Backcountry Notes

The Backcountry is the "other South" - - the one you don't see in "Gone With The Wind" and most other depictions of the South.  Both the geography of the area and the nature of its European settlers make this region different from the coastal areas.

The settlements along the south Atlantic coast and the Chesapeake Bay were dominated by English gentry who developed a plantation system that became dependent on slavery.  The plantation owners in general thought of themselves as Englishmen; in many cases planned to return to England once their fortunes were secure; and, when they could afford it, sent their children to school in England.

The settlers in the Backcountry had no such pretensions.  Whatever their reasons for coming to the American colonies, they generally abhorred the English King and his colonial Governors and wanted to live as far from the seats of Royal government as they were able.  By and large, they were not slaveholders; many did not approve of the practice; and the few who did have slaves held only a few, not nearly the scale of the hundreds held captive on a coastal plain plantation.  By and large, the Backcountry settlers were disfavored Protestants who detested the influence of the established Church of England.  The Backcountry provided these early settlers with the land and isolation they needed.

The first Backcountry settlers were ethnic Germans coming primarily from the Palatine area.  During the time of American colonization, Germany was a region, not a nation.  Within the area of Germany were numerous principalities which seemed to be constantly at war.  The displacements and dissatisfactions of internecine warfare and religious differences prompted the initial migration of Germans to the colonies.  They settled first in the area of Pennslvania known today as the "Pennsylvania Dutch" country. [See Note 1, below, on the term "Dutch."]  The German settlers typically formed farming communities, although their occupations included more than farming; most had a trade or craft, such as bootmaking or carpentry.  Their communities of farmer-craftsmen and farmer-artisans established a model for the Backcountry settlements:  the settlers were interdependent within the community, relying on each other for the skills and most of the products they needed, and were at the same time substantially independent of the outside world.

The German communities proved to be very stable socially.  They were based on three sets of values:  faith, family, and community.  In many respects, they lived as the old-order Amish folk still live today.  The settlers traded with the "outsiders," sending agricultural and other products back along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road to the city, but generally remained apart culturally.

The German settlements began early in the 1700s and by the 1720s had pushed into central Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and then into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  These areas to this day contain many fine examples of the craftsmanship of these settlers in the form of cut-limestone houses and post-and-beam barns.  Later settlers, notably the Moravians, travelled south into the Peidmont of North Carolina and established towns and farming communities; Old Salem, in Winston-Salem, NC, contains many well-preserved structures of timber-frame construction.

Very soon after the Germans came waves of Scotch-Irish settlers.  This people, also known as Ulster Scots and more recently as Scots-Irish, were ethnic Scots who had settled in the Ulster Plantation in the northern area of Ireland beginning about 1607.  The Scotch-Irish generally came from the borderlands above Hadrian's Wall and the western Lowlands of Scotland, areas where life had been challenging for many generations.  In Ulster Plantation, the Protestant Scottish immigrants were expected to serve as a buffer between hostile Irish Catholics and English Anglican landowners and overseers (setting in motion a conflict which continues to this day).  In return for their difficult and often bloody service to the Crown, the Scotch-Irish were treated as second-class citizens and beginning late in the 17th century were subjected to so-called "Punitive Acts," laws which penalized non-Anglicans based on their religion.  Presbyterian Scotch-Irish could not hold public office, for example, and were taxed to support the established church; the resentment engendered by these laws eventually infuenced the United States Constitution, which forbids any religious test for holding public office and forbids the United States government from establishing a state church.  These Ulster Plantation social conditions were exacerbated early in the 18th century by periodic droughts.

Beginning about 1720, Scotch-Irish folk came to the American colonies in large numbers; it is estimated that more than 200,000 immigrated from the 1720s to 1776.  While some of these settlers went to New England, the bulk of them came into the harbors of Philadelphia and Baltimore and from there moved into the interior.  A lesser, but substantial, number of Scotch-Irish, and quite a few Germans, came in to the southern ports of Charleston and Savannah, making their way to the interior in a northwesterly direction.  In Pennsylvania, the Scotch-Irish leapfrogged the Germans and began populating the Allegheny Mountains in western Pennslvania.  Coming south along the Great Wagon Road, they settled in the Alleghanies and along the Blue Ridge; by mid-century, the Scotch-Irish had passed the Germans, flooding into southwestern Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and the central Peidmont of North Carolina. 

The culture of the Scotch-Irish thus came to dominate the Backcountry.  In those areas first settled by them, the Scotch-Irish tended to assimilate newcomers, which included German, Welsh, New Amsterdam Dutch, and yeoman English settlers.  [See Note 2, below.]  The Backcountry thus became the original "melting pot" of the American settlements.  More than other ethnically-diverse areas, the Backcountry settlers developed a blended culture, freely intermarrying and developing common religious and social communities.  On the German model, these communities were largely interdependent within themselves while remaining substantially independent of the outside world.  The family names common in these areas reflect the origins of the people - - Scotch-Irish names like Buchanan, Blackburn, Campbell, Crockett, Hall, Henderson, Lewis, McDowell, Preston, Stuart, and Vance; German names like Aldhizer/Altizer, Harman, and Hess; New Netherlands Dutch names like Vanhoozer, Vanover, and Vandyke; and Welsh names like Absher, Bowen, and Jones. 

The structures associated most closely with Scotch-Irish settlement are log cabins, log barns, log taverns, and even log churches.  The Scotch-Irish did not bring this building method with them; they  learned the craft from Scandanavian settlers in southeastern Pennsylvania.   The Scotch-Irish readily adopted this method of building, which required them to take only the most basic tools into the wilderness.

I call the Backcountry the "other South" because of its substantial differences from the South so often depicted in songs, books and movies. There were no plantations here, and no traditions based on the values of the English gentry.  Their general lack of affection for the English Crown led the Backcountry settlers to join the rebel side in the American Revolution and when the war was going badly, stalemated in the North and failing in the South, the militias of the Backcountry rose to the occasion and blazed the path to victory at King's Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse.  Between the Revolution and the Civil War, men and women of the Backcountry became involved in the Underground Railroad owing to their opposition to slavery. The Backcountry folk largely opposed the cause of secession in 1861.  In Randolph County, North Carolina, where many of my German ancestors had settled, the vote went against secession by a lopsided 2466 to 45; in Virginia, 47 counties left the state to eventually form West Virginia; northeast Tennessee was notoriously Unionist.  In both North Carolina and Tennessee the popular vote went against secession - - a narrow margin of about 600 votes in North Carolina, and a landslide margin of more than 10,000 votes in Tennessee. 

When I was a child, I spent summers on my grandparents' farm in the community of Whynot, in Randolph County, NC.  In many respects, the values of the Backcountry community still survived there.  The devotion to the traditional values of faith, family, and community was evident not only in words, but in actions; it was an amiable and enviable way of life. 

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[NOTE 1] - The term "Dutch" in this context does not refer to persons from the Netherlands, but to western German folk.  The use of the term "Dutch" to refer to Netherlanders alone developed later, around the time of the establishment of the German nation.  In Germany, the usage survives; the German term for "German" is Deutsch and the nation is called Deutschland.  The term "Pennsylvania Dutch" means "Pennsylvania German."  My own German ancestors in the North Carolina Backcountry were known as "North Carolina Dutch" down to the time of my grandfather Slack.  The North Carolina Dutch became thoroughly assimilated, however, and the usage has largely disappeared.

[NOTE 2] -  For a discussion of the assimilative nature of Scotch-Irish culture, see Jim Webb's book, "Born Fighting."