Appalachian History

I am an average woman of the United States, a married women with two children and an income of—well, I’m not quite sure what it is, but I know it is not enough to live on as we ought to live. But, small as it is, our church has been trying to get me to budget (horrid word, isn’t it?). We have a person called by a disagreeable name, Stewardship Secretary, going around and giving lectures on how we ought to spend our money. It’s easy for her to talk about budgeting. She gets her money paid regularly, while I have to get mine in dribs, just as I can beg, scold, and wheedle it out of my husband.

I’m very economical, I can tell you that. I don’t keep account of every penny I spend. In the first place, you understand, we must have a roof over our heads, and rents are simply awful. It’s even worse if you try to own your own home and keep up insurance, repairs, and taxes and pay the interest on the money you borrowed to buy the house with. I cannot tell you offhand what we do pay for rent---sometimes more and sometimes less.

Then, there is food. We must have three meals a day, and you know how men are about food. I always say that none of my family shall ever be reported for being undernourished, with delicatessen shops so close. I can always send one of the children over at the last minute for anything I want. It’s hard to say exactly how much we spend on food---sometimes more and sometimes less---but I’m sure you can form a good idea from what I’ve told you as to just what we do spend.

And clothes! I’m a good manager, and I never expect to be a back number when it comes to styles. Cut off for clothes just about what most people spend, but remember that mighty few women get the good results I do for the money I put into clothes.

We spend practically nothing on amusements---nothing worth mentioning. The only thing we do is go to the movies, unless you’d call our trips in our car amusement. I think trips of that sort are a real necessity.

I am sure I give all the unaccounted-for part to the Church. The money goes somewhere, and I always give the children a penny or a nickel apiece for Sunday School---whenever we get up in time to start them off. You look as if you thought I ought to give more! Well, charity begins at home, I think.

---excerpt from ‘Short Pagaents for the Sunday School,’ by Laura Scherer Copenhaver, Doubleday, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929

Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver (1868-1940) wrote fiction, poetry, and dozens of church pageants, many in collaboration with her younger sister, Katharine Killinger Scherer Cronk. One of Copenhaver’s poems, "Heralds of Christ," became a well-known hymn.

Copenhaver taught at Marion Junior College in Smyth County, VA and assumed positions of leadership in the Lutheran church and on the Marion social scene. Her father, Dr. John Jacob Scherer Jr., had served as pastor of Marion’s Lutheran church before moving on to the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church in Richmond, presidency of the state synod, and a place on the Inner Missions Board of the national church.

At the 1922 meeting of the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church, Copenhaver presented an address titled “Mountain Folk in the South” which spurred the organization to create a mission school near the lumbering community of Konnarock.

The Konnarock Training School aimed “to tram the mountain children into true Christian womanhood and manhood,” and provided elementary-level academic and religious education for Smyth County children who did not have access to other public schools.

At the Smyth County Centennial on May 27, 1932, members of Marion College, county high schools, and local citizens presented a historical play written by Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver. Miss Smyth County, Eleanor Fairman, spun the wheel of time and scenes from local history were acted out.


sources: The human tradition in the New South, by James C. Klotter
http://openlibrary.org/details/MN41756ucmf_4
Smyth County, by Kimberly Barr Byrd, Debra J. Williams
http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Smyth/086-0027_Konnarock_School_1997_Final_Nomination.pdf
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2007/copenhaver.htm



Laura+Lu+Scherer+Copenhaver Smyth+County+VA appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Please welcome guest blogger Cindy Gladden Tuttle of Salem, VA. She is the granddaughter of Texas Gladden (1895-1967), an American folk singer best known for her traditional Appalachian ballad style of singing.


A black and white log house. Red shuttered windows. Beds ablaze in summer with a multitude of blossoms of all kinds. Seven white pines, their boughs heavy laden with snow in winter. No furnace, but a wood cookstove and a stone fireplace. Spring water by gravity. Washtubs, washboards, and clotheslines. An unfinished attic bedroom, the presumed home of Rawhide & Bloody Bones and the Hairy Teeth Man. The sweet aroma of fried apples. Afternoon Bible stories sitting on the floor round Granny’s rocker.

These are some of my richest and warmest memories I have of childhood. The memories of the statuesque woman known affectionately to us as Granny, to others as Mom, and to the rest of the world as Texas Gladden. She possessed a literate style of speech accompanied by a gentle laugh and a radiant smile. She was a lady devout in her Mormon faith and devoted to her family of husband James, nine children, and twenty-eight grandchildren. Her countenance and manner belied the treasure she carried within herself.

Born in 1895 in Smyth County, VA, Texas Gladden had a repertoire of over 200 old time mountain ballads. These are songs that traveled to these mountains with the early settlers and were handed down through the generations. They are of Anglo-Saxon/Celtic origin and contain the remnants of the European ideals of female subjugation. These old ballads also gave expression to the wishes, desires, and fantasies of the women like Granny who cultivated them. Some of these ideas are easily illustrated in ballads such as The House Carpenter ---the tale of a woman lured away from her loving husband and babies only to discover her ill-fated mistake.

Granny always said that these songs should be sung by an uneducated voice as the ballads themselves were uneducated. She stylized these songs through the use of odd phrasings and grace notes. She defined grace notes, which she learned from her mother, as unexpected twists on a note. She never thought that people who sang operettas should tinker around with mountain music. An hour or so of immersion into the music of the mountains allows the listener to understand that Granny was correct in her thinking on this concept.

Most of Granny's singing was done at home and she modestly claimed she didn’t sing anything but lullabies. Raising nine children during the Great Depression certainly left her with little time to do much else. Her public appearances were rather sparse. She sang on occasion at community events at the old Fort Lewis School and at the festivals at Whitetop Mountain during the 1930s. She and her brother, Hobart Smith, performed at the White House in 1933 at the request of Eleanor Roosevelt. Her only other known public appearance came in 1941 at the request of Alan Lomax.

In 1959, as part of his Southern Journey project, Lomax visited Granny at home and recorded a number of her songs. These can be found on Ballad Legacy: Texas Gladden (Rounder CD 1800). This CD also contains snippets of Lomax' interview with my Granny. Listening, one can hear warm gentility. She says during these interviews that she always had a perfect mental picture of the story in the song. Listening to her rendition of 'Mary Hamilton,' one can see the tragic picture she paints, both for the audience and in her mind, as she sings:

Word has come from the kitchen
And word has come to me,
That Mary Hamilton drowned her babe,
And throwed him into the sea.

Down came the old Queen,
Gold tassels around her head
Oh Mary Hamilton, where’s your babe,
That was sleeping in your bed?

I think that perhaps I inherited some of Granny's visualization when it comes to music. There is an old mountain lullaby she used to sing to me. Every time I hear it, I have the most wonderful vision of all those pretty little horses.

Go to sleep, go to sleep,
Go to sleep little baby,
When you wake, get some cake,
And ride them pretty little horses.

Black and a bay, sorrel and a gray,
Whole heap a’ little horses.
Black and a bay, sorrel and a gray,
Whole heap a’ little horses.

Little old horse, little old cow,
Ambling around the old hay mound,
Little old horse, he took a chew,
"Darned if I don't," said the old cow too.

Granny's music and singing style were rediscovered by Joan Baez during the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Granny was not a part of this as her health was failing at the time. She died in 1967 without ever achieving the fame and fortune she so richly deserved. Nonetheless, she remains a true Appalachian treasure to those of us who loved her and to those who loved her music.

Useful links on Texas Gladden & Hobart Smith ---
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/gladden.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart_Smith
http://www.oldtimemusic.com/FHOFHobart.html

If you are interested, she is also seen in a short film narrated by Pete Seeger titled To Hear Your Banjo Play. It can be found at:
http://revver.com/video/263858/to-hear-your-banjo-play/



Texas+Gladden Smyth+County+VA Alan+Lomax Appalachian+ballads appalachian+history history+of+appalachia