Of all the chapters that I read and reviewed in my most recent review of the book Letters From the Smokies in Smoky Mountain Living (June-July, 2025), the story of the Walker Sisters was the one story that got my attention probably more than any of the others. In her book The Walker Sisters of Little Greenbrier, place-based author Rose Houk has created a photo history of their story. In this brief 60-page book, on the cover is a photo from 1905 of all seven sisters dressed in church attire and taken at their remote rural family home around the beginning of the 20th century in Little Greenbrier on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains. Houk tells their amazing story so well in this slim volume filled with photos and archive memorabilia that I’m going to keep a low profile, here, and let you enjoy a bit of her narrative and their history for yourselves.
Location
Rose Houk begins the book: “In a small log cabin on a mountain farm, six women lived their entire lives. They were the Walker sisters, who spent their childhoods, grew into young women, and lived out their final years here in Little Greenbrier, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. Six sisters, all born in the nineteeth century, who experienced the joys and comforts and griefs and sorrows that every person eventually knows, who held firmly to their habits and ways even as their century-old family home was surrounded by a new national park; and who through their lives witnessed immense changes in the world beyond.” Houk describes their homeplance and activities in poetic detail almost as if she were there and witnessing it all for herself. “When rain pelted the cabin or snow flew outside, everyone gathered around the hearth, while a pone of corn baked and a pot of beans bubbled with sweet aroma. The walls were covered with newspapers and magazines; the job of repapering was an annual chore,” she writes.
Food
Living off-the-grid and self-sufficiency was the name of the game for the Walker sisters, as Houk describes. “The Walker sisters were organic gardeners and guardians of biodiversity long before these ideas became trendy. A gate behind the house opened onto a huge vegetable garden, fenced with hemlock stakes and surrounded by prolific orchards. There was also a large chestnut orchard, which produced delectable—and marketable—nuts that could be sold for a handsome four dollars a bushel in town. On any table, pork and corn showed up at nearly every meal. The women enjoyed plenty of fresh food during the growing season. But what couldn’t be eaten at harvest had to be preserved for later consumption. With the sound of the dinner horn, everyone gathered for the main midday meal. No one was ever turned away from the Walkers, and if there were too many guests, they would set a second table. For them, food was much more than simply a substance to keep body and soul together—it was a measure of generosity, satisfaction, and kinship.
Weaving & Sewing
About the sisters more domestic creative work, Houk writes: “When the women weren’t cooking or farming, a large part of their daily domestic routine involved spinning and weaving. The work of producing yarn and weaving cloth was almost unimaginable, and it took a person of strong character to accomplish it. Spinning was a skill gained through much practice, and the Walker sisters kept several wheels spinning for hours on end with some of the skeins dyed with poke berries or walnut bark. Besides providing a creative outlet, quliting was a welcome social affair. Women gathered around the frame at a quilting bee and got a chance to catch up on all the local gossip, as they stitched a cherished heirloom.”
Health & Medicine
“When it came to staying healthy,” Houk writes, “mountain people turned to herbal medicine and home remedies before they would ever seek out a doctor. Mother Margaret Walker, before she died in 1909, was well known as an herbalist, valuable knowledge that she passed on to her children. In their own herb garden outside the back door, the Walker sisters grew horseradish, boneset, and peppermint for curative teas and poultices. The wild plants of the hills and forest were sought for their healing properties as well—sassafras to build the blood and ragweed to ease the itch of poison ivy. In springtime, they might dig some ramps or down a tonic of sulfur and molasses.”
School & Education
Back at the turn of the 20th century, education wasn’t manatory as it is today. Houk tells us that “For most mountain children, formal schooling occupied only two or three months of the year when farm chores were lighter. And though the Walkers were diligent students, none of the girls went beyond sixth or eighth grade. In those days the value of an education for a young woman was questioned, because people genearally assumed she would marry and stay home.
The National Park
Houk spends a good deal of time in the book writing about the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and how the Walker sisters had to deal with this in terms of their very survival. “While many mountain people were displaced by the park, the Walker sisters stood their ground and throughout negotiations with the government; they wanted a lifetime lease so they could remain in their Little Greenbrier home for the rest of their days. In the end, the Walker sisters did receive the desired lifetime lease plus $4,750 for their land. Though they could stay for the rest of their lives, park regulations curtailed or ended some of their traditioanl practices such as hunting and fishing, herb gathering, wood cutting and livestock grazing.”
Development & Tourism
With the creation of the Park and developments such as roads, trails, automobiles and motorcycles, thousands of hikers, anglers, and sightseers came to the mountains and many of them wandered up the old wagon road to the cabin in what was now known as Five Sisters Cove. “Mostly, the sisters welcomed them.” Houk writes., “But as women without menfolk around, they continued doing things in the ways and with the implements they knew best how to use—with their father’s hunting horn, used to signal nearby relatives of any need for assistance.”
At the End
Toward the end of the sisters lives at their home in the Smokies, “Park rangers kept a watchful eyes out for them, too, lending a hand when they got snowed in. As the land began to reclaim itself, the Walker sisters worried about forest fires and the threat of foxes and hawks marauding among their crops and chickens.” As Arthur McDade writes in his 2021 article on the Walker sisters: “With the passing of the Walker Sisters, a fascinating period of Smoky Mountain history died with them. But the heritage of the sisters is maintained today in historic photos, archival interviews and recordings, articles, books, and memories, and in the historic structures and grounds which survive today.”
About the author: Thomas Crowe is the author of the award-winning memoir Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods and publisher of New Native Press. He lives in Jackson County, North Carolina.