Appalachian History

You kin talk about y’r op’ras, y’r germans an' all sich
Y’r afternoon r’ceptions an' them pleasures o’ the rich
You kin feast upon y’r choc’lates an’ y’r creams an’ ices full
But none of ‘em is ekal to a good old candy pull.

For ther’ isn’t any perfume like the ‘lasses on the fire
A bubblin’ an’ a dancin’, as it keeps a risin’ higher
While the spoon goes stirrin’, stirrin’, till the kittle's even full
No, I reely think ther's nothin like a good old candy pull.

Then the exercise o’ pullin’, how it sets the cheeks aglow
While the tongue makes merry music as the hands move to and fro,
An’ with scarcely hidden laughter, the eyes are brimmin’ full
For the happiness is honest at a good old candy pull.

It's true we miss the music an’ the ballroom's crush an’ heat,
But ther’ isn’t any bitter that stays behind the sweet,
An’ I think the world’d be better, an’ its cup o’ joy more full
If we only had more pleasures like the good old candy pull.

The Candy Pull
By A. R. Luse

The sugar was boiling in the kettles, and while it boiled the boys and girls played "snap," and "eleven hand," and "thimble," and "blindfold," and another old play which some of our older people will remember:

"Oh! Sister Phœbe, how merry were we,
When we sat under the juniper tree—
The juniper tree-I-O."

And when the sugar had boiled down into candy they emptied it into greased saucers, or as the mountain folks called them, "greased sassers," and set it out to cool; and when it had cooled each boy and girl took a saucer; and they pulled the taffy out and patted it and rolled it till it hung well together; and then they pulled it out a foot long; they pulled it out a yard long; and they doubled it back, and pulled it out; and when it began to look like gold the sweethearts paired off and consolidated their taffy and pulled against each other.

They pulled it out and doubled it back, and looped it over, and pulled it out; and sometimes a peachblow cheek touched a bronzed one; and sometimes a sweet little voice spluttered out; "you Jack;" and there was a suspicious smack like a cow pulling her foot out of stiff mud.

They pulled the candy and laughed and frolicked; the girls got taffy on their hair—the boys got taffy on their chins; the girls got taffy on their waists—the boys got taffy on their coat sleeves. They pulled it till it was as bright as a moonbeam, and then they platted it and coiled it into fantastic shapes and set it out in the crisp air to cool.

Then the courting in earnest began. They did not court then as the young folks court now. The young man led his sweetheart back into a dark corner and sat down by her, and held her hand for an hour, and never said a word. But it resulted next year in more cabins on the hillsides and in the hollows; and in the years that followed the cabins were full of candy-haired children who grew up into a race of the best, the bravest, and the noblest people the sun in heaven ever shone upon.

In the bright, bright hereafter, when all the joys of all the ages are gathered up and condensed into globules of transcendent ecstacy, I doubt whether there will be anything half so sweet as were the candy-smeared, ruby lips of the country maidens to the jeans-jacketed swains who tasted them at the candy-pulling in the happy long ago.


sources: Gov. Bob Taylor's Tales, by Bob Taylor, DeLong & Rice, Nashville, 1896 online at www.gutenberg.org/files/20171/20171-h/20171-h.htm

The Candy Pull, by A.B. Luse, Werner's Readings and Recitations, No. 38, edited by Edgar S. Werner, Edgar S. Werner & Co, NY, 1907

They first met at the Point Truth Primitive Baptist Church near Nickelsville, VA. Charles Nickels was the clerk there, and Mary Louvinia 'Lula' Burke came up on Sundays from her family's home in Grassy Creek, just across the Russell County line.

Isaiah 'Zur' and Sarah Burke didn't encourage their daughter's budding romance. Charles and Lula were not allowed to be alone while they were courting. They had to sit in the room with her parents, but occasionally managed to hold hands when the older folks weren't looking.

Charles Franklin Nickels (1881-1948)

On a number of occasions, Charles rode to Grassy Creek with the intention of asking for Lula's hand in marriage. Having figured out the young suitor's intentions, when Zur saw Charles coming, he would feign a headache or some other ailment so he could go in the house and avoid talking to Charles.

Charles Nickels was not a wealthy man: he was a traveling photographer by trade. He'd begun to operate The Rural Studio in 1903 while still living at his parents' home. Charles traveled as far as Georgia to take pictures. When he returned home, he developed the negatives and printed the photographs. His cameras used negatives made of glass coated in various chemicals to obtain the image, and so developing the final image was a rather tedious and dangerous procedure. Finally he printed the picture on a penny postcard and mailed it to the customer. All of this for a dollar!

Mary Louvinia "Lula" Burke (1887-1962)

Could Charles Nickels' humble profession have been a contributing factor to Zur Burke's reluctance to encourage the couple?

On the third trip to Grassy Creek, Charles called out after Zur that there was no use going inside, because this was going to be the day he asked for Lula's hand. Finally the old man relented and gave his permission for them to be married. Charles was so excited he wrecked his buggy on the way home.

Charles and Lula were married on January 12, 1907 in Scott County, VA. They went on to have 9 children together—Pearl, Gilbert, Blanche, Madge, Mary, Henry, Jim, Charles Harold, and Mildred. All reached adulthood except Mildred, who died at just over a year old.


source: www.clinchmountainhome.com/Nickels/charlesbio.html



Scott+County+VA courting traveling+photographer appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

“Well, if it isn’t Jimmy Roberts, where have you been the last two years? I have asked people about you but no one seemed to know,” inquired Mary as she spied Jimmy at the door.

“Why---hello Mary! It sure is good to see you again. I don’t believe I have seen you since graduation night two years ago last June. I have been working for the Transport Power Company ever since I left college. Most of my work has been traveling and out of doors. I started out as a surveyor and that was the reason no one knew much about me. But now I’m an electrical engineer in the General Office. Isn’t that great? Where have you been all this time?”

Unidentified couple. Based on period costume and age of couple could be a couple much like Jimmy & Mary.

“Oh me? I worked several places the summer following my graduation but for the past eighteen months I have been working for the Company at Chicago. I am a private secretary for the General Manager and that is the reason I’m here. Here comes Mr. Walsh and I will have to go now, but I’m staying at a friend’s house, Mrs. J.W. Kenny, 642 S. Pine St. in Cleveland and I wonder if you would like to call---maybe this evening?”

“Do you really mean it, Mary? Gee, I’d be tickled to death. Sure I’ll come, and this evening too. I never---“

“Well, so long Jimmy, I’ll see you this evening,” said Mary.

“So long, Mary,” replied Jimmy.

After that Jimmy Roberts was a different man. Immediately after dinner he went to his room to get dressed for the evening. He sang all the while he was getting ready. It seemed as though the world was all laughter and sunshine to him.

A happy man it was that strolled down Pine St. dressed up in his very best, and his mind very rapidly turning over recollections of the afternoon’s incidents. He took the card, which Mary had given him with her address on it, to make sure of the right house.

1912 postcard view of Market Street at night, Steubenville, OH.

At half past eight he was rapping on Mrs. Kenny’s door. Mary answered the door. They talked all evening of many things that had happened since their graduation. Each one told of his or her particular incident.

That night Jimmy couldn’t sleep. Too many things were on his mind. He was so happy to think that it wouldn’t be long until Mary would be his own.


---excerpt from “Jimmy Roberts,” by Virginia Hopkins
Harding Bee Hive
Printed and Published Weekly by the Students of Harding Junior High School
Steubenville, OH
Jan. 22, 1903



appalachia appalachian+history courting history+of+appalachia Jefferson+County+OH Steubenville+OH

The Knoxville Journal
1890-02-03

'An Elopement'

Chattanooga, February 2,-News reaches the city of a romantic elopement, with an unhappy ending, in Polk County, Tennessee, yesterday. A young farmer named Stancel stole the twelve year-old daughter of a planter named McCash. The eloping pair went to Cleveland and were married last night by Squire Harry Parke. This morning they took the track and walked as far as Red Clay, GA., twelve miles.

They were just beginning to feel safe from pursuit, when the irate father of the girl put in appearance, having come by rail from Cleveland where he had traced the fugitives. An animated triangular quarrel took place, but might triumphed and the old man took the girl under his arm and went back home, the disconsolate groom following at a safe distance. He had bought tickets to Dalton GA., and was to have taken the train his father-in-law went down on.


Source: http://genealogytrails.com/tenn/polk/newspaperbits.html



courting Polk+County+TN appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

It's the first Saturday in November and you're a single girl at home watching television. Well, don't just sit there, go out and find a man! It's Sadie Hawkins Day!

According to American folk tradition, Sadie Hawkins' Day affords women the opportunity to ask out a man. Although not an uncommon practice today, when this method of dating was suggested in the latter part of the 1930s, it caused quite a stir. This event made its debut in Al Capp's "Little Abner" comic strip on November 13, 1937.

One of Capp's most memorable characters, a homely gal named Sadie Hawkins, got tired of waiting for men to come a'courtin. Her father, Hekzebiah Hawkins--a wealthy and powerful man, was even more concerned that Sadie would never leave home and would become an old maid. As Mayor of Dogpatch, he decreed "Sadie Hawkins Day" and held a footrace in which the unmarried girls pursued the town's most eligible bachelors. The prize for the women who caught their man was, of course, matrimony. Sadie, of course, with her big, fast-movin' feet, got hers.

This comical event soon jumped off the cartoon page and into the real world. The first Sadie Hawkins Day dance took place on November 9, 1938. By 1939, over 200 Sadie Hawkins' Day dances had been documented.



Sadie+Hawkins+Day Al+Capp courting appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"I got married in 1926. I met [Charlie] in Davie County, between Mocksville and Salisbury. We met at a friend's house. I spent the night down there with a friend. We just wrote to each other for quite some time. [Laughter] He'd come to Conover once in a while. My grandmother had died a long time before then. I was still boarding with my aunt and uncle, though. We just decided to get married, that's all. [Laughter] We got married at Mocksville. At a justice of the peace. He wanted to get married down there, and we just got married down there.

"We stayed down there for a little while, but not long. I got off [work] for a little while. Then we moved up here to Conover and lived up here for several months, and he couldn't find any work at that time. The Depression had started then, so we moved back to Davie County to his mother's. His father was dead. We lived down there a year then, and he worked on the farm. Then that next fall we moved back up to Conover, and he got work, too, in the glove mill, and we both worked there. He turned.

"I was off, I guess, about a year when Billy was a baby. I quit pretty soon after I got pregnant. We just wanted a child so bad, and I just decided to quit. I did have some trouble [getting pregnant]. I just don't know what it was. He was born the thirty-first of May [1930], and we'd have been married four years the sixteenth of October.

"I hadn't been to the doctor but very little, unless it was just something I had to go for. [Laughter] I hadn't been to the doctor till I got pregnant, and then I started going. Dr. Herman at Conover [delivered the baby at home]. I didn't have any trouble with my pregnancy. I had a little trouble because of my age when he was born, but outside of that everything was all right.

"My aunt stayed with me, one of them, at one time, taking care of our youngest one, and after we moved out here my mother taken care of some of them part of the time. And one of my cousins stayed with me one time and taken care of them, so it's just different ones. But we always had somebody to take care of them when they wasn't in school.

"We've got four children. We had a boy and then a girl and then two more boys."

Junie Edna Kaylor
b. 1904
December 12, 1979 interview
Conover, N. C.
Interview H-106. Series H. Piedmont Industrialization.
Southern Oral History Program Collection (H-4007)
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/aaron/aaron.html

related post: "June Bride? Time for a Shivaree!"


North+Carolina+Piedmont Junie+Edna+Kaylor Conover+NC appalachia appalachia+history courting appalachian+culture appalachian+mountains+history