Appalachian History

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 with a look at the WV family that brought us Mother’s Day. It took the individual effort of each Jarvis, mother and daughter, over two generations to forge the holiday we recognize today. And it’s a story with a twist.

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.

Nothing about Kentucky born Baseball Hall of Famer Earle Combs was commonplace except his throwing arm; that seemed ordinary only because he shared the Yankee outfield with Bob Meusel and Babe Ruth, both exceptional and accurate throwers. Combs was a dangerous hitter, a fleet, graceful outfielder, and the best leadoff man baseball had yet seen. In the annals of “Murderer’s Row” he is celebrated as first in line of that wrecking crew.

It was the Chesapeake & Ohio’s first luxury passenger train – the Fast Flying Virginian, or F.F.V. It debuted on May 11, 1889, shortly after the Ohio River Bridge between Covington, KY and Cincinnati opened, and it ran daily between New York, Washington, and Cincinnati. Any Virginia aristocrat of the era would’ve instantly recognized C&O’s not-so-veiled reference to the “First Families of Virginia.”

Today, it’s Tennessee’s largest historic district. During the Great Depression, the Cumberland Homesteads community came into being as part of a nationwide New Deal agrarian movement to create subsistence farm communities to aid out-of-work, rural residents. Cumberland Homesteads was one the first of 33 similar communities built between 1934 and 1938, and eventually consisted of 250 homes, a school, a park area, as well as a stone water tower and governmental buildings.

We’ll wrap things up with the story of the Russell farmstead and inn. William Ganaway Russell had the good fortune to buy a farm exactly halfway between Walhalla SC and Highlands NC.
 There was no railway service between Walhalla and Highlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Travelers would have to ride horseback or via stagecoach on the Highlands Highway for two days to get to Highlands, 30 miles away. And waiting for them at the end of their first day’s ride, along the banks of the Chattooga River near the old Cherokee settlement of Tsatugi, sat the Russell farmstead and inn.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Blue Ridge Institute Archives at Ferrum College, we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by the Wheat Valley String Band in a 1984 recording of Black Mountain Rag.

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

To see Mrs. Augusta Robinson walking over town from Castle Hill, which she does most everyday, where she makes her home with her daughter’s family, one would never believe she is old enough to join the Past 80 Club.  But she was born May 10th, 1875 in Collierstown, the daughter of Mr. John and Mrs. Wilhelmina Robinson.

There were 6 children in her family, 3 boys and 3 girls, and she is the lone survivor. Mrs. Robinson says all of her education was received in the Maple Grove, one room, log school located in the Entsminger hollow near where the New Hope Baptist church now stands.  Her first teacher was Mrs. John L. Pain and is remembered by Mrs. Robinson as a very kind person.

A small country store on an early path of Rt. 11 near Fancy Hill, in Rockbridge County, VA. Photographed by Arch Tolley about 1920.

On one occasion there was a hole between the logs in the ante-room, which was used as a clothes closet, and some of the boys pushed a plank through which they were using as a seesaw. Mrs.Pain said “Children, what will people passing by think?”  That was all that was necessary; the plank came out.

Her second and third teachers were Mr. Ed Harrington and Miss Margaret Ayers.  Schoolmates she recalled were Miss Drewry Entsminger, Mrs. Emma Conner, Mrs. Rebecca Nicholson, Rucker, Oak, Carter, Minnie and Maude Entsminger and the John Entsminger family.

In those days children didn’t get to Sunday school until they were good size because most people had to walk.  But Mrs. Robinson said the catechism was always taught in the home.  Her early Sunday school days were at the Rough and Ready school House which was on the turnpike going over North Mountain.  It was some walk from her home, but she thoroughly enjoyed it, with the crowd composed of:  her family of 6, 4 boys and 4 girls from the John Entsminger family, 3 girls from the Clinton Entsminger family and Miss Emma Hayslett.

They traveled across the hill, over fences, across the creek, through a muddy lane. The one great occasion in Mrs. Robinson’s life was when she was converted. Rev. E. C. Root conducted a revival at the Rough and Ready school and she was one of the 18 converts, who were baptized in the creek in front of Mr. Bill Knick’s house, which is now owned by the Supervisor Herbert Chittum.  Of this group there are only three living; Mrs. Drewery Entsminger, Mrs. Emma Conner, and Mrs. Robinson.

When the New Hope Baptist church was built Mrs. Robinson moved her membership there, where it has remained through the years, even though she attends the Baptist church here in town most of the time.

Mrs. Gussie says she can remember when her mother cooked on the fireplace and later when they bought their first cooking stove. Like every other girl of that day she learned to cook but much preferred working in the corn fields with her brothers.  Of course there were not as many different means of entertainment as we have today but the youngsters got together on different occasions.

What she enjoyed most was the taffy pulling which always followed molasses making from the sugar cane her father raised. Laughing, Mrs. Robinson said, “the children of today raise cane—but of a different kind.”

Another annual affair was in the fall when the young people of the community gathered in the home of Mrs. P. I. Huffman to help her and her two daughters—May, who later became the wife of Dr. H. R. Coleman, Sr.—and Lucille, who married Ernest Armstrong.  As a reward Mrs. Huffman always treated them to hot apple pie, honey, preserves and hot biscuits.

At the age of 14 Mrs. Robinson became interested in boys.  Jordan Entsminger was her special friend, and she said they courted for 7 years, going places together with the crowd.  But, finally they were married on November 20, 1894 by Rev. E. T. Mason, Sr., in her home.  Their attendants were Cynthia and Eliza Entsminger and Sam and Emmett Robinson.  Her wedding dress was of a tan worsted material, Basque waist, high collar, long sleeves, and the skirt touched the floor. Her matching felt hat was trimmed in darker tan ribbon.

They started housekeeping two weeks later at Long Dale mines, where they lived for 13 months. To this union there was one daughter, Mrs. Gilmore Reid. Mrs. Robinson now has 3 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

In spite of her 80 years she is planning ahead just like a young person. She says she expects to go dewberry picking this summer and wants to pick enough to can 8 quarts and some for jelly and preserves like she did last summer.

When asked what she attributed her long life to, Mrs. Robinson said she didn’t know, but she thanked God for giving her good health through the years. If you don’t know Mrs. Robinson it would be worth your while to meet her and learn how she lives—always in a good humor and ever ready with something worth while to talk about.

Lexington [VA] Gazette, June 1, 1955, “Past 80 Club”
online at http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/rockbridge/newspapers/pst80clb.txt

Calhoun, Ga. 1934. Mrs. Ralph Haney poses for a photograph in her kimono. The peacock design was made of chenille.

Imagine: you’ve piled the family into the car and are driving south for a Florida vacation. You’re traveling along U.S. Highway 41 in northwest Georgia, when suddenly both sides of the road become flanked by row after row of clotheslines chock full of stunning chenille bedspreads. Congratulations! You’re in the thick of “Peacock Alley.” And most likely you’re in downtown Dalton, GA as well. 1930s travelers often stopped and bought these bedspreads, and of the many designs adorning the spreads, the most popular among tourists was the peacock. Hence the nickname.

Sometimes the bedspread buyers believed their purchases to be examples of authentic American folk crafts, when in fact by that decade a well organized industry had formed around the tufted beauties. Catherine Evans (later Catherine Evans Whitener) revived the handcraft technique of tufting in the 1890s near Dalton. Tufted bedspreads consisted of cotton sheeting to which Evans and (later) others would apply designs with raised “tufts” of thick yarn. These tufted bedspreads were often referred to as chenille products. Chenille, the French word for “caterpillar,” is generally used to describe fabrics that have a thick pile (raised yarn ends) protruding all around at right angles.

By the 1920s merchants had organized a vast “putting out” system to fill the growing demand. They established “spread houses,” usually small warehouses (or homes) where patterns were stamped onto sheets. Men called haulers would deliver the stamped sheets and yarn to thousands of rural homes in north Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Families then sewed in the patterns. The hauler would make another round of visits to pick up the spreads, pay the tufters (or “turfers,” as they sometimes called themselves), and return the products to the spread houses for finishing. Finishing involved washing the spreads in hot water to shrink them and lock in the yarn tufts. The tufted spreads could also be dyed in a variety of colors.

The participation of farm families in this industry provided badly needed cash incomes and helped these families weather the Great Depression. It also produced fortunes for some. Dalton’s B. J. Bandy (aided by his wife, Dicksie Bradley Bandy) was reputedly the first man to make $1 million in the bedspread business by the late 1930s, but many others followed.

Also in the 1930s such companies as Cabin Crafts began to bring the handwork from the farms into factories. The bedspread manufacturers sought greater productivity and control over the work process and were also encouraged to pursue centralized production by the wage and hour provisions of the National Recovery Administration’s tufted bedspread code. These new firms also began mechanizing the industry by adapting sewing machines to the task of inserting raised yarn tufts.

Today, Dalton remains the tufted bedspread capital of the world.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/2yvllg

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I am an average woman of the United States, a married women with two children and an income of—well, I’m not quite sure what it is, but I know it is not enough to live on as we ought to live. But, small as it is, our church has been trying to get me to budget (horrid word, isn’t it?). We have a person called by a disagreeable name, Stewardship Secretary, going around and giving lectures on how we ought to spend our money. It’s easy for her to talk about budgeting. She gets her money paid regularly, while I have to get mine in dribs, just as I can beg, scold, and wheedle it out of my husband.

I’m very economical, I can tell you that. I don’t keep account of every penny I spend. In the first place, you understand, we must have a roof over our heads, and rents are simply awful. It’s even worse if you try to own your own home and keep up insurance, repairs, and taxes and pay the interest on the money you borrowed to buy the house with. I cannot tell you offhand what we do pay for rent—sometimes more and sometimes less.

Then, there is food. We must have three meals a day, and you know how men are about food. I always say that none of my family shall ever be reported for being undernourished, with delicatessen shops so close. I can always send one of the children over at the last minute for anything I want. It’s hard to say exactly how much we spend on food—sometimes more and sometimes less—but I’m sure you can form a good idea from what I’ve told you as to just what we do spend.

And clothes! I’m a good manager, and I never expect to be a back number when it comes to styles. Cut off for clothes just about what most people spend, but remember that mighty few women get the good results I do for the money I put into clothes.

We spend practically nothing on amusements—nothing worth mentioning. The only thing we do is go to the movies, unless you’d call our trips in our car amusement. I think trips of that sort are a real necessity.

I am sure I give all the unaccounted-for part to the Church. The money goes somewhere, and I always give the children a penny or a nickel apiece for Sunday School—whenever we get up in time to start them off. You look as if you thought I ought to give more! Well, charity begins at home, I think.

—excerpt from ‘Short Pagaents for the Sunday School,’ by Laura Scherer Copenhaver, Doubleday, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929

Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver (1868-1940) wrote fiction, poetry, and dozens of church pageants, many in collaboration with her younger sister, Katharine Killinger Scherer Cronk. One of Copenhaver’s poems, “Heralds of Christ,” became a well-known hymn.

Copenhaver taught at Marion Junior College in Smyth County, VA and assumed positions of leadership in the Lutheran church and on the Marion social scene. Her father, Dr. John Jacob Scherer Jr., had served as pastor of Marion’s Lutheran church before moving on to the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church in Richmond, presidency of the state synod, and a place on the Inner Missions Board of the national church.

At the 1922 meeting of the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church, Copenhaver presented an address titled “Mountain Folk in the South” which spurred the organization to create a mission school near the lumbering community of Konnarock.

The Konnarock Training School aimed “to tram the mountain children into true Christian womanhood and manhood,” and provided elementary-level academic and religious education for Smyth County children who did not have access to other public schools.

At the Smyth County Centennial on May 27, 1932, members of Marion College, county high schools, and local citizens presented a historical play written by Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver. Miss Smyth County, Eleanor Fairman, spun the wheel of time and scenes from local history were acted out.

sources: The human tradition in the New South, by James C. Klotter

http://openlibrary.org/details/MN41756ucmf_4

Smyth County, by Kimberly Barr Byrd, Debra J. Williams

http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Counties/Smyth/086-0027_Konnarock_School_1997_Final_Nomination.pdf

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2007/copenhaver.htm

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Item 032596 in the collection of the West Virginia Historical Photographs Collection reads Testament to the Brick Laying Prowess of Thoney Pietro and appears to be a 1946 newspaper clipping, though its source is not identified in the collection.

“The life of Thoney Pietro has not always been that of a retired country gentleman; he has earned the right to retire by his own labors. He commenced his career as a common laborer, but he was never content with doing anything less than his best.

“A typical example of his physical strength and skill, as well as his desire to be the best at any job, occurred during September, 1900, when he was working as a bricklayer for James McAfee and Company, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, who were engaged in a street paving project in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

Pietro Company Road Crew at work in Williamson, W. Va., 1915

“The speed and skill with which young Pietro handled the paving bricks attracted the attention of his superintendent, a Mr.Ross, supt.of the work,who became so enthused over the young Italian’s prowess that he offered to bet $300.00 that Pietro could better the existing record for the number of bricks laid in a given time. The record was then held by an Irishman who had laid 806 square yards of brick in ten hours.

“Admirers of the Irishman quickly took the bet. So on a bright September morning in 1900, 0n 12th Avenue in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the contest was held. Eight hours and fifteen minutes later measurements disclosed that Pietro had established a new record and one which stands to this day – he had laid single handed a section of street 30 feet in width and 350 feet long- an amazing total of 1166 square yards of brick, 58 bricks per sq.yd., totaling 67,628 bricks or an average of more than 136 bricks per minute all day. The same bricks as he laid then are still in use 46 years later.”

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