From the managing editor, June 2021

Seasons of rainstorms in the mountains can bring back memories of stories told to me by Nana about delivering babies.

Nana, born in 1889, settled in the Riceville community east of Asheville with my grandfather, Ernest, who the grandchildren called Poppins.

While a doctor was available when he made his rounds in a horse-drawn buggy, the neighbors knew they could call on Nana as a midwife if the doctor couldn’t arrive on time for a birth.

As a child in the 1960s and early 1970s, I loved to sit with my grandmother—she lived across the road from my mother’s house—to listen to her stories about life in an era with few automobiles.

Nana and Poppins both worked for a time at a resort atop the ridge that in future years would carry the Blue Ridge Parkway down into the Asheville area. Before that, however, a road to the mountain ridge ran up from the Riceville community to the inn, which was a seasonal destination for wealthy visitors seeking a cool, summer mountain destination.

Nana worked at the inn as a housekeeper, working daily to update the guest rooms, changing sheets, cleaning, and helping provide the level of quality required for the out-of-state visitors.

In old images from the inn, Poppins can be seen holding the reins for a team of horses at the inn, and I believe he helped operate carriages that were used to carry visitors to and from the inn.

Nana told stories of how the road up to the inn was well designed, with bridges and storm drains installed. From what I recall, she said the roadway infrastructure had been built by masons and laborers who had worked on the Biltmore House and the Grove Park Inn.

In the 1970s, my brother and I hiked up the old roadbed from Riceville Road. We located old stone bridge abutments and then we would dig away the decades of leaves and debris to uncover granite storm drains cut into the roadside. From what I remember, the stonework echoed the same style of workmanship as seen throughout the Asheville area—work done by the teams of masons who trained to create the look desired for the area’s renowned destinations, and then used throughout the mountains on whatever job they were called to perform.

However, those stone works didn’t exist everywhere—they weren’t cheap to build—and more common public roads were known to regularly flood when the rains of spring and summer arrived.

I don’t know how frequently the roads of the Riceville community flooded, but Nana told stories about having to deliver babies when the doctor’s carriage—or later the doctor’s old Ford—couldn’t be coaxed across a flooded section of road along the Swannanoa River or one of its swollen feeder branches.

Someone would come tell Nana that she was needed, maybe nearby, maybe a couple of miles up the valley, when a woman was giving birth.

She would gather her supplies, don appropriate storm-resistant clothing, and make her way to help. Sometimes the doctor would have figured out a way to get through the flooding and she’d arrive to assist him, but generally, if the creeks were high, she was the one with the level-headed attitude and education on hand to deliver the baby.

I can’t tally the total of neighborhood babies Nana brought into the world, but from her stories it was not a small number. 

Nana also cared for her nearby in-laws when the devastating flu spread around the world from 1918-1920. She never told me if she caught the flu, but my sister recalls stories about Nana moving in with in-laws to care for them as they fought to survive the pandemic.

It’s sometimes hard to imagine the challenges faced by our ancestors as they lived their lives, whether it was earning a dollar building roads, driving a team of horses to deliver visitors to their vacation destination, or delivering babies.

But modern mountain folk still serve their neighbors as well as visitors from afar. 

I guess it’s in our blood.

—Jonathan Austin