The women are part of the mountains, as are all the people. They carry their culture with them when they leave. It is why the eastern seaboard is littered with little mill villages with names like Cabbage Town or Olympia or Hagood. They have always been the keepers of the flame, the home fires. They have always had all of the skills, and then some, of the men. They have always worked just as hard and just as diligently doing the same work as the men. Make no mistake, these women may stay silent in church, but this is most definitely a matriarchal society.
Women control much of the business interactions here. If I, for instance, wish to hire a man to come help me with some task on the farm, I must call his wife and arrange it. She will make the decision whether he may accept my job.
Appalachian women have held positions throughout history as coal miners, textile mill workers, farmers, actresses, nurses, midwives, activists and union organizers. They can string up 10 miles of barbed wire then go home and nurse a sick child back to health using a concoction made from wild herbs.
Women’s traditional duties included, but were not limited to, all matters of the running of the homestead. This was not merely housekeeping. They kept a large garden, a flock of chickens, a bee skip or two, milking either goats or cows …or both. They kept the fires burning in the large wood burning cook stove and hauled water from the creek and the spring. They bore and raised children in an era before antibiotics, sometimes in the fields as they worked. They cooked meals for their families, with corn meal being the primary staple. They worked in the fields with the men during planting and harvest. They have been known to drive teams of oxen during plowing. They were skilled at the wild-crafting of herbs for medicines. Most of the women I know canned between 1500 to 2000 quarts of food each winter and kept it in a root cellar. They knew ways to preserve tomatoes and potatoes well into the winter. They presided over the hog killings and made scrapple and smoked hams in the smokehouse.
Life was very busy indeed. But if you worked like this, your family always had enough to eat. The only thing you needed money for was sugar and flour and the odd luxury item like a bag of hard candy. If you didn’t work like this, you didn’t survive. Though the community did take care of its own, and neighbors would take care of the less fortunate, Appalachian folk do have a great admiration for self sufficiency.
When the men poured out of the hills to work in the textile mills, the women went right along with them and took dangerous jobs in the mills. The children did the same. Many of them stayed in the mill towns, but just as many came back in the spring to “make a garden” and continued this life until it got too cold to work the fields again.
They ran power into Grassy Fork, TN in 1964. Phone lines were added in the mid 1970’s. Before that there was a phone down the mountain that would take calls and a rider on horseback would bring your phone message to you for a small fee. I have many neighbors who have not made the jump to indoor plumbing. To the outsider, this looks like poverty. But many times it is just the way they choose to live. It’s the way they have always lived.
Life has changed very slowly here from the time the original Scots/Irish came here. Most of that change has occurred over the past 75 years. The world Catherine Marshall wrote about in Christy was the early 20th century. Yet her mother, Leonora Whitiker, who the book is based upon, entered a world that was much more primitive than she expected.
When you really enter this culture and participate in it, you do start to realize how much of a Brigadoon this actually is. Because of the long tradition of passing on oral histories, both spoken and sung, stories that happened 150 years ago are often related as something that might have happened to a dear friend. They often forget to tell you they are talking about their great-great-grandmother. The women pass on stories, songs, remedies, recipes and food preservation to their daughters and the culture survives intact through the generations. So, we have colonial period speech and culture still being practiced here.
The isolation of the mountain hollers helps this longevity of the culture. The isolation has also produced some of Appalachia’s most fascinating people like the Melungeons and the Blue Fugates of Kentucky.
Life has always been hard in the mountains. The grit that women needed to survive here from the 1700′s to the present often shows up in the genealogies. Hannah Hall Finney would walk to Charleston with her family to visit relatives in the early 1800′s. It takes me six hours to make that drive. Can you imagine? It is not that uncommon today to have to scare off bears and coyotes from the yard. Women needed to be able to use firearms. The elements themselves are very hostile at times.
I found the area oddly Republican when I arrived. I was even more surprised when I found out that they had been that way because of events that occurred following the Civil War. People have long memories here. Many of the Appalachians sided with the Union during this period. Slave keeping was not practiced here on the scale it was practiced in the rest of the South, so they had little interest in defending it. Today’s story, Sadie Makes Her Stand, is drawn from this period. It’s a story you’ve heard before, but I don’t think you’ve heard the Grassy Fork version.
Here are a few resources for finding more about women in Appalachian History:
ETSU Center for Appalachian Studies and Services
West Virginia University Bibliography for Appalachian Women
Similar Posts:
- And Now, For Something Completely Different! by Rosanne August 27, 2007
- Growing Up Appalachian by Rosanne September 1, 2007
- What Gives You Hope? by Ashley August 14, 2009
- Big Brother is Watching… by Ren August 21, 2007
- The Hippie Hippie Shake by frau sally benz August 12, 2009
I grew up in southern WV (most of my family still lives there and I miss home sometimes). My area (Logan County–I grew up on Buffalo Creek) isn’t quite as remote as some, but it’s nice to read this stuff that reminds me of my grandparents and granny. The only one left now is my mamaw and a couple of papaw’s brothers, and I absolutely love their stories. So thanks for this, even if it does make me homesick, because I tend to get really infuriated by the media portrayal of Appalachia as nothing but a bunch of poor, illiterate, backward hillbillies.
Terrific post, Rosanne. My mom’s family is from west-central PA, outside of Alverda, PA (a PO/company (mining) town between Johnstown and Altoona), so it’s interesting to see that Appalachian culture is pretty similar from South to North.
That made me think about my mom’s cousins. They’ve long since passed and gone, but I remember visiting them in the ’70s. There was a gigantic coal stove in the middle of their kitchen, and a James wringer washer along the side. I can also remember how surprising it seemed for Dale to have all that in his house – and have a brand-new top of the line tractor sitting outside the barn. Weird indeed for a kid who grew up in urban NJ.
How does the workload and the type of work that Appalachian women do compare with that of Appalachian men? The second shift is certainly a reality for women in modern (I’m sorry if that’s not a good word to use – what is the right word for the world outside Appalachia? I keep thinking of “English” as in “not Amish” – something like that) society. Are Appalachian men at leisure when their shifts at the mill or in the fields are over while the women take care of the homestead?
Also – I am thrilled that you are guest blogging. My father’s family is from the mountains of West Virginia and although I am estranged from them, I’ve always been fascinated by the region.
Thank you so much for this wonderful snippet of social history. I think the issue of poverty v. “choosing” to live that way is an interesting and thorny one, and I would be curious to see it discussed further. What does it mean to choose that way of life when it is, if not your only option, the one that all your friends and family are part of, and the one in which you were raised? What did YOU mean here by saying that it’s the way “they choose to live?” I’m not challenging; but I would like to hear more.
As someone with interests in both Appalachia, storytelling, and theater, you’ve probably read the play The Kentucky Cycle. If so, what do you think of it? If not, it might be something you’d be interested in reading.
appalachian women sound like some of my female ancestors who were pioneer settlers in montana and oklahoma. what few photographs from that era my mom has unearthed in her voluminous genealogy studies show women who look they could stare down a mountain lion. women of our family who eventually migrated to the northwest inherited many of those traits that survive to this day.
a wonderful post, and wonderfully written. i will make smokey mountain breakdown part of my daily reading from now on.
Hi Betsy, Thanks for your comment.
What I mean by that is that living in a way that one’s ancestors have lived in and making do with a set of skills that seem archaic to the outsider(but are extremely appropriate to this environment) is a perfectly valid way to live. We don’t necessarily need to come and rescue these people. Their culture has been plugging along just fine without us.
Most are like my muleskinner friend, Aurthur, who is fond of saying, “I onlies went to school one day ’cause the goat ate my pants.” Aurthur would be lost outside of this culture. The majority of people over age 45 only have a fifth to eighth grade education and they got that in a one or two room school house. But then, there is my friend, Pastor Jimmy Morrow, the serpent handling preacher. With his fifth grade education, he has writtten a book and has another in the works and absolutely no shortage of lofty scholars and filmmakers who show up at his little church and court him. Given other options, Jimmy most certainly have multiple degrees and be chairing some history department at a large university. But he wouldn’t be the Jimmy I know. And that would be a great loss.
Living this way is much more of a choice now than it was 75 years ago when many of the mountain folk never left the hollers…not even to visit the closest market town 15 miles away. Many of the brighter teenagers and college age students who do well, do so with the intent of coming back here and adding their skills to the local community. Most of them study things like education, social work and geological science…skills they can use and still live back here at home. The rest of them take traditional jobs in sawmills and logging. There are some industrial jobs available.
Perhaps I am so passionate about preserving this culture as long as possible because I myself came from a culture that is all but extinct now. The changes are coming. There is no doubt of that. The developers and gated communities are gradually encroaching upon us. And it hurts my heart to think where these beautiful people will end up once that change comes.
I haven’t read The Kentucky Cycle, but will endeavor to pick it up. I have read some criticism of it, but would need to do a close reading before making my mind up.
Thanks for a fascinating contribution on a subject that, as far as I’ve been able to find, is way under-studied.
Although my family isn’t Appalachian (they’re more bible-belt far south), I stumbled across various people who were, as well as stories and small citations.
And, from time to time, I’ve looked, so it’s great to see some resources I hadn’t had.
Hi, just wanted to let you know that I’m really digging this content in addition to the cross-posted story/essay format. I’m looking forward to the rest of your contributions this week!
I’m another West Virginian now living outside West Virginia. I enjoyed your portrayal… I’ve recently tried to educate myself some on Appalachian history, and it was interesting to read of the effect of Civil War and Post-Civil War violence on the area. The biggest battles, numerically, were not fought there, but there was a lot of this style of guerilla and brigand style disruption.
Also, a bit off the particular topic, but I think it’s worth mentioning that Bush’s administration just approved new rules for expanding mountaintop removal mining. This is going to have the effect of wide-scale depopulation of the coal-bearing portions of the dessicated plateau regions of the western front of Appalachia (particularly Southern West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and Eastern Tenessee). The highlands may be spared of this, but the coming decade is likely to witness the final chapter of Appalachian culture in these areas unless something changes.
Hi KS…yes, the media does have a tendency to look at the culture and weigh it against the expectations of the outside world. Many people from this area were hired to build the Oak Ridge nuclear facility, precisely because they were thought to be illiterate. But literacy doesn’t necessarily equate with intelligence or capability. The man who built my house did so out of his head with no blueprints. He does this all the time. Many of them are poor by most standards. But I think that is very much an imposition of our own consumer driven mindset.
spyderkl: yes, you would think there would be more differences between the southern and northern Appalachians, but they do seem to have more in common with each other than they do with life off the mountain.
Ottermatic: As far as I can tell, the men work just as hard as the women. There is some difference between men’s and women’s work. But I’ve known men who like to can and make a mean skillet of cornbread and women who enjoy logging. Of course, there are lazy people here just like anywhere. Everyone likes to gossip about them. Leisure time is usually a family affair. Sundays are still very sacred here. You can’t get any work done on a Sunday unless it pertains to the comfort of one’s livestock or some sort of emergency. Very biblical. The stereotype of the lazy Appalachian perhaps comes from the fact that they eagerly grab any down time they have available.
The word you are looking for is “foreigner”. They call us “foreigners”.
ol’jb: Funny you should mention the mountaintop removal. I’ve got a piece in the works for that. They don’t do it here where I am…I’m too far south. But it’s the sort of thing I feel I need to actually witness to write effectively about, so I’m going to have to go look at it. One of my writing partners and I were talking about taking a trip to Abingdon to cover a draft horse and tack auction so I’m hoping we might see some of it. Of course, I know it’s a horrific thing and intellectually I know what is involved. But I need the sense memory to drive it home.
Hi Spyderkl. I’m from Hooversville, just over the mountain from the Quemahoming dam.
Rosanne,
For some visual reference points (although it’s difficult to grasp the scale from these images), you can try the galleries on the following website:
Coal River Mountain Watch- http://www.crmw.net/
Ohio Valley Environment Coalition- http://www.ohvec.org/
Also, try looking at Google Earth, and you can see enormous swaths of deforested, filled-in valleys (where people used to live) all over the region.
Rosanne, thanks for responding so thoughtfully to my questions. I think it gets at what has always been a tension among progressives (and Progressives! sorry, /history nerd): wanting to improve the condition of people’s lives, esp. those with little money and material resources, but also bringing their own assumptions and condescension about what “improvement” means (and even about being needed in the first place). It’s why it’s so important to listen to what people themselves say they need, through formal elected representation and other, less formal means as well.
I think I asked because I’m wary about romanticizing “other” groups’ poverty and segregation, the way many people did, for example, about blues culture. (I’m not suggesting that you’re doing that here, just explaining my own hesitation about this subject.) I have to be wary of it in myself, since I love the traditional music that comes out of Appalachia, but I think there can be a tendency for outsiders to expect a kind of hillbilly minstrel show out of the performers. Cultural preservation is such a good thing in so many ways, but it can also get caught up in romanticizing a group of people and pretending that the culture is something static, not an evolving, living tradition that changes with the times and joyfully appropriates what is interesting or useful to it. (I’m thinking of musical tradition here, primarily.) That’s the danger of the authenticity fetish. I like so much what you’re doing because, it seems to me, you’re avoiding that trap.
As to the Kentucky Cycle, I read it in high school (awhile ago) and never read any of the criticism about it, but I did suspect there are some parts that are considered problematic. That’s one of the reasons I asked about it, since I’m no expert on either dramatic literature or Appalachia.
Sounds like another version of here…
Hey Rosie,
If you go down to Exit 407/Hwy 66 of I-40 as it goes in to Sevierville, TN, you will see a prime example of mountain top removal- it is all over Sevier Co. and Cocke Co. is not far behind. Unless, of course, the current slide into the next big US depression gets there first!
This is not a matriarchy. Women working just as hard as, or harder than, men does not a matriarchy make.
Especially when the area is “oddly Republican.”
Somerset? Hot damn. It is, indeed, a small, small world. Hooversville is a place name I never thought I’d see on a blog. Not that Alverda is any better, but you know.
Tinfoil, you’re right. I grew up surrounded by strong women, but there was never, ever, any question about who was ultimately in charge, and it wasn’t the women in the families. And this always seemed especially true of the older generations.
This is certainly true of the area of Appalachia from which I come. In fact, women who do “men’s” work (which is fairly common) are often seen as “not real women” by Appalachian men. However, I am from the northern part of Appalachia (the Blue Ridge near the Maryland/Pennsylvania border) and I’m sure culture varies from one region of Appalachia to the next.
Roseanne – from Abingdon, a one hour drive on US 58 West will take you to Big Stone Gap, VA or Appalachia, VA where you can see examples of mountaintop removal quite well from the VA side of Black Mountain (the highest point in Kentucky). Black Mountain is now protected, as the state of KY purchased mineral and timber rights to the mountain, but it was threatened as recently at 10 years ago.
Holy shit-sounds like my grammy’s house up in Red House, West Virginia.
While I agree with tinfoil hattie that women working alongside men does not a matriarchy make, there is a very strong sense of ‘women’s strength” in Southern West Virginia (where I’m from) that men (the good ones) respect. In Appalachia there is value placed on an able-bodied person, whether that person is male or female.
While there are redneck assholes to contend with, I took less flak for being unfeminine and different in West Virginia than I take now in Ohio.
And when you wish to hire a woman to help you with something? What happens then?
I deal with her directly, sophonisba.
[...] An American Brigadoon… from Feministe by Rosanne [...]
[...] An American Brigadoon… from Feministe by Rosanne [...]