Appalachian History

"Once we hit a place where a feud was being settled. It was back in the hill country of Virginia and the place was called Rocky Comfort. It really wasn't a town. There was a water-power grist mill, a store, a blacksmith shop and about a quarter of a mile up the little valley there was a meeting house, where traveling preachers would sometimes hold revivals which were called camp meetings.

"The feud was between the Buxton --or Bruxton-- and another bunch of natives named Greenberry,--I think that was the name.

"Old Uncle Jed Buxton, a tall, sharp-eyed old fellow with a yellowish-gray, hang-down, moustache was boss of the Buxton bunch and Grandpappy Lindsay Greenberry was head of the enemy tribe.

"I never heard what the feud started over, probably some Buxton stole a Greenberry pig, or some Greenberry shot a Buxton cow. But whatever it was that started it there'd been killing on both sides and from what I heard about it they were always gunning or ganging up on each other, or cutting each other up with Bowie knives. The cause of the feud wasn't important, though; it was the way it ended that seemed funny to me.

"And a queer thing was that both tribes were religious and when they'd go to the camp-meetings they've have a temporary truce while the meeting was going on.

"It was at the camp-meeting the feud ended. The preacher was a big raw-boned Hard-shell Baptist, and he certainly believed in hell-fire and damnation; and when he'd get up and start to preach he'd always pull out a twist of long-green tobacco and pull off a big chew--then he was ready to go at it. And he went.

"He was almost as good as Doc Porter when it came to oratory. He talked hell-fire and brimstone...sizzlin' and bilin' and smokin' until he'd have the whole audience sweating and groaning. Finally he got under the hides of the Buxtons and Greenberrys and had them all tremblin' on the brink as he called it...jest hangin'over eternal damnation by a brickle thread!

"The payoff was that old Uncle Jed Buxton and Grandpappy Greenberry both got more religion than they'd ever got before and decided to make peace and stop their tribes from carving and shooting and beating each other up.

"The preacher got them together at the mourner's bench and got them to agree to make friends and be brethren. But they had to do something to prove the treaty would last and they could trust each other... And that's where the funny part of it came in.

"Old Uncle Jed Buxton and Grandpap Greenberry acted for the whole bunch of each of their tribes. The peace ceremony was performed at the camp-meeting in the presence of the whole audience, the Hard-shell Baptist preacher acted as master of ceremonies. You'd never guess how they pledged themselves and proved that they trusted each other. Those two old mountain codgers who had been killin' enemies shaved each other! And not with safety razors either!

"They did it right on the preacher's platform while the whole congregation looked on and muttered a lot of 'Amens' and 'Praise the Lords.'

"They drew straws for to see who should shave who first, and Uncle Jed Buxton got the chair first. Grandpappy Greenberry lathered Uncle Jed up, took that wicked long-bladed razor (the preacher supplied the outfit) and whittled the whiskers off of Uncle Jed's face and neck...but when he got down around Uncle Jed's wind-pipes I noticed the Buxton clan got mighty tense and silent. But Uncle Jed didn't bat an eye while his old enemy was fooling around his neck with that darned sharp razor!

"When Uncle Jed was well shaved, Grandpappy Greenberry sat down in the chair, which was a common hickory split-bottom kitchen chair, and Uncle Jed took the razor and went over him!

"That settled the feuds. Each had trusted his neck to the other when the other had a sharp razor in his hand...and as far as I know they never feuded again. But I'll say those two tough old mountain hillbillies had a lot of nerve."


Source: Library of Congress, American Memory, American Life Histories: Manuscripts for the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940. From an interview conducted with William D. Naylor on Sept, 19, 1938; Sept. 27, 1938; Oct. 1 and 3, 1938 by Earl Bowman



appalachia appalachia+history camp+meeting feuds history+of+appalachia revival+meeting

It’s tent revival season throughout Appalachia! Last week the Voice of the Word Ministries tent revival took place in Johnson City, TN. Later this week the Blue Ridge Foothills annual tent revival kicks off in Wolftown, VA. You can bet there are hundreds more throughout the region – the region that invented the tent revival.

The first camp meeting took place in July 1800 at Gasper River Church in southwestern Kentucky. A much larger one was held at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in August 1801, where between 10,000 and 25,000 people attended, and Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist ministers participated. It was this event that stamped the organized revival as the major mode of church expansion for denominations such as the Methodists and Baptists, who were newly converted by the teachings of John Wesley.

“The significant and most recurring theme in mountain preaching,” according to Deborah McCauley, author of Appalachian Mountain Religion, “is that of a broken heart, tenderness of heart, a heart not hardened to the Spirit and the Word of God. Mountain people teach through their churches that the image of God in each person lives in the heart, that the Word of God lodges itself in the heart, and the heart is meant to guide the head, not the other way around.”


“God led me into the Free Methodist Church when in 1935 I was sanctified in a revival preached by Brother Albert Faust from Pittsburgh,” said West Virginian Dewilla Lemmon of her revival experiences. “Melrose Uphold, a neighbor, and Sister Eva Young, a local Free Methodist preacher, arranged for a meeting in a vacant building near my home. This came as an answer to prayer for me because I had been privately seeking holiness, not really knowing what it was, only that for many months I had craved a pure, perfect condition of heart with God, notwithstanding the knowledge that I had been born again.”

One of Lemmon’s fellow worshipers, “Sister Uphold,” explained to her that the experience she sought was “sanctification.” “So I went to the altar and prayed for it. I also made various restitutions. Brother Faust quoted the Scripture: ‘The Lord whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple.’ And Jesus did just that for me on the night of September 22, 1935 after Brother Faust had delivered his sermon and while Sister Young walked up and down behind me at the altar quoting in a strong voice: ‘This is the will of God, even your sanctification.’”

Sources: http://are.as.wvu.edu/ferber.htm#_edn24
Lemmon, Dewilla. “Camp Memories” journal exercise recorded by Pauline Shahan. July 6, 1980
Appalachian Mountain Religion. University of Illinois Press: Chicago; 1995
http://www.theopedia.com/Great_awakenings

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