Backcountry Folk of the Tennessee Mountains
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 08:16AM ;)
Curtis Stiner, mountain farmer. National Archives. Note: Click on any image for a larger view.During the decades following the end of the Civil War, the mountainous reaches of northeastern Tennessee remained relatively isolated from the rest of the world. There was growth in the urban areas of Knoxville and Chattanooga, and coal mining came to the Cumberland Plateau, but elsewhere life continued much as it had for generations.
The modern era arrived between the world wars, when Tennessee Eastman was established in Kingsport and the Bemberg Corporation built rayon mills in Elizabethton -- and when two major Federal projects, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Tennessee Valley Authority, brought the outside world irrevocably into the high country and its river valleys. The Park and the TVA dams displaced whole communities from ancient abodes and altered forever the way of life that had endured from the Colonial period.
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J. C. Nicely, Union County, TN. National Archives.With the Federal projects came resettlement plans and, during the Depression, public works projects. Reading the accounts surviving from this era, it is hard to escape the attitude of the Federal men that they were bringing indoor plumbing and enlightenment to backward, uneducated, gap-toothed hillbillies. Yet among those archives are a scattering of photographs which reveal folks of a very different character. Perhaps unwittingly, the Federal men left us vignettes of an independent, hardy, resourceful, and industrious people, worthy descendants of the Backcountry settlers of long ago.
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Mrs. Jacob Stooksbury of Loyston, TN, pictured with her spinning wheel and yarn winder. National Archives.
The mountain people made, grew, or gathered nearly everything they needed to survive. They were remarkably skilled at crafts and handwork of all kinds, making their own clothing, pottery, tools, and musical instruments, growing and gathering their own food, and constructing their own shelter. To the fullest extent possible, they lived in a world fashioned by their own hands.
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Margaret (standing) & Louisa Walker, photographed in front of their home in the Great Smoky Mountains. Library of Congress.The mountain folk lived in handmade houses -- log cabins built with hewn timbers and planks and shakes, resting on hand-built stone piers or foundations, heated by stone fireplaces and chimneys. Their farms featured handmade barns, corncribs, smokehouses, and springhouses. They educated their children in handmade schoolhouses and worshipped in handmade churches. They made tables, chairs, benches, bedsteads, and other furnishings. They wove cloth on handmade wooden looms. The surviving examples of this craftsmanship attest to the skills of the mountain folk.
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Stooksbury homestead near Andersonville, TN. National Archives.
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Children reading in doorway of Little Greenbrier School & Church, Sevier County, TN. National Archives.FAMILY LIFE. Mountain families tended to be close-knit, sometimes clannish. Extended families were the norm; it was not unusual to find three generations living in the same household.
Life was often hard in the mountains and children were expected to pitch in as soon as they were old enough to work. Families worked together and worked with other families in the community to ensure that they had shelter, food, and clothing.
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Esco Glandon of Bridges Chapel, TN. National Archives.
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Glandon family by the fireplace in their cabin. National Archives.
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Sarah wilson of Bulls Gap, TN, shelling peas for supper. National Archives.The rules of mountain life tended to be simple. Either you chopped wood in the fall, or you were cold in winter. You tended the corn and the garden in summer, or you went hungry. Yet despite the hard work and sometimes long hours, families found time to socialize, celebrate, and sing old songs.
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Farm family near Andersonville, TN. National Archives.;)
Interior of Harriet Hankins' cottage. National Archives.
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Little Greenbrier School and Church, Sevier County, TN. The children are seated in handmade bench-desks. Library of Congress.
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Schoolchildren in Little Greenbrier School & Church. Library of Congress
Children went to school in one- or two-room schoolhouses which typically served other purposes. Community life often centered around the church and church-school combinations were not uncommon.
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Oakdale School, Loyston, TN. National Archives.
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Interior of Oakdale School. National Archives.
FARM LIFE. For most of their history, the residents of the Tennessee mountains were classified by the Census as "farmers" and their economy was based on "subsistence farming." The reality of mountain life was, of course, far more complex. The people of this area, like other parts of the Backcountry, were also skilled artisans and craftsmen. They lived on farms but had a long list of other occupations. They were carpenters and loggers, stonemasons and bricklayers, tanners and bootmakers, weavers and quilters, blacksmiths and wheelwrights, and more. Thus they were interdependent within their local communities, and largely independent of the outside world. See The "Other South."
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Outdoor forge on the S. J. Barley farm in Campbell County, TN. National Archives.;)
S. J. Barley blacksmithing. National Archives.
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Curtis Stiner operating a portable sawmill. National Archives.
Agriculture in Tennessee was mule-powered well into the 20th century. From the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture:
Until the widespread adoption of motor-powered machinery in the mid-twentieth century, mules powered most farm activities in Tennessee. . . . According to the research of agricultural historian Pete Daniel, mules were of extraordinary value, especially to families with small farms, who often treated their mules as unofficial members of the family. . . . Mules were more expensive than either workhorses or oxen, but farmers . . . considered mules to be more surefooted, smarter, and stronger than horses and oxen. . . . According to those who owned mules, the animal rarely succumbed to disease and performed well in the hot summer. . . . Mules typically responded to simple commands. Farmers yelled "gee" for a right turn, "haw" for a left turn, "whoa" to stop and "come up" to start. Farmers and mules worked together to produce the family subsistence. Perhaps that explains why rural families were so attached to their mules, giving them names and treating them as pets.
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Gaines McGlothlin with his prized mules on a farm near Kingsport, TN. National Archives.
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Mule-powered plowing on the Melton farm, Anderson County, TN. National Archives.
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Hauling logs with mule teams. National Archives.
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Barnyard at the McHaffie homestead, Knox County, TN. National Archives.
HOME INDUSTRIES -- Spinning and Weaving. The Scotch-Irish brought with them the skills needed to make linen and wool cloth. See Frontier Culture Museum -- 1700s Irish Homestead. Spinning and weaving produced "homespun" and woolens for making such clothing, blankets, and household linens.
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Faust family, Anderson County, TN, in 1910, pictured with spinning apparatus. Library of Congress.From The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture:
The early decorative arts of Appalachia were the hand-pieced quilts, handwoven coverlets, split oak egg baskets, and other "necessary" crafts once common to every remote household. In the Appalachian mountains of East Tennessee, art was often the result of need. The nonindustrialized Appalachian people were self-reliant, making do with materials at hand, crafting the cabins they lived in and all the furnishings, growing the flax and raising the sheep for the carding, spinning, and weaving of cloth for their clothing, and making any needed household implements, farming tools, toys, and bedding from the materials at hand.
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Mary Faust, dressed in "homespun." Library of Congress.
The color that came into the Appalachian household came from natural material and natural dyestuffs, from walnut hulls and indigo, from inventive hands and minds adding "art" to everyday living. Intricate weaving patterns and dyes added life to the traditional coverlets, and surely many households contained "showoff" quilts made for marryings and buryings.
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Mrs. James Watson spinning yarn in her cabin near Gatlinburg, TN. National Archives.;)
Margaret Walker seated at the hand-built loom in her Great Smoky Mountains log house. Library of Congress.
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Aunt Lizzie Regan working at her loom, Gatlinburg, TN. National Archives.
ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES:
Backcountry Folk of the Tennessee Mountains
Backcountry Folk of the Virginia Blue Ridge
Backcountry Folk of the Kentucky Mountains
Backcountry Folk of the Shenandoah Valley -- The Farm Life
Views of the Old Shenandoah Valley
Bear Hunting in the Smokies, 1909
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Reader Comments (5)
Thanks for a great article. The pictures were incredible.
As the son of a East Tennessee hillbilly... I claim with pride my mountain DNA. My dad, uncles and aunts (cousins by the dozens) were the most independent and resourceful people I knew... totally independent despite the federal intrusion into their lives (I’m from the government, I’m here to “help”). The word “CAN’T” was NOT in their vocabulary! As a young boy, I watched by dad take an old metal army surplus water tank (found in the woods), a discarded old kerosene space heater... and fashion a water heater we used for 20 years! He also could break a pencil in half at 30 yards with a .22 rifle...(I never could do better than 20 yards)! We also got Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs and the Stanley’s... and what became known as Bluegrass music, that made Dolly wanna sing! (and which “nobody” likes... until they hear it!)... God bless!
What a superb article. I spent almost an hour just going through all the pictures. These are my people, I have very few photographs of my ancestors, but I recognize them here, in the descriptions and their work and their honest faces. Thank you so much Jay for this much appreciated piece.
phyllis -- Thanks for your kind note. I enjoyed putting this together (I confess to having a Tennessean or two in my family tree).
Ron, Son -- Thanks for your comments. I try to find good pictures, on the assumption that a picture is indeed worth 1,000 words, and that a thousand words of my usual screed would tend to drive readers away anyhow. Some of the pictures I found for this piece are truly priceless.