Appalachian History

Did you know that Daniel Boone’s autobiography was ghost written by a man named John Filson? Have you ever considered how Filson might have altered or embellished the stories told to him? Might he have edited or altered the material in order to make it more exciting, or perhaps to push a personal or political agenda on the public?

Dr. Darren R. Reid

In the following partial transcription from ‘The Adventures of Daniel Boone’ podcast, guest scholar Dr. Darren R. Reid begins to consider the ramifications for historians who have to wrestle with these questions. Dr. Reid earned his PhD in History and American Studies at Scotland’s University of Dundee – he currently teaches at both that institution and at the University of Edinburgh. He published ‘Daniel Boone and Others on the Kentucky Frontier: 1769-1795’ in 2009. 

“For the best part of two centuries, Daniel Boone’s name has been synonymous with the exploration of the American frontier. Thanks largely to a legacy created by exaggerated books, movies and television shows, Boone has become something of a folk hero, not entirely dissimilar to characters like Robin Hood. Like the English outlaw who supposedly stole from the rich and gave to the poor, Boone’s life is shrouded in myths, half-truths and outright works of fiction. Also like Robin Hood, the myth of Daniel Boone has been used by successive generations as a means of expressing their view of the world.

“Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor was a much later development in the Robin Hood saga that tells us nothing about the actual historical figure. In a similar manner, all sorts of methods have attached themselves to Daniel Boone over the years, that tell us nothing about who he really was, what motivated him to do the things he did, and what he actually accomplished with his life. For that reason, it is important when studying individuals like Boone to go back to the earliest sources, whilst always looking out for tales and anecdotes that fit the myth, rather than the man.

Oil sketch of Daniel Boone by Chester Harding, the only portrait of Boone painted from life. This was painted when Boone was 84 years old, a few months before his death.

“In that spirit, the Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, first published in 1784, is a logical place to start any investigation about his life. But before we begin analyzing Boone’s narrative, I think it’s important that we first establish a few baseline facts about the man in order to provide ourselves with some context for this discussion.

“Born in 1734 to parents Squire and Sarah, Boone lived the early part of his life on the Pennsylvania frontier, where he and his kinfolk had regular, positive contact with their Indian neighbors.

“Later, the family moved to the North Carolina backcountry, where the young Daniel developed his skill and reputation as an able woodsman and hunter. At the age of 21, Boone married Rebecca Morgan, with whom he started a large, and quite successful, family.

“Shortly before his marriage, Boone had also served as a teamster for General Braddock during his disastrous defeat in the Seven Years War, a conflict some of you may know better as the French & Indian War.

“By 1769, at the age of 35, Boone had begun another relationship, this time, with the then unsettled country of Kentucky, a region with which he would continue to have close ties for the next two decades.
“Indeed, it is Boone’s association with the Kentucky frontier and the opening up of the trans-Appalachian West which is responsible for his enduring fame. In particular, it was Boone’s narrative, the document we’re going to study here, that would propel Boone from a local, to an international, stage.

“When first examined, Boone’s narrative appears to be a simple proposition: a first-hand, autobiographical narrative covering the period from 1769 to 1783. And as such, it should provide us with a good basis upon which to start our investigations.

“There are, however, a few problems right out of the gate that need to be addressed. First, Boone’s narrative was published as part of a much larger book: The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky, by John Filson. This immediately raises some questions about the authorship of Boone’s narrative, particularly with respect to any role John Filson might have played in its creation.

“To what extent did Filson edit Boone’s account? And to what extent was he responsible for the final shape of the narrative? Even before we look at the document, it is important that we frame it with these questions in mind, because Filson’s role as author of the larger book strongly suggests that the final version of Boone’s narrative was the product not of one man alone. Instead it was likely a collaborative endeavor, in which Boone likely provided a narrative of his life, which was then re-packaged and edited by Filson for mass consumption.

“Now, Boone certainly wasn’t illiterate — his contemporaries describe him as writing with a common farmer’s hand. But there is a lot of evidence in this source to suggest that its final form is written by someone with a more sophisticated understanding of written language than we might expect from a hunter or pioneer.

“Let’s consider the narrative’s opening passage: ‘Curiosity is natural to the soul of man, and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections. Let these influencing powers actuate by the permission or disposal of Providence, from selfish or social views, yet in time the serious will of heaven is unfolded. And we behold our conduct, from whatever motives excited, operating to answer the important designs of heaven.’

“Now, this is certainly a bold offering, but is isn’t the type of introduction one might expect to come from a ‘common farmer’s hand.’ Nor is it, with its constant nods toward divine Providence a type of sentiment one expect from a pioneer who appears to have been ambivalent towards religion throughout much of his life.

Historian & Daniel Boone’s editor, John Filson. From ‘History of Kentucky,’ by Connelley and Coulter (1922).

“The grandiose language also contradicts most accounts of Boone’s character, which tend to suggest a man given to far fewer words than the introduction of this document might otherwise suggest. This opening statement, then, stands at odds with what we already know about Boone. The flamboyant nature of the language seeming to jar with what we know about the historic figure from other sources.

“Instead of telling us about Boone, then, this opening section seems to be describing the views of someone else, most likely John Filson, who offered the book in which Boone’s narrative appears. But even then, this is not entirely certain, as at least one other source accused another settler, a man named Humphrey Marshall, of polishing up Boone’s final narrative.

“It is likely, then, that this work is the product not of one man, Daniel Boone, but of two, or possibly even three, working in tandem. Now whether or not Humphrey Marshall did contribute to this work is unknown, but we do know that this work, whoever contributed in the end, was not solely produced by Boone, and that means that other agendas were at play.”

Please welcome guest author Hilda Downer. Downer is an Appalachian poet who makes a living teaching English at Appalachian State University, and as a psychiatric nurse. She is a member of the Appalachian Studies Association, NC Writers Conference, and the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. She has published poetry and essays in journals and anthologies such as the award-winning anthology of Appalachian women’s writing on the sense of place, Bloodroot. Her most recent book of poetry, Sky Under the Roof, was published by Bottom Dog Press, 2013. She lives in Sugar Grove, NC.

The postmaster handed over the small package saying he was sorry it was empty. Indeed, the box felt weightless and upon being shaken, its sound was inaudible like that of the first few flurries of a mountain winter. Because I knew what was inside, I opened the taped end gingerly, but with a quick tug to dislodge the flap – the stubby finger of a rattle flexed outward through the resulting side opening.

It swayed from side to side and lifted its “head” like a big fat bug in rigor mortis. My hand recoiled from the rattle’s touch. Between layers of cotton, six rattles filed away like expensive silverware, a strange gift from a friend in Oregon for me to distribute among my son’s bluegrass band, Sons of Bluegrass, comprised of all East Tennessee State University Bluegrass students in the only bluegrass major in the world.

The discussion about the use of a rattle in the fiddle and other traditional instruments had naturally occurred between my son, fiddler Meade Richter, and me. He had spent considerable time with elderly fiddlers in competitions over the years, as well as studied this practice in his Bluegrass History classes.

He knew fiddlers often inserted a rattle in the f-hole for good luck. Meade, even as second-time winner of Fiddler of the Festival at Union Grove, the oldest fiddle festival in the United States, put more stock into actual practice than the practice of possessing a good luck charm.

Could there be some logical rationale behind this superstition? Because rattlesnakes are only indigenous to the Western hemisphere, the root of magical or practical use of the rattle would trace back to Native Americans.

Opposed to the African reverence of the snake as an object of worship, the European Christian association of the serpent with Satan led to a “reversed bad luck” akin to current motorcycle gang and military jewelry depicting a rattlesnake coiled around a skull or dagger.

The famous Revolutionary War flag portraying the rattlesnake and slogan, “Don’t Tread On Me” represented the shared bravery of soldiers and a snake that warns its victims before striking (Yronwode).

The act of keeping a rattle in a musical instrument as an amulet to ward off evil spirits, especially for people steeped in superstition before their arrival to this country, could easily have derived from their own volition.

However, the use of rattles for warding off pests must precede the Revolutionary War, learned from Native Americans as early settlers adopted other natural remedies. The particular practice had to begin prior to the 1900s when the fiddle was considered to be the Devil’s instrument. Therefore, the fiddle was not allowed indoors, but was hung in the barn or on the porch as a compromise for what was useful to get the work done at corn shuckings and the like.

These open spaces had spiders, mud daubers, and mice seeking refuge in a new home. The smell of the rattle sent a strong message to such vermin to stay away (Miller). Certainly, from their first encounters with the Eastern Diamondback rattlers from the coastal area to the timber rattlers in the Appalachian Mountains as they migrated westward, settlers felt a need to be in harmony with a world wilder and stranger than fiction. To keep a part of something on them that belonged, the rattle of a snake with its own music, just might help them become more a part of the new world they had to either adapt to or not survive at all.

Another utilitarian aspect of placing the rattle inside a musical instrument rises from the belief that it renders a “sweeter sound” – more crisp and loud (Cox 26). Especially in a time before PA systems or modern recording enhancements, a lone fiddle might be the only accompaniment at a dance and would require the most volume it could muster. A singular rattle sounds like a rain stick turned upside down, perhaps a musical instrument in its own right. Alan Jabbour, known for collecting great old recordings, states that the rattle in his fiddle renders “a rhythm section” to his performances (Royce).

Usually, the explanation provided by mandolin players is that, ‘“Bill Monroe did it this way . . .”’ (Mandotim). Why did Bill Monroe do it that way, though? One account is that Monroe believed the rattle settled the dust in his mandolin, providing a deeper clarity of sound. Fiddler Bev Conrad, experimenting with a rattle in her fiddle, removed it the next day to find the rattle dust coated—“a big ball of lint, fuzz, dust, and cobwebs had been gathered up by the sweeping motion of the rattle as it wandered around the inside of the fiddle” (Conrad).

Indeed, scientific evidence proves that the movement of a snake’s body creates friction resulting in static electricity that cannot be dispelled as creatures with hair and feathers do (Luck-Baker). Instead, the snake utilizes this electrical charge for sensory purposes, navigation, and to conserve energy for striking when threatened. Also, the rattle distracts an attacker’s attention away from the vital organs of the snake (Vonstille 26). Furthermore, the vibrations of the rattle, attached or detached to the snake’s body, generate static electricity on their own (Luck-Baker) capable of attracting dust particles, thus clearing the inside of an instrument so it sounds less muffled.

No mater what, the rattle is a good thing. It warns predators and innocent bystanders alike. The rattlesnake just wants to live and be left alone. It exemplifies patience, lying in wait for long periods of time for prey. (No, they do not clear out when they hear hikers trekking toward their direction).

Playing an instrument exemplifies the same patience and dedication. Since my son first played fiddle at a young age, I can scarcely remember a meal or time to go out the front door when I did not have to ask Meade to lay the fiddle down first.

Fiddler Meade Richter.

The difficulty of playing the fiddle prompted people to think that to play well, a fiddler must have to trade his soul with the Devil. I think of when a friend turned to me following Meade’s last competition performance at Fiddler’s Grove and saying through the darkness, “No human could make sounds like that.” Neither could a rattlesnake, like one of Rilke’s “terrible angels,” be more beautiful in its existence.

The fact that my son is even alive after nearly dying from an infection at one week old causes me to believe that, like the rattlesnake, we all have something extra, greater than we as mere organisms can even bear, so that beyond death and even in brave defiance of death, we can leave something of great beauty behind that takes on a life of its own.

Now that Meade has been playing a rattle-inoculated fiddle for a few days, he reports no variation in sound, though he has not been in a studio that might detect such nuances. However, when he lays the fiddle down, he alone hears the rattle, like a final note.

Sources:  Conrad, Beverley. “A Rattle of Truth.” The Fiddle –Legends, Lore & Helpful Hints. 23 October 2012. 4 June 2013.

Luck-Baker, Andrew. “Sience:  Snakes that Shake to Electro-locate.” News Scientist. 20 August 1994. 5 June 2013.

Mandotim. “Folklore, Rattlers and Fiddlers.” The Mudcat Café.  2 January 2006. 4 June 2013.

Miller, Ken. “Rattlers.” Ken Miller Guitar. 2011. 5 June 2013.

Royce, Janet Farrar.  “What’s that Rattle Snake Rattle Doing in My Fiddle?” Flying Fiddle. 3 May 2010. 4 June 2013.

Verstille, W. T. and Stille III, W. T.  “No Electrostatic Sense in Snakes.” Scientific Correspondence. 5 Jaunary 1995. 5 June 2013.

Yronwode, Cat. “Rattlesnake Rattles, Rattlesnake Salt, and Rattlesnake Dust.” Lucky Mojo. 2000. 5 June 2013.

Please welcome guest author Dean King, who weighs in on the Hatfields & McCoys with his newly published history Feud. King is the author of the national bestseller ‘Skeletons on the Zahara.’ He has written for many publications, including Men’s Journal, Esquire, Garden & Gun, Granta, Outside, New York Magazine, and the New York Times. He lives in Richmond, VA.  Feud opens as follows:

Prior to the Civil war, the Tug River Valley essentially ignored calendars and resisted progress. There were no roads, no rails, no schools, and no churches in the area. The transcontinental telegraph system, which crossed the nation in 1861, bypassed the region.

Telegraph service would not arrive in the valley for three more decades. Barricaded as they were in mountainous cul-de-sacs, locals spoke a dialect barely recognizable to outsiders, a tongue more Elizabethan than modern Victorian, using yit for yet, mought for might, seche for such, and the word allow to mean “figure.” They added es to form plurals like nestes. They afeared witches and haints. Questions from outsiders made them techeous (a state in which they were best avoided). The forest that enveloped them and, along with the hills, shaped their lives — a part of what the botanist-explorer William Bartram dubbed the sublime forest—was still dense, vast, and virginal.

One day in the fall of 1854, when he was fifteen, Anse Hatfield went out in the forest to bag some squirrels for the stew pot, something he had done many times before. Gangly, on his way to six feet, Anse, whose mother called him Ansie, was always on the move, slipping adroitly through the trees, already with the signature Hatfield slouch in his gait.

His hawk-nosed intensity and nasal twang were cut by a penchant for practical jokes and a raucous and infectious laugh. Like his father, Big Eph (pronounced “Eef”), he liked to wrestle, but not more than he liked to hunt. Wearing a buckskin coat and carrying a rifle, powder, and balls, he set loose his pack of hounds, led by three trustworthies named Rounder, Fife, and Drum. No sooner had he let the dogs go than they scared up a large spike horn deer.

The trio went tearing off after it. As the buck topped the ridge of Big Pigeon mountain, Anse took into account the distance and the rise, leveled the barrel of his gun considerably above it, and squeezed the trigger. But his prey was too far away. It disappeared over the ridge with the dogs in hot pursuit.

Dean King.

Anse was concerned. This buck had legs and might lead his dogs beyond return. There was plenty of trouble to get into among the intricate bends and folds of the woods here, almost no stretch of which was flat. Boulders, roots, and rocky streams hid beneath the leaf cover and behind rotting logs. In slicks, where lightning strikes and landslides had felled the trees, grew thick snarls of laurel, myrtle, huckleberry, and rhododendron that could trap a hell-bent hound like a steel cage. It was easy to get lost here, no matter how acute one’s sense of smell or direction. Anse, worried yet confident in his mastery of the place, set off at a fast trot.

He raced through the undulating wilderness, past trees festooned in ghastly hues of old-man’s beard. Here and there antler lichen clung tombstone-like to trunks living and dead.

The Mingo chief Logan, like many of the Indian tribes that had once roamed the place, had welcomed white traders and settlers to his tribe’s vast sacred hunting ground, until 1774, when they murdered his family. Then Logan had attacked white settlements with ferocity. “When the good soul had the ascendant, he was kind and humane,” the chief later explained, “and when the bad soul ruled, he was perfectly savage and delighted in nothing but blood and carnage.”

By 1824, the Indians were gone, and the Virginia General Assembly created Logan County, which would eventually form nearly half of the state of West Virginia. Within a year, the last known bison in the county (and, indeed, in all of Virginia) were killed. Still, young Anse stalked a stretch of the Great Forest where elk roamed and where wolves and wildcats — the latter called variously cougars, catamounts, pumas, panthers (pronounced “painters”), or mountain lions by the locals — prowled.

There have been many stories about the way Anderson ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield acquired his name. Some have suggested that he killed a panther in his youth, prompting his mother Nancy to say “That boy’s not afraid of the devil himself.” This 1901 photo is from the American Journal of Sociology.

When Anse did not return home for supper, his mother, Nancy — the illegitimate daughter of the scandalized daughter of Abner Vance — began to worry. She told Big Eph that she was afraid that Anse was hurt. He told her not to worry: the boy was every bit as “stout as a bear.”

Big Eph, a six-foot-tall, dark-complected, blue-eyed, Bunyanesque man of 250 pounds who had once treed and killed a wildcat with a butcher knife he carried in a scabbard, was a shrewd judge of these things. He laughed when Nancy suggested that a bear might have attacked Anse. “If a bear even gets a glimpse of a man in the woods, then he goes the other way,” he assured her. “Besides, Ansie has hunted so much, he’s a dead shot.”

The boy was used to pursuing not only deer and squirrels but raccoons, possums, and groundhogs, along with grouse, wild turkeys, and ducks. He even knew how to shoot a swimming turtle in the head so that it would not sink. “No bear is going to get in speaking distance of him,” Big Eph declared. And then he added, “why, I seen him shoot a squirrel’s eye out in the top of a tall hickory when I couldn’t even see the squirrel before it fell.” Anse, he knew, could do a man’s work and could fend for himself.

But the next day, Nancy was even more worried that a bear might have gotten Anse, who, no matter how stout and sure of shot, was still just a boy. Nancy, like her son, was tall, strong, and smart. She was graced with her mother’s features: a high forehead, a thin nose, and a square chin. Only ten of her eighteen children would survive childhood, but those who did were, like her, sturdy and intelligent.

Able to read and write, she owned a medical book and served as the area’s midwife, which yielded her a wide network of friends. Between her tutoring and the will of the family to improve its lot, eight of her grandchildren would go on to become doctors.

Now Nancy decided something must be done to find her boy. Big Eph and their oldest son, seventeen-year-old Wall, rode over to Ben’s Creek, to the east, where two Hatfield uncles lived, to see if Anse had stayed there or stopped by for a meal. He had not.

Dean King discusses ‘Feud’ at May 31 lecture in Logan, WV. Photo by Keith Davis/Woodland Press.

In fact, as the stag thrashed off through the woods, Anse had set out too fast, stumbling to his knees before he even made it up Big Pigeon. Cursing, he jumped up and moved his gear back in place as he made his next stride. But a breathtaking mile later, when he gained the top of the ridge, the buck had vanished.

Stopping to consider his next move, Anse sensed that something was not right. He reached down to his shot pouch — it was too light. when he stumbled, he realized, the shot had all fallen out.

“There I was with my gun shot empty, bullets lost, and that spike buck aleadin’ every dog I had clean out of the county,” he would recall. He decided he could not afford to go back, for if he did, he might never see his hounds again. He had to stay on their heels.

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. Check us out on the Stitcher network, available on mobile phones, in-car dashboards and tablets worldwide. Just click below to start listening:

We open today’s show a look at the origins of the phrase ‘Ollie, Ollie, in come free’. This was the call from the person who was ‘It’ letting those hiding children (the ‘Outs’) know it was safe to come back to base in the children’s game of hide-and-seek. The phrase has a more varied history than you might imagine.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

Next we offer up an excerpt from guest author Michael Abraham, whose historical novel War, WV has just released. “Nobody ever comes to the hollows of West Virginia by accident,” says Pug Graham, the book’s protagonist. “Everybody has a reason. Mostly they come home, because so many have left. Others come from curiosity, the burning desire to see and experience the poverty, the inexorable crawl of natural reclamation, the deterioration of manmade structures and of the souls of the people themselves.”

The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code, a shorthand phrasebook for telegraphers, was published in 1891. It helped telegraphers avoid repetitive motion disorder by spending less time sitting at the key, but it also helped them send faster, which meant they earned more money, since telegraphers were generally paid by the word. Usually the phrases were fairly straightforward, but we can imagine the book’s authors having their fun as they worked away on their manuscript; the code “boastful,” for example, stands for the “Western Maryland” railroad.

We’ll wrap things up with R.M. Edward’s look back at the Roane County, TN of his youth, in the 1830s. He warns his readers in this 1893 memoir “never to indulge the habit of tickling a child, for no one can forsee the injury that may result. I feared [my schoolmate] Hezekish as I would a bear, and hated him more intensely than any man I ever saw. All this originated from his insane desire to tickle me to death, in which he often came near succeeding. He would tickle me till my breath would be gone and I would think my time had come and I should surely die.”

And, thanks to the good folks at Rounder Records (The North Carolina Banjo Collection, Rounder CD0439/40), we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Worley Hash in a 1976 recording of Pearly Blue.

So, call your old Plott hound up on the porch, fire up your corncob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

On June 8, 1948, the town election in Clintwood, VA drew national and international attention when the voters elected an all-female town council and mayor. The Petticoat Government consisted of Mrs. Minnie “Sis” Miller, mayor, and Mrs. Ferne W. Skeen, Mrs. Buena H. Smith, Mrs. Ida M. Cunningham, Mrs. Kate Friend, and Mrs. Marion Shortt, town council.

Letters poured in from around the world wishing them luck and expressing amazement that an all woman government could be elected anywhere. The State Department featured the story in its Voice of America broadcast.

The idea shouldn’t have seemed so far-fetched. It had already happened twice before in US states.

The Petticoat Government: Marian Shortt, Beuna Smith, Minnie Miller (mayor), Ida Cunningham, Ferne Skeen, and Kate Friend. Courtesy Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park.

In Oregon, women gained suffrage in 1912, eight years before much of the nation, and by 1916 the women of Umatilla, OR took control of city government through their electoral option. Mrs. C.G. Brownell held a card party and the women attending decided what roles each could take in city government.

They did not inform the men of the community and the elections proceeded quietly. Since candidates did not have to declare themselves, E.E. Starcher and C.G. Brownell confidently expected re-election. But the town of 198 people elected Laura Starcher as mayor, Lola Merrick as treasurer, Bertha Cherry as recorder, Florence Brownell, Gladys Spinning, Anna Means and Stella Paulu to council positions.

In her acceptance speech, Laura Starcher promised to provide Umatilla a progressive administration, replace failing electric street lights, install sewers, and clean up the town. The womens’ administration accomplished Starcher’s promises and more, installing warning signs at railroad crossings, adding a library to the community budget, and framing ordinances for speed limits, parking regulations, and fire protection.

By 1920, the women of Umatilla, “Having accomplished what they had set out to do four years earlier,” bowed out of the political scene.

And in 1925, shortly after the 19th Amendment was passed, the voters of Winslow, AR elected an all female government consisting of Mayor Maude Duncan and Council members Lyda Cole, Florence Marley, Audie Crider, Bee Chervery, Daisy Miller, Etta Black, Martha Winn, Virginia C. Dunlap and Stella Winn. It worked so well that every single woman was elected to a second term.

By all accounts, Clintwood’s Petticoat Government, which took the reins in September 1948, was highly successful. Miller’s administration undertook many important improvement projects, including: clean-up campaigns, expanding parking in town, installing parking meters in the downtown area, purchasing a fire truck, organizing a systematic garbage disposal plan, and improving traffic hazards throughout town. Six of the women served only one term, however, Mrs. Ferne W. Skeen and Mrs. Buena H. Smith successfully sought re-election.

Sources:
www.ccrh.org/comm/umatilla/women.htm

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mtnties/petticoat.html

www.oldstatehouse.com/exhibits/arkansas-women/organizations/petticoat_politics.asp

Petticoat+Government Clintwood+VA Dickenson+County+VA Minnie+Miller appalachian+politics appalachia appalachian+mountain+history appalachian+history