Appalachian History

Annie Taylor could get away with anything she pleased at school. Her father Champ was feared in Catawba Falls, NC by every teacher who had ever tried to rein her in; he'd threatened to kill several, and had literally run one out of town. Then Annie crossed swords with Miss Daintry Graham one day in class, and got the whipping of her life. It wasn't long before Champ came in search of Miss Graham:

"I got me a piece of chicken wire and went out into the river to wade, because that was the most defiant thing I could think of. There was a fish in that river that I'd tried for days and days to catch, and couldn't. I decided to seine him up; and I did. I know now, and I didn't then, that he was a big-mouth bass and that he would have weighed approximately seven pounds. He was a whale of a fish. I strung him onto a forked alder stick.

"Then I heard Champ Taylor coming down that river, cursing at the top of his voice: 'Git in that road and git to running, I'm a coming and I'm a-going to cut you into shoestrings and strew 'em from here to Old Fort. Come out from under that bed and git to running.' I just calmly waded along, because I had buckled on a .38 by the side of me before I went into that river and I made up my mind that if that man bothered me I was not going to waste a bullet; that I was going to shoot about the third button of his shirt. I knew that I could hit it, too, because I'm that kind of a marksman.

"Anyway, he was raising Cain until he came down and got even with me. There were alder bushes along the creek and he couldn’t see me till he got right even.

"I said, 'Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I want to show you my fish.'

"Well, I had decided when I got that fish what I was going to do, and I'd put a nice little bullet hole right through between its eyes. I held it up: 'Look, see my fish. This river makes so much noise, I've got to come further out.'

Rural One-Room School, P. R. Young and pupils, Transylvania County, NC, 1903, left half of photo.

"So I waded out nearer to him, and all the time my mind was going two ways. I was talking like somebody that had no sense, but my mind was saying: 'Don't shoot him unless he takes his hands off of that saddle. As long as he holds that pommel of that saddle, don't shoot. Don't shoot till he tries to come down; watch his hands, then aim for the third button on his shirt and just let one bullet do it all.'

"But I was talking. I said, 'Look at my fish. I had to put a bullet between his eyes, but I got him. Didn't take but one bullet. I got me five more in here,' and I waved the gun out and sashayed it around. I said, 'I've got five more shots in here, all ready, and I think I've got six more in my pocket. Yep, I can re-load if I want to.'

"You see, what I was doing was letting him know that I could blow him off of that mule if I wanted to. And I was letting him know that he'd better 'tend to his own business, but I was doing it in a very gentle way.

"I was giving it time for the idea to soak into his weak mind. Well, he didn't know what to do, for the last thing he expected was to see the teacher in a short dress, wading in the water, with a fish in one hand and a gun in the other hand.

"And the last thing he expected was one that could talk in a calm voice and that was just like a little girl so excited over a fish.

"Directly, when I saw that old Adam's apple begin to jump up and down in his old long throat; it began to go up and down before he could. . . he didn't know what to say, and I knew he was up a tree, and when I saw his shoulders sink, I knew right then that I had won. When his shoulders slumped, I knew right then that the day was mine.

"I said, 'Oh, you'll have to excuse me for being so enthusiastic over a fish. I've got to tell you something: you're the very man I wanted see.' I said, 'You know something, I had to whip your daughter today, because she went through these woods down here to meet those old wagon drivers, and I know that you and your wife want to raise decent children and you don't want any unexpected grand-children, and the proper procedure is to just keep those girls out of that road, and I told them I'd switch 'em if they went down there and they did, and I switched them.

"'More than that, I've got another supply of switches on hand, and if they don't mind me, I'm going to switch 'em again.'

"'That's right, Miss Graham, put the wood to 'em, and if you can't do it, just report it to me.'

"Big change in attitude, I mean. I wasn't letting him know that I'd heard all that cursing coming down the road. I was making him think that that water made too much noise, and that I couldn't hear him.

After that, I had no trouble."


Daintry [Graham] Allison
(b. 1896 in Old Fort, NC)
Interviewed July 24, 1975
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville

So everything went along pretty calm, until Thursday of the third week. It clouded up to rain; the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed. Afternoon recess came and we were going strictly on schedule: afternoon recess at two-thirty. I heard those wagons coming up the road and I saw these big girls: one of them was Mr. Taylor's girl and the other one was named Annie. And they giggled at each other, and shook their skirts and yonder they went through the woods to those wagon drivers.

I built up a pretty good head of steam after I pitched one inning for the ball team; I went and rang the bell. No girls appeared. The other children: "Miz Graham, didn't we have our fifteen minutes play period?"

I said, "No, we're going to have eight minutes of it the next pretty day. We have to get our lessons over with now, because it looks like it's going to rain and get the river up and wash away all of the footlogs. We have to hurry and get home before it rains. We have to have spelling."

So I marched the little children in and I had Fourth Grade spelling and we corrected the papers. No girls appeared. Fifth Grade spelling; no girls appeared. Then it was time for Seventh Grade, and they were Seventh Grade spellers, because I didn't have any Sixth Grade. Here they came in, just a struttin' and a giggling, and a shaking their skirts and a laughing and twisting.

I said, "Where have you girls been?"

"Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh."

I said, "Look a here, didn't I tell you not to leave this schoolground without permission?"

"Huh, I go where I please, when I please, and Pappy don't allow no schoolteachers to scold me."

Boy, believe you me, they'd just as well have lit that chip on my shoulder right then. I grabbed one of those dogwood switches and I went for her and I cut her shirtwaist on the bias. I don't know how I did it; but the switch did it. I was putting every bit of pep I had…now if those two girls had double-teamed on me they could have probably pitched me out of there. Maybe, I don't know. But, I whipped that girl.

Rural One-Room School, P. R. Young and pupils, Transylvania County, NC, 1903, right half of photo.

I just kept saying, "Sit down, sit down, sit down," like a needle in a broken record of a phonograph, "sit down, sit down." When I wore out one switch, the little children began running under the benches and trying to hide, because pieces of that switch were flying all over that room.

I reached for another dogwood switch, and boy, she sat down. I sat down, too. I waited until I could get my voice absolutely calm before I opened my mouth, because at St. Catherine's we had been taught, besides carrying a book on your head without dropping it, because you walked properly, that if you controlled your voice, you controlled the situation. That you could not control the situation and you should not speak until your voice was absolutely its normal self.

So I sat there about four or five minutes and got calm again. I said, "Now look a here, I told you girls not to go through the woods to meet those wagon drivers, and I'm going to stay up here these five months, and you're going to obey me, and everybody else is, that comes to this school, and when you don't, I'm going to give you a whipping, and you'd just as well know it."

I said, "Annie, come up here."

"You ain't a going to whip me like you done her!"

Annie came at me like a piledriver, sideways. She was going to knock me off my feet. I just very gracefully stepped aside and let her just about take the whole end out of that building, because she landed against it with every bit of power she had. All of the power that she had intended for me. She was a great, big, tall albino girl; one of the few albinos that I've taught: absolutely white hair, white skin, almost white eyes.

She flew at me like she was going to skin me. I just grabbed her and began to whip her and I repeated the same thing: "Sit down, sit down, sit down," because all teachers had been taught to treat them alike, and I said the same thing. Well, I didn't hit her but five licks until she sat down, and that gave me the right to quit.

I said, "All right. Now I want you girls to get ready to write your spelling, but remember that I'm boss here for five months."

So I gave out spelling, and when I dismissed that school every child cleared out every article that he’d owned that was in that building. Everything went home.

Finally, one little third grader that had charge of the home-made baseball and the home-made ball bat (that was all that we could afford then in the line of athletic equipment) was standing there knocking the ground with that ball bat. "Miss Graham," he said, "you know how to shoot. Now, I know you do. I done heard about it. Go over yonder to Mr. Kelly's where you board and get your gun. Champ Taylor will be down here directly and he'll want to cut you up with that old hawkbill knife of his, and the thing to do is to kill him."

Story continues here (go to p. 48)


Daintry Allison
(b. 1896 in Old Fort, NC)
Interviewed July 24, 1975
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville



Old+Fort+NC Daintry+Allison education+in+Appalachia one+room+schoolhouse appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Part 1 of 2

Five miles out from Old Fort, up near Catawba Falls; that was my first school. No teacher ever stayed there five months. Usually, they'd stay five or six weeks.

All right. The regulations were that your dress had to come down to your ankle bone. That's what you had to wear while you taught. I made me three of those happy little items, and I wore them in time of school just like stage clothes, and then when I got out of there and went over to my boarding place, I put on my regular clothes, which barely covered my knee caps, and I dressed like I was clothed and in my right mind.

There was one man in there that tore up the school every year. People put a chip on my shoulder and they just as well put a rich pine on there when I first went in there. "Don't you talk to his children."

Now I'm not going to call that man's name. I’m going to call him Champ Taylor, because that wasn't his name. "Don't you scold Champ Taylor's children. You be good to them. Kinda pet 'em along. Maybe he'll let you stay the five months. We like you; we like this school. We don't want you to have to go away."

"Well, what does Champ Taylor do to the other teachers?"

"He comes with his old hawk bill knife and makes them run back to Old Fort, and they have to get out of here. Why, that there man last year, the last time they sent a man in this school he was the third teacher they'd sent, and he had to leave his suitcase back there in my back bedroom where he boarded here, and leave out of here and have the man that runs the river barn in Old Fort come back up here and get it; Champ Taylor had him on the go."

They said, "He had to run out of here in the dark."

Rural One-Room School, P. R. Young and pupils, Transylvania County, NC, 1903, left half of photo.

And people would say to me, "Miss Graham, when Champ Taylor gets after you, air you gonna run? Watcha gonna do? He don't let no teacher say in here no length of time."

I said, "Oh, I don't know. I'm no good at running. Maybe I'll have to wait and see what I'll do. I just don't know, but I'll meet that situation when it comes."

Right up the road above the school house there was a sawmill. The year before that, four of the bigger girls had got pregnant with illegitimate children, supposedly by those wagon drivers that were comers and goers, and they were driving wagons out of there to haul that lumber to Old Fort for sale, for shipping on the railroad.

I laid the law down the first day of school. I said, "Now, let me tell you: nobody's going off of this schoolground after you get here until time to go home. You've got to wait until three-thirty before you leave here. Nobody is going to that road to talk to these old wagon drivers, and if you do, I'll thrash you."

We thought a switch was good for everything but the toothache, then, and we didn't hesitate to use them. I had three, already dried, that my Committeemen furnished me, and put them up in the schoolroom; up in one corner. They were dogwood. So we weren't "Woodman spare that tree" people then. Things went along calmly.

Teachers had to spend one night in every home that sent them children. I wondered what I'd do when it came to going to Champ Taylor's, but I figured that if that was part of the prescription, I'd take it. So I began to visit every Tuesday night and every Thursday night, but mostly on Tuesday night, because on Monday I walked up there from Old Fort, and on Friday I walked back home those five miles after teaching all day, so visiting was confined mostly to Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

I divided it up and made my list, so that the children knew when I was coming to each home. They kept saying, "Are you going to Peachy Carson's house?" That's another name I've changed. "Teachers never did go up to Peachy Carson's. They don't stay here long enough to get up there. Peachy lives in the very last house, way up Carson's Flats.

Peachy, by the way, had a beautiful peaches complexion. One of the most lovely that I ever saw, but here hands were terrible. She hoed. She had the awfullest corns on her hands. They felt like somebody's that played golf eighteen rounds every two hours.

But Peachy could pick up a hundred pounds of cottonseed meal and just toss it into a wagon as easy as I could pick up ten pounds of sugar. Peachy's house was way back. Well, I didn't know whether I was going to get to Peachy's house or not, but I firmly resolved that I'd go there, and I left it for next to the last place. Champ Taylor's was the last place on my list. I was going there last of all.

End of part 1
Continues tomorrow


Daintry Allison
(b. 1896 in Old Fort, NC)
Interviewed July 24, 1975
Southern Highlands Research Center
Louis D. Silveri Oral History Collection,
D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections,
University of North Carolina at Asheville



Old+Fort+NC Daintry+Allison education+in+Appalachia one+room+schoolhouse appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia