresters for both federal and state agencies as well as private forest industries.

Sources:
www.biltmore.com/explore/then/forestry.shtml
www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections/forestry/schenck/series_vii/forest_school/school_sunburst/school_sunburst.html
www.ncmarkers.com/Results.aspx?k=Search&ct=btn
www.foresthistory.org/Research/Biltmore_Project/Flowers.pdf


Carl+A.+Schenck Biltmore+Forest+School Biltmore Pink+Beds Sunburst+NC Champion+Fibre+Company appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Lillian Exum Clement was nominated as a Democratic candidate for North Carolina's House of Representatives two months before the 19th Amendment, granting the vote to women, was ratified in August 1920. The vote over her two male opponents in the primary was an astounding 10,368 to 41. She won the general election in November and, on January 5, 1921, took her seat in Raleigh, becoming the first woman in the South to hold legislative office.

"I was afraid at first that the men would oppose me because I am a woman," she told The Raleigh News & Observer on her first day in office, "but I don't feel that way now. I have always worked with men, and I know them as they are. I have no false illusions or fears of them. You may quote me as saying 'I am definitely for them.'"

Others soon followed. In Tennessee, in a special election on January 25, 1921, Anna Lee Worley was selected to succeed her husband. In 1922 Kentucky gained female legislators. In North Carolina, the next women to serve were Julia Alexander and Carrie McLean, both of Charlotte, in 1925 and 1927 respectively.

Exum, as she was called, was born in Black Mountain, NC, the sixth of seven high-achieving children of George Washington Clement and Sara Elizabeth Barnett. Exum is a coastal North Carolina town where the teenaged George had gone to work supervising railroad crews before finding his way to Black Mountain. Exum's family moved to Biltmore after her father procured a job as foreman on the Vanderbilt estate. The Clement girls benefited from the support of one of the leading women of that era, Edith Vanderbilt.

Encouraged by her, Exum enrolled in the newly established Asheville Business School. She came to realize she could compete with the male students intellectually, and at age 14, went to work in the Buncombe County sheriff’s office while studying law at night. In February 1916 she passed the bar exam with top grades, and the next year hung out her shingle in the Law Building. She was the first North Carolina lawyer to practice without a male partner.

As a legislator (addressed by fellow solons as “Brother Exum”) she introduced seventeen bills including the measure for the secret ballot, the “pure milk bill” requiring tuberculin testing of herds, and a reduction in the abandonment period required for divorce from ten to five years.

Nineteenth century engraving of the State Capitol Building by J. & F. Tallis of London and New York.

She sponsored a bill to have the state assume control of a home for unwed mothers, garnering opposition (she was pelted with eggs and vegetables while speaking in its behalf in Asheville). Sixteen of her bills passed. Her bill proposing private voting booths for elections was defeated (some argued that other legislators opposed the bill because it would be impossible to bribe or intimidate voters if you couldn't see them cast their ballots).

In the summer of 1921 she married newspaperman E. Eller Stafford, necessitating a special bill to change her name in the short session. She did not seek reelection. At age thirty-one she died of pneumonia and was buried in Riverside Cemetery.


Sources:
“Brother Exum Takes Her Seat,” Asheville Citizen-Times, May 8, 1960, reprinted in Jack
Discovering North Carolina: A Tar Heel Reader , Claiborne and William Price, eds., 1991
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, V, 419--sketch by Alice
R. Cotten, William S. Powell, ed.
Women State and Territorial Legislators, 1895-1995: A State-by-State
Analysis, with Rosters of 6,000 Women, by Elizabeth M. Cox, 1996
A Popular History of Western North Carolina: Mountains, Heroes, Hootnoggers, by Rob Neufeld, The History Press, 2007


Lillian+Exum+Clement Brother+Exum North+Carolina+politics Asheville+NC Biltmore appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history appalachia