Pre-industrial Appalachia
Agriculture
• A number of new grasses were introduced into
the region by European settlers.
• Timothy is named for Timothy Hanson, who
distributed it in Virginia and North Carolina
prior to the Revolutionary War.
• Red and white clover and orchard grass are
also non-native.
•“Weeds” introduced by Europeans include
winter cress, yellow rocket, prickly lettuce,
English plantin, bitter cress, Queen Anne’s
lace, common yarrow, field pennycress,
common chickweed, shepherd’s purse, bitter
nightshade, henbit, wild garlic.
•Flowers introduced include star-of
Bethlehem, multiflora rose, dandelion, oxeye
daisy, wisteria, bouncing Bet, violets, butterand-eggs, daylily.
•The honey bee, another European
introduction, was called English flies by the
natives.
•A near subsistence agriculture was practiced
in the mountain region.
•Surpluses could be traded in the towns, and
livestock could be driven to markets.
•Meat could be preserved and transported by
river.
•Weise notes one hog drive by James Layne
of Floyd Co. KY. In 1842 Layne drove 225
hogs from Floyd Co. to Lynchburg VA. For
his hogs he received $1,029.
•Layne was one of the wealthier Floyd
Countians. He owned a gristmill, a general
store, and 19 slaves.
•Prior to industrialization, population was
sparse.
•Valley land had already been claimed by the
colonial aristocracy.
•Settlement takes place in the narrower
valleys, coves, and finally hollows.
TABLE ONE
Population, by River and County
.,
River/County
1850
1880
1900
1910
1920
Levisa Fork
Johnson
3,873
9,155
13,730
17,482
19,622
Floyd
5,714
10,176
15,552
18,623
27,427
Pike
5,365
13,001
22,686
31,697
49,477
Tug Fork
Martin
-
3,057
5,780
7,291
7,654
3,740
6,753
8,976
3,092
5,607
8,276
11,255
26,042
2,512
6,601
9,172
10,623
24,467
8,704
10,791
11,655
6,055
15,701
28,447
33,988
5,278
9,838
Kentucky River
Leslie
Perry
Letcher
10,097
Kentucky
/Levisa
Knott
-
Cumberland River
Bell
Harlan
4,268
10,566
31,546
Source: US. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920.
Weise,
Grasping at
Independence
Note: Counties are listed under the river that runs through them. Part of Pike County is
on the
Tug Fork, but the majority of its land and population is on the Levisa.
•The case of Floyd Co. KY is probably typical.
“By measurements of population, land occupation,
and farm acreage, Floyd County had become by 1860
essentially settled and established.
“Migrants into Floyd County, whether they squatted
on unoccupied land or attempted to obtain legal title,
entered a region covered by a maze of conflicting and
overlapping land claims. Between 1816 and 1835,
the State Land Office in Frankfort controlled the
dispensation of vacant land.
“Anyone wanting to claim a piece of property had to
secure from the office a warrant, which allowed him to
locate and survey a certain number of acres. The
claimant then had to return a record of the survey to
the land office, which, within about six months, issued
a land patent conferring official title. Most likely,
groups of warrant holders would hire one person to
enter all their surveys at one time. In 1835, the state
legislature transferred to the counties responsibility
over land distribution within their boundaries, making
the process much easier for settlers who did not want
to make the long trip to Frankfort.
“Often the warrants issued by the Land Office overlapped
earlier grants, some given by Virginia before Kentucky
became a state in 1792 and some given by Kentucky
before it reorganized its land distribution system in 1815.
A few of the Virginia warrants embraced hundreds of
thousands of acres, but most ranged from two thousand to
thirty thousand acres. Unfortunately, the manner in which
Virginia parceled out land was, as one historian has
observed, "notorious for its wasteful inefficiency," causing
the state to issue grants far exceeding the amount of land
actually available.
“Kentucky's method after 1792 was no better. By 1800,
Kentucky and Virginia together had issued grants to
almost four million acres on the Big Sandy, about twice
as much land as actually lay within the Big Sandy
watershed. The Virginia grantees and descendants
rarely settled or even surveyed their holdings, and they
did not defend their titles in suits filed by settlers, who
could claim title after fifteen years of occupancy and
paying taxes. Consequently, the Kentucky Land Office
and the counties disregarded Virginia grants and
reissued patents for the same land, resulting in a mass
confusion of land titles and contradictory claims that
caused no end of headaches for those who professed
themselves to be legal property owners.” (Weise 28)
Class
•There is a view of pre-industrial Appalachia as a
Jeffersonian ideal: independent people with strong
family values, egalitarian but committed to helping
one another in time of need.
•As late as 1982, Eller writes:
“The absense of highly structured communities
and formal social institutions contributed to the
evolution of a comparatively open and democratic
social order in the mountains. Not until late in the
nineteenth century did significant economic
differences begin to create conscious class
distinctions among mountain residents. Unlike the
rest of the South, where the emergence of
commercial agriculture spawned a highly stratified
social system based on black slavery (and later on
tenancy and sharecropping), the self-sufficient,
family-based economy of the southern moutains
served to inhibit the growth of a rigid social
hierarchy.”(9)
•Both Billings & Blee and Weise have shown
that class structure was indeed present, and
affected educational opportunities, marriage,
and access to power.
•Industrialization will widen the gap between
haves and have-nots, but it is not the sole
source.
•“Whiteness” also becomes significant in preindustrial Appalachia. While many NC and GA
Native Americans became prosperous, even
slave owning, farmers, removal proved
success could be quite temporary.
•Scholars are just learning to “read” for race
beyond the black/white distinction. The
following passage from James Brown’s Beech
Creek shows what we need to look for.
“Until 1899, when the Carters moven en masse onto Flat
Rock Fork, people in the Laurel and Beech neighborhoods
had few personal relationships with the Carters…
Undoubtedly, however, the Carters’ reputations were
known. The Carters were viewed as savages, and many
people accounted for their actions by noting that Dick
Carter’s wife was supposed to have been a full-blooded
Indian. As one old man said, ‘They’s connected with
Indians and had sort of a wild attitude. I saw one of the
old women—Vicie Carter [wife of Dick Carter]. She’s
mighty Indian-looking, about seven feet high and darkskinned too… They’s want to hunt and fish of the summer.”
Another old man recalls: ‘They had preculiar ways. They
lived more like Indians than anything else I can think of.
Never did have nothing. Lived hand to mouth. All I ever
knowed did.’” (19)
•“Carter” is a pseudonym. Dwight Billings has
told me the real family name. It is a common
Eastern KY name, and one that has been
identified as “melungeon.”
Religion
• Williams discusses the tremendous role played
by Francis Asbury in the spread of Methodism.
• Methodism represents a break within the
Anglican church over the form of worship and
predistinarianism.
• John Wesley was strongly influence by the
Dutch theologian, Jacob Arminius.
•Arminius held, contrary to Calvin, that
man had free will, that salvation was open
to all, and that God’s grace was resistible.
•Herein is the theological justification of
evangelical Christianity.
•Evangelical Christianity, on the frontier,
takes the form of the camp meeting.
•One of the most noteworthy was the Cane
Ridge Revival in Bourbon Co. KY.
Cane Ridge Meeting House
Racoon John Smith (1784-1868)
•John Smith was born in Sullivan Co. TN of a
German father and Irish mother. He was raised
regular Baptist of the strictest order.
•Barton W. Stone was a Presbyterian,
educated in North Carolina, minister at Cane
Ridge, who declared “The Last Will and
Testament of the Cane Ridge Presbytery.”
•Thomas and Alexander Campbell were West
Virginians.
•All sought the “restoration” of the New
Testament Church.
•The Primitive Baptists have their origin in a
reaction to the “New Light” emergence of
evangelism and missions.
•Since God, before the beginning of the world,
had already chosen the elect, then it was only
arrogance that led others to presume they could
save souls.
•Thus the Primitive or “hard shell” Baptists
opposed mission, evangelism, Sunday Schools,
revivals, etc.
•Primitives are conservative on other issues
as well, including segregation of the sexes
during worship, the exclusion of women from
preaching and other ministerial activities, an
educated and professional clergy, and often
strict dress codes.
•Old Regular Baptists, like the Primitives,
reject missions.
•They hold, however, to “election by grace”
rather than to “particular election.”
Individuals may seek grace, but God elects
who receives it.
•Old Regulars may be much more exuberant
in their worship.
•In both traditions, people tend to join later
in life than in most fellowships. People may
attend for many years before joining the
fellowship.
•While Regular Baptists hold to particular
election, they nevertheless may have
revivals, engage in evangelism, and even
have “Sabbath Schools.”
•All three of the above have preserved an
unique style of singing. Hymns are lined, and
instruments are not used.
•Free Will Baptists, with roots in Wales, are
Armenian, as the name implies. They tend to
accept more modernism than others.
•Missionary Baptists are highly evangelistic.
While some congregations reject
“modernism,” others are even associated with
the Southern Baptists.
•Among all these groups, closed communion
is nearly universal.
•Adult baptism is the rule, though the more
liberal judge the age of consent to be early
teens.
•The ministry is reserved to males.
•Footwashing is a common practice.
•The Pentecostal-Holiness movement also has
roots in the Wesleyan revivalism of the
frontier.
•As a distinct movement, however, it is 20th
century.
•Its 1908 statement includes:
We believe the pentecostal baptism of the
Holy Ghost and fire is obtainable by a
definite act of appropriating faith on the
part of the fully cleansed believer, and the
initial evidence of the reception of this
experience is speaking with other tongues
as the Spirit gives utterance (Luke 11:13;
Acts 1:5; 2:1-4; 8:17; 10:44-46; 19:6).
•An anomaly within that movement is the
handling of snakes during the worship
service.
•Most sources say it began in the Church of
God, Cleveland TN.
•However, John Fox Jr. recorded observing
snake handling in GA in the 1890s.
•At least one 18th century traveler observed
natives handling snakes.
Patriarchy
• What Billings and Blee (13) call
“Appalachia’s patriarchal moral
economy, an agricultural system
that featured subsistence farming,
kinship cooperation, and various
strategies of survival”
•and Weise (56) calls “household
localism,” come to dominance in
pre-industrial Appalachia.
•Religion, particularly in its
Baptist manifestations, enforce
patriarchy.
•English, and then American, property law
contribute mightily to patriarchy.
•Married women are either not allowed to
have property in their name at all, or are
prevented from conveying property without
the consent of the husband.
•WVA does not reform its law until 1931.
•As late as the 1890s married women in
Kentucky could not make wills, be the
guardian of their children, receive wages
earned, or own or inherit property.
•See Josephine Henry, 1889
•Tennessee’s Married Women’s
Emancipation Act was passed in 1913.
•Thus one avenue open to men for obtaining
property was to marry a woman who had
property or who might inherit property.
•But for the women, marriage meant the loss,
or at least loss of control, or property.
•Controlling property was a means of
controlling the extended family where land is
the only means of living.
Debt
•A small merchant class developed in the
towns, supplying the rural community with
basic commodities and perhaps some luxury
good. Members of this class, as well as the few
professionals, doctors and lawyers, also
speculated in land.
•Appalachia, indeed most of rural America,
was cash poor. There simply was not enough
currency in circulation.
•Much of the exchange was made by
circulating IOUs or by “keeping it on the
book.”
•When there was an economic downturn,
these debts would be called in. Those who
could not pay would lose their land, often at
county auction.
•This pattern where periodically the big fish
would get to eat the little fish repeats itself
continuously in rural America, from Daniel
Boone to Willy Nelson.
“…by 1804, several entrepreneurs including
Hugh White were employing slave labor to
manufacture salt on Goose Grek, a tributary
of the Kentucky River, where they operated
thriving mercantile businesses as well.
According to his carefully kept ledger, Hugh
White extended credit to ninety-five
accounts for goods worth more than ƒ2,922
(the equivalent of nearly $10,000) in
1806…” (Billings & Blee, 28)