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THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
From "Frye's Geography."
By courtesy of Ginn & Co., Boston.
The Southern Appalachians.
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
BY
SAMUEL TYNDALE WILSON, D.D.
PRESIDENT OF MARYVILLE COLLEGE
AND
STATED CLERK OP THE SYNOD OF TENNESSEE
Literature Department
Presbyterian Home Missions
156 Fifth Avenue, New York City
1914
TQ NEV7 TOPI \ ?USLIC LIDP.AKY
TIL»BN F^UNSiaTIONB
J
Copyright, igi4, by The Board of Home Missions
OF THE
Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.
Printed by
J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York
5
FOREWORD
The field of the American Church extends over our entire land. It includes city, town, village^, and coun- try, throughout the North, the South, the East, and the West, Every division of this wide field is in- tensely interesting to the loyal Christian. No other part of the field appeals to the heart with more ro- mantic interest than does that included in the southern Appalachians. In this little book the story of the southern mountaineers is told by one who has been all his lifetime identified with them, and loves them, and has been their ready champion whenever occa- sion offered. The Board is glad to have the story so authoritatively and sympathetically presented to the Church at large. — First Edition, 1906.
REVISION
The Board of Home Missions has taken advan- tage of the call for a fourth edition of "The Southern Mountaineers" to ask the author to revise the book in order to incorporate in it the results of the census of 1910, and a statement of the changes that have taken place in the mountain field and in the work of our church in that field during the past eight years. In compliance with this request, the author has writ- ten into the present revised edition the matters re- ferred to, together with the results of his own con- tinued study of the general subject involved.
The value of the revised edition has, moreover, been greatly increased by the generous permission accorded the author by Mr. John C. Campbell, Secre- tary of the Southern Highland Division of the Sage Foundation, to make free use of the facts and sta- tistical data of his unpublished study of the Southern Highland region. The personal, thorough-going, and scholarly investigation of the southern mountain prob- lem that Mr. Campbell has been carrying forward un- der the auspices of the Sage Foundation during the past six years is the most important contribution yet made to an exact and scientific knowledge of the facts involved in that problem. The principal use
Vll
viii REVISION
here made of the material embodied in the study has been in further illustration of the conclusions reached in the former edition. In one important particular, however, the author has changed his former letter- press to conform with Mr. Campbell's conclusions; namely, he has adopted the larger bounds assigned to the Southern Appalachian Province.
The Board of Home Missions expresses its hearty and grateful appreciation of the courtesy of Mr. Campbell, and is glad to be allowed to give advance currency to some of the conclusions of his epoch- making study. The Board also thanks the many friends in our own and other churches who have used and often generously commended "The South- ern Mountaineers." It is hoped that this revised edition also will be useful in guiding Christian patriots in their study of the southern highlanders.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. Rocky Moun- tain System — Appalachian Mountain System — Northern Appalachians — Southern Appalachians — Their Extent — Scenery — Climate — Products and Resources — Population — Seclusion ... 1
II. THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS. A Composite • Stock — Principally Scotch-Irish — Other Strains — Scotch-Irish Evolution — "Transplantation of Ulster " — Londonderry Patronymics — Roose- velt's Tribute — A Virile Lineage — Race Registry — Three Classes of Mountaineers: (1) Class One Is Helping— (2) Class Two Will Help — (3) Class Three Needs Help — Modifications of These Classes — Many Men of Many Kinds — "Mountain- eers," NOT "Mountain Whites" 11
III. THE SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS. The '
Nation's Frontiersmen — Established Christian- ity, Protestantism, Democracy, Civil Govern- ment, AND EdUCATION-^SeRVICE TO THE NATION
Share in the Revoitution — Kings Mountain — Sons, Daughters of t'&e Revolution — War of 1812 AND Mexican War — Civil War — Spanish- American '^^P'^ . War — ^Servicb of Emigrants and Indiatiduals . . 26 *
IV. THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM. Dixie's Two
Problems — Black Problem — White Problem — Problem and Its Peculiarities: (1) American, (2) Protestant, (3) White, (4) Country, (5) Varied and Complex, (6) Delicate — Wanted, Tact and More Tact — Not Wanted, "Missionaries" — (7) Urgent 42
V. THE MOUNTAINEERS' REASON FOR BEING.
How They Became Mountaineers: (1) Hunting
ix
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
AND Fishing Attractive — (2) Onlt Land Available — (3) Few "Outlaws" — (4) Influence of Slavery — (5) Mountain Fecundity — Why Remain in Moun- tains? (1) Few Do Migrate — (2) Inertia Hinders — (3) Local Attachment — (4) Ambition Dormant — (5) Timidity Dominant — (6) Precedent Lacking — (7) Poverty Prevents — So, Populous Mountains . 54
VI. THE PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING. Problem Restated — Some In Statu Quo Ante — Reasons for Problem: (1) Lack of Live Neighbors — (2) Of Varied Society — (3) Of Incentive to Labor — (4) Of Trade — (5) Of Means of Communication — (6) Of Money — (7) Of Schools — Educational Statis- tics— (8) Of Books — (9) Of Educated Leaders — Mormonism — Devolution Versus Evolution . . 65
VII. PIONEER PRESBYTERIANISxM AND THE PROB- LEM. Presbyterians Were Dominant — Presby- terians Were Active — Founded Churches — Founded Schools — Founded Colleges — Helped Found State — And Were Successful — And Their Work Abides 79
VIII. LATER PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE PROB- LEM. Causes of Presbyterianism's Partial Fail- ure: (1) Decay of Education — (2) Territory Too Vast — (3) Ministers Too Few — (4) No Mission Boards — (5) Many Ministers Went West — But Workers Did Their Utmost — Southern and West- ern Theological Seminary — (6) Divisions of Pres-
BYTERIANISM — OtHER DENOMINATIONS — SoME UN- CHURCHED Neighborhoods — The Post-Presbyterian Age 86
IX. PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE PROBLEM. How Solve Problem? (1) By Devel- opment of Economic Life — (2) By Perfecting of Public Schools — (3) By Multiplying of Uplift Agencies — What Is the Mission of Our Church? (1) To Preach to Every Creature— (2) To Dis- charge Debt to Brethren — (3) To Help Other Denominations — (4) To Employ Usual Methods — (5) But, Principally, to Educate — Supplementing State Education — Education the Open Sesame —
CONTENTS xi
chapter page Educate the Leaders — ^With Education Wide- VisiONED — And Pat Debt to Other Churches — And Stimulate Them to Similar Educational Work — Thus, More Light 96
X. THE DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER COMMU- NITY CENTERS. A Notable Uplift System— And Notable Builders Thereof — An Adjusting Uplift System — The Center, Its Genesis — Conditions of the Renaissance: (1) A Model Home — (2) The Workers' Consecrated Lives — (3) The Open Book World — (4) Training In Home-Making — (5) In- dustrial Training — (6) Community Welfare Cam- paigns— (7) Bible Study — (8) Moral and Religious Training — Results: (1) Community Aroused — (2) Old People Helped — (3) Young People Trans- formed— (4) Usually, Church Established — Tes- timont of a Visitor — Statistics .... 109
XL THE BOARDING-SCHOOLS AND LARGER COM- MUNITY centers. The Strategic County Seat — Presbyterial Academies — Academies and Board- iNG-ScHOOLS — Worthy of the Kirk of Knox — Policy and Purpose — Service Rendered — Future Service — Twofold Equipment — Girls Need Help Most — The Colleges of the Synods — Stockdalb Memorial — Pikeville College — Witherspoon Col- lege— Harlan Industrial — Langdon Memorial — Mossop Memorial — Harold McCormick School — Favored Old North State — Dorland Institute — Bell Institute — Burnsville Academy — Laura Sun- derland Memorial — Ashevxlle Schools — Where the Graduates Go 123
Xn. THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS. Ideal Location- Rich Investment — Fourfold Object — (1) The Pease Memorial House — Little People — Large Work — (2) The Home Industrial School: The Hand of Providence — ^The Devotion of the Founders — The Scope of the School — ^The Support of the School — (3) The Farm School: Its Develop- ment— Its Design — Its Rich Fruitage — (4) The Normal and Collegiate Institute: "The Key- stone School" — Its Plant — Its Clientage — Its Teachers — Its Courses of Study — "Home-Making" — Religious Life — The Outcome 140
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XIII. APPALACHIAN POWER. Problem, Power, Promise — "Power" a Popular Theme — Mountains are Power-Plants — Appalachian Power — Natural Power — Water Power — Steam Power — Mineral Resources — Timber Supply — Farm Products — Vi- tal Energy — Vast Extent of this Power — Above All, Human Power — In Numbers — In Unity in Variety — In Strength of Race — In Strength of Body — In Strength of Mind — In Pure American- ism— In Spirit of Independence — In Fervent Pa- triotism— In Sturdy Protestantism — In Strong Religious Nature — In Simple Faith — In Strong Will — In Supreme Self-Confidence — This Power Pent-Up — And Must be Released .... 152
XIV. APPALACHIAN PROMISE. A Fourfold Promise— (1) Natural Power Developed — Enriching Appa- LACHiA — Enriching America — (2) Manhood: Human Power Developed — By Material Progress — By Educational Advance — (3) Christian: Religious Problem Solved — God's Love for Mountains — No Irremediable Evils — What Prevents Will Remedy — What Sleeps Will Awake — Rapid Rehabilita- tion— Ready Assimilation — Assistance from With- out— Development from Within — (4) National: Future Nation- Wide Service — Home Guards for Appalachia — Reinforcements for America — Con- tributing Social Service — Prohibition Appalachia — Heroic Fighting — Victorious Fighting — Fight- ing Blood — Contributing Christian Faith — Con- tributing Christian Workers — Contributing Christian Reserves — In the Nick of Time — Kept FOR the Master's Use — Inspiring View — Problem Versus Power and Promise — The Appalachian Providence 172
APPENDIX. Statistical Tables of the Presbyterian (U. S. A.) School and Community Work in the Synods of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia for the Year 1913; AND OF the Sabbath-School Department of the Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work; and of the Regular Church Work for 1913 197
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Southern Appalachians Frontispiece
opposite page The Hills of Heaven and the Hills of Earth .... 6
Men of the MotrNTAiNS 18<
A Grandmother Who Wanted a School for Her People . 34
A Mountain Hom^ 48
Hitting the Trail 62
"The Knobs" 7i8
The Elizabeth Boyd Memorial, Oakland Heights Presby- terian Church, Asheville, N. C 82
Where Presbyterian Work for Southern Mountaineers
Began in 1879 90«
On the Way to Visit Pupils' Homes 102
School and Teachers' Home, Jewett, Tennessee . . . 114
The Borland Institute, Hot Springs, N. C 128
The Laura Sunderland Memorial School 136
The Asheville Home School 144
The Normal and Collegiate Institute, Asheville, N. C. . 148
The Asheville Farm School for Boys 158
Missionary Home and Church, Jarrold's Valley, W. Va. . 168
"The Willows," the Boys' Home at Dorland Institute,
Hot Springs, N. C 192
The Southern Mountaineers
CHAPTER I The Southern Appalachians
Relief maps of the United States show two ex- tensive mountain systems traversing the country northward and southward on lines approximately parallel to the Mississippi River.
In the West the great Rocky Mountains and the Sierras lift eleven states to their own lofty elevation,
and to a large extent decide the
The Rocky character of the industries of the
Mountain System . . . .
populations that occupy those
states. The course of empire has pushed irresistibly into, among, and over these mountains, until now al- most every nook of them has been occupied in the in- terests of mining, lumbering, cattle-raising, farming, manufacturing, and health-seeking. That to which Daniel Webster once referred contemptuously as a desert has come to be regarded by the world as an exhaustless storehouse of wealth and health.
In the East, corresponding to the Rockies of the West, there stretches another less massive and yet
I
2 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
very noble mountain system, the worthy counterpart of the sister system of the Occident. While second to
the Rocky Mountains, the Appa-
The Appalachian i^chians are not second to the Al- Mountaiii System , , t^ <• .1
•^ pnie system of Europe, for the
southern Appalachians alone have a greater area than have the Alps. Geologists find the genesis of the sys- tem as far northeast as the hills of Newfoundland, and its exodus among the hills of northern Alabama. Within its limits the system embraces about 175,000 square miles of mountain territory as against 980,000 included in the Rocky Mountain system, exclusive of the Sierras.
In the early history of our country the Appalachians were looked upon as the natural western limit of the country and the formidable enemy of all progress sunsetward. As population increased, however, moun- tain passes were discovered and highways established and natural and artificial waterways utilized, until the Allegheny barriers became only a difficulty to be overcome and a temporary hindrance to predestined advance. Ere long the mountains came to be ignored as soon as passed ; when railroads completed the vic- tory of transportation and made easy the passage of these American Alps, the people almost forgot the mountains, and^, to all intents, the Alleghenies ceased to be. The Rocky Mountains assumed, in their turn, the place of dread and importance, but the Appalach- ians, in slighted state, reigned on in their silence and isolation, awaiting the time of their rediscovery.
THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS 3
The northern Appalachians are not so compact or continuous or extensive as are their southern sisters ;
consequently, since they did not so
The Northern seriously bar the progress of west-
Appalachians , . . ^,
ward emigration, they were not so
much dreaded, nor, when conquered, were they so much ignored. Their population was for the most part assimilated into the economic and social life of the surrounding country. The development of the coal industry in the Pennsylvanian Alleghenies con- tributed largely to the victory of society over the mountains, and even founded among them many im- portant and prosperous cities. The Green Mountains, the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, the Catskills, the Hudson Highlands, like the Pennsylvanian Alle- ghenies, are in social, economic, and political Ufa either part and parcel of the commonwealths in which they lie, or are so much overrun by health-seekers, pleasure-hunters, and wealth-exploiters as to be per- force largely identified in culture and interests with the territory contiguous to them.
The problems presented by the northern Appa- lachians have been in the main satisfactorily solved by the people of the states in which the mountains lie; though here and there retarded communities still ex- ist, good schools and the other agents of civilization have in the main • equalized the culture of these sec- tions with that of the surrounding territory. The mountains in themselves naturally attract much at- tention, being located, as they are, so near the great
4 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
centers of population. There is even an Appalachian Mountain Club, organized in the patriotic cycle of 1876, to preserve the mountain forests and resorts, to provide accurate maps, and to publish scientific data respecting the northern Appalachians.
The Appalachians south of Mason and Dixon's line extend from the southern border of Pennsylvania to
the northern counties of Georgia The Southern ^^^ Alabama. They include the
Appalachians , . •; , , ,
mountam masses and the enclosed
valleys and coves of nine states. The region they occupy is approximately six hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide. It may be subdivided in turn into three belts, which Mr. Campbell, of the Sage Foundation, bounds and names substantially as follows: (i) The eastern belt is the Blue Ridge belt, which includes the mountain ranges that lie between the Piedmont Plateau and the great central depres- sion of the Southern Appalachian Province or Sys- tem. (2) The Greater Appalachian Valley, or the Valley-Ridge belt, is the great central depression lying between the Blue Ridge belt on the southeast, and the Allegheny-Cumberland belt on the northeast. (3) The western belt is the Allegheny-Cumberland belt, and includes the Allegheny and Cumberland mountains and plateaus which lie between the aforementioned cen- tral depression and the western escarpment of the Cumberland plateau and the western boundary of West Virginia.
Mr. Campbell has made a careful personal survey of the field, and has consulted with the geologists that
THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS 5
are authorities regarding the Appalachian region. As the result of his investigation of all the facts involved,
he includes in the southern high- lands two hundred and forty- seven counties of eight states, as follows : forty-two of western Virginia, fifty-five of West Virginia, thirty-six of eastern Kentucky, forty-five of East Ten- nessee and of the eastern part of Middle Tennessee, twenty-three of western North Carolina, four of west- ern South Carolina, twenty-five of northern Georgia, and seventeen of northern Alabama. In view of the description of the southern Appalachians as given in the preceding paragraph, it is necessary for us to add the four mountain counties of Maryland to the two hundred and forty-seven counties enumerated above. Thus the field that we are considering may be said to consist of two hundred and fifty-one counties lo- cated in nine different states. The total area of these two hundred and fifty-one counties is 110,412 square miles, or about one third of the total area of the nine states in which the region lies; and nearly one fourth the area of the eleven Southern states lying east of the Mississippi River. This area is much larger than that of England, Wales, and Scotland combined ; over half as large as either Germany or France; over twice as large as the empire state of New York; and nearly one third larger than all New England together with New Jersey and Delaware. Indeed this mountain do- main of the South is imperial in its dimensions.
The scenery in the Appalachians is sublime in the extreme. The mountains increase in height as they
6 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
fare southward, until in Carolina and Tennessee they tower six thousand feet heavenward. About twenty
of them rise higher than Mount ^ Washington, while the tragedy-
crowned head of Mount Mitchell reaches an elevation of 6,711 feet above the sea. Their wooded summits, plateaus, declivities, and gorges present an endless variety of views that in many places rival in pictur- esqueness those seen in the most famous of mountain ranges.
"The mountains like giants stand, To sentinel the enchanted land."
The flora and the fauna of the northern temperate zone flourish as if in a national exhibit of a zone's riches. Peaks and ranges, cliffs and crags, cascades and waterfalls, laurel glade and fern brake, lie in a great silence broken only by the song of many birds and the shrill stridence of insistent insects. The charm of the mountains enthralls more and more those visitors that are familiar with them, until at least some sojourners would fain remain within their magic circle forever.
The climate is equable and invigorating, the ozone- laden air being a tonic that to the initiated renders
the mountains an ideal health-re-
Their Climate ^ u uu • • u a
sort. Health is m every breeze and
gushes from thousands of purest springs of free- stone and mineral waters. The section is fitted to be a playground and sanitarium for a great nation, and ere long will so be recognized. Many diseases yield
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THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS 7
to the salubrious influences of the air and water and quiet.
The cultivated sections in the great and fertile val- leys produce liberally the usual crops to be found in
the central states, the staples being Their Products ^^^^ ,^^^ ^^^^^ The purely
and Eesources , . ., , j i- 1 T
mountain soil, sandy and light,
yields more reluctant crops of corn and potatoes. Fruits flourish when cared for. North Carolina ap- ples are famous throughout the South. Hogs and cat- tle are produced in large numbers; and, were it not for sheep-killing dogs, the section might be the great- est sheep-raising country in the world.
The natural resources of the Appalachians are al- most limitless. A king's ransom is in every county, if it were only collected. The water power is almost incalculable. The forests are rich in timber of many varieties ; and the earth is bursting with coal, iron, copper, zinc, salt, mica, lead, phosphate, and other minerals. Marble and other building stones are found in exhaustless store. The region in its scientific as- pect is one of richest interest to zoologist, entomolo- gist, botanist, dendrologist, geologist, and mineralo- gist; while in a practical way it is of most alluring attractiveness to the wide-awake prospector and in- vestor.
The population of the region is collectively large,
though popularly supposed to be small. In the two
„ , ^ , . hundred and fifty-one counties that Their Population 1 ^, ^, a 1 1 •
^ make up the southern Appalachian
country, the census enumerators found in 1910 as
8 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
many as 5,280,243 people. This grand total exceeds by a million people the population of the Pacific States — Washington, Oregon, and California — and doubles that of the Rocky Mountain region, called the Mountain Division by the Census Bureau; namely, the eight commonwealths of Montana, Idaho, Wyo- ming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. This large aggregate is scattered over so vast a territory that the average to the square mile is only forty-seven, a fact that shows that the teem- ing mountains are, after all, a somewhat sparsely set- tled part of the Union. The urban population of the section is so comparatively small that it does not greatly affect the average. The Rocky Mountain Di- vision would, however, in comparison seem to be al- most uninhabited, for the average in that region is only three to a square mile!
Collected in one body the mountaineers of the South would make one state somewhat larger than Ohio, or a state somewhat smaller than Illinois; or a city as large as Greater New York and Pittsburgh combined. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the 14,555 square miles of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut contain nearly as many inhabitants as do the southern Appalachians with their 110,412 square miles, an area more than seven times that of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
The tide of western emigration, as has been said, flowed over the southern Appalachians, but ebbed
THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS 9
away from them as the advancing flood flowed west- ward. Domestic emigration and foreign immigration
alike pushed on toward the magic Their Seclusion ^^^^^ r^^^ ^.^.^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^1^^
to divert attention from the mountain ranges of the South. So the nation went on about its toil and ex- pansion, practically oblivious of one of its most valu- able possessions. The southern mountains were for a long time almost as much a terra incognita to the American people as was the far Northwest before the Lewis and Clark expedition.
And as the entire section rested in seclusion from the nation's knowledge, so did each part of the purely mountain region live in practical isolation from the rest of the section. There were no pikes or well-built highways; oftentimes only bridle-paths led from set- tlement to settlement or from cabin to cabin. There are almost no natural lines of travel or transporta- tion, such as are so liberally afforded in the northern Appalachians by navigable rivers and lakes. For several hundred miles north and south no railroad crossed the mountains. Even at present there are a considerable number of counties that are not entered by a railroad. And during rainy seasons travel even by horseback is diflicult in the mountain recesses. To an extent that is hardly conceivable to their country- men that dwell in the midst of the twentieth century hurry and bustle, our southern hillsmen are undis- turbed and unaffected by that hurry and bustle. They call outsiders "furriners." They are marooned in the mountains. They are the latest Robinson Crusoes.
10 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
Thus the mountaineer's horizon was limited by the summits that rose on every side, shutting him in from the rest of the nation and forcing him to find his world in his own small neighborhood. And so the mountains have merely rested in what Ruskin would call their "great peacefulness of light," unknown and unknowing so far as the outside world has been con- cerned.
>,
CHAPTER II
The Southern Mountaineers
Like the rest of Americans, the mountain people are of a composite race. There is probably no un- mixed strain of blood in any com- |,^0"^P°site munity of the United States.
While it is true that family origin is not so important as is personal character, it is nev- ertheless true that heredity has much to do with ac- counting for that character, and merits consideration from every thoughtful student of history.
While it is undeniable that the mountain people of the South are a composite race, the fact remains that
they are probably of about as pure Principally ^ stock as we can boast in Amer-
ica. Almost all their ancestors came from the British Isles. The principal element is Scotch and especially Ulster-Scotch, more fa- miliarly known as Scotch-Irish. That this is the case is indisputably proved by history, by tradition, and by the family names prevailing in the mountains. All the region about the mountains was settled princi- pally by Scotch-Irish, the unbroken traditions of the
II
12 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
mountaineers agree that the majority of the pioneers were Scotch-Irish, while the names of the people are, throughout most of the section, fully fifty per cent, of them, Scotch or Scotch-Irish. It may be added, too, that there still survive most interesting phases of life and idioms of language that are Scotch or Scotch-Irish in origin. No argument based on the present condition of the mountaineers can suffice to render doubtful the cumulative proof of the prevail- ing strain in the mountain stock.
There are also, especially in the valleys, numerous Huguenot names that once belonged to the noble peo- ple who were driven from France
Other Strains u^t, 4.- r^-uiz^j-^r
by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, and the dragonnades that followed that revo- cation. Most of these Huguenots came to the moun- tains by the way of Charleston and Savannah, the great Huguenot ports of entry for the South; while others came with the Scotch-Irish from Ulster where they had taken refuge.
English, Welsh, and German names are also very numerous in the Appalachians, as is to be expected ; though the German names are not of any recent im- migration, but rather may be traced back in many cases to "the Pennsylvania Dutch." Kentucky has more English names than do the other states of the Southern mountains. Occasionally the student of ethnology may stumble upon a community that is a puzzle, as, for example, that one occupied by the "Malungeons" of upper East Tennessee. Our Church conducts successful work in two fields in this Malun-
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 13
geon region. The people, whoever their ancestors may have been, are very responsive to good influ- ences.
In this composite race, then, the Scotch-Irish ele- ment largely predominates. And surely that fact lends
an added interest to the study of Scotch-Irish ^j^^ problem of the mountains, for
Evolution ,, . , ,. , , .
there is no sturdier element in
American character than is that contributed by the Scotch-Irish. That the "Plantation of Ulster," which took place as long ago as the days of James the First and Shakespeare, should directly and prevailingly affect the character and possibihties of the Atlantic highlands of America, is one of those interesting facts that emphasize both the romance and the philosophy of history.
The Irish rebellion against Queen Elizabeth had been suppressed with relentless energy, and the con- fiscated estates of Ulster were peopled by the so-called "Plantation of Ulster." Protestant emigrants, mainly from the Scotch Lowlands but partly from London itself, at the command of King James took the places of the evicted Irish, and established the most in- tensely Protestant section of the British dominion. Scotch the colonists entered, and Scotch they re- mained in blood, for intermarriage with the Roman- ists was prohibited by law and by religion ; but Scotch- Irish they became, as we Americans usually call them, in consideration of their Irish home.
At first they prospered greatly; but as early as 1633 England began to maltreat them, violating her pledges
14 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
and forfeiting her claims to their loyalty by a policy of perfidy and persecution. The English State de- spoiled the Ulster yeomanry, and the English ChurcH cropped the ears of the non-conforming Presbyteri- ans. But just as all of Laud's emissaries and Claver- house's dragoons could not force the Covenanters in old Scotland to conform to Episcopacy, so were all the acts and agents of Parliament unable to coerce the Scotch-Irish cousins of the Covenanters in their Ul- ster home. But so unbearable did their position be- come that there occurred what Dr. Mcintosh called a "Transplantation of Ulster" to America and re- ligious freedom. Fiske, in his "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," estimates that between 1730 and 1770 at least half a million souls, or more than half the Pres- byterian population of the north of Ireland, emigrated to the American colonies ; and that at the outbreak of the Revolution they made up one-sixth of the popu- lation of the colonies. In the New World, this pro- lific race became a nation-founding people. Their annals have been recorded by many historians and their achievements hav^ made their history imperish- able.
They landed at Boston, Philadelphia, and Charles- ton, and leaving behind them the seacoast and the
colonies that had their established ''Transplanta- religions, they advanced inland to
tion of Ulster" . ^ , .• r , •
form a second tier of colonies.
From Pennsylvania they pressed southward down the Shenandoah Valley and under the Blue Ridge till they spread out southeastward to meet the Charleston im-
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 15
migrants, or pushed down southwestward past Abing- don into the valley of East Tennessee and up the trail of Daniel Boone into Kentucky. So advancing, they took possession of the mountains and valleys of the Appalachians.
The gravestones in eastern Pennsylvania, in Vir- ginia, and in East Tennessee mark the successive mi- grations of some strong old Presbyterian families. These immigrants brought with them their Scotch- Irish convictions and characteristics branded into them by the fires of persecution. Their invasion of the mountains began in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
During a recent visit to the north of Ireland, the writer took notes in Londonderry of such names on
the business signs as are familiar
Patro°n mici "^""^^ '" ^^^ southern highlands of
America. One of the first names noted down was "Brownlow," and it recalled to memory the fact that Parson Brownlow was accus- tomed to boast of his Scotch-Irish extraction. Then the names fairly trooped into the notebook. When, however, it appeared that the majority of the names encountered must be transcribed to the notebook, a more expeditious way of making and preserving the comparison was found in the securing and checking up of a directory of North Ireland that is published in Londonderry. On every Londonderry street the names and, indeed, the faces of the people demon- strated the identity of the Cis-Atlantic and Trans- Atlantic Scotch-Irish races.
i6 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The writer asked Mr, Samuel Bogle, a stationer of Londonderry, what Christian names are most used in his family. To the great surprise of his questioner he replied that Samuel, James, John, Andrew, and Hugh are the names most commonly used by his kin- dred. Strange to say, the four adults of the Bogle family connected with the Eusebia Presbyterian Church, near Maryville, Tennessee, a few years ago, were Hugh, an honored elder, and his sons, James, John, and Andrew, while the father of Hugh, also an elder, had been named Samuel. In order to learn what traditions survived regarding the branch of the family that had generations ago emigrated to Amer- ica, the writer also called on the father of the Lon- donderry Samuel Bogle, and was startled at his close resemblance to the American Hugh Bogle, whose fu- neral services the writer had not long before con- ducted.
Mr. Campbell, of the Sage Foundation, is naturally interested in the Campbell clan, and so was greatly pleased when informed, upon what seemed to be good authority, that one mountain county in Kentucky has several hundred Campbells within its borders. This is a case not only where "the Campbells are coming," but also where they have already come, not this time, however, in their ancestral homes in the Highlands of Scotland or in the hills of Ulster, but in the land of promise, the southern highlands of America.
In the "Winning of the West" Mr. Roosevelt pays the following tribute to the Scotch-Irish pioneers:
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 17
"The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and
parentage, and of mixed race ; but the dominant strain
^ in their blood was that of the Pres-
TriMte^^*'^ byterian Irish— the Scotch-Irish
as they were often called. Full credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cava- lier for their leadership in our history; nor have we been altogether blind to the deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot ; but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and virile people, the Irish whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin. These Irish representatives of the Covenanters were in the West almost what the Puritans were in the Northeast, and more than the Cavaliers were in the South. Mingled with the descendants of many other races, they formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward,"
Our mountain people may, then, boast a most virile lineage. In many cases the individual genealogical
records have been lost, A Virile ...^ , ,.„,,,
Lineaffe ^^" skillful herald trace
The founders of our ancient race."
One generation of pioneers unable to read or write would be sufficient to break the magic thread that ties the generations together. The writer once saw a new student upon matriculating write down a phonetic caricature of a well-known name, and had the privi- lege of setting the young man right for the rest of his
i8 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
life in the correct spelling of his family name that had been lost through illiterate parents. But nobody could efface the record of racial lineage registered in name and frame, in feature and speech, in mental and re- ligious characteristics.
Rudyard Kipling tells a story of a puzzlingly pecu- liar family discovered in the Himalayas. It was evi- . dently a family with a foreign
^ ^ strain in it. Investigation revealed certain infallible signs worked into the Hindoo family: red hair, irascibility, the worship of the crucifix, and the singing of a song that proved to be "The Wearing of the Green," and those Hibernian signs were all ex- plained and justified when it was found that a soldier of a forgotten Irish regiment had married a native woman and reared a family in that lonely recess of the mountains. Everything about the family pro- claimed its Irish ancestry. Were all the southern highlanders to conspire to deny their ancestry, thou- sands of voices would yet cry out of their physical, intellectual, and religious characteristics : "Do not deny the races that gave you birth and heredity ; your speech and everything about you betray you ; most of you are Scotch-Irishmen; many of you, especially in Kentucky, are Englishmen ; some of you are Hugue- nots and Germans ; all of you are descendants of the original stocks with which God peopled the New World. Hold high your heads, for what more could God do for men than he had done for you ! He pre- pared for you : he gave you great-grandfathers of the best races he had in stock."
o
^^BUC LIBRARY
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 19
A century and a half have passed away and the
tnen of the mountains of to-day are the descendants
of some of those sterHng pioneers. Three Classes of j^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ate for
Mountaineers -^ , . . , . »
several generations in their Appa- lachian homes ; but they are still there to give account of themselves, and to face the providential future. There have developed among these dwellers in the mountains three distinct classes, that must be recog- nized by every judicious student of their history: (i) nominal mountaineers; (2) normal and typical moun- taineers; (3) submerged mountaineers.
I. Merely Nominal Mountaineers. — These are the large populations that have occupied the fertile and
extensive valleys of the Shenan- Class_ One Is ^^^^ ^^^ g^g^ Tennessee, and
other rich valleys and plateaus, and have established centers of trade and commerce that have developed such prosperous cities and towns as Birmingham, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Johnson City, Bristol, Asheville, Roanoke, and Staunton. These mountaineers, or rather valley-dwellers, have to deal only with such questions as affect other in- telligent sections of our land. They send out mis- sionaries to the ends of the earth, and have as rich and pure a life as have any urban or country people of our Southland. They are a positive force in our national life, and are a valuable asset in the inventory that Uncle Sam may make of his riches. They out- number the other two classes combined. To apply to
20 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
them any hasty generalizations suggested by a study of the third class is simply unpardonable.
2. Normal and Typical Mountaineers. — Away from these centers of wealth, competence, cul- ture, and refinement, there are two other classes
more affected by their mountain -^,^,^_z^° environment than are these others
that merely live in sight of the mountains or in highland communities that are "low- land" in their development. There are, first, the true, worthy, normal, typical mountaineers that deserve far more of praise than of dispraise. While their isolated and hard life, remote from the centers of culture, has contracted their wants and the supply of those wants, and has forced them to do without a multitude of the "necessities" and conveniences and luxuries that seem indispensable to many other people of the twen- tieth century, they have largely kept that which is really worth while, namely, their virility and force of character. Hemmed in by remorseless environment, they have nevertheless preserved the former rugged character and sterling qualities of their race.
The fact is that Nature, in accordance with her marvelous method of compensations, has endowed these hardy mountaineers with some sterner qualities in lieu of the more Chesterfieldian ones of more fa- vored society; qualities that render them in sojfie re- spects stronger and more resourceful than their more pampered kinsmen of the valley or the plain. They have escaped many of the vices and follies that are sapping the life of modern society. They have nerves,
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 21
in this day of neurasthenia and neuremia. They know something of all the necessary arts, in these days when centralized and specialized labor gives each workman only a part of one art to which to apply himself.
The mountaineer of this class eats what he raises, and applies to the store for little more than coffee and sugar to supplement what his acres produce. He often does his own horseshoeing, carpentering, shoe- making, and sometimes he weaves homespun. He is the most hospitable host on earth, and he heartily en- joys his guest provided that guest has the courtesy to show his appreciation of what is offered him. His honesty coexists with a native shrewdness that is sometimes a revelation to the unscrupulous visitor that would take advantage of him in a trade. He is usually amply able to take care of himself. Indeed no American has a livelier native intelligence.
To speak of this class of mountaineers as meriting patronizing disdain is to show oneself to be a most superficial observer. Many of these men of the mountains do need much that can be given from without the Appalachians, but they have a reserve strength that, when aroused, will speedily prove them the peers of any people.
3. Submerged Mountaineers. — There is a third and
much smaller class of mountaineers of which not so
much good can be said. They cor- Glass Three Needs Help respond to, while they are entirely
different froln, that peculiar and pitiable lowland class of humanity that was one of the indirect products of the institution of slavery — "the
22 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
poor whites" or "white trash," as they used to be called. They are the comparatively few, who are very incorrectly supposed by many readers of magazine ar- ticles to be typical of the entire body of southern mountaineers. By this mistaken supposition a mighty injustice is done to a very large majority of the dwellers in the Appalachians. As fairly judge Eng- land by "Darkest England," or London by White- chapel, or New York by the slums, or any community by the submerged tenth.
This third class consists of the drift, the flotsam and jetsam, that are cast up here and there among the mountains. They are the shiftless, ambitionless degenerates, such as are found wherever men are found. Usually they own little or no land and eke out a precarious existence, as only a beneficent Provi- dence that cares for the birds and other denizens of the forest could explain.
They are those unfortunates that are found every- where, whether in city or country, who sink to the bottom, and leave upper and middle classes above them. They are simply the lowest class in the moun- tains, and they deserve at our hearts and hands both sympathy and aid. 'The writer will make no fun of them, will recount no startling stories at their ex- pense, and will not exploit their oddities or peculiari- ties. It was his good fortune to have parents who were foreign missionaries; and very early in his life these parents taught him to count no one common, unclean, or even ridiculous for whom Christ died. That early training coincides fully with his inclina-
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 23
tion when his brethren of the mountains are concerned. A derisive smile, a sneer, a cynical remark, or an un- kind criticism would cause the mountaineer the keen- est hurt, and would cost the offender the valued friendship of that mountaineer, and his own brotherly- influence over him; and why should one say behind a mountaineer's back what would naturally make him a lifelong enemy if said before his face? It is a mis- take to treat any mountaineer as if he were a stolid creature incapable of feeling; for the fact is that there is no one more keenly sensitive than is he. His face may not show it, for he has the Indian's impassive- ness; but, if you could see his heart, you would be reminded of the sensitive plant of his hills that closes convulsively almost before you touch it, [/'
The proportion of Scotch-Irish names may not be so great among this third class, but many such names are found among them. This class would be a very hopeless one were it not for a quality that will be re- ferred to again ; namely, the fact that it can be made over in one generation.
It need hardly be said that, as in all classifications
of men on the basis of character and condition, there
are many gradations among these
Modifications of ^^^^^ ^j^g^^g ^^^ j^^^g^ ^hat the
These Classes . ^, , . ^
classes themselves merge mto one
another, so that at times it is impossible to say just
where one ends and another begins. But why be too
nice in determining metes and bounds? Is there not
even in the great metropolis a slum problem, and is
there not a Fifth Avenue problem — both with inde-
24 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
terminate boundaries? The worthiest question any- one can ask himself is : How can I best help any brother man of mine, of any rank and race, sub- merged or non-submerged, to realize his high calling in Christ Jesus?
The southern Appalachians have, then, these three classes, very widely distinct, with many modifications
and shadings of the classes, and, Many Men of q£ course, with many special idio-
Many Kinds . ^i • j- -j i
syncrasies among the mdividuals
that make up the classes. No one is at all prepared to understand the mountaineers who has been led by imaginative and long-range magazineers to confound the people of the region into one vast mediocrity or even degeneracy in which all individuals and all classes look alike to him.
A nomenclature that is objectionable to the persons named should, in courtesy, be modified to remove all
unnecessary offense. Some writers "Mountaineers," have gotten into the habit of call- not "Mountain • j - a - i u -" ■rjjr^-i. >, mg us modern Appalaches moun- tain whites," a term -that' implies peculiarity and, inferentially, inferiority. We are not deeply in love with that nomenclature. It sounds too much like "poor white trashy" the most opprobrious term known in the South. We do not like this color label process any more than country school boys en- joy being called "greenies" by their city cousins. There are no mountain blacks, or browns, or yellows. Fancy how it would sound to hear the inhabitants of the Buckeye State spoken of as "Ohio whites" ! They
THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS 25
call themselves Ohioans, and we call ourselves "south- ern mountaineers" or "highlanders," and of that name we are humbly proud. There is no evil hint in the word mountaineer in the Appalachians, but rather the reverse — an honorable ring. Better use no class name at all, if possible; but if one must be used, let it be a generous one.
A letter was not long since received at a mountain post-office addressed, "To the Teacher of the Moun- tain White School." Put yourself in the place of the proud-spirited people of that village, and you can the better appreciate the fact that the thoughtlessly ad- dressed letter was of no help whatever to the teacher.
The ancestors of the mountaineers left Europe in search of a land where a man might be "a man for a' that," and the descendants of those ancestors are jeal- ous of their American peerage. They are courteous only to the courteous. They can endure no "I-am- greater-than-thou" air. Surely they have a right to expect of their friends the courtesy of an acceptable designation and the avoidance of what is to them an objectionable epithet; they are mountaineers or high- landers, and never "mountain whites."
CHAPTER III The Service of the Mountaineers "i
If we take the term "southern mountaineers" in its broadest extent, all must agree that the service ren- dered the nation by the mountaineers of the South has been a notable one.
They conquered the Alps beyond which untold mil- lions of later compatriots were to find their fruitful Italy. It was, indeed, no small service that Boone and Robertson, Bean and Sevier, and the Shelbys lent the struggling colonies and later the infant republic, by pressing backward the long-time frontiers until those frontiers practically vanished in the sunset West.
As backwoodsmen, clad in buckskin, and bearing their trusty rifles, the pioneers took their lives in their
hands and scaled the mighty bar- The Nation's ^.j^j.^ ^^^^ Nature had piled before
Frontiersmen ,, , , j -u u .. j
them, and braved wild beast and
wilder Indian, and defied the dread of unknown evils
in an unknown wilderness. What we pass in review
in a day cost them the efforts of the best part of a
lifetime. Their days were spent in arduous toil, and
their nights were too often wasted in anxious vigils.
The annals of the frontiersmen are full of the stories
of daring exploits and uncomplaining endurance.
26
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 27
Such service was the cost that civilization pays for new conquests, but it was paid not by the salaried emissaries of an organized government, nor by the subsidized forces of great trading companies, but by individuals that went always at their own charges, and sometimes at the cost of all things; more often than not, hindered rather than encouraged by the unappre- ciative governments they had left behind them when they plunged into the depths of the forest.
They took with them the Bible and Protestant Christianity, and established their hereditary faith in
every district of the mountains. Established There is no infidelity native to the
Christianity Appalachians. An infidel is an im-
ported monstrosity. The only heresy is that of con- duct. Men believe in the Bible as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. "Thus saith the Lord," when once ascertained, is the end of all their fre- quent theological controversies.
The legends of Londonderry may have faded from the memory, but the Orangemen of Ulster are hardly
more inveterate foes of Romanism Established ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^g southern moun-
Protestantism ^^.^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^^^ -^ ^^^ Blue
Ridge stopped at a cabin for a gourdful of water. As the mistress of the cabin, "on hospitable thoughts in- tent," was bringing the water, a little child clung to her skirts and hindered her. In her annoyance she reproved the child, and in a warning voice said, "You must be good or Clavers will get you." Thus has the once-dreaded name of Claverhouse survived as a
28 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
bogie among those that are unfamiliar with the pages of history. In somewhat the same way has a deep- seated hatred of Roman CathoHcism been inherited from the past. Strange to say, Rome has as yet made practically no effort to win the mountain people; she either overlooks them or deems them an unpromising field of proselytism.
Fiske, in his "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," tells of a great service rendered by the Scotch-Irish
of the Appalachians. He says : pf ^o^jf^®*^ "In a certain sense the Shenan-
doah Valley and adjacent Appa- lachian region may be called the cradle of modern democracy. In that rude frontier society life assumed many new aspects, old customs were forgotten, old distinctions abolished, social equality acquired even more importance than unchecked individualism. . . . This phase of democracy, which is destined to con- tinue so long as frontier life retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian region in the eighteenth century."
Out of the chaos of individualism, the frontiers- men soon evolved all the necessary elements of civil
government. In many places they
Established founded law and order as substan-
Civil Government ^. „ ,, . , , . ,,
tially as they exist anywhere m the
states. In some sections they introduced a good ob- servance of the Sabbath — a better one than is now to be found in most of the cities of our land. There are worthy citizens in the remotest coves that do
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 29
not hunt on the Sabbath, even at the present day; and the writer recalls one instance where the people of a very mountainous region discussed the advisa- biHty of using mob law to rid their neighborhood of an intruder from another country, who, despite their protests, persisted in hunting on the Sabbath day. Another mountaineer apologized, on his own initia- tive, for having been out with his team after mid- night of Saturday night, justifying himself on the good old Shorter Catechism ground that his work was one of "necessity and mercy." In many places, how- ever, the Sabbath is in as extreme peril as it is in our great cities.
The fatal mistake of the pioneers, if it was not in many cases an unavoidable necessity, was their al- lowing the hardships of their lot to Established prevent them from giving their
Education , -u j j ^•
children as good an education as
they themselves had enjoyed. As Mr. Roosevelt in- vestigated the early documents that deal with the set- tlement of the Allegheny frontier, he noted the ab- sence of signatures made by mere signs or marks. In 1776 out of one hundred and ten pioneers of the Washington District who signed a petition to be an- nexed to North Carolina, only two signed by mark. In 1780 two hundred and fifty-six pioneers of Cum- berland signed the "Articles of Agreement," and only one signed by mark.
But the mistake referred to was by no means a universal one. In the case of the people of the rich
so THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
valleys and plateaus, the first care of the pioneers was to establish their log church; their next was to plant by it an academy. Many such schools perished either in the course of the years or during our Civil War; yet there remain as the lineal descendants of such schools, supported and perpetuated at the cost of unbounded sacrifice on the part of able Presby- terian ministers, at least six of the so-called "small colleges" to which the people of our generation are so generously paying eloquent tribute.
The service that the southern mountaineers have rendered in national matters can hardly be overesti- mated. They were possessed by a Service to r , r ■,•■, / , ,
the Nation ^f'^^ ^°^^ °^ ^'^^^t^' ^"^ ^° ^^^
birthplace of American liberty
very appropriately was in the mountains. In Abing- don, Virginia, at the junction of the valleys of the Blue Ridge and East Tennessee, as early as January 20, 1775, a council met that, as Bancroft says, "was mostly composed of Presbyterians of Scotch-Irish descent." "The spirit of freedom swept through their minds as naturally as the wind sighs through the fir trees of the Black Mountains. There they resolved never to surrender, but to live and die for liberty."
This was four months before the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the lowland hills of North Carolina issued the "immortal Mecklenburg Declaration," which in its turn antedated by more than a year the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress.
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 31
While the very fewness and the inaccessibility of the mountaineers were their best defense from the
armies of the redcoats, on the Share in the other hand, their insignificant
numbers and remoteness from their only friends exposed the frontiersmen to the deadly assaults of the Indians, the allies of Britain. The mountaineers have been called by Gilmore in the title of one of his books, "The Advance Guard of Civilization"; and with equal appropriateness, in the title of another of his books, "The Rearguard of the Revolution."
Twice during the Revolution, "the grand strategy" of the English planned simultaneous assaults upon the colonies from the coast-line and the Indian frontier; and twice did the little band of Watauga settlers frustrate the successful carrying out of those saga- cious and most sinister plans of campaign. In 1776, while four hundred and thirty-five men behind pal- metto logs in Charleston beat off the British fleet with its five thousand sailors and seamen, Sevier and Shelby and their two hundred and ten backwoods- men repulsed and defeated the Cherokees led by Oconostota and Dragging Canoe. Then from Georgia northward to Virginia, the frontiersmen swept in retributive wrath upon the Tory-led Indians, and dealt them such a blow as extorted from them an unwilling but at least a temporary peace. At the same time the Tories that infested the frontier were either driven out or forced to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederation.
32 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
In 1779 when, on the coast, Savannah had been taken by Clinton's expedition, the frontier invasion was forestalled by the timely capture of all the ammu- nition stored for the coming campaign by the British and their allies at what is now Chattanooga, by seven hundred and fifty mountaineers led again by Shelby and Sevier. Thus were the southern colonies pro- tected, without help from the Colonial army, by the woodsmen who while fighting for their own existence also contributed materially to the saving of the infant nation.
Nor was this all the service that the frontiersmen rendered during the Revolution. The darkest hour of
„. _, ^ . the War of Independence in the Kings Mountain c ^.u • o u /-• 1
South was in 1780, when Charles- ton was captured by the English, Gates and DeKalb were defeated at Camden, and the interior was over- run by the victorious British soldiery. Washington said: "I have almost ceased to hope."
Especially troublesome was the presence of Colonel Ferguson, who established himself with two hundred regulars in the western border counties, attempting to draw to the royal banner the rougher element that inhabited the foothills and were neither planters nor mountaineers. Two thousand Tories had joined the standard, and Ferguson was threatening the frontier settlements.
In August he sent word to Shelby threatening to "march his army over the mountains, to hang the patriot leaders, and to lay the country waste with fire and sword." The Indians had rallied from their con-
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 33
fusion of the previous year, and were menacing the settlements; but not for a moment did the "rear- guard" hesitate when they saw their duty and their opportunity. When all other opposition in the South was practically dormant, Shelby and Sevier formed the instant purpose not to act on the defensive by guarding the mountain passes against the foe, but the rather bravely to issue from their natural defenses and to assault and capture Colonel Ferguson and his force.
The story of the Battle of Kings Mountain is too long to tell here, but no more heroic or romantic chap- ter is found in our nation's history. The mountain clans mustered on the Watauga and a draft was taken, not to decide who should go to fight Ferguson, but who should stay to defend the settlements. By Sep- tember twenty-fifth, eight hundred and forty moun- tain men were ready for the fight, including four hundred "Backwater Presbyterians" under Colonel Campbell. Of the six leaders, five were Presbyterian elders. Dr. Doak, the founder of Washington Col- lege, committed the expedition in prayer to the God of battles, and addressed the volunteer soldiery, closing his address with the words :
"Go forth, my brave men, go forth with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon."
A few days later, at Kings Mountain, after a march of great hardships and sufferings, nine hundred and sixty militiamen surrounded and took by storm an entrenched natural fortress, and captured over eleven hundred English soldiers.
"That glorious victory," said Jefferson, "was the
34 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
glorious annunciation of that turn in the tide of suc- cess which terminated the Revolutionary War with the seal of independence."
The mountaineers had, without orders, without pay, without commission, without equipment, and without hope of monetary reward, struck a decisive blow for the entire country. And then, upon their arrival at their cabin homes, without a day's rest they had to hurry into the Indians' territory to check the warlike expeditions that were about to descend upon the set- tlements.
Thus were the trusty rifles of the pioneers used within one short month against the British regulars at Kings Mountain, and against their savage allies at Boyd's Creek, three hundred miles distant.
The southern mountains are full of the descendants of Revolutionary soldiers. Besides the little armies
of volunteer soldiery who fought Sons Daugrhters of ^^^ Indians and Tories on the the Revolution . . ,,.,,, , •
frontier, and besides those who is- sued out of their mountain settlements to render spe- cial service at Kings Mountain and Cowpens, there were also large numbers of volunteers from the eastern slopes and valleys of the Blue Ridge region who served in the patriot armies. Then, too, at the close of the war, there were large numbers of Revolution- ary soldiers from other sections, who, when dis- banded, moved into the Appalachians and took up grants of land that were made them by the Govern- ment. From this prolific race there have issued hosts of descendants who are eligible to be enrolled as Sons
A Grandmother Who Wanted a School for Her People.
THE «£W ri)HK FOBUC LIBRART
AtrrOK, LJINOX TXLD«N FOUNDaT^'^*--
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 35
or Daughters of the American Revolution. Some of
them proudly show their friends the very rifles that
their forefathers carried during their service in the
patriot armies.
The mountaineers again guarded the frontier for
the Government during the second war with Britain.
Many volunteers served in the
ii/r^^- -^^^^ northern armies, but most of them Mexican War ■, ■, A 1 t 1
served under (jeneral Jackson m
the "Creek War" and at New Orleans. The intensity of the patriotism may be judged by a philippic against laggards preached in 1813 by Dr. Isaac Anderson in his Maryville pulpit. His text was, "Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the in- habitants thereof; because "th^^ 'came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the. X-prd against the mighty."
"British rum and Albion gold have roused the Creeks' lust for rapine and. blood. We are exposed to their incursions; let us carry the war into their country, and go in such numbers as to overwhelm them at once. Apathy on this subject would be crim- inal. The call of country is the call of God."
A few weeks later one of the patriot doctor's patriot schoolboys, young Ensign Sam Houston, was the second to mount the breastworks of the Indian stronghold on the Tallapoosa. Three severe wounds he received that day, but he lived to be a figure of na- tional importance. The men of the mountains crushed the Creeks in a campaign of many battles; and then
2,6 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
at New Orleans struck the British the heaviest blow that they received during the war.
In 1 817 the only volunteers General Jackson took with him to the Seminole War were eleven hundred Tennesseeans. In the war with Mexico, so eager were the mountaineers that, at the first call in Ten- nessee for three thousand men, thirty thousand volun- teered their services. The state became known as "the Volunteer State," but the entire Appalachian sec- tion also merited the name.
Naturally in the days of the Civil War, there were divisions and alienations and feuds in the Appalach- ians. Many on the Virginian side The Civil War ^^ ^^^ mountains and among the
North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama mountains espoused the cause of the Confederacy, and made as good soldiers as the valorous hosts of the South could boast. "Stonewall" Jackson was a mountaineer in- dubitably of the first class, and his famous "Stone- wall" brigade was made up largely of the men of the hills. The West Virginia, Kentucky, and East Ten- nessee mountains were overwhelmingly for the Union ; while, also, there were many men of the other sec- tions referred to that fought for the preservation of that Union. No better soldiers were found on either side of the great debate at arms than were those that enlisted from the mountains.
While it may be an exaggeration to say that the loyalty of the Appalachians decided the great contest, that loyalty certainly contributed substantially to the
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 37
decision ; for the mountains cleft the Confederacy with a mighty hostile element that not merely subtracted great armies from the enrollment of the Confederacy, but even necessitated the presence of other armies for the control of so large a disaffected territory. The Federal forces actually recruited from the states of the southern Appalachians were as considerable in number as were the armies of the American Revolu- tion gathered from all the thirteen colonies, and con- siderably exceeded the total of both mighty armies that fought at Gettysburg, while those from East Tennessee alone numbered over thirty thousand men.
These soldiers were not conscripted or attracted by bounty, but rather in most cases ran the gauntlet through hostile forces for one, two, or three hundred miles to reach a place where they could enlist under the flag of their country. The congressional district in East Tennessee in which the writer lives claims the distinction of having sent a larger percentage of its population into the Union army than did any other congressional district in the entire country. One county of that district furnished more Federal sol- diers than it had voters.
The story of the loyal mountaineers is as romantic and thrilling a one as was ever told by minstrel or by chronicler of the stirring days of chivalry. No doubt their position was one of the divinely ordained in- fluences that contributed to that outcome of the frat- ricidal strife which all Americans now recognize to have been providential and, therefore, best.
38 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The happy union of later days was most auspi- ciously manifested in the service rendered side by side
by the sons and grandsons of the
Spani^-Amer- veterans of both armies of the six- ican War . , . .
ties, as these younger Americans
united to free Cuba from Spanish tyranny. Of the men enlisted during the Spanish-American War, a little army gathered from the states of the southern mountains — a number far in excess of the quota to be expected from those states. Indeed the recruiting stations had repeatedly to suspend operations in this section, so numerous were the enlistments. The offi- cers testified heartily to the superior quality of the young mountaineers as soldiers and campaigners. Said one of the officers : "The soldiers from the mountains of the South were the best soldiers we had in the war." The boys fought uncomplainingly amid whatever privations. They were of the stock that produced Sam Houston. At San Jacinto his captive, Santa Anna, asked Houston how so few could win so complete a victory. The victor drew an ear of corn from his pocket, and said : "When patriots fight on such rations as these they are unconquerable."
Another form of service rendered by the people of the mountain region has been that contributed to the
upbuilding of the newer parts of oc y I.C ui j^^j. j^j^^ 1^ ^j^g emigrants who
Emigrants , -^ . ,
have gone out into those sections
from the Appalachian country. In spite of the com- paratively few who have migrated from the remoter mountains, the Appalachians as a whole have been a
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 39
veritable cornucopia pouring out great numbers of young people, first into the Northwest, then into the Southwest, and finally into all the great West. Everywhere these emigrants have been rapidly as- similated, and they have made invaluable contribu- tions to the sections of their adoption. What Dr. H. W. Wiley says of their influence in Indiana is also true, in varying degrees, of their influence in other states of the Union. While addressing the Indiana Society of Chicago, he said: "The truest Hoosier was the emigrant from southwestern Virginia, from western North Carolina, from eastern Tennessee, and eastern Kentucky. This last wave in its approach stopped for a while in Kentucky, then passed on and overwhelmed and engulfed the 'lumbar' region of In- diana. Typical of this stream was Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, with their son Abraham, who came with the rest of the flood and bided for a time, only to move farther west and north. These were the true Hoosiers, free from all the virtues of education, many of them knowing not even how to read and write, but lithe of limb, strong of body, keen of sight, honest of heart, and endowed with a power of ob- servation and penetration which was little short of marvelous. They brought the Hoosier dialect so- called into the state, and with keen and incisive words and biting sarcasm and wit, in their homely way ob- served and treated all the subjects which came up for their consideration. It was one of these who in the fertile imagination of Edward Eggleston formu- lated the fundamental principle of Wall Street finance
40 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
as it exists to-day, in the terse but comprehensive ex- pression, Them thet hez gits.' Not only did they thus see into the intricacies of finance, but with equal insight and vision understood political and social problems in which they lived. These were the fathers and mothers, the grandfathers and grandmothers, of that great army of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and authors who had their being or received their in- spiration in southern Indiana, chief among them the great preserver of his country and the idol of the whole nation, Abraham Lincoln, who lived his boy- hood years in that environment and received from it that inspiration and character which with his native genius made his career possible. Contemporaneous with or coming soon before or after him were an army of great men and great women to whom the fame and prosperity of Indiana are due."
This chapter would be incomplete were it not to call attention, before closing, to the service rendered
_ . - their country by individuals of this
Service of „ i. • • a
Individuals mountam region. A mere mention
of a few representative names will emphasize the great part that, in spite of all their se- clusion, the Appalachians have had in the affairs of the nation. There are the pioneers Boone, Sevier, the Shelbys, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston; the presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and An- drew Johnson; the famous Confederates Zebulon B. Vance, John H. Reagan, and "Stonewall" Jackson; the renowned Unionists Parson Brownlow and Ad-
I
SERVICE OF THE MOUNTAINEERS 41
miral Farragut; the inventor Cyrus H. McCormick; and the man of the nation, Abraham Lincoln.
Surely the annals of the country would be the poorer were the deeds of the men of the Appa- lachians not found recorded in them.
CHAPTER IV
The Appalachian Problem
The problems that America confronts and must
solve are legion in number. There are problems na-
, , tional and problems sectional; but
p , , the national problems belong also
to the sections, and the sectional ones belong also to the nation. Away down South in Dixie land, there are two great problems — one, black; the other, white.
The black problem is of vastly the greater impor- tance because it affects the peace, prosperity, and
civilization of the entire South, if The Black ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^j^^ nation. It is a
Problem , , ... , .
problem to the right solution of
which the best efforts of patriots must, perhaps for a long time to come, be most faithfully dedicated. It demands the best human wisdom, and, above all, that wisdom which cometh from above, profitable to di- rect.
While we lend our most loyal endeavor to the right solution of this supreme problem — a solution that shall please our common Lord and Master — we should imitate the methods of the divine Mathematician, and
42
THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM 43
not confine ourselves to one problem alone, but rather seek also the solution of other contemporary, coin- cident, and pressing problems.
The second problem is a white one ; it is the Appa- lachian one. It is presented principally by the third
class of the mountaineers of the ProblT^^*** South. Among the total five mil-
lions inhabiting the Appalachians there are a considerable number (how many, though some say two hundred and fifty thousand and others five hundred thousand, there is no statistician wise enough to give exact data) that are sorely in need of our Christian sympathy and help.
To use one metaphor, they are our belated brethren ; they are behind the times; "they have fallen behind in the race of life and progress" ; they have thus far missed the twentieth-century train. As they have aptly been called, they are our "contemporary ances- tors," To use another metaphor, they form a sub- merged class — not submerged by the waves of an- vancing civilization, for these waves have rolled up against the rocky bulwarks and fallen back in spray upon the lowlands ; but submerged in sylvan solitudes and seclusion, and sometimes buried in backwoods- man idleness and illiteracy.
The problem is simply this : How are we to bring these belated and submerged blood brothers of ours,
our own kith and kin, out into the
The Problem and completer enjoyment of twentieth- Its Peculiarities ^^ . ..: •'. , ™ . .
century civilization and Christian- ity ? Let us seek the solution.
44 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The Appalachian problem has certain peculiarities that cannot fail to engage our attention.
Whatever else may be said of our problem, it must be agreed that it is a peculiarly American one. In
many of the heights of the Ap- Problem palachians, a foreigner is almost
as rare an object as an American would be in the wilds of Tibet. An Indian in his war paint in a crowded city street hardly excites more gen- uine interest and curiosity than does a non-English- speaking visitor in the recesses of the Great Smokies. The total population of foreign birth in the southern mountains, including the 57,072 miners and their fam- ilies of West Virginia, is only 89,964. If we omit West Virginia, the percentage of foreign-born popu- lation in the mountains is far less than one per cent. There is at least one spot undisturbed by foreign im- migration. Only in some mining communities are there many foreigners. West Virginia has fourteen mountain counties that have from six to fifty-one per- sons of foreign birth to each county. Kentucky has one county with no foreigner, and twenty counties with only from one to eighteen of foreign birth. Virginia has twelve counties with from none to twelve of for- eign birth. Tennessee has twenty counties with from none to twenty of foreign birth. North Carolina has five counties containing together a grand total of eight foreigners — not the equivalent of just one ordi- nary mountain family. Sixteen North Carolina coun- ties have from one to eighteen persons of foreign birth. South Carolina has a county with a lonely
THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM 45
total of thirteen foreigners. Georgia has sixteen counties with from none to nineteen of foreign birth. And Alabama closes the procession with four coun- ties that have an aggregate foreign population of forty- two.
The problem is also a purely Protestant one. There is no other locality in the English-speaking world
where a parallel in this regard can A Protestant ^^ found to the conditions in the
Appalachians ; for, except in a few towns in the valleys, not a Roman Catholic can be found.
The testimony of the Religious Census, pubhshed by the United States Census Bureau in 1906, is re- markable indeed. According to this census, there are only 86,607 Roman Catholics in the southern Ap- palachians, and these Hve in Maryland and in the mining regions, and in the larger cities. For exam- ple, 20,373 live in the four mountain counties of Maryland, and 13,467 in Birmingham. Out of the 251 mountain counties, 161 do not have even one Roman Catholic within their borders. In Virginia twenty-three of the forty-two mountain counties have no Roman Catholics either within their own limits or within the "independent cities" that are surrounded by those counties. In West Virginia, in spite of the mining population, fifteen of the fifty-five counties have no Romanists ; in Kentucky, twenty-eight of the thirty-six have none; in Tennessee forty-one of the forty-five; in Georgia, twenty-one of the twenty-five; in Alabama, ten of the seventeen; in South Carolina,
46 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
one of the four; while in North Carolina only one of the twenty-three counties contains a Roman Catholic, and that is Buncombe County in which Asheville is located.
In a recent Roman Catholic appeal in behalf of the "Missions of St. Francis de Sales (East Tennessee)" the following remarkable statement appears : "This mission field comprises some thirty-four counties of East Tennessee, embracing an area of over twelve thousand square miles, with nearly a hundred thou- sand families within that area. The total population is over five hundred thousand souls. The Catholics on these missions (exclusive of the city of Knoxville) number less than three hundred." The appeal ex- presses the hope that from a chosen center "mission- ary activity and church extension may radiate until this fair field gleams with the 'white robe' of mission churches and rejoices in thousands of loyal neo- phytes."
The Protestant prejudice is intense. When the writer was only a lad, he once found himself in very bad repute among some mountaineers because he was mistaken for a Roman Catholic. He rose to his feet to lead the opening prayer in a mountain Sabbath school. In that locality it was for some reason the universal custom to kneel in prayer, and some one explained the innovation of the visitor by saying that it was rumored that Roman Catholics stand in prayer. The stranger was not reinstated in public confidence until he told the people that Presbyterians, too, stand,
THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM 47
as did Ezra and the congregation of Israel, in the offering of prayer.
Mission teachers have sometimes occasioned serious trouble for themselves by teaching their pupils the Apostles' Creed with its fatally misunderstood sen- tence, "I believe in the holy catholic church." No amount of footnotes or oral explanation could ren- der the sentence innocuous, or restore confidence in the supposed heretic who had attempted to teach it to the children. The mountaineers are unanimously and un- equivocally Protestant; and, as has already been stated, Rome has, for some reason, put forth practi- cally no effort to proselyte these dwellers in the hill country.
The Appalachian problem is almost solely a white
one. In i860, there were but few slaves in all the
Appalachians, and almost all of A White Problem ^^^^^ ^^^^ -^ ^^^ ^^jj^y^ ^^^^
in 19 10 there were but comparatively few colored people in the Appalachians. True, there are 618,- 024 colored people reported as living in the south- ern mountain region, or about one eighth of the entire population, but they do not live in the remoter mountains. Half of this number live in Virginia and Alabama. There are some people in the recesses of the southern mountains that have never seen a colored man. In "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," the hero Chad saw a negro for the first time in his life. He was amazed, and asked what was the mat- ter with the man's face. When informed, he braced up and said: "It don't skeer me."
48 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
Twelve mountain counties of West Virginia have within their borders from five to forty-eight colored people. Kentucky has two counties that report only one and four colored respectively. Virginia has one county with only four colored inhabitants and an- other with only seven. North Carolina has one county with no colored people. Tennessee has six counties with from eleven to ninety-eight. Even Georgia has six counties with only from fifteen to one hundred and sixty-two colored people.
The only part of the South that is not directly concerned in the race problem is the purely mountain region. The two problems of the South — the col- ored and the white one — in their territorial applica- tion almost exclude each other.
The Appalachian problem is, of course, a country problem. Perpetuating, as the geographical adjective
does, the name of a tribe of In- p v,^^ ^^ dians, the Appalaches, it suggests
an outdoor problem, one near to Nature's heart. Save in an exceptional case like Asheville, there are no cities in the very mountains, though they flourish in the great valleys of the Blue Ridge and East Tennessee. Only twenty per cent, of the southern mountaineers live in towns of one thou- sand or more. The people are practically all farmers, and are unspoiled by the contaminations- of city life. Their life is ideally bucolic. As has already been said, if it were not for the sheep-killing dogs, the moun- taineers might easily be the greatest pastoral' people of modem times.
THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM 49
Nevertheless, the problem is a varied and somewhat
complex one. The endless variety of conditions
among the various settlements is A Varied and . ^ ^ ^ • .•
n 1 p hi apparent to one who has any mti-
mate acquaintance with the people.
The mountaineers are homogeneous as to race, but
heterogeneous as to conditions.
It is an utter mistake to assume that, because some — by no means all — of the mountain counties of Ken- tucky are cursed by the vendetta, that reminder of the clan vengeance of the Gaels, it is also true that the mountains of East Tennessee and western North Carolina are likewise afflicted by the same scourge. The feud is unknown in most of the Appalachians. So also is it a mistake to suppose the feudists them- selves the incarnation -of all evil. The Presbyterian bishop who knew them best declared: "Feud lead- ers were usually among the best, most honest, and successful men of the mountains; and when they re- moved to other localities, made some of the best citi- zens."
To assume that, because "wildcat" illicit distilling is done in some places in the mountains, the favorite occupation of the mass of the mountaineers is "moon- shining" is absurd, and besides does -great injustice to the valiant and victorious hosts of temperance men scattered all over the mountains.
Could a spiritual and moral barometer test the con- dition of all the purely mountain communities, a vast variety of records would be given. Some neighbor- hoods have stood by the Sabbath, the home, morals,
50 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
and religion, while many others have wandered far astray.
Then, also, as might be expected, superficial esti- mates are often as apt to be too harsh as they are to be too favorable. For example, one of the most in- accessible counties of western North Carolina has been widely advertised as a very immoral county. One of our ministers, however, after a residence of several years in the heart of that impeached county while engaged in educational and religious work, de- clared that he never before lived in a place where there is so little secret vice, and that he had known of almost no illegitimate births in the county during his residence there. While the conditions there are prim- itive, and large families are being reared in single- roomed cabins, the logically inferred immorality does not after all prevail. Sometimes under a rough, sus- picious, and repellant exterior, the heart beats true.
There are, however, many places in the Appalach- ians where the conditions are deplorable and call loudly for reformation. Some must receive help from outside sources or perish ; while, as we have seen, others will themselves lend a most effective helping hand in the making of the new mountains that patriot- ism and philanthropy unite in desiring. The problem is, of course, not so complex as is that which concerns the redemption and evangelization of the exceptional populations of the great West, or the hordes in the polyglot city of New York ; but it is nevertheless sufificiently complex to challenge the best zeal and discretion of the church of Christ.
THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM 51
It must also be said with emphasis that our prob- lem is an exceedingly delicate one. The highlanders
are Scotch-Irish in their high-
A Delicate spiritedness and proud independ-
Problem ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^
must do so in a perfectly frank and kindly way, show- ing always genuine interest in them, but never a trace of patronizing condescension. As quick as a flash the mountaineer will recognize and resent the intrusion of any such spirit, and will refuse even what he sorely needs, if he detects in the accents or the demeanor of the giver any indications of an air of superiority.
The worker among the mountaineers must "meet with them on the level and part on the square," and conquer their oftentimes unreasonable suspicion by genuine brotherly friendship. The less he has to say of the superiority of other sections or of the defi- ciencies of the mountains, the better for his cause. The fact is that comparatively few workers are at first able to pass muster in this regard, under the searching and silent scrutiny of the mountain people.
The success of a worker in the mountains has sometimes been greatly and needlessly endangered by
the writing of an injudicious let- Wanted, Tact ^gj. ^Yiat has gotten into print and
and More Tact ^, , ,. , ., u 1 ^- +1,^
then has found its way back to the
place where it was written, to embarrass its author and to injure or even to destroy his usefulness. On the other hand, while workers in the mountains wel- come heartily the visit of friends from other sections, their solicitude lest those visitors in addressing the
52 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
schools or churches should offend the sensibilities of the people by leaving the impression that they look upon them as a peculiar and, inferentially, a lower class, has unhappily sometimes been justified. Cer- tain offensive expressions of well-meaning but blun- dering visitors are quoted to the prejudice of the work and, sad to say, of the workers, even for years after they were thoughtlessly and tactlessly uttered. There is more tact and discretion needed in the moun- tains than in the cities, for the mountaineer has sensi- bilities as acute as any yet discovered, and a pride that deeply resents the air of conscious and patroniz- ing superiority.
Mr. Campbell, in his study of "The Southern High- land Region," earnestly protests against the use of
the terms "mission work," "mis- Not Wanted— ^^^^ schools," and "missionaries" Missionaries . , . . ,,
m speaking of the mountaineers
and of the work and the workers among them. These terms, while unobjectionable in many sections of our country, and while used frequently even by the dis- tinctively southern churches, and while confessedly innocent and appropriate in themselves, are neverthe- less extremely offensive in many sections of the South and of the southern mountains when used in refer- ence to the work carried on among people of this sec- tion by people of another section. The mountaineers are proud-spirited and independent, and, in resent- ing the word "missionaries," often say: "We're no heathen; they needn't send missionaries to us." The newspapers of the section frequently reflect this sen-
THE APPALACHIAN PROBLEM 53
timent in very emphatic editorials. Most of the work- ers in the southern Appalachians will agree with Mr. Campbell that the use of the word "missionary" does arouse a very troublesome prejudice which often hin- ders a most worthy cause.
Whatever else may be said, the problem is surely an urgent one, whether we take into account local or
national considerations. The men
P^M^^^^* ^^ ^^^ mountains need us; and
surely we need them. We must add their sturdy strength to the embattled forces of our Christian Americanism in the great war of the ages that is being waged in our day and in our land for the supremacy of sound government and for the spread of God's glorious gospel.
Most of the Appalachians are with us already; what added strength it would give us to have the entire army of the five millions on our side in this mo- mentous conflict ! They are ours by traditions and prejudices; the day will come when they will be ours as intelligent and efficient allies.
CHAPTER V The Mountaineers' Reason for Being i
Before going further into the discussion of the problem, it will be an interesting task to search out somewhat more in detail the philosophy of the forma- tion of the problem.
How did the mountaineers ever become moun- taineers? It might be enough to ask in reply: How
has it come to pass that all moun- How They Became ^^-^^ ^^^^ ^^^-^^ population? Na-
Mountameers , , , , ,
ture abhors a vacuum, and wher- ever men can support themselves, they take possession and establish their homes. The mountains of earth all have their inhabitants. Even the bleak coasts of Greenland have their Esquimaux, the deserts of Syria have their Bedouin, and the lava lands of our West have had their Modocs.
In attempting to give the reasons for the choice the earliest settlers of the mountains made of their wild home, we can but approximate the truth. In many cases, probably, the reasons for the choice were en- tirely different from those that we usually assign.
Some pioneers, whom Izaak Walton would call Piscators and Venators, chose the mountains for the
54
MOUNTAINEERS' REASON FOR BEING 55
game that then still frequented every mountainside.
They had such love of Nature and of the wild life, of
hunting and of fishing, that they
Hunting and shrank away from civilized society
Fishing Attractive , . , , ,, ^ .
because it lessened the opportuni- ties for the pursuit of their craft. Like Cooper's Leatherstocking, they tried to keep a few days' march in advance of the vexations and annoyances of civiliza- tion. The survival of the savage strain that is in all of us is to be reckoned with. It is hard even now for all the allurements of business and society to win some men back from that blessed spot in field or by flood where they tent in vacation days.
Rip Van Winkle fled to the Catskills to escape do- mestic turmoil, and he slept away twenty long years before he returned. In the early days many of the frontiersmen crept up into the coves and along the slopes of the mountains and found Sleepy Hollows, where now, "each in his narrow bed forever laid," they lie in the sleep of death; and where now some of their descendants, metaphorically speaking, lie in a sleep almost as profound as is that which their fore- fathers enjoy. These sleepy survivors, however, are the hunters and trappers of to-day, learned in all the lore and craft of the woodsman.
Some of the later pioneers — for but few of the earlier ones settled in the remoter mountains — chose
the mountain land as Hobson's A^^^I^kT^ choice, because it was available
and the choicer "flatwoods" were pre-empted. Poverty decided their location, as it de-
56 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
cided in the city who shall live in the cheapest tene- ments and who shall vegetate in the "Cabbage Patch" in which Mrs. Wiggs plants her humble home.
Some of the "Regulators" defeated by Governor Tryon at the Alamance before the Revolutionary War and some of the many victims of the harrying and dragooning of Virginia and the Carolinas during the Revolutionary War were forced, in ruin and despera- tion, to abandon their lowland homes and to press westward. While the more vigorous reached the bet- ter lands beyond the mountains, others with more incumbrances, or with less daring and energy, or with Fox's "broken axle," stopped in the mountains, and their descendants have never abandoned the rocky acres that became their modest patrimony. In some cases they tried to avoid close neighbors, reserving the land near them for their kindred. And yet those first settlers had no thought whatever of condemning their posterity by the choice they made of a home in the wilderness to imprisonment for life in the soli- tary confinement of mountain isolation.
It has been a theory with some that the remoter mountaineers are the descendants of criminals and
outlaws that took refuge in the ew u aw mountain fastnesses to escape the
punishment of their crimes. Fiske says in his "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors" that, in the earlier days — before lawbreakers were in the habit of fleeing to New York and other large cities to hide from the offi- cers of the outraged law — there were some criminals from among the "indentured white servants" of Vir-
MOUNTAINEERS' REASON FOR BEING 57
ginia who took refuge in the mountains and planted permanent homes there.
Gilmore insists that there was a "low-down" class in the mountains in the days of the Revolution. "They were mostly descended from the more worthless of the poor white settlers who, driven back from the seaboard, had herded among those wooded hills with the hordes of horse-thieves and criminals who had escaped from justice in the older settlements. The progeny of these people are even at this day a foul blot on American civilization."
But in the Appalachians as a whole the percentage of such settlers must have formed almost a negligible quantity in the analysis that the historian may at- tempt. The mountains have not been, to any larger extent than other sections of the country, a Botany Bay or a Pitcairn Island. In the case of the Appa- lachians, the original "old man of the mountain" was neither a wild man nor an assassin.
The natural and economic antagonism between slaveholders and non-slaveholders was so great that it
was to be expected that wherever. Influence of g^g ^^ ^^^ ^.^gg gf ^.j^g mountains,
opportunity offered itself for the non-slaveholders to live at a comfortable distance from the cause of friction, they would seize that op- portunity. Slavery did not pay in the mountains, and so it did not exist there to any appreciable extent. This common antagonism was one cause of the set- tling of the mountains; it was also an effect of that
58 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
separation, taken in connection with the opposing in- terests that it occasioned.
Gilmore says of our mountaineers: "Their ances- tors being too poor or conscientious to hold slaves were, more than one hundred years ago, forced back to the mountains by the slaveholding planters of the seaboard and insulated there, shut out from the world, and deprived of schools and churches. The present condition of these people is directly traceable to slav- ery; for, in making the slave the planter's black- smith, carpenter, wheelwright, and man-of-all-work, slavery shut every avenue of honest employment against the working white man and drove him to the mountains or the barren sand hills."
The aristocratic slaveholder from his river-bottom plantation looked with scorn on the slaveless dweller among the hills ; while the highlander repaid his scorn with high disdain and even hate. For the reason of this social antipathy as well as for inherited love of the Union, the mountaineers of this vast region that almost bisected the territory of the Confederacy stood by the national Government in the Civil War. It is a question as to who suffered more from the efifects of slavery, the slave or the slaveless white man.
The greatest cause of the populating of the hill country, however, is yet to be mentioned ; it is simply
the natural increase of the original Mountain families. This mightiest of all
causes for the existence of the five millions is often overlooked, though it explains what might otherwise be inexplicable. The population at
MOUNTAINEERS' REASON FOR BEING 59
first was thin and scattering, not too large to be ac- counted for by the several reasons for their immigra- tion that have here been adduced. There was abun- dant room at first, game was plentiful, and only se- lect tracts of land were tilled.
The fiat of the Creator, "Be fruitful and multiply," was heeded; and the pioneer family in the course of years increased to twelve or fifteen ; then harder lines were encountered. The young people when they mated — and they married very young — took a less desirable part of the family domain, built a cabin, cleared a few rocky acres, and in turn began their struggle for existence. Game disappeared, trade was non-exist- ent, time grew harder; and faster grew the families. This process continued for several generations, and now we see the natural and inevitable result.
A sight that may still be witnessed is that of a young mountaineer at work, in the face of the jovial gibes of his friends, clearing for himself and his "in- tended," or his already "obtained," a field or so on a hillside that has never felt the profanation of a plow. The field will provide corn for his "pone" bread ; and a few razor-backed pigs grown, not fattened, on the mast in the woods will furnish his "side-meat."
The writer, not long since, conducted the funeral of a mother in Israel who united with the Presby- terian Church as long ago as 1837. She had a hun- dred and six direct descendants — eight children, fifty-two grandchildren, and forty-six great-grand- children. The writer also recently matriculated a new student from a cove, a splendidly developed
6o THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
young woman, who told him that she had to earn her own way, "for," said she, "father has sixteen chil- dren." And the sixteen all had the same mother.
Since these human bees from our mountain hives almost invariably settle just as nearly in sight of the old bee-gum as possible, there need be no wonder that the woods are full of them. There is no suspicion of "race suicide" in the Appalachians. Out of moun- taineers' loins proceed armies. A corporal's guard becomes a great people.
A staid little towhead, almost crowded out of the cabin by his multitudinous brothers and sisters, once said, and it was his parents of whom he was speak- ing, "Clay and Sally Ann has heaps of children;" and as the youngsters were gamboling about the cabin door, there were literally "heaps" of them. A mother of ten, when felicitated upon her large family, replied in a deprecatory way: "Seems Hke a body ought to have at least a dozen children." Mountain mothers seem to hold the Israelitish attitude on child-bearing.
When we take into account facts such as these just related, and the additional one that early death is rare in the mountains, we can easily see that fe- cundity and longevity unite to make the Appalachian problem a growing one. The millions did not go there; as Topsy might say, "They just growed there." And in the near future even greater clans will people the rocky hills and prove that the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha is no fable, but rather is veritable his- tory that repeats itself even in the reputedly childless twentieth century.
MOUNTAINEERS' REASON FOR BEING 6i
This mountain region, without great help from im- migration, increased in population ten and eight- tenths per cent, during the decade closing in 19 lo. Graphic maps showing the relative number of births in the different sections of our country bear eloquent testimony to the prolific fruitfulness of the Appalach- ians.
Such are some of the reasons that account for tlie
peopling of the Appalachians. But why do not the
mountaineers emigrate to Okla-
]?^L-^®T^-^ ^? homa and elsewhere, as do the the Mountains? 1 i- ^1 n ^i -mru u
people of the valleys? Why have
four or five generations held to the same simple life? Many of the young men who have come into con- tact with people from the outside world do go into
the "flatwoods," and even migrate Few Do Migrate ^^ ^he West. In the early part of
the nineteenth century many migrated in search of a free-soil country, to Indiana, Illinois, and adjacent territory ; and their descendants are, as a rule, substan- tial citizens of to-day. In an address already referred to, delivered before the Indiana Society of Chicago, Dr. H. W. Wiley enumerated half a hundred Indian- ians who had attained eminence in various fields of endeavor and pointed out the fact that they had de- scended from southern mountaineer families that had removed to Indiana. Soon after the Civil War, many mountaineers migrated to Texas; and more recently some have gone to Oklahoma, and even as far as Oregon and Washington. Most of the people, how-
62 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
ever, live and die where they were born. This fact
can be accounted for in different ways.
The principal reason is found in the inertia that is
the concomitant of a life of isolation. What has
. been tends to continue. The un-
Inertia Hinders ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ j^^^^^ quicken ;
they rather stagnate. Only give Nature time, and she will even yet produce fossils ; and surely in the moun- tains there is "all the time in the world." The lack of prosperity induces shiftlessness, and where shift- lessness rules, there is little initiative; and it requires a strong spirit of initiative to break loose from time immemorial associations. Conservatism dominates in the secluded sections of the Appalachians.
The mountaineer's bump of inhabitativeness is fully developed. He has a strong attachment to his native
heath, its bracing air, its refreshing
Aii 1- J. water, its unrestrained liberty.
Attacnment t< ,ry i-i t • >^ i- t*
Pears like I cam t live nowhere
else," he tells you. He does not know nostalgia by
that name, but in exile he may die of it.
"Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms. So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar But bind him to his native mountains more."
Ambition lies dormant in his nature. There is ; nothing in his immediate environ-
Ambition ^^^^ ^^ arouse it; and air else is
Dormant , , . ,,.
vague and uncertain rumor. His
forebears, so far as he has any knowledge of them.
¥
bo
ffi
|
vC.^^' M^ |
* |
|
|
^M*i ^h ^ |
||
|
'l^-^.^^K |
^5»,%_ 3 |
i
rHfi KE^'roRK I fOBLiC LIBRARY
MOUNTAINEERS' REASON FOR BEING 63
have been content "jest to rock along"; and, pray, why should he set himself up to be any better than his own kith -and kin, past or present ?
"Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, He sees his little lot the lot of all."
The geologist speaks of "the Appalachian type of folding"; and so may we speak of the folding away of the human ambitions petrified in the strata of Ap- palachian existence. In these hills nature yields to a man's utmost endeavor hardly more than enough to keep soul and body together; and if there is a sur- plus of products, there is no market for that surplus. So the mountaineer yields to the orderings of fate, and throws away ambition, and contents himself with raising what is absolutely necessary for actual exist- ence, and philosophically comforts himself with the backwoods aphorism, "Enough's a-plenty;"
A native timidity also dominates the mountaineer. Bold as a lion in physical danger, he shrinks from
the society of the lowlands. iimiaity Though he makes occasional trips
to the valley town to sell apples, huckleberries, chestnuts, and "sang-root," he is not at his ease until his striding steps are again turned mountainward.
In addition to these reasons for his home-keeping,
there is what to him is the decisive
Lackin^^* one of a lack of precedent. No
one of his "kin-folks" ever left his native hills, and why should he leave them? Until
64 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
a tangible and success-attended precedent is set for him by some one he trusts — and probably even then — he will remain just where birth and breeding have placed him.
Their extreme poverty discourages those who would leave the mountains from doing so. They bat-
„ ^ tie for existence with sterile, un-
Poverty Prevents , ,. ., r^, ,
*' productive soil, ihe narrow val-
leys and the mountainsides, so steep that sometimes they must be cultivated by the hoe if at all, return to "the man with the hoe" — or for that matter to the women and children with the hoe — only enough corn and potatoes to provide for the daily bread. No money to pay for removal to a new country or for setting up new homes comes to hand to give the abil- ity to realize the dream of new homes in a new world. Whether our philosophy may or may not fully ex- plain the fact, a fact it nevertheless remains that,
rude and inhospitable and, in popu- So, Populous j^^ opinion, sparsely settled as
Mountains . • .1 a 1 1 •
those regions are, the Appalachians
abound in human beings, as in the other works of God; that those people are there in most cases from no fault of their ancestors or of themselves ; and that they deserve our sympathy and not our scorn.
CHAPTER VI The Problem's Reason for Being
The problem has been stated to be: "How are we to bring certain belated and submerged Appa- lachian blood brethren of ours out The ProDlem -j^^^ ^]^g completer enjoyment of
twentieth-century civilization and Christianity?" We have seen that many of the pio- neers in the mountains were of superior lineage and of the best development of their day. How are we to account for the lapsing of many of their descend- ants to a lower civilization than was that which their forefathers enjoyed?
The answer to this question will decide the amount of exculpation that may be accorded the contemporary mountaineers, and the degree of sympathy that may be felt for them. There is a world-wide difference between the degeneracy that Nordau tells of, and the provincial limitations that we find in mountain dis- tricts.
Theirs is a case of what has been termed "arrested
development." While they have
Some In Statu ^^^^^ ^^^^ and held part of what
their fathers had several genera- tions ago, the world has forged far ahead, and left
^5
66 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
them far in the rear. There is a great difference be- tween the America of 1780 and the America of 1914, a century and a third later. There are some purely mountain communities that for various local and providential reasons have substantially retained the high degree of intelligence and force of character with which the first settlers endowed them. True, their characteristics belong to colonial days rather than to those of the twentieth century.
On the other hand, there are, doubtless, other com- munities in the mountains, as elsewhere, that started with comparatively low standards of intelHgence and conduct, for, though their founders were of noble race, they themselves were but indifferent representa- tives of that race. Even the Edinburgh, the Glasgow, and the Londonderry of to-day can parallel from "the masses," as distinguished from their "classes," any cases of departure from racial excellence that we may discover among the mountain "masses."
But, after deducting these two classes from the total of our purely mountain people, the fact still re- mains, and is fully confirmed and estabhshed by local history and family tradition, that the present genera- tion, in many cases, lacks much of the intelligence and culture and force of character for which their pioneer ancestry were distinguished when they entered the mountains to make homes for themselves and their children.
There are, however, several good and sufficient reasons to be adduced to account for the losses sus-
PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING 6y
tained by these children of the original mountaineers, where losses have been experienced. They are such
as merely need mentioning in
ProWm ^°' *^^ ^^^^^ ^° ^^ recognized by every
student of history as being real and adequate and precedented.
Confessedly, many who settled in the mountains were less energetic and aspiring than were their
brethren that pushed forward to Lack of Live ^y^^ 1^^^^^^ ^^^^^ j^ ^y^^ ^^jj y^^_
Neighbors , -r, r • , ,
low. Professional hunters are
poor farmers. The influence that such people would exert upon those possessed of more energy would in- crease by intermarriage and constant example and in- tercourse. In such society the ambitious and ener- getic family would be unpleasantly conspicuous, and feel so much out of place as to lead it to seek other environment, or to abandon some of its energy so as to do in the mountains as the mountaineers do.
Indeed, the fact that in their isolation the moun- taineers have not enjoyed the stimulus of a varied
society accounts for part of that Lack of Varied retrograde movement. "All na- Society , f.r,.
ture s difference keeps all nature s
peace"; and society's differences prevent social stag- nation. Solitary confinement, even within the walls of the mountains, has its disadvantages. Society's range of ideas is decided by the kind of society that exists. In some of the more isolated mountain districts there has been, owing to their isolation, too much inter- marriage, even; and what injures European royalty
68 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
does not improve mountain society. Premature mar- riage also has the unhappy result of causing some of the women to age prematurely.
Dr. W. S. Plumer Bryan has well said :
"They have been reduced to their present condition of poverty and ignorance by the strenuous conditions under which they have been compelled to live. No one who has never himself experienced those condi- tions can realize how terrible is their effect upon the individual life, or how great their effect must be upon the life of a family from generation to generation. To live on the mountainside and perhaps in the depths of a forest, without roads, without means of trans- portation, on such products as the soil outside the cabin door provides, and in climates of great severity, will tell upon any man or woman, or family or stock, however fine its origin may be.
"The physical effect is only exceeded by the mental. Imagine your own condition if you were compelled to live year after year in the same house, and with the same surroundings, engaged in the drudgery of the house or in the drudgery of the field. The nearest neighbor's house is often too far for a visit; and if it be near enough, the house is often but little better than the one from which the visitor comes. The con- versation centers on the crops and the household events, with only now and then a vague report from the great world outside.
"Anyone who would not degenerate under hard conditions like these would be more than human ; and
PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING 69
wwwprrrft* ^.SHIL «a^ TW*
lia— 1,11,111 III! ^B-^- -..r-^ •'-■.'' •:..'~-'Sm«c''o^"'<rKw^*'ir»:^ ■ ^ '=^.-«". --* — , "—
in my opinion these strenuous conditions are quite enough to account for the peculiarities and deficien- cies of the class under discussion."
After the days had largely passed when the greater part of a living could be secured by the hunt or chase,
and the mountaineers found them- Lack of Incen- selves constrained to have recourse tive to labor ^^ ^^^ unproductive soil for the
corn and cane and potatoes that must supplement their ham and bacon in sustaining life, they were taught by sad annual experience that their best efforts could not insure any adequate return for their labor; that the thin sandy soil never would yield abundantly enough under their methods of farming to pay ex- cept niggardly for the toil expended.
If it is every season demonstrated that by no ex- penditure of toil or energetic effort can farming be made remunerative, why, pray, should men expend that hopeless toil and energy? Let enough be se- cured to supply the simplest wants and then let all bootless labor be avoided. By Nature's decree they were destined to hopeless poverty ; then why not sub- mit to the decree, eat the modest fare provided, drink the delicious water gushing from a thousand springs, and be as merry as such a hard life may allow ?
No reward for labor, no stimulus to labor !
"A Scotchman even will not work when there is no incentive." Idleness was a logical result of despair of substantial reward for industry. Good wages for peeling bark or for work in the lumber camp has in
70 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
many cases proven a specific for what was supposed
to be inveterate laziness.
Not only was there the absence of reward for labor
on the little home place, but there was also the al-
most complete deprivation of op- XiRCK 01 xr&uc . •.• (• , !• .,, ,,
portumties for tradmg with others
of the same neighborhood or of more distant com- munities. For a long time there were not even the lumber and the tan-bark industries. Almost every- thing that was consumed in the cabin was produced on the place. Even the limited wardrobe was woven on the old-fashioned loom; and the illumination was provided by beeswax tapers, or tallow dips, or "light pine" torches.
Thus trade was severely limited to a little neigh- boring swapping and bartering. The explanation of the peculiar hold that "moonshining" has had in the mountains has been the fact that it provided a home market — the only one, in many instances — for the corn that was raised. In the typical mountain glen, the wants are sternly restricted to what Nature pro- vides. There can be no considerable trade without somewhat adequate means of communication and transportation.
Almost the only means of communication among the southern mountains has been that provided by the
rocky, gully-gashed roads leading Lack of Means of ^^^^ ^^^ settlement to another. Communication . , , .„ ,
As a glance at the map will show,
the region is singularly devoid of navigable water- courses, such as in other sections of our country pro-
PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING 71
vided comfortable and inexpensive means of inter- communication even before the days of railroads. A corresponding lack of railroad facilities has existed until very recently, and even yet exists to a notable degree. A journey of fifty or a hundred miles over the almost impassable mountain roads w^ill readily explain what at first seems so strange to most visi- tors to the mountains — the fact that so many moun- taineers have never traveled beyond the limits of their native county.
The lack of trade and the prohibitive distance from all markets naturally resulted in the almost complete
dearth of money in the practically Lack of Money quarantined cabins and coves. Some economists are ready to maintain the thesis that the preservation of society demands the coinage of money; and all students of sociology must agree that "no money" does undoubtedly mean the decline of civilization. Which is the cause and which the ef- fect, one may sometimes be puzzled to decide, but the fact is demonstrated beyond all question. Many Ap- palachian mountaineers do not have ten dollars in money from one year's end to the other. No money and no trade cruelly exclude means of comfort and all books and other aids to mental culture and illumi- nation. The writer once visited a cabin in which the only literature was an out-of-date copy of a patent- medicine almanac. Money is an advance agent of civilization.
One of the most evident and potent reasons for the
^2 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
retrograde movement has been the lack of public
schools — and of any schools, for that matter. The
_ , „ „ , , mountains are to the nation a per- Lack of Schools ^ u- i. i r ^i f
manent object-lesson of the abso- lute necessity of popular education to safeguard even our most virile stock. In ante-bellum days there were in the Appalachians practically no schools. Since the war there has been much improvement, but yet not much until recently. Owing to the small school funds of the states involved, and to the fact that these funds have been prorated according to the enu- meration of the school population, the sparsely set- tled regions of the mountains have had few schools, and far between; and even these schools in many cases have been open but two or three months in the year.
A gratifying advance is now being made, and surely none too soon. It has long been ardently prayed for and industriously worked for by the friends of the mountaineers.
That the significance of even the present educa- tional conditions of the southern mountains may be
realized, nothing more is needed Educational ^y^^^ ^j^^ presentation of the bare
Statistics . . ^. , _
statistics of the Census of 1910.
The following three tabular views give the statistics, not of the entire nine mountain states, but only of the two hundred and fifty-one mountain counties of these states.
I. The population of the mountainous portion of the Appalachian states is as follows:
XI : o
1
i
VM& fiifiW rORK I
i'UBLIC LIBRARY
AITOJ^, LRNOX
PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING 73
|
Total Population |
Total White |
Native White Parentage |
Foreign White Parentage |
|
|
Alabama |
681,867 315,449 580,919 184,806 394,018 204,601 860,145 837,319 1,221,119 |
497,624 270,430 562,301 175,660 359,693 145,044 779,113 713,323 1,156,817 |
471,451 267,884 555,685 151,720 356,876 143,450 762,212 700,308 1,042,107 |
15,843 |
|
Georgia |
1,789 |
|||
|
Kentucky |
4,531 |
|||
|
^'^aryland |
17,747 |
|||
|
North Carolina |
1,688 |
|||
|
South Carolina |
982 |
|||
|
Tennessee |
11,217 |
|||
|
Virginia |
6,913 |
|||
|
West Virginia |
57,638 |
|||
|
Total |
5,280,243 |
4,660,005 |
4,451,693 |
108,348 |
Foreign- born White
Negro
All Other
Alabama
Georgia
Kentucky
Maryland
North Carolina . South Carolina .
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia . .
Total.
10,330 '
757 2,085 6,193 1.129
-, 613
,\5,684 y 6,lb2 ^
57,072
184,098 45,003 18,421 9,136 32,842 59,549
. 80,922 .
123.880 64,173
89,964
618,024
145
16
197
10
1,483
8
110
116'
129
2,214
2. The number of persons ten years of age and over, by nativity and race, is as follows :
|
Total |
Native White |
Foreign- born White |
Negro |
|
|
Alabama |
496,075 223,462 398,771 141,499 277,937 145,331 625,349 609,845 903,822 |
345,039 190,478 382,459 128,411 251,949 102,704 656,427 511,870 798,150 |
9,964 733 2,045 6,054 1,102 598 5,519 5,891 54,646 |
140,970 |
|
Georgia |
32,236 |
|||
|
Kentucky |
14,137 |
|||
|
Maryland |
7,024 |
|||
|
North Carolina |
23,843 |
|||
|
South CaroUna |
42,023 |
|||
|
Tennessee |
63,335 |
|||
|
Virginia |
91,994 |
|||
|
West Virainia |
50,925 |
|||
|
Total |
3,822,091 |
3,267,487 |
86,552 |
466,487 |
74 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
3. The number of illiterate persons ten years of age or older is as follows:
|
Total |
Native White |
Foreign- born White |
Negro |
|
|
Alabama |
78,489 34,015 73,820 6,604 45,671 28,589 82,818 85,001 74,866 |
33,878 24,299 69,673 4,230 38,739 13,828 55,836 67,529 51.407 |
1,442 44 278 811 37 48 824 384 13,075 |
43,206 9,671 3 796 |
|
Georgia |
||||
|
Kentucky |
||||
|
Maryland |
1,501 |
|||
|
North Carolina |
6,518 |
|||
|
South Carolina |
14,713 |
|||
|
Tennessee |
28,303 |
|||
|
Virginia |
14 869 |
|||
|
West Virginia |
10,347 |
|||
|
Total |
609,873 |
359,419 |
16,943 |
132,924 |
Lack of Books
The sway of illiteracy is a most malign one. To be shut out from the sweet world of sacred Scrip- ture, of science, of history, of biog- raphy, and of literature in general, is to live in the shadow of a perpetual eclipse of in- telligence, and in a twilight that borders hard on the region and shadow of mental death. This illiteracy alone is sufficient to account for whatever deteriora- tion may be observed among our kinsmen of the mountains. There is no race of men on earth, be it French or German or Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon or Scotch-Irish, that can either attain to its true sphere or retain that sphere without the help of schools and of the periodical and book-world.
Another cause of the deterioration in the moun- tains can hardly be emphasized too Leaders ^^'''^^*®^ strongly. It is the lack of an edu- cated ministry, and, indeed, the lack of educated leadership of any kind. Even the
PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING 75
Highlands of Scotland would have sadly degenerated had there been no educated ministry to bring weekly influences of an ennobling sort to bear upon the peo- ple. To be deprived of an intelligent ministry would be calamitous enough even in a community of books and lectures ; but to lack it where there were no other educated leaders, and few, if any, books, would be fatal to high ideals or attainments. The educated leaders, so necessary even in the most highly enlight- ened community, have been sadly lacking in the se- cluded mountain districts. If our hillsmen had only known the pity of such a loss, dismal and unending indeed would have been the coronach with which they would have bewailed the loss :
"He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest Like a summer-dried fountain When our need was the sorest."
Let it be said here, however, that any generaliza- tion regarding the mountain preachers that would ig- nore the splendid service that has been rendered to civilization and Christianity in thousands of com- munities in the southern highlands by numberless humble servants of God who have preached his glori- ous gospel with all the powers they had, would be at once ungracious and unjust.
From the pioneer days God has had his loyal serv- ants of different faiths that, often at their own charges and often at much heroic self-denial, have for long lifetimes called the mountaineers to repent-
76 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
ance, right living, and the Saviour of men. Uncom- missioned by mission boards, unpraised and unsup- ported by outside bodies or churches, uncomplain- ingly and unflaggingly they have served Him who had called them to be prophets of the Great Smokies. And they have fought drunkenness, licentiousness, murder, and the other evils of the mountains, and have fearlessly raised a standard about which the re- deemed might rally. They were men
"Who all their lives in silence wrought, And then their graves in silence sought,"
never having suspected that they were, what God some day in the presence of all the church triumphant will proclaim them, worthy to reign over many celes- tial cities.
No "Old Mortality" can chisel deeper their names in orderly kirkyards, for the poor parsons of the hills lie in hillocks unmarked unless by a couple of sand- stones picked up from the rocky hillside by the kindly grave-diggers. But the God of all the earth keeps their names graven on his mighty and loving hand. Their fame is great in heaven, and let us not forget them — whether they were Wesleyan circuit-riders, or Lutheran ministers, or Baptist preachers, or our own Presbyterian parsons.
But after we have done full justice, if that is pos- sible, to the faithful though often illiterate mountain preachers, it is of course a notorious fact that there have been many others, in many communities, that have not been fitted by culture or nature or grace
PROBLEM'S REASON FOR BEING ^^
for the position of leaders of God's people. Illiterate, narrow, bigoted, and sometimes wrong in life, such men have been blind leaders of the blind, and both preacher and people have fallen, sorely injured, into the mountain ditch.
Where such leadership has existed, the confusion of thought and ethical standards has been great and sad. On the other hand, whenever educated, or at least somewhat educated, and naturally intelligent and wise men have stood for God in their strength of character and zeal, they have had an influence that would be utterly impossible in the lowlands. In those exceptional cases in which our own church or some other has, through a succession of educated ministers, stood by the work for generations past there is light to-day on the mountain, and the fruit of the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon in that light.
It is among the unschooled, the bookless, and the pastorless classes that false teachers find their prey.
As the writer has personally and Mormonism repeatedly seen the emissaries of
the Mormon abomination plying their mission of per- version and seduction among the Smokies, he has felt the same deep indignation that on other occasions he has felt upon hearing, at night, in his mountain vaca- tion camp, the baying of the bloodthirsty dogs in too successful pursuit of bleating and panic-stricken sheep. And what must the Shepherd of the sheep feel as he sees his flocks on a thousand hills the quarry of the tireless wolves of the West?
78 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
A doctrine in vogue nowadays is evolution. There is certainly a very strong social tendency that well
merits the name "de"-volution.
Evolitior ^^"^ ^"^^'' ^^^ '^""'^^ environment and
the forces of labor and intelligence
and religion are favorable, even Scotch-Irishmen cre- ated in the image of God will lose much that would otherwise indicate their proud descent. It is by no means unprecedented that isolation should injure even strong races. As Goldsmith says of the dweller in the Alps:
"But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, Each wish contracting fits him to the soil. And as refinement stops, from son to son Unaltered, unimproved, the manners run."
It cost the Scotch-Irish Protestants, besieged by James II within the walls of their Londonderry, the most heroic and strenuous endeavors on their own part, even under wise and able leadership, to save the city and to drive the Roman Catholic army from be- fore its walls. Indeed, their efforts had to be rein- forced by the relief that William III sent them before they could see Rosen and the Jacobite army raise the siege. Equally will it require heroic and strenuous endeavor on the part of the beleaguered mountaineers aided by wise and able leaders within, and reinforced by expeditions of relief from without, to raise the siege, and to make all the mountains what our fore- fathers made Londonderry — the happy home of thrift, intelligence, morality, and religion.
CHAPTER VII
Pioneer Presbyterianism and the Problem
The dominant faith of the pioneers in a large part of the southern Appalachians was Presbyterianism.
This is fully recognized by the his- Presbyterians torians of the different states in
were Dominant i • i ^i .. ■ ^^ c
which the mountams lie. bays
Phelan in his "History of Tennessee" :
"Religion in our state was coeval with immigration. The Presbyterians at first had every outlook to obtain a complete ascendancy in the religious thought and life of Tennessee. As they went they built churches, they established congregations, they formed pres- byteries. Presbyterianism was first upon the ground, and its ministers were leading figures in the state. They were men of strong characters, and the minds of men had not yet been turned to spiritual affairs. Besides this, they were practical school-teachers."
Similar testimony is given by the other historians of the border. The first Christian ministers that at- tempted to win the mountains for Presbyterians ^^^-^^^ ^^^^ o£ the faith of Calvin
were Active , ^jr -ri. t> u i. •
and Knox. The Presbyterian min- isters that were found in the first influx of pioneers
79
8o THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
lived exceedingly busy lives. They founded churches and schools, and took prominent part in all that con- tributed to the welfare of the new settlements. They participated in military expeditions and in the de- fense of cabin and blockhouse and distinguished themselves in constructive work in political affairs. They were preachers, educators, warriors, statesmen, and, in general, men of affairs among the frontiers- men with whom they had cast their lot.
The early ministers were indefatigable preachers, addressing the people in private houses, forts, the
^ , , «, , forest, and then in the log churches Founded Churches ^u 4. £ ^- ^ j f
that frontier reverence erected for
the worship of Almighty God, They organized churches at central places, and maintained there di- vine services as often as their large fields would al- low; and in these centers the people within a radius of ten miles or more gathered at the stated services, rejoicing that Providence had placed the means of grace at their very doors ! The woods around the church were filled with the horses of the surrounding country, for all the people that did not walk came on horseback by the various trails that converged at the house of God.
And these primeval preachers planted Christian churches in many of the more thickly settled sections of the Appalachians. Take Abingdon Presbytery, situated in the heart of the Appalachians, as an ex- ample. The members of that presbytery reported by name to the General Assembly of 1789 twenty-three
PIONEER PRESBYTERIANISM 8i
congregations, and eight years later twenty-two addi- tional ones. The indefatigable efforts of the pastors of the pioneers were crowned with most gratifying success.
The pioneers of the church were also the pioneers of Christian education and, indeed, of education in
general, upon the frontiers. Their Founded Schools ^^^^^ ^^^^ u^^^-^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ .
education and its school-house." Practically all the frontier forces of education were in their hands. The parsons were, almost all of them, pedagogues, "the first and the best" that the backwoods young people enjoyed.
In these schools the men that were to shape the affairs of state received the rudiments of their educa- tion. The ministers, however, were not yet satisfied with what they had accomplished, and in a number of cases established and conducted academies, in which thorough work was done by the founders who had, many of them, been educated in the best eastern institutions of learning.
In 1776 the Presbytery of Hanover founded Lib- erty Hall Academy, in Lexington, Virginia; but its predecessor, Augusta Academy, was established by Robert Alexander as early as 1749. Dr. Samuel Doak in 1783 secured a charter for Martin Academy, while in 1 81 8 he founded Tusculum Academy. Dr. Heze- kiah Balch established in the eighties his school at Greeneville. Dr. Isaac Anderson in 1802 founded, near Knoxville, Union Academy, popularly known as
82 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
"the log college," out of which grew the present Maryville College. And there were other academies scattered throughout the Presbyterian marches.
All the early colleges established within the range of the Appalachians were Presbyterian. Out of the
day-school grew the academy ; and Founded Colleges ^^ ^j^^ academy was added a col- lege department which was planned, founded, and con- ducted by Presbyterian parsons. Without other en- dowment than their fervent love for God and his mountain people, and their indomitable purpose and perseverance, these consecrated men conducted col- leges that served the cause of God even more grandly than the founders dared to dream.
The story of the Appalachians would be only im- perfectly told were no mention made of the splendid service of Washington and Lee University, as it is now called; Washington (Tennessee), chartered in 1795 ; Greeneville and Tusculum, chartered as Greene- ville in 1794, and as Tusculum in 1844, and now called Tusculum ; Blount College, now the University of Tennessee, founded in 1794; and Maryville Col- lege, founded as The Southern and Western Theologi- cal Seminary, in 1819. Hampden Sidney, founded in 1775, Centre College, founded in 1819, and Cumber- land University, founded by the Cumberland Presby- terian Church in 1842, though located outside the Appalachians, contributed to their illumination. These several institutions provided many of the leaders of Church and State not merely for the Appalachians, but also for the great Southwest.
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PIONEER PRESBYTERIANISM 83
Just as the first of these institutions trained among many other pioneer educators, the founders and first presidents of Washington, Blount, Maryville, Tus- culum, and several other colleges, so did these insti- tutions in their turn raise up a host of educators for the Southwest. Indeed, most of the professional men and other leaders of that great region received what training was theirs in the humble halls of these col- leges of the frontier. The records of these institu- tions, where any records have survived the ravages of time and of the Civil War, bear eloquent tribute to the unparalleled service our Presbyterian fore- fathers of the log colleges rendered in the making of the West.
The pioneer ministers, in view of their education, culture, and ability, were naturally deferred to even in
political matters. They assisted th ^^sf t^^^^ materially in the foundation of the
pohtical institutions of the fron- tier. The elders also of the Presbyterian churches were commonwealth builders of no mean importance and ability.
Among the laymen trained in the school of experi- ence and some of them educated in the log colleges, there were many who contributed largely to the estab- lishing of civil government in the new settlements, and, as the years went by, to the foundation of terri- tory and state. A book could be written specifying such political service rendered the cause of the nascent states of the Appalachians. The heroes of the Ala-
84 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
mance, while foes of tyranny, were champions of civil government.
The early ministers of the Appalachians were, like Paul, abundant in labors, in journeyings often, in
perils in the wilderness, in weari- And Were ^^^^ ^^^ painfulness, in watchings
Successful ^^^^^^ .^ j^^j^gg^ ^^^ ^j^jj.g^^ j^ ^^1^
and nakedness, besides being burdened with the care of all the churches. Like Paul, too, their labors were blessed of heaven. They laid the foundations of Christian commonwealths, tamed the wildness of frontier human nature, and won great numbers of souls for Him who preached the Sermon on the Mount. They established many churches, and replen- ished the fires on many family altars. They never suspected themselves of heroism, but their figures loom up through the mists of more than a century as worthies of true heroic race. Inspired by their creed and more still by their Christ, they consecrated their learning and their lives to the Christianization of their brethren of the Scotch-Irish border.
Their own generation might well rise up to call them blessed, while succeeding generations have not
done well if they have forgotten And Their Work ^^^^ ^hese brave chaplains of the ^'^^^^^ wilderness did for the militant fa-
thers of the frontier. Those faithful men builded not so successfully as they wished, but more wisely than they knew. While, for reasons that shall be enu- merated, the purely mountain regions were not ade- quately or permanently possessed, the more thickly
PIONEER PRESBYTERIANISM 85
populated sections were occupied by presbyteries and synods, which are to-day continuing and extending the work of the fathers. The statistical tables of the assemblies of the various Presbyterian churches occu- pying the field tell of the work that is being done.
CHAPTER VIII
Later Presbyterianism and the Problem
How did it come to pass that Presbyterianism failed to hold the predominance in the country after
the pioneer period? There are Partial Failure of ^^ causes that conspired to limit Presbyterianism . , r r> u .. • •
the spread of Presbyterianism.
Nowhere does the creed or the polity of any denomi- nation appeal without exception to all classes of peo- ple and to all types of mind in the community. This is as true and as natural as the fact that no political party has ever commanded the allegiance of all the people at any period of our national history.
The rapid decay of education that followed the set- tling in the mountains necessarily made a church less
welcome that insisted so much Decay of Educa- upon an educated ministry. The
tion Made it Presbyterian ministers recognized
Less Welcome , . / , „
this fact, and very naturally many
of them went where they were wanted, and where they could take their families with fair hope of sup- porting and educating them. They could hardly be expected to go where they were not especially wel- come.
86
LATER PRESBYTERIANISM 87
It was physically impossible for the pioneer preach- ers to reach the recesses of so vast a parish. The ter- ritory contains, as we have seen,
Territory more than one hundred thousand
Too Vast M 111 1
square miles; and the long and
lonely mountain roads are almost impassable during a large part of the year. As well expect a handful of merchants to do business for all the broad Appa- lachians. The population was far more sparsely set- tled in the early days than at present; and so all that the preacher could find at the end of a weary journey might be only two or three families.
Let it be remembered that those were the days of small things — beginnings only, in religious matters —
in America. There was no Gen- Mimsters ^^.^1 Assembly until Hanover Pres-
bytery was thirty-five years old. So were Lexington, Abingdon, and Transylvania pres- byteries older than the Assembly. There were only 266 Presbyterian ministers in the entire United States in 1799. If the 9,410 ministers even now belonging to our branch of the Presbyterian Church were to set- tle in the southern Appalachians, there would be room for all, and a parish of 568 souls for every one. The ministers of the early day had to be provided by the frontier church, for the demands for ministers by the rest of the rapidly growing country exhausted the en- tire supply; and this was true in an epoch at the be- ginning of which there was no Presbyterian theologi- cal seminary in the United States. Practically no
88 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
more volunteers could be expected from the North and the East.
If the cost of an education in these better days of the twentieth century hinders many from entering the Presbyterian ministry, as it confessedly does, what must have been true in those days of hardship and struggle for existence, when every male inhabitant was needed for the clearing of the wilderness, and "the winning of the West"? The few frontier min- isters did, amid their many other toils, educate such young men as they could find, who could support themselves, and who, they thought, would be useful in the ministry; but what were they among so many? The Presbyterian Church adhered to its time-honored requirements of a thorough training for the ministry, and made no modification of its conditions for en- trance into its ministry. All its ministers even in the mountains must have attained its high standard of education. Other churches profited by this fact, while the founding of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1810 by some Presbyterian ministers of the Ken- tucky frontier, was a protest against this rigid ad- herence to the law of "the book" on the part of the ancestral Church.
The pioneer was practically penniless, so far as money was concerned ; and after he had kept the wolf
of poverty from his own door, he No Church j^^^ u^^jg strength to devote to the
^Boards « , , , -nri
support of the church. What was
needed then is what is immensely useful now — a home-mission board that should tide the backwoods-
LATER PRESBYTERIANISM 89
men over the days of privation until they might be able to care for themselves. But not till 1802 did the General Assembly even appoint a Standing Commit- tee on Home Missions ; and at the end of a generation the entire income of the Board of Missions was only $27,654. The entire income of even the present great Home Mission Board would be found sadly inade- quate were that Board to attempt to supply the gos- pel to all the people of the southern highlands. Had there been a strong Home Board in the days of the pioneers, the story in the southern mountains would, however, have been very different. But the whole land was then mission territory without any organiza- tion that could assist in its evangelization; so the places that could support the gospel enjoyed the dis- pensation of it; while the poorer sections were, too many of them, forced to dispense with it. The Sus- tentation Scheme worked wonders in the Highlands of Scotland, and a similar scheme with financial back- ing would have greatly improved the condition of affairs in the American highlands.
There was a constantly enlarging field of work lying to the south and west, and the ministers heard the
insistent calls from every direc-
Many Ministers ^ion, "Come over and help us!" It Went West ' , , . ^ . .
was merely a choice among mission
fields, and many chose to go westward. A very large
number of the early ministers of the Southwest and
of the Northwest were originally from East Tennessee
and the valleys still farther eastward.
90 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
But Workers Did Their Utmost
Indeed, the Presbyterian churches of the Appa- lachians have been, from the first, constantly depleted in strength by a steady and uninterrupted stream of emigrants to the West. Hundreds of churches from Indiana to Texas and across to Oregon were founded largely by the Presbyterians of the mountains. In some cases entire churches removed bodily to the West.
The vi^orkers in the mountains savi^ all that w^e now see of the need and the strategic importance of their
position, and some of them made herculean efforts to meet their op- portunity. The records of the pres- byteries and synods that had to do with the region bore frequent testimony to the solicitude those bodies felt, and to the efforts they made to reach the desti- tute fields in the mountains. Long-distance criticism of the fathers' work would be silenced if the critics were to do as the writer has had the pleasure of do- ing— read the entire ofiicial records of one hundred and fifteen years' proceedings of one of those Appa- lachian presbyteries. The wants of the field were keenly realized, and noble efforts to meet those needs were made by a pitifully inadequate force. Their cry was an echo of the Master's : "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest."
Rev. Isaac Anderson, D.D., who had been educated at Liberty Hall Academy in old Rockbridge County, Virginia, found himself in early manhood an ordained
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LATER PRESBYTERIANISM 91
minister settled in the center of East Tennessee. As he viewed the religious destitution of the valley and
the mountains, his heart bled for Southern and the hurt of the daughter of his
Western Theologi- ^^^^^^_ ^^ ^^^^ ^ ^^^^^ pilgrim-
cai oeminaxy ^ . t~> *
age to seven-year-old Jrrmceton
Theological Seminary in the hope that he could in- duce some of the young men about to graduate from that school of the prophets to reinforce the inadequate band of toilers in the Tennessee mountains. In vain was his pleading, however, for were not many fields nearer home in dire need? And why not "begin at Jerusalem"? „....-•-*
Sorely disappointed, but daUntfess in his devotion and courage, this Presbyterian prince turned his horse's head homeward. During the two weeks' journey through the Shenandoah Valley and onward to his home, the shadow of the Appalachians was upon his spirit and conscience. In that shadow a mighty resolve was made — that since he could not bring the Princeton boys to his help, he would found a Princeton for the Southwest. He soon laid his plans before the newly formed Synod of Tennessee, and that body founded at Maryville The Southern and Western Theological Seminary. With a very little amount of help from man and with a vast amount of help from God's grace and providence, he put the rich gift of his life into the seminary, with the one purpose of raising up workers for the great mountain field of the South.
His broad shoulders bore an Atlas's load of toil, re- sponsibility, and privations, till thev tottered and fell
92 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
under the burden. But he had given thirty-eight years to his seminary — or Maryville College, as it came to be called — and had the unspeakable joy of seeing, besides hundreds of trained Christian laymen, as many as one hundred and fifty of the graduates of his school enter the Presbyterian ministry. At times a majority in some of the mountain presbyteries were graduates of his training. And no one can com- pute the indirect influence of his great work and life upon the other churches of the highlands. God showed in Dr. Anderson what one consecrated life could do for the redemption of the mountains.
We may here anticipate a little. The troubles that led to the organization of the Cumberland Presby- terian Church, and to the division The Divisions of ^f ^he mother church into the Old Presbyterianism , ^.^ o , i u j i
and New Schools, had perhaps a
more paralyzing effect in the Appalachians than else- where, because of the already weak condition of the church. These schisms resulted in the extinction of the church in some places, and reduced it in many other sections to a state of mere existence. And, as if these internal difficulties were not enough, the na- tional strife culminating in the Civil War added an- other line of cleavage to an already twice-bisected church. Thus several disunions took away much Presbyterian strength.
Few who were not present in the section can im- agine the overthrow of church life that was wrought, especially by the cataclysm of the Civil War. The most conscientious and earnest men on both sides of
LATER PRESBYTERIANISM 93
the controversy, including no small number of elders and ministers, went to the front, and armies of them offered up their invaluable lives as a pledge of their consecration to what they deemed right.
Let us revert now to the condition in which the pioneers discovered themselves when the Presbyterian
Church found the region too im- Other Denomi- mense to cover with the resources
at its command. There could not be an educated ministry provided or supported in most sections of the mountains, and so the region was thrown upon its own devices as it sought to secure a ministry.
Since educated ministers could not be found, or sup- ported if found, men without special education were necessarily made preachers. The denominations that did not have an educational standard for the ministry took the places of the absent Presbyterians. A great number of these ministers served absolutely without compensation, except the reward of conscience that comes to men who please Christ. None of them re- ceived any adequate salary; and so preachers were farmers for six days of the week. They organized their churches and the Presbyterians in the mountains united with those churches.
Many of these men preached the gospel with all earnestness, and were of untold benefit to the moun- tains in which they prosecuted their simple-hearted ministry. The pity is that their number was inade- quate to meet the needs of the mountains. Their sue-
94 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
cessors are still upholding the cause of Christ in the Appalachians, and they deserve generous reinforce- ment and appreciative recognition at the hands of all Presbyterians.
Since there was a general lack of organized efforts to provide the gospel for all the sections, a consid-
erable number of thinly populated
Some Unchurched j- - • . i r. ■j.t. \
Neighborhoods ?/'^""^', ^"'^ ^"^^ ^^^^^"^ ^">^ ^^-
ligious leadership of any kind, and
so have remained to this day. The deplorable results of such deprivation can easily be imagined. And in such communities the children of the Presbyterians, to their sorrow, shared in the heart-famine that pre- vailed.
When the Presbyterians in the remoter mountains
were absorbed by the denominations that took pos-
p X -p session, so far as any possession
•h-^i^^r,;^-^ "ii„« ' was taken, they did not cease to bytenan Age . , . ,
impress their hereditary influence
upon the region in which their distinctive name was lost. It is believed that they contributed to the moun- tains as a permanent legacy and reminder of their ex- istence these distinctive principles: (i) The su- premacy of the Scriptures; (2) the sovereignty of God; (3) man's direct responsibility to God; (4) the vital interest of theology; (5) the Christian Sabbath; and (6) the dignity of the individual. There were several principles that too nearly vanished or passed into echpse in the mountains with the passing of the Presbyterians. These were : ( i ) The imperative
LATER PRESBYTERIANISM 95
need of an educated ministry; (2) the equally im- perative need of popular education; and (3) the su- premely imperative need of the family altar. And the Presbyterians of to-day have something to do in re- placing these losses of a century of neglect.
CHAPTER IX Present-day Presbyterianism and the Problem
The formation, the analysis, and the early Presby- terian treatment of the Appalachian problem have
thus far engaged our attention.
i.i.°^ i-T^ -. But a problem exists to be solved,
the Problem ? . ^ ^ . . . _ „, .'
just as a proposition of Euclid is
a Q. E. D. The all-important question then is before
us — How is this present problem to reach solution?
The answer is simple though triple ; it is this : The Appalachian problem is to be solved by means of three agencies — (i) the economic or material de- velopment of the mountains; (2) the perfecting of the public school system; and (3) the multiplying of the uplift agencies of the various churches and of other philanthropic organizations.
In order that industry and energy may have full development and exercise in the Appalachians, labor
must become remunerative, wages By Development ^^^^ ^^ available, markets must of Economic Life , ., ,
become accessible, trade must
flourish. Money and markets will be two mighty mo- tives to help arouse the mountains to new life. Amer- ican enterprise is at work as never before hastening
96
PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM 97
this first-named element of the solution of our prob- lem— that is, the economic or material development of the mountains.
The Appalachians are one of Nature's choicest storehouses of treasures. The very air and water are assets, and make the mountains the sanitarium of the states east of the Mississippi. The tide of immigra- tion is beginning to turn from the West to the South. Exploitation companies are developing the vast tim- ber, mineral, and hydro-electric resources, and pros- pectors are penetrating every recess of the mountains in search of new investments and hopeful fields of operation, and their search is being rewarded. Rail- roads and even white lines of turnpikes are steadily pushing their way into the mountains. Mines are be- ing developed and manufactures established. Agri- cultural experiment stations are demonstrating that even the mountain soil will in many places yield a fair reward for the labor expended upon it.
This industrial invasion will incidentally introduce much evil, but it will prepare the way for better things. It will break up the isolation. Better an in- vasion that will bring opportunity and prosperity to the old mountain home than a hegira down to an un- wholesome mill village and child labor therewith on the sweltering plain. If the rewards of labor are forthcoming, shiftlessness will disappear. The days of no trade and no money are passing away. The mountaineer sees it, dreads it, and will profit by it.
The second element in the solution of the Appa- lachian problem is the perfecting of the public-school
98 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
system. In most of the states in which this Appa- lachian range is located, there is a very great increase
of interest and effort in behalf of By Perfecting of ^^^ common schools for all the
Public Schools 1 r 11 4-1, 4-- C 4.U
people of all the sections oi the states. Noble, large-minded leaders have been preach- ing the new crusade against ignorance and in favor of public instruction, and more and more of the peo- ple and of their legislators are joining the crusading armies.
Not forever are the children in the insular pos- sessions of the United States to have better instruc- tion and better educational advantages in general than have these mountaineer sons and daughters of the American Revolution living in the very heart of the republic. Not forever are the teachers of the public schools to be recruited principally from the untrained youths who have barely passed the grade they at- tempt to teach. Not forever is the money invested in court-house and jail to exceed that invested in the schoolhouses of the county, as is often the case at present.
Largely increased appropriations are being made, and many improvements in the system of public schools are being introduced. Laws providing for compulsory attendance are being enacted. Progress hitherto has been slow and delayed. It will be the work of years to attain to a satisfactory system, but every patriot must rejoice that something better lies in store for the children of the highlands. Hope de- ferred has made the heart sick ; but now a better day
PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM 99
is dawning. It may be added that in the public
schools of the mountains the reading of the Bible will
be welcomed. The people want it.
The other element in the solving of the problem
of the Appalachians is the multiplying of the uplift
agencies of the churches and of
?y ™?^i^Ply^^& °^ the other philanthropic organiza- Uplift Agencies . ,, ^ , . , • ., •
tions. Now, what share m this
great work the Presbyterian Church is to have is a
matter that concerns all those who love the old Kirk.
Is there any special phase of the work for which
our church has special equipment and adaptation?
What is the special mission of Wnat Is the present-day Presbyterianism in the
Mission of Our a , , . 0 -vxr 11 4. 1
Church? Appalachians? We may well take
a little time to blaze out our course over the mountains. It is a happy fact that we have but to follow the course of the Home Board as it has followed the leadings of Providence during the past quarter of a century to find a safe trail already blazed out very distinctly over these mountains of the South. In general, the mission of present-day Presbyter- ianism in the Appalachians is, so far as in it lies, to
discharge here as elsewhere, the To Preach to ^^^ ^^^^ Christ's world-wide com-
Every Creature . . , •. 1 . j
mission lays upon its heart and
puts into its hands. The apologies that the Church owes are to God for not more promptly carrying its share of the Gospel message to the mountains, and are not to any men or denomination of men for now carrying it there.
100 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The present duty of Presbyterianism is also to dis- charge the debt that it owes its brethren in the Ap- palachians. It owes a duty to To Discharge brother Americans "beleaguered
Debt to Brethren , ^r . ■ , . ■ r .
by Nature m the mountain fast- nesses" ; for ours is a national church, with a duty to perform to all sections of the land. It owes a duty to the descendants of the Scotch-Irishmen ; for, though not all Presbyterians are Scotch-Irish, most Scotch-Irish were originally and even yet the major- ity are, by principle or prejudice or tradition, Presby- terians ; and Presbyterianism exercises but common sense in recognizing that fact. It certainly owes a peculiar duty to the descendants of a Presbyterian ancestry, to us the proudest lineage on earth. "Blood is thicker than water." The Presbyterians of these halcyon days of Presbyterian strength and achieve- ment should do what their hard-pressed fathers longed to do, but were prevented by their providential limitations from being able to do.
The Presbyterian Church is the broadest and most tolerant in Christendom. It would not re-enter the
mountains with any spirit of de- To Help Other nominational zeal or with any
Denominations , r i • .■ r .■, .^
word of depreciation of the other
churches of the Appalachians. Besides being un- christlike, it would be exceedingly out of keep- ing with the proprieties of the case for us to criticize the brethren that have "tarried by the stufif."
Rather do we turn with deep gratitude to the faith- ful servants of Christ, of whatever name, who have
PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM loi
cared for the religious interests of the Appalachians in spite of difficulties that have tried men's souls. It is the duty of present-day Presbyterianism to run to the aid of our hard-pressed brethren of other denomi- nations and contribute to the common cause that which will make their work far more effective and satisfactory, while at the same time it introduces a fresh body of workers into a region where the force now employed is on every hand confessed to be piti- fully inadequate.
The time-honored means of preaching and teach- ing the word by evangelism and school are of course
necessary in the mountains, as io iiinploy, m elsewhere. Indeed they are more
Methods effective there than in most parts
of our country. The holding of tent meetings has been of service in gathering together new congregations for organization into churches ; and by the means of such meetings the efficient missionar- ies of our Sabbath-school Board have organized and fostered many Sabbath-schools, often in regions where there had never been such schools. For the organiza- tion of churches, no more speedy or efficacious means can be employed than are those put into practice by the heroic and energetic missionaries of the Sabbath- school Board. And here valuable assistance is also rendered the other denominations, who oftentimes are greatly benefited by the services given by our Sab- bath-school missionaries. This phase of Christian work might well be indefinitely increased in view of
102 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
the providential favor that has been manifested to it.
The organization of a Presbyterian church in the mountains, however, should mean more than the or- ganization of a nucleus of ill-indoctrinated or un- trained church members to be ministered to once or twice a month. It should rather create a center where earnest and all-the-year-round efforts should be made by every method known to the wise winner of souls to render it a city set on a hill, a light set on a stand.
No less than in other communities does the pastor here need to be a shepherd, safefolding his flock from grievous wolves. Here no less than elsewhere is the Bible-reader and catechist or community worker jus- tified by the results of her work. A permanent, shin- ing Presbyterian church will be one of the greatest contributions to a mountain county that our zealous Church can make; and the benefit rendered will be many fold greater than can be computed merely in terms of advantage to the mother Church that estab- lished it.
The Presbyterian Church, however, has reached a
practical consensus of opinion as to what is its chief
mission in the southern mountains. Bu^ Principally, j^^^ ^-^^-^^ -^ ^^ ^^
to Educate .,„,.. , . ' ^ ,
vide Christian education for the
young people who are to be the future leaders of the mountains. This is, of course, recognized as an ex- ceptional case.
Usually the Church looks upon itself as an evan- gelizing agency. But in the Appalachians it recog-
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PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM 103
nizes the fact that here the most successful way to contribute to the coming of the glad day when the mountains will be fully evangelized is to educate the young people of the mountains. What hope of build- ing up good Presbyterianism or good Christianity of any type if a large proportion of the people cannot read, or search the Scriptures that testify of Christ? What hope of founding a substantial work so long as educated leaders with a desire for improvement and progress are lacking? It is evident that the Appa- lachian worker must lay broad and deep the founda- tion of education and intelligence before he can erect a permanent Christian church that shall largely im- prove the people for whose good it is consecrated.
When this Presbyterian policy was at first in process of formulation, some of our people were un- easy lest the Church might pervert Supplementing -^^ ^^^^^ -^^ ^^- ^^^y. ^^^^ ^^^
State Education ^ ^ . ■, 7 , t> ^ ,
state IS supposed to do. But such
doubters have now come to see, first, that in this re- spect the southern mountaineers are an exceptional population, and need an exceptional treatment; sec- ondly, that the speediest way to revolutionize the region they inhabit is to give a large body of the young people such a thorough Christian education and religious training as will render them the great evan- gelizing and elevating force of the future; thirdly, that the states involved are not yet giving the rural districts of even the "flatwoods" at all adequate schools ; and fourthly, that they can never give the Christian education and religious training so abso-
104 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
lutely indispensable to the new mountains that all Christian patriots wish to see.
The chief bane of the mountains is the absence of education and of Christian education at that; and the
remedy for the evils that exist, so Education the ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ j^ ^ remedy, is to be
Open Sesame ^ . . ... j /-i • .•
found m enlightened Christian
education. This fact is keenly appreciated by the dis- cerning ones in the mountains, and they eagerly long for the wondrous panacea for their ills. The broad- minded ones will welcome and encourage and aid all efforts made by any church to contribute what it may to the education of the mountains.
The people of the Appalachians will hear their own sons as they speak of needed advance and improve- ments; but they will not listen to Educate strangers. They are too proud-
spirited to do so. Education, then, is the best means for reaching comprehensively and collectively our brothers of the mountains. The schools will create the new generation that, as Grady said of the New South, will see "their mountains showering down the music of bells, as their slow- moving flocks and herds go forth from their folds ; their rulers honest and their people loving, and their homes happy, and their hearthstones bright, and their conscience clear." They will mold public opinion and change time immemorial conservatism, and introduce the best and most wholesome gifts that the modern world can put into church and home and heart.
PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM 105
This Christian education must be of the most wide- visioned kind. It should bring to the service of the
mountains the most modern, sci- With Education ^^^^^^ practical, and helpful
Wide-Visioned , , ^u j r ^ ^- 4.u
phases and methods 01 twentieth- century education, and yet hallow it all with the hope- ful and happy spirit of that godliness that "is profit- able unto all things, having promise of the Hfe that now is, and of that which is to come." Preachers and teachers and community workers, the three forces enlisted in the Christian education of the people, will contribute by all the means within their power to the enlightenment of the future leaders of the people. It will teach the care and preservation of the health of that body that is the temple of the Holy Spirit. In connection with the sanctification of the life, sanita- tion of the home will be indoctrinated into the people, so that typhoid, tuberculosis, and the other scourges of the hills may be driven into permanent exile, and their armies of victims be saved to the country. The teachings of science as to the influence of alcohol and narcotics upon health and life will affect the young mountaineers as they affect many young lowlanders, and will rapidly strengthen the armies batthng against intemperance and degeneracy. This Christian educa- tion will interest itself in boyhood and girlhood, and will busy itself in providing wholesome play and sports and recreation in order to break up the monot- ony of the mountains and to brighten the rather som- ber character of mountain childhood and youth. It will encourage whatever will foster the ability of the
io6 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
farmers to earn a comfortable living from the soil — to substitute modern and scientific methods of agri- culture for those that have proved themselves pitifully deficient or inadequate. It will strive to make a worthy, attractive, and homelike home out of every cabin in the hills. It will strive by day to accomplish these results, and, where feasible, it will strive even by night, for has it not the happy results of the Rowan County, Kentucky, "Moonlight Schools" to encourage it? And it will do all these things and whatever else is in its power in order that the bless- ings of the best Christian civilization may be shared by all our brothers and sisters of the mountains; and that, as it thus prepares the way of the Lord and makes straight a highway for our God, the glory of the Lord may be revealed, and all flesh may see it together.
Such Christian education best pays the debt we owe to the churches that have been left comparatively
alone in the mountains. Their best
J. ^nJ.^^^^^' workers and many of their minis- to Other Churches . f^
ters will receive the benefits of the
Presbyterian schools and centers. And as we gladly
train their workers for the common service of our
Lord and his mountain vineyard, there will disappear
from men's hearts the fear that we are merely a
proselyting agency, seeking our own advancement in
the way of territorial expansion or numerical growth.
The mere fact that for various reasons some local
leaders may not appreciate the educational invasion,
and that others may be found even to antagonize it,
PRESENT-DAY PRESBYTERIANISM 107
will not prevent the service rendered from being a real and far-reaching one.
The statesmanlike leaders of the various denomina- tions represented in the mountain work recognize the magnitude of the task before the united church of Christ, and both heartily welcome the contribution that our Church is making toward the performance of the task, and generously speak in handsomest terms in recognition of the character and extent of that con- tribution. The first Interdenominational Conference of Mountain Workers was held in Atlanta in April, 191 3, and was marked by the most cordial and fra- ternal unanimity among the representatives of the various churches, and by evidences, on the part of all, of enthusiastic and hopeful devotion to the cause of the mountain people.
Another happy result of the carrying out of this mission of present-day Presbyterianism has already
been greatly to stimulate other de- ^^^•l^*^V?^^v^ *° nominations on the field and away
from the field to similar efforts to afford the Appalachian youth the Christian training that they so much desire. This is an indirect result of Presbyterian efforts, but one that is already joy- fully witnessed and should still be hopefully looked for by the Church ; for thus Christian education is ex- tended to the rising generation in the mountains, and the common cause of the Lord of the mountains is conserved.
What matters it if credit be not always given to the real cause, and even ingratitude sometimes greet the
io8 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
best sacrifices the Board and its workers can make?
Jesus, our Master, was kind, for love's sake, to the
unthankful. The great heart of
,J^ J}^. . the mountain people will beat
More Light , „ , ^ , ,
gratefully, and the future will
cheerfully acknowledge the debt it owes to the old
Church of their fathers. The statistics of the good
done by the Church will be accurately kept in heaven,
even if most of it does not find tabulation in the
"Minutes of the General Assembly."
CHAPTER X
The Day-schools and Smaller Community Cen- ters
The entire Presbyterian Church should acquaint it- self with the magnitude of the service rendered the
southern highlands by its accred- A Notable Uplift -^^^ agents, who have by heroic
and herculean labors built up and carried forward an Appalachian uplift system that has been the pride of the mountains, and that ought to be the pride of the Church. The colleges in the Appalachians, most of them, were founded by the pioneers, and are venerable in age and service; but almost all the rest of the schools and community cen- ters have been organized and established within the past quarter of a century.
The Board of Home Missions and its officers have been unswerving in their devotion to the service of
the mountaineers. The successive And NotaMe synodical superintendents and the
Builders Thereof -^ • ^ i ^ £ .u i u
supermtendents of the work nave
counted no labor too arduous for them, and have even zealously assumed personal obligations, and raised special funds to continue or to advance the work dear to their hearts. The rank and file of the mountain
109
no THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
workers, a consecrated band of ministers, teachers. Sabbath-school missionaries, and community workers, have toiled and moiled, planned and executed, strug- gled and triumphed in the cause that led them often far from home, but always near to Nature's heart and humanity's heart and the great heart of God. No wonder that a cause championed by brave souls should have prospered bravely even beyond human ex- pectation.
If we leave out of account the colleges, which are not connected with the operations of the Home Board,
it will be seen that our Church has
UplfftSysJem "^.°^"^ ^°' ^^^ Appalachians a
triple system of uplift influences or forces : ( i ) Day-schools and community centers ;
(2) boarding-schools and large community centers;
(3) normal schools. A few years ago the deplorable dearth of school facilities in the remote mountain dis- tricts led the Woman's Board to establish large num- bers of primary or day-schools in the most destitute districts. These establishments served the double pur- pose of schools and community centers. So remark- ably successful were these schools in awakening the communities in which they were located and in arous- ing public opinion in favor of education, that many of these communities have found themselves able with the help of the larger appropriations now being made for the support of the public-school system by the states of the southern mountains, to assume for themselves the support of the schools within their borders. In such cases the Woman's Board has gladly closed its schools,
DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER CENTERS in
thankful that the crutch it had loaned is now no longer needed. In some cases, where the need of continued occupation was not imperative, the workers have been entirely withdrawn; but in other cases, where there was still sore need of the help the Church could ren- der, the workers have continued to serve the people, transferring their entire energies to the many lines of general and religious community uplift for which, in the former conditions, there had not been sufficient time, and by means of which they could more rapidly and effectively contribute to the metamorphosis of the mountain. In some stations the public school is still so entirely inadequate for the needs of the chil- dren that it has been deemed necessary to continue the Board's school. The system of uplift service is, then, in process of adjustment. Meanwhile, however, it may be said that every day-school is a community center; and every community center is, in its essence, a school of some sort. But now these day-schools and community centers call for our more particular attention.
A certain mountain community has practically no public school and has never had an adequate one.
And the children live on and ex- The Center— jg^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ develop. Tidings
Its Genesis , i. • a
come by some mysterious Appa- lachian wireless telegraphy, announcing that the peo- ple of T'other Mountain or somewhere beyond the bar- riers have had their children taught by some women that came there to live; and the tidings report the beneficial efifect the instruction has had in "smarten-
112 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
ing up" the children. And chimney-corner councils are held, and meditative pipes are smoked; and so one day the cause of the children sends out an em- bassy to beg for a school for Daddy's Mountain, too. And the good mission teachers of T'other Mountain are touched by the awkward but eloquent plea for the unknown children, and they write a letter.
In the course of time, a man with a mule reaches the mountain. Both the man and the mule have an interrogative air about them. Did circuit-riders ever reach that wilderness, the man might be a circuit- rider. But, in fact, he is a Presbyterian sky-pilot. He investigates the needs of the field ; and the peo- ple readily promise to give some land, and perhaps to build a temporary cabin home and a cabin school- house. Then the mule and the man pick their slip- pery way down the rocky trail and disappear. "Out in the flatwoods" things happen — Presbyterian system makes them happen — until, in the fulness of time, the epochal event takes place: two community workers reach the spruce-pine cabins and begin to live for the rising generation of Daddy's Mountain. "God made two great lights. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."
There are now on Daddy's Mountain all the elements that are needed for such a renaissance as the old dead
mass has long needed. The ad- Conditions of the ^,.g„^ Qf the miners, or even of the Renaissance .,, , , . ,,
sawmill man and his godless
"hands," has sometimes transformed a mountain glen
DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER CENTERS 113
into an amphitheater of revelry by the introduction of wild recklessness and the vices of the valley. But the coming of the teachers means the regeneration of the community.
Everything that is best in our civilization centers about the Christian home. The teachers ere long
have a simple but attractive cot-
1. A Model Home ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ becomes, in its fur-
nishings, its comfort, its neatness, and its genuine homelikeness, an ideal and a model for the people that come from far and near to see it for themselves.
These are the days of demonstration farms, and demonstration canneries, and demonstration road- making; but here is something higher yet, even a demonstration home. And slowly but surely the dem- onstration convinces, and the cabins, especially those of the younger folk, begin to take on some of the features of the teachers' home, now the norm of all homes to the people of the neighborhood. And pur- pose number one of the establishment begins to be realized.
The consecrated lives in the cottage, however, are the principal agents in the renaissance of Daddy's
Mountain. The spiritual forces of
2. The Workers ^^^^^ jj^^^ ^^^ ^^^ heavenly dy- namics that God employs in the vitalizing of dead lives and the quickening of inert purposes. The most observant eyes on earth surely are those that day after day, with X-ray penetrativeness, observe these teachers. And when those eyes see in the heart of the teachers unselfishness and genuineness and Christ-
114 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
likeness, they brighten with hope and emulation. Of none is it true more completely or in more senses than of these teachers, that they do not "live unto themselves" ; they could not do so if they would, and they would not do so if they could, since it was for this cause came they into the mountains — that they should there bear witness to the truth.
Though the strongest influence these workers ex- ert is the silent influence of their daily lives, their
words have a power such as in less ' , __ P, - unsophisticated communities would
be utterly inconceivable. They be- come the oracles of the children and, to a consider- able extent, the authority of the adults. They open the book world — and that is, after all, the entire world — to the delighted eyes of their pupils. To have a tabula rasa put into their hands for such inscriptions as they may choose to write makes their work a seri- ous responsibility, but also awakens an enthusiasm that nerves them in their isolation. Their proteges have little to distract their attention, and make most cheering progress.
Besides maintaining their home as an everyday ob- ject-lesson in housekeeping and home-making, the
community workers attempt to ^Training in ^^.^j^ ^^^ j^.^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^
Home-makinff , , , ,. ,
can reach them, the women of the
community, in the mysteries that out in the wide, wide
world go under the labels of domestic science and
home economics. And right eager are the maidens
of the hills to learn the strange but simple and ex-
0)
E
o
o 03 OJ
C
O
o CO
illfc
UB^^^^
^^J^o^;^^^
DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER CENTERS 115
perimental lore regarding food-stuffs and food-values, cookery and sanitation, and dress-cutting and dress- making, that the workers lay before them. It is, how- ever, through the Mother's Meeting that adult and maternal hearts are aroused and reached. A moun- tain mother will respond, as any mother will, to what- ever will benefit her child. And when the workers follow up their teaching by house-to-house visitation, they add force to their teaching by their kindly pres- ence and sympathy in the home. Zenana work may be more unique, but it can hardly be more useful than this mountain Christian Settlement Work.
Many of the workers give sirnple instruction along practical industrial lines. The extensive exhibits
sometimes collected at the annual
Trainir*"^^ Mountain Workers' Conference
raining ^^^ ^.^^^ School at Maryville Col-
lege, surprise visitors with their evidence of the un- expected extent to which the busy mountain workers have been able to give attention to training along in- dustrial lines, from the kindergarten stage and up- ward. The Home Board's pamphlet on "The Allan- stand Cottage Industries" is a revelation as to how the supposedly obsolete spinning wheel and loom can be made to give forth even in the twentieth century both beauty and utility. Mountain boys, too, take kindly to the training in the making of box furniture, mission furniture, and the like.
Recognizing the truth that is being emphasized by lecturers on the Country Life Movement, that a man
ii6 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
must be able to make a comfortable living before he can be expected to be a very useful citizen, the work- ers in our community centers are w ^^^"^^"5^ devoting more attention than ever
Campaigns ^° co-operating with those govern-
mental and private agencies that are attempting to bring to the rural population, even to their very doors, the valuable suggestions and helps as to their problems and opportunities that specialists are preparing for their use. These new friends of the mountaineers — for all real mountaineers are rural folk — bring hope in their every accent, for they assure our highland people that with proper methods of agricul- ture and horticulture, most sections of the mountains can be rendered much more productive than they are at present. Miss Goodrich tells of girls' tomato clubs started last year under the charge of one of the workers in the Laurel region who has been appointed collaborator in Madison County, North Carolina, by the United States Department of Agriculture. With the assistance of this Department, three "Farmers' Days" were held in the Laurel field, with addresses from specialists on practical farm matters. During the current year fifteen community centers, including the Laurel and Marshall fields, in French Broad Pres- bytery, are experiment ground for the development of community work, under the direction of the Home Board.
The Presbyterian Church and its mountain workers believe that the entrance of God's words giveth light ;
DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER CENTERS 117
and so they make every center pre-eminently a Bible school. Throughout the years they direct and develop
-, ^., , „ , the study of the Book of books.
7. Bible Study t., • j u ^ c ^\
*' ihe memories and hearts of the
children are being enriched with the truth of God, and the minds of even the aged are being brightened by the glory that "gilds the sacred page," So central a place does the Bible hold in this mountain work that very appropriately the name first given to community, workers was "Bible-readers." Dr. Calvin A. Duncan gives the following outline picture of the methods employed by these Bible-readers :
"The women employed as Bible-readers establish a model home where Christ is first in all things. The house is inexpensive, yet neat and comfortable. It is kept clean within and without. Great care is taken to comply with all sanitary conditions. Choice flow- ers bloom in the yard, and the premises are made as attractive as possible. Mothers' meetings for prayer and Bible study, sewing of garments and helpful con- versation, are held in this home. Then the homes of the people are visited, the sick and dying are minis- tered to, and words of comfort are spoken to the be- reaved. In some instances medicines are supplied and administered. The Sabbaths are full of work, these women often superintending the Sabbath-school, lead- ing the singing, and doing most of the teaching. Then there is the young people's meeting and the prayer- meeting work. It seems to me that if our Saviour were here on earth he would be doing just such work as these good women are doing."
Ii8 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
Running through all these various modes of serv- ice and dignifying and irradiating them all is the „ dominant and supreme purpose on
Relfjoua Training 'I' P"' f '"^ 7-''"^.'° f -"-h
the kmgdom of God m the com- munity. They, like Micah, have an all-controlling ambition that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and that it shall be exalted above the hills, and that people shall flow unto it. And to this end they endeavor to make everything contribute to the alignment and train- ing of the people in lives of clean morals and pure religion. Then, too, once or twice a month the near- est Presbyterian minister comes and holds services in the schoolhouse, with the mountainside gathered about him. Occasionally, too, the Sabbath-school mis- sionary visits Daddy's Mountain, and reinforces with all his might the Sabbath-school of the mission set- tlement. Thus do all branches of the work unite in one common flood of spiritual blessing for the neigh- borhood and the school. And thus is ushered in the new generation on the old mountain.
The results of a day-school appear with almost miraculous swiftness. The influence of the school ap- pears first of all in the children. Results: 1. Com- ^^^^ j^ j^ ^^^ j ^^^jj ^^^ ^^^j^^
munity Aroused , ,
community reveals a new move- ment and life and ambition. The women "red up" the cabins, and the men begin to plan for something new on the farm. Windows appear in the cabin homes. Morals tone up, and temperance men grow
DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER CENTERS 119
aggressive. The Sabbath becomes a marked day, and every day has sung into it the new songs of hope and activity. The people have heard the sound of a gong in the tops of the trees, and have bestirred them- selves.
Of course the work must encounter opposition and misunderstandings. There are prejudices of conserva- tism that would not be disturbed,
2. Old People ^^^ ^f inertia that would not
® ^® move, and of pride that is hurt.
But the difficulties are not greater than are those that must be met in any mission work. Much of this opposition is honest and can be overcome; such part of it as is selfish must be endured in the strength that God gives. But where the children go the hearts of the parents follow, even if at a distance; and so the older people, too, are influenced by the workers, who instruct them principally by proxy. And they are helped so far as adults fixed in their ways can be helped. And many appreciate the workers as they deserve to be appreciated, namely, whole-heartedly.
However, the principal efifect of the community centers, as was to be expected and desired, is found
to be in the transforming of the
3. Young People ^^^ generation, the hope of the
future. A few years of awakened community life put the light of intelligence flashing in their eyes, irradiating their minds, and illumining their hearts ; for God's will has been done, and there is light! Instead of aimlessness, a definite mission is theirs! Life has possibilities and opportunities for
120 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
them. And, while all step up to higher thoughts and deeds than were their fathers', some look out beyond the tree tops and mountain ridges toward a higher school of which they have heard. And now and then, by the election of God and God's children, one of them is led off of Daddy's Mountain, out to that higher school to prepare for — God knows what.
In the course of the years, the people, in many cases, call for a church organization; and so the far- off presbytery is communicated
is granted and the church is found- ed. And now to the community center and the school- house there is added a church house, to prepare them the more fully for that home of the soul of which the young people have learned so much since the workers came to Daddy's Mountain.
And all this change has taken place in a few short years; for in the Appalachians men do not have to wait, in such work as this, so very many days for the finding of the bread they have cast upon the waters. The harvest is speedy.
A minister of another denomination has written the following tribute to the mountain workers of our
church : "No one who has ob-
VisitS°^^ °^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^^^ progress of the schools
established by the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. can fail to be impressed with the wonderful transformation they are working. I remember having sent an appointment to preach at a schoolhouse in a community that I had never before
DAY-SCHOOLS AND SMALLER CENTERS 121
visited. It was in a remote country district, and I expected to find a rude, ill-favored people, rough in voice, manners and dress, such as I had frequently met in this section before. Arriving at the place a few minutes before the hour for preaching, I thought I was to have no congregation, because I had been accustomed to see the people stand in crowds around the church door and chew tobacco and crack rude jokes until the preliminary services were over and the minister was ready to commence the sermon.
"On this occasion no one was to be seen, but as I dismounted a handsome, bright-eyed youth came out and introduced himself with an easy grace unusual in one reared in a remote country home. I remarked to him that I supposed my congregation would be small, judging from the present outlook. He informed me, however, that the house was full.
"I entered the building and to my astonishment faced as neatly dressed and intelligent an audience as you usually see. I was astonished when I heard them sing, and I could hardly preach for wondering at the evidences of refinement, intelligence, and good taste before me. When the service was over, three or four bright, intelligent ladies came forward, intro- duced themselves, and told me they were conducting a school there under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church. The appearance of the population had been transformed in a few years by this school,
"If Christian philanthropists all over the country could really understand the fruitful field that lies be- fore them in this section, they would not stop until a
122 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
model home and a model school were maintained in every community. Some denominations have spent all their energy and their money in this section in evangelistic work. Evangelistic work is well, but it is of little use to get people converted unless you put into operation some means by which to develop them in piety, and instruct them in the practical duties of Christian life."
The first day-school in the South under the Wom- an's Board of Home Missions was established in 1879, . . at Whitehall, North Carolina. In
May, 1913, the superintendent of school work reported mountain schools and com- munity centers of all kinds under the Woman's Board's care as being 48; teachers and community workers, 132; boarding pupils, 1,175; ^^Y pupils, 960; industrial pupils, 252 ; total pupils, 2,387 ; Sabbath- school scholars, 5,019; members of young people's so- cieties, 1,230; number of conversions, 321.
CHAPTER XI
The Boarding-Schools and Larger Community
Centers
The establishment of day-schools and smaller com- munity centers in the remoter rural districts is justi- fied by the spirit of Christianity, which is especially interested in the individual and in the unfortunate. And God has set his seal of approval upon this form of his church's activity.
Christian statesmanship, however, calls also for the occupation of whatever centers of population may
exist. Life proceeds from the The Strategic j^^^j.^ ^^ ^^^ extremities. Thus the
County Seat 1111 j j
church has always reasoned, and
so has occupied the strategic points that command other points. The pioneers established their acade- mies, if in the country — there was little but country in their day — at any rate in the most thickly settled parts of the frontier. The mountain county seat is sometimes only a village, but is always the largest place within the county limits. From it roads radiate to all the civil districts of the county. Its character affects the entire county. Capture for education and morality the people within sight of the court-house, and the county itself will ere long also capitulate.
123
124 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
These facts led our mountain synods and pres- byteries and their synodical superintendents — espe- cially those men of apostolic la-
Acrdemirs^^ bors, the late Rev. Donald Mc-
Donald, D.D., former superintend- ent for Kentucky, and the Rev. Calvin A. Duncan, D.D., former superintendent for Tennessee — to en- deavor to locate in the county seat of each mountain county destitute of such a school a Presbyterian acad- emy, either under presbyterial control or under the control of the Board of Home Missions. In 1887 the Synod of Tennessee had nine such academies un- der the care of its presbyteries. The local friends, aided to some extent from abroad, provided the neces- sary buildings; while the modest sums required for current expenses were secured from tuition, dona- tions, the Board of Aid for Colleges and Academies, self-denial — and always faith.
In 1905 there were within the limits of the Appa- lachians and of the Synods of Kentucky and Ten- nessee nineteen academies and Academies and boarding-schools, all Presbyterian,
though not all of them connected with the Board of Home Missions. There were also several listed by the Synod of Tennessee as "day- schools" that had done and were doing academic work; they were Grassy Cove, Huntsville, Sneed- ville, Elizabethton (Harold McCormick School), Flag Pond, Erwin (John Dwight School), and Mar- shall. So there were twenty-six schools, aside from
BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 125
the preparatory departments of the colleges, where an academic education could be secured.
As the Presbyterian patriot a few years ago read the distressing statistics that the Southern Education
Board had collected regarding Worthy of the these mountain counties and as he Kirk of Knox ^^^^^ ^^^^ Board's clarion call to
patriotic action in behalf of these counties, he experi- enced a sense of solid satisfaction in the knowledge that one division of the old Kirk that boasted Knox and his school system had made this substantial and beneficent contribution to the educational interests of nearly thirty counties of the Scotch highlands of America. As men count polls, the mountain synods connected with the Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. are but a feeble folk; but nevertheless they have large love for the mountains, and they had behind them a mighty Church and a Home Board that also feels "the call of the blood."
The purpose sought in the establishment of the schools of high grade was the same as in the case of
the day-schools and community Policy and centers — to train Christians for
^ life's opportunities. The policy
was to make each academy and boarding-school a center of influence in all the county or region from which the students gather; to train new envoys of intelligence and send them out into many neighbor- hoods to pass the truth and training on to their friends; and thus to exempHfy the cheering truth of mathematics — that ten times one is ten.
126 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The very useful careers of several of these acad- emies and boarding-schools were cut short as the
result of the awaking of interest in
T, J , the public schools, an awaking that
Rendered .1, . , ,1,1
these church schools themselves
had done a great deal to bring about. The states of the southern Appalachians have recently enacted leg- islation providing for the establishment of county high schools, and so it has been deemed best by the Woman's Board in many cases to terminate the regu- lar high-school work of our schools, and to seek other methods of serving the mountains. But the schools have already been in existence long enough to have rendered invaluable service, and in some cases to have wrought a moral and intellectual transformation in the counties they served that seems almost miraculous. They had performed a most timely and patriotic part in the renaissance of the mountains.
In this period of transition in the public-school sys- tem of the Appalachians, some adjustment of the
work of our church has been made Future Service necessary. After earnest deliber- ation it has been decided: (i) that there must still be some boarding-schools main- tained in certain strategic centers of the mountain region; and (2) that there should everywhere be sympathetic cooperation with the civil authorities on the part of our church, so that its work may supple- ment their educational work by the providing of Bible, industrial, and manual training under the care of its teachers. This annex will, in general, be warmly wel-
BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 127
corned by the school authorities, and at the same time provide our Christian workers the best of oppor- tunities for the moral and religious training of the young people. It is believed that in this cooperation with the public-school authorities, but entire independ- ence of them, will be found an economical, workable, and most effective mode of helpfulness to the young people gathered in the county seats for their high- school training.
The different boarding-schools now operated by our Church in the synods of West Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee have plants varying in Twofola ^Qg^ from ten thousand to two hun-
dred thousand dollars. The prop- erty value of all the schools is given in detail in the Appendix. The buildings employed have been con- structed with a view to considerations of utility, but are generally attractive as well as useful. The chief equipment of the schools, however, is, of course, the teaching force. The teachers have been carefully chosen for their happy blending of scholarship, teach- ing ability, genuine character, and Christian devotion. They enter upon their work in the fear of God and with the love of souls. They uphold high standards of scholarship. And in the carrying out of the gen- eral policy of the church in the establishment of these schools, they spend their days and nights in the en- deavor to send back into every part of the mountains earnest, scholarly, and efficient young men and young women to share with others their acquisitions in edu- cation and character.
128 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The mountain boys need Christian boarding- schools ; but more yet do the mountain girls, the fu- ture mothers of the new moun-
tr 1 ' -B/r i tains, need them. The bane of iso-
Help Most , . ' , r , ^ ,.r ,
lation and of the Crusoe hfe has
told most heavily on the girls and women. They have suffered most. "The mountains are a good place for men and dogs, but they are hard on women and horses." Gallaher sings the praises of the "Mothers of the Forest Land," and nevertheless adds the quali- fying words:
"Yet who or lauds or honors them Even in their own green home? "
The district school may lighten their gloom with the illumination of the three R's, but it is the boarding- school that kindles the light of the outer valley world and the inner Christian life. As the girls come in contact with devoted and cultured Christian women, they are transformed by the education of the heart and mind alike. Their longings are satisfied, their ideals are elevated, and their ambitions are awakened. To many of them the opening up of the new oppor- tunities is like the cleaving of the rock in a thirsty land. And so it is to all the mountain youth that are suffering from a long-time and often insatiable thirst for knowledge — the kind that the boy Lincoln had, while, outstretched on the puncheon floor of his fa- ther's cabin, he pored over his well-thumbed book, with the aid of a pine-torch light.
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BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 129
Although the purpose of this book makes it un- necessary to describe in detail the work done by the
colleges of the Appalachian sy-
^]^® ^°"®8:e* nods, it would be impossible to
of the Synods , , , . ,
overlook them m any such sum- mary as we are now making. All the colleges re- ferred to have found it necessary, as indeed, have all other colleges of the section, in order to serve their constituency to the best advantage, to conduct pre- paratory departments in connection with their college departments. So the Presbyterian Church has had in successful operation, in several cases for a century past, college annex boarding-schools which have trained and sent out many thousands of the young people of the Appalachians. The usefulness of these institutions cannot be measured by their lists of alumni, worthy as those lists are. The influence of their undergraduates has been far greater than that even of their graduates. Davis and Elkins (estab- lished in 1904) in West Virginia, and Pikeville (1909) in Kentucky are the junior members of the octette. Centre College of Central University and the Kentucky College for Women, formerly called Caldwell College, are located in the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, and Cumberland University is lo- cated in the Central Basin of Tennessee, but all three of these historic institutions have had many students from the hills. The East Tennessee trio of colleges, Washington, Tusculum, and Maryville, were, as stated in a former chapter, established by the Scotch-Irish pioneers to educate the young people of "the fron-
I30 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
tier" and "the Southwest," and incalculable has been their service. The Presbyterian Church may well be proud of what its colleges in the three synods of the southern mountains have accomplished for the region they have served.
Let us turn now to the regular boarding-schools that represent our church in the three synods. In
Lawson, Raleigh County, West Stockdale Virginia, stands one of the young-
Memorial f , , 1 , T^ • ^
est of these schools, the rattie C Stockdale Memorial Home Industrial School. The attractive main building accommodates forty girls. The manse, occupied by the pastor who serves the large field from Clear Creek to Jarrold's Valley, is built on the school grounds, as is also the neat chapel- schoolhouse. The Stockdale Memorial is the only boarding-school representing the Woman's Board in West Virginia. It lays special emphasis upon domes- tic science and industrial training.
Strategically located on the Big Sandy branch of the C. & O. Railroad, in Pike County, the eastern- most of the thirty-six mountain
Pikeville counties of Kentucky, Pikeville
College ^ „ , , •;
College deserves handsome treat- ment at the hands of the great church that placed it there on outpost duty. It was established as an acad- emy in 1889, and organized as a college in 1909. It has thus far confined itself to junior college work. The total valuation of its property is about seventy- five thousand dollars. There are three buildings. The Derriana dormitory for girls, a forty thousand dollar
BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 131
hall, was presented by Mr. John A. Simpson, an elder in the Covington Church. The college is under the control of Ebenezer Presbytery, and also under the care of the Synod of Kentucky.
At Buckhorn. in Perry County, Kentucky, on the Middle Fork of Kentucky River, at the mouth of
Squabble Creek, stands Wither-
c!^lleT^°°'' spoon College. This very remark-
able and prosperous school is con- ducted by Rev. and Mrs. Harvey S. Murdock and ten assistants, and is supported by the Lafayette Ave- nue Church of Brooklyn. The eight buildings are utilized to the utmost. Hospital clinics are provided for the needy mountainside. The Englewood farm is tilled by the students. More than three hundred stu- dents are enrolled. The additions to the church mem- bership at Buckhorn were last year the largest in the Synod of Kentucky.
In 1892 a day-school was begun in Harlan, Ken- tucky. In 1896 buildings were erected for an acad-
„ , .r , , . , emy and for a girls' dormitory. Harlan Industrial t^, n ^ r ,,
Ihe average enrollment of the
academy for the years 1901-1911 was two hundred and forty-six. In 191 1 the academy work was transferred to the public school authorities, and the work con- ducted by the Woman's Board was changed to that of an industrial boarding-school for girls. This school has cooperated with the public schools, and supple- mented their work. It is hoped that general com- munity and extension work will ere long be largely developed in this interesting center that has been at
132 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
once so gratifying and so conspicuous an evidence of the transforming influences of Christian education in the mountains. The town of Harlan is growing rapidly, the school population having risen in three years from two hundred and seventy-one to seven hundred and fifty-one. An excellent public-school building has been erected at a cost of seventeen thou- sand dollars. The admirable new church edifice, to cost thirteen thousand dollars, now in course of con- struction, will itself be educational in its influence.
About fifteen years ago Presbyterians in Kentucky established in Mt. Vernon, Rockcastle County, the
Mt. Vernon Collegiate Institute.
Langdon Memonal t - ..i. i. i.
" In 1905 the property was trans-
ferred to the Brown Memorial Church of Baltimore, by whom in turn it was transferred, in 1908, to the Woman's Board of Home Missions. This Board, largely aided by the Brown Memorial Church, sup- ports and directs the school. In honor of Mrs. Lang- don, who built the dormitory as a memorial to her husband, the school is now called the Langdon Memorial Industrial School for Girls and Young Women. The county authorities have recently taken over the high-school work formerly conducted by the Woman's Board; and now the Langdon Memorial, under the wise leadership of Miss Rose McCord, has adjusted its work to supplement the work of the county high school. Many of the high-school girls board in the Langdon Memorial, and take Bible, do- mestic science, and industrial training under its work- ers. Kindergarten and music are also provided by the
BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 133
workers. Both community and extension work have been carried on with excellent results. It is believed that much more effective uplift service can be ren- dered by our workers under the new arrangements than when the entire high school was in their charge. Mossop Memorial Industrial Boarding-school for Girls, Huntsville, Tennessee, is the successor of
Huntsville Academy, which was es- Mossop Memorial ^ablished by Kingston Presbytery in 1885, and which continued its beneficent work till 1907, when it was taken over by the public-school au- thorities. At comparatively small outlay an immense benefit has been meted out in the education of the young people, in the renovation of the public schools, and in the establishment and multiplication of Sab- bath-schools. One of the leading men of Huntsville, after enumerating the many ways in which Scott County had made remarkable progress, bore this voluntary testimony : "Your Board is not entitled to all the credit for these improvements, but your church and school should be given more credit than all the other agencies known to me." In 1907 a guar- antee of partial support from two generous donors for whose parents the new school was named, made it possible for the Woman's Board to estabHsh an in- dustrial boarding-school in a property presented for that purpose by Tennessee women. The property in- cludes the dormitory located on twenty acres bor- dering the town on the west, and a two-story acad- emy building upon one acre in the eastern part of the town. It is valued at $9,600. The school is confined
134 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
to boarding pupils, accommodates thirty, with three teachers, and is always full. It is operated upon the principle that the surest and quickest way to uplift the community is to qualify young women to be compe- tent Christian home-makers. Under the superintend- ence of a principal and with the efficient coopera- tion of Dr. and Mrs. Henry S. Butler, the school has from the first been a model one, and happy are those accepted as its students.
On the northeastern edge of the great valley of East Tennessee, in Carter County, under the Unakas,
TT ij -IDT n and upon the beautiful Watauga,
Harold McCor- , ^, , ^ ^^. ,,
. 1 e u 1 where the heroes of Kmgs Moun-
mick School . , , . , -r-r , ,
tarn rendezvoused, is the Harold
McCormick School of Elizabethton. A few years ago this useful academy was transferred by the Wom- an's Board to the Home Mission Committee of Hols- ton Presbytery, by whom now it has in turn been transferred to the control of the Board of Trust of Tusculum College. For seven years Rev. W. C. Clemens has been its principal, and under his guid- ance it has not only given a general education to many, but has also prepared a goodly number for college.
Our church has been strongly drawn to the Old North State. Mt. Mitchell's lofty summit looks down
upon eight of our boarding- NortrStaTe* schools, all of which are within one
hundred miles of that mountain. The fact that annually large numbers of tourists and seekers after health from the Northern states visit
BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 135
Asheville and the surrounding country has made this
region the one best known to the church at large.
The investments that the church has made here are
the largest made in the mountain region.
At the state line, as one goes up the gorge of the
French Broad River from Tennessee, is Hot Springs
■n 1 J T j.-i i. and its Borland Institute. Dr. Borland Institute _ , , , ,. 1 , ,
Borland established the mstitution
in 1887 in his old age, and it stands as a pledge of the providential approval of his life of devotion to his Master. In 1893 the Woman's Board assumed the work. The plant has grown to be an excellent one. The girls' dormitory stands in the town of Hot Springs. It is three stories high and well-built, con- taining rooms for sixty girls and the teaching force. Two miles away is the Institute farm, "The Willows," where is the boys' dormitory with accommodations for fifty students. Close to the girls' dormitory stands the school-building of eight class-rooms where the boys and girls study and recite together; and practice cottages, in which the girls in rotation are instructed in housekeeping and home-making. This is the only secondary coeducational school in the mountains car- ried on by the Woman's Board. Incidentally it may be added that in its eighteen years' existence it has been remarkably successful in establishing Christian homes. The social life of the young people is under the faculty's close supervision, for they regard it fully as much a duty to teach young people right social habits as it is to teach arithmetic or history. So eager were the young men for the privileges of the
136 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
Institute, that, before a dormitory was provided for them, they occupied a tobacco barn that was lent them for use as a dormitory. On "The Willows" farm, one of the best in Madison County, the young men find opportunities for practical farm work; they also do the housework. Borland Memorial Church, in the town, near the institute buildings, is a church home for all students. The average annual enrollment for the decade closing in 191 1 was two hundred and twenty pupils. For eighteen years Miss Julia E. Phillips has been principal, and during that time has impressed her character on the institute and upon literally thousands that have attended it.
A special interest attaches to Bell Institute, located in a romantic and beautiful mountain setting, in
.„ „ ., . the village of Walnut, Madison
Bell Institute <- 4. -kj ^.u r- v £ v
County, North Carolma, for it was
founded and conducted by the former Cumberland Presbyterian Church. After the union of this church with the Presbyterian Church of the U. S. A., Bell In- stitute, in 1908, came under the care of the Woman's Board of Home Missions; but there is continued as- surance that this school, in the very heart of the mountains, is still especially dear to the hearts of the founders, for a lively, practical interest in it is mani- fested by them at all times. The industrial boarding department accommodates fifty girls, and the day- school, which is coeducational, has a capacity for an equal number. A principal, three teachers, and a matron comprise the faculty. Twenty-two pupils graduated this year, more than one-half of whom plan
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BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 137
to continue their work in higher schools. The prop- erty consists of a large dormitory building, and a com- modious chapel and school building, in an enclosure of seven acres of land. The total value of the plant is seventeen thousand dollars.
In Burnsville, the county seat of Yancey County, is the Stanley McCormick Academy, fostered during all
its history by Mrs. Nettie F. Mc- BurnsvilleAcademy^^^^^j^j^ It has been a presby--
terial academy, under the care of the presbytery of French Broad, but has been transferred to the control of Mrs. McCormick. Its excellent buildings and equipment are valued at over fifty thousand dollars. Under the management of a large and efficient corps of teachers, the academy is most worthily justifying its right to the enviable vantage ground it occupies.
Crowning a commanding and beautiful site one mile from Concord, in the Piedmont region, out beyond
Asheville and the mountains, Wa Sunderland ^^^ Laura Sunderland Memorial
School is fulfilling its beneficent mission. It was the outgrowth of the first school es- tablished by the Woman's Board in the South, and was designed to reach pupils from the farm, the mountain, and the cotton mill. It provides a boarding- school for sixty-four girls, who are chosen from a long waiting list. A large proportion of the students are young women too old for the public schools. The eight common-school grades are covered in five years, and training is given in housekeeping, domestic econ- omy, sewing, cooking, agriculture, and gardening. As
138 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
a result of the strong religious influences all the stu- dents are professing Christians. This hive of busy bees, too, has had the advantage of continuity of wise administration, for Miss Melissa Montgomery has been in charge for the past seventeen years.
At Asheville stand the three schools that form, as it were, the apex of the Presbyterian Home Mission
school system of the Appalachians,
Asnevilie ^^ representing the largest invest-
Schools . , ,
ment m money and workers and
effort. As representative of the entire school work they will be spoken of in a separate chapter.
When the course of study has been completed, the graduates of these schools go forth to live their fu- ture lives and to exert their future
Where the influence. Some are already at
Graduates Go , , , , .^ • ^ t
home, and take up their share of
the responsibility for continued advance in the com- munity that is the home of the school. Others return to their homes in the country to improve them, and to introduce a new life into the neighborhood. They become leaders in public sentiment and public prog- ress. They hurry up the evolution of the hill country. In some counties almost all the public-school teachers are former students of our boarding-schools or acad- emies. They also wake up the Sabbath-schools.
The danger of conservatism is petrifaction. Galdos tells of the peasant lad, Celipin Centeno, as setting out from the mines of Socartes, with his little budget in his hands, in search of the place where he could become "a useful man"; and what Galdos says of
BOARDING-SCHOOLS, LARGER CENTERS 139
Celipin might be said of many an Appalachian youth trained in our schools : "Geology has lost a stone, and society has gained a man." Some of the young peo- ple push on, with help, through the colleges of the synods, and then go out to serve the church at home and abroad; the number of such recruits is consid- erable, and is increasing. The purpose of the estab- lishment of the schools is abundantly justified.
CHAPTER XII
The Asheville Schools
AsHEViLLE is an ideal site for any school, and espe- cially for such as are intended to contribute to the
^, , ^ solution of the Appalachian prob-
Ideal Location , -r,- . ^ •
lem. Picturesque America can
hardly boast a panorama of more impressive grandeur and surpassing beauty than is that presented from any eminence in this queen city of the "land of the sky." The romantic Swannanoa and the French Broad unite their waters near the city and contribute the only addition that the lover of natural beauty could ask to complete the perfection of this North Carolina landscape. Just above this junction of the rivers, the estate of Biltmore lies in all that unique attractiveness which nature and art have given it. A climate that is believed in by the physicians of all the states attracts every year tens of thousands of rest- seekers and health-seekers to Asheville, to the Sapphire country, and to all the mountain region within easy access of the capital city of western North Carolina.
In such a noble natural setting the Presbyterian Church has located four schools of magnificent
140
THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS 141
achievement and even more splendid promise. The money invested in the permanent plants of these
schools amounts to two hundred Rich Investment ^^^ sixty-five thousand dollars ; but so economically has the investment been made, and so wisely administered, that it is equal in efficiency to what twice that amount would be in many places. About five hundred and fifty young people were gathered in the four schools during the year 191 3.
The plan of the schools prevents any unnecessary duplication of work. The very names suggest the ^ .,,«,. X difference in the scope of the in- Fourfold Object ^^j^^^ions. The Pease Memorial House for Little Girls is a school home for girls from six to twelve years old, and provides Instruction in the first four common-school grades. The Home Industrial gives a home industrial training to girls from the fifth grade to the eighth. The Normal and Collegiate Institute affords to girls and young women a four years' course of normal and collegiate train- ing, and special courses of training in domestic sci- ence and domestic arts. The Farm School provides for boys and young men instruction in the common- school branches, and in industrial training in the shop and on the farm. Thus is a wisely coordinated and yet differentiated work carried on in four institutions with the economy and efficiency of a single institu- tion. Let us look at the work of these schools some- what in detail, as being typical of the work of the other worthy schools that have been merely men- tioned in the foregoing chapters.
142 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
I. The Pease Memorial House
The Pease Memorial House for Little Girls was
erected in 1908. Although special preparation to care
^.,,, „ , for little girls in the Home Indus-
Little People ^ • 1 c u 1 r -1 1 J t-
•^ trial School family had never been
made, the most needy cases could not be refused, and
there were always some little folk in the family. The
erection of a building for the care of the little ones
was, then, not an experiment but an extension. In the
first edition of this book it was spoken of as "The
Annex That Must Come."
Fifty-five boarders were received the day Pease House opened, and during the school terms there has not been a vacancy. Forty of the girls are twelve years old and under, and of this forty the most are from seven to ten years. The girls of Pease House compose the practice school of the Normal and Col- legiate Institute.
Fifteen of the older girls do the heavier work of the house, but all the children, including the tiny tots of five and six years, have some share in the work of keeping it tidy. Out of school hours, when not playing vigorously out of doors, or quietly with dolls, or poring over some favorite book in a quiet corner, they are as busy and happy as birds building nests. At the same time they are acquiring right ideals as to future home nests of their very own.
The work of Pease Memorial House is in no sense that of an orphanage. Some of the children both of
THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS 143
whose parents are living come from remote moun- tain districts where there are very poor or no school
advantages. By far the greater large Work number are half orphans, whose
mother or father does the utmost to support the child, thus keeping loving touch with her and look- ing to the future when they will again have a home together. This is a great incentive for the little girls to learn all they can about housekeeping and home- making. Last year $2,110.29 was paid by the parents toward the meeting of school expenses.
2. The Home Industrial School
Several lines of providential guidance led to the es- tablishment of the Home Industrial School. In 1870,
Rev. L. M. Pease and his wife, The Hand of broken in health by their labors at
the Five Points Mission in New York City, went to Asheville in search of health. Childless themselves, they were giving their lives to the service of childhood; and so they naturally be- came deeply interested in the children of the moun- tains. Business reverses frustrated the purpose they formed to found a school for these children, and they were compelled to open their home to boarders. In their Christian home many visitors, including the Rev. Thomas Lawrence, D.D., and Miss Elizabeth Boyd, afterwards the wife of the Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D., became interested in their efforts in behalf of the mountain children, some of whom Mrs. Pease was training as helpers in the home.
Miss Boyd, while spending the winter of 1884 in
144 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
South Carolina, became deeply interested in the poor children near her, and gathered some of them about her and gave them lessons in kitchen-garden, and at the same time instructed them in the saving truths of the Scriptures. At the annual meeting of the Wom- an's Executive Committee in Saratoga in May of the same year, she made a fervent appeal for the opening of mission schools for the neglected children of the more destitute parts of the South.
The appeal could not be granted until the General Assembly should enlarge the scope of the commit- tee's work and until funds should be provided. Later on these hindrances w^ere removed, and the Board of Home Missions upon the authorization of a liberal friend took steps for the purchase of property. By an opportune and providential telegram sent the Board by Dr. Lawrence, a location in the mountains was chosen. Mr. and Mrs. Pease transferred to the Home Board their property, including their home and thirty- three acres in the suburbs of Asheville, reserving for themselves an annuity for their lifetime. Thus the location of the projected school was most happily de- cided, and a property valued at thirty thousand dollars was secured.
Miss Florence Stephenson, of Butler, Pa., assistant principal in one of the public schools of Pittsburg,
was appointed principal of the The Devotion of ^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ position she tne rounders , n, i , i
has filled to the present with un- varying efficiency and success. Before the end of the year four other teachers were assisting her; while
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THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS I45
Mr. and Mrs. Pease for six years devoted their entire time to the interests of the school. The Home In- dustrial was opened in the fall of 1887, and was soon filled with seventy boarders and forty day-pupils. The building has grown by successive additions until it now accommodates one hundred boarding-pupils and their eight teachers. Were the building three times its present size, it could be filled immediately by eager pupils.
The school is filled with a home atmosphere in which a healthful, sane, and earnest Christian Hfe is
lived. The family life is per- Tlie Scope of meated with the spirit of daily
worship, Bible study, honest toil, and unselfish service that fill the busy round of each day's duties. The teachers have turned aside from higher salaries elsewhere to give themselves to this work, and they put their lives into their holy task. The making of wholesome and Christian home- makers is their constant aim. The school is an in- dustrial home. All the girls, as daughters in a home, engage in the household duties under direction of the household mothers. All are trained in kitchen-garden and cooking classes, in sewing, dressmaking, and in other domestic arts. Instruction in the fifth to the eighth common-school grades is provided.
Scholarships of one hundred dollars each sustain
the pupils, most of whom come
. , Support from the remote mountain dis-
of the School . • . t . o ^ -j
tricts. Last year ?3,440 was paid
in tuition and board by such as were able to contribute
146 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
toward their own support ; while the entire cost of the school was $14,500. The broad Appalachians and the honor of the Saviour and of his church receive rich returns from this investment in the making of new homes for the mountains.
3. The Farm School
In 1893 plans that had been maturing for at least two years were realized in the inception of a work
^ ^ , for the boys and young men of
Its Development ^ m ..u r- r ..u ^
^ western North Larolma that was
designed to be similar to that for girls already so well established in the Home Industrial School. The Home Board purchased a farm of four hundred and twenty acres lying on the beautiful Swannanoa, about nine miles from Asheville. The school was opened in November, 1894, with three instructors and twenty- five boys. Since that time the school has steadily ex- panded, until in 1913 it reported property to the value of $62,000; total expenditures of the year, $18,734; and receipts from tuition, $1,852; while the value of farm and garden produce was estimated at three thousand dollars. Two hundred acres have been added to the original farm, and an electric lighting plant has been installed.
The Farm School is first of all a "school" in which the boys are thoroughly instructed in the various . grades of the common schools.
^ Then, as the word "farm" sug-
gests, it is an industrial school, planned to train its stu- dents especially as farmers, but also to some extent as
THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS 147
carpenters. The boys do most of the housekeeping also, a fact that ought largely to enhance their value in the matrimonial market. The third design of the school is not mentioned in its name, but it is all-per- vasive in its life. That design is to make good Chris- tians as well as good farmers. A Sabbath well spent, followed by a week of practical Christianity, includ- ing the reverent and daily study of the Bible, results in an overmastering Christian sentiment that, for ex- ample, has been manifested during the past years in very many ripening characters and in large numbers of professions of faith in Christ.
The threefold design of the school is happily realized. A steady supply of sturdy lads and manly
^^ ^. , ^ .^ young men is sent out into the An- Its Rich Fruitage , , . • , , , •
palachians with the deep impress
of their manual, intellectual, and religious training manifest in all their being. Some go on to college, and enter the ministry and other professions; some become teachers, or enter business life; but, as was hoped, many more return to their homes to practice and pass on to others the new ideas and ideals with which their life in the Farm School has endowed them. Faithfully do the superintendent, J. P. Roger, M.D., and thirteen consecrated coworkers adminis- ter the trust for the church. The Farm School de- serves liberal support at the hands of the church it so admirably serves.
148 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
4. The Normal and Collegiate Institute
"In the founding of this school the Woman's Board have placed the keystone in the arch of their work in
the mountains of the South." In School^^^*°^^ 1892 there was established on the
property given by Mr. Pease to the Home Board an additional school, for which the growing educational work in the Appalachians had prepared the way and also created the necessity. There were already many mission schools, and there would be many more. These and the public schools were calling for teachers to the manner born. The church saw the opportunity to do a most efficient serv- ice to the mountains and the adjacent regions by pro- viding teachers thoroughly prepared to direct these schools. And so by the benevolence of philanthropic friends the keystone in the Appalachian Home Mis- sion school system was put into place; and the Nor- mal and Collegiate Institute was that keystone.
Just across the lawn from the Home Industrial, an extensive four-story building was erected, which in
191 3 provided a school home for
two hundred boarding students. At the entrance to the grounds stand the manse and the Elizabeth Boyd Memorial Chapel. The chapel was erected by Dr. Dodge, the president of the Board of Home Missions, as a memorial to his wife. In it gather for the Sabbath worship the girls of both schools and residents of the neighborhood. The church organization, bearing the name Oakland
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THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS 149
Heights, is self-supporting. In such a commodious plant, then, the Normal and Collegiate Institute has enjoyed its twenty-one years of uninterrupted pros- perity under the principalship, first, of Dr. Lawrence, and then of Professor E. P. Childs.
The girls of the Normal come from the four moun- tain states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Ten-
^ ^,. nessee, and Kentucky, and an in-
Its Clientage • u u i.
" creasmg number each year enter
from our own mountain schools conducted by the Woman's Board. In 1913, out of a total enrollment of 200 boarding pupils, sixty or more came from these elementary schools. The ages of the students range from fourteen to twenty- four years. The pu- pils come principally from the country, for the In- stitute is not designed to furnish "cheap education" to those who could easily obtain educational advan- tages elsewhere.
There are sixteen teachers and officers in the fac- ulty. The teachers are from the best normals and
colleges of the country, and are
Its Teachers ,, j r i.i, 1 •
well prepared for the work m
which they are engaged. The result is an admirably conducted institution.
There are four courses of study: (i) Normal, providing an excellent training for rural teachers es- pecially, and including a practice of^StiiT^^ school of five grades. (2) Col-
legiate, providing thorough prepa- ration for the advanced women's colleges of the North and South. (3) Domestic Arts, including dressmak-
150 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
ing and millinery. It is the intention to extend this to a two years' course in order to give sufficient train- ing for teachers of domestic arts. (4) Domestic Sci- ence, affording training in home economics. It is planned to make this also a two years' course for the training of teachers. While there is no separate reg- ular course in music, two competent teachers are em- ployed to give instruction in instrumental and vocal music, and emphasis is placed on normal training in this line for public-school teachers. Excellent choral work is done by the pupils.
The domestic work of the school home is done by the pupils as a part of their training. By a system of
_T , . work list assignments each girl is
Home-makinff . . . , r , ^
given experience in every kind of
home work — cooking, care of the dining-room, care of dormitories, the laundry, and the like. The prin- cipal purpose of the school is not simply to help in- dividuals but to train leaders and to send strong in- fluences for righteousness and sane living into many communities, and thus to affect the life of a multi- plied constituency.
The religious character of the school is evident in all its activities. A strong Bible department is main-
_ ,. . ^.^ tained under a special teacher, at
Religious Life ^ ^, . r ., ^ , , ,
present the pastor of the Oakland
Heights Church, and systematic instruction is given throughout the four years of each course. A very active branch of the Young Women's Christian As- sociation renders material assistance in the Christian work of the school. The Association cabinet take
THE ASHEVILLE SCHOOLS 151
charge of the mission study classes, and frequently conduct the chapel exercises. The entire faculty frankly and persistently emphasize the Christian char- acter of the school, and every effort is made by them personally to bring all the pupils into a close personal relationship with the Christian activities of home and church. No one has yet graduated from the normal course who was not a professing Christian, and a very large majority of the graduates have been active workers in Christian lines. In 1913 all but five of tJhe students were professing Christians.
The girls who have graduated from the institution in these twenty years of its history have justified the
hopes and plans of its founders The Outcome ^^^ ^^ ^jj ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^ p^^^ ^^
teachers and helpers in its activities. They have taken with them such a spirit of helpfulness that their in- fluence has been felt wherever they have gone. County superintendents highly esteem them as teach- ers, because of their character and earnestness as well as on account of their thorough preparation. Wher- ever these graduates go, they have a part in the work for general uplift, civic order, and public welfare. Quietly and without parade the cause of Christian education in the secondary grades of school work has been advanced throughout these mountain states by the Normal and Collegiate Institute.
CHAPTER XIII Appalachian Power
We have thus far, in our study, directed our atten- tion to the problem that the southern mountains pre-
-, , , „ sent to the country in general and
Problem, Power, ^ ^u n ^ . • ^. , • Promise ^^ Presbyterian Church m par-
ticular. The mountains, however, are much more than a problem; they are embodied power and they are stored-up promise. Before we take leave of our general theme, let us consider it from these additional points of view. And, first, let us consider what we may term Appalachian power, recapitulating and emphasizing those elements of that power which our study has already disclosed to us.
Power and its conservation is nowadays an in- tensely popular topic in industrial and scientific cir- ,_ cles. Let it be water power, wave
Pop^lL Theme P°'^^''' '"" P""^^""' ^^"^ P^^^^'
steam power, electrical power,
radium power, or power of whatever kind, — it rivets the attention of the captains and privates of industry, and the doctors and students of science. New sources of political or economic strength and of national or sectional wealth and influence are subjects of live- liest interest to very many of our people.
152
APPALACHIAN POWER ' 153
Mountains are not inert, powerless objects, born amid the throes of nature, and then petrified for the
geologic ages. Mountains are the Mountains Are homes of men, and share positively
Power-Plants • ^1 u- .. r i.i- j r
m the history of the race and of
the world. To the lover of nature they are instinct with a life peculiarly their own ; in the midst of their reticent loneliness, to the attentive ear their heart- throb is audible. Their peaks may be personified by the poet and the orator, but they are persons to the seeing eye. Of Childe Harold it was said:
"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends,"
and where the mountains are full of men, they are
full of all the kinds of physical and personal power
that exist — all the kinds with which God has charged
his terrestrial creation.
Surely, then, we may fitly speak of Appalachian
power, for the Appalachians rank, as we have seen,
among the most noble and imperial
Appalachian ^f e^^th's mountains. The utili-
X owcr
tarian age in which we live is fast
waking up to a realization of the power, the dynamics,
the potentiality, packed away in them as in a mighty
storehouse of Nature's forces. Then appropriately
may we sing of Appalachian power, and of the men
who, driven by fate, first stored human power within
these mountain fastnesses.
That the southern highlands are full of natural,
physical power is evident to the most superficial ob-
154 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
server. Their resources are so numerous and varied that it taxes even the fertile imagination of the pro- fessional prospector and promoter
Natural Power j ^ i , ^ ^.u
adequately to convey to the un- initiated even a faint idea of their number and va- riety.
The mountains are not mere scenery ; they are also power. Ruskin says that "mountains are the begin- ning and end of all natural scen-
Water Power " -ri 4. ^ 4. 4.u u
ery. They are at least the be- ginning of most forms of energy known in the indus- trial world. The greater part of the water power in the Cis-Mississippian states south of the Ohio and of the Potomac originates in the heart of the southern Appalachians. Although few of the mountain streams are navigable before they leave the region of their birth, they have in them mighty resources of power that for countless ages have gone to waste so far as the material advantage of man is concerned. There is no better watered region in the world. Almost every "hollow" of any length has its running water, for myriads of springs burst out at all elevations, and the streams that they form must descend many hun- dreds of feet before they reach the great rivers that bear their tide to the Gulf of Mexico or to the At- lantic Ocean. The amount of power generated by this descent is almost incalculable. In the writer's own country, the Little Tennessee River, while mak- ing its way through the Great Smokies out of the North Carolina mountains, turns upon its edge in
APPALACHIAN POWER 155
rock-walled narrows, and is no mean reminder of Niagara's whirling rapids; while enough unutilized power runs away down stream to provide, as will ere long be practically demonstrated, both power and il- lumination for great industries. Southey's word- painting of how the water comes down from Lodore in far Cumberlandshire might have described besides several minor creeks, two beautiful streams. Little River and Abram's Creek, that have both their source and their mouth within the borders of this same county, — a county over half the size of Rhode Island. Such streams are typical; though not navigable, they are power-producers, and this power transmitted by electrical currents, will some day turn countless wheels of industry and profit. The smaller streams have many of them been utilized to turn the neigh- borhood mill. In Tuckaleechee Cove, in this same county of Blount, a great spring bursting from the mountainside turns a grist mill within one hundred feet of where it issues forth. The larger mountain streams have as a rule gone unharnessed. Now, how- ever, some of them are being harnessed, and manifest destiny will ere long add many more to the class of producers of hydro-electric power.
As to steam-producing power, our mountains con- ceal deposits of coal large enough to supply the South
for many ages, and to send, when Steam Power needed, large surpluses to the other
sections of our country. As if with kind considera- tion for the convenience of men, it sometimes occurs
156 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
that the coal and the iron can be taken from neigh- borly openings in the same mountainside.
Estimates prepared by the United States Geological Survey in 1908 credit the Southern states with a coal area of 87,000 square miles as against an area of 44,000 square miles for the combined seven principal coal-producing countries of Europe; and also assign to the Southern states a reserve supply of coal amount- ing to the almost unthinkable total of 530,000,000,000 short tons as against 418,000,000,000 short tons for the combined seven European countries to which ref- erence was made. The principal coal fields of the South lie in the Appalachian region. Here, then, is stored up steam power for ages to come.
So much of the purely mountain land is thin and steep that the mountaineer's saying is often justified:
, ^ "God Almighty never built this
Mineral l-csources ^ • 1 j r r » t> ^
— mountam land for farmmg. But
dig down beneath the surface and you will find ex- haustless quantities of coal, as we have already seen, and of valuable marbles, and phosphate rock, and of most of the useful minerals — iron, zinc, lead, copper, bauxite, salt, and the like; while the natural gas and petroleum fields have now added new sources of power to our already long inventory of such re- sources. West Virginia, in 191 1, gave the nation mineral products to the value of $105,958,000, over one- fourth of the mineral products of the entire South. The abundant presence of the minerals that are a necessity to all the industries indicates that the
APPALACHIAN POWER 157
Appalachians are destined to be a great manufactur- ing district.
In spite of cruel waste in many parts of the south- ern mountains, the forests are still of vast extent.
In the writer's own county, some Timber Supply lumbermen purchased seventy thousand acres of virgin forests, and are keeping their own railroad busy shipping out the product ; and yet they assure us that it will take from twenty to twenty- five years to cull the large timber from their posses- sions, and that at the end of that period there will be another growth of trees ready for their harvesting. There is home-making power in our great forests. About twelve per cent, of the 75,000,000 acres in the southern mountains are covered with forests of vir- gin growth. The Forestry Bureau reports a total of 58,583,000 Appalachian acres, however, as being tim- bered land. Unhappily large deadenings are still some- times seen, even in these days of high-priced lumber. The mountains are, nevertheless, a storehouse of tim- ber supply for the nation.
Although a mountainous country, the southern Ap- palachian region is also a farming country. The gov- ernment estimates that 23,310,000 Farm Products ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ gq^^^.^ ^ji^s ^f
the region, are non-agricultural. Of this area 9,900,- 000 acres lie above an altitude of 2,500 feet, and 54,000 acres above an altitude of 5,000 feet. About two-thirds, then, or an area of 74,000 square miles, is agricultural. While the soil in the valleys is much of it fertile, it is also true that the purely mountain soils.
158 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
especially on the eastern borders of the valley, are capable of sustaining a good population. Says Dr. Glenn: "The agricultural lands of the Appalachian mountains are generally fertile, and, if wisely hand- died, will support safely and permanently a much greater population than now inhabits the region." Where proper methods of tillage and rotation of di- versified crops are employed, Appalachian farming, favored above most of the world by seasonable rains and abundant sunshine, has its full share of prosper- ity. No section need import less than should the southern Appalachian region. It grows practically all it needs. The future possibilities of fruit-growing and stock-raising are also very great.
The mountain breezes furnish another kind of power when by ozone and oxygen and electrical en-
ergy they contribute to the health ^^ of human nerves and muscles and
the vigor of human heads and hearts and hands. A naturally strong and sturdy race inhabit the Appa- lachians, and they are capable of great endurance. Were it not for preventable diseases, due largely to their lack of information regarding the origin of such diseases, the vital statistics of the region would be unexcelled on the earth. All that nature could do in providing pure water and pure air has been done, and the result is good appetites by day and sound sleep by night; and, in short, the development of a race of tenacious constitution and large reserve of physical endurance.
o
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O
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I
APPALACHIAN POWER 159
Now, all these various forms of energy belong not to some single mountain peak, some Japanese lone
sentinel, Fuji-yama, or a Sicilian
^/mi.?^t^^* ^tna or a Neapolitan Vesuvius,
of This Power , ^ , • u^ ^ a-u *.
but to a mighty system that ex- tends over vast areas of nine southern states. The Appalachians are examples of Nature's mammoth sculpturing like that seen in the Alps and Himalayas. They cover, as we have already seen, a vast region approximately six hundred miles long by two hun- dred miles wide, and contain one hundred and ten thousand square miles. This royal domain is three and a half times as large as are the Highlands of Scotland with all the Lowlands thrown in ; six and a half times as large as Switzerland with all her many hundreds of snowy pe^ks; as large as the Alps and Apennines and sunny plains ^of ^Continental Italy; and well-nigh as large as great Norway, land of fiord and mountain. And the various forms of power of which we have spoken are found in all this mighty region, and are not confined to one isolated mountain heap. No pent-up pinnacle contains these powers, but the whole boundless mountain range is theirs.
The real power in the Appalachians that especially concerns us as Christian patriots is, of course, the
human power, the power of the Aliovi* All
_- ,_' mountaineers. We are prospectors
Human Power . ^ ^
not for water power, steam power,
mineral resources, timber supply, farm products, nor even for vital energy in itself considered. We are deeply interested in these matters as they affect the
i6o THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
people of the mountains; but that which vitally con- cerns us is that higher form of energy, human power. The census bears witness to the great extent of this power. As already stated, in the two hundred and
fifty-one counties that make up the
In Numbers ,, a i u-
southern Appalachian region, in
1910 there were 5,280,243 people. That number may look small when we recall the fact that a larger num- ber, to be exact, 5,578,334, — immigrants arrived at our shores from the Old World during the six years from 1907 to 1912; and the fact that twice that num- ber arrived during the decennium covered by the last census. But the number assumes its proper propor- tions when we realize that it far exceeds the total population of the colonies when they waged war for independence ; and that it almost equals the total popu- lation of the United States at the time of the census of 1800.
As was seen in the chapter on "The Southern Mountaineers," the population of our section is made
up of three classes: (i) The In Unity nominal mountaineers or the
dwellers in the cities and towns and on the better lands in the valleys and along the plateaus; (2) the typical mountaineers, isolated by their environment, retaining the rugged strength of their race; (3) the belated mountaineers, or the sub- merged and lowest class in the population. There is, however, a substantial unity in this variety that is a token of strength. There is great power in exercise in the first class; great power in reserve in the sec-
APPALACHIAN POWER , i6i
ond class ; and great power buried and awaiting resur- rection in the third class. There is no special con- flict among the classes; they understand one another, and are ready for cooperation as time and training pre- pare them for it. There is potentiality in this unity in variety. It is an exemplification of what one of the denominations terms itself, "Unitas Fratrum."
To have descended from the virile Scotch-Irish, English, Huguenot, and German races signifies the
best possible racial heritage. Blood
of Rar^*^ ^^"^* ^^^ "^^" °^ ^^^ mountains
have, flowing in their veins, not
much blue blood perhaps, but something that counts more yet in the making of American greatness, — a tide of rich red Teutonic and Celtic blood. There is stored up in that blood vigor and tenacity and en- durance that combine to make an endowment of masterful power for the men in whose veins it pul- sates.
"Our ships were British oak, And hearts of oak our men."
As we have seen, the salubrious climate contributes to the vital forces of the mountaineer. He has strong
nerves and a strong body. He may of Bo?^^*^ be lank and lean, but he is tough
and sinewy. The squirrel-hunter can hold out his old homemade twenty-five-pound rifle, and with unflinching nerve duplicate the best work of the best shot of the day. Whether he be- long to the immediate stock of Abraham Lincoln, An-
i62 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
drew Jackson, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston or not, he belongs to their stalwart people, and looks it. The average height and weight of the southern Ap- palachian soldiers of the Union, as recorded by the recruiting officers, considerably exceeded that of the soldiers enlisted in any other section of the country.
The southern mountaineers have a mental vigor that has arisen out of their heredity, their healthful
climate, and their unexhausted ^f M"^T^*^ power; a vigor that is refreshing
to a patriot taking stock of our na- tional resources. Strong, alert, shrewd, logical, in- cisive, the genius of the mountaineer is of the keenest sort known in our nation. A close observer like Cassius, "he looks quite through the deeds of men." When you think him dreaming, his photographic and phonographic observation is recording all that is tak- ing place about him. Self-complacent visitors from civilization make an egregious blunder in their hasty inference from his taciturnity and seeming stolidity that the mountaineer is intellectually their inferior. In native ability he is fit to stand before princes. It has been said of him : "He may be illiterate, but he is not ignorant; he is not 'backward,' but he is unde- veloped." The common opinion of educators in the Appalachians is that, other things being equal, there is a peculiar strength of intellect and a quickness of perception among students from among the purely mountain people that exceeds that found among the dwellers in the flatwoods.
The mountaineer has a keenness of insight and
APPALACHIAN POWER 163
throughsight that is refreshing to teachers and preachers. A picture illustrating a magazine article written by Mr. Roosevelt many years ago was enti- tled, "Which is the Bad Man?" It represented side by side a slouchy, walking-arsenal, but honest- faced cowboy, and a meek-looking, conventionally attired civilian whose degenerate face proclaimed him a sharper. Place side by side a self-satisfied and irre- proachably attired town dude and a gawky mountain rustic and propound the conundrum, "Which head contains the brains?" and many mountain workers al- ready have both hands up high to tell you the true answer. Addison would confirm their decision were he living, for his hand was in; he reported in "The Spectator" the results of a dissection of a "Beau's Head."
A friend of the writer tells of a visit two Mormon elders made at a Cumberland mountain cabin. One of the saintly elders to all appearance dropped dead at the fence. The other did not lose his self-posses- sion, but calmly said to the mistress of the cabin : "Yes, he is dead; but I shall now show you that the Latter Day Saints have power on earth to raise the dead." Before he could take any steps toward dem- onstrating his divine legation, the mountain woman saw at a flash the attempted deception and the proper reductio ad ahsurdum with which to paralyze both deceiver and deception. She leaped into the cabin and seized a kettle of boiling water, and hurried back to empty it on the supposed corpse: "I reckon I kin raise the dead too," she cried; and she raised him in
i64 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
short order. A lowlander will have to get up very early in the morning to get ahead of a highlander! Nature has compensated the mountain man for some material limitations by bestowing upon him a liberal amount of gray matter. Indeed it has been main- tained that his brain is the most perfect in form that is known.
Our mountain folk possess also a mighty deposit of power in their pure Americanism in race, spirit,
and historic development. Says a Iti Pure j^^^g^ Georgian : 'Tn all the broad
reach of this land of the free there is no other field so teeming with the possibilities of a clear-sighted, virile, well-balanced, glorious American- ism as is that to be found in the romantic Appa- lachian country." If the spirit of America is the spirit of liberty, then the mountaineers are the incarnation of that spirit. Independence has almost gone wild in the mountain wilderness. Tyranny has been left be- hind so far and so long that it has become an in- credible monster to their thinking. Could their tongues express the thoughts that arise to them, they might say:
"We are watchers of a beacon
Whose light must never die; We are guardians of an altar
'Mid the silence of the sky: The rocks yield founts of courage,
Struck forth as by thy rod. For the strength of the hills we bless thee.
Our God, our father's God!"
APPALACHIAN POWER 165
He sees no earthly reason why, if he is called out of the mountains for any cause, he should not be the
peer of any man, "Lowland or In Spirit of Highland, far or near." Such a
Independence q \ u u -^ u ia
bcotch heritage he could never
lose in the freedom of the hills. His independence is a passion. In the Civil War the mountaineer made a fierce fighter^ and was an ideal soldier in all re- spects save one, — he would not remove his cap to any martinet, any more than did William Penn, in the olden day, to the king of England. He does not have to be educated to self-respect. He has this quality by inheritance. As one of them said: "We don't eat at nobody's second table." He resents the arrogance of wealth or position, and would rather die than sub- mit to tyranny. Sometimes it is even hard for him to yield due respect to the authority of the civil law when it comes in conflict with his individualism. There is strength in the spirit of individualism even if it does interfere with the community spirit.
There is an asset of power, too, in Appalachian patriotism. Not long since the writer conducted a
funeral in an old graveyard in
In Fervent Tuckaleechee Cove in his home
Patriotism 011 •<- , 1
county. Surely here, if ever, could
the words of the Elegy, in a Country Churchyard be
true, — here among the mountaineers:
"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."
i66 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
But, no; the patriarch of the cove told me that in this modest yard He buried soldiers of every war of the republic, — the Revolution, the Indian wars, the War of 1812, and the Mexican, the Civil, and the Spanish- American wars. The records of the yard even give the names of the soldiers. In the roster are the names of two of the cove boys who were once stu- dents of the writer, and who fell in battle while fol- lowing the flag in the far-away Philippines. And what is true of that churchyard is true of others in the same county, and of large numbers throughout the" southern mountains. Wordsworth exults over the patriotism of a youth buried in ''the Churchyard among the Mountains", about which he writes so sympathetically. Of his mountain soldier he said, as we may say of ours :
"No braver youth Descended from Judea's heights, to march With righteous Joshua; or appeared in arms When Gideon blew the trumpet, soul-inflamed, And strong in hatred of idolatry."
As we have seen in the chapter on "The Service of the Mountaineers," the men of the mountains, at every opportunity, have hurried to answer the call of their country in time of war. Their fervent patriotism is an asset that the nation has learned to count upon. May it hereafter be needed, not on the field of bloody strife, but rather in the service of peace, in the up- building of the political, economic, and moral well- being of the nation!
APPALACHIAN POWER 167
Another element of power is found in their sturdy
Protestantism. It is of the 1688 Londonderry type,
and is red-hot and irreconcilable.
In Sturdy ^Vell, Protestantism is the great
Protestantism ^ ^ r 1 • -i- i.-
power plant of modern civilization.
The map of Protestantism is the map of the world's power and progress. But it is a waste of time to emphasize the dynamics of Protestantism in national life, for all recognize it. Hospitable as America is to all creeds, it is historically a Protestant nation, and must welcome the unanimous help the five millions of the Protestant highlanders of the South will bring to the perpetuation of our national liberties and civili- zation.
As has been said of the race of Shem, it may be affirmed of the mountain race, "It has a genjus for
religion." This is another inval- In btrong uable element in the mountaineer's
strength of character. His faith in God and God's book is simple, hearty, childlike. And this is surely to be expected, for it is not a mere poetic fancy that
"The mountains holier visions bring Than e'er in vales arise, As brightest sunshine bathes the wing That's nearest to the skies."
Wordsworth could have said of our mountaineer as of his herdsman, "In the mountains he did feel his faith." There are no indigenous infidels or agnostics in the Appalachians. By racial intuitions, hereditary
i68 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
training, and mountain environment their belief in God and his religion is absolute, unapologetic, and controlling. In these days of trimming and hedging and apologizing and doubting, it is no small matter to find five millions of sturdy Americans having an un- questioning faith in divine things.
The mountain man's faith is not merely intellectual or theoretical, but it takes strong hold of his think- ing, and, in many cases, of his life and conduct. The southern mountaineers are grave by nature. Their native ballads, like those of most mountain dwellers, are somewhat weird and are written in the minor key. The native character is a serious one. Nothing inter- ests a mountaineer audience so much as does a de- bate on some question of biblical interpretation or doctrinal dispute; and where the Spirit of God is moving on hearts, nothing holds the attention more fixedly than does a discussion of some point of Chris- tian duty. The one book that is read in the Appa- lachians more than all others combined is the Bible, and many readers have an intimate acquaintance with its contents.
The mountaineer, then, has a strong religious na- ture. Too often, as everywhere else, this religious nature is dwarfed and misshapen by environment and natural depravity; but, though stunted and deformed, it often, by many a token that is recognized by the quick vision of sympathetic lovers of souls, proclaims its latent strength and future possibilities. There is always something responsive to appeal to, in the man of the mountains.
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APPALACHIAN POWER 169
The mountaineer lives the "simple life" in close touch with nature in its varied manifestations. From
nature, but yet more from the In Simple Scripture, and perhaps principally
from strong heredity, he has ac- quired an absolute faith in a personal, omnipotent, om- niscient, and omnipresent God, who has to do with him in "all the good and ill that checker life." He be- lieves in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus as the Saviour of the world. He has no doubt that Jesus will "come to judge the quick and the dead"; while "the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting" are unquestioned tenets of his creed. Such a simple but powerful faith issuing from the mountains will some day "remove moun- tains" from before the onmarching American peo- ple. '
The mountaineer has a resolute and dauntless will. What he wishes to do he will do without asking
license. His will, in the absence of In btrong wm worthier objects of concern, may have been exercised in matters of trifling import, and thus may have seemed to be mere personal caprice or stubbornness; but give it nobler objects to elicit its powers, and it will reveal those noble qualities of high purpose and indomitable perseverance that have filled the world with heroes and the world's arena with victors. The mountaineer is no invertebrate, but, if he thinks the occasion demands it, he will stand alone against the whole world. He is made of good
I70 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
staying stuff, of the kind that God and men like to employ when great deeds must be done.
A grave but positive self-confidence is a typical highland temperament. The mountain man is not so
r „ much "a man of cheerful yester-
In Supreme j » r u r ■,
Self-Confidence ^^^^ , as of confident to-mor- rows." This class characteristic will stand him mightily in hand when new times and new ideas arouse his slumbering ambitions. This confidence is not self-assertive or combative or ego- tistical, but is matter-of-fact and unconscious. The dweller in the hills has by intuition what others se- cure as the result of training and experience. He takes it for granted that what others do or have done, he can do. This quality, which is his by nature, is of untold advantage to him. It fills his efforts with the world-conquering characteristic of dogged persist- ence. When at last success crowns his efforts, he is satisfied, but not surprised.
The various forms and manifestations of human power that have here been enumerated as embodied
_,,..„ in the people of the southern Ap-
This Power ^„i u- r r
Pent-Up palachians are, of course, often
limited and handicapped by en- vironment. The isolated mountain region Is a long way behind the times. The pioneer period in all its barren and rugged simplicity survives in many set- tlements of the mountains.
"A pity it is," said one, "to spoil the naturalness of these belated pioneers by introducing the twentieth
APPALACHIAN POWER 171
century among them !" Yes, but naturalness, immo- bility, and superficial content are not the chief end of
man. The only way to make a use- And Must f^i ^ ^^^ ^^^^ jg ^^^^ Qq^
Be Released , . ' .... •. Asr
wants, IS to enlighten it. We are
not put into the world to enjoy it so much as to re- deem it. Christian culture may not be so picturesque as are pioneer survivals, but it is the necessary fruit- age of Christianity. Sentiment may say: "Let the mountaineers alone; they are content." Reason and the Spirit of the Master say : "Enlist them in service ; thus they will be useful. Release these imprisoned powers of body and mind and spirit; then will these powers be employed in fruitful service for humanity."
CHAPTER XIV Appalachian Promise
We have recognized the existence of great reservoirs of power pent up in the southern Appalachians. This
power is tremulous with promise. p . The Appalachian region is beyond
question as potential with promise as is any other section of our country. The promise here recognized on every side is an unmistakable one and might be thus summed up: All this largely un- utilized power will ere long be made available for its foreordained and larger uses. This promise is a four- fold one, having to do with the natural resources, the manhood, the religious life, and the nation-wide serv- ice of the mountains. The promise specifically relates to the Appalachians, but also overflows in blessing on the plain.
The material development of the South, especially during the past few years, has been phenomenal. A
new, confident, and energetic spirit
Devek^ed^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^" possession of the people.
The business slogan of the leaders in this industrial advance is: "The South, the Na- tion's Greatest Asset." Vast amounts of capital from
172
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 173
other sections of the United States and from foreign countries are being invested in the exploitation of mining, lumbering, farming, and manufacturing en- terprises. The cry of the business world was once, "Go West !" It is now, "Go South !" The Panama Canal changes the South from a frontier land to a central location in the Union. The mountain region with its hydro-electric and coal resources is the heart of it all. The mighty power locked up in the natural resources of the southern Appalachians will be devel- oped to a hitherto undreamed-of extent within the next few years.
Much of the financial profit arising from this de- velopment of the natural resources of the mountains
will go to the section where the in- Enriching vestors live ; but most of that profit ^^ will, after all, remain in the region that is being developed. Already even into the remote mountain regions there are penetrating those ele- ments the lack of which first produced the problem of the southern mountains, — namely, live neighbors, a varied society, incentive for labor, trade, means of communication, money, and therewith, schools and books and educated leaders. The development of the natural wealth of the section will vastly enrich it. Many judicious observers predict that the southern Appalachians will some day be another Pennsylvania. The war is long past; a spirit of brotherhood pre- vails; the convincing call of a delightful climate and of alluring business opportunities is everywhere heard ; the mountains have been rediscovered, and ere
174 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
long will yield forth notable contributions to human comfort and gain.
Investors from other sections of the country will reap rich returns from their investments in the new
mountains. They will agree that
£inricning their venture was the accepting of
xiiii6ncai
a good proposition. Part of the
future financial service of the Appalachians will, how- ever, be indirect, as is that which it renders now in climate and meteorological ways, a service so great that our government has determined to make it per- petual by the establishment of the great Appalachian Mountain Forest Preserve. Part of the service will be that rendered by the development of "all that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields," — the vast re- sources so much needed by the nation at large; while a most important part will, as we shall see, be that ren- dered by the hosts of stalwart and intelligent workers that will emerge from the woody heights to help carry forward the world's work. The entire country will be much enriched by the opening up of the long- hidden treasures of the southern highlands.
While the promise, everywhere visible, of the de- velopment of the natural power stored up in the Ap- palachians is most noteworthy, of 2. Manhood: f^r more significance to the real
Human Power prosperity of our land is the Developed . .
promise arching the hills that the
manhood, the human power of the mountains, is also destined to a similar and, it is hoped, a speedy develop- ment. Indeed that development is, in many places,
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 175
already in progress. The men of the highlands are,
at last, discovering themselves. They find that they
are of value in the world's activities, and that they
may have a worthy share, along with other men, in
making things come to pass in their immediate world,
and even out in the flatwoods.
Mention has been made of the paralyzing influence
of the lack of remuneration for labor expended. If
there can be no adequate return
By Material ^^^ labor, there will, in the course
Prosrress
of time, be little labor. Nowadays,
however, the agents of numerous new enterprises are invading the former solitude of the mountains, and calling for men to work in those enterprises, and, an unheard-of thing! are offering for that labor a re- muneration that seems to the startled mountaineers a princely wage. In a few short weeks' experience in these new conditions, the mountaineers adapt them- selves promptly to the new world, and form a new estimate of themselves that will never thereafter be lost. The sluggard becomes industrious ; many former idlers even become energetic workers. And with reg- ular wages comes a higher estimate of their own worth in the world. And with the knowledge that they can accomplish tasks in a workmanlike way, there comes to some the ambition for leadership in the doing of the work that is to be done. And so it comes to pass that, out of a drone, the material progress amid the hills has created a man and even a leader of men. And the signs of the times give
176 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
promise that this progress is to go on increasingly in the days just before us.
While the progress of the section will rapidly de- velop manhood or human power among the moun- . tains, the advance of education will
Advance^*'"'' contribute even more notably to
this development. Tennessee's ad- vance is typical of what is taking place among prac- tically all of the mountain states; within a few years the appropriation to the support of the public-school system has increased from a very unworthy sum to one-third of the total annual revenue of the state. A good beginning has been made throughout the Appa- lachians toward the general provision of high schools, so potent elsewhere in developing the latent possibili- ties of efficiency and leadership among young people. And everywhere the privileges afforded the youth of the hills by religious and other philanthropic schools will let loose imprisoned dynamics in hosts of ambi- tious sons and daughters of the uplands of the South. Mountain manhood will everywhere be developed.
The Appalachian problem before the American church, as we have seen, may be thus epitomized :
How are we to bring certain be- 3. Christian: ^^^^^ ^^^ submerged blood
ProEsolved brothers of ours, our own kith and
kin, out into the completer enjoy- ment of twentieth century civilization and Christianity? The writer often views God's rainbow outlined against the ponderous bulk of old Smoky, and rejoices in it as
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 177
a new token of an old covenant of grace made by the Builder of the everlasting hills with the earth that he has so abundantly blessed. But clearer even than the sevenfold beauty of the bow are the everlasting prom- ises of God that span the mountains, cheering onward the united Church of God to its mission of service. As that church animated with the spirit of the Good Shepherd "goes into the mountains and seeketh that sheep that is gone astray," does it not hear the Shep- herd say of that hundredth sheep, "It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish"?
God loves the mountains. His Mount Moriahs be- gin to smoke with sacrifices in the early days of Gene- sis, and his Mount Zions, crowded God s Love ^ ^^rith the redeemed, linger in the
for Mountains . , tt n j u- t.
Apocalypse. He called his chosen
lawgiver into the mountain-top to enter into the se- cret place of the Most High; and there out of the midst of the fire he spoke face to face with him and gave him the oracles of the law for all the coming ages. Moses sang of God as granting his theophan- ies amid the mountains:
"Jehovah came from Sinai, And rose from Seir unto them. He shined forth from Mount Paran."
At Mounts Lebanon, Nebo, and Carmel, — there God met his people and showed his glory. Jesus when on earth loved the .mountains. He preached his great- est sermons to multitudes gathered on a mount ; he fed
178 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
five thousand hungry men on a mount ; he spent nights in prayer on a mount ; he was transfigured upon a mount; he told his disciples to meet him, after his resurrection, on a Galilean mount; and it was from the Mount of Olives that he ascended to his Father. It were treason to doubt that he will answer the prayers offered in his name in behalf of the coming of his kingdom amid the Appalachian mountains.
There is no reason why the kingdom should not come there as really as in the lowlands. There are no
obstacles in the hills that are not
Evik^^""^^'^^^^ similar to those found elsewhere.
The faults of the mountaineers are only such as are common to humanity. There are no sins that are peculiar to the Appalachians. Our ap- peal for the mountaineers is based not on their ex- trinsic vices but on their intrinsic virtues and possibili- ties. And yet there is an abundance of evil on the great hills, and it must be exorcised. In Jesus' days on earth the devil went into a high mountain, and he dared there to tempt even the Son of God. There was once in the Holy Land "a herd of swine feeding on the mountain," and a legion of evil spirits entered them. And there is evil in our mountains as every- where else on earth ; and in their frank way some of our people have named their home places, "Hell for Sartin Creek," "Sodom," and "Devil's Fork" ; but even such localities can be redeemed and are being re- deemed. Some mountains are volcanoes, but God can draw their fires, and make them as fruitful as the slopes of Vesuvius.
, APPALACHIAN PROMISE 179
We have seen that the development of business en- terprise, and the perfecting of the school system may
be confidently expected to make What Prevents ^j^^jj. invaluable and miracle-work- Will Eemedy , ., . , ,. ,
mg contributions to the enhghten-
ment of the mountains. There remains then only the contribution that the various denominations of the Christian church are to make. The generous devel- opment of our training schools and colleges, the estab- lishment of industrial and vocational schools, and of a model church and Sabbath-school at every such cen- ter, and the development of the church into an ideal community center in which the spiritual life shall dominate everything and also take interest in every- thing that concerns the earthly as well as the spiritual welfare of the people of the neighborhood; and the carrying out of extension work from these centers into the contiguous territory ; — all this will be the mightiest service that the Presbyterian Church can render our kindred of the mountains. When the ground is thus thoroughly covered by our church and her sister churches, our third of the problem will be satisfac- torily solved in a short generation.
Why so confident a statement? Because, for one reason, there is no special or peculiar problem in those sections where the Presbyterian Church and similar churches have occupied the field and have conducted continuous work; and the presumption is that the things for which we stand, — thrift, schools, and an educated ministry, — will remedy that which they would have prevented, had they been present.
i8o THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
The original mountain stock was made up, as we have seen, very largely of Presbyterian Scotchmen
and Scotch-Irishmen and noncon- What Sleeps formist Englishmen, and also in-
WiU Awake , , , t .1 r-
eluded some Lutheran Germans,
and a few French Huguenots. Even where the name "Presbyterian" has almost been forgotten — to our shame be it said — by these Macs of the mountains, the visitor will be invited to eat "Presbyterian bread," a kind of corn bread that is good though cold, and that was prepared by the foremothers on Saturday, so that they might not have to work on the Sabbath day. Occasionally some one will bring out for exhibition an heirloom copy of a "Confession of Faith" that had crossed the sea from Londonderry. An octogenarian once showed the writer such a copy which he pre- served in a little box of neat workmanship, a new ark of the covenant which he had made to contain it. Re- cently the writer met a mountain preacher whose grandfather was a Presbyterian elder in a cove where now Presbyterianism is only a tradition. It was grat- ifying to hear the brother emphasize most earnestly the duty of old-fashioned Sabbath-keeping. And this preacher is a representative of numberless similar instances of latent Presbyterianism with which the workers in the Appalachians are constantly meeting. Small wonder is it, in view of such facts, that many mountaineers when given the opportunity, gravitate rapidly toward Presbyterianism. We expect rever- sion to type in our work. Not, necessarily, that great numbers of those of Presbyterian descent will line up
APPALACHIAN PROMISE i8i
ecclesiastically with the church of their ancestors ; that is not what our Church is especially concerned about; but that great hosts will adopt again, in what- ever may now be their church connection, the passion for education in the individual, the home, the pulpit, and the community, and the recognition of the im- perative necessity of home training in religious mat- ters, for which the old Church has always stood.
The greatest Appalachian promise is to be found in the stock with which we have to do, and in the
extraordinary and really marvelous
■n^i 1 -Tj. X- rehabilitating power that it pos-
Rehabilitation _ **, f . f .
sesses. -bor this mountam stock is,
indeed, capable of very rapid rehabilitation when fa- vorable conditions obtain. It took several generations to retrograde, but it requires only one to come back to the ancient patrimony.
For nearly thirty years the writer has been watch- ing this miracle take place, as the mountain boys have entered the first preparatory year at Maryville Col- lege and have struggled manfully onward until, at the end of eight long years, some of the elect have left college the peers of any and able to hold their own in the best professional and technical schools of the land; while those that have spent only two or three years in school have gone back home transformed in thought and purpose, and destined to transform many others. A hundred times has he thought of the ad- vertiser's "Before taking" and "After taking."
The boys and girls of the mountains are naturally quick, and have the strength of the hills in their hearts
i82 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
and brains. As we have already said, it is the con- sensus of opinion among those that Rave taught them that they are, on the average, quicker and more alert than are the ordinary "flatwoods" country students. One telling suffices. Fox touches off this quality well : " 'Don't little boys down in the mountains ever say "sir" to their elders?' inquired the Major. " 'No,' said Chad ; 'no, sir,' he added gravely." Their ambition is easily aroused, and they will un- dergo great hardships to realize its object. They as-
similate new ideas and adapt them-
AssUilation '^^"^^f *^ "^"^ surroundings with a
celerity and an ease that are akin to magic. In Asheville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and other towns, there are many well-groomed and pros- perous business men that were born in cabin homes. And they would feel at home in the White House after a week or so. The writer used to be anxious about the students from the mountains when they en- tered college, lest they might feel ill at ease, or in- vite chaffing by manifest embarrassment, or lest they might become homesick. But long since he found that his concern was unnecessary. They are abundantly able to take care of themselves ; to conceal their em- barrassment when they experience any; and, when they decide to conquer their almost overmastering homesickness, speedily to make themselves as much at home in the college as if it were their "old cabin home."
The fact is that the young man of the far moun- tain, when separated from his dwarfing environment,
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 183
and aroused by ambition, is a most attractive charac- ter. The discerning soul is constrained to love him. He has drunk in the mountain air and water and scen- ery until he has partaken of their strong qualities.
Help toward the solution of the religious problem of the mountains has come in most heartening en- thusiasm and zeal from the Church Assistaiice without the limits of the southern
Appalachians. Of the exceptional interest that our Church has taken in the highland field we have already spoken in detail. Our sister evangelical denominations in strong force are also tak- ing part with us in our common and patriotic ministry for the mountains. Last year, according to statistics compiled by Mr. Campbell, there were one hundred and ninety-six church and independent schools in the mountain work, of which forty-eight were connected with our church. Nine were independent schools, one was conducted by the Y. W. C. A., while the rest were conducted by the Baptist, Brethren (Dunkards), Christian, Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal Church South, Protestant Epis- copal, Presbyterian Church in the United States, Re- formed Church of America, and United Presbyterian denominations. All the splendid service rendered in love to the cause of Christ among the mountaineers by these ecclesiastical and philanthropic organizations makes up a mighty contribution from without to the religious education of the hills. And all this does not take into account the contributions to the support of the ordinary church work made through the boards
i84 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
of the various churches charged with the granting of such assistance. As the value of the mountains and the worth of the mountaineers become more generally recognized, we may expect this help from without to be increased for years to come, until the special prob- lems involved shall have been solved.
The religious problem will, then, be solved partly by the help afforded by other sections of our country.
The principal work will, however,
from wShin ^^ ^°"^ ^^ *^^^ ^°"^ °^ *? moun-
tains themselves. All that our
mountain brethren ask at our hands is a "chance." Give the choicest and noblest spirits among them the intellectual and religious training that they desire, and they will take care of their native hills. Already the elect youths trained in the various available insti- tutions are in charge of many of the schools and in control of many of the new enterprises that are being established in the mountains; and as the work ex- pands, the volunteers provided by all the training schools of the various churches at work in the moun- tains will be needed for the ushering in of the new day.
The policy of the Presbyterian Church is the same at home and abroad; that is, to train up workers in every land and region to carry forward the work of evangelization among those to whom they are at- tached by ties of family and patriotism. Such labor- ers know the people and are known of them, and so meet with such a reception as can never be extended
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 185
to those of alien birth, however kindly their heart or
faithful their service.
A fourth and final element of Appalachian promise
is that of a future nation-wide service that will be
rendered by the aroused and pur-
4. National: pose-filled people of the moun-
Future Nation- ^^j^^ j^ ^^^^ ^o ^^^^ ^ u^^^.
Wide Service „ . ,, ^ • 1 ^- a
cry from the present isolation and
inertia of the mountain folk to the position where they may helpfully serve the entire nation; but, to quote Fox's quotation of a mountaineer's measure of distance, it is, after all, only "a whoop and a holler" to that position, and a wide-awake and wide-visioned teacher can speedily lead them to it. There are men hardly yet in middle hfe, now leaders of important causes in the greatest cities of our nation, whose kin- dred still live in mountain cabins. What prepared them for this wide and responsible service was simply a thorough-going Qiristian education received in a brief but formative decade of their youth.
The man who rears his family in the fear of God and with respect for civil government, and who in his
home community champions the Home Guards^ cause of morals and religion, and
for Appalachia ^^ j^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ belongs to the
Home Guards upon whose vigilant devotion the wel- fare of the country at large must ever depend. Al- ready there are worthy hosts of such men in the Ap- palachians battling for the well-being of their homes and children; they have transformed disorderly com- munities into law-abiding ones; they have driven the
i86 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
saloon from their mountain fastnesses ; and they are ready to stand manfully for whatever better things commend themselves to their judgments. Their num- ber will increase with the spread of education and especially of Christian education. The public prints have much to say of the belated survivals of lawless- ness appearing in the mountains, but they do not record the heroism displayed by the citizenship that is rapidly enthroning law throughout the hill-country, — the Home Guards of Appalachia.
In view of what the fetter-loosed southern moun- taineer is capable of doing for his country, wisdom
would counsel : Save him, not Reinforcements ^^^.^j ^^^ primarily for himself,
for America 1 u • .1 r «: .
though he is as worthy of eifort as
is any other body on earth, but especially that he may help to save the Americans of coming days, from the mountain foot-hills to the distant seas. The ark containing man's hope once rested on an Oriental mountain. It may be that the ark of God resting on Appalachian domes may contain no small amount of the power and hope of the future church throughout our broad domains. Let all the churches of Christ press forward the work of Christian education in the Appalachians until the ark-rescued people that shall issue from those heights shall be men and women with a providential equipment for Christian service for the nation at large. Thus will Appalachian power be, as it is peculiarly fitted to be, a benediction to the far- thest lowlands of earth.
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 187
Little as the nation now realizes it, the men of the mountain will in coming days be of immense help to
the nation at large in its fight for Contributing g^^j^j reforms. This will be espe-
Social Service • n > vu ^ * *u
cially true with regard to the re- forms that directly concern the home and rural life. Take, for example, the cause of temperance. A very large majority of the people of the southern Appa- lachians are as thorough-going temperance people as are found in America. A fatal tendency on the part of many of the American people is to make hasty generalizations. A generation ago a hasty generaliza- tion was made by magazine readers, — most of our American people, — and all of us southern moun- taineers were classified as moonshiners, and much to our chagrin, and, we admit, somewhat to our indigna- tion, the traditional classification lingers. And yet in the days when there really were frequent moonshiners, there was never more than a corporal's guard of them compared with the rest of the people. At present there is just enough of the moonshine business sur- viving in the mountains to interest the revenue offi- cers whose fees are affected by it, and the romancers who can make such "fetching" copy regarding it.
The splendid fact is that, while the gallant fight for the destruction of the legalized liquor traffic is still
far from won in many more fa-
Pronibition vored sections of our country, the
Appalachia ,, . , , . . ,
southern Appalachian region has
almost freed itself from that traffic. The temperance
map of the region is a luminous one. Almost all the
1 88 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
region that we are considering is under prohibition laws, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carohna, and Georgia have (1913) state-wide prohibition. In the West Virginia election in which the prohibition amendment was adopted, the majority against the hquor traffic was overwhelming, the only county vot- ing against prohibition being Ohio County, on the Ohio river. In the North Carolina campaign, the mountain counties cast a much heavier vote against the saloon than did the lowland counties. In the Tennessee legis- lature the "hill billy" legislators were the ones who really passed and enforced the prohibition law. In Kentucky, where local option as yet prevails, only two of the thirty-six mountain counties are hospitable to the liquor trade, and those counties are controlled by cities located within their limits. None of the four Maryland mountain counties, however, have voted the saloon out of their borders ; but all four of the South Carolina counties are "dry," and so are fourteen of the seventeen Alabama counties, and twenty-eight of the forty-two counties of Virginia. Of the two hun- dred and fifty-one mountain counties, two hundred and twenty-eight do not have legalized liquor selling within their borders. Only twenty-three counties, or one in eleven, have legalized liquor selling.
The mountains have long had temperance men that have been terrific fighters. Inch by inch, while the
,- . -n- 1 J.' world was too largely looking upon
Heroic Fightmsr -u 1 .f /
the saloon as a necessary evil, these
fighters have been advancing the lines of prohibi- tion, till now almost all of the Appalachian ter-
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 189
ritory is "dry" to the glory of God and the satisfaction of good men. In 1878, the writer, just out of college, was colporteur for the American Bible Society in a mountain county. In one corner of the otherwise fair county he was surprised to find the most God-forsaken civil district he has ever visited. There had been four recent murders in the district. Sixteen out of seventeen families visited in one day had no copy of the Scriptures. And yet, in such phe- nomenally unfavorable environment, he found a stal- wart young Methodist who almost unaided had taken handsome advantage of the peculiar but providential Tennessee law enacted the year before making un- lawful any saloon within four miles of an incorporated school not in an incorporated town. At some expense, and he was a very poor man, this unknown hero had secured the incorporation of a log cabin public school, and had thus made the liquor traffic an outlaw within a radius of four miles of the log cabin corporation. What he did at great and unquestioned personal risk and discomfort, he did out of his love for Christ. When solicitude was expressed regarding the danger he was in, he glanced anxiously at his young wife, but set his teeth together, and said: 'T reckon I'll see it through." And he did. No wonder his county has been free from saloons for many years, and that his civil district was splendidly rehabilitated in much less than a generation.
The mountaineers may be slow, but the lifetime of one generation has transformed them into a resolute
I90 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
temperance army that will never allow the liquor traffic to find again a legal home among them. Their
thoughtful leaders have seen the Fi^htin^^ blighting influences of the whisky
trade, and have united to rid their people of the malign mischief-maker. The young people trained in the mountain colleges, boarding- and day-schools of our Church and of other churches have been practically unanimous in their determined hos- tility to the saloon, and have in a few years multiplied and solidified the temperance sentiment in their home counties until it has become irresistible. Many former moonshiners and habitual drinkers have voted for pro- hibition laws, and many have become very effective and zealous temperance workers.
Yes, the mountaineers of the near future will help the nation win many battles for temperance and other
social reforms. They, too, love ^ God and home and native land.
Take courage, you who in many states are fighting your apparently death-struggle battles against an or- ganized and wealthy saloon-power upheld by de- praved Americans and by many as yet un-American- ized though naturalized foreign immigrants ! If you will but listen, you may hear the "tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching" of Americans from the free hills, coming to share with you the contest and to join with you in the victory that awaits our common cause. Be assured that these stalwart recruits from "the land of the mountain and the glen" will stay in the fight to the finish. When the witches stir
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 191
in their caldron Scotch-Irish blood, and John Bull blood, and a little Huguenot and German blood for seasoning, and then let the brew simmer in the moun- tains for a few generations, it is bound to make "double, double toil and trouble" for anybody that once excites that blood to indignant action.
So, too, will the future Appalachians contribute of their power to the religious faith and work of the
entire nation. Theirs, as we have Contributing ^^^^ j^ ^ simple and unquestioning
Christian Faith . . , „ . . , . 1 1
faith. Our national faith needs
quickening. To the faithful who are praying for that quickening there will be renewal of cheer and zeal when they see issuing from the schools and homes of the highlands groups of men and women who are fully persuaded that "God is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Mountains have throughout the ages been the refuge of distressed faith. Lot obeyed God and escaped to the mountain lest he should be consumed. Rahab sent the spies for hiding to the mountain. Jesus told his followers that in a certain day those of them that were in Judea should escape to the mountain ; and the author of the epistle to the Hebrews testified that many heroes of faith did wander in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. But the best thing is that faith thrives in the hills. And it is quickened and rectified, and directed by the Christian education that the Church is giving through the schools and centers of illumi- nation of which we have spoken. And this sturdy
192 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
faith of the hills will reinforce, through many work- ers and emigrants, the faith of the lowland. Already from the valleys of the highlands, an exhaustless storehouse of humanity, many thousands of families have gone out West and elsewhere and are in the churches of those sections. And right welcome is the reinforcement.
The mountains of the future will not add merely to the Christian faith of the country at large, but will
contribute far beyond their pro Christian ^^^^ ^° ^^^ active, zealous, and en-
Workers ergetic Christian workers. Indeed
parts of the Appalachians are al- ready doing so. For example, Maryville, the synodi- cal college of Tennessee, has thus far sent three hun- dred of its graduates into the ministry, besides some undergraduates; and during the past thirty-six years has sent out forty-eight foreign missionaries. More than thirty-five candidates for the ministry are now enrolled among its students. Tusculum has contributed one hundred and fifty-four of its alumni to the min- istry ; and Washington also has sent forth large num- bers. And from these and the other schools of the mountains there are proceeding large and steady streams of Christian ministers, teachers, and other workers, who are serving the Church at home and abroad. And the signs of promise for an increase of such contributions are most encouraging.
The more we study the problem of the seclusion of the people of the southern uplands, the more con-
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APPALACHIAN PROMISE 193
vinced we must be that the hand of God is in it, and that this manly race has been held in reserve by the
Lord of Sabaoth to be thrown into
Contributing the continental fieht for sound
nstian Americanism and pure Christianity
jtv6S6rV63
at the psychological moment, in his "fullness "of time," to help decide the battle for righteousness that is being waged for the entire na- tion.
In the days of the American Revolution, the sons of the Appalachians, sons of Anak in size and valor,
swept down from their mountain f m- -^^^^ eyries and conquered Ferguson and
his men at Kings Mountain. In coming days, the mountaineer, like Tennyson's eagle, will sweep down to the modern field of oppor- tunity in the valley below.
"Close to the suri in lonjely lands
Ringed with the azure world he stands. He watches from his mountain walls And like a thunderbolt he falls."
And history will repeat itself. On America's great moral battlefield at a critical period the reserve power trained by the Church of Christ in the mountains will hurry to reinforce the army of God, and will, per- haps, in God's great mercy be a deciding influence in turning the tide of battle toward victory. And great will be the gratitude of the victors on that day of united deliverance. As when Barak of Mount Naph-
194 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
tali swept down from Mount Tabor and delivered Is- rael from Jabin, king of Canaan, and Sisera, his cap- tain, the Church will celebrate the faith of the hero who thus "wrought righteousness, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens."
Surely men of virile lineage, and strong body, and intellect; embodying pure Americanism, personal in- dependence, fervent patriotism, and Kept for the sturdy Protestantism; favored of
Master's Use -,t -^.i ^ r •
Heaven with a strong religious na- ture, and honoring Heaven with a simple faith; and in everything exemplifying strength of will and su- preme self-confidence, must be destined for conspicu- ous service not merely in their native Appalachians, but beyond in the great world-field wherever men of such caliber and character are needed by the kingdom of heaven. The miracle of the waters may be re- peated. Out of the mountain reservoirs flow ten thousand streams that unite to bless the lowlands with mighty rivers, and to provide refreshment and wealth for town and country. Out of the mountain reser- voirs of reserve strength and virility there may at no distant day proceed streams of living waters to make glad not merely plain and valley, but even the City of our God.
Every morning, as the writer rises for his day's work, he looks out of his bedroom window, across the
tops of Tennessee forests, upon the Inspiring View ^j^^.^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ -^ ^p^^^^ ^^^ -^^
Chilhowee's proud length, and heaped up in the tow- ering piles of Old Thunderhead and Gregory's Bald.
APPALACHIAN PROMISE 195
And they are never the same Smokies that they were the day before. Throughout the year, kaleidoscoping every day and shifting every hour, a new panorama lies in majesty before delighted eyes. The geologist tells of the mighty metamorphosis of the Appalachi- ans that has taken place since the mountains were thrown up twelve thousand feet above the primeval plain. The daily and annual metamorphosis of light and shade, of brown and purple, of vegetation and snow, proclaims the infinity of the Builder of the mountains.
As the delighted spectator drinks in the sublime in- spiration of the scene, he almost forgets the problem
of the Appalachians, and thinks Problem Versus rather of their power and promise. Power and Promise God rolled those mountains up for
the good of America; and, as we have seen, our American Congress has recognized this fact in providing for the vast Appalachian Forest Preserve, to be a blessing in all the future to all the cis-Mississippian country. So has God stored away in this great mountain reservoir of humanity five millions of sturdy race to be a source of refreshment and strength to the nation in trying days to come, the days of struggle to preserve our civil and religious institutions unimpaired in the Armageddon with which the hordes of undesirable Americans and un- Americanized immigrants are threatening our nation.
Yes, the Appalachians are a power and a promise as well as a problem. The problem will be solved, and
196 THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEERS
when solved will be a means to the solution of other and wider problems, a pou sto on which the Christian
Archimedes of the future will lift
?rovi^encf "'"' "P ""^ P'^"^ "' ^od for America's
welfare toward their fuller con- summation. A day will come when the Christian philosopher and historian will tell not of the Appa- lachian problem, but of The Appalachian Provi- dence.
I
APPENDIX I. School and Community Work
The following tables will convey some idea of the Presbyterian school system and community centers of three of the five synods of our church in the southern mountains. The author has compiled the tables from information provided by the Home Board and by the authorities of the several institutions therein men- tioned.
Some of the schools are controlled and conducted by the local presbyteries and synods; some by boards of trustees, in which the majority of the members are required to be Presbyterians; most are conducted by the Woman's Board of Home Missions ; while a num- ber are directed by the cooperation of two of the agen- cies that have been mentioned.
Pamphlets descriptive of such of the schools as are under the care of the Woman's Board of Home Mis- sions may be had upon application at the Board's rooms, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Informa- tion regarding any of the schools listed in the tables may be secured by correspondence with the schools.
197
198
APPENDIX
1. Synod of Kentucky.
Teachers
and Workers
1913
Value
of
Property
1913
No. of
Pupils
1913
Colleges.
*tCentral University, embracing:
(a) Center College, Danville, Ky. ;
(b) Preparatory School, Danville, Ky. ;
(c) College of Dentistry, Louisville Ky Kentucky College for Women, Danville, Ky
Pikeville, Pikeville, Ky
Witherspoon College, Buckhorn, Ky
Boarding-schooh.
Harlan, Harlan, Ky
Langdon Memorial, Mt. Vernon, Ky
Community Centers.
Cortland, Ky. (Station) ,
Hindman, Ky. (Station)
Manchester, Ky. (Station)
Manchester Home, Manchester, Ky. (Sta- tion)
Total
40 19 10 11
94
$880,000
153,631
75,000
50,000
15,100 5,175
2,342 2,086 3,318
5,675
$1,192,327
275 226 240 296
32
62
1,131
♦ Not in the mountain section.
t Controlled jointly by the Synods of Kentucky, U. S. and U. S. A.
APPENDIX
199
2, Synod of Tbnnesske.
Teachers
and Workers
1913
Value
of
Property
1913
No. of
Pupils
1913
Colleges.
Maryville, Maryyille, Tenn
♦Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn . . .
Tusculum, Greeneville, Tenn
Washington, Washington College, Tenn ....
Academies.
Stanley McCormick, BurnsviUe, N. C
Harold McCormick, Elizabethton, Tenn
Boarding-schools.
Normal and Collegiate Institute, Asheville, N. C
Home Industrial School, and Pease Memorial House, Asheville, N. C
Farm School, N. C
Borland Institute, Hot Springs, N. C
Bell Institute, Walnut, N. C
Laura Sunderland Memorial, Concord, N. C
Mossop Memorial, Huntsville, Tenn
Day-schools and Community Centers.
Banks Creek, Cane River, N. C. (Station) . .
Big Pine, N. C
Jacks Creek, Day Book, N. C
Laurel Field, White Rock, N. C. (Station) . .
Little Pine, Marshall, N. C
Pensacola, Athlone, N. C. (Station)
Wabiut Run, Marshall, N. C
Walnut Spring, Marshall, N. C. (Station). .,
Jewett, Grand View, Tenn. (Station)
Juniper, Sevierville, Tenn
Ozone, Tenn
Rocky Ford, Flag Pond, Tenn
Brittain's Cove, Weaverville, N. C
Marshall District, Marshall, N. C
Rock Creek, Irwin, Tenn
Sycamore, Sneedville, Tenn
Vardy, Sneedville, Tenn
Total
39
16
18
7
16
$826,835 355,500 290,205 200,000
51,300 10,000
150,000
702 360 192 122
193 130
294
|
9 |
52,650 |
167 |
|
14 |
62,850 |
160 |
|
12 |
46,485 |
181 |
|
5 |
17,075 |
100 |
|
6 |
22,600 |
76 |
|
4 |
9,623 |
31 |
|
1 |
1,910 |
64 |
|
2 |
2,415 |
72 |
|
2 |
1,900 |
42 |
|
14 |
19,475 |
200 |
|
2 |
3,640 |
94 |
|
1 |
1,725 |
60 |
|
2 |
3,050 |
74 |
|
2 |
3,125 |
34 |
|
2 |
1,100 |
53 |
|
2 |
3,530 |
120 |
|
1 |
1,733 |
49 |
|
2 |
2,380 |
98 |
|
1 |
tio |
|
|
3 |
7,550 |
|
|
1 |
500 |
t27 |
|
1 |
2,085 |
|
|
1 |
761 |
t25 |
|
199 |
$2,152,002 |
3,730 |
* Not in mountain section. t Industrial pupils only.
200
APPENDIX
3. Stnod of West Vieginia.
|
Teachers and Workers 1913 |
Value of Property 1913 |
No. of PupHs 1913 |
|
|
College. *Davi8 and Elkins, Elkina, W. Va |
10 4 2 1 1 2 2 |
$201,285 17,100 1,400 1,500 |
134 |
|
Boarding-school. Fattie Stockdale Memorial, Lawson, W. Va. Community Centers. Brush Creek, Cabell, W. Va |
72 |
||
|
Clear Creek, W. Va |
tie 25 |
||
|
Dorothy, W. Va |
|||
|
Dry Creek, W. Va |
1,395 1,375 |
||
|
Jarrolda Valley, W. Va |
tl8 |
||
|
Total |
22 315 |
$224,045 $3,568,374 |
265 |
|
Total of the three Synods .... |
5,126 |
* Controlled by Presbyteries of Lexington and Winchester, U. S., and Synod of West Virginia, U. S. A. t Industrial pupils only.
APPENDIX
20 1
II. Work of the Sabbath-school Board
The following table sums up the work being done in the Appalachians by the Sabbath-school Depart- ment of the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-school work:
|
Synods |
S. 8. under Care of S. S. Mis- sionaries |
Officers and Teachers |
Pupils in These Schools |
Presby. Chs. Organized Since 1887 |
No. of S. S. Mission- aries |
|
West Virginia Kentucky Tennessee |
90 63 127 |
449 239 491 |
3.909 3.020 6,659 |
28 22 30 |
3 3 7 |
|
Total . . . |
280 |
1.179 |
13,588 |
80 |
13 |
The average number of Sabbath-schools organized in the three synods each year since 1892 is ninety.
III. Regular Church Work
The author has compiled the following tabular view of the church work being done in the counties of the southern mountains by our branch of the Presbyterian Church. Only the churches and Sabbath-schools lo- cated in the mountain counties and only the ministers living within those counties are enumerated, those por- tions of overlapping presbyteries lying without the limits of the counties referred to having been care- fully excluded from the statistical table. The pres- byterial reports presented to the General Assembly of 19 1 3 are the basis of this summary. The work that
202
APPENDIX
the Board of Freedmen conducts among the colored people is not included in this table.
|
State |
'a o o w a a 3 6 |
Synod |
Presbytery |
E tn ■a |
1 Ui 3 O |
0. s (U .a a O |
:t 00 t-l a M a (S 02 • |
|
Maryland |
4 |
Baltimore .... |
Part of Baltimore. . . |
10 |
13 |
1,619 |
1,055 |
|
West Virginia. . |
10 14 6 |
West Virginia . |
All of Grafton AU of Parkersburg . . All of Wheeling |
13 11 20 |
19 28 24 |
2,486 2,308 5,420 |
2,174 3.491 4,382 |
|
Kentucky |
8 10 |
Kentucky .... |
Part of Ebenezer Part of Transylvania |
8 8 |
11 15 |
949 913 |
1,128 1,499 |
|
Tennessee (including Ga. and N. C.) |
10 2 3 7 4 10 |
Tennessee .... (including Ga. and N. C.) |
Part of Chattanooga (Tenn. and Ga.) Part of Cookeville. . . All of French Broad, N. C |
19 5 13 14 6 30 |
29 10 11 23 18 46 |
1,582 292 931 1,385 798 4,333 |
2,088 343 2,307 |
|
AllofHolston Part of McMinnville All of Union |
1,683 726 3,992 |
||||||
|
Alabama |
2 5 4 |
Alabama |
Part of Birmingham — A |
12 11 8 |
10 22 21 |
830 819 1,046 |
739 |
|
All of Gadsden Part of Huntsville. . . |
1,052 556 |
||||||
|
Virginia |
None |
||||||
|
South Carolina . |
None |
||||||
|
Total |
99 |
5 |
15 |
188 |
298 |
25,711 |
27,215 |
X-
!