Appalachian History

When asked what brought him to this community, Joe Raines said the Lord had sent him here as a pest on the Maynors and Williames for their meanness. That is the only reason Joe ever gave for coming to Cirtsville, WV. However, he came, and once here, he proceeded to make the most of the generosity of the people of the community.

He established a circuit of enough homes that he would spend a night with so it took him two weeks for him to cover his route. If Joe was delayed in making his rounds, the people became worried about him and began to inquire about his whereabouts.

Joe liked to fish and spent many hours fishing in Paint Creek. Next to Dr. Billy Feazell, Joe was said to be the best fisherman to ever fish in Paint Creek. After fishing all day Joe would take his string of fish to the home he was going to spend the night with. He would dress them and give them to the cook to fry for supper.

Cirtsville, WV. No date. Collection of Carol Sue (Lively) Beavers.

Joe was always welcome whether he had fish or not. He was not a lazy man and always had some kind of project underway, but it was usually something that was of no benefit to him or anyone else. His first project in the community was a school. There was a small building at the foot of Spruce Mountain that was vacant and Joe took it over for his school. Some of the people paid a small fee and enrolled their children in Joe's school. A few of them learned to read and write and a little arithmetic. Joe's school lasted two months. All his pupils were tired of school and quit going, so the Raines School closed.

Joe was the slowest man I ever saw. The method used to speed up someone who was dragging behind was to say: "Come on, you are as slow as Joe Raines."

Another project Joe tried that was hard work and very little profit was to gather up surplus from the gardens and haul it to Mount Hope and sell it. Then he would take the money he received for the products and buy such items as soda, soap, matches, and other things that the farmers needed and bring them back and sell them to the people who had given him the garden products.

One summer he used a wheelbarrow to transport his products. Another summer he used a small wagon which he pulled himself. Each year in April he would leave Cirtsville and go to Sandlick and spend a month with the Sandlick people, but he would return to Paint Creek by May 1.

Another visit that Joe made every summer was to the Tollison Stover home. This place was on Lick Run of Coal River. The route traveled was to go to the top of Spruce Mountain, then take a footpath along the Lick Run ridge. It was a good half day's journey for any man, and at the speed that Joe traveled, it took most of the day.

So on this occasion Joe started early in the morning, and it was late afternoon before he arrived. He was tired and hungry. The girls of the family were good cooks and they were all glad to see Joe again. They prepared a good supper for him. Among the things that they had were biscuits, butter, and honey. That was Joe's favorite food. Joe just could not quit eating honey and hot biscuits, so he overate. A short time after supper he began to feel pain in his stomach. Joe's remedy for all ills was Japanese oil [ed- this is the liquid portion remaining after the separation of menthol from Japanese peppermint oil]. He is the only man I ever knew that could drink Japanese oil full strength from the bottle. Joe took several swigs of Japanese oil but it did not help.

The pains continued to get more severe so Joe decided to go to a higher power. Joe went to prayer and his prayer was: "O Lord, I need your help. If you don't help me Lord, I am going to die, Lord, I know you can help me. I know you have the power to help me but the H--- of it is, will you." Joe's prayer was answered. He recovered from the honey colic but from that time on, he put a limit on the amount of honey he consumed.

Joe stayed with the people of Cirtsville until he became too feeble to make his rounds and he was taken to the poor house at Shady Spring where he died. He made his boast that he lived in Cirtsville for 40 years, and had as much to eat and was as well dressed as anyone else, and had never done any useful work.


Okey R. Stover
Upper Paint Creek, WV
b. 1895
online at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ggracie/okey16.html

There are a few things that can be said about Kennamer Cove that probably cannot be said truthfully about any other community in the state.

There have been only two murders in the Cove, which occurred ninety years ago. I am sure there has never been a divorce case in court in the whole 130 years since Hans Kennamer, with a large family of children, settled among the Indians. Hans Kennamer and some of the five generations of his descendants are buried in Pisgah Cemetery, which is in sight of the D.A.R. school located on the brow of Gunter’s Mountain.

John R. Kennamer (1873-1952)
From The Progressive Age, August 22, 1929

Granddaddy of reunions in state
by Boone Aiken
The Birmingham News, page 13
Tuesday, Sept. 5,1972

AUBURN There are family reunions and more family reunions in Alabama, particularly around this time of the year, but how many can claim their very own cove, complete with a pavilion in case of rain or a too enthusiastic sun?

Furthermore how many have their very own museum? Or a commercial picture postcard with their name and a picture of the ancestral home site?

No one knows exactly how many Kennamers there are today but at last count in 1942 there were 2,400 families.

John R. Kennamer, Sr. (1873-1952) organized the first Kennamer family reunion.

On Aug. 21, Kennamers, from as far away as Oklahoma and "cousins by the dozens" gathered again at the Pisgah Church in Kennamer's Cove in Marshall County for the 44th annual reunion.

Earl Kennamer, Auburn University extension wildlife specialist, recalls when the first reunion was held he rode in style in the rumble seat of the family car from Selma to Kennamer's Cove. He also reports the huge picnic basket of food beside him arrived intact at the Aug. 15, 1929 affair, but his friends rather doubt this astounding bit of information.

At that time more Kennamers arrived by buggy and wagon than by automobile, he said.

Always there has been a good crowd on hand whether the reunion was held on Thursday, Saturday or Sunday. One of the smallest occurred in 1942 when only 350 persons attended due to war conditions, lack of transportation and Kennamers in the armed services.

The Kennamer clan proudly announces its annual reunion is held “rain or shine, war or peace, depression or inflation, hot or cold, Republican or Democrat, pollution or smog, mini or maxi, hair or bald.”

They report their membership is made up of “farmers, preachers, teachers, merchants, students, retirees, secretaries, lawyers, housewives, beauticians, radio announcers, contractors, doctors, salesmen, bankers, druggists, and what-have-you.”

A famous family member is Dr. Rexford Kennamer Hollywood, physician to Elizabeth Taylor and Gary Cooper.

In 1965 a concrete block structure, 10'x30' was built to house family mementoes. Included are pictures of pioneer families, old family Bibles, family records, a 150-year-old quilt, a 50-year-old baby dress and arrow heads.

Although no one knows just how many persons actually showed up Sunday at the pavilion in Kennamer Cove Earl Kennamer, vice president of the Kennamer Family, Inc. said estimates between 500-1,000.

All with well-filled picnic baskets, of course.

Modern day view of Kennamer Cove.

Minutes from the 1st Kennamer Family Reunion

On August 15th, 1929, six miles south of Woodville, at Pisgah Church, in Kennamer Cove, was held the first Kennamer Family Reunion.

By actual count five hundred Kennamers and their kinfolks assembled. Many members of this large family from a distance were present to enjoy the day, a day long to be remembered by all present.

The morning was given over to meeting and greeting each other in social conversation.

At the noon hour was taken in enjoying an old time picnic dinner. There was enough food to feed a crowd three times as large. It is generally agreed that the day of miracles has passed, but when I saw some of the baskets of food taken up, after every one had eaten, I involuntarily thought of the Savior feeding the five thousand, and the baskets remaining.

In the afternoon many short speeches were made to the great delight of all. First on the program, was our genial editor, Hon. J. S. Benson, who kept the audience in laughter by his funny and appropriate stories. He was followed by Federal Judge Franklin Elmore Kennamer, of Tulsa, Okla., who made the principal speech of the day. He made a strong plea for the sanctity of the home, reverence to God, and obedience to Constitutional Government. Next Mr. D. P. Woodall, postmaster at Hillsboro, Ala., made an interesting speech. Dr. L. G. Kennamer, of Richmond, Ky., made a short and very appropriate speech.

Mr. P. H. Woodall, of Columbus City made a stirring appeal to the young folks to live for God and the Church. He was followed by Hon. T. J. Kennamer, U. S. Marshall of Birmingham, Ala., and in a happy speech. The last speaker on the program was Hon. Chas. B. Kennamer, District Attorney of Guntersville, Ala. It is needless to say that he made a good one. He said the majority of persons convicted by the courts are young educated men, and stressed the great need or moral training in the schools. That the colleges were not now giving this training as they should.

All speakers urged the parents to train their children in matters right or wrong and to learn obedience to parents and reverence to God.

The occasion was such a success that it was unanimously voted to hold another reunion next year.


sources: www.docftp.com/pdf/komab3-A+FAMILY+IN+REUNION
http://bellsouthpwp2.net/p/u/publicw/history1st.html

The work of the mountain mother is burdensome and she bears more than her share of responsibilities of the household. Her housework includes washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and often spinning and knitting for the family. Handicapped by lack of modern conveniences, her task involves undue hardship.

In most of the homes cooking is done on a small wood stove, with none of the modern conveniences; often the only implements are iron kettles, pots, and ovens which may be used interchangeably on the stove or in the fireplace; the latter is still preferred by many for baking corn bread and sweet potatoes. A scant allowance of fuel is provided from meal to meal. During a rainy spell, or when the father is away or sick, or the children off at school, the mother may be left without fuel, though wood grows at her very door.

Woman holding an infant, early 1900s. McDowell County, NC.

Carrying water, a toilsome journey up and down hill several times a day, usually falls to the lot of mother and children. No one of the families visited had water in the house or on the porch, and only 1 out of 5 within 50 feet of the house. Twenty families carried water over 500 feet and 8 families were from an eighth to a quarter of a mile distant from their springs.

The wash place, consisting of tubs on a bench and a great iron wash pot in which the clothes are boiled, is usually close by the spring. Much straining and lifting and undue fatigue are involved in this outdoor laundry. Sometimes even a washboard is a luxury, substituted by a paddle with which the clothes are pounded clean on a bench or a smooth cut stump.

Much of the family bedding is homemade, the work of the women and girls in their leisure hours, after the crops are laid by or in the evening by the fireside. Besides the time-honored log cabin pattern, their collections of patch-work quilts include such quaint and intricate designs as "Tree of Life," "Orange Peel," and "Lady of the White House." Many a mountain home has its spinning wheel still in use and occasionally one finds an old-fashioned hand loom.

Some homes display a collection of coverlids and blankets, handmade at every step of the process. The wool was grown on the home farm; sheared from the sheep; washed, carded, and spun by the women and girls of the family; dyed, sometimes with homemade madder, indigo and walnut dyes; and woven on the loom into coverlids and blankets. Even the designs are often original or variations of old favorites, like the "Whig Rose," "Federal City," and "High Creek's Delight by Day and Night."

The other duties of the mother are largely seasonal. From December to August the children are home from school and she has their help. Together they make the garden; help plant the com and peas for winter; gather them when ripe ; pull fodder and dig potatoes ; feed the stock; and perform the usual farm chores of milking, churning, and carrying water. In many homes the mother may be found doing chores which are usually considered a man's work, unduly prolonging her working hours and exposing herself to more stress and strain than is compatible with her own health or that of the children she is bearing.

A woman spinning thread, early 1900s. McDowell County, NC.

It is uncommon for help to be hired in the home, except occasionally for a few days during confinements. Moreover, with the exception of sewing machines, household conveniences are totally lacking. Hard-working women complained that the men have planters, drillers, spreaders, and all kinds of "newfangled help," but that nothing had been done to make women's work easier.

Practically all the mothers visited, besides their housework and chores, had helped in the fields more or less — hoeing corn, pulling fodder, and so forth. Of 212 mothers, 188, almost nine-tenths, had worked in the field before marriage; 167 since childhood; and 166, or three-fourths of the mothers visited, had helped in the field after marriage.

A woman's field work in the mountain country is not so extensive or fatiguing as in the lowlands where the cotton crop requires the constant labor of the entire family many hours a day during a long summer and autumn. In the mountains, little farming is done, the average family raising no appreciable farm produce for sale. The woman helps plant and hoe the corn and in the autumn helps harvest the crops — stripping fodder, carrying it to the barn, making sirup from sorghum cane, picking beans, gathering apples, and digging potatoes. Her field work is not arduous in itself, but only because it is undertaken in addition to her already numerous duties — caring for the children, housework, sewing, canning, and chores.


"Rural Children in Selected Counties of North Carolina," by Frances Sage Bradley, MD, survey published in 1918, U. S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau
online at www.archive.org/stream/ruralchildrenins1918unit/ruralchildrenins1918unit_djvu.txt

Parcel post was one year old. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran six crack trains daily, right through the middle of town, headed for St. Louis or New York, not counting a dozen locals to Pittsburgh or Columbus. You stood under the shed of the station, enviously peering into the Pullman diners as supercilious patrons dipped into their soup and stared at you out there in the dark. Some day, you promised yourself, you’d sit in a diner too and stare too.

A nickel bought a shoe shine, a hamburger with onions, a box of Uneeda Biscuit, and a pound of soup beans. A pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from Doc Bougher cost a five dollar bill. Coal was 10 cents a bushel, dug out under the town itself by the High Shaft Coal Company. The best ice cream you’d ever taste, no matter if you lived to be a hundred, cost 25 cents a quart.

The people in 1914 took their politics, religion and their patriotism seriously. The Elks, K. of P.’s, the Masons, and the K. of C.’s were Very Big socially. So was the G.A.R. and Women’s Relief Corps, although their ranks grew thinner and thinner on Decoration Day.

331 South Seventh Street, Steubenville, OH, several blocks over from where this piece's author George A. Mosel grew up, typifies the look of the neighborhood he describes.

Thousands, young & old, thought nothing of toiling up Market Street hill to Union Cemetery on foot to hear some windbag froth at the mouth over the bravery of the boys at Gettysburg or San Juan Hill.

Automobiles were still pretty risky things to some people. They hadn’t learned to trust them much. Babies were conceived at home and not on a vacation trip to Niagara Falls or in a Tourist Cottage on the Lincoln Highway. Old folks died home-style. The shades were pulled down in the front parlor and services were held there and not in an antiseptic Funeral Home ten squares away.

The phonograph was coming of age. The little square boxes with the cornucopia horn and revolving disks were going out and “His Master’s Voice” was coming in. At Erwin & Robinson’s, you could squander your hard-earned money on “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” which had come out back in 1911, or on “It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary”(1912); “Peg ‘o My Heart”(1913). If you wanted to be strictly up-to-date you’d go for the very latest songs, “The Missouri Waltz” or “When You Wore a Tulilp.” The really ‘hot’ record was “The St. Louis Blues.” Harry Lauder’s “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’” was a prime favorite on records.

Home was more than a place where they had to take you in, no matter what you did. Families did things together. They played games, sang songs; they went to church en masse; they fought and argues with one another and they entertained their friends under the family roof tree instead of the country club.

Not much spectacular ever happened on North Fifth. The people just wouldn’t allow it. No big fires, or robberies, juicy divorce cases or scandals that I can recall.

That is not to say life was one soft bed of roses. There were many a heartache back of those austere front doors. Babies died too young and old folks turned into vegetables. A favorite diagnosis of sudden death was “acute indigestion,” known now as a coronary thrombosis. The people were beset by the fears and desperations of a long lingering illness, unemployment, and a poverty-stricken old age, without the modern blessings of Social Security, Relief Checks and free nursing for the aged. Many lived low on the hog.

But they put on a brave face to the world. They “made do,” bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with the quiet courage of their forefathers.


from Through a Rear-View Mirror, by an ex-child of the city of Steubenville, Ohio. George A. Mosel, publ. by Hamilton I. Newell, Inc., Amherst, MA, 1963

In that back country in the 1870's money was very scarce. Just how scarce we people of this day can hardly realize. Most trade in the store was exchange of goods for farm produce - eggs, butter, poultry, hides, feathers, ginseng, yellow root, etc. In order to get some real money Father went to the county seat, Sandy Hook (then called Martinsburg), and bid in a pauper.

The county had no poor farm those days and so the county officials let the paupers out to live at the homes of whoever of responsibility made the lowest bid for the pauper's keep. I do not remember the amount Father was to receive for keeping this pauper but it was pitifully small.

The pauper's name was Steve Hacker. He was of fine physique, about 6 feet tall and muscular. He had a reputation of being a bully in the vicinity where he had lived, but had had an accident which left him paralyzed from his waist down. Having no one or property to support him, and not being able to work, he was adjudged a pauper.

At the time he came to us he was maybe 30 years old and a handsome man – black hair and eyes and dark complexion.

Though for a time we got along very well with Mr. Hacker, his having lived an active life up to his accident, the quiet of his confinement to his bed and chair palled on him, so naturally he wanted out and was restless and cross toward us children when he didn't get out. When helped to his feet he could stand and with a crutch and a cane - sometimes two crutches - he could walk a little by dragging his feet.

To get him outside took someone's time, which was not always convenient, and when out he seemed to try to get in some situation that would require help, and then got angry if the help was slow in coming. This did not help matters any.

One day because help was slower than he wanted it in coming he threw his heavy cane with an iron tip at brother Jack, but Jack was alert and dodged it. Jane and I soon learned to keep out of his reach, for he would strike our heads with his knuckles or cane when Father and Mother were not present.

One day the family left Jane and me with Mr. Hacker and went to the cornfield to work - a very unsafe thing to do. We played around out of his reach until about the middle of the forenoon, when in some way Mr. Hacker managed to get on his feet and reach his crutches, and drag out to the yard gate, and through it and on a few steps to the little creek that ran by, and out to the deepest place, and then deliberately fell backward in the water and called to us to call the folks to come and get him out. Jane went and called them and Jack and Morgan Brickey came and lifted him up and helped him to the house and dressed him in dry clothes.

The next year one of our neighbors bid Mr. Hacker in, and he remained in our neighborhood until his death several years later. He became a changed man and left a neighborhood of friends when he died. What a pity that men like that cannot, or could not then, have work that they could use their physical and mental energy.


The Journal of William Franklin Mason
(b 1872, Horton Flats, Elliott County, KY)
Online at http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/elliott/mason/mason29.txt

Ellen Fridley was a central figure in the economic and cultural flowering of Big Ridge, VA during the 1910s and 1920s. An entrepreneur, she ran the Big Ridge Supply Company, lodged in a small building near her home, where mountain residents could buy gum, tobacco, groceries, clothes, kerosene, and other items. She often accepted butter, chickens, eggs, and home produce in barter, which her husband later peddled in White Sulphur Springs.

Her economic ties with a larger world of commerce were complemented by a literate and intellectual curiosity. She read newspapers, ordered books through the mail, and apprised herself of events of the day. Like her sister-in-law Lelia Belle, Ellen had "modernist" leanings; she believed that scientific and cultural innovations elsewhere could benefit her family and her community, and should be embraced.

Hezekiah Fridley, Ellen's husband, was in the same respects almost the opposite of his wife. Illiterate, with a resentful suspicion of book learning, Hezekiah was also deeply superstitious. When their last child, Ruth, was born with a severe but surgically correctable cleft palate, the stage was set for a protracted battle between these headstrong individuals and their different points of view.

Ellen resolved that her daughter would not go through life with her speech and physical appearance impaired by a condition she knew could be improved. Hezekiah, skeptical that any human being could or should correct what God and nature had ordained, steadfastly refused to permit an operation. Aunt Ellen prevailed. I don't know how, but I suspect that her independent sources of income had something to do with her ability to carry on with her own plans.

When Ruth was one year old, she and her mother boarded the train together in White Sulphur, bound on the C&O line for Huntington, West Virginia. Through her contacts with physicians, Ellen had located a surgeon trained to carry out the operation on Ruth's cleft palate. Uncle Hez railed against her decision and predicted dire outcomes from the surgery. Ellen ignored him, although his wrathful predictions increased her own anxiety about the operation and its consequences for Ruth's health.

It was an all-day trip, and Ellen entertained her restless daughter with stories, games, and the extraordinary sights of the New River gorge through which they traveled. They spent their last night together away from home, boarding with strangers in Huntington.

Ruth died on the operating table the next day. The doctors speculated later that her tiny body housed a weak heart that could not withstand the operation. Ellen Fridley returned to Big Ridge alone, riding all day on the train with her daughter in a coffin in the baggage car.

Enraged with a grief that was compounded by self-righteousness, for months Uncle Hez upbraided Aunt Ellen for her foolish and fatal decision. Ellen first tried argument, then silence and avoidance, but he kept on. Submerged by her own grief and guilt, and well aware of his stubbornness, Ellen knew she must find a way to stop his tirades.

Uncle Hez's greatest weakness was his superstitious nature. One night, many months after Ruth's death, when he had fallen asleep, Aunt Ellen quietly brought a small lantern and set it on the floor next to their bed. After settling herself back under the covers, she reached over and turned up the wick. Shadows flickered through the rafters as she dangled her hand around the chimney. Presently Uncle Hez awoke.

"Ellen! Ellen, wake up!" She feigned sleep. "Ellen, wake up, there's a haint [ghost]!"

"Hez, what are you shaking me for?," she asked drowsily. "I don't see no haint."

"Ellen, it's there! Yonder in the corner!"

Ellen moved her long fingers and the ghost danced. "Hez, get on back to sleep. You're seeing things." Ellen slowly turned down the lantern, and the house darkened. Hez grumbled and tossed, then fell into a fitful sleep.

The next day, unnerved by the ghost and irritable from his restless sleep, Uncle Hez continued to rail against Aunt Ellen for sending Ruth to her grave. That night, Ellen once again set the lantern next to their bed. When the light began to flicker in the same corner, Hez woke up.

"Ellen! Ellen!"

"Oh, Hez," she said sleepily. "Let me rest."

"Open your eyes, Ellen! It's over yonder!"

Ellen peered around the room, then turned to Hez. "I don't see no haint, Hez. I reckon that means it's come for you." She soon turned down the lantern, but her words had reinforced what Uncle Hez already feared. He lay in watchful terror most of the night.

By the third night, Uncle Hez was so frightened of the nocturnal visitations that he could scarcely fall asleep. It was the wee hours of morning before his snoring finally persuaded Aunt Ellen that he slept. She turned up the wick.

"It's the haint! Wake up, Ellen, it's back!"

Ellen feigned sleep. He poked her with his elbow and shouted in her ear: "Wake up!"

"Oh, Hez, can't nobody sleep with you having all these haints."

"It's there! Over yonder in the corner! Same place for three nights!"

Aunt Ellen finally delivered her punch line: "Well, Hez, if it is a haint, it must be Ruth's. You won't let her rest in peace, fussing about her all the time."

Uncle Hez was silent. Aunt Ellen made the ghost dance just a few more times for effect, then she lowered the wick.

Ever after that night, Uncle Hez was afraid to speak of Ruth at all. The ghostly visits ceased, and the lantern stayed on the shelf. As for Ruth, Uncle Hez and Aunt Ellen separately offered up their silent prayers for her peaceful slumber beneath the sheltering trees of Big Ridge.


From "Beyond the Mountains": The Paradox of Women's Place in Appalachian History,” by Barbara Ellen Smith, NWSA Journal Volume 11, Number 3