Appalachian History

"So you wonder why I have spent the last ten years of my life behind this meat counter," said Jack Gallup. "You think I ought to be doin' something better, do you? Well, I'll tell you. For one thing, I never would study in school and I dropped out at the end of the fifth grade; and another thing is, I have never been able to get any money ahead because I spent it on gasoline and liquor.

I am not much over thirty, but I might have saved up enough money by now to start a small business of my own. I know the grocery business and I know the meat business from top to bottom. My uncle's store has a good trade and I do all the buying for the meat counter and stand behind the counter to cut it and weigh it. Particular people come in here and it's my business to please them.

In the course of time, you know, a man can learn anything if he puts his mind on it. I could have learned something out of books when I was in school, but I wasn't willin' to put my mind on it. I was interested in marbles and baseball and in playing pranks on the other boys and in deviling the teachers. A good lawyer here in Tucony once told my mother I'd make a good lawyer if I'd only study, but I wouldn't.

What little I know I've learned right here in this store. In sellin' meat I learned some arithmetic because I had to, and I've learned to speak fairly good English from educated people who came in here to trade. I've always kept my ears open, and that's easier than studyin' books and worth more; I never could see much in books.

I remember at least one thing I heard a teacher say. It was somethin' about paying too dear for your whistle. These people who get a book education have to pay too much for it. I may not be right but that's my way of thinkin'. Anyhow I wasn't willin' to pay the price. It may be worth it to some people but not to me.

Have I always lived in Tucony? Most of my life. I was born out in the country six miles from town on a farm my granddaddy bought when this was a wild country, and I had my fun fishin' and huntin' and trappin'. I went to school when I had to, and I worked in the cornfield when I had to, but my daddy had to lick me sometimes to make me do it. I reckon the way I lived out in the country is what makes me so strong and healthy.

When my daddy moved into town so my sisters could go to high school, I got a job as an errand boy in a grocery store, and I don't ever seem to be able to get away from groceries. When I was growin' up I got several other small jobs, but I didn't keep any of 'em long. I got to runnin' round nights with the boys and we used to drink and prowl about, and sometimes times we got into fights and landed in the cooler. It cost my daddy a lot of money to get me out of trouble, and it was at a time when he had mighty little money. I don't know why it is but when I get liquor in me I want to fight. I'm just a plain fool.

Finally my uncle took me into his grocery and put me behind the meat counter. I got drunk once in a great while and he always threatened to fire me but he never did. He's a queer old duck, but he's good-hearted. He hates to see money go out of his hands but he'll give a bunch of ripening bananas to some of his kin to help feed the chillun. Some people would rather give things to strangers than to their kin. Not my uncle. He abuses everybody who works for him, but he is good to them in many ways. He'll do anything for them except raise their wages; some of them have been with him a long time.

He and his wife work hard - she with her butter-making and he behind his counter or an the road looking after his branch stores in neighboring towns. He drives his own automobile and he goes like the devil was after him. He says time's money, and money is what he wants. Two or three times he has run his car off the mountainside and rolled over and over, but he's so tough he was back at work in a day or so. He growls and says he's nearly dead but he goes on. I once told him he wasn't fit to die. I expected he'd beat me over the head with a stick, but he only laughed.

Spencer Mull,
Brevard, N.C.
interviewed August 7, 1939 by A.W. Long
Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project
for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA)
online at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/wpa/27060407.html

Edna Lynn Simms’ original photo caption accompanying her portrait of him reads simply: “George D. Barnes, collector of Indian relics, Dayton, Tenn.” Sounds straightforward enough. But it leaves out the shadings about what KIND of collector --- how the man was viewed ethically in the world of archaeologists, collectors, museums, and relic hunters. Collectors of all eras often skirt the edges of the legitimate in their single-minded pursuit of building their collections. Barnes had his admirers, and he had his detractors on that topic.

The University of Tennessee Special Collections Library in Knoxville, TN houses one of Barnes’ collections: the Barnes Collection of Rhea County, which contains marriage bonds, legal documents, and signatures of prominent Tennesseans and North Carolinians documenting the history of Rhea County from 1785 to 1891.

Their website tells us: “George D. Barnes was born in about 1879 in Pennsylvania. His father collected Native American artifacts, and Barnes began accompanying him on his expeditions at a young age. Through these adventures, Barnes discovered his own love of collecting.

“He quickly became a notable collector in his own right, and sold a number of highly regarded collections to private collectors and to such prestigious institutions as the Smithsonian. He also maintained a private collection in Dayton, Tennessee, where he lived for many years.”

And Wesleyan University’s Arachaelogy Laboratory holds in its collection several items thought to be Cherokee, collected by Barnes “with the permission of landowner” in the late 1800’s and sold to A.R. Crittenden in 1899, who in turn donated them to Wesleyan, say the accession papers.

Nor was Barnes a stranger to the professional archaeology world. The TVA began an archaeological survey of Tennessee’s Norris Basin on January 8, 1934. William S. Webb, director of archaeology for TVA, selected Thomas M. N. Lewis as supervisor for the Norris project with George D. Barnes and A. E. Wilkie as field supervisors. The 1934–1936 projects in the Norris Basin identified and excavated twenty-three archaeological sites. The resulting archaeological report (Webb 1938) involved several individuals that would go on to make their mark on archaeology.

Archaeologist Mark Williams of the LAMAR Institute/Univ of GA views Barnes quite differently: “George D. Barnes was a professional artifact looter and dealer from Dayton, Tennessee, who was in business in the 1920s and later. He made a trip to the Shinholser site sometime in 1932 and apparently excavated a huge trench about 200 feet south of Mound A (Patterson n.d.:156).

“This trench was supposedly 150 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 2.5 feet deep. Patterson adds that the work "revealed fourteen human skeletons in fairly good shape; some large pottery urns were also found and the bones and teeth of animals" (ibid). I do not know what else he recovered from this trench.

“There apparently is still a small collection of items at the McClung Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee (Richard Polhemus, Personal Communication) from his work, but I have not examined this collection [ed: The George D. Barnes, Jr. collection].

“This area of the site is now in young pine trees. Although we placed three of our small excavation units in this area in 1987, no visible remains of Barnes' trench were noted then nor was any visible in old aerial photos from the late 1930s. It presumably was backfilled. It is possible that Barnes was responsible for the open trench on top of Mound A.”


Sources: http://dlc.lib.utk.edu/f/fa/fulltext/0019.html

"Archaeological Excavations at Shinholser
(9BL1): 1985 & 1987"
by Mark Williams
LAMAR Institute/Univ of GA
http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Lamar/PDFfiles/Publication%2004.pdf

A History of Archaeology in Tennessee
by Bobby R. Braly and Shannon Koerner
Paper published as part of a synthesis of Tennessee Archaeology, in a graduate seminar at Univ of TN (2008) sponsored by members of the Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology
http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/research/TennesseeArchaeology/02_History_of_Tennessee_Archaeology.pdf


appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history appalachia Norris+Basin+archaeology appalachian+archaeology Shinholser+archaeolgoy+dig George+D.+Barnes McClung+Museum Wesleyan+University