The First Appalachians were Scotch Irish and arrived in Appalachia with their love for God, Guns, and Liquor. These Appalachians survived in the Appalachian Mountains because of their Appalachian customs, traditions, and help from nature. The Chestnut tree, moonshine and the primitive baptist church were vital to their survival.
VIDEO HERE (20:28 miutes)
dad was from eastern KY. I remember him talking about the chestnut tree blight.
ReplyDeleteI know that grandma's house had a lot chestnut in it. as floor boards and walls and the table was one board. like 40 some inches wide. and grandpa's bacon was really lean. he ran his hogs on the hillside and they where half wild, I think.
they put route 64 thru my uncle's farm. after that a lot of it all went away.
grandma had a different idea about god, she use to tell me, if I wanted to talk to god, go up on the hillside and have a sit. nothing made by man up there to brother you while you ask your questions. she passed while I was stationed in west Berlin and I didn't find out until after I got back. she made the best ice cream I ever had. and always had sweet corn bread
stashed away for us boys when we got back from the trips to the creek and fields.
every summer she fire up the summer kitchen, wood stove and tall windows on the back porch. a life I never see again.
Wow Anon what a great short read. Gets a guy to thinking. BTW thanks for your service. Clumb Some.
Delete2 weeks every summer. you have no idea bad I want to stay there and no go back to
Deletephilly.. I stopped in back in 1984 and again in 1989. last trip was in 2000. that world changed a lot in that time. a lot of what was a great place to grow up was gone.
My family is part Scotch-Irish. They resided in the North Carolina mountains when they came here. Very poor, not a bit of white privilege. If you got it you earned it. Dad kept up the tradition.
ReplyDeleteHarlan County born and bred…
ReplyDeleteI was six years old before I ran on level land…left Harlan at the age of 10 and was placed in remedial speech classes in Dallas due to my heavy regional dialect.
When troubled as a kid I would climb up the ravine to an out cropping of rock on the cliff and look over the hollar and listen to the forest…
My family is Scotch-Irish Protestants that immigrated from Northern Ireland in the early 1700's. There is a place outside of Gatlinburg, TN with the name Wear's Valley.
ReplyDeleteMy great-grandmother used to tell stories about her great-grandfather named Tom Wear, from Wear’s Valley. He married Sarah Bean, whose parents set up the first trading post in what is now Tennessee, Bean Station. Mamaw and Papaw were a big influence on my life and I miss them dearly.
DeleteWe may be related!!!
DeleteScots -Irish. North Georgia and Alabama. Wormy chestnut and hard drinkin'.
ReplyDeleteGlad someone got it right: 'Scots', not Scotch. Although I do enjoy a single malt...
DeleteWhen I think of the Appalachians, I think of how the original 'woke' politician, FDR, forced people who had lived for generations on their land, off of their land so the gentry could enjoy the Blue Ridge Parkway.
ReplyDeleteSchool-taught history was full of praised for FDR, how he saved the country. Self reading added learning about unConstitutional programs, ideas birthed in Wilson's time, wanting to control people. The federal Resettlement Administration is the least talked about -- "It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government," as Wikipedia says. In the 1950s, the war on poverty PR focused on WV and KY families, subsistence farming and mining. That war on poverty didn't take, so the feds shifted the major focus onto poor rural and urban blacks.
DeleteA hell of a lot of Germans settled this country also. My people got off the boat in Philadelphia in 1730 coming from Otterburg, Germany and pioneered out to present day Preston county, WV. Farming and timber got them through. Many hid or forgot their heritage after the first and second world wars for obvious reasons, hell, folks even stated calling GSD’s Alsatians. My family made sure us kids knew where we came from, why we left and the blessings we enjoyed here in the new world. Dunkers. Eod1sg Ret
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Germans were all over but this story is about Anglo-Saxons. God bless 'em all.
DeleteI maintain that my many Scots Irish ancestors came to America by 1750 because it gave them one more chance to shoot at the British.
ReplyDeleteScotch is a whiskey. Scots are a people.
ReplyDeleteAnd the "Scotch-Irish" are a real demographic group, consisting of uprooted Scots deported by the Emglish to resettle parts of Ireland in the 1600s and early 1700s. If they got off the boat in America straight from Scotland they're Scots; if they got off the boat from Ireland they're Scotch-Irish (which has been a legal term since at least 1680).
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Deletehttps://newacquisitionmilitia.com/historical-use-term-scotch-irish/
My great grandfather McAfee was written up in Canton NC paper about bathing in the creek year round. Interestingly my entire family has ended up back in smokey mountains. I have 7 acres in Hayesville NC that we will "retire" to in a couple years - so I'm the last to resettle there.
ReplyDeleteRoots run deep.
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I hiked all over the Blue Ridge. Used to find foundations or cabins in disrepair. I always tried to find the dump. Ya smell rotten taters they was rattlers about. I miss those mountains and the people.
ReplyDeleteSmell of cucumbers means copperheads. Killed a few myself.
DeleteMy family originated in Southern Germany or Switzerland. Landed in Philadelphia about 1740 and settled around Frederick, Maryland. After a few years, hit the road to Virginia. Oddly enough, that trip may have loosely followed a game trail that became I-81 250-years later. Aside from distant family that moved to the mid-west, expanded family remains in the Roanoke area. Between a few wars, employment evolved from subsistence farming to include coal mining, railroading or furniture factories. And some dabbling in Franklin County's finest.
ReplyDeleteConstruction of Skyline Drive in Virginia basically resulted in forcible relocation - if not government "taking" - from lands lived on and worked by generations. Though 4-5 generations have since passed, descendants still have some hard feeling about the action. Same thing occurred with building the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Harlan County, Kentucky: One of my Drill Instructors was from Harlan County. Good man that put forth extra effort to prepare us for life Mainside in the FMF. A fellow recruit, also from Harlan County, told us a humorous story or two about "Porky Pig" being home on leave.
Not much is known about Dads side of the family from down home. Get to the ACW, and the Cherokee side of the line just isn't there before. Family tale is that they escaped the "Removal" and settled down there. Some of mom's side came over on the first boat at Jamestown, married into the Powhattans. Still remember riding on a mule we borrowed from Frank the neighbor, who got fresh milk in return, and Papaw plowed the field for tobacco. Did a bit of time hoeing it, lift the leaves on both sides of the row, check for Copperheads, hoe, step forward a step or two, repeat. I remember Papaw getting his first tractor, Uncle Jack bought if for him. Jack was making "big money" up at the steel mill in Hamilton Ohio. Back then, alot of very independent, healthy but skinny people in Eastern Ky. Now, just the opposite. Damn Lyndon Johnson anyhow.
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