A Walk Back in Time

A few miles east of Gatlinburg, a right turn off the main road leads directly into the solitude and beauty of Greenbrier Cove. The road is rough and narrow, its edge precariously close to the river, which tumbles over and around huge boulders that old-timers call graybacks. As rugged as the road is now, it’s hard to imagine its condition when my grandmother gave birth to my father there in 1916.

My grandparents’ farm was one of more than 1,200 appropriated by the government in the 1920s and early 1930s to make way for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Though some of those farms were very prosperous, my grandparents lived on little more than an isolated, hardscrabble homestead. 

For years, knowledge of that homestead—my father’s humble birthplace—was about all I knew about my family’s Smokies history, which began more than two centuries ago when my ancestors of Scotch-Irish, German, and Dutch descent hacked their way through the wilderness from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. So a few years ago, when I caught the bug to dig up my roots, I started my search in Greenbrier Cove.

I PULLED INTO ONE of those rare wide spots along the road, grabbed my water bottle and hiking stick, crossed the road, and headed into the woods. My sister and brother had joined me, but I might as well have been alone. I was on a quest into the past.

After cresting the almost vertical hill, we reached the family cemetery, with no more than a dozen marked graves and remarkably clear of undergrowth and fallen branches. As I studied those ancient headstones, some battered by time and tilting this way and that like teeth in a snaggle-toothed grin, my heart brimmed with what-ifs and maybes. A litany of emotions drifted over me as I pondered what these great-grandparents, cousins—and God knows who else—had known about heartbreak, betrayal, love, and forgiveness. About life.

Getting to the old home site wasn’t easy.  I followed a faint game trail that snaked along Ted’s Creek, a drowsy, stone-filled stream. I didn’t count how many times I stumbled, crawled under or over wind-thrown trees, sidestepped mounds of bear scat—which mercifully seemed to be a few days old—or crisscrossed that winding stream. Eventually, by scrabbling through thickets of rhododendron and mountain laurel, I reached the place where my daddy had lived until he was 12 years old. One glance and the land’s familial tug worked its magic.

In the years since my father’s family had left, the forest’s unhampered growth had reclaimed the land that had cradled their two-room log cabin and barn. The split-rail fence that once hemmed in their property was gone. Not even a gnarly apple tree—a ghost of their small orchard—had survived. The only evidence of human existence was the bones of what once would have been a fine-looking stone chimney and a fieldstone spring where my Grandma Mertie would have kept her butter and milk cold.

THE FACT THAT I can imagine this place as it was when my third great-grandparents lived here comes thanks to an unlikely source—the writings of a 19th-century Knoxville attorney known only as Mr. R., who suffered from hemorrhage of the lungs. I discovered his article, “A Week in the Great Smoky Mountains,” in an 1860 issue of The Southern Literary Messenger, an esteemed periodical published in Richmond, Virginia, of which Edgar Allan Poe served as staff writer, critic, and editor for a time. A century and a half later, Mr. R.’s first-hand account introduced my ancestors to me in vivid detail. 

 Upon receiving the sobering diagnosis, Mr. R. heeded the advice of his physician to undertake vigorous exercise in a cold, invigorating climate. It was early November 1859, and Mr. R. knew that hiking to some of the highest peaks of the Smoky Mountains, where temperatures could be 10 to 20 degrees colder than in the lower elevations, would be just what the doctor ordered.

On November 3, 1859, Mr. R. set off on his horse, Billy Button, with a pair of saddlebags slung across the animal’s back. One held extra socks and shirts, two blankets, an overcoat, and some reading material: a copy of John William Draper’s Human Physiology published in 1856. Forgoing other cold-weather provisions, Mr. R. placed only one item in the second saddlebag: a quart of brandy, just to balance the weight, he said. 

Mr. R. crossed the Holston River in Knox County by ferry, then rode on to Sevierville where he passed the night at “a comfortable tavern.”  On Friday, November 4, for about ten miles of good road, he and Billy Button followed the west fork of the Little Pigeon River, passing farms with workers busily tending acres of cultivated land. Soon, the road deteriorated to little more than a rough path with the river racing along beside him. Fording was dangerous, yet necessary. At one crossing, Billy Button lost his footing. As the balancing bottle of brandy didn’t serve its theoretical purpose, Mr. R. was plunged into the frigid water. Fortunately, hypothermia didn’t stand a chance against that bottle of fire he’d stashed in his saddlebag.

When Mr. R. came upon my grandparents’ cabin, he was greeted by “the fierce outcry of mongrel, whelp, hound, and cur of low degree.” As my grandfather was considered a skillful hunter, I suppose it only natural he’d have as many dogs as he did children—17.

 “Light, stranger, light!” my grandfather called in greeting, welcoming the stranger to dismount. After Mr. R. confirmed he was at Mr. H.’s cabin, the men said their howdies, then Mr. R. extended his hand to my grandmother. Using a term often bestowed upon women of her age, he said, “I suppose that this is     Aunt Dolly.” 

Grandmother answered cheerfully, “Yes, Mister, that is what they call the little that’s left of me.” From Mr. R.’s description, she was a sizable woman. Mr. R. told them he’d been directed there, that their house was known as one of the best in the mountains. “You will find our house mighty rough,” Grandfather replied, “but you may look at my old woman there to see if we starve up here in the mountains.”

I had always pictured my ancestors near starvation in the remote mountains, but Mr. R. made me see things differently. “A nicer supper I never ate than old Mrs. H. and her rosy daughters prepared for me,” Mr. R. wrote. “Good coffee, good bread, both corn and wheat, fresh, nice butter, rich milk, nicely cooked chicken and venison, and last though not least, the most delicious honey in the honeycomb.” 

My grandparents kept about 50 bee hives—typically called bee gums since they were often made from hollow sections of sweet gum logs—tended mostly by my grandmother who, according to Mr. R., “let swarms of bees crawl all over her. She worked away as though they were so many house flies buzzing around her, and when they clustered too thick around the edges of her cap, she brushed them off with a delicacy and gentleness…” 

When grandmother was stung on the tip of her nose—a proboscis to Mr. R.—he figured she would lose her temper. But, after applying a few drops of Radway’s Ready Relief, she casually resumed her honey gathering.

Grandmother was outspoken and didn’t mind telling Mr. R., “I do declare I believe a body might larn a lawyer something if he would only use his own eyes and senses and not be forever gwine to his books to ax them everything!”

Mr. R. proclaimed that my grandmother, who reminded him of Mrs. Poyser in Adam Bede—a rough exterior with a heart of gold—made the best “strong cup of good yaller coffee.” He doubted whether a better cup could be found anywhere. “One cup, reader, of the coffee she will prepare next spring will be worth a trip across the Atlantic for a taste,” he wrote. 

 Grandmother teased Mr. R. about strips of ribbon she’d used to decorate her bed posts. She quizzed him repeatedly, trying to get him to identify the pale pink “ribbons.” Turns out these Smoky Mountain ribbons were dried bear gut. When grandmother wanted to send a piece of this ribbon to his wife, Mr. R. vehemently declared he was single. He did, however, agree to take a piece of the unusual ribbon home with him and pledged to show it to any reader interested in seeing some genuine bear gut.

During Mr. R.’s week in the Smokies, he hiked during the day, slept long after the family had eaten their breakfast, and in the evenings enjoyed lively conversations around “glorious fires…where the price of wood is nothing. And what immense chimney places they have! I am not exaggerating to say that the one at Mr. H.’s would hold fully half a cord.” As the womenfolk sewed by the fire, with sweet potatoes the girls had carried inside in their aprons roasting in the ashes, everyone joined in nightly discussions about times there’d been nothing to eat but “taters,” and great hunting stories—grandfather said he’d killed some 25 or 30 panthers in his time, along with deer and bears innumerable.

Thanks to Mr. R.’s account, I learned about  the “wild and romantic scenery” that surrounded my grandparents’ humble cabin, their hard yet harmonious lifestyle, and that they were a most delightful couple—vastly different from the grim-faced individuals I’d seen in an old sepia-toned photograph. Now, nearly a century and a half later, having seen their words on paper, I can easily imagine my grandparents’ rich, lilting voices, echoing through the hills and hollows of the Smokies.

About the author: Jo Harris lives in Jonesborough, Tennessee. She wrote about moonshine runners and the history of stock-car racing in the October/November 2014 issue of Smoky Mountain Living.

Digging Up My Roots

For years, climbing my family tree didn’t appeal to me. I suppose I simply had to grow into that need for knowledge just as I had into my sister’s hand-me-down dresses. But eventually I had to know if my roots had been planted shallowly in the organic duff, or deeply in the fertile Smoky Mountain soil.

My husband, ever the devil’s advocate, offered cautionary advice. “With mountain families so entwined,” he said, “what happens if your family tree looks more like a family wreath?” And, “You know digging in the dirt can get your boots muddy, right?” His well-meaning admonitions fell on deaf ears. I told him I had faith in George Bernard Shaw, who once said, “If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you might as well teach it to dance.”

In the Smoky Mountains, people often had identical names, which makes it hard for genealogists to know if they’re following the right line. And, though contemporaries of Speckled Bill, Whitehead Bill, or Laughing Bill knew of whom they referred, such nicknames can be stumbling blocks for researchers. Many helpful resources exist, and one I turn to frequently is Smoky Mountain Ancestral Quest (smokykin.com). Searching with a surname and given name, it’s often possible to go back several generations. The family who established this website spent years trying to untangle their ancestry and have collected massive amounts of information. 

Other invaluable sources include the Great Smoky Mountains National Park archives, the genealogy department at the King Family Library in Sevierville, and the Smoky Mountain Historical Society, which has several publications including funeral home records, marriage records, and burial/cemetery listings, including some dating back to the 1850s. 

—Jo Harris