1 50 11 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/9502bd1e9ef1a3b70f95f5ab6091eb3f.pdf c234ea832ac859d27b3e3068d44d3729 PDF Text Text �MOUNTAIN PREACHER STORIES �This page intentionally left blank �MOUNTAIN PREACHER STORIES Laughter Among The Trumpets by Ben d Fisher Appalachian Consortium Press • Boone, North Carolina 28608 �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004^ its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program^ Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license^ visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1990 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-3662-7 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-3664-1 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �To our sons David and Hugh �Appalachian Consortium Press The Appalachian Consortium is a non-profit educational organization comprised of institutions and agencies located in the Southern Highlands. Our members are volunteers who plan and execute projects which serve 156 mountain counties in seven states. Among our goals are: •Preserving the cultural heritage of Southern Appalachia •Protecting the mountain environment •Publishing manuscripts about the region •Improving educational opportunities for area students and teachers •Conducting scientific, social, and economic research •Promoting a positive image of Appalachia •Encouraging regional cooperation The member institutions of the Appalachian Consortium are: Appalachian State University Blue Ridge Parkway East Tennessee State University Gardner-Webb College Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association John C. Campbell Folk School Lees-McRae College Mars Hill College Mayland Community College N.C. Division of Archives and History Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild U.S. Forest Service Warren Wilson College Western Carolina University Western North Carolina Historical Association �TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Introduction The Striking Clock. Coining a Word Wagon Wheel Stars Making a Darning Ball Fresh Air The Salesman Super-Salesman........... Squirrel Gravy The Three Gifts The Three-Minute Egg Stealing Chickens Young Groundhogs Not Fit for a Dog Mule Trouble Braying Mule Panther Tracks The Banty Rooster Healthy Hogs The Beehive A Hard Luck Story Hog with a Peg-Leg How to Cook a Catfish.. At Home in the Orphanage Flooding the Market Three Kinds of He Foundered Ciphering.... Company Nuisance The Birthday Present Ain't He Growed? Between Louisville and Frankfort Getting Out the Straight Board ' Simmons vu ix .....xi 1 1 2 2 3 5 6 7 8 ....9 .10 12 12 14 14 16 16 .....17 19 19 ....20 21 22 23 24 25 ....26 27 28 28 29 30 30 �That's No Reason A Problem in Communication I Don't Know Where We're Going Too Hot to Handle AWholeKegful The Umpire Merciful Justice Whupped or Killed The New Jail Where Do You Live? Cataloochee Baptist Church Reaching High Not So Stupid The Parachute Never Went to College Myself On Smoking Chewing Tobacco The Best Man in the Community Driving a Nail Anvils OnNaggin' Swearing a Character A Word for It The Pulpit Robe The Preacher Who Pressed His Luck Mountain Preacher or Seminary Graduate The Bathrobe I Frenzied Cussin' Climbing an Oak Tree The Shrewish Woman Riding Shotgun The Lost Sheep Creasyback Beans A True Baptist Ben: The Man Behind the Stories by Roger G. Branch Vlll 31 32 33 .....34 .........34 35 36 37 39 39 40 41 ..42 ...43 45 46 ....47 ................47 ....49 49 50 50 51 51 52 53 54 55 .....57 .....58 ..58 59 60 60 62 64 �PREFACE My husband, Ben Fisher, had collected these mountain stories for many years, and used them often as illustrations in his speeches and in his writing. In sessions of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, occasionally when a controversial issue had caused stress and frayed patience, I have heard a motion to "set aside five minutes for Ben Fisher to tell a story." "Second the motion!" He would have to get to his feet immediately and try to tell the right story for that moment. Often he managed to make a point, obliquely and with a disarming smile, because he knew "how to drive a nail without busting the plank." He had always meant to make a book of these stories, "but not," he said, "until Fm finished with them myself." Now, alas! he is finished with them. After he died in November, 1985, I worked first on his other nearly completed manuscript, The Idea of a Christian University in Today's World, and have only now been able to publish the mountain stories. A few were on tape, a number had been transcribed in rough draft, and some have been contributed by folk who carried them in loving memory. The subtitle of this book, Laughter Among the Trumpets, comes from Job 39:25 (King James version: "He saith among the trumpets, Ha ha"). This verse became the headline on a feature article by Jay Jenkins some years ago, pointing out how Ben used humor to deflate pomposity or to soften stridence. It is impossible, of course, to convey on paper the timing, or the reminiscent laughter in the voice of the teller; but the book is conversational in tone. Afew stories on tape were interspersed with comments which I have left in place because they provide background settings. Some of the old way of life is vanishing; there may come a day when such description will be a valuable record of "the way we were." IX �Many of the stories have been told in Switzerland, in New England, in Hong Kong, in Wales, in Japan, in Australia. Ben received one attractive offer to videotape them, but the proposal was for him to dress in overalls and act the part of a country bumpkin. This he refused to do, because to him the chief appeal of these tales is not their provincial nature but their universality. The characters may never have been out of their home counties, but in telling about them, Ben had found the secret of drawing people together with a laugh at human foibles that know no cultural boundaries. Drawing people together, in the name of the Lord, was a special part of his ministry. Sally Fisher �INTRODUCTION During the past forty years, I have collected stories illustrating the humor of the Southern highlander. Appalachia, especially that part of it in western North Carolina, was heavily populated with immigrants from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Some were folk of German origin. They brought with them not only their rugged individualism and their determination to work and to wrest homes out of the wilderness; they brought also a sense of humor and a dignity which have always been characteristic of a sturdy yeoman people. Their humor has certain consistencies which are identifiable. First of all, mountain humor, like all folk humor, typically arises out of a life situation. Occasionally there will be an imaginative "tall story," but usually the tale relates something that happened, not something just dreamed up. Partly for this reason it is frequently told in the first person. A good storyteller will often add some embroidery, but he is essentially describing a happening that needs no adornment. Often one could scarcely imagine anything as funny as what actually occurred. Moreover, most mountain preachers and many of the oldtime mountaineers had a real talent for telling stories. This is the reason that when these stories are written, they are not nearly so funny as when they are told or put on video-tape. The power is somewhat in the timing. A third characteristic of the wit of the mountaineer is that it is never meant to hurt anybody — it is not sharp, or barbed, or mean, or ugly — and when possible, a man tells the story on himself. (This is another reason for the frequency of the first person.) This kind of satire bears comparison with that of the Romans — for that matter, all the way back through history mankind has been laughing at basically the same life situations. But mountain satire laughs at them gently. In Roman times, some very bitter satire was written by Juvenal, who could not make enough harsh, biting remarks about enough people. There was another type of Roman satire written by the gentle poet Horace, who made people laugh and feel good. Mountain humor XI �is essentially Horatian: light-hearted and kind, it never has a barb in it, never lacerates, never seeks to embarrass or humiliate. Some of it is not so funny as it is poignant. It illustrates a great warm-heartedness that characterizes mountain folk. Another noticeable feature of mountain wit is that it is clean. There maybe an occasional hell or damn, but beyond that—and that very infrequently — these stories can be told anywhere: in church or in any company. This is not to say that the mountaineer didn't have some barnyard jokes. He had plenty of those, but he had the good sense and good taste to know that the place to tell those was in the barnyard. A final characteristic of mountain stories is that most of them are didactic. There is almost always an implied lesson to be learned, and for this reason mountain preachers have used as sermon illustrations many of the stories which follow. In a way, this book should be considered my tribute to the old-time mountain preacher. He was a man of God, He knew how to preach the Word, he loved his people, he shepherded his flock, and he needed — believe me — a sense of humor in those rough mountains and in those times. Ben C. Fisher �THE STRIKING CLOCK he story is told of the little mountain congregation that inherited a very beautiful banjo clock, which they immediately installed in the back of the church. They were all so proud of the beautiful set of chimes that they were encouraged to form the habit of coming early enough to hear them, thus starting the morning service promptly at the eleven o'clock hour, and the evening service at eight. One Sunday evening when the congregation had gathered expectantly and were awaiting the beautiful chimes, the clock ran away, striking forty-nine times. One of the old mountaineers stood up and said, "Come on, old woman, let's get out of here. It's time to go home. This is the latest it's ever been." COINING A WORD The old-time mountain preacher could, many times, be eloquent. His language was often colorful, and sometimes when he was short of a word, he simply manufactured one that said more than conventional English. One Sunday morning Uncle Jethro was preaching—as they say in the mountains — "in a weaving way," and he was almost completely carried away by the occasion. He had a large congregation and a good sermon, and the amens had been frequent. It was one of those beautiful spring mornings with fleecy clouds floating in the air, and soft breezes coming through the window. The crops were up, the pastures were green, and the cattle could be seen on the hills. Uncle Jethro looked down the aisle and out through the open door to the beautiful valley below, and he said, 1 �"Folks, I want you to realize that the whole earth belongs to the Lord. It's all his; it's his, brethren, from horizon to hosettin." WAGON WHEEL STARS This story comes from southern Appalachia. It was told to me by my dear friend John Steely, a colleague at Southeastern Seminary and a friend of more than twenty-five years. It seems that a young preacher had been away to college and had taken a course in astronomy. He was overcome with the transcendental distances, the hugeness of the universe, the black holes, the galaxies, and the enormous size of the stars. He had a somewhat guilty feeling that he had made God too small. He incorporated all of this into a sermon to his mountain congregation, and told them that Jupiter is a planet so big that the earth could be placed inside it several times. When the service was over, the mountain boys were outside talking. One old deacon said to another, "Did you hear that?" "Yes," he said, "I did." "Well, what do you think about it?" He said, "I don't think a thing about it. You can just look up there — look at all them stars up there. You can tell that if they was as big as wagon wheels, they'd lap." MAKING A DARNING BALL This is a human interest story that actually happened in a little community over near Franklin, not far from Sylva. A young girl became the first from her community to attend college. She had gone all the way down to Greensboro, North �Carolina, and majored in home economics. When she came back, the home demonstration club invited her to speak. These good mountain women were very proud of their college graduate, but they had requested her to talk about something practical. She decided that she would teach them how to make a darning ball by taking the white and the yolk out of an egg, then pouring the eggshell full of plaster of Paris, allowing it to harden, and then breaking the eggshell off. The hardened plaster can be shellacked or varnished, and it does make an excellent darning ball. It fits very nicely into the toe or heel of a sock. She appeared at the appointed hour, and she had some pots and pans and an egg on the table in front of her, and she allowed her pride in having been to college to be reflected in her choice of words. She picked up the egg and said to those good mountain ladies: "You will observe that the object which I hold in my hand is elliptical in shape. By inducing a small opening in both the anterior and posterior ends of this elliptical object, and by exhaling gently through it, I force the contents into a saucepan." One good old mountain woman piped up, "Friends, ain't a college education wonderful? I always just poked a hole in each end and blowed 'er in a cup." FRESH AIR The father of one of my boyhood chums had been killed in an accident, leaving this boy (whom I will call Henry), his widowed mother, and his older brother. My grandfather had a large, squared-log house which he allowed the family to use rent-free. It was carefully built and chinked. Along the north side was a lean-to built out of boards, with a sloping roof. There was a large fireplace at one end of the main cabin and a big Foster range at the other. This was where the family lived. They ate at a big oilcloth-topped table, and they slept in the large room, where there were four big beds, each with a straw tick and afeatherbed. �Henry's mother was a wonderful cook, and I used to like to go there and spend the night and eat, particularly when she would bake potatoes in the ashes behind the backlog. Anyone who has never eaten potatoes baked in this fashion doesn't know what he has missed. There is simply nothing like the flavor of a potato baked "mealy done" in good hickory ashes. On several occasions I spent the night there, and when the wind was high, I could see the hooked rug waving a bit, because the cabin sat a little way off the ground. If it happened to be snowing, a "skiff" of snow would drift in, in a narrow line along the cracks. Henry and I went to a little mountain school together. First, second, and third grades were together in one room, and fourth, fifth, and sixth in another. Of course we were able to hear it all, and we learned a lot. About this time a hygiene course had been introduced in the third grade of the public schools. Our teacher went to great lengths to teach us good health rules. One of the habits she stressed was that in order to be healthy, we needed to get plenty of good fresh air. Each night we were supposed to lower our window two inches from the top and raise it two inches from the bottom so that the air would circulate freely. After she had explained this procedure several times, we came into our little schoolroom one morning, and after she had called the roll, she began to inquire what each had done about adjusting the window. When she came to Henry, she said, "Henry, did you lower your bedroom window two inches from the top last night, and raise it two inches from the bottom?" Henry looked at her a moment and answered, "Teacher, just to tell you the honest truth, fresh air ain't our problem." �THE SALESMAN A mountain boy had grown a little tired of the back-breaking work on his rocky little mountain farm, so he decided he'd go into the city and get himself a job to earn some money. Because he had done a lot of fishing and hunting, he determined that what he'd like to do would be to clerk in a sporting goods store. So he went into the store and applied to the manager for a job. The manager observed that the mountaineer wasn't dressed very well, and his English wasn't the best, so the manager was trying to let the boy down gently. But the boy said, "Friend, all I want is a chance for one day. It won't cost you one thing. If I don't sell you a lot of stuff this first day, it won't cost you anything. I need the job. How about letting me try?" The store manager thought, "Well, what have I got to lose?" Along about 4:30 he started checking up, and he found out that the old boy had sold one man $3600 worth of equipment. The manager was just fascinated. So he called the mountaineer in and said, "Friend, have you actually sold $3600 worth of equipment to one man?" He said, "Yes, sir, I did." The manager said, "How in the world did you do it?" The boy said, "Friend, it all started with some fishhooks. He bought some fishhooks, and I said, 'How about your fishing pole? We've got a special here: a nice rod and reel. The fishhooks are not going to do you any good unless you've got a good rod and reel/ so I sold him the rod and reel. "Then I said, *Where are you going to catch these fish?' " 'Well,1 he said, *I guess Fll stand on the bank,' and I said, 'Now, friend, you're not going to catch any fish just standing on the bank. What you need is a good boat. If you've got a good boat, you can get out there where the fish are.' "He said, 'All right,' so I sold him the boat. "Then I said, 'When you get into this boat, how are you going to move it along?' " �" 'Well/ the man said, 1 guess I'll paddle it or pole it/ "I said to him, 'Now, friend, you're not going to catch any fish paddling or poling. Everybody else will be there first. What you need is a motor/ So I sold him a motor to go on the boat. He bought that, and I said, *Now, can you swim?1 "He said, Well, some/ "I said, *You oughtn't to be out there without some life preservers. In the first place, it's not legal/ So I sold him some life preservers. "So," the mountaineer said, "it all added up to a little more than $3600." The store manager was just amazed. He said, "Friend, do you mean to tell me that a man came in here and asked to buy some fishhooks, and you sold him $3600 worth of fishing equipment?" "No, sir, that's not exactly right. I didn't say the man came in here and asked to buy fishhooks. What he said was that he had aheadache and wanted to buy two aspirins, so that's when I said, 'Man, you need to go fishing/ " He got the job. SUPER-SALESMAN Some years ago a man, after having been away for several years, returned to western North Carolina to revisit the scenes of his childhood: the old home place and the little mountain cemetery. It was a hot July day. As he drove along he got hotter and hotter, and he began to think about those delicious Nehis that he used to drink when he was a boy. Suddenly he saw in the distance what he was sure was an old-time country store. It was, and he pulled off the road. The sun had been very bright. He parked his car, and when 6 �he went into the cool shadows of the old store building, he was temporarily almost blind from the light of the sun. But as his eyes began to adjust to the dark interior, he was amazed to see boxes of salt and cans of salt and sacks of salt stacked on the counter and on the floor and almost everywhere else. He stood around waiting a few minutes. No one appeared. Finally, when he heard a movement in the back of the store, he went on through to the part which was storeroom and feedroom. An old man was carefully cranking out a canful of kerosene from an old-fashioned hand-cranked tank. As he watched, he noticed also that there were more boxes of salt, sacks of salt, and cans of salt back in this storeroom. He said to the old man, "Do you own this store?" "Yes, I do," he replied. "Well," he said, "friend, you must sell a lot of salt." The old man thoughtfully scratched his chin and said, "No, sir, but there was a fella through here the other day who sure sells a lot of salt." SQUIRREL GRAVY A mountain preacher who was very, very strict with his family came home one Sunday afternoon and learned that his oldest boy had taken a shotgun out that afternoon and killed seven or eight big fat squirrels. The boy had dressed them out and brought them in, and his mother had parboiled them and fried them a golden brown, and was getting ready to serve them for supper. The preacher was wroth. He told the whole family in no uncertain terms how he felt about that violation of the Sabbath. The time came when they all got ready to sit down at the supper table before a platter of those rich brown squirrels. The good woman had made a great big bowlful of good, brown gravy �and some hot buttermilk biscuits. The aroma of the coffee and gravy was floating around. The family sat down after the blessing, and the preacher said, "Just like I said, and I want to tell you again, young man, you had no business going out hunting on Sunday. That's a sin. It's shameful, and I'm surprised that you'd do it. There isn't anything in the world that would make me touch one mouthful of those squirrels — but I will take a little of the gravy." THE THREE GIFTS Three young people, two brothers and a sister, were very proficient with the guitar, the banjo, and the fiddle. They went to Nashville to the Grand Ole Opry and did so well there that they were invited to play at the White House. The music company sent them on out to Hollywood, where they made some hit records and soon became very wealthy. However, they were so busy making money and performing that they neglected their mother, whom they loved very dearly. It soon became apparent that they would not be able to get home for Christmas, and they felt guilty about it, so they decided that each would do something unusually nice in the way of a Christmas present. The girl went out and bought her mother a string of genuine matched pearls. The older brother bought a beautiful mink stole. The younger brother wanted to do something really special, so he went to a pet shop and spent five hundred dollars for a myna bird, and another five hundred dollars getting a fellow musician to teach this bird to sing his mother's favorite hymn. They met and were all quite pleased with themselves, and made arrangements to have these presents sent to the mother special delivery so that she would have them before Christmas. Christmas came and went, and since they hadn't heard from their mother, they became a little concerned, so the younger son called his mother. She said, "Oh son, I'm just so glad to hear from 8 �you. I haven't been too well, but Fve been meaning to write. I hope you're well, and I'm sorry you didn't get home for Christmas." The boy said, "Mom, did you get our presents?" "Oh, yes." "Well, what did you think about sister's pearls?" She said, "Son, they're the prettiest things I have ever seen in my life. I'm almost afraid to wear them — I'm so afraid I'll break the string and lose some of them. Once in awhile I wear them to church, but mostly I keep them wrapped up in a bureau drawer, and I open the box and look at them sometimes." "Well," he said, "did you get the mink stole that brother sent?" "Oh," she said, "it's just so warm, and I wear it to church every Sunday. It's the prettiest thing, might'nigh, I ever had. The people at church just brag on it." Then the younger son paused and said, "Well, Mom, did you get the myna bird?" "Yes, I did, son," she replied. "Thank you so much. It was delicious." THE THREE-MINUTE EGG When I was serving as administrative assistant to the president of Southeastern Seminary, it was customary for us to go over to Nashville, Tennessee, in February for the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention at which the institutional budgets were approved. On this trip there were Stealey, Binkley, Sandusky, Newman,* and I. In those days, before Baptists became prosperous, we didn't have *Dr. Sydnor L. Stealey, president of the seminary at that time; Dr. Olin T. Binkley, dean; Dr. Fred Sandusky, registrar; and Dr. Stewart A. Newman, professor of theology. — Ed. �the money to fly over, so we had to pack five people into a car and make a two-day trip. We'd drive to Asheville one day and then on into Nashville the next. Because they gave us special rates, we usually stayed at the Mountaineer Hotel, near Beaucatcher Tunnel. The motel didn't have a restaurant, so we used to go up to Buck's, just a few doors above, where we liked to eat breakfast because of the homemade biscuits and baked apples. On this particular morning, we sat at a round table, and because I was on a diet, I ordered dry toast and a three-minute egg. The little waitress brought the egg, and I broke it, and it was raw, so I sent it back. She brought another egg, and it was the same way, and I sent it back. She brought the third egg, and it wasn't any better, but I ate it as best I could. But I didn't like it. And, of course, when I got home and told my wife about it, I found that she had been cooking my threeminute egg four minutes. Just one year from that day, almost to the day, we were back on our way to Nashville — same crowd. We went up to Buck's and sat down at that round table. The same little waitress came up (I didn't recognize her at the time), stood there, and stared at me for a long time. With a twinkle in her eyes she said, "Okay, Grumpy, let's get started on those eggs." STEALING CHICKENS This story originated not in my native state but in Arkansas. I heard it first from a well-known Congressman who was one of the greatest friends that private higher education has ever had, particularly in keeping up appropriations for student scholarships. Some years ago, a young man had completed reading law and had passed the bar exam. He moved into a small town and hung out his shingle. Almost two weeks went by, and not a single client darkened his door. Then one day he looked up, and coming 10 �through the door was a lanky mountaineer with about two days1 growth of beard. One of the "galluses" of his overalls was held up with a thorn, which had replaced the missing button. (The Congressman explained that the thorn was significant. The middle class, he said, used a nail for this purpose, but the poor used thorns. This boy didn't have the money for a nail.) Pausing a minute, the newcomer said, "Friend, are you a lawyer?" The young man replied, "Yes, I am." "Well, I need help. I've been indicted. Can you help me?" The young lawyer said, "That's what I'm here for. Sit down, and tell me what your problem is." The mountaineer paused, looked at the floor, pulled his earlobe, scratched his cheek, shifted his cud of tobacco from one side to the other, and said, "Well, I'll tell you, it's like this: they swore out a warrant, and I've got to stand trial. I'm out on bond. I've been arrested for stealing chickens." "Well," the lawyer said, "that's a fairly serious charge. If I'm going to help you, you've got to tell me the complete truth. Now, you understand that whatever you tell me is privileged information. Do you know what privileged information is?" The mountaineer said, "No, sir, I don't." "That simply means," said the lawyer, "that anything you tell me, good or bad, can't be used in court against you. They can't compel me ever to tell it to anyone or to testify against you. It's absolutely confidential." When there was no reply, the lawyer continued, "Now, the first thing I want to know is this: did you really steal those chickens?" The old mountain boy hesitated a minute, looked at the floor, looked at the ceiling, then looked out the window, and finally said, "Well, friend, to tell you the truth, you've put your finger on the weakest point in my whole case." 11 �YOUNG GROUNDHOGS Dr. George Capps passed on to me the story which follows. It seems that for a good many years the people in a small mountain community had gone to their preacher to ask him when it would be all right to plant their gardens. No one could remember when he had failed to give them good advice. One spring in recent years, they went again and asked the old preacher about planting-time. He studied a minute and said, '"Well, it's going to be a little cool, and it's going to be a little damp, but it's going to be a good garden year, so you go ahead and plant your seed. Everything will be fine." So they went ahead and planted every seed on the mountain. The weather warmed up, and in about two weeks every seed came up. Then came a hard freeze, which burned everything off to the ground. People were really appalled. One of the deacons went back and said, "Preacher, our congregation is terribly upset. For as long as anybody can remember, you've been telling us when to plant the gardens, and you've never failed. We want to know two things: how have you been able to do this all these years, and what happened this spring?" The old preacher shook his head. "Well," he said, "friend, you know, I'm nearly ninety years old, and all these years, I've been watching the groundhogs, but, friend, these young groundhogs are somethin' else." NOT FIT FOR A DOG A young preacher who had been ordained to the gospel ministry only a short time before was very much excited when he received one of his first opportunities to preach. He had been invited to come to a small "quarter-time" mountain church, located in a rather isolated area of the county. He rose early, put on his best suit, picked up his Bible and notes, got into his car, 12 �and checked his directions. In his eagerness and anticipation he arrived at the church about an hour before preaching time. As he started into the church, there was an old hound-dog stretched full-length in front of the door. He had to step over the dog, and he went on into the church, whereupon he discovered he'd forgotten his Bible. When he came back, the old hound was still there, and wouldn't move. He stepped over the dog again, went back to the car, and decided that while he was there, he would just sit out in the cool air and review his sermon. The time got away, and people began to gather, so he thought he had better go on into the church. He got his Bible and his notes and started back, and this time the old hound-dog rose up just as he got to the threshold. The young preacher tripped, and fell his full length down the aisle. He got up very angry, and rushed back and kicked that dog in the ribs. The old hound went howling down around the side of the mountain. The young man had started back into the church when someone tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Friend, I want to tell you something. You've made a terrible mistake. I guess you're the preacher, and I think you ought to know that the dog you kicked belongs to the chairman of the board of deacons of this church. That man's got eleven children, and he thinks as much of that dog as he does of any young'un he's got, and I just thought you ought to know it." "Well," the young preacher said, "after the service I'll try to make it right." Immediately following the service, the young man rushed up to the deacon and said, "I want to apologize. I lost my temper and I did an unchristian thing. I'm sorry I kicked your dog, and I want you to forgive me." The old mountaineer looked at the young preacher for a long time without changing his expression. Finally he said, "Now, son, don't let that worry you. I'm glad you kicked that dog. I wouldn't have had him hear that sermon for fifty dollars." 13 �MULE TROUBLE A well-known and popular local mountain politician once lost a very close election. His friends were all moaning and groaning. He was down at the post office one morning to get his mail, and somebody came up and said, "Aw, Henry, you must feel terrible." He said, "Yes, I do. Reminds me of the fellow that was out one day in the pasture, trying to hem up a young mule in the fence corner and catch him. The mule turned and kicked him in the head and, as he said, 'busted his head wide open.' He was rushed to the doctor, crying, 'Oh doctor, please, please don't let me die. Do anything, but don't let me die! Please save me.' "The doctor said, 'You're hurt pretty bad. Fll do the best I can. You afraid to die?' " 'Oh no,' the man said, 'it's not that. It's just the thought of being kicked to death by a jackass that bothers me.'" BRAYING MULE This is one of the favorite mountain preacher stories, and has basis in fact. I got this tale from Phil Elliott, late President of Gardner-Webb College, and for many years himself a mountain preacher when he was a young man. Phil Elliott had gone to Robbins, North Carolina, to be pastor, and while he was there, he invited Brother Thad Dietz, a greatly beloved mountain pastor known as the Prophet of the Cowees, to come and lead the revival meeting. Brother Dietz had learned to read mostly from the King James version of the Bible, and while he was not college-educated, he knew the great Biblical themes, and could preach them, Genesis to Revelation, sometimes in almost pure Elizabethan English. He had a marvelous sense of humor. He was to do the preaching, and Brother Will Cook was to lead the singing. Will was another great 14 �mountain preacher [along with G. N. (Napoleon) Cowan — I believe they were the first two Jackson County preachers ever to attend college; both were Wake Forest College graduates]. The meeting started, and Brother Dietz was preaching, and the response was good. As they went back one night to the hotel, Brother Dietz said to Pastor Phil Elliott, "You know, I've been watching Will, and Will wants to preach so bad he can taste it. Would you mind if we let him preach on Saturday night?" A little later, Brother Dietz said to Will, "My throat's a little scratchy. Will, reckon you could preach on Saturday night?" Brother Dietz said later that Will rose to that just like a mountain trout to a grasshopper. In the meantime, Phil and Thad made an agreement that no matter how good a sermon Will preached Saturday night, they weren't going to say anything about it. Saturday night came, and Will dusted off his best sermon, and as they say in the mountains, he "preached a big un." However, there was one brief interruption. Not everyone back in the mountains had a car or a truck. Some brought their families to the revival meeting in a wagon, with straight chairs and straw in it. One farmer had hitched his team too close to the church, and about halfway through the sermon one of the mules started to bray. The farmer had to get up and go out and move his team out of earshot, and then come back and take his seat again in the congregation. But there was a good response to the invitation after the sermon: people joined the church by letter and profession of faith. Three or four young people came for baptism. The next morning, all three men were having breakfast at the hotel—ham and eggs. Will would work up to the sermon, but neither Phil nor Thad would say a word about it. Finally, Will couldn't stand it any longer, and he said, "Brother Dietz, I want you to tellme something: that mule braying last night—did that bother the congregation?" Phil said Brother Thad just kept sawing away at his ham 15 �and looked up over his glasses and said, "Now, Will, which one was that?" PANTHER TRACKS Years ago, when my mother was just a child, she and her dear friend Vera decided to enliven the little Webster schoolhouse. They had found a stuffed panther paw (panthers were called "painters" in the mountains). They used the paw to make some authentic-looking footprints in the moist earth near the school well. At recess, they set up pretended howls of fright, and when they were sure of everyone's attention, they pointed out the pawprints. The response was so much more dramatic than they had anticipated that they dared not tell about the prank until after they were grown. School was dismissed, and the men of the community organized a posse, took their dogs, and tracked that painter all the way to the top of Gribble Mountain, where they said it got away. THE BANTY ROOSTER This story has its setting in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. Our two small boys received one Christmas week a beautiful bantam rooster and five little "banty" hens. These were gifts from Dr. Robert Allen Dyer and his wife, Mary. Dr. Dyer, later dean at Wake Forest University, was then professor of psychology and director of guidance at Gardner-Webb College. We were glad to get the banties. The boys enjoyed them as pets, and the hens supplied eggs for a long time. Finally, the only survivor was the little banty rooster. In order to keep the chickens, I had built a lot for them in the 16 �backyard. Theboy next door had abiggame chicken, and the two roosters would run along opposite sides of the fence, ruffling up their feathers and pecking and generally pretending to fight. One day while I was sitting out on the back porch, the game rooster backed off, flew over the fence, attacked the little banty rooster, and was just about to kill him. I walked over and picked up a little piece of pine limb and hit the game rooster across the head just hard enough to flatten him out momentarily. He jumped up, staggered, shook himself, got airborne again, and retreated across the fence from what he evidently thought was an attack by the banty. The banty must have thought also that he had been the victor, because he got up on a little pine stump and tried to crow, but he was so tired that he fell off backwards. Apparently neither of them realized that there had been an unseen hand. HEALTHY HOGS Pork was very important in the early days, all over the South but particularly in the mountains, not only because it provided the household with a ready source of protein and fat, but also because it could be so easily preserved. Although my grandfather told about curing beef, and smoking beef hams, and making beef sausage, I never saw any of this in the smokehouse in my day. It was generally pork that was the family's source of meat for the entire winter. It was used for seasoning-meat, of course; it appeared on the table as we use breakfast bacon; and the cured ham was served on special occasions, particularly on Sunday. Sausage, seasoned with home-grown pepper and sage — and salt, of course — was sometimes canned and sometimes just put into a great stone crock and covered with hot grease. Through the cold weather it would keep very well and served as a rich source of nourishment for the mountain family. 17 �Along about July or August, pork fat tended to turn and the meat got strong and became too rancid for food, but the fat still was not wasted. It was put into a washpot, along with either a "storeboughf lye or a home-made variety. (Most mountain people had a lye-hopper, which was a wooden bin. Into it they put hickory and oak ashes, and either let it sit out in the rain, or poured water over it. The result was a strong brown lye that would take the meat off your fingers if you weren't careful.) The mixture of pork fat and lye was cooked in the iron pot until it was thick, then poured into pans, cut into squares, and used for soap, especially for washing clothes. All this is to say that the hogs which were raised so carefully were a vital part of the family's resources. This story, like many of the mountain tales, has to do with the mountaineer and new-fangled notions about farming and health. A new county agent, who was working with the county health officer, was driving along one day when he saw perched on the mountainside, as if on stilts, a cabin with a long trough that ran from the back porch down to a hog-pen which was only about twenty-five or thirty feet away from a corner of the kitchen. There were several hogs in the pen. The mountaineer was getting ready to have some winter meat. The agent called him out and said, "Friend, I hate to mention this to you, but you've got your hog-pen too close to your back door and your well. You're going to have to move that hog-lot. This is the most unhealthy thing I've ever seen, and something must be done about it right away." The mountaineer said, "I sure don't understand that. I ain't lost a hog in forty years." 18 �THE BEEHIVE This story is an excellent illustration of mountain humor arising out of a situation. It so happened that on a Saturday just before a revival, Aunt Sarah discovered that she was low on honey. She said to Uncle Dave, "Now, Dave, I want you and the boys to rob the bee gums and bring me some honey because you have put it off and put it off, and I will need it tomorrow." Uncle Dave said that he reckoned he would do it, and he told the boys — two boys, half-grown. This didn't please them because they had planned to go down to Sylva. But the old man got his bee-robbing paraphernalia, and they went out to the bee gum. The bee gum is simply a hollow log about three feet high, placed on a board with a hole in the bottom where the bees can go in. Another board is placed on top of all that, with a heavy rock to hold it down — a very uncomplicated beehive. They started out to rob the bees. One of the boys took a long pole, and as his daddy went past he pushed one of those beehives over. It rolled right under his daddy's legs, and the bees just swarmed up all over him. There wasn't much he could do except run, and he took off through the laurel thickets. One of the boys was telling about it later, and he said, "Friends, you could tell by the movement of the bushes that the old man was a-laboring." A HARD LUCK STORY This was one of the favorite stories of my grandfather, Bob Fisher, who for many years operated a general merchandise store in the little community of Addie. One day one of his mountain friends came into the store. This particular fellow was usually very good-humored, but he seemed to be troubled and had a long face. Finally my grandfather said to him, "Henry, you've got a long face for such a pretty day. What's your trouble?" 19 �The man thought a minute and said, "Aw, Mr. Fisher, we've got real trouble up at our house. You know, we didn't have but one sow, and we're depending on that sow for our meat and lard this winter. Mr. Fisher, she dropped nineteen of the prettiest little pigs you've ever seen. You know what? Every one of them little pigs died except one — and damned if it didn't die!" HOG WITH A PEG-LEG I have some question about the next mountain story. In some ways it is a cruelty story, which is rather unusual, but for the sake of the record, I shall relate it. I'm not certain of the source, but it was either Kentucky or Arkansas. A young county agent had heard that there was a farmer up the road who had a hog with a peg-leg. This the agent could hardly believe, so he drove out there to see for himself. The farmer took him down to the hog-lot, and there was a hog hobbling around with a well-made artificial hind leg. The agent was fascinated. He said to the mountaineer, "I've been all the way 'round the world, and I've seen a lot of hogs, but this is the first one I've ever seen with an artificial leg. Is there a special story about this?" "Yes," the farmer said, "and I don't mind sharing it with you. A couple of years ago — you see that stump over there? I was cutting that tree down. I'd chopped into it, and notched it, and I was putting my wedge in to fall it, and the wind shifted and a gust caught it. That tree came right over on top of me. It was just about to crush me to death, and that old hog saw it. He rooted out of that lot and came out here and got his back under that tree and got me enough room so that I could wiggle out from under. I'd be a dead farmer if it hadn't been for that hog." The county agent said, "That's a marvelous story, but it still doesn't tell me about that artificial hind leg." 20 �"Well," the farmer said, "that's one smart hog. Another time, just a little while after that, we'd put in one of these new-fangled wood stoves and we didn't know how to operate it. We'd all gone to bed, and our house caught on fire. That old hog saw it, and he broke out of that pen again and pushed his way in, and raised such a fuss that he woke us up and got us out of the house. Without his help we'd all have been burned up, and the house would have burned down. You appreciate something like that/' The county agent said, "That's great, but you still haven't told me why that hog has such a beautiful artficial hind leg." The farmer said, "Man, don't you see? It ain't hard to understand. Any hog that's done as much as that one has for me and my family — we ain't going to eat a hog like that all at one time." HOW TO COOK A CATFISH Any mountaineer knows that there are two kinds of catfish. There is a blue catfish which, when properly dressed and cooked, has sweet and delicious meat. There is the yellow or mud-cat which, unless prepared in a very special way, always has the taste of mud and the river bottom. The only way to cook a mud-cat is to skin it carefully, preferably the day before it is to be cooked so that it can take some salt for at least twenty-four hours. When the fish has been thoroughly salted, it should be dried with a towel and then split down the middle and tacked, back down, to a piece of oak plank. When this has been done, the catfish should be carefully sprinkled with some big chunks of good yellow country butter. Salt it a little more, pepper it well, cover with slices of onion, and put on top some thin slices of bacon. The catfish then should be put in the oven at 350 degrees and allowed to remain there for about forty-five minutes. Do not baste, and do not open the oven. 21 �After about forty-five minutes, open the oven and poke the catfish gently with a fork. If the meat falls away from the bone, then remove the catfish, throw the catfish away, and eat the board. AT HOME IN THE ORPHANAGE This is not a funny story, but it is memorable to me for its human interest. A cousin of mine from the mountains, W. C. Reid, with the help of his wife, Millie, headed the North Carolina Baptist Orphanage for years. They were greatly loved. A mountain family of five children had been torn up by the death of the father in a logging accident and by the sudden death of the mother not long afterward. Their pastor and one of the deacons, without even telephoning the orphanage, put all the children and their clothes into a car and drove them to the orphanage one Sunday afternoon and left them. Millie said later, "I didn't know what to do. We couldn't put them in a cottage that night, so I went upstairs and made up three beds. We had plenty of room. They were sniffing and crying, and we finally persuaded them to eat a little—not much — and drink some milk, and we put them to bed. "Next morning they came down for breakfast. Fd scrambled eggs and cooked bacon, and I had jelly and toast on the table, and pitchers of milk. They just sat there and shook their heads. "And I noticed one of them lookingback through the kitchen. There was a plate of yesterday's biscuits sitting there on a side table, and suddenly it dawned on me; I remembered what they were probably used to having for breakfast. "With our modern child-care theories, no case worker would have approved, but I went back there and got them each a cup of black coffee, stirred it about half full of sugar, and brought them 22 �those left-over biscuits. They crumbled those biscuits into the coffee and ate like little hungry wolves." FLOODING THE MARKET My grandfather Fisher was noted for his community interest. Although he had little formal education himself (having been born about the time of the Civil War), he never ceased to plug for education and anything else that would improve the community. He was a prosperous farmer, and in addition he owned a big merchandise store at the foot of the Balsam Mountain. He heard that Buncombe County had engaged in something new in farming. They had employed a county farm agent who helped the farmers improve their land and the quality of their produce. Since Grandpa was always in favor of progress, at his own expense he arranged to have this man come over from Buncombe County on the train. He pushed back everything in the feed room and prepared for all who were interested to come and hear this young man speak. There was a fire burning in the big old Warm Morning stove in the feed room, surrounded by a sawdust box so that they could do their chewing and spitting. About thirty-five or forty mountain farmers gathered skeptically to hear what this young man had to say about teaching them to farm. He gave them a talk about diversification of crops so that they'd have a little something, as they say in the mountains, "to bring them in some cash money." One of the men who had gathered there was a well-known character by the name of John L. Jones. John L. was a good provider, but he had a rough time on a mountain farm over behind Dark Ridge. He sat and listened as the man explained about soil conservation and rotating crops. The young farm agent said, "The thing that you men really need to do is to raise something you can sell all year long. For example, one of the things you could raise would be frying-size 23 �chickens, and those will sell almost any time of the year." When he had finished, Grandpa asked for remarks or observations. The mountaineer is "not much on talking." Finally Grandpa turned and said, "John L., what do you think about this?" John L. rose and spit in ^e sawdust box and said, "Young man, about them fryers, just let me tell you something—tell you what I can do. I can go up here on the mountain. I've got a few fryers. I can catch a half-dozen of'em and dress 'em out, and take 'em down to Sylva and glut the damn market." THREE KINDS OF PIE This story was told to me by a mountain preacher who has long since gone to his rest. He enjoyed telling it, and I enjoyed listening. He was holding a revival meeting once in a sparsely settled mountain community, and the preachers had been invited out to supper away up in the head of a little cove. They made their way up as far as they could go in a car; then they crossed a footlog, and there suddenly, in a little clearing on the side of the mountain, was a long, low cabin with a lean-to on the north side. As they went in, there was that nice, clean, fresh smell of floors that had been scrubbed with lye soap, and a fireplace that had been freshly whitewashed. Coming from the kitchen were all those delightful aromas associated with good mountain cooking. The lady of the house welcomed them and assured them that supper would be ready in just a minute. They sat down, then, at a long wooden table with no cloth, but loaded with good mountain vegetables, fruits, fried chicken, and ham. She said, "Now, preacher, we don't make company out of anybody here. Just take out and eat your supper. Eat all you want, but just keep in mind this one thing—I've got three kinds of dessert." 24 �In those days, the preacher said, he was mighty fond of sweets, and he actually "pushed back" before he had finished, and said to the good lady of the house, "I've finished my supper now, and Fm really looking forward to the three kinds of dessert." She said, "Fve got three kinds, just like I told you. It's kivered, unkivered, and crisscross, but it's all apple pie." FOUNDERED This story was told many times by my grandmother, and my father told it with great relish as long as he lived. I suppose that some in this day and generation may not be able to appreciate all the humor of this story without an explanation of the term foundered. An animal such as a cow or hog or horse is said to be foundered if it eats too much. At times this term is applied humorously to human beings. Another comment that may be needed is that in the economy of the mountains, most people ate cornbread at least twice a day. "Wheatbread," as it was sometimes called, was usually reserved for breakfast and many times only for special occasions, especially if it had yeast in it, in which case it was called "ligh thread." A very fine family—wife, husband, and about seven or eight "young-uns"—had a little mountain farm down below where my grandfather lived, and the whole family was inordinately fond of hot biscuits and butter. Since they were a poor family, and wheat was scarce, they didn't have this treat often. But in the spring of the year up on the side of the mountain under Black Rock they were clearing a new ground, which is hard work, and some of the boys kept begging their mother for all the biscuits and butter they could eat. About the middle of the afternoon one day, their mother, who was a good friend of my grandmother, came up and said, "Lilly, I want you to do me a favor." 25 �My grandmother said, "Of course, if I can. What do you want?" She said, "How many bread pans have you got?" Grandma said, "Oh, Fve got several." She said, "I want to borrow every one of them, if you can spare them. You know that crowd I've got — they've never had enough hot buttered biscuit and sourwood honey. We robbed the beehives, and we've got some of the prettiest, clearest sourwood honey we've ever had. I'll bring you some when I bring the pans back. Tonight I'm going to founder them on biscuits and honey. I'm going to feed them all they can eat. I'm going to need every pan you've got." That night Mrs. Jones flew in and got a good fire going in that old Foster range, and she made her biscuits. She had great crocks of yellow butter, and she had plenty of sourwood honey and molasses. They came in from the field, went straight to the back porch and washed their hands and faces, came in and sat down, and they all just ate until they fell away from the table. Mrs. Jones told my grandmother next day, "I foundered 'em all right. I thought that was the last Fd hear of it. They ate until I didn't think they would ever want to see another biscuit. They went to bed, and got up this morning and started back to the new ground. You know that littlest boy of mine? On the way out, he pulled me by the apron and said, 'Ma, how about foundering us again tonight on honey and hot biscuits?'" CIPHERING Another story I should like to pass on has to do with one of my great-grandfathers, who was a merchant and a man of property. He had done very well for his time and day and generation. He had one slight handicap, though, that continues to be something of an embarrassment to the family. There was 26 �little schooling to be had when he was growing up during the Civil War, and as a matter of fact, the old man couldn't read and write. A business man came in from Atlanta, and he found out that old man Davey couldn't read and write. While staying at the local boarding house, he "made his bragf that he would trim the old man in a trade. He stayed for three or four days, but things didn't work out as he had planned. His friends almost had to take up money to get him out of town. As they were puttinghim on the stagecoach, someone asked him about how he had fared with his trade. He said, "Friends, I'll be frank with you. It is true that the old man Davey can't read and write, but friends, he can cipher to beat hell." COMPANY NUISANCE This story was a favorite of my Uncle David Brown, and he told it of his grandfather, a prosperous and well-known farmer who lived in one of the first frame houses in Jackson County (which is still standing). It was located on a route where many "drummers" and friends and relatives found it convenient to come by and spend the night. Since he was a very hospitable person, there were a few who really abused the privilege. There was one man — no relation to the family whatsoever — who had become something of a nuisance. He would drop by sometimes and stay four days at a time and expect to be fed and bedded himself, and also have feed furnished for his horse. One night after supper they were sitting out on the front porch, having their after-supper chew of tobacco and waiting for dark and bedtime. The guest who had already outstayed his welcome was trying to strike up a conversation. He finally spit and said, "Well, Mr. Brown, there's a lot of people coming and going here. I guess all these comers and goers sorta worry you sometimes." 27 �Grandfather Brown said, "Friend, it's not the comers and goers that bother me; it's these comers and stayers." THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT Games came in seasons for children in the mountains, and in the spring a boy had no social status at all unless he had plenty of marbles. For that reason the paper sack that Uncle Lewis Broyles had handed me for my eighth birthday had been a huge disappointment. It was full of marshmallows. My thanks were brief, and I carried my present down to the bridge over the Tuckasegee River at Webster, where I hung over the rail for awhile and brooded about adults who had forgotten how important marbles are. I even considered dropping the mar shmallows into the stream. However, I decided to make a concession and eat one. It was at that point that I discovered that Uncle Lewis had not forgotten his boyhood after all. He had hidden a beautiful marble in every one of those marshmallows, and made my eighth birthday one of the most memorable of my life. AIN'T HE GROWED? The following story is one of my personal experiences that I cherish. As a young man I was very fond of Aunt Sarah. She was no relative of mine, but she was "Aunt Sarah" to all the young people. I think the main reason we loved her was that she always had a jar of sugar cookies, and when we'd come by for any occasion, she always managed to slip one into our hand and two for our pockets. After I had left my little mountain community where I was 28 �born, and had been gone many years, I was invited back to hold a revival meeting at the River Hill Baptist Church. Uncle Will Cook was pastor, and I had really looked forward to renewing old acquaintances. He said to me one day, "We ought to go up on the mountain. There's somebody I want you to see: it's Aunt Sarah." I said, "Isn't it some surprise that Aunt Sarah is still living?" "Yes," he said, "she's still living and enjoying life. I know she'll be glad to see you." So we went up on the mountain, parked our car, and walked up a steep front yard. Aunt Sarah was sitting in her rocking chair on one end of the porch in the shade, stringing Kentucky Wonder beans. It was a hot day, and she had pushed her glasses up on her head. Uncle Will said, "Aunt Sarah, this is the preacher. I've got somebody here to see you. Do you know who this is?" Aunt Sarah pulled her glasses down and looked at me intently for a few seconds, and then a great smile broke over her face. "Why," she said, "it's Ben Coleman Fisher. Ain't he growed!" BETWEEN LOUISVILLE AND FRANKFORT This is a true story told to me by my good friend and former colleague, Bill Strickland, who was for some years professor of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and later became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Appalachian State University at Boone, North Carolina. While he was still a student at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Bill was pastor of a little church near Frankfort. One day two members of his church hired a friend who owned a truck to take some young steers to Louisville so that they could sell them at the Bourbon Stock Market there. They invited a neighbor who could neither read nor write and had never been beyond the county line to accompany them 29 �on the sixty-mile trip. As they made their way to Louisville, the neighbor talked incessantly. Following the sale of the steers and a good lunch they headed for home. The neighbor was absolutely silent until the truck passed through the town of Shelbyviile when all of a sudden he excitedly broke the silence by saying: "Fellows, let me tell you something. If there's as much land on the other side of Louisville as there is between Frankfort and Louisville, this is a big world!" GETTING OUT THE STRAIGHT BOARD This story again illustrates something of the wisdom of the mountaineer. On a good-sized mountain farm worked a very good carpenter who never would clean up his shop. The floor was always covered with scraps of wood, shavings, and sawdust. The man for whom he worked had complained about the clutter a time or two, but he really spoke sharply about it one morning when he came in and found the shop almost knee-deep. The carpenter was busy shaping a board for the tailgate of a wagon. He looked up slowly, took his plane off the board, and let it swing down to his side as he gave a big sigh. "Brother," he said, "is there anything wrong with the work?" "No, it's just that you're so —just look at all those shavings on the floor, and that sawdust. This place hasn't been swept." "Well," the carpenter said, "just to tell you the truth, it takes a heap of shavings to get out one straight board." f SIMMONS This story concerns my cousin and lifelong friend Mack Hall. It is reprinted from Historic Webster (Winter 1982) Volume VIII, Number 4. 30 �Uncle Dick Hall occasionally used to make a corn crop in Muster-ground Hollow, which was just over the hill from Aunt Mollie Fisher's home. When he and his boys came to work the crop, Aunt Lela would send a huge dinner basket, which would always contain, among other things, some half-moon, fried dried-apple pies, of which I was inordinately fond. I would make it a point to get up to the Muster-ground Hollow just a little while before they would sit down under some spreading oak trees to have their dinner. Mack, the oldest boy, said to me one day, "Ben Coleman, do you like persimmons?" I said, "I don't know—I never tried one." He said, "They sure are tasty before dinner. Would you like one?" Mack got up, walked over to a small tree, pulled off a green persimmon, and handed it to me. I must have been about six years old. I popped the green persimmon into my mouth, bit down on it, and promptly spit it out. Mack said, "Ah, pshaw. I forgot to peel it." So Mack got another green persimmon and peeled it very carefully. By the time I had chewed it up, my mouth was so puckered that I couldn't even spit it out, and I set up a fearful howl. I went running home, and my mother was "hopping mad," as they say in the mountains. She was "in a hissy!" She went charging up to the new ground after Mack. It took Uncle Dick some little time to arrange a cease-fire, but the truce lasted more than half a century. THAT'S NO REASON When my good friend Dr. Dafydd Davies, then chairman of the faculty of theology of the University of Wales and principal of South Wales Baptist College, Cardiff, heard some of my 31 �mountain stories at an international conference at Ridgecrest, North Carolina, he said he had a good mountain story he wanted to share from Wales. The city of Swansea, forty miles west of Cardiff, as a result of extensive industrial development within its boundaries, found itself short of an adequate water supply to meet all its needs, especially during the dry seasons. The government in Britain can act much more swiftly than ours in condemning land, using the old English right of public domain. The Swansea city fathers moved with great speed toward condemning a little valley and throwing a dam across it to provide a new reservoir. The implementation of this plan would have destroyed a village with a small Baptist church and a cemetery. Basic proceedings were already under way, and property owners had been notified. The Welsh Baptist preacher was determined that it should not happen, and put on a preservation campaign with such vigor that he attracted the attention of the British Broadcasting Corporation, who invited him to debate the matter one Sunday afternoon on television. In the heat of the debate, the television interviewer said, "And besides everything else, it's not a very pretty little valley." "Sir,* the preacher fired back, "by no stretch of the imagination could you say that my wife is pretty, but that's no reason to drown her!" The little valley is still there. A PROBLEM IN COMMUNICATION Humorous situations usually arise basically from fact, and this story could not have been invented — it actually happened, and has been passed on from my great-uncle through our family. Into the town of Sylva, North Carolina, located deep in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, came a man by the name of Bill, 32 �who opened up a combination tombstone shop and harness shop. He hadn't been there long when a big strapping mountaineer, whom we shall call Tom, rode into Sylva one Saturday morning on a big bay mare. Tom was a well-known citizen in the community. He stood six feet six in his stocking feet, weighed over two hundred fifty pounds, and didn't have one ounce of fat on him. He had something wrong with his saddle, andhe'dheard that there was a man in town who had opened a harness shop and could fix it. Now there was something unusual about both of these men. Bill, who ran the combination tombstone factory and harness shop, was deaf and dumb, and no one had told Tom about this. And Tom couldn't read or write. He rode to the harness shop, got off his horse, strode over to Bill, and began to tell him how he wanted his saddle mended. Bill commenced immediately to make some gestures to ward his ears and lips to show that he couldn't hear and couldn't talk. He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to Tom. Tom looked at the piece of paper, and then he said, "Friend, this is a mess. This is a real mess. You can write, and I can't read it. I can talk, and you can't hear it. Just fix this saddle, and I'll be back in about an hour." I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING It seems that two tall mountain boys were making their way to another part of the county one Saturday and got into unfamiliar territory. They came to a place where there was a fork in the road, and three orfour signspointingthis way andthat way. One old boy stood there and looked at the signs and said, "Friend, we've got us a problem. You know, I can read figures, but I can't read writin'. I know how far it is, but I don't know where we're going." 33 �TOO HOT TO HANDLE One Saturday afternoon a blacksmith in a small mountain town had just finished shaping a horseshoe on his forge. He had, of course, first heated it red hot, shaped it very carefully to fit the horse's hoof, and then — with a pair of iron tongs — plunged the horseshoe quickly into a tub of water. He had just pulled it out and thrown it on a bench where it was continuing to cool when an old mountain boy came shambling into the blacksmith's shop to look around. The boy walked over to the bench and picked up that horseshoe. It was still very hot, and he threw it down quickly and shook his hand hard. The blacksmith looked over and said, "Son, that was too hot for you to handle, wasn't it?" The boy said, "No, sir, it just doesn't take me very long to look at a horseshoe." A WHOLE KEGFUL My grandfather had a country store at Addie, North Carolina, and one day a small boy came in just after a keg of maple sugar had been opened and set in front of the counter. The boy kept eying it, and finally Granddaddy Bob said, "Would you like to taste that?" "Mr. Fisher," said the boy, "I could eat that whole keg." My grandfather was wise as well as kind. He said, "Well, eat all you can." He had to go into the back room to fill a jug of kerosene for a customer, and when he came back, he found the boy ready to leave, licking his fingers and wiping them on his overalls. There was only a small depression in the very center of the keg, where the boy had hollowed out a little of the pure sugar. 34 �"I thought you were going to eat the whole kegful," Granddaddy said. "Mr. Fisher," the boy replied, "I already ate all that was any good." THE UMPIRE The story that follows illustrates the quick wit and natural humor of the mountaineer. A young man came down off the mountain into the valley looking for work. He had no cash, and he couldn't find a job at first. Finally, he talked a second time to the owner of the general store, who said, "Well, I still don't have anything, but do you know anything about baseball?" "Yep," was the reply. "Have you ever refereed a baseball game?" "Yes, I've called a few games." "Well," the storekeeper said, "we're having a ball game here tonight. Our umpire is sick, and we haven't been able to find anybody to take his place. We're paying ten dollars." "Oh, man," the boy said, "for ten dollars — yes, I'll call that game." That night the two teams came in and took their positions on the field, the pitcher went to the mound, the catcher crouched behind the plate, and the batter stepped up. The mountaineer had put on his breast protector and face mask, turned his cap around backwards, and picked up his mitt. He "hunkered down," and the pitcher wound up and fired a ball. It went across the plate, and the young mountaineer called, "Strike one!" At that, the batter whirled around and chewed him out, the manager jumped off the bench, and they were about to mob him. 35 �He got that strife settled. The pitcher cut loose again and threw another fast ball. The old mountain boy shouted, "Ball one!" The pitcher tore off the mound and dashed over to dispute the call, and the young umpire thought the pitcher was going to strike him. He was a little shaken, but he managed to get the pitcher back on the mound, and he got down behind the plate again. When the pitcher cut loose another ball, the mountain boy stood up and said, "Too!" Here came the catcher and the batter and everybody else: "What do you mean by twoT He said, "Friends, it's just too close to call." MERCIFUL JUSTICE This is a different kind of story, but it says a great deal about mountain people. Besides having the gift of humor, they're bighearted and neighborly. My cousin, Dan Moore, for many years was a circuit court judge in western North Carolina. He later became governor of the state and then served on the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was holding civil court once in Waynesville, and not far from that city, in a small mountain community, was a Baptist church whose members had added on some Sunday School rooms. The contractor had said that when they got down to the last thousand dollars, he'd donate that. The contractor was killed in an accident, but the congregation felt that they didn't owe the money and had refused to pay it. However, the estate sued the church; consequently the case had to be tried. It came to court, and Dan Moore told me, "I sat on the bench, and it seemed a very clear-cut case; it didn't take long for it to go to the jury. I instructed the jury," he said, "and it didn't seem to me that there was much doubt that the jury was going to have 36 �to find in favor of the plaintiff, and the little church was going to have to pay that money.'' He said the jury was gone, and gone, and gone. An hour passed, and they were still gone, and he said, "I just couldn't understand it. I was afraid we were going to have a hung jury, and I was about ready to send the bailiff to find out what was going on." Finally, they filed back in, and the foreman of the jury stood up and said, "Judge —." Judge Moore said, "Wait just a minute. Have you reached a verdict?" "Yes, we have, but I wonder if I could make a statement?" The judge said, "Certainly. Go ahead." "Well,"he said, "Judge, it didn't take us ten minutes to decide the case. It was very clear-cut. We found for the plaintiff, and the little church is going to have to pay this thousand dollars. But," he said, "the reason we've been out so long is that we've been making that money up, and we're still short about two hundred dollars. I wonder if we could take an offering here in the courtroom?" Dan said, "They passed a hat to me first, and we passed hats around through the courtroom, and we oversubscribed that thousand dollars." This is a mountain idea of justice tempered with mercy. WHUPPED OR KILLED Another good story connected with my cousin Dan Moore is an excellent illustration of several aspects of human nature. Dan Moore was holding court once in Sylva, and it seems that a group of men had been in a poker game in a little sawmill town, and had got "roaring drunk." In the process, one man had 37 �taken his knife and cut a fellow up so badly that he died. The attacker was tried for manslaughter and convicted, and he got five to seven years in the state penitentiary. This was the first time the old boy had ever been in any trouble, and so the governor reduced his sentence, and, with time off for good behavior, he was in prison only a couple of years. The day before he was to get out, he got hold of a paper somehow, and saw that Dan Moore was in Raleigh along with his wife, Jeanelle, for some kind of judiciary meeting. He learned that they were staying at the Sir Walter Hotel. As soon as he got out of prison, he went down and stood in front of the hotel, and when he saw Dan Moore coming, he said, "Judge, do you remember me?" Dan looked at him a minute and said, "Yes, I believe you're from up near Sylva.* He said, "Yes, Judge, Fm the man you sent down here for cutting that man up." And he added, "You know I don't get rich working down here. I understand you're going back to Sylva, and I just wonder if I could get a ride with you back home." Dan said, "Certainly, I'd be glad to have you." When his wife, Jeanelle, found out about that, she was terrified, but it was already done, as she told it later. She said, "We got ready to go, and that man was still there. He got in the back seat, and I got in the front with Dan. I sat at an angle, and didn't take my eyes off him. I had a crick in my neck for a week. It's nearly three hundred miles from Raleigh on up to Sylva, but we made it all right. We got up on top of the Balsam Mountains, and started down at a place called Dark Ridge, and he said, "All right, Judge, now pull over.'" Jeanelle said, "I thought, 'Here it is. It's coming now.'" She said he got out and stretched himself and walked around and said, "Well, Judge, you can let me out here, and I can cut right across the mountains, and I'll be home with my family before you can be in Sylva. I just appreciate what you've done for me so much," he said. "You know I don't have any money, but I 38 �just want you to know one thing: if there's ever any time that you want anybody whupped or killed, you just let me know." THE NEW JAIL This story is, as a matter of fact, a true one, and illustrates the keen sense of humor of the mountaineer and his ability to picture a ridiculous situation in an easy manner. I shall not name the county or the county seat, but in a little mountain town the grand jury met and after an inspection condemned the county jail, and ordered the commissioners to build a new one. The commissioners knew they had the court order, and knew the jail should be condemned, but they were short of money. They argued and argued. Finally one old mountaineer got up and said, "Brethren, we can't stay here all day. I want to make a motion." The chairman said, "Well, John, that is what we are here for. You just go ahead and make your motion." "Well," he said, "Mr. Chairman of the County Board of Commissioners, I want to make the following motion: One, I move, sir, that, as the grand jury has directed, we tear down the old jail. Two, I move that we build the new jail out of the materials of the old jail. Three, I move, sir, that we use the old jail until the new jail is ready." The motion passed, and the meeting was adjourned. WHERE DO YOU LIVE? We had stopped at a small country store with a gas pump, and the mountain storekeeper was filling the tank. He watched 39 �our two small boys working off the energy that had been pent up during the car trip; and as they coasted around, he asked, "Where do you come from, boys?" "Boiling Springs,* they both replied. "Where's that?" he asked. They were too little to know how to identify their home town on the map. "Is it east or west of here?" They didn't know that either. "How many miles away?" They had no idea how far we had traveled that day. But a mountaineer is resourceful. "Well, boys, where do you get your hair cut?" "Shelby," they chorused, and the problem was solved. CATALOOCHEE BAPTIST CHURCH This story happened not far from Waynesville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Cataloochee country, which was once one of the rougher, wilder sections of Hay wood County. Brother Thad Dietz and Phil Elliott were on their way one Sunday morning to preach and lead the singing at a revival meeting at Cataloochee Baptist Church. I have mentioned both these men elsewhere in this book. Brother Dietz was a great mountain preacher, who — as they say back in "them thar hills" —had "pastored" two generations of my family and was greatly loved by all the people in the coves and hollows. He lived by the Bible and out of the love of his heart for his people. Phil Elliott, who later became president of Gardner-Webb College, was in his younger days another great mountain preacher. He taught English at what is now Western Carolina University, and he was a master storyteller. As Phil and Brother Thad drove deeper into the territory, they became completely lost, and it was getting on toward 40 �preaching time. Just about the time they were despairing of what to do, they saw a long, tall mountaineer loping down the road, and they pulled over as they approached him. He had about three or four days' growth of beard, and was wearing overalls and a blue shirt; his hat was pulled down over his ears. He said, "Howdy, fellas.'' They said, "How do you do, sir. We were wondering how to reach the Cataloochee Baptist Church. Are we anywhere close?" The mountaineer spit, scratched his head, and said, "Well, friends, I'll just have to tell you this: it's a way hellward from here." REACHING HIGH The mountaineer has often been depicted as shiftless and lazy, and this is absolutely untrue — a lazy mountaineer is a very, very rare exception. However, there were some exceptions, as there are in any community. This story was passed on by an uncle of mine. Living in an old frame house on the upper side of my uncle's farm was a man not noted for his energy, for working, or even for paying his rent, but my uncle let him live there. If this man had a little meal and some "side meat" and a little chewing tobacco, he figured that he could make the rest by fishing and hunting. My uncle was driving by one day in his buggy, and he noticed something unusual about that house. He turned around, went back, and discovered that the weather-boarding on the side of the house, all the way up to the top of the window frame, was missing. He knew what had happened, and he got out of his buggy and called this man out into the yard and said, "John, the woods is just full of kindling, and you are too lazy to go get it. You have burned the siding offmy house for kindling. Look, man, you have taken it off all the way up to the top of that window frame." 41 �Old John looked my uncle straight in the eye and said, "Frank, don't blame me. That is as high as I could reach." NOT SO STUPID I heard this latter-day story a good many years ago in Jackson County, at an associational meeting. It seems that a psychologist was spending his summer vacation there. He was a man of great sophistication and education — he'd published a number of books — and he was fascinated with mountain people. He considered himself several cuts above them, and he wasn't quite certain how bright they were. They seemed to him to be ignorant and primitive, but he liked to listen to them talk. While he was out for his constitutional one morning, strolling along, he met an old mountain boy who talked with a drawl, and had on a pair of overalls, a floppy straw hat, and brogan shoes with no socks. "Let's stop a minute," the psychologist said. "I'd like to talk to you." The boy said, "Well, I've got a little time. They's a couple of stumps here. Let's just sit and talk a spell." The psychologist began, "How long have you lived here in the mountains?" "Well, I was born and raised here. I been here all my life." The psychologist said, "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions — give you a little psychology test?" "What's a psychology test?" "Well, it's a sort of test of the mind. It shows whether you're quick or slow." The old boy said, "Well, I reckon I'm a little slow, but I've managed to do all right. I make a living and pay my debts." The psychologist asked the boy a few general questions 42 �about where he lived, the size of his family, and so on, and then he really got down to the little psychological test: "First of all, how many fingers do you see?" He held up three fingers, and the mountaineer said, "I see one — two — I see three." "Listen carefully: what would happen if I put out your eyes?" The old boy thought a minute. "Well," he said, "mister, if you put out my eyes, I couldn't see." "You're doing fine," the psychologist said. "Now, if I cut off your ears, what would happen?" The old boy thought again and said, "Friend, if you cut off my ears, I reckon I couldn't see." The psychologist said, "Now wait a minute. Let's start over. You know that's not right. How many fingers do you see?" The boy said, "I see three." "Listen carefully: what would happen if I put out your eyes?" "Mister, I couldn't see." "Now," the psychologist said, "listen one more time. What would happen if I cut off your ears?" The boy repeated, "Friend, if you cut my ears off, I couldn't see." "Well!" the psychologist said. "Now, young man, you know better than that. What do you mean, if your ears were cut off, you couldn't see?" The boy said, "Friend, if you cut my ears off, my hat drops down over my eyes, and I can't see!" THE PARACHUTE This story pokes a little fun at expertise. An old mountain boy had never been up in an airplane and 43 �said he never intended to go. But someone came into the community with a small open-cockpit plane, and almost everyone in that little village went for a ride, circled the pasture, and landed. They all seemed to enjoy it, and they kept coaxing this old boy, but he said, "No, I'm not going up there. What happens is that a man could get killed." "Oh," they said, "it's perfectly safe. We've got a parachute for you. If anything happens, you just jerk that ripcord, and you'll float right to the ground." "Well," the old boy said, "if you've got a parachute and you think it's safe, I just might try it." They talked him into getting into the plane, but in the process they forgot two very important details: they failed to put his seat-belt on, and they forgot to tell him how to open that parachute. The pilot took off, circled the field two or three times, and when they got up to about seven or eight thousand feet, he said to that old mountain boy, "Friend, how are you doing?" "Oh," he said, "this is great! I wish I'd tried it before." "Well," the pilot said, "now we're going back to the field, and I'm going to have to make a pretty sharp turn, so hold on." The pilot banked the plane rather steeply, and since his passenger's seat-belt hadn't been fastened, the old mountain boy fell out. He was picking up speed and clawing around because he didn't know how to open that parachute. About that time, he looked down, and here came a little fellow coming right up, and whizzing by him. As the fellow passed him, the mountain boy said, "Friend, do you know anything about opening a parachute?" The fellow looked back down and said, "No, sir. Do you know anything about a gas heater?" 44 �NEVER WENT TO COLLEGE MYSELF This is not really a mountain story, but Fm certain that the old man chiefly involved must have had ancestors who moved from the mountains to the flatlands of eastern North Carolina. At any rate, shortly after we moved to Wake Forest, North Carolina, where I joined the administration and faculty of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, I had occasion to make the short trip to Raleigh, North Carolina (which is, of course, the state capital). I was driving a vintage Pontiac with a rather uncertain gas gauge. I had driven about six or seven miles when the unmistakable sputter began to occur, and I knew that I was out of gas. I looked around quickly; to my right there stood a farmhouse and what appeared to be a gas pump near an outbuilding. I wheeled into a dirt road and had just enough momentum to coast up almost even with the gas tank. There was an old man sitting on the step of what appeared to be a corncrib. He was whittling. Sol got out to explain to him my predicament. I said, "Sir, my name is Ben Fisher. I teach over here at Southeastern Seminary at Wake Forest, and Fm out of gas. I see you have a gas pump here, and I was wondering whether you could just sell me a couple of gallons so that Fd have enough to get to a gas station." The old man got up slowly, put his stick down, closed up his knife on the palm of his hand and slipped it into his pocket, brushed off his overalls, and said, "Yeah, I guess I could." We pushed the car up to where he could get the nozzle into the tank, and he put out a couple of gallons of gas. In those days a gallon of gas was not very expensive (I think the whole deal didn't amount to more than sixty cents). I paid him, and he carefully pocketed the money, and I said, "I surely do thank you." He looked straight at me a minute and said, "You say you're over here at Wake Forest?" And I said, "That's right." 45 �"Well," he said, ''friend, I've never been to college myself, but Fve always managed to keep gas in my car." ON SMOKING This story is another from my own Jackson County, and it was told by Brother Thad Dietz, whom I have mentioned elsewhere in this book. There came to the church a young pastor who was down on the use of tobacco in all its evil forms. He kept preaching about it. He had a sermon on dancing, too, and he was against most of the colleges, but smoking was a sin he denounced often. Finally the deacons met at the home of Brother Dietz, who had retired and built a house not far from the Scott's Creek church. The deacons were of a mind to tell the young man that perhaps he had the wrong church. Brother Thad said, "Oh, brethren, he's young, and he needs all the help he can get. Now you know we dip, and chew, and smoke, and we're not going to stop. Let's just drag it to death. He'll get tired of it." Not long afterward, one Sunday morning Brother Dietz came into church. It was impossible not to know when he came in, because in his vest-pocket, as always, he had an old pipe half full of half-smoked tobacco, and in the pocket on the other side were his matches. The pastor's sermon subject was tobacco again, and several times when he said, "I don't see how a Christian smokes," he looked straight at Brother Dietz. Outside after church, Brother Thad took that old pipe and packed it full of tobacco, took out two matches, and motioned to the young preacher to come over. He raked those two matches along the seat of his pants, and covered everybody nearby with blue tobacco smoke, and then fanned it away. "Now," he said, "I want to show you how a Christian smokes." 46 �CHEWING TOBACCO Most of the old-time mountain preachers not only raised tobacco but they chewed it, dipped it, smoked it, and sometimes even sniffed it. It was considered a staple household item, and many mountain people believed that tobacco, in addition to giving enjoyment in its use, also possessed an untold number of medicinal qualities. However, there moved into a mountain community a younger preacher who had other ideas about the use of tobacco. He took every occasion to denounce it from the pulpit — he talked to individuals about it — in fact, sought to eliminate its use altogether, without too much success. It took an old mountain preacher to give him his "comeuppance." One afternoon at an associational meeting the young man went up to the old preacher and said, "Sir, I don't see how you can chew tobacco and preach the gospel." The old mountaineer flushed; he looked at the ground, and he looked slowly up at the sky; he moved his cud of tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other, scratched the stubble on his chin a little, looked at the young man and said thoughtfully, "Well, son, I can tell you this: it sure does beat preaching tobacco and chewing the gospel." THE BEST MAN IN THE COMMUNITY This story, I believe, came originally from the Madison County area in North Carolina, where it seems there lived a man who took inordinate pride in his physique, his strength, and his ability to "lick" any man in the surrounding countryside. He had heard that across the mountain there was a man who had never been defeated in a fight. So he decided he ought to do something about that situation. He got up early one morning, having nothing better to do, saddled his mule, and rode across the mountain. Down in the 47 �valley he came to a crossroad where there was a little mountain store. He got off and went in to see the storekeeper, and said, "Friend, I understand that there's a man in this community who says that he can whip any man in the world and has never lost a fight." The old storekeeper studied a minute and said, "Well, I think you must be talking about my friend who lives right up here at the head of this hollow. I think he's breaking new ground. You just follow that trail, and there's a fence around one side of that new ground. Just ride all the way around until you come to the end of that fence, and you'll catch him out there in the field." The man thanked him, got on the mule, went on up to the head of the hollow, and found the man out there plowing the new ground. He rode along that fence until he came to the end of it, turned into the field where the man was plowing, and as he got off his mule, he said to the plowman, "Friend, they tell me that you're the best man in this community." The plowman stopped a minute and said, "Well, that's what they say." "I'm here to challenge that," he said. "I've come here to whup you. I'm going to whup you good." The plowman said, "Well, we'll see." He very carefully folded up his lines, hung them on the hames, and grabbed that man and just wiped up the ground with him. He whipped him every way that a man can be whipped and finally, he just carried the man over and threw him across that barbed-wire fence, right out into the middle of the trail. The man got up and dusted himself off, and the plowman said, "Stranger, is there anything else I can do for you?" The man kept brushing himself off, and said at last, "Yes, would you mind pitching me my mule?" 48 �DRIVING A NAIL This is a good illustration of the way mountain humor and common sense can often be used to relieve tense situations. This story has its origin in a little Baptist church on the side of Balsam Mountain. It took place one night during a stormy church session. One particular deacon thought the only way to solve a problem was to get up and take the hide and hair off everything and everybody in sight. When he had finally vented all his spleen, a wise old fellow-deacon got up and calmly remarked, "Brother Jones, we love you, but I'm going to say something to you that I've been wanting to say a long time. Do you know what your trouble is, Henry? You don't know how to drive a nail in a board without busting the plank." ANVILS This story came from eastern Kentucky. Back before the railroads or any other form of transportation except boat or horse or mule power, an old mountain boy who had had a hard winter went from high up in the Cumberland Mountains down to a little community on the Cumberland River to make some "cash money for spending." He looked all over the little town, and the only thing he could get to do was unloading a barge that had just come in. In those days the pay was about twenty-five cents an hour. Among other items on the barge were several dozen anvils for blacksmith shops. These anvils weighed about a hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds each. The merchant said, "If you'll unload these anvils, Fll give you a dollar an hour." This old mountaineer was tall and rangy, well-muscled and very strong. He approached his job with enthusiasm. He marched up the gangplank and down onto the deck, and picked up one of those hundred-and-fifty-pound anvils in each hand. 49 �Then he started off the barge. About the middle of the gangplank, with his weight plus the weight of the anvils, the gangplank broke, and he fell into about thirty or forty feet of that muddy river water. He was thrashing around down there, and finally he yelled, "Listen, fellers, if somebody don't help me soon, Fm going to have to let one of these go." ON NAGGIN* This is one of several stories told on Uncle Dave Norman, and presumed to be true. Uncle Dave was a well-known and well-loved mountain preacher. His people seldom, if ever, caught a "mess" offish or killed a deer without sharing with him, and when their gardens or their crops came in, they were generous. Uncle Dave's wife was known as Aunt Sarah. They sometimes disagreed, as husbands and wives are wont to do. One morning Uncle Dave was up about the place, getting in some firewood and filling up the reservoir on the stove. He and Aunt Sarah were having an argument, and she was getting the better of him. He turned to her and said, "Sarah, you want me to tell you something? Honey, you've worried me and nagged me till, to tell you the truth, I may be the meanest of the two." SWEARING A CHARACTER Uncle Dave was a good mountain preacher who was known far and wide for his kindness and for his availability in times of trouble. One Monday morning about daylight, long before most people had got out of their beds, a young man knocked on the front door of this mountain preacher's home. Uncle Dave appeared, scratching his head and saying, "Well, son, what can I do for you?" 50 �The young man said with great seriousness, "Uncle Dave, I'm in a heap of trouble and I need your help. They've took out a warrant for me, and I've got to go down to Sylva-town to recorder's court and stand trial at ten o'clock; I was just awondering if you could come down and swear me a character?" Uncle Dave thought a minute and said, "Son, now I'll just be frank with you. You've been mighty good to me. When you killed a deer, you've brought me a good roast; when you've caught fish, you've shared your catch; when you've found a wild honey tree, you've brought me honey; you're not a bad boy, and I want to help you. I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going down to Sylva to that courthouse, and I'm going to get up on that witness stand, and I'm going to tell the truth just as long as I can; and son, if the occasion calls for it, I'll rise a little." A WORD FOR IT This is a "one-liner" that deserves to be included in a collection of mountain stories. There was a mountain preacher who had not had a college education, but who knew the difference between Baptist doctrine and the narrow teachings that sometimes characterized early radio preachers, and after listening to one of them for awhile, he was heard to observe: "Brethren, that is one ignorant ramus." THE PULPIT ROBE This is another story that probably has factual basis. A small mountain community had brought in several factories and other enterprises, and had prospered. Instead of just one little Baptist church as they'd always had, they now had a 51 �Methodist, a Lutheran, and even an Episcopal church. They decided to have a union service on Easter, and they also made an agreement that the ministers would wear robes. The old Baptist preacher "didn't know so much about that." He had never worn a robe, and he "allowed as how" he wasn't going to start now, but they talked to him, and after he thought it over, he said, "Oh, well, it won't do any harm one time. Ill put one of them things on." They all gathered and had a very fine service, and the old mountain preacher participated. When they came out, one of the other ministers said to him, "Now, David, wearing that robe wasn't too bad. What do you think about it?" "Well," David said, "I reckon it's all right, but just to tell you the truth, pants are warmer." THE PREACHER WHO PRESSED HIS LUCK I first met Monsignor John F. Murphy (Father Jack) when he was executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. In conferences on Christian higher education, with uncanny regularity, we found ourselves in agreement on almost every substantive issue, and formed a lasting friendship. He told me the following story with an Irish Catholic setting. I have adapted it for many of my audiences into a Baptist setting. It seems that a young mountain preacher was called to become pastor of a small church. He had not even had time to unpack his furniture when an old deacon came to say, "One of our members just died of a heart attack, and the family wants you to hold the funeral service." When the time came, the young preacher mounted his pulpit and took his congregation with a great Biblical sermon through the pearly gates, down the streets of gold, right up to the throne of grace. Then he paused a minute and said, "I didn't know this 52 �brother, and I don't like to put anyone away without having someone say a few kind words. I'm going to stop and give anyone a chance — it doesn't have to be long — a chance to say a good word about this brother." There was an embarrassing silence. Said the preacher, "I've caught you by surprise. Let's sing one verse of'Amazing Grace,' and you think about what you're going to say." The good old mountain congregation dragged out a verse of "Amazing Grace" in close harmony. After they sat down, there was again dead silence. The young preacher finally said with considerable heat, "Well, I can tell you this: we're going to be right here until somebody does say a good word about this brother." At last, away in the back of the church, an old gray-haired mountaineer held up his hand and in a quavering voice said, "Preacher, his brother were worse!" MOUNTAIN PREACHER OR SEMINARY GRADUATE This is a story shared with me by my good friend and former colleague Dr. George Capps, associate secretary of the Education Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. It has to do with a church somewhere in the Smoky Mountains where the congregation had never had a pastor except one whose schooling had been very limited. As has often happened in small communities, the village began to grow and prosper, some small industry moved in, new markets opened up, and many new young members were attending church. When the time came to call a preacher, the pulpit committee was divided on whether to search for a good old mountain preacher such as they had always had, or whether to try to find a seminary graduate. Because the old pastor had retired and moved away from the community, they had to make the decision on their own initia53 �tive. On two separate Sundays they went to hear first an oldtime mountain preacher and then a seminary graduate. They had announced that on the third Sunday they would make a recommendation to the church. One old deacon just couldn't wait. He didn't get out much, and he sent word to the chairman of the search committee to come and see him. "Now, Henry," he said, "you know I can't get to church, and I can't get out to tell nobody. I oughtn't to ask you to do this, but I'm just a-dyin' to know what kind of a preacher you're going to get—and I'll keep it confidential. Fm not in favor of getting one of them new young pastors. I hope you're going to call us a mountain preacher." The chairman of the committee said, "Deacon, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed, because we thought about it, and prayed about it, and it was unanimous. We decided to call that young seminary graduate." The old man thought a minute and said, "I hope you know what you're doing. He must be a powerful preacher." The chairman said, "No, sir. We're not calling him on his preaching. We're calling him on his praying." "What do you mean — 'calling him on his praying5?" The chairman said, "Let me tell you something: when that young preacher prayed, he was asking God for things that old preacher didn't even know He had." THE BATHROBE This is an old story that I believe came out of the red clay hills of north Georgia and made its way into North Carolina and into Jackson and Swain counties. It seems that back during the Depression, a family was trying to scratch out a living on a little hard, red-clay farm, and 54 �things weren't going too well. The oldest boy decided he was going to have to do something about the situation, so he went to Detroit (he didn't go to Detroit; he went to Deetroit; everybody went to Deetroit looking for work). He lucked into a job that paid him twenty-five dollars a week. When Southern cotton mills were paying about six or seven dollars a week, this was a real bonanza. He didn't know there was that much money in the entire world. He had great love for his grandmother, who was up in her eighties, so he went to the store and bought her a beautiful knit bathrobe with three panels, in three different colors: green, red, and white. He bundled up this bathrobe and sent it to his grandmother, who opened it, put it on, and liked it so much that she wore it to church on Sunday morning. Some of the ladies that had traveled a little and were a bit more sophisticated recognized it for what it was. They were giggling and making remarks behind Granny's back, and she knew something was wrong. After the service, one of the good ladies went up and said, "Granny, don't you know what you've got on? That's a bathrobe. Why in the world would you wear a bathrobe to church?" "Well," she said, "Sadie, you always did have a mean tongue. I'll just tell you why I wore this bathrobe to church. In the first place, it's the prettiest thing I ever had in my life; and in the second place, my grandson sent it to me, and I love him dearly. And," she added, "in the third place, I love my Lord, and I wore it for the glory of God. Besides," she said, "I ain't got no bathroom, and you ain't neither." I FRENZIED This is a story which comes out of my own experience of being a pastor. I was invited to supply in a mill church in the foothills of the mountains of western North Carolina. The church was 55 �having some difficulty in keeping a pastor. They wished me to come and serve with them awhile, preach doctrinal sermons, and try to help them to develop a better fellowship. One of the first things I discovered when I went into the community was that there were five or six ordained ministers who were members of the congregation. These men had migrated, mostly from the mountains, to find employment in the cotton mills. There was a considerable amount of jealousy about who would be called upon to lead in prayer, teach a Sunday School class, or perform any other duty in the church. I had not been there too long when the church voted to establish a mission. We had one member-preacher whom we shall call Adams, who had had some difficulty in his last church. As a matter of fact, he had been asked to leave the church because he had used some intemperate and rather crude language in the pulpit. The chairman of the board of deacons came to me and said, "Preacher, we want you to talk to Brother Adams. He is dying to preach, and we believe he can serve this church at the mission if he can promise not to use that kind of language in the pulpit." I agreed to talk to him, so on the following Sunday after church, he came around to the study and I just put it on the line. I said, "Now, Brother Adams, the congregation wants you to preach, but you remember that in the last church you got to saying a lot of ugly things about women and the way they dress, and the language you used was pretty harsh, and you know what the result was." He said, "Yes, Brother Fisher, the devil got ahold of me," and he continued, "You just give me a chance to preach, and I won't ever do that sort of thing again." As a result, he went ahead and accepted the little church. About four or five weeks later on a Monday morning Brother Adams came, passed right by my secretary, burst into my office and said, "Brother Fisher, they've fired me. Can they do that?" I said, "Brother Adams, sit down and tell me about it." 56 �"Well, they fired me," he said. "I didn't know a mission church could fire their preacher. I thought that would be up to the parent-church." "Well," I said, "I don't know. I'll have to look into that. But there must have been some reason. Now suppose you sit down and tell me what you preached on." It turned out that he had become excited again, and he had used some very strong language in regard to the way women dress. He had specified short skirts, lipstick, etc., and what he had said was unbelievably crude and vulgar. "Brother Adams," I said, "you know we talked about this, and you promised that you would not do this again. What happened?" "Brother Fisher," he said, "I'll just be frank with you. I was preaching one of my best sermons. I really had the congregation with me, and the more I preached, the more they got to Amen-ing me, and Brother Fisher, when you Amen me," he said, "you just as well sic a bulldog on a heifer. To tell you the truth, I just frenzied." CUSSIN' A young and eager preacher, walking the mountain roads to visit his congregation, came upon one of his members who was plowing new ground. The air was blue with his expletives, and the young preacher was shocked. He begged his church member to control both his language and his wrath, whereupon the farmer said, "You want to plow this row? Help yourself." The preacher picked up the challenge and started down the row. The ground was uneven, and he stumbled along, zigzagging as he went, and getting his breeches covered with red clay. The plow struck a rock and nearly threw him. The mule balked, but finally was induced to go on. When the preacher finished the row, sweating and dirty, he threw the lines over the hames, and walked back to where the farmer was still standing. 57 �Wiping his brow, he said, "Son, you'll just have to do the best you can, and not cuss any more than you have to." CLIMBING AN OAK TREE This story was a favorite of a good old mountain preacher friend of mine, who was quite a philosopher. He used it as a sermon illustration. A mountain congregation had had some experiences in the Depression that made them very cautious about going into debt. They needed to add some Sunday School rooms and put a steeple and a bell on the church, but they had agreed that they wouldn't start until they had enough money to pay for the whole job. They were quite proud of the money they had already raised, but the last of it was slow coming in, and they were becoming discouraged. Their preacher said, "Well, I can tell you, brethren, it's time to roll up our sleeves. You know, there are just two ways to climb an oak tree. You can wrap your arms and legs around that rough, scaly bark, and work at it; and when you get to the top, you may have lost a little of your hide, but the view will be pretty, and you'll be proud you're up there. "Or," he said, "you can plant an acorn and sit on it." THE SHREWISH WOMAN There was in a little mountain community a woman who had spent a lifetime making things miserable for everybody. She criticized the pastor, the deacons, and the choir, and gave her neighbors a piece of her mind when it suited her. She was especially vocal in church conferences and had kept everyone in turmoil for about forty years. She didn't like what the Woman's 58 �Missionary Union was doing; she didn't approve of the people who led the Training Union programs; and she thought the Sunday School superintendent was something less than perfect. The pastor, she hinted, worked none too hard. A new young preacher had been on the field just a few days when this dear lady suffered a fatal heart attack. He had not been there long enough to know about her, and he preached a glowing sermon. The crowd made its way to the little mountain cemetery, and as they were lowering the casket into the grave, a huge cloud was hanging over the mountains. Suddenly, there was a great roll of thunder, and lightning split the sky. One of the old deacons looked up and said, "Fellers, she's there." RIDING SHOTGUN While I was visiting our son Hugh, his wife, Serena, and our granddaughter Elizabeth, I rode along one Saturday morning to a shopping center where Serena wanted to get some groceries. I elected to stay in the back seat of the car, and six-year-old Elizabeth stayed with me. "What shall we do, Elizabeth?" I asked. "Let's play stagecoach, Granddaddy." "Good," I replied. "How shall we do it?" "I'll drive," she said, moving over under the wheel, "and you ride shotgun." I had a gnarled cane made by a friend years agofromthe new growth of a beech stump in Maine. It had dried to an inordinate strength, and had a natural knob at one end. I was firing away from the car window with this cane as my gun, uttering loud cries of "Pow! Pow!" and not noticing that Elizabeth, in embarrassment, had slid down in the driver's seat to a point where no one could see her. 59 �"Myrt!" shouted a passing shopper to his wife. "Come here. This ya gotta see!" In mountaineer fashion, I made as if to cock the cane—with a suitable click, aimed straight at him, and reached for the imaginary trigger. He took off, and as far as I know, he is still running. THE LOST SHEEP This concerns an incident in connection with my first revival, which I held at Perry's Chapel, Franklinton, North Carolina, in August of 1938.1 had taken as my text the parable of the lost sheep, and (I thought) was exhorting in no mean measure. From time to time I observed an old gentleman in the last pew in the church. He seemed to be drinkingin my words, and I noted too that when I mentioned in an illustration that my home was in western North Carolina, he seemed somewhat excited. I was very much elated and felt sure I had led some lost soul to the throne of grace; and sure enough, as soon as the service was over, the old man sent one of his boys for me and said that it was urgent that I see him. I made my way hastily to the back of the church and gripped the old man's hand. He looked at me a moment and then with nasal twang made the following statement: "Son, hain't you from up in the mountains? Shore did preach a powerful sermon. I just happen to recollect, being as you was speaking of sheep, that my ram died last month, and I thought you might know someone in Hay wood county that would sell me a pure-bred Hampshire ram." CREASYBACK BEANS This story happened to me. The Haywood Association was meeting in a little church in 60 �what is known as the Cowee section. There are some log houses there, built long before the Civil War, that people still live in. It was one of those beautiful cool October days in the mountains, and I was with my good friend and cousin Weston Reid, and a preacher by the name of Sawyer — a man about my size and a good trencherman. When we went out to have "dinner on the grounds," I noticed a dear old lady in a faded blue dress and black shoes and stockings. She wore a poke bonnet such as I hadn't seen in years. She hesitated a little before unpacking her old pasteboard box, then shyly set an old-fashioned iron pot on the table, and something wrapped up in a white towel. I alerted Reid and Sawyer, because I knew there'd be something worth looking into in that pot, so — being experienced — we didn't go in with the first two or three waves. For people these days who have never attended a mountain association, it is a feast-time. There is nothing in the European festivals that will equal the table that is set out in the yard, with every kind of meat and vegetable you can think of, and pies, cookies, cakes, and desserts of all kinds made by everyone's best recipe, and tea and coffee and milk to drink. When we went over and took the lid off that little iron pot, we found it full of creasyback beans. A creasyback is a bean somewhat like a Kentucky Wonder. These had evidently been the last "mess" on the vines, because about half the beans were shelled out (these are called "shellie" beans). They'd been cooked with a large piece of salt pork (the kind called streak-of-fat-andstreak-of-lean). And in the white towel was a big "dodger" of cornbread. Since nobody seemed to mind, we put that iron pot down where we could reach it, and found some vine-ripened tomatoes and some onions and hot pepper; and "amongst us," as they say in the mountains, we cleaned up those creasyback beans. I hadn't eaten any like that in years. They were delicious. We went back into the church for the afternoon service, and when my time came to address the association, I spotted that dear little lady in the back of the church. I began by saying, 61 �"Lady, I don't want to embarrass you, but I want to tell you that I just had the best dinner I've had in a long time. Those creasyback beans and that cornbread you brought were absolutely delicious. If I could just have found some buttermilk, everything would have been perfect." She beamed, and the congregation smiled too. Just about a year from that date, the three of us — Reid, Sawyer, and I — happened to be back at the same association, meeting in a different church, to represent our various institutions and agencies. We were standing under a big oak tree, waiting for the crowd to thin out a little bit before we went up to the table. I felt someone tug at my coat sleeve, and though I didn't recognize her for a minute, there stood the dear old lady in her same little poke bonnet. She was holding the iron pot, and a jug with a cob for a stopper. She said, "Ain't you the preacher that likes creasyback beans? This time I brung your buttermilk." A TRUE BAPTIST This story is told in connection with the early days of CarsonNewman College, which was being operated not too long after the Civil War, not as a college but as a Baptist orphanage. The head of the orphanage was a mountain preacher. He had been out several weeks riding his mare back in those mountain coves and hollows, collecting money to support the children during the winter. He had started home and was just coming down Roan Mountain. He reached a spot where he could see the blue smoke coming up from the kitchen fire at his home, and he could almost smell the bacon frying and the cornbread cooking. He was thinking how good it would be to get home and see all of his children again, when his dreams were rudely interrupted. A grizzled mountaineer stepped out from behind a bush and put a muzzle-loading rifle against his stomach. The old 62 �mountaineer said, "Friend, stand and deliver. I want your money, or I want your life." "No use to get excited," said the preacher. "You can have the money. Fm offering no resistance, so just don't be nervous. I've got three hundred dollars here," he continued, "silver dollars, in these saddlebags. You go ahead and take this money, but if you do, I just want you to know one thing: there'll be some little young 'uns down there at that Baptist orphanage that are going to go cold and hungry this winter. If that's what you want, you're welcome to the money." The old mountaineer looked at the preacher a moment, uncocked his gun, put it down by his side, crooked his arm around it, reached down in his pants pocket and pulled out another silver dollar. He said, "Here, preacher, take this silver dollar and put it with the rest. I wouldn't touch that money. I'm a Baptist myself." 63 �BEN: THE MAN BEHIND THE STORIES by Roger G. Branch en Fisher was a story-teller. His skill was an abiding legacy from his mountain culture. Mountain people, typical of most folk societies, use story-telling both for recreation and as an intellectual tool for abstract reasoning, treating one vivid life experience as an analog for wider applications. Capable of squeezing a laugh out of life if anyone could, Ben often told stories just for the fun of it. But he also understood thoroughly the power of a well-crafted story to make a point that stimulates thought and sticks in the memory. So his stories usually had a didactic function, artfully influencing his world and making it better. When Ben died on November 3, 1985, he left incomplete a task long urged upon him by friends — the task of capturing on paper the mountain tales for which he had become famous. He had begun. Some were in manuscript form in various stages of polish, and he had recorded others on tapes. His wife, Sally, has transcribed these and edited the entire collection in her determination to finish this project that he had launched before cancer slowly dragged him away from his manifold ministries. These are not all of his stories, but they offer a representative sample of his treasury. At the time of Ben's death, one of his former students, Dr. R. F. Smith, Jr., wrote in his church bulletin, "Most of you don't know Ben. But you need to." Knowing him makes the stories more meaningful. This chapter is intended to be an introduction to Ben — only that, because you had to be with him awhile, hear 64 �his stories, touch his mind, observe his victories over suffering, and feel his love to begin to know him. Benjamin Coleman Fisher was born May 27,1915, at Webster, North Carolina. His parents were Ben F. and Amy Long Fisher, and his forefathers were pioneer mountain settlers. The world of his childhood was still characterized by such pioneer attributes as economic self-sufficiency, strong family ties, neighborliness, a sense of community, love of the land, and religion — ardent, evangelical Christianity—as ever-present as the mountains. That world became a part of the man, profoundly shaping his character and values although he lived much of his life beyond its cradling hills and valleys. The pioneer heritage was a source of deep satisfaction to Ben. A prized possession was a gavel fashioned from the original, hand-made pulpit of Scott's Creek Baptist Church. Ben's great-grandfather, Humphrey Posey, had established this and many other churches as a pioneer preacher in the mountains of the Carolinas and Georgia. Ben was particularly proud of two things about "Grandpa Posey." First, he was among those who resisted the shameful removal of the Cherokees and Creeks from their lands to Oklahoma. Second, this ardent mountain preacher was well educated, having studied classical Latin and Greek from books his mother had brought when the family migrated from Virginia. Ben, his descendant, hated the "ignorant hillbilly" stereotype of mountain people. He also believed with every fiber of his being in an educated ministry and in Christian education generally. To that cause he gave a lifetime of faithful, innovative service. Ben's childhood was a rich sampler of some of the best of the rural South, a world largely defined by kinship and the land. In an autobiographical article in the Historic Webster newsletter, Ben said, "When I was still a baby, my mother and father went to live with Uncle Wibb and Aunt Mollie Fisher on what is now the Swayngim farm. Since Uncle Wibb and Aunt Mollie had reared my mother, they were more like grandparents." The social fabric of his childhood was a densely woven network of 65 �extended family relationships. More often than not, those who touched his life in the community, church, or school were kin. He attended the Webster school with his brother Wibb and sister Marian, his mother's younger sister and brother, and numerous cousins who were not only family but also best friends. Forever afterward Ben's conversations were sprinkled with accounts of boyhood adventures and misadventures with these kinsmen. He lived in a land of many aunts, uncles, and cousins. The aunts were a pervasive, loving influence throughout his life; the uncles told him stories of the War Between the States; and the cousins (notably Mack Hall) fed him green persimmons and otherwise evoked images of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Among the boyhood companions most frequently mentioned in Ben's accounts of growing up in the mountains were two cousins named David. One was David Hall, who became a U. S. Congressman from North Carolina. The other was David H. Brown, who became an engineer and rose through the management ranks of Chrysler Corporation to the position of head of its Australia and Far East Division. One family in one small community produced these three — a national leader in Christian higher education, a Congressman, and a corporate executive. The tales of their youthful adventures are human slices of rural America, but these men shatter the "backward hillbilly" stereotype. Great folk story tellers always have strong links to the past. Ben learned many of his stories and the art of telling them from his maternal grandmother, Florence Long Cagle. Even her homesite was steeped in history, a rambling two-story house located in the Muster-ground Hollow where troops had drilled before marching away to the Civil War. As Ben recalled his experiences, "I spent many a pleasant hour there. Granny Florence was a great story-teller." Ben Coleman, as he was called by kin and neighbors to distinguish him from his father, also named Ben, grew up as boys do. And how he grew! As an adult, the man from the mountains was a mountain of a man—six feet three inches tall and ranging 66 �in weight through the years from about 250 to almost 300 pounds. He once described his running gait as a teen-ager with the word "lumbering." However, his huge hands were deft in such diverse skills as photography, playing a guitar, and electrical work. As young Ben Coleman grew in stature, he also grew in knowledge. His lifelong love of learning was born where his education began, in a small community school. Read his tribute to that school: My early schooling was in the old Webster school, where sometimes three grades were taught in one room, and where at one time the library consisted of two shelves which held a Webster's dictionary and a King James Bible. But I want to say that although since that time it has been my privilege to attend some excellent schools and to visit and study at some great universities at home and abroad, the moral influence of the Christian men and women who taught in that little, old-fashioned Webster school has made a lasting mark on my life and my career. I don't know of a single teacher at that time who had had the kind of teacher training that is required today, but I remember one teacher particularly who repeated often to her classes: "No real man or woman would lie, cheat, or steal. Let your word be your bond. Pay your just and honest debts, and be beholden to no man. Make something out of yourself. Go to college if you can." Those instructors also taught us how to spell, how to read, and how to do basic math. These were great teachers because, as far as I know, without exception they wanted to leave a better world than they had found and to provide for young people a better chance than they had had. While Ben took these lessons to heart, the admonition to go to college presented a major challenge. First it was necessary to journey across the mountains to Fruitland Institute, a Baptist academy established to provide secondary education for mountain children. By the time he completed his high school requirements there in 1933, he hadbeen licensed to preach. Determined to secure the best preparation possible for ministry, he gathered his courage and his scant resources to go to Wake Forest College. 67 �In the middle of the Great Depression that was a long journey of faith, and necessitated one year out to work and save. In the years that followed he was unfailingly sympathetic to students in financial distress. He was able to remain at Wake Forest College, which bestowed upon him the A.B. degree cum laude in 1938. In 1971 the school honored its distinguished alumnus by conferring upon him the Doctor of Divinity degree. After serving the Castalia and Peachtree churches as pastor in 1938-39, Ben followed up on his conviction of the need for further preparation for ministry by enrolling in Andover-Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. - He received his Master of Divinity degree in 1942. The sojourn in the North was an enriching experience for this young man from the hills. He received an excellent education and exposure to a new culture. Before he returned from seminary, he married Sara (Sally) Gehman, of "Pennsylvania Dutch" heritage; their sons were David Lincoln, born in 1942 in Boston, and Hugh Robert, born in 1944 after they had returned to North Carolina. There was a bit of the "Br'er Rabbit" trickster in Ben. He told his new bride that he was "used to having fresh, hot biscuits every morning for breakfast." He continued, "Well, I got right ashamed of myself watching that sweet little girl get up to make my biscuits on those cold, dark winter mornings in New England. After a few weeks one of my cousins who was in the area paid us a visit, and she quickly set Sally straight about my custom, or lack of it, of having hot bread every morning for breakfast. It was a while before I saw another biscuit." A special treasure from Ben's days at Andover-Newton was a profound knowledge of and appreciation for the great New England writers. In later years one of his favorite activities was to teach college-level courses on this subject when he found opportunity to do so. The Fishers returned to North Carolina in 1942 to the pastoral ministry. Ben was pastor of First Baptist Church, 68 �Nashville, 1942-45, and First Baptist Church, Newton, 1945-47, before entering the field of Christian higher education, which thereafter dominated his life. Movingto Gardner-Webb College, he served as chairman of the English department, 1947-48, and executive assistant to the president and director of public relations, 1948-52. After serving with the Education Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and with the Baptist colleges of Kentucky, 1952-54, Ben returned to North Carolina to join the staff of the dynamic new seminary that was being created on the old campus of his beloved Wake Forest College. He was administrative assistant to "Doc" Stealey and director of public relations and professor of Christian Education at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1954-62. He joyously plunged into the new school's heady, idealistic mixture of emphases: prophetic involvement, academic excellence, intellectual freedom, and commitment to world missions. And, for a season, it truly was Camelot. Even as he played an amazing variety of roles, he also made important contributions to the world of ideas. He helped to restructure public relations, away from practices bordering upon manipulation and deception, and toward sensitivity to public interests and honesty in reporting. He thought through the role of the college trustee and published his practical conclusions in A Manual for College Trustees. These were fruitful years. For the next move the Fishers remained in their home in Rolesville while Ben changed his daily commute from Wake Forest to Raleigh. He became executive secretary of the Council on Christian Higher Education, Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, 1962-70. He served effectively as liaison person between the seven colleges supported by North Carolina Baptists and the denomination. It was far from an easy task. Southern Baptists have typically been ambivalent to ward higher education. The rural and frontier heritage is intolerant of anything that smacks of elitism. Moreover, the colleges have 69 �often served as a highly visible, convenient, and virtually defenseless target for malcontents and power-seekers, Ben went far beyond the role of trouble-shooter and peace-maker; he so interpreted higher education to North Carolina Baptists that the colleges came to have strong advocates in most Baptist churches "from Manteo to Murphy." It was during this period also that at the request of Governor Dan K. Moore, Ben served on the "Speaker Ban Commission," which was able to defuse the controversial issue of limiting choice of speakers on state college and university campuses. This was the era of the governance crisis in all of higher education, and it is a measure of Ben's expertise that the state Board of Education commissioned him to write a special report on duties and responsibilities of college and university trustees, used as the basis for Chapter V in the major study called Planning for Higher Education in North Carolina (1968). In 1970 Ben was chosen for the highest leadership position in Baptist higher education: executive director-treasurer of the Education Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He held that office until his retirement in 1978. He applied effectively the wisdom gained during his near quarter of a century of experience in Baptist higher education. In addition to his direct involvement with Baptist colleges and the denomination, he continued to write extensively. He also worked hard to help other denominational groups improve their colleges and universities. He campaigned for cooperative efforts to strengthen all Christian higher education, as is evidenced by his service as chairman of the Secretariat of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, 1978-79. Ben Fisher was an unblinking advocate for private churchrelated colleges and universities. They had nurtured his mind and soul. More importantly, however, he believed that America needs a strong dual system of higher education — public and private institutions. In his view both are required to meet the varied educational needs of a diverse people because they supplement and complement one another. No doubt one of the most 70 �satisfying events of his very eventful career came in December 1977, when he organized and led a White House Conference between President Jimmy Carter and chief executives of 22 boards of church-related higher education. Retirement mostly meant a change of address for the Fishers. They moved to Murfreesboro, N. C., home of Chowan College, where long-time friend Bruce Whitaker was the president. They were home, but hardly retired. Ben was named adjunct professor of religion and educational consultant to Norman A. Wiggins, president of Campbell University. He served actively on many advisory boards and councils. He continued to write. He excitedly made plans to go to Rusehlikon, Switzerland, to study for a time at the Baptist Theological Seminary there. At the invitation of Dafydd Davies, he gave the introductory lecture of the centenary celebration of University College Cardiff in Wales. He arranged for Dr. Davies and Harry Blamires to give lectures in the United States. He sailed his beloved boat, the Sara G., and found life to be full. However, dreams of a long, satisfying period of semi-retirement soon were smashed. Stricken by cancer, Ben began a long battle using surgery and various forms of treatment to stretch his time to the fullest. He did not stop doing what he wanted to do. He did go to Riischlikon, and other places as well. He surrendered treasured activities grudgingly, and only as deteriorating strength left no alternative. Eventually, the Fishers moved to Raleigh to be closer to specialized medical care. He continued to write — and to tell stories, even about the deadly enemy that was taking his life. Through the years he would occasionally threaten a friend with a reference to his great size, saying, "If you don't treat me with more respect, Fm going to provide in my will that you must serve as one of my pall bearers." The list of public honors bestowed upon Ben for his many ministries is far too lengthy even to sample. They range from local citations to national, even international, recognition. Being human, he appreciated them; being Ben, he didn't let them turn his head. Crate Jones, Ben's friend and former pastor, wrote 71 �about his inherent humility in an article in the Biblical Recorder: His "take the lower seat" attitude was matter-of-factly revealed one day. He was to give the baccalaureate address at an important university. "They are going to give me another degree." Sound like bragging? But wait. The Big Ben rang as true as Westminster's famed one when he added, "I don't need it; I'd rather have two dozen ears of sweet corn." Maybe Ben wouldn't actually have swapped one of his five honorary doctoral degrees for two dozen ears of sweet corn, but he was secure in his sense of self-worth. And he did like fresh sweet corn. Like everyone else who knew Ben Fisher well, I have a personal store of rich experiences. All of us want to say, "Let me tell you about... " So, let me tell you about Ben. My wife Annette and I arrived in Wake Forest in early August of 1956 in a state of youthful optimism, innocent faith, and abject poverty. Our total assets were our personal belongings, a tiny (and leaky) housetrailer, and $20 beyond what I would need for fees to begin my theological education. Our plan for survival was blind faith and the hope that someone named Ben Fisher could use my degree and experience in journalism. With my ratty little trailer settled in, I trudged halfway across Wake Forest to the "old music building" which had been the home of Southeastern Seminary during the years of joint occupancy of the campus with the recently removed Wake Forest College. At the foot of the steps a student identified himself as Randall Lolley and responded to my inquiry that Ben Fisher was on the premises. "I was talking to him just a second ago in the hall," he said. "You'll find him right inside, and you can't miss him. He has a 'lean and hungry look.' " Why that mountain of a man ever hired a scrawny kid from South Georgia with his mouth wide open and his eyes bugged out in shock remains something of a mystery. Life with Ben began with a joke on me, and it was far from the last. Even as I prepared to leave the 72 �seminary after completing the B.D. and course requirements for the Th.M., Ben had a parting thrust, the last of many teasing references to the backwardness of my native state. He said to President Stealey, "Yeah, Doc, we're sending Branch out as a missionary — to Georgia." Although Ben showed little reluctance in unleashing his humor upon me and other friends, he did not use it to inflict hurt as many do. More often than not he made himself the butt of many funny stories. In fact, they often were true accounts, and his willingness to share his misadventures and embarrassments revealed a rare openness to others. He invited us to laugh with him at himself— a sign of being at ease with self and everyone else. Ben was not a plaster saint. Some of his humor was too country-boy earthy for his after-dinner speeches — a thing shared with close associates only, and such it will remain. He also had a towering temper. Once it exploded upon a new student assistant in the darkroom, who had decided to clean up the place, even scouring the surface of the print dryer with gritty household cleanser. The shiny drum of the expensive dryer was terribly scratched, and Ben found many ways to describe the assistant's incompetence before his anger cooled. Another young man who earned Ben's wrath was one I call "the evangelist." Part of my job was to write graduation stories on all persons completing degrees. With accompanying photos these were sent to students' hometown newspapers. It was a nice touch for students, and good public relations for the seminary. Before the stories were mailed, we asked the students to come by briefly to check for accuracy or to suggest changes. One student, known for "getting results" as an evangelistic preacher (and by his demeanor obviously aware of his importance to the Kingdom of God), found himself too busy to come by our offices in spite of several messages from me. Not long before graduation I mentioned the situation to Ben, and "it struck him wrong." He set off toward the cafeteria where the student was taking part in some pregraduation festivities. He reminded me of Casey Jones' 73 �freight train on the long down-grade to the cafeteria. I did not go along to witness the event and wish that I had. I know only that the young man was in my office almost immediately, and he was contrite, cooperative, and curiously humble. I remember Ben most for his compassion. Annette and I both worked for the seminary for the sub-minimum wage that all institutions paid in those days. Ben once said, "Roger, you can make as much per hour as you like but I have only $ 150 a month for you, and we have to work as many hours as it takes to get the job done." It was not exploitive. We worked together, he longer than anyone. Always living at the edge of need, we Branches found our situation even more precarious when our son Gary was born during our second year at Southeastern. Ben was alert for little grants-in-aid, and helped me find loans when things got too tough. He also brought us food from his pantry and freezer. Since he was supporting a wife, two hearty teen-age sons, and his father on a limited salary, I know that every one of those gifts was a sacrifice. The Branches also ate some meals in the Fisher home, where Sally and Ben both cooked. Our first was a dinner meal built around a big roast. After the blessing, older son David asked, "Dad, FDI or FHB?" Ben seemed taken aback briefly, then relaxed and said, "FDI, boys, FDI." Then he explained, "We have this code that we use when we have company. If the food's a little short, it's FHB: Family Hold Back. If there's plenty, it's FDI: Family Dig In." Ben and his father gardened, and Sally managed. I never saw any evidence of hunger. So I think that the FDI-FHB business was a joke, probably on me, but I guess I'll never know for sure. Visits to the Fisher home let us get to know Sally; their mutual devotion was obvious. Ben once explained, "Sally and I have an agreement. If she decides to leave me, I am going with her." She remained his emotional, spiritual, and intellectual partner to the end and beyond. Three years as a pastor and a teacher in a Baptist college in Georgia ended with my return to North Carolina in 1963 as 74 �associate editor of the Biblical Recorder. Ben was a member of the paper's board of directors and influenced my decision to accept the position. By then he was with the Council on Christian Higher Education. His close relationship with editor Marse Grant made us all co-laborers in the cause of Baptist higher education. Always a mentor and friend, he now became my colleague. Looking back over the years, more than 30 of them, I realize that Ben was often misunderstood and inadequately appreciated. Some people heard his stories and thought they were funny but missed the underlying message. Some may even have judged him to be an intellectual light-weight because he told humorous stories. Inability to perceive the several layers of meaning in his messages led such folk astray. In fact, his intellectual interests were broad, and his vision was acute. If he often used country boys' way of speaking, he was no less a world citizen, at ease almost anywhere. Ben was a peacemaker, a mediator. Such people are sometimes seen as lacking courage or convictions. In the sometimes fractious relationships between Baptist colleges and their critics within the denomination, he filled an indispensable role for decades. He had to struggle to control that thunderous temper because he had strong convictions and attendant emotions. Sometimes patience takes more character than taking a dramatic stand. Yes, he had convictions. On the day that the trustees of Southeastern Seminary voted officially to drop all racial bars to admission, I watched him write a straightforward news release announcing the decision. He pounded it out himself on his battered typewriter. When he finished, he said softly, "At last!" Once one of my friends at Southeastern said, "Your friend Ben Fisher can be downright rude. I'm in his class but I met him on campus today and spoke to him, and he acted as if he didn't see me." My response was, "He didn't see you, and what's more he does the same thing to me." Ben's power of concentration was phenomenal. When he started "chewing" on an idea or problem 75 �mentally, other things faded to the periphery of his attention. Thus, his apparent occasional aloofness was an unfortunate byproduct of one of his great strengths. Ben Fisher's service to the cause of Christian higher education was profoundly significant. It crossed denominational, regional, and national boundaries. Character traits and values nurtured in a mountain family and community reached out to the world through him. Because his cause was education, his contributions will continue. We should not forget that he made them. One of the educators who spoke at Ben's funeral was Monsignor John F. Murphy, who — as head of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities — had worked closely with Ben in national organizations and programs for Christian higher education. He began his remarks by saying, 'That which we miss most today at this celebration is Ben's voice telling us a story for the occasion." We shall continue to miss Ben's voice telling his stories. But if you ever heard him and if you read carefully his stories in this book, you may think that you still catch echoes of his robust tones. Roger G. Branch, Sr., Ph.D., is professor of sociology and head of the department of sociology and anthropology, Georgia Southern College, Statesboro, Georgia. He is also a pastor, and the author of a number of books and articles. His latest book, Resources for Ministry in Death and Dying, was published by Broadman Press in January 1988. �a He in in He of the as a He at a of A in University in Today's World. He SALLY all of the the he He Hie in of C. on on all put in JVew of a of 1985. the � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mountain Preacher Stories: Laughter Among the Trumpets Description An account of the resource <span>Over a period of forty years, Ben Fisher collected stories illustrating the humor of the Southern Highlander. English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish immigrants to the Appalachian region of North Carolina brought with them a rugged individualism and a sense of humor and dignity which have been characteristic of the sturdy yeoman farmer. Most mountain preachers and many of the old time mountaineers had a real talent for telling stories. While the “tall tale” is a staple of mountain storytelling, more often the tales relate to something that happened, not something just dreamed up. Mountain humor, like all folk humor, typically arises out of a life situation. Fisher’s work, edited by his wife Sally following his passing, relates many of the stories and tales that he had heard over the course of his life.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZAWHgOYz-DRmnf49UwJnz2cHS4rKihJw" target="_blank">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNPC" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469636627/mountain-preacher-stories/" target="_blank">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Ben C. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachia Consortium Press Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Appalachian Region, Southern--Humor Clergy--Appalachian Region, Southern--Humor Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Appalachia Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF E-books Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/12212302/appalachia.html Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1990s humor mountains Preachers religion https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/c87a5fa217010fa898d9d85424ddaeca.pdf 80f1af9d9e71bb69d230017eccf09e87 PDF Text Text �For His Cause A Little House A Hundred Year History of Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church by DONALD B. SAUNDERS �The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From 1973 to 2004, its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program^ Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press. www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license^ visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Original copyright © 1988 by the Appalachian Consortium Press. ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-4201-7 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-4203-1 Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press www.uncpress.org �THE APPALACHIAN CONSORTIUM The Appalachian Consortium is a non-profit educational organization comprised of institutions and agencies located in the Southern Highlands. Our members are volunteers who plan and execute projects which serve 156 mountain counties in seven states. Among our goals are: Preserving the cultural heritage of Southern Appalachia Protecting the mountain environment Improving the educational opportunities for area students and teachers Conducting scientific, social and economic research Promoting a positive image of Appalachia Encouraging regional cooperation THE MEMBER INSTITUTIONS OF THE APPALACHIAN CONSORTIUM ARE: Appalachian State University Blue Ridge Parkway East Tennessee State University Gardner-Webb College Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association John C. Campbell Folk School Lees-McRae College Mars Hill College Mountain Regional Library North Carolina Division of Archives and History Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild U.S. Forest Service Warren Wilson College Western Carolina University Western North Carolina Historical Society �To my parents �CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction 1: The Founding and the Founders 1 Mrs. Alfred M. Stewart. Col William J. Martin. The Rev. Dr. Jethro Rumple and North Carolina Presbyterianism to the 1880's. Blowing Rock, 1880-1900. The German Reformed Church. The first building. W. M. Morris's deed of land. The Rev, C. A. Munroe and the Lenoir connection. The first members. Notes for Chapter One. 2: The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 33 The Rev. Robert P. Pell and mountain education. The arrival of the Rev. Edgar Tufts and his Blowing Rock work. A new generation of summer people: Dr. William J. Martin, the Rev. James I. Vance, the Rev. Charles G. Vardell. Building the stone church. The first Session. The formation of the Synod of Appalachia and its significance. The church and the Grandfather Home for Children. The death of Tufts; tributes to his work. Notes for Chapter Two. 3: From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 Blowing Rock by the 1920's. The Rev. Charles G. McKaraher's pastorate at Blowing Rock. Remodeling the church portico. McKaraher's academy at Shulls Mills. The Rev. Walter K. Keys and Holston Presbytery home missions. The Rev. G. Sexton Buchanan and the first manse. The church's "fiftieth" anniversary celebration. Dr. Mary Warfield. The WOC. Mrs. Annie L. Cannon and the first education building. The church and the black community. The departure of the Rev. Buchanan. Notes for Chapter Three. 65 �4: Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 97 The first Keys pastorate. The church and World War II. The deaths of Martin, Vance, and W. L. Holshouser. Postwar changes. Keys's illness. David Ovens and Grandfather Home Sunday. The pastorate of the Rev. Robert D. Earnest. The building of the Negro Community Church. Two pastors with Korean connections: the Rev. Sam S. Cappel and The Rev. Leroy T. Newland. The recall of Dr. Keys. Notes for Chapter Four. 5: Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 121 Keys's second pastorate. Lay leaders and leadership opportunities. Robert A. Dunn and the Dunn Youth. Building the present manse. The Rev. Blake Brinkerhoff and the Summer Residents Committee. Brinkerhoff and the KKK. The changing character of the town. The Rev. Richard Holshouser and the Cannon Educational Building. Return to Concord Presbytery. Notes for Chapter Five. 6: Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 151 Holshouser's departure and the call of the Rev. Francis C. Collier. The Collier case. Recovery, redirection, and reunion. The pastorate of the Rev. Vaughn Earl Hartsell. Rumple Sundays and preaching missions. Celebrating the centennial. Whither the town? Whither Rumple? Notes for Chapter Six. Bibliography 175 Index 181 �ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INSPIRATION FOR WRITING this book came on a spring walk in 1985 along the then-unopened stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, in sight of the Grandfather, between Blowing Rock and Linville. I knew the job needed doing; I had just concluded another semester's teaching; I needed a project to break a block; and I determined then to make my services available for the task. My only concern was that others with more knowledge and experience than I had a more rightful claim to write it. Looming like giant footsteps across a trail were professional considerations due my acquaintance from days at Davidson College, the Carolinas Presbyterian professor par excellence, Blowing Rock summer resident and worshipper at Rumple, raconteur and repository of many pertinent facts, both trenchant and trivial, Dr. Chalmers G. Davidson. I knew that Dr. Davidson had been asked to take the job on. I did not yet know he had begged off the project, on the grounds that his semi-retirement, which he fills as the first Archivist of Davidson College, was busy enough, and he needed no new writing projects to tackle. He has since been a valuable consultant to the one hundredth anniversary history project for the town of Blowing Rock; his contributions will undoubtedly prove important when Appalachian Consortium Press publishes the work in 1989. Now, most all of us who attended Davidson in the years Dr. Davidson taught history there, whether we took his courses or not, stood and still stand in awe of his learning, of his good humor, and of the peculiar nature of his curiosities: his interest in matters genealogical sometimes seems surpassed only by his love of an earthy story. He has revealed, I am sorry to inform the reader, precious few such stories for this book, with which I might have enlivened the narrative. But he did assure me, when I asked him, that the topic was mine if I wanted it, and that he was always ready to help. I am grateful for the professional and personal regard he has shown me as this work has progressed, giving me free rein in the Davidson College archives, particularly in the Dr. William J. Martin papers, and answering numerous questions about Blowing Rock and its people. His com- �ments on the book's final draft proved valuable. He knows a great deal more than I knew to ask; he has been of enormous help. But even before I had to wrestle with a legend like Dr. Davidson, the project itself had taken shape in the mind and heart of the Rev. Vaughn Earl Hartsell, whom I knew only slightly when I started, but who came to be a friend. His desire to observe the church's anniversary by such a project, his constant interest, his own knowledge of the subject, his help in arranging oral interviews and in finding the funds for the publication of this book, and above all his unquestioning faith in my ability and determination to complete it: these have kept me going in the year and a half since I volunteered to do the job. I also owe a great deal to Dr. Jerrold L. Brooks, Executive Director of The Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches at Montreat, and the staff there, especially Mr. Bill Bynum. Before there were local church histories, there are the records at Montreat —congregational, Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly—which make local accounts possible. All historians, and all Presbyterians, now reunited in the Presbyterian Church, USA, have reason to be grateful for, and to continue to support, the facility and its rich resources. When the project began, I knew numerous oral interviews would be desirable and necessary to give a human dimension to the story and to alert me to the many details I knew nothing of in the history of the church and the town. Several longtime members at Rumple and residents of the community have been kind enough to grant extended interviews, some quite early on, others only later in the project. Appropriate notes appear throughout the text to these invaluable sources of information and support. Among those who helped me in this way were: former pastors Robert D. Earnest, Blake Brinkerhoff, and Richard Holshouser; elder emeritus Howard Holshouser and his wife, Mabel; other members of the Holshouser family, including William L. Holshouser, Jr., and his wife, Louise VonCanon Holshouser, of Banner Elk, and Virginia (Mrs. Eubert "Peck") Holshouser, of Boone; former elders Rudolph Greene and Perry Lentz; former Summer Residents Committee chairmen Eugene S. Bowman and Andy Nimmo; William C. Cannon of Concord and Blowing Rock; members Agnes Coffey, Gladys Tester, and "Miss Hattie" Brown; former member, deacon, and elder Jim O'Dell; summer residents Betsy McClure, Linda Yarnell, and the Rev. Allan Smyth; and Mrs. McClure's aunt, Helen Weedon Deaton of Statesville, daughter of one of Blowing Rock's earliest transplant families and Rumple members. Jean Clawson, liaison from the Session to the Historical Committee, kindly �helped me interview Jo Greene, now of Winston-Salem, who with her late husband Spencer lived in Blowing Rock from the late 1930's to the 1960's, and who recalled for us many anecdotes regarding Annie Ludlow Cannon. From the start the backing of the Historical Committee at the church has been very reassuring, as has been that of the special Centennial Committee chaired by George Kinnard. It almost goes without saying that without the help of Jerry Burns, editor of The Blowing Rocket and a son of Rumple Church, and use of the materials collected through the resources of The Blowing Rocket over the years, this work could never have been written. As of this writing, the special 1976 edition of that newspaper devoted to the history of the town is the single best source of local historical information. He also gave me access to various items collected at the church reaching back well into the early years of its history. Among the more recent and valuable materials are two hefty scrapbooks assembled between 1962 and the time of her death in 1978 by Mrs. William C. (Elizabeth) Lentz. Would that such a diligent effort had been made from the beginning, or were still underway. Tom and Michelle Bouvier, church members and word processor enthusiasts, gave help preparing the first, brief version of the project on their computer; their example made me realize the value of learning the computer and helped inspire me to acquire my own. Summer resident Eleanor (Mrs. Leon S.) Bradshaw showed the Rev. Hartsell and me around the First Presbyterian Church of Salisbury, introduced us to the church historian there, Mrs. Josephine Kluttz Krider, and toured with us the old manse once inhabited by Jethro Rumple (now the historical museum of Salisbury) and the Salisbury public library's collection of local history. Mrs. Julia Keys Williams of Sarasota, Florida, daughter of longtime pastor Walter K. Keys, answered thoughtfully and graciously many questions during her visit to Blowing Rock in April 1987. For information concerning the Boone Fork Academy, I thank Katherine J. Peterson of Boone, formerly a teacher at Watauga High School and at Appalachian State University; and for information on R. A. Dunn and his Blowing Rock property, Jim Love of Mount Holly. I am also grateful to my departmental colleague, North Carolina historian Dr. Ruby S. Lanier, who serendipitously was working on a sketch of the Rev. Jesse Rankin of Lenoir while I was engaged in this project, and so was able to give me materials concerning the Lenoir Presbyterian Church and help in other ways with source references. For assistance in conceptualizing some of the interpretations contained in this book, I thank Dr. Patricia D. Beaver, Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at ASU; need- �less to say, the final form my thoughts have taken is my own responsibility. The Rev. Dr. Thomas F. Clark, artist, sculptor, my professor of Old Testament Bible at Davidson College, and historian of the Myers Park Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, was kind enough to read and comment upon a nearly-final version of the manuscript. The Rev. Lawton W. Posey, pastor of the Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church of Charleston, West Virginia, who has written numerous articles and reviews for several church publications, also read it and provided many welcome suggestions. Other favorable comments were kindly supplied by Dr. John W. Kuykendall, president of Davidson College; the Rev. Dr. Perry H. Biddle, Jr.; and Mrs. Margaret Tufts Neal. I am grateful too, for a careful reading of the last draft by Church members Mary Smith, Bernie Greene, Jerry Burns, and Jean Clawson; their sharp eyes caught a number of minor errors and omissions; those that remain are my own fault. Publication was made possible by the Session of the Church, the Summer Residents Committee, and several special contributors: my thanks to Capt. and Mrs. Salem Van Every, who arranged for the Foundation of the Carolinas to contribute toward the underwriting of the book in memory of Mrs. Van Every's nephew, John Arvid Moberg, a member of Rumple Memorial at the time of his death in September 1986; other members of the Moberg family; and to Willard and Betty Broyhill Gortner, area summer residents. I also acknowledge the generous support of Dr. George P. Antone, my department chairman at ASU, and Dr. William F. Byrd, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who provided me with a block of release time and other support for this work during Spring Semester 1987. Finally, I express my debt to my parents, to whom I dedicate this book. Born and reared "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," they saw to it that "the faith once delivered to the saints" was taught to their children, both at home and in the church in which I grew up, Grace Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey. Had they not taken an interest in the affairs of Rumple Church during several summers in Blowing Rock, I might never have been introduced to its ministry and its minister. Boone, N.C. December 1987 �INTRODUCTION FOR MORE THAN half of its one hundred years, it was known officially as the Blowing Rock Presbyterian Church. In all its early records, in presbytery minutes, and in reports —when it made them — to the denomination's General Assembly, the "little house" did not use its current name before 1940. And nothing shows that the congregation or session ever voted to adopt the name of its founding spirit. Yet by the time Holston Presbytery, to which the church had belonged since 1915, "went on record as recognizing the name of the Church in Blowing Rock to be the Rumple Memorial Church" in 1940, the role of Jethro Rumple, D.D., minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Salisbury for some forty years and a longtime summer resident, had been recognized for decades. Indeed, from the time of the construction of the present stone church, completed in 1912, the building has displayed a stone marker, donated by Sunday School pupils of the Salisbury congregation, memorializing Dr. Rumple. It is in many ways fitting that the church should bear the name of a person from "off the mountain": a major part in its history, and in its active life today, has been played by contributors, sung and unsung, who have lived among the mountains and its people but whose homes and livelihoods have been elsewhere. Two factors go a long way toward explaining this phenomenon. First, perhaps, was the sense of mission, at its height in the Presbyterian Church, U.S. during the long generation from the 1890's through the 1920's, reflected in the status of the Blowing Rock church as a missionary activity of the denomination in that era. This account will sketch many of the men and women who during those years were called to "labor in the vineyards for the Lord," as they said, and whose zeal sometimes seems hard to recapture today. If they occasionally showed an imperfect understanding of the people and the conditions they met in the mountains, their convictions have nevertheless left permanent impressions even on the very granite of the land. The second factor has been the growing and changing role of the town of Blowing Rock as a summer resort over the past century. To many of their visitors in the early days, the mountains were a retreat, a solace, a sometimes-romanticized "place of quiet rest near to the heart �of God," as the old hymn has it. Later, a somewhat more strenuous round of "leisure" activities - golf, horsemanship, dining out, or shopping and sightseeing-increased the social and economic significance of the summer community. Each year, as the autumn leaves blew off the trees, these folks departed; but what they left behind, as contributions of time or money, has been vital to the church's survival. So without the support of professional church workers, and lay people whose lives were staked elsewhere, neither Rumple Memorial nor the town ever would have taken their present shape. But the church's success in the community has depended equally on reaching out to, and meeting the needs of, local people. Not all mountain missionary work succeeded. And not all the resorts which were springing up in the era when Rumple Church was planted provided a permanent Presbyterian witness. The church at Highlands, N.C., for example, dedicated just two years before the one at Blowing Rock, struggled and died in 1910, and was not revived until interested persons, many of them retired outsiders, reorganized it in 1929. Linville, founded as a resort during the same decade the Rumple Church was organized in nearby Blowing Rock, has not maintained a regular Presbyterian place of worship despite several false starts. To keep a church alive and active, a base of permanent resident members, as has been the case at Rumple, is imperative. For the local people who have shared in the work at Rumple Memorial, the church has fulfilled its characteristic roles: a source of comfort in times of pain and death, a place for celebrating weddings, baptisms, and holiday traditions, and a scene of spiritual study and worship. Early resident members often gave, sacrificially, of the labor of their hands and hearts, and from narrow bases of income, to build and maintain its physical plant and to carry on its programs. For some members even today, the church represents what was truly "the faith of their fathers": second, third, and even fourth generation descendants retain current membership. Like their forebears, they are still being challenged spiritually and ethically to display in their families and in the community the faith they have heard preached in the church. And like them, they take their places in the pews alongside the doctors, professors, city preachers, successful business people, and all sorts of folks from other places who make up the summer congregation, led by a common commitment to serve the same Lord. Projects of outreach were and are jointly undertaken by the entire membership. The most noted of these, since 1918, has been the Church's support of Grandfather Home for Children in Banner Elk, of which much more will be said in this account. It is mentioned here as �an example of the way in which the sense of mission, the impact of the summer community, and the work of local residents have all come together to accomplish an unusual thing. Nothing humans do on earth is permanent or perfect. Ink fades, buildings are pulled down and rebuilt out of all recognition, men and women err and die, "mind and memory flee." The faith of Christians is that God remembers, rewards, and "maketh perfect"; the faith of historians, that the preserved memory of the past influences the present. Here, then, is something of what remains of the record of Rumple Memorial Church, in at least part of its context. It is written not simply to honor the living and memorialize the dead, certainly not to remind the Almighty what His people have done in this place. It, too, is service, and is inspired by example. �This page intentionally left blank �The Founding and the Founders ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1887, at its regular fall meeting, the Presbytery of Concord, of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, received and approved a report from the Reverend C. A. Munroe of Lenoir that "he had organized a church [in Blowing Rock] on the 17th day of July, 1887, of 8 members...." Presbytery then "ordered that the name of the church, Blowing Rock,... be put on the roll of churches," and the church had its official beginning. It was the culmination of years of effort to establish the denomination in Watauga County, North Carolina.1 The first known call to the Presbyterian public to launch "A Church Enterprise in Watauga, N.C." was made in a letter signed by "Mrs. Alfred M. Stewart" in the North Carolina Presbyterian on October 18, 1882. Her audience would not have been large: there were only some 25,000 Presbyterians of all varieties in the state, out of a population of more than one million, by 1880, and circulation of the paper was certainly no more than a few thousand. The weekly journal, which reached church people from its offices in Fayetteville, was at the time a major source of news and information concerning the denomination, although it was not an official church publication. Besides news and letters, it also ran inspirational poetry, various lessons from Scripture, and even such almanac information as when to plant crops and recent weather reports. It was a logical forum in which to promote her efforts. According to property deed records, Alfred M. and Emma Reid Stewart were from Mecklenburg County and probably lived in Davidson, although they do not appear on the 1880 census for that town. They first bought property in Blowing Rock in 1880: an eighty-acre tract from S. M. and Emma S. Clarke for $700. Part of this tract, which �2 / Chapter One straddled the middle fork of the New River, was still known as "Stewart's field" in recent memory. Other acreage Emma Stewart bought in her own name later, including property on the south end of Main Street. In Davidson, she kept a boarding house, listed as "Stuarts Inn" in the College Handbook of that era, for college students during the school year, and another in Blowing Rock, the Skyland Inn, at what is now the Farm House Restaurant, for summer people. She was a member of the Davidson College Presbyterian Church; nothing in the records shows that she joined the church in Blowing Rock she helped to launch, but she must have attended services there in summer. The Stewarts' son, Herbert, or "Hub," lived in Blowing Rock and also in Southwest Virginia near Abingdon, as late as the 1950's; apparently he never married. He ran the Skyland Inn from the time his mother became infirm, about 1919, until the sale of the property in 1945 to the present owners, Mr. and Mrs. E. J. Blackwell2 In Davidson, the Stewarts would have known Col. William J. Martin and perhaps others from the college who spent their summers in the mountains. Her letter, in any event, was no doubt sparked by conversations in Davidson and Blowing Rock with Col. Martin (who long was an elder in the Davidson College Presbyterian Church) and the Reverend Dr. Jethro Rumple of Salisbury, both of whom were a great deal better known to Presbyterians across the state. Why neither of these men signed the letter is a mystery. Her letter informed those "who live in more favored parts of our land" of the "widespread religious destitution in Watauga County," where the "few Presbyterians are literally as 'sheep without a shepherd/ " She reminded her readers that "Blowing Rock is resorted to yearly by visitors, among whom are members of our communion. But they come to us to find no sanctuary and no means of grace of our faith and order." She proposed to put up "an inexpensive house of worship," after obtaining a lot, to further the course of "religion and morality," and asked for donations "in our weakness . . . even if the aid rendered be small."3 Over the winter and spring the donations trickled in. Letters at the church preserved from that period show that small contributions came from all over the state. From as far away as Wilmington, $15 was raised "among my young friends of the Second Presbyterian Church" by Miss May Colville, who expected Mrs. Stewart to remember her as "Miss Annie Rankin's friend" (Annie Rankin was a daughter of the Reverend Jesse Rankin of Lenoir). From Fayetteville, Mrs. L. M. Evans sent $5 and regretted she could not "make it five times that amount." The Reverend Robert Zenas Johnston, pastor at Lincolnton �The Founding and the Founders / 3 and stated clerk of Mecklenburg Presbytery, forwarded $2, noting he was "on missionary ground" himself, helping to build a church at Iron Station in Lincoln County, and so could send no more. He signed himself "your old pastor" and thought of Mrs. Stewart as one of his "old friends." The reference is puzzling, for although he was a Davidson graduate, class of 1858, preached all his career in the Presbyteries of Concord and Mecklenburg, and had been Jethro Rumple's successor at the Providence and Sharon churches in southeast Mecklenburg County when Rumple moved to Salisbury in 1860, Johnston never preached near Davidson. Perhaps the Stewarts had lived in one of these areas before taking up residence in Davidson. Or they may have provided him board on his visits to the town in his capacity as a trustee of the college from Mecklenburg Presbytery: he served from 1871 to 1879, and again from 1897 to 1908.4 To Emma Stewart's call came two especially interesting responses from persons who remembered their own visits in Watauga County: Arnold W. Miller, pastor of First Church, Charlotte, and Mrs. Peter Tinsley Penick, of Mooresville. Miller recalled that "when we were a part of Concord Presbytery [i.e., before 1869], Watauga was one of my favorite counties, and in several portions of it I have preached. I shall always feel a deep interest in its welfare and hence, hail with delight, the first movement tending to the establishment of Presbyterianism in that remarkable section." When Miller died in 1892, a tribute at the state Synod meeting observed that "the people of Western North Carolina will long remember his labors. There the inmates of many homes have been permitted to read numerous religious and moral periodicals, sent by him year after year to the children, who otherwise never would have seen these periodicals." Miller, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, served his Charlotte charge from 1865 to shortly before his death. Mrs. Penick, wife, mother, mother-in-law, and daughter-in-law of Presbyterian divines, sent Mrs. Stewart "one dollar which I hope will not be too late to be useful in 'putting a few nails* in the house of worship you are building." She wrote, "I love our grand old mountains! Many of the happiest days of my girlhood were spent among them, and Blowing Rock is associated with some of my tenderly cherished memories." According to her letter, she and several family members had spent "some weeks at Shull's Mills and Morris" in 1879 and had seen and felt then the need for a church in that vicinity.5 The donations received as a result of Emma Stewart's call were inadequate to begin work. Presbytery was at that time uninterested in pursuing the matter; money was apparently being raised for a church �4 / Chapter One at Jefferson, but major support was not yet forthcoming for any new construction ventures. No doubt what finally got the Blowing Rock project off the ground was the support of her two collaborators, Col. William Joseph Martin (1830-1896) of Davidson College, and Jethro Rumple (1827-1906), minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Salisbury. The contributions these prominent North Carolina Presbyterians and Blowing Rock summer residents had already made to the denomination were well known in the state and the region. Sometime during his tenure as professor of chemistry, geology, and natural history at Davidson, which began in 1869, Col. Martin sojourned in Blowing Rock. The exact date has not been pinpointed, but what drew him is clear: it was his interest in the geological formation of what were already being called the oldest mountains in America. Born in Richmond the son of an Irish immigrant physician, Martin was an 1854 graduate of the University of Virginia. He studied chemistry there, but according to one who has written about his career, Martin drew his inspiration to teach from classes under the famed William Holmes McGuffey, whose Eclectic Readers and Eclectic Spelling Book helped shape popular education in nineteenth century America. After teaching three years at Washington College in Pennsylvania upon earning his Master of Arts degree, Martin was invited to succeed the well-known Elisha Mitchell at the University of North Carolina in 1857. His academic career was interrupted by service with the famous N.C. Bethel Regiment, which he helped to raise among Chapel Hill students, during the Civil War. He saw action in several campaigns, advancing from captain to colonel, and was three times wounded. The scene of his return home, which came down through his family, is reminiscent of the classic screen version in "Gone With the Wind": alone and exhausted on a "pitiful-looking," half-starved gray horse he arrived unrecognized and mistaken for drunk until he was cleaned up by his brother-in-law and a faithful "old darky."6 As the University was forced to close its doors in 1867, Martin moved to Columbia, Tennessee, founded a private academy, and taught school for two years. He then joined two of his former Chapel Hill colleagues at Davidson, where he taught generations of boys and filled various leadership positions until his death. From 1884 to 1887 he was college vice-president, and acting president in 1887-88. He was awarded the honorary Doctor of Letters degree from two institutions, Hampden-Sydney College and U. N. C., in 1887 and 1889. Martin introduced laboratory instruction to the struggling liberal arts college, which was surviving Reconstruction largely on the prayers of Presbyterians and the remainder of the bequest received from Salisbury �The Founding and the Founders / 5 merchant Maxwell Chambers shortly before the War. To build up the college's geology program, Martin tramped to the mountains for rock samples, often in the company of Washington Caruthers Kerr, Martin's predecessor as professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at Davidson and state geologist from 1864 to 1882. Another who came with them was probably John Rennie Blake, an 1846 graduate of the University of Georgia and a contemporary of Kerr's at the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1856 and 1857, who taught various subjects at Davidson from the Civil War to 1884. Blake and two nephews, W. B. and Robert Arrowood, taught a one-room school in Boone for a time after the War. Both Arrowoods later became Presbyterian ministers, but it is doubtful if their Boone enterprise was ever under the care of the denomination.7 The Colonel and his naturalist companions from the college were living in a generation for many of whom the hand of God in nature was becoming less and less apparent. Uniformitarian principles in geology had disturbed the comfortable belief in a six-thousand year-old earth; fossil studies were revealing extinct species; Charles Darwin's controversial writings posited processes of "natural selection" for the origin of species, and struggle for life, not harmony, as nature's ruling principle. Yet Martin's faith in a personal God did not falter. Tributes collected in memoriam by the college spoke positively of his Christian character and conviction as well as his extensive knowledge and scholarship. A former student, perhaps remembering experiences in the college's required chapel services, wrote: "I loved to hear him pray there was such simplicity, such humility, such childlike faith." Rumple, who kept a sharp eye on the school from his position as secretary of its board of trustees for more than forty years, and who knew him well from summers in Blowing Rock, remarked at Martin's death: Col. Martin's crowning was his absolute faith in God and in his word. His scientific studies did not shake, but only confirmed his faith. He knew that every scientific experiment ended in a mystery-"why" that could not be answered, and wisely reasoned that in the higher region of sacred science there would likewise be unanswerable mysteries. And so he could afford to trust the promises of God, and resign himself to the divine will.8 The Colonel and his wife, Letitia Coddington Coston of Wilmington, indeed understood something of the mysteries of divine will: they lost six of their ten children in infancy. But a son, William J. Martin, Jr., and a daughter, Mary Turpin Martin Sloop, retained lifelong associa- �6 / Chapter One tions with Presbyterian mountain activity, continuing the Colonel's work in the next generation.9 According to property records at the Watauga County Court House, Col. Martin first purchased land in Blowing Rock, a half-acre lot on Main Street near the present Episcopal church, from William M. and Edith M. Morris on October 6, 1886, just seventeen days before the Morrises deeded the property across the street for the Presbyterian church. But he and his family had undoubtedly been spending summers in town long before that date. In any event, two years later he purchased property on Chestnut Hill, and began building the house he called Chestnut Knoll, which still stands. Martin's daughter remembered that the "family was one of the first of the outlanders to establish a summer home at Blowing Rock."10 Another of the early summer residents was the Rev. Dr. Jethro Rumple of Salisbury. When and why the preacher and his family first decided to summer in Blowing Rock is uncertain. In her fascinating memoirs written during the 1930's, Hope Summerell Chamberlain of Salisbury, a member of Rumple's church, recalled being taken to Blowing Rock as a child for the sake of her mother's health; this would have been in the early 1880's. Perhaps the Summerells or other Salisbury Presbyterians introduced Rumple to the mountains; or perhaps the preacher introduced his parishioners to the mountain region he already knew.11 In a newspaper interview given in the late 1930's, Etta Gregorie Norvell said she remembered staying at a Mrs. Brady's boarding house at the same time as Dr. Rumple, late in the season after the Blowing Rock Hotel had closed, during the summer of 1889. This seems a rather late date for Rumple to be in a boarding house, since by then he, like Martin, had purchased a lot from the Morrises, and probably had already built a house on Main Street.12 Toward the end of his long life, he lived in a small summer cottage built for him on the property of his son-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Charles G. Vardell, on Chestnut Hill, a short walk from the Martins. Jethro Rumple was one of the most remarkable Presbyterians and North Carolinians of his generation. "There is scarcely an area of the church's life and work in North Carolina to which at some time in his career Dr. Rumple did not make a significant contribution."13 A prolific writer and preacher, he also pioneered causes in religious education �The Founding and the Founders / 1 and social concern. His belief in the responsibility of the church for its young people was evident all his life. He served almost fifty years on the board of trustees of Davidson College, his alma mater, and was the guiding spirit behind the founding of the Barium Springs Orphanage in Iredell County at about the same time (1888) he was involved in establishing the church in Blowing Rock. Both these institutions later named buildings in his memory. In addition, he served on the board of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and is reported to have strongly favored the move of that institution from Hampden-Sydney to Richmond in 1895-98. In Salisbury, he was a member of the city public school board and secretary and treasurer of the board of directors of the "State Colored Normal School" which was established there in 1881. He held numerous posts at presbytery and synod level in the church, although he was never elected moderator of the General Assembly. The University of North Carolina honored him with the Doctor of Divinity degree in 1882. Many persons prepared posthumous sketches of Rumple's life, including his daughter, Linda Lee Rumple Vardell. Hers was included in the 1916 edition of Rumple's History of Rowan County.u She noted his birth on March 10, 1827, "in an unpretentious farm-house in Cabarrus County, N.C." and his early love of learning: "we can see the barefoot boy trudging the long way to the rough school house from which the first ambitions of his life must have come to him." He grew up in the Bethpage congregation, attended several "old field schools," and was educated for college by Moses Lingle at Flint Hill in Mecklenburg County. Graduated with distinction from Davidson College in 1850, he alternately taught school and studied at Columbia Theological Seminary, then located in Columbia, S.C., and was licensed to preach the gospel in 1856 by Concord Presbytery, "of which he was the remainder of his life a member." His premier pastorate was at the Providence and Sharon churches in Mecklenburg County; the first of these is one of the historic "seven churches of Mecklenburg," dating to 1764, while the second was an offshoot in 1851.15 Four years later, Rumple was called by the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church of Salisbury, where he was installed as pastor on November 24, 1860, and "continued to be their faithful and beloved pastor for the remaining years of his life on earth. . . ." Rumple's daughter did not mention, nor did other published contemporary accounts of his life, that the famous preacher was born of unmarried parents. The fact was no secret in the small community he grew up in, and was apparently widely known during his lifetime. "He was the natural son of David Thomas Houston and Mary Winecoff �8 / Chapter One Rumple, the widow of John Rumple, Jr. It is apparent that his parents were kept from marrying, because his maternal grandfather stated in his will that if his daughter Mary Rumple married again she would have no part of his inheritance." Houston's will provided for his "beloved son known by the name of Jetherow Rumple born of Mary Rumple." But Rumple himself seems to have been cared for as a child by his eldest half-brother and wife, Levi and Christine Rumple. It may be that the minister's lifelong regard for the care of unfortunate children stemmed from his awareness of his own background.16 In his prime the Reverend Doctor Rumple was a large and robust man of exceptionally good health, and a vigorous public speaker. His daughter called him "a preacher of the old school, not disdaining the elaborate introduction to his sermons; and his style was clear, his diction elegant, and his moral always helpful and practical." Another who grew up in his congregation remembered, "From three-quarters to a full hour was allowed for the sermon, old fashioned, with all the bones of its structure fully visible, its fourthlys and fifthlys in sequence.... When at last the sermon was over, and the last hymn sung, Dr. Rumple would end the final prayer with a warm (Aye-men) in a tone that sounded as if he were glad to have done; and I would be glad with him."17 His concern for children was noted by all who knew him: he "always kept up his interest in and attendance on the Sunday School[;] he knew all the children in the congregation personally and was loved by them." Rumple and his wife, Jennie E. Wharton of Greensboro, whom he married in 1857, had two sons, Watson Wharton and James Walker, and a daughter, Linda Lee. Both the boys died young: Watson at age eighteen while a student at Davidson, James, "a lawyer of some promise," by drowning at age twenty-nine. Two years before his death James married Jane Dickson Vardell and had a son, James Malcolmson. The young widow thereafter married William J. Martin, Jr., the Colonel's son, whose own first wife had also died. Rumple's daughter married Charles Graves Vardell, Jane Dickson's brother; and thus family connections, first established no doubt during summers at Blowing Rock during the children's youth, were formed between the Rumples, Martins, and Vardells.18 With the Civil War in 1861 came the split in the Presbyterian Church not healed until 1983. Rumple moderated the called meeting of Concord Presbytery, held at Davidson College in June 1861, which reflected locally the process that led to the formation of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. During the War he served as secretary of the presbytery's Board of Committee on �The Founding and the Founders / 9 Domestic Missions, which supplied chaplains to the Confederate Army. He took several tours of duty himself as chaplain, including one with Robert E. Lee's army in October 1862, and another, for ten weeks, with General Scales' Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia. He reported that during the latter "an army church was erected, Bible Classes organized in each Regiment, a Soldier's Christian Association was formed, 400 New Testaments distributed, together with several thousand pages of Tracts, nine members received into the Presbyterian, and several into other churches, about 40 professed conversions . . . and double that number led to ask, What must we do to be saved?" Rumple modestly noted that "other missionaries came and cooperated in this blessed work." Rumple also served on a Synod of North Carolina committee to raise funds for the education of children of deceased Confederate soldiers — a task presbytery, in the straitened circumstances which followed the defeat, declined to fund. In September 1864 he was elected Stated Clerk, a job he held for the next four years. Then during the last months of the conflict, war came home to Concord Presbytery: General George Stoneman's raid passed through much of Western North Carolina, including Watauga County, destroying much property and forcing postponement of presbytery's scheduled spring session.19 The war's end brought confusion to the whole South, and did not exclude organized Presbyterianism. Rumple seems to have been influential in retaining the structure which Southern Presbyterians had forged during the war and in rejecting overtures from the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., seeking their return — although a minority in Concord Presbytery opposed "hasty and premature" action which would commit the Southern Church to its independent stance.20 On the other hand, he favored continued Southern Presbyterian work among newlyfreed blacks, even if on an increasingly segregated basis. He was one of a two-man committee to sign a pastoral letter in the North Carolina Presbyterian in 1866 which observed that "our Pastors, churches, and people have always recognized [the blacks'] claim to Christian equality and brotherhood, and have rejoiced to have them associated in Christian union and communion in public services and precious sacraments of the Sanctuary." But the letter also encouraged establishment of Sabbath Schools and Day Schools "where the number of colored people is sufficient to require them" and wanted all schools "under the direction of suitable Southern teachers, if such can be obtained."21 Here was revealed the paternalism and fear of Northern influences which hampered much of the Southern church's effort among the freed population during the succeeding years. Already blacks were leaving Presbyterian �10 / Chapter One congregations; Rumple's Salisbury church, which had added "colored" members almost annually since the 1820's, dropped them from its rolls in 1868 after they had "voluntarily connected themselves with the Colored Presbyterian Church in union with the Northern General Assembly."22 When in 1868 Rumple resigned as Stated Clerk, he had already become chairman of presbytery's sustentation committee, which in that era of hard times had the important task of finding financial support for its pastoral responsibilities. From this point on in his long career, Rumple was an earnest and resourceful promoter of evangelism. Almost all the positions he was to hold in the denomination reflected this concern. In the fall of 1869, presbytery took up for the first time since the war consideration of mission work in areas "west of the Blue Ridge Mountains." On behalf of his committee Rumple recommended putting "at least one missionary in each of the missionary counties . . . as soon as practicable, & also that they be empowered, for the more speedy evangelization of that region, to establish one or more mission Schools, as soon as the way shall be open." The major obstacle seems to have been the dearth of trained pastors, because of the war's disruption of schools and seminaries.23 Rumple's committee by 1870 was promoting efforts to "cultivate extensive missionary fields in Yadkin, Burke, McDowell, Yancy [sic], Mitchell, Watauga & Ashe Counties, & hope ere many years to organize a circle of churches in regions where Presbyterianism has never been planted." His report that year identified one of the "charges" in the presbytery as "Jefferson, Boone (Ashe & Watauga Cos)," but no pastor or missionary was specifically named to hold the charge. In 1871, the Rev. B. L. Beall was recommended for a $500 salary for missionary work in presbytery; perhaps he was the unnamed pastor who in the previous year had been instructed to spend two weeks laboring in Ashe and Watauga counties-in January and February! Rumple himself went to work for a spell in the mountains in 1872. Presbytery arranged that "Rev. J. Rumple will spend six weeks in Watauga County, and two weeks at discretion during the summer." At its fall meeting, presumably as a result of interest created by Rumple and his predecessors, presbytery voted to support "the erection of a building for religious and Educational purposes in Watauga Co.," but there was no later record that such a building was ever put up, nor was a location mentioned. Raising funds to support such missionary work seems to have been extraordinarily difficult. Rumple's committee attempted in 1876 to extract the sum of $4.70 from each church in presbytery to pay the regular evangelist's salary— he had preached 166 �The Founding and the Founders 711 times that year—but got no response except from one congregation which "complains of the injustice of the basis of distribution, but does not promise to pay the average."24 Always creative and determined, Rumple in 1876 had his committee recommend the reorganization of the churches in Concord Presbytery into "Clusters for convenience of meeting and cooperation in church work.... At these meetings it shall be in order . . . especially to devise ways and means to search out and supply with the means of grace, the destitute portions of their territory." One such "cluster" formed then brought Lenoir, Watauga, and Jefferson into the relationship which within a few years would bear fruit in Blowing Rock.25 During the decade from 1878 to 1887, the energetic Salisbury pastor took on another project: publishing a series of articles in the North Carolina Presbyterian on the history of the denomination in the state. These articles provide not only an insight into the thinking of Rumple himself, but a good contemporary overview of religious conditions at about the time the Blowing Rock church was founded. What kicked off the project was a discussion at a meeting of synod in 1875 on "Presbyterian Aggressiveness": was the religious body holding its own, or losing ground, when compared to other Protestant groups in North Carolina? Rumple was made a member of the inevitable committee formed to consider the subject and by 1877 was not only chairing the project, but "the labor of preparing the report all fell upon his hands."26 The completed articles ranged far beyond the original topic and are mostly historical, having interest in their own right; only three of more than thirty touched on "aggressiveness." But on this topic, Rumple concluded that the distinctive features of Presbyterianism —its insistence on a methodically trained clergy, "the deliberation with which most of our members connect themselves with the Church," the greater than average amount of its members' contributions — all made for a "more permanent body" than was true of other denominations. Presbyterians had played a role in the state out of proportion to their numbers, it was true. But the answer to "the question whether we have been doing and are now doing our whole duty in the field" required knowing "what the obstacles are that have impeded our progress, what have been the causes of past and present failure, and what are the Scriptural remedies." He thought the Book of Church Order was too brief and general on the "means of extending our church into destitute regions, or heathen lands," tempting "our ministers and Presbyteries ... to regard the preaching of the Gospel to established churches as the great, all-absorbing design of our church organization."27 To remedy the situation Rumple invoked the language of battle: �12 / Chapter One Now if it is right to receive instruction from an enemy, it is surely much more allowed to learn wisdom from the experience of our brethren of other religious denominations. While we would not abandon our habit of entrenching, and fortifying the ground already occupied, for any system of advancement however plausible, or successful, we could and should superadd to the pastoral system a more faithful and diligent developement [sic] of the Evangelistic arm of our church. . . . [O]ur five Presbyteries [in North Carolina] have scarcely five evangelists, all told. Not onetwentieth part of our ministers are evangelists. . . . We urgently need a reformation of popular sentiment upon this matter.25 While Rumple rejected the Methodist system of bishops to supervise and appoint missionaries, he proposed to learn from their practice of training laypeople to take more active part "without remuneration" in local church work. He also believed the denomination might need to "pray for a peculiar set of laborers who like Paul... and others would consent to waive their right of leading about a wife, in order that they might devote themselves more fully to evangelistic work, men who would face poverty in order to plant the Gospel in destitute regions and build up churches on no other man's foundation. It is scriptural to be willing to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ/'29 In concluding his articles on "Aggressiveness," Rumple changed his figure of speech to reflect the times: In the loose agricultural and commercial systems of other days, when railroads and telegraphs were not yet dreamed of[,] when markets were distant, competition limited, and long credits the rule on all sides, men could afford to do business in a careless way. ... But in the more rapid transactions of modern days, when small profits, cash payments, quick returns, and urgent competition are in vogue, the old course of business would be simply ruinous. And so in these modern times, when great activity and energy characterize many of the churches . . . the fruits of a large part of our missionary and evangelistic work have been gathered by other denominations because we are slow in planting churches and in gathering in members. It is our duty to practice the wisdom of the serpent as well as the harmlessness of the dove.30 By 1879, the synod was discussing the appointment of a synodical evangelist to promote the cause of "aggressiveness." Frustrated perhaps by division over the issue at the presbytery level, synod in October 1879 elected the Rev. Charles Montgomery Payne "the first agent of Evangelistic Labor" and held the first synodical home missionary meeting in North Carolina.31 The next decade was to see a substantial �The Founding and the Founders / 13 expansion of church planting, with redoubled efforts by both presbytery and synodical evangelists. The Blowing Rock church was to be one result. ***** The still-unincorporated village of Blowing Rock which Rumple and his friends knew in 1880 had a population of 339, living in 56 "families" (a census term, later changed to "households"). Almost all were farmers. Only two "merchant farmers," a schoolteacher, a nurse, and a music teacher (male) stood apart from the norm. Many of the families whose descendants later associated with the Presbyterian Church— Pitts, Sudderth, Greene, Coffey, Hartley, Oxendine-were already living in the township, but not one of them was among the eight charter members of 1887, whose names do not appear on the census rolls for 1880. One of the "merchant farmers" listed was William M. Morris, who with his wife Edith Matilda Morris had moved to Blowing Rock within the previous decade. They had bought "the old Amos Greene place about 1874 and opened a house for summer boarders."32 The property they owned on Main Street was extensive. Four children, a son and three daughters, were listed in the family as of 1880, the two eldest "at school." Morris's store became the legal center of the town when it was incorporated and its limits defined by act of the North Carolina General Assembly on March 11, 1889: Blowing Rock extended threefourths of a mile in every direction from his "store-house." Morris's boarding house operation had become increasingly typical for the town by that time. Even before the Civil War, a few families seem to have visited the mountains, but the number of summer people grew only after the War and its aftermath.33 Arthur singled out Morris for special praise in his reminiscences: He was most successful, and the good things he furnished for his boarders to eat will forever be remembered by all who had the good fortune to sit at his table. He had a most remarkable little benchlegged cow, which gave oceans of the richest milk imaginable. His deep featherbeds were good for tired legs after a day's wading in the creeks fishing for speckled trout. One presumes Edith Matilda Morris, and probably her daughters, also had something to do with the food served and hospitality shown the guests! Arthur mentions a couple of other early boarding house �14 / Chapter One keepers: Len Estes, who "looked like General Grant," built a house, a sawmill, and the dam on what would later be the Chetola estate, and later "moved West"; and W. W. Sherrell, who "bought the Harper property and opened two or three small houses for summer boarders about 1877 or 1878 at Fairview." Sherrell (Sherrill) would later join Rumple Church.34 By the later 1880's, hotels were springing up to meet the growing demand for summer residences. The Green Park Inn, then in the separate Caldwell County town of Green Park, claims local precedence: it was built in 1883. No detailed census records exist for 1890, but in 1900 enumerators counted 805 people in 166 "families" in Blowing Rock; perhaps most notably for the shape the town was taking in its first full year of incorporation, five residents were listed as hotel proprietors or hotel keepers, while several new names were shown taking in boarders. Blowing Rock now also boasted two physicians (George W. Roby and Calvin J. Parlier), a postmaster (William Edmisten), a dentist (Andrew J. Toppings), several craftsmen of varying trades, a butcher, and, among the servants, an eleven year-old boy "wood chopper" for two school teacher sisters, Mollie M. and Gabria (Gabrielle) E. Blair, the latter a recent valedictorian graduate of the Skyland Institute, which, like the Presbyterian church, had been established in 1887. The only "preacher" listed in 1900 was a black man, 45 year-old George W. James, boarding with a black school teacher named Long. Most of the town's residents were still farmers, but already had come a New York-born "retired merchant" and his wife, Ogdon (Ogden) E. and Mary C. Edwards, the first of a much later trend. Summer resident Gaston Gage remembered "Colonel" Edwards from his childhood: he was tall, thin, always wore a skull cap, and repeated for the children lore and sayings he had picked up on his world travels. "Apparently he had made and lost a number of fortunes," Gage recalled. Mary Edwards founded the "Community Service Fund," a predecessor organization to the Blowing Rock Community Club, which still functions. By that time, too, Moses Cone, textile magnate of Greensboro, had begun to develop his estate out from the center of town. Many local residents were earning cash money working among his crops, orchards, and livestock. So "outlanders" were already beginning to make their mark in the growing community.35 In her 1882 letter, Emma Stewart called attention to the "religious destitution" of the town. How accurate was this estimation? It is true that no permanent place of worship seems to have been established before the Presbyterians erected their structure in 1886; but the public morals of the community during the 1880's appear to have been, by the �The Founding and the Founders / 15 standards of the times, restrained and decorous. Not that there was much real trouble to get into. In a day when waiting for the mail could occupy one for hours, the few public amusements were tame: gathering wildflowers, going on a picnic, taking a walk, fishing in one of the various forks. Nostalgia may have colored the reminiscences preserved of those early days in the community, but when in the next generation Blowing Rock was favored by a smarter set, oldtimers decried seeing grown women "riding astride," not observing the Sabbath, chewing gum "as a goat would a towel he had pulled from the clothes line," and drinking soft drinks with their beaux in public.36 Perhaps it was the Presbyterians which gave the decorous tone to the early summer colony; or perhaps the wave of new arrivals of German-American extraction, who began moving into the town during the same era, brought a class of solid-citizen types to town; for whatever reason, the recorded memories of early Blowing Rock seem pale beside those left from the more boisterous past of Boone, the county's largest town and seat of government.37 ***** At the same time the Presbyterians were making their bid to form a church in Blowing Rock, a similar effort was underway by the German Reformed Church. In 1882, the same year Mrs. Stewart's letter was published, the Reverend John Ingle, of that denomination, preached a sermon at the Blowing Rock home of Jacob Kluttz, a recent arrival from the German settled area of Rowan or Caldwell counties. Seeing the need for a minister's services, Ingle moved his family up the mountain the following April and "at once began to hold services in a school house at the location of the present village and organized a Sunday School." By 1884, Ingle had convinced the North Carolina Classis (the Reformed equivalent of the Presbyterian Synod, a statewide organization or "court" of clergy and lay elders) to support a "Watauga Mission." Thus a congregation "Calvinistic in faith and Presbyterian in church government," as Dr. Rumple said of this denomination, was already being formed in the mid-1880's.38 Perhaps these concurrent efforts spurred Rumple on; in any event, at the fall 1885 meeting of presbytery, things began moving more rapidly. On October 15, the Committee on Home Missions "was directed to consider the propriety and means of erecting a Presbyterian chapel at Blowing Rock in Watauga Co." The next day, pre- �16 / Chapter One sumably after much prayer and deliberation by the committee, the full court agreed to "look with favor upon the scheme" and to provide $150 toward the project when the remainder of the funds had been raised by other contributors. The following March the committee met to appoint the Rev. C. A. Munroe and Captain E. W. Fawcette of Lenoir to "undertake at once the erection of a church building at Blowing Rock" and requested presbytery to apply the $50 already raised for a church at Jefferson (which had folded five years earlier) to the Blowing Rock cause. Supply ministers, including Rumple, were appointed for the summer of 1886, who were to be entertained "as far as practicable" by the Lenoir men and their travel expenses defrayed by whatever collections were obtained at the services.39 At its April 1886 meeting, presbytery approved the committee's report. Work on the building probably began that spring. It must have proceeded rapidly. The chapel was small, of simple frame construction, with a tower whose bell reportedly could be heard for two miles in every direction. Its total cost was $677.93. According to the 1936 history, "the whole community united in the erection of the church, but the local contributions, material, etc., were not at the time noted." Munroe's account to presbytery in April 1887 did note that "proprietors of B. R. Hotel and others did gratuitous hauling," indicating that the Blowing Rock hotel, which opened in 1888 and stood at the south end of Main Street for many years, must also have been under construction that summer. Other gifts to furnish the building were recorded: a Bible from Miss Lizzie Kerr, a hymn book by ladies of the Salisbury church, organ by Mrs. Rumple, pulpit lamps by a Mrs. and Miss Pegram, communion service by the Rev. B. L. Beall, two pulpit chairs by Mrs. Stewart, lumber for the pulpit by Capt. W. W. Lenoir, and hymnbooks by the publication committee of the denomination. Except for Mrs. Stewart, all these people seem to have been affiliated with either the Salisbury or the Lenoir churches, an important indication of the network of support which helped sustain the fledgling mountain mission during its early years. Some of these items remain at the church to this day: the large pulpit Bible, the pulpit, possibly the chairs, and perhaps the organ. It is unlikely that the original bell was moved to the present structure, but its ringing of the eleven o'clock hour every Sunday morning carries on a one hundred year-old custom.40 The fourth Sunday in July, 1886, was a great day for organized religion in Blowing Rock. On the very same day Rumple and others dedicated the new Presbyterian chapel, the Reformed congregation was organizing, in a building called the "Estes Schoolhouse." The �The Founding and the Founders I 17 Mount Bethel house of worship was probably not built until 1894;41 but when it was organized in 1886 the Reformed congregation was twice the size (sixteen) of the Presbyterian flock of a year later. Were the two denominations competing for members? Probably not. A list of the first Reformed communicants shows a preponderance of names of German origin: Holshousers, Kluttzes, Lentzes, Trexlers, Bollingers. Descendants of most of these families would later join Rumple Church, but at first the new arrivals seem to have been loyal to denominational ties, and perhaps patterns of organized worship, inherited from earlier generations at places in the western Piedmont, especially Rowan County. And while the first regular Presbyterian membership also seems to have been recruited largely among newcomers to the county, several factors probably accounted for the success of the Presbyterians: first, there was the support from the Lenoir Church, which, although sporadic to begin with, at least gave the little flock a connection to a larger statewide and regional structure of organization than was available to the Reformed membership. Then there was the summer resident support: the increasingly numerous, and more affluent, seasonal visitors swelled the ranks of worshippers and allowed a larger base of financial undergirding. The more central location of the Presbyterian chapel also likely favored its more rapid growth. A final factor was undoubtedly the arrival in 1897 of the young Edgar Tufts, whose energy and devotion to his work spilled over the Grandfather and touched Blowing Rock. In the end, these advantages outweighed the early and earnest effort at the Reformed Church. In 1900 Ingle gave his occupation to census takers as "farmer": he probably preached only part-time and received little income from his churchly duties. The congregation was "irregularly supplied" from year to year through the next two decades by at least six other ministers. Its only regular pastoral care after the fall of 1903 came from a missionary from Lenoir. Membership in 1911 was listed as thirteen. In 1912, the Rev. and Mrs. Ingle joined the Rumple congregation, although he still was listed as of 1917 in the Reformed Church's statistical reports as "without charge" and living in Green Park. In 1919, at the age of eighty-four, he reportedly preached for a year at the Blowing Rock Baptist Church until a new minister could be found. The Reformed congregation itself "was unfortunately lost to the denomination in 1921 when only four members were reported."42 By the time of the July 1886 dedication service the little Presbyterian chapel still lacked "brick pillars and an enclosure to make the job complete."43 No matter the state of the structure, it must have resounded that Sunday with the full force of Rumple's formidable ora- �18 / Chapter One torical skills, and Mrs. Rumple's applying of her musical talents to the little pump organ. The sermon would later be remembered as a prophecy of the church's success. Rumple took his text from Psalm 72:16 — "There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains. The fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon and they of the city shall flourish." Rumple could not have anticipated how Lebanon itself would shake quite literally by the 1980's. But he demonstrated his faith in the "handful of corn" being sowed in his beloved mountains. Later that summer, supplies appointed by presbytery took their turns filling the new pulpit: the Rev. J. M. Wharey on the first and second Sundays in August, and Munroe on the fifth Sunday. It is not clear if the Rev. Beall preached as he was appointed to, on the third and fourth Sundays.44 To further insure the harvest, Rumple and Munroe arranged to conduct "a protracted meeting at Blowing Rock, including the 5th Sabbath of October." No doubt it was hoped that all these efforts would bring in enough new members to keep the new work going. Formal organization would await the results of these labors in the following year. ***** The Presbyterians' chapel was almost finished—indeed, it had already been dedicated-before the land on which it stood was officially signed over to them. The deed to the property was dated October 23, 1886. Witnessed by Joe B. Clark(e), justice of the peace and later the town's first mayor, it conveyed to the new church's trustees the land "Beginning at a sugar maple on the West side of the Caldwell and Watauga Turnpike Road" and bordered by property of the Morrises on one side and H. F. Schenck on the other. The lot contained "seven tenths of an acre, more or less" and was to be "for the only use and behoof of said church forever." An interesting confirmation of the legal status of women in that era was that Clark was required to examine Mrs. Morris separately from her husband "tending to her voluntary execution" of the property deed and to certify that she "signed freely and voluntarily without fear or compulsion of her said husband or any other person and that she doth voluntarily assent thereto."45 It would be helpful to know just how and when the Morrises were persuaded to donate the lot. One clue might be found in the fact that during the same month in which the Presbyterians got their lot for free, the Morrises were selling lots to several private buyers, among �The Founding and the Founders / 19 whom were Martin and Rumple. On October 6, the Colonel bought a half-acre from them, for $100, on the east side of the "Turnpike Road." Then on October 23, the preacher secured a lot of similar size across the street, close to the church property, for $50. Also that day David A. Atwell of Rowan County, and Dr. Frank A. Shaffner of Forsyth County, bought tracts of about the same size, for $100 and $50 respectively. Perhaps these land sales sweetened the pot, or satisfied the Morrises' need for some immediate cash. Two years later, the couple also sold "for $1" a one-fourth acre tract to trustees for the Protestant Episcopal Church, diocese of North Carolina, who also got another onefourth acre from S. M. and Emma S. Clarke, for the erection of an Episcopal house of worship. The Morrises thus were benefactors of two churches, but the Presbyterians ultimately obtained their membership; they joined in 1891. Later they left the county and moved "east of the Blue Ridge."46 The first trustees of the church property were all prominent Presbyterians from Lenoir: the Rev. Benjamin Leander Beall, his brother Dr. Robert Lamar Beall, and Capt. E. W. Fawcette. Beall had helped organize the Lenoir church in 1852, and had served that congregation as stated supply from 1879 to 1882. He was twice evangelist for Concord Presbytery, 1868-1872 and 1883-1888. Nearly sixty years old in 1886, he was injured two years later in a railroad accident while returning from a preaching appointment in Burke County and had to give up his post. He "had the unique privilege of reading his own obituary" when his death was at first reported after the wreck. He lived on until his eighty-sixth year, but "never ceased to suffer bodily pain." It was said of him when he died in 1913 that he and the Rev. Jesse Rankin of Lenoir (one of Rankin's daughters was BealFs first wife, and a niece was married to Rumple) were "the pioneers of Presbyterian Evangelism in Western North Carolina." Laboring mainly in the mountains, he preached "in season and out of season, in log school houses, in store buildings and in private homes from house to house" over territory from Ashe to Macon counties. "Eternity alone will reveal the full fruitage of the good seed he scattered in that large territory of Gospel destitution," C. A. Munroe recalled. He also thought Beall to be "thoroughly orthodox, . . . perhaps the most conservative preacher on all points of Christian doctrine and church polity in Concord Presbytery."47 The other Lenoir trustees, both laymen, were long active in the life of the church there as members of the session, the Sunday school, and various other boards and committees. Robert Lamar Beall was a physician, Edward William Fawcette an educator. The latter was in turn a �20 / Chapter One founder of the Patterson School, president of Concord Female College and Statesville Female College, and a school in Johnson City, Tennessee. He ended his career as head of Finley High School in Lenoir.48 The names of these three men were listed as the trustees of the Blowing Rock church property until 1954. By the end of summer, 1886, the new church was clearly functioning. To insure its continued operation, presbytery arranged that over the winter of 1886-1887 Munroe "be appointed to preach one Sabbath each month at the Blowing Rock Chapel,... his churches agreeing thereto, and that the Home Mission Committee supply Mr. Munroe's pulpit during his absence at Blowing Rock. . . ." Further, it placed the "the Blowing Rock Chapel and Sabbath School . . . under the care of the Lenoir Session until a minister is appointed to that field." Munroe was also given "commission to receive members and organize a church, if the way be clear." This arrangement was renewed the following spring for the months of April, May, and June 1887.49 Rumple, too, probably returned to preach in the summer of 1887. The mountains were certainly on his mind that year. It was the semicentennial of Davidson's founding, and Rumple was on the campus to give the historical address. In flowery rhetoric he compared the college, as a "fountain of pure learning," to the "head-springs of the four noble rivers, the Yadkin, the Catawba, the Watauga, and the Great Kanawha, streams that diverge to the four quarters of the earth" from their origins at Blowing Rock, "the towering apex of eastern America."50 Colin Alexander Munroe had a long and honorable career in the Presbyterian Church, U.S. Born at Troy, N.C., in 1844, he was the eldest of three preacher brothers, all of whom attended Davidson College and Union Seminary. C. A. graduated in 1872 at Davidson and in 1876 at Union. Munroe was already a veteran of the Confederate Army before he started college; he must have taken classes there under that other old soldier, Col. Martin. He later was a member of the college's board of trustees. His alma mater awarded him the D.D. degree in 1915, and he died at Davidson four years later. Licensed in Fayetteville Presbytery upon completing his seminary studies, Munroe briefly supplied two churches there, then was called to Mississippi, where he was ordained in 1877. In 1883, he returned to Concord Presbytery as evangelist for its "Western Field." Working out of the newly-organized church at Old Fort, he fulfilled these duties for at least one year. Then in 1884 he moved to Huntington, West Virginia, for reasons unknown, and was called by the church there in 1885. At the same time, he held a call to the Lenoir and Hickory churches. "It �The Founding and the Founders 7 2 1 was the call of these two churches [that] he accepted, and he was received back into Concord Presbytery on June 19, 1885." From then until 1903, he served the Lenoir charge (the Hickory church received its own full-time pastor in 1891). In that year Concord Presbytery again named him evangelist. He took up residence in Hickory and resumed his travels, resigning in 1917 due to ill health. Munroe held the second-longest pastorate in the history of the Lenoir church. His recollections of activities there, some of which were published in that church's history, gave insight into what worship was like in that era, and as the church was so close geographically and organizationally to the fledgling congregation in Blowing Rock, they described what must have been similar practices at both churches. Because some of the Lenoir members also made a habit of spending summers in the mountains (one thinks of the Harpers, probably also the S. M. Clarkes, and somewhat later the Bernhardts), they would themselves have shared in them.51 "Communion Days" were impressive, awe-inspiring occasions and usually lasted for a weekend. Wine was served to all in one special chalice reserved for the occasions.... We see the gatherings of the little group-friends coming in from the country and staying at least through the weekend-the McGalliards, the Corpenings, Greys, Abernathys, Dicksons, Glasses and others. . . . There was heart-searching preaching, usually by a visiting minister. There was the opening of the doors of the church and always a pointed and evangelistic appeal. And then when Sunday came, there was the white table spread in the early morning hours, which on other Sabbaths was taken by Sunday School. Students . . . had given up their usual Friday evening social and as the hour for the observance of the Sacrament drew nigh, it was as though a spirit of reverence and of loving awe walled the quiet streets and country roads. The sermon and then the call separated the communicants from the non-professing Christians. The little organ was silenced and Captain Faucette [sic] 'raised the tune[.]' Always it was 'T'was on That Dark and Doleful Night,' sung to the minor strains of Windham.'... The service closed with the singing of 'Home Sweet Home . . . Prepare me, dear Saviour, for Heaven, my home.' It was Munroe who, in the summer of 1887, returned up the mountain to organize the church at Blowing Rock. At the fall meeting of presbytery, in Newton, he reported he had completed his appointed task on July 17. He had enrolled eight charter members: Mrs. Rosa Watkins, by letter Miss Sarah Walser, by examination �22 / Chapter One Mrs. Mary Ann Patterson, by examination Mr. Spurgeon Walser, by examination Mrs. Martha Walser, by letter Samuel J. Walser, by examination Miss Mary Walser, by letter, Baptist Mr. Arthur Parks, by letter. Nothing is known of Watkins, Patterson, or Parks. They must not have lived long in the community, as they were not there in 1880 and were gone by 1900. But the Walsers do appear on the 1900 census for the town; many of their descendants lived in Blowing Rock in later generations, and were active at Rumple Church; at least one of their descendants, Paul Walser, attends currently. Spurgeon Walser and his wife, Martha, both fifty years old, had been married twenty-three years as of 1887. Two of their children, still living at home as of 1900, joined the church with them: Mary was eighteen, Samuel was ten. Sarah may have been another daughter, or, if she was incorrectly recorded as "Miss," their daughter-in-law, the twenty year-old wife of William Walser, head of one of two other Walser families in town; these men, William and David, were probably also Spurgeon and Martha's children. Martha gave birth to her last child, Robert, in April of 1888. As of 1887 there would have been another little girl, Annie, age three, as yet too young to join the church. Both these would join Rumple in 1899; "Rob" Walser would spend many of his adult years as Sunday school superintendent during the 1940's.52 Other additions to the membership came in the next two years; perhaps Rumple or Munroe held more "protracted meetings." Mrs. Willie Clark, Rufus Brady, and Mrs. M. J. Brady joined by letter from other Presbyterian churches (place or places unknown). Mrs. Brady was likely the boarding house keeper with whom Rumple is reported to have stayed in the summer of 1889; neither the Bradys nor Mrs. Clark appear on the 1900 census. Not until 1891 were more names put on the rolls. The Rev. R. P. Pell, synodical evangelist, and Munroe at that time added the previously-mentioned Morrises, their daughter, Bessie, who would have been fourteen, and E. (Edward?) G. Morris, listed on the 1900 census as a carpenter with six children. E. G. Morris's wife, Doxy, joined the church the next month. Perhaps he was a grown son of William and Edith. Also joining the fold were E. (Elcana) G. Clure (Clewer, on the census returns), age 61, a farm laborer, and his wife, Martha, age 47; Mrs. Martha Kershea; Mrs. Martha Kirby (not found on the 1900 census); and H. W. Weedon (Weeden). Mrs. Mary W. Weedon also joined, "by letter from the Methodist church."53 �The Founding and the Founders / 23 ***** And so the efforts of Emma Stewart and her friends had borne fruit. A church had been planted in a "destitute region." It was the only church Concord Presbytery organized that year, though more were to follow. Like many country churches, it had no regular pastor. Services were held rarely, if at all, through the winter, perhaps almost weekly during the summer if Rumple or other ministers were in town. There is no way to know how often Munroe rode up the mountain from Lenoir, or how scrupulously the Lenoir session cared for the little flock's needs. Session minutes of the Lenoir church never mention Blowing Rock through this period. No local session (that is, lay elders) to conduct church business was at this time provided: the few original members could hardly have made one up, especially since women, six of the eight, were not then permitted to hold church office. The records hint at a Sunday school, but give no indication of attendance, names of teachers, or any other such data for the period. All the evidence points to the fact that Blowing Rock was a transitional type of church, more a convenience for the summer people who had church homes elsewhere than a truly local one. For a decade the church would struggle along, adding a few members when a visiting preacher would enroll them. Munroe seems to have severed his relationship with Blowing Rock in 1891 when he took full-time charge of the Lenoir congregation; in 1892 a presbytery report indicated the Blowing Rock pulpit was vacant. Perhaps it was served thereafter only in the summertime, by Rumple or other vacationing preachers, or by an occasional evangelist.54 Its success would not be assured until a man arrived, at the start of its second decade, who epitomized a new spirit abroad in mountain missions: Edgar Tufts. �24 / Chapter One Notes for Chapter One 1. Minutes of Concord Presbytery, Vol. 9, pp. 94-95. Printed copy at The Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches, Inc., Montreat, NC. Xeroxed copies of the printed and the original handwritten minutes are in the RMPC records. 2. Watauga County Court House, Register of Deeds Office. On the Stewarts: oral interviews with Helen Hartley, April 1987; Julia Keys Williams, April 1987; Jo Greene, July 1987. See also "Music Made Farm House Popular Attraction Here," and "Around Town," The Blowing Rocket, The Blowing Rock Story, special Bicentennial issue (first published July 1976, reissued 1983), pp. 55, 8. Hereinafter cited as The Blowing Rocket, special edition. Dr. Chalmers G. Davidson kindly supplied the information concerning "Stuarts Inn"; in 1896-97 students paid $10 a month to board there. 3. North Carolina Presbyterian, October 18, 1882 (New Series, Vol. XV, No. 771), p. 2. Microfilm copy at The Historical Foundation, Montreat. 4. E. C. Clark, comp., Ministerial Directory of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., 1861-1941 (Austin, TX: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1942). Later editions by various editors and with different dates of publication. Hereinafter cited as Ministerial Directory, and year of edition. Dr. Davidson kindly supplied the dates of Johnston's service on Davidson College's board of trustees. 5. I have been unable to locate a settlement or post office in the county named Morris. By the 1880's there was one called N orris, and another at Moretz's Mill, both on Meat Camp Creek. But since W. M. Morris took summer boarders, it is possible that the Penicks actually were staying in Blowing Rock. I am grateful to Mrs. Evelyn Shepherd and Mr. Eric Olson for helping my search. The letters cited in these paragraphs have been preserved at the church; they must have come down from the Martin or the Vardell families. Both the Colonel's son and Rumple's son-in-law prepared the semicentennial sketch of the church's history, which referred to the existence of the letters. 6. Mary T. Martin Sloop with Legette Blythe, Miracle in the Hills (New York: McGraw Hill, 1953), pp. 11-12. See also Benjamin F. Garrett, "The First Fifty Years of Chemistry at Davidson," Briarpatch, March 1980. The article was researched and written by a chemistry professor at the college. 7. John Preston Arthur, A History of Watauga County, North Carolina. With Sketches of Prominent Families (Richmond: Everett Waddey Co., 1915; repr. 1976), p. 251. If Arthur was correct, the Arrowood brothers would have been very young-or the school was being conducted later than he recalled. William Butler and Robert Silvanus Arrowood were born in 1850 and 1854, respectively; both graduated from Davidson College (in 1876 and 1877) and William from Union Theological Seminary in 1879; there is no record that Robert ever attended seminary, although he was licensed and ordained in Concord Presbytery in 1886. E. C. Clark, comp., Ministerial Directory, p. 21. See also Neill Roderick McGeachy, Confronted By Challenge: A History of the Presbytery of Concord 1795-1973 (n.p.: The Delmar Co., 1985) (hereinafter cited as �The Founding and the Founders / 25 McGeachy, Confronted], p. 389, where he notes that R. S. Arrowood's ordination must have come "under what, today, is called 'extraordinary clause.'" 8. Tribute from the Rev. J. Rumple, D.D., in The Davidson Monthly (April 1896), Memorial number to Col. William J. Martin, p. 264. 9. Chalmers G. Davidson, Davidson College press release, "A collection of letters and papers of the William Joseph Martin family . . ." n.d., p. 1. 10. Sloop, Miracle in the Hills, p. 20. 11. Hope Summerell Chamberlain, This Was Home (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), pp. 212-220. This section of her book gives an evocative account of what the tiny summer community of Blowing Rock was like, in a child's eyes, at this early date. 12. "Norvell Visit in 1889," The Blowing Rocket, special Bicentennial issue (1983 reissue), p. 3. The house Rumple built on Main Street still stands, much remodeled, just north of the Methodist Church, and set well back from the road. The rear of the property must have had a commanding view of the John's River gorge in the early days, since so much of the area had at that time been recently timbered. 13. Jethro Rumple, The History of Presbyterianism in North Carolina (Richmond: The Library of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, 1966); reprinted from the North Carolina Presbyterian 1878-1887; foreword by H. M. Brimm, i. Hereinafter cited as Rumple, Presbyterianism. Several short sketches of Rumple's life and career are collected in this volume, pp. iii-xii, 299-302, and have been sources for these paragraphs. I am also grateful to First Presbyterian Church, Salisbury, for allowing me to copy local press clippings describing his death, funeral, and career, which are among the church's historical memorabilia. 14. "Sketch of Author" by Mrs. Linda Rumple Vardell, pp. 13-18, in Jethro Rumple, A History of Rowan County North Carolina, Containing Sketches of Prominent Families and Distinguished Men (Salisbury, NC: J. J. Bruner, 1881). Republished by the Elizabeth Maxwell Steele Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1916, 1929. Hereinafter cited as Rumple, A History. Rumple wrote this work as a series of serial articles for the Carolina Watchman, a Salisbury newspaper with statewide circulation. Another biographical sketch was written about the time of Rumple's death by the Rev. Dr. John B. Shearer of Davidson in Samuel A. Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present (Greensboro, NC: Charles L. Van Noppen, 1905), III, 375-385. Hereinafter cited as Shearer, "Jethro Rumple." 15. After 1869 both these congregations belonged to Mecklenburg Presbytery. See Rumple's own sketches of these churches' histories in Presbyterianism, pp. 50-51 and passim. 16. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 416, citing a member of the Rumple family. 17. Ibid, p. 417. Shearer said it was Rumple's "custom to examine his texts in the original Hebrew and Greek languages" and that he was never satisfied �26 / Chapter One "until he thought he was teaching the people something" from the pulpit: Shearer, "Jethro Rumple," p. 382. Reference furnished by Mrs. Linda Yarnell. 18. The Vardell family has kept an extensive family history and genealogy up to date, most of it the work of Jean Vardell Martin Foil. A copy lent to the author by Linda Yarnell has been helpful for establishing these various family relationships. 19. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 230-263, 296. 20. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 264-292, has interesting documentation of the effects of the defeat upon Concord Presbytery. As an indicator of Rumpie's sympathies, it may be noted that when it became necessary to choose a new president of Davidson College in 1866, the Rev. George Wilson McPhail of Norfolk, Va., who had spent the War years in Philadelphia but who was "a Southern man of Southern sympathies," was elected. Rumple, a member of the Davidson Board of Trustees from 1859 until his death in 1906, no doubt had concurred in MePhaiFs election; ibid., pp. 293-294. At a called General Assembly in Macon, Ga., in December, 1865, Southern Presbyterians renamed their body "The Presbyterian Church in the United States," usually abbreviated PCUS. 21. Ibid., pp. 274-276. 22. Josephine Kluttz Krider, History of the First Presbyterian Church, Salisbury, North Carolina (hereinafter cited as Krider, First Church], p. 55. For evidence of the loss of black membership throughout the denomination, see McGeachy, Confronted, p. 311. Concord Presbytery's reaction in 1868: "all we can do is wait, until, in the Providence of God, they shall return to the fold from which they have strayed." See also Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in The South, 3 vols. (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963-1973) (hereinafter cited as Thompson, Presbyterians), II, 99; he notes that although at the 1866 General Assembly the denomination "recognized that the old relation between master and slave had been overthrown" by the War, the "dogma which asserted the inherent sinfulness of slavery . . . was solemnly declared to be unscriptural and fanatical. . . ." 23. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 325. For Rumple's activities in this period, see chapters 12 and 13. McGeachy notes however, pp. 319-320, that the miscellaneous records of presbytery are fragmented and mostly lost for the years 1870 to 1937. 24. Ibid., pp. 328, 336, 342, 351. 25. Ibid., pp. 354-355. Presbytery records show the Jefferson church, founded in 1863, was dissolved in 1880, and its membership transferred to Wilkesboro; ibid., p. 370. 26. J. Rumple, "Presbyterianism in North Carolina, Introductory," January 30, 1878, in Rumple, Presbyterianism, p. 1. All citations are to page numbers in the reprint edition; dates are those of original publication. 27. "Aggressiveness," November 6, 1878; Rumple, History, pp. 105-107. �The Founding and the Founders / 27 28. "Obstacles in the Way of Progress," November 13, 1878; Ibid., pp. 108-111. 29. Rumple also doubted whether the average Presbyterian preacher "as a rule, preaches often enough. The demand of a country church is two sermons a week during summer and once a week in the winter. The town or city preacher is expected to preach twice a week the year round, and to lecture once a week." Preachers, he thought, could re-use their sermons to different audiences, thus "colonizing" for the faith "in destitute neighborhoods, in school houses, and in private dwellings." Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 370. Thompson's otherwise authoritative Presbyterians, II, 31, says the North Carolina plan of synodical evangelization was the second in the PCUS, and not adopted until 1889, after the model had been pioneered in Kentucky in 1881. Perhaps it was the absence of the title "synodical evangelist" which led Thompson to overlook the North Carolina effort. His source, David I. Craig, A History of the Development of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, and of Synodical Home Missions (Richmond: Whittet and Shepperson, 1907) is admittedly ambiguous on the subject. According to McGeachy, citing Craig, the Rev. Payne served as synod's "Agent of Evangelistic Labor" until 1884, but the "first synodical evangelist" was the Rev. William D. Morton, who was indeed appointed first in 1889. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 385, 400. The matter is of some importance, as Thompson makes much of the Kentucky example as inspiration throughout the church. 32. Arthur, History of Watauga County, p. 218. Census data for 1880 and 1900 from Carl A. Ross, Jr., ed. 1880 Census of Watauga County and 1900 Census of Watauga County (Boone: Department of History, Appalachian State University, 1983, 1984). Hereinafter cited as Ross, Census. 33. Among the pre-War visitors were the G. W. F. Harpers of Lenoir, active Presbyterians and merchant-farmers like the Morrises. Theirs was apparently the first permanent home built by non-residents in the thenunincorporated village. A descendant of the original Harper is Gwyn Harper of Hickory, a summer member of Rumple Church and quite knowledgeable about the region's early history. Another member of the Harper family, James C. Harper, during the 1840's surveyed what later became the C aid well and Watauga Turnpike, still later U.S. Highway 321, between Blowing Rock and Lenoir. Another early local worthy who passed through the community before the War was Mrs. William B. (Alice Bostwick) Councill, of Sumter, S.C., who recalled picnicking at The Blowing Rock with her new husband in 1852 and being greeted by two "wild looking" mountain men paying their respects to the young doctor, son of the prominent Boone storekeeper, and his bride. "Harper Recalls Rock When He Was A Boy," and "1852 Trip to Blowing Rock Was Most Dangerous Then," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, pp. 5, 56. 34. Arthur, History of Watauga County, p. 218. 35. Ross, Census, 1900; "Skyland Memories" and "Community Club History is Given," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, pp. 77, 16; Ruth Vardell Gage �28 / Chapter One and Gaston Gage, "Blowing Rock Memories, 1899-1975," typescript copy furnished to the author by their son, Charles Vardell Gage (hereinafter cited as Gage-Vardell, "Memories"), no pagination. Another reminiscer, Mrs. C. D. Mackey, interviewed many years ago, believed that the Edwardses "have good claim to the title of founders of the summer colony." "Blowing Rock in 1889," and "Cone Family Left The Mountains A Richer Place," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, pp. 67, 24. 36. "Blowing Rock Was Wild In Early Days," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 66. For the lack of amusements, see Gage-Vardell, "Memories." 37. Arthur's History of Watauga County is full of fascinating tales of county families still fighting over grudges dating from the Civil War, kidnappings, and other assorted mayhem in this era. While he hardly wished to perpetuate the stereotype of the feuding mountaineer—he constantly stressed the contributions of upstanding citizens - Arthur could not resist telling a good story. 38. Rumple, A History, p. 329. For the account of the Reformed church, later called Mount Bethel: A Board of Editors under The Classis of North Carolina, Historic Sketch of the Reformed Church in North Carolina, with an introduction by the Late Geo. Wm. Walker, D.D. (Philadelphia: Publication Board of the Reformed Church in the United States, 1908), pp. 321-323. 39. Minutes of Concord Presbytery, Vol. 8, pp. 834, 860. Rumple was appointed to preach in Blowing Rock the first and second Sabbaths of July and dedicate the church. The Rev. William W. Pharr was scheduled to preach the third and fourth Sundays, but he later reported he did not attend, and his excuse was found satisfactory; presumably it had something to do with the fact that Rumple was staying on to preach the next two Sundays. It is impossible now to ascertain why Rumple did not dedicate the church on the first or second Sunday of July, 1886; perhaps the building was not ready. There is a slight possibility that the dedication occurred on the third, not the fourth Sunday, since the subsequent entry in presbytery minutes reads simply that "Rev. J. Rumple, D.D. reported that he preached at Blowing Rock on the 3rd and 4th Sabbaths of July [1886] and dedicated the church there according to appointment": ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 2-3. But I take the best source for the dedicatory date of the fourth Sunday in July to be the "1936 History," prepared by Vardell and Martin, both of whom were surely present and who may have had other records upon which to base their recollections. As will be described in chapter three, they arranged to celebrate the church's semicentennial on the anniversary date of the church's dedication, not its organization, and they chose to stress the fourth Sunday in July, 1886, as the appropriate one. Mrs. Rumple was in the habit of noting in the margin of her Bible, one of which is at RMPC, the texts her husband or some other preacher used for sermons. She made many such entries, usually with a date and sometimes with a place or church at which the sermon was given. The entry beside the text Rumple used at the dedicatory sermon reads, "Blowing Rock dedication of new church J.R. 1887"; this is almost certainly in error; she seems to have added the date later, as the ink appears to be darker. �The Founding and the Founders / 29 40. Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 2-3, 18-23, 51-52. See also "Blowing Rock Hotel Completed In 1888," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 11. The old pump organ, today in the Nebel Sunday School Room at RMPC, is of uncertain origin. It is rather elaborate for the gift of a preacher's wife, and likely dates from a somewhat later time, given perhaps when the stone sanctuary was completed in the early 20th century. The "1936 History" refers to an Esty organ with two banks of keys and pedals "with electric attachment for pumping" given by Jessie Kenan Wise in 1931. It is not known what became of this instrument. 41. Contradictory sources exist for the date of the construction of the Mount Bethel sanctuary. Many old-timers in Blowing Rock have heard that the two churches were built by the same crew and during the same year, 1886. It is hard to imagine how such a well-remembered coincidence can be wrong; but the historian of the North Carolina Classis of the Reformed Church gave the first Sunday in November, 1894, as the structure's dedication date, and named the preacher who gave the sermon: the Rev. J. L. Murphy. The congregation would hardly have waited eight years to dedicate the building. Perhaps what local people remembered was that the Blowing Rock Hotel and the Presbyterian chapel were both under construction that summer of 1886: see above. 42. Classis of North Carolina, Historic Sketch, p. 323; Jacob Calvin Leonard, History of the Southern Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (Lexington, NC: n.p., 1940). "Around Town," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 28. Another generation of Ingles would be active at Rumple church well into the twentieth century: see chapter three below. 43. Minutes of Concord Presbytery, Vol. 9, pp. 51-52. 44. James Morton Wharey, born in Goochland County, Virginia in 1839, graduated from Hampden Sydney College in 1857, and from Union Theological Seminary in 1862. He was a chaplain with the Confederate army during the war. After serving several pastorates in Virginia he joined Concord Presbytery in 1876. As of the summer of 1886, he was preaching at the Rocky River church, "mother church" of the historic "seven churches of Mecklenburg." Late that year he was called to the Mooresville church, serving until 1905. His last years (1905-1909) were spent as stated supply to the Hickory and Taylorsville churches. Ministerial Directory, 1942 edition. Wharey had been the appointed alternate to the Rev. J. A. Ramsey, pastor at Thyatira and Back Creek churches, who informed presbytery that Wharey, not he, had been to Blowing Rock. Others who had been designated to fill the Blowing Rock pulpit that summer either did not attend (William M. Pharr was excused) or did not report: B.L. Beall and Pharr's alternate, W.A. Wood. Minutes of Concord Presbytery, Vol. 9, pp. 2-3. For more on Beall, see below. 45. Watauga County Court House, Register of Deeds Office; copy in RMPC church records. 46. Watauga County Court House, Register of Deeds Office; Session Records, Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church (hereinafter cited as RMPC session records); Arthur, A History of Watauga County, p. 218. An undated, �30 / Chapter One pencilled notation in the earliest record book at RMPC says the Morrises moved to Hudson. Acquisition of land was a problem in the tightly-knit town. Dr. Vardell in 1936 recalled that fifty years previously only four or five families had owned all the suitable building sites in the village, and no member of these was connected with the Presbyterian church. "History of the Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church, Blowing Rock, N.C., Compiled by Rev. C. G. Vardell, D. D. and Dr. W. J. Martin, D. D., L.L. D., Read at the Semicentennial of the Church, July 26, 1936 . . . , " pp. 1-2. Hereinafter cited as "1936 History." 47. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 413; Minutes of Concord Presbytery, stated meeting of April 1913, pp. 177-179. Nancy Alexander, History of the First Presbyterian Church of Lenoir (Lenoir: The Printing House, 1976), no pagination. 48. Nancy Alexander, Here Will I Dwell: The Story of Caldwell County (n.p.: the author, 1956), pp. 114-116; tributes in memoriam to R.L. Beall, 1891, and E.W. Fawcette, 1901, First Presbyterian Church, Lenoir, NC, Minutes of Session & Register, 2 vols. 49. Minutes of Concord Presbytery, Vol. 9, pp. 18-20, 22-23, 59. Although no record exists that the Lenoir Session ever voted on, or even discussed, these matters, the formalities seem to have mattered less than the facts. In the "1936 History," p. 3, Munroe is said to have fulfilled his duties at Blowing Rock until 1891. 50. Address by the Rev. Jethro Rumple, in Semi-Centenary Addresses, Davidson College, 1887, p. 69. I am indebted to Dr. Chalmers Davidson for bringing this reference to my attention. 51. Alexander, History of the First Presbyterian Church of Lenoir, no page numbering; McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 383-384 and passim.; Ministerial Directory, 1942 edition. 52. Ross, Census, 1900, pp. 92, 94, 101. More members of the Walser family would join in 1900: Mr. and Mrs. Will Walser. RMPC Session Records, Munroe-Tufts book, pp. 5-6. According to the memory of Hattie Brown, the Walsers had taken the initiative locally to establish the church: oral interview, July 1987. 53. There are discrepancies among the old record books at the church, the earliest of which has been recopied, and perhaps corrected, at least once. I have tried to reconcile the records, but some confusion exists, most glaringly between the report Munroe submitted to Presbytery and the oldest record book, presumably in his handwriting, and continued by Edgar Tufts, which is at the RMPC. The book shows only six, not eight, charter members: Mary and Samuel Walser are not listed. A later entry in Tufts's handwriting shows Mary Walser joined in May, 1899. A David Walser joined in June, 1891, with a later, pencilled entry showing that he some time subsequently "went back to the �The Founding and the Founders / 31 Baptist Church." One woman member is reported to have been "dismissed for immorality" at some point in Tufts's time. 54, A Home Missions report to Concord Presbytery in 1894 reported a $125 disbursement to the "Blowing Rock field," perhaps to pay summer supply pastors. A report on Sabbath Schools indicated four teachers and forty "scholars" on the roll at Blowing Rock where, since there was no session, the Sabbath school was reported only to be "under Presbyterian influences." Minutes of Concord Presbytery, stated meeting of spring 1894, pp. 13-14. �This page intentionally left blank �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 LOOKING BACK FROM about 1890, a man like Jethro Rumple must have been dissatisfied with the limited success of the Presbyterian home mission effort in North Carolina since the Civil War. A modest number of new churches had been added, but most of them, especially in the Western end of the state, were small and weak, and of course poor. Experiments like the "clusters" of churches Rumple had suggested in the 1870's had not worked out well. Presbytery had appointed roving evangelists to work full time in the field, but they had too many miles to cover, got little pay for their work, and must have been easily discouraged; turnover in the post was relatively frequent. During the late 1880's and early 1890's, in another unsuccessful effort at reorganization, some of the mountain counties were briefly reassigned to presbyteries centered in the more easterly parts of the state, presumably in the hope that mission activity would find a broader base of support from more established pastors and congregations there. This experiment, too, was soon abandoned. Synod evangelists, who began to work in the early 1880's, with the entire state to cover, naturally appeared infrequently in any one area.1 Still groping for an effectual method of work, Synod in 1891 named three evangelists, each of whom was assigned a more restricted region; one of these was the Rev. Robert Payne Pell, who was sent to Mitchell and Watauga Counties. As Avery County was not created until 1911, out of Mitchell and Watauga, PelFs field was still quite large. He traveled hundreds of miles over the next four years, mostly on horseback. The first Presbyterian church in Mitchell, at Elk Park, was organized through his efforts in 1891. But times were tight: a recession began in 1892 and deepened in 1893. And his duties were draining: Pell reported during 1894 that he had regularly served four churches (Blowing Rock would have been one), five "mission points" (which would have included 33 �34 / Chapter Two Banner Elk), 162 communicants, four Sabbath Schools with 275 pupils and seven teachers, and three prayer meetings; he had performed 45 baptisms, added 68 new members, and collected $787 "for church and school purposes." It is not clear where Pell had his base of operations in the mountains, or even whether he stayed all winter, during his four years of labor.2 Pell also promoted for a while, probably with Rumple's backing,3 a scheme to establish schools for girls at Blowing Rock and at the newly created lumbering and resort town of Linville. Nothing seems to have come from these plans, even though Pell said he had private local pledges for land and materials. Presbytery sent a team to Linville to follow up on the idea, but would promise no money, and the whole project soon died. At Blowing Rock, W. M. Morris had apparently been persuaded by his Presbyterian friends to donate a site for an educational enterprise to rival the Skyland Institute, founded in 1887 by Emily Prudden. The Institute, not a Presbyterian venture, was already flourishing by then; perhaps fortunately for the cause of education, Prudden was left without competition at this time. She later turned over her work to the American Missionary Union.4 But PelFs interest in education was a straw in the wind; for throughout the denomination, as well as across North Carolina, the concern for planting schools was becoming as real as the concern for planting churches. Public education in the Southern states, generally outclassed by denominational schools before the War, was, during Reconstruction, even more poorly supported, and the school terms short. Before the turn of the century there were no reported twelve-year schools anywhere in the state. What was true even in most towns went double for the country regions.5 Synod took up the issue of "The Church and Christian Education" at its 1891 meeting. Closer home in Concord Presbytery, a special committee which included Pell and Munroe, as well as ruling elder G. W. F. Harper of Lenoir, prepared a report which noted that, although the public schools "are mainly conducted by Christian teachers, a fair proportion of whom are Presbyterians," and in most "the Bible is read at the opening of school, with prayer for God's blessing," some schools neglected these routines. None used the Bible as a textbook, or required study of the Shorter Catechism.6 Preparing students for higher learning, and providing it, were traditional Presbyterian concerns, since the church needed an educated ministry. The report thus pointed out to praise several schools and academies in the bounds of presbytery which functioned as feeder schools to the church's colleges. But increasingly, "parochial schools and academies" were being seen as �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 35 important ancillaries to the larger work of the church, especially in the remote mountain regions. The interest which Synod and presbytery showed in Pell's efforts in Blowing Rock and Linville was one sign of this newer, wider concern, even though those plans came to naught. Another was the increased number of laymen and laywomen who by the end of the century were spending summers in isolated rural areas, supplementing the meager public educational effort and giving Christian instruction. Such teaching was carried out under denominational auspices, though often at the volunteers' own expense. It would take the explicit combination of these two responsibilities, teaching and preaching, soon to find ideal personification in one remarkable man, to give new vigor to the church's mountain work.7 In the fall of 1894 Munroe, by then fifty years old, tried to resign as chairman of presbytery's home missions committee. He was refused. His full-time obligations at the Lenoir church, coupled with the continued shortfalls of financial support for his committee's work, may have prompted his request. Pell, perhaps also weary of his work, accepted a call to a church in South Carolina in January, 1895. Concord Presbytery had previously discussed without result appointing an assistant for him; now his departure left the whole Mitchell and Watauga field uncovered. But that spring a young worker, supported temporarily by both Synod and Presbytery, came from Union Theological Seminary to labor at Banner Elk. It was the first arrival in the mountains of Edgar Tufts. He was a man after Rumple's and Munroe's own heart.8 "I reached Lenoir last Friday afternoon. Mr. Munroe, the Chairman of the Committee which I am to work under, met me at the depot. He was very kind to me, and as soon as I got the soot and smoke washed off, he took me around to meet 'wife material' as he expressed it." So Tufts wrote on Monday, May 13, 1895, to Mary Elizabeth Hall, the woman who three years later would become his wife. On Saturday, the Lenoir pastor and the seminary student rode to Blowing Rock. "On our way, we got caught in a rainstorm but did not get very wet. It took the whole day to get to our destination on account of the rough mountain road." In the evening, "to a small congregation," and again on the following day, Munroe had Tufts preach his first sermons in Blowing Rock. �36 / Chapter Two I was never more surprised than I was when I saw the place. I thought my work would be almost altogether among country people. But Blowing Rock has four or five large hotels and they say that sometimes there are as many as a thousand people there, from all parts of the country. There are not many visitors there now, however. They will begin to come next month. That same Sunday afternoon Tufts got his first taste of the freakish weather at the Rock. He and Munroe "went out to call on some people and before we got in again we were caught in a snow storm! Fortunately for me I had my coat on and we were near enough to a house to get shelter." The temperature dropped below freezing that night, Tufts reported, "although the fruit, of which there seems to be no end, was not killed."9 The next morning Munroe returned to Lenoir. Tufts went on to Banner Elk, "further up the mountains from Blowing Rock," by himself that Monday. He found the scenery "perfectly grand" and "enjoyed the ride very much" but thought it "very cold this morning until about twelve o'clock." A postscript on his letter to Bessie the next day added that "the mountains have considerable snow on them this morning, and the wind is whistling like mad. Am afraid I will miss the fruit wliich I was expecting." Munroe had taken Tufts the long way to his charge. As Tufts noted, the train came in to Elk Park from Johnson City, Tennessee, just eight miles from Banner Elk. But Tufts was grateful for the chance on the long ride to hear from the older preacher "all about the work." It was not so extensive as PelFs had been. Another seminary student was working in Mitchell County that summer. Still, Tufts was to be the only Presbyterian preacher in Watauga County; he was twenty-four and had only one year of seminary training. He was to preach at three locations: twice a month at Banner Elk, once at Blowing Rock, and once "at a place sixteen miles from here, called Cove Creek." Tufts told "Miss Bessie" he found Banner Elk much as he expected it, an "average country village," and he anticipated Cove Creek to be "a very rough place." But Blowing Rock, being a "regular fashionable summer resort," was a place "where I will have to do my best." He sent her "a little prospectus of Blowing Rock, which will give you a faint idea of that vicinity."10 Such was the beginning of the little preacher's mountain work. Tufts was born in Kirkwood, Georgia, five years after the close of the Civil War. He was one of six children. His mother's precarious health (she had never fully recovered from the privations of the war years) led the family to move to rural Maitland, in central Florida, when Edgar was still small; here his mother died of tuberculosis when he was �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 37 twelve. His daughter has traced his later concern for the sick and lonely to the boy's early experiences. Perhaps his first contact with, and openness to, outside tourists also came from these early years, as Maitland was by then attracting a small colony of winter visitors, including a New York woman who became a sort of foster mother to the young boy.11 Tufts may also have inherited something else from his weakened mother: he, too, later developed a tubercular condition which claimed his life at age fifty-two. The young Tufts entered Washington and Lee College, Virginia, "with $50.00 in his pocket" in 1889. From his birth his parents had wanted him to become a minister. "It was his mother's request as she gave her children her final good-bye on this earth."12 Accordingly, he and a childhood friend from Maitland, while roommates at Washington and Lee, were taken under the care of St. John's Presbytery, Florida, as candidates for the ministry. Tufts graduated from college in 1894 and entered Union Theological Seminary at Hampden-Sydney that fall. He returned a few days late to seminary at the opening of the 1895 term, in order to stay and finish the roof on the little church he started in Banner Elk that summer. He came back the next summer and was warmly received. Under his leadership in 1896 the building was completed and dedicated (Munroe came to preach the sermon), an organ installed, the school improved and its enrollment added to. As water to a dry land, Tufts's work was slaking a thirst for the gospel, and for learning, among a small but growing body of followers. He was even able to organize a literary society in the tiny, distant town.13 President of Union Seminary in that era was the Reverend Dr. Walter W. Moore, a native Charlottean, who among his duties had to help find various appointments for his studenvvvvvts. Summer work in home missions was considered good preparation for later ministerial responsibilities; it was also a source of low-paid manpower for the manifold projects the church took on but for which full time funding was hard to find. Such field work probably also weeded out the less-committed from the ministry. It turned out to be for Tufts the finding of his life's calling. Moore, Tufts reminded him later, was the first to give his name to Munroe's committee as one "who had the qualifications needed for the pioneering and constructive work then called for in our North Carolina mountains." Moore visited Banner Elk some years later to marvel at all Tufts had accomplished. He had, he said, "unquestionably made the right suggestion," and gave "thanks to God for His guiding hand in the matter."14 Relatively little is known of Tufts's early years of service in Blowing Rock. Not until 1898 were any new members enrolled at the Blowing �38 / Chapter Two Rock chapel, probably because until Concord Presbytery ordained him "as an evangelist" in 1897, he would not have been permitted to perform such tasks. In March, 1898, several additional members of the Weedon family were received into the church: Anna, Clarence, and Dea, while Alva and Eleaza Weedon were baptized. More members of the Walser household joined the next year: Mary, Robert, Clara, and Annie, while Mr. and Mrs. Will Walser were added in 1900. There were others: Maggie Leadford, Melvin Cox, Mrs. A. M. Critcher, Mrs. and Mrs. John Springs, Ola Pendley, W. G. Hall, W. W. Sherrill, M. E. Johnson. By 1905, when work began on the stone church building, Tufts had added twenty-eight to the fellowship. Several of these also received baptism. Since Presbyterian practice is to accept into full communion any baptized believer who professes faith in Christ, these individuals would have never been baptized in any other church. The little congregation was growing slowly, even though Tufts visited it only once a month. According to his daughter, Tufts lived all one winter in Blowing Rock early in his career, about 1903. Perhaps some of his parishioners in Blowing Rock hoped he would move his operations permanently. But by that date the school at Banner Elk was taking more and more of his time and energy. It ran from April to December, so that he was able to leave that work for a winter; but the support he had slowly and painfully gathered there may have seemed to him more precarious and more demanding of his attention.15 One of the active church families in those early years, whose descendants still attend Rumple church frequently in the summers, were the Weedons. W. H. Weedon's youngest daughter, Helen, now Mrs. Karl Deaton of Statesville, was perhaps the first infant Tufts baptized in the still-uncompleted stone sanctuary, in April, 1906. She recalled that her father had first come to Blowing Rock to find timber for his business in Newton. Already well along in years, Weedon not only found timber, but a growing little town to his liking. Soon he moved his much younger, second wife, Mary, and his family up the mountain. He built "Fairview," the well-named house which still stands, overlooking the John's River gorge and commanding one of the finest views of Grandfather Mountain anywhere in Blowing Rock. The prominent, ancient granite outcropping on his property became a surveyor's benchmark for much of the west side of town as it began to be platted in 1887.16 Tufts made the Weedon household a regular stopover on his monthly rides to Blowing Rock, often staying overnight as a guest in the main house. Little Helen Weedon always looked forward to his visits: not �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 39 only was he a welcome source of outside news and a pastoral solace, he was a warm, loving presence to the children. In winter, Tufts bundled himself for the ride from Banner Elk in a heavy woolen poncho or cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. He and his horse sometimes arrived almost unrecognizable, covered head to foot with ice and snow. In better weather and later years, Tufts sometimes brought over his wife, Bessie, whom he had married in 1898, or one or more of their children: Edgar H. and Margaret (a third, a daughter, died in her teens). The ride over the mountain, usually by way of Foscoe and Shulls Mills, sometimes through Valle Crucis, was regularly on the fourth Saturday of the month. Visiting isolated cabins along the way, he spent the night in Blowing Rock with the Weedons, or later the Holshousers, or other church families. Some youth activity or social probably took up that evening. His Sunday services would have been sparsely but faithfully attended in winter. In the summer season, they would have drawn larger crowds. Tufts no doubt also oversaw and taught classes in the Sunday school. According to a historical sketch prepared in 1937 by the Women of the Church, Mrs. W. L. Holshouser was for many years the superintendent of the Sunday school, which "has functioned almost continually" since 1897 "due to interest of members and visitors."17 Helen Weedon Deaton and others remember that the entire community went to Sunday school and worshipped at whatever church had a preacher on any Sunday: by the 1910's, the Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians were also being served monthly, at least in the summer, by some clergyman. Presbyterians followed this practice at least until the arrival of their first full-time pastor in 1931. One living resident member's memories stretch back to Edgar Tufts's time, and the original frame church in which his ministry began. Mrs. Charles F. (Hattie) Brown, now ninety-one, one of six children of Charles S. and Nancy Ann Young, remembers being taken as a child to a Christmas service, through a snowstorm, with woollen socks pulled up over their shoes to keep them dry. A large Christmas tree, lighted with candles, stood in the corner of the church. That service included a poem recited by her brother, Paul: for his performance his father rewarded him a silver dollar. Her family considered Edgar Tufts a special friend; he later recruited Hattie and her sister, Rose, for his fledgling school for girls at Lees-McRae.18 Some of Tufts's sermon notes have survived, tucked in a Bible still at Rumple Church. He wrote them on whatever odd scraps of paper came to hand: the backs of letters, envelopes, or circulars received at the school. One set of notes from the 1920's is written on a piece of W. L. �40 / Chapter Two Holshouser's letterhead stationery, which carried the printed notice "General Merchandise, Produce, Coffins, Caskets." That sermon dealt with "The Dignity of Man." Most of the outlines are brief, giving little clue to what filled out his main points. Some very early notes, pencilled on a mailing envelope from the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta postmarked in 1897, have to do with Giving, They read: Universal custom in the ch[urch] Old Testament giving of the Holy Spirit All should give 1st From a business standp't 2nd For humanity's sake 3rd Because God commands 4th Because of the good it does Suggestions Give systematically Give all you can Give cheerfully Do not give for glory Give for the good of others The day: Sunday The scope: everyone The amount: as you are blessed The nature of: act of worship The object: The nature: of a free will A gift Tufts would have preached many times to young people, at LeesMcRae and elsewhere. One sermon for which the notes survive was probably composed with such an audience in mind, but it may also have reflected Tufts's awareness of his own work. Titled "Influence," it took its text from Romans 14:7: "For none of us liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself/' The notes read: "everybody has an Influence. Influence is increased a) by position b) by certain gifts. Two kinds: cf. Jno 1:43-46 [the story of Philip's leading Nathaniel to Jesus]. Direct and intentional, cf. Jno 21 [Jesus' appearance to his disciples after the resurrection]. Indirect and unintentional. Goes on after death!' Another sermon outline gave insight into Tufts's own faith. The text was Psalm 27, which begins, "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" Tufts asked rhetorically, "What has sustained us?" �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 41 and answered, "The goodness of the Lord. 1) providing for our wants 2) raising up friends 3) in giving us His Word for a lamp 4) In preparing a Home, cf. Jno. 14, Rev. 21:1-4." After the morning service, on those monthly Sunday afternoons, Tufts would perhaps have made pastoral calls in town before his scheduled evening services in Pineola, Linville, or some other outpost. He early developed a warm and respectful friendship with William R. Savage, who served the Episcopal Mission of St. Mary's from 1902 to 1917. Eleven years Tufts's senior, the bachelor Savage lived at Blowing Rock, and had charge of his church's work in Valle Crucis as well. About 1920 he went to Todd in Ashe County, cared for the mission there, and then was officially retired at Glendale Springs, living in the mission house until his death in 1934.19 When Tufts died in 1923, the Episcopal priest, now "a veteran in the army of the Master," as he said of himself, sent the widow a tribute to his Christian coworker. He remembered that they first met at "7 o'clock in the evening of Saturday the 27th day of September, 1902, . . . at Miss Pendley's supper table and sat side by side, and we have been going that close to each other ever since!" Savage had preached for Tufts several times in Banner Elk and had "aided him in administering the Lord's Supper" and at least one baptism: the infant daughter the Tuftses lost so young. The clergyman wrote, "the everlasting hills of the Lost Provinces so-called [were] stern witnesses of the faithfulness of the beloved pastor who travelled throughout the mountain country ministering to the sheep and lambs of the flock/ aiding the needy, lifting up the fallen, ministering to the sick and dying, comforting the afflicted, in fact doing everything that a real shepherd of the sheep would do for the flock under his care."20 As so many did, Savage emphasized in his tribute Tufts's work "than which there can be no greater—the noble work of providing for the mountain boys and girls a good education at small cost, one so thorough in all its branches that it fitted the students not only for higher institutions of learning but as well for the great duties of life." Tufts's most permanent legacy to the mountains was the Lees-McRae Institute, which he built up out of the work of volunteer summer workers who preceded and immediately followed him in Banner Elk: women such as Annie Lucie Morgan, who stayed on in the community to marry one of the local pupils, George Banner; the Rev. L. E. Bostian, who took over Tufts's duties for the winter of 1895-96; and others. He honored Elizabeth McRae of Maxton, North Carolina, another Presbyterian mountain teacher who had taught in nearby Cranberry, but never in Banner Elk, when he used her name for his school in 1900.21 But it was another of Tufts's enterprises in Banner Elk which his �42 / Chapter Two congregation at Blowing Rock took most to heart: the children's home he started in 1914. Tufts, as Rumple before him, had early on been concerned for little children whose families had been broken up by the death of one or both parents and whose remaining relatives had neither room nor means to care for them. By early 1914, his school well launched, Tufts resolved to do something for their care. Tufts often sought outside support, always with permission of presbytery, for his work, first for the school, later for a hospital, and, toward the end of his life, for a full-fledged college (his pleas on behalf of that last cause were not accepted). So after first designating a site on the school property and rounding up some furnishings from his Banner Elk congregation, he sent to the churches in presbytery a folder announcing his purpose to open a "mountain orphanage" that spring. A great deal, he said, was needed, including "two or three good cows and a lot of poultry Money can also be used." Help came from the First Presbyterian Church of Concord, where Annie Ludlow Cannon and the Grier Bible Class raised $1000 toward the first buildings. That church and many others later sent additional sums.22 But most importantly for the Blowing Rock church, Tufts had succeeded in interesting a remarkable and generous woman, and a member of his summer congregation, in his work. Annie Cannon had already come to know Tufts in Blowing Rock. She not only continued to support the Grandfather Home, but would later become the largest single benefactor of Rumple Church.23 Special collections for the work of the Home from the Blowing Rock congregation, which began soon after the session was organized and have continued to the present, have amounted to many times the original cost of the entire enterprise. ***** Not long before Tufts arrived in the county, a second generation, scions of the church's original founders, had grown to manhood, married, and taken their places in the burgeoning Blowing Rock summer community. Two of these were soon to make major contributions to the church of their fathers, on the state and national levels and at Blowing Rock. William Joseph Martin, Jr. (1868-1943) and Charles Graves Vardell (1860-1956) became brothers-in-law when Martin married Vardell's sister Jennie in 1897. Vardell, it may be recalled, married Rumpie's daughter Linda in 1891. Despite the difference in their ages, the men were also classmates, in the class of 1888, at Davidson College. �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 43 Vardell had worked for the United States Department of Agriculture and had attended Oberlin College for two years before entering Davidson in 1885. The younger Martin had spent summers in Blowing Rock with his family from the time of his childhood; Vardell first came to the resort community while a student at Davidson, to wait tables at a resort hotel. However well they may have known each other at school, the church at the Rock must have brought them closer together. The Presbyterian summer community revolved around Rumple and the "Old Colonel," Martin's father. Vardell, whose own father, William Gildersleeve Vardell, was a Presbyterian minister in Charleston, South Carolina, would have received a ready welcome in the circle. After college, both men went on to professional study. Martin taught one year at Presbyterian College in South Carolina, then attended Johns Hopkins University for one year. From there he went to the University of Virginia, his father's alma mater, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received both the M.D. degree and the Ph.D. in chemistry. He taught at the University until 1896. During the summer of 1895 Dr. Martin "of the University of Va." was "resident physician" at the Fair View House in Blowing Rock, "Mrs. M. J. Brady, Proprietress." Vardell, meanwhile, attended Princeton Theological Seminary and earned the Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1891. He was pastor at the Presbyterian Church in New Bern from 1891 to 1896. Then in 1896 both men entered the field of Presbyterian higher education in North Carolina. When his father died, Martin was invited to take the Colonel's chair as Maxwell B. Chambers Professor of chemistry at Davidson. Here he taught until 1912, when he was elected president of the college. He left in 1929 to head what was then known as the General Assembly's Training School, now the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, in Richmond, until he retired in 1933. Also in 1896, Vardell was called by Fayetteville Presbytery to be president of the newly-formed Red Springs Seminary for Women, soon to be renamed Flora MacDonald College, in Red Springs. He ran the school for almost thirty-five years, retiring in 1930.24 In 1898 and 1899, Vardell and his wife purchased several lots on Chestnut Hill, near the Martins' house in Blowing Rock. Vardell designed and built a summer house for his own family, and a cottage for Dr. Rumple, on the site. The Colonel's property had passed to his heirs in 1896. "Bill Joe," as his family and friends knew him, bought out his sisters' shares of the family's mountain holdings in 1909. Thus by early in the century, Chestnut Hill had turned into a virtual Presbyterian academic enclave during the summers. Vardell's children and grandchildren recall large and lively summer gatherings of family and �44 / Chapter Two friends around the five-leaved dining table or in front of the great rock fireplace in the wood panelled living room at the Vardell house. The college president brothers-in-law ran their schools from the mountains during the summers. Vardell, whose campus was farther from Blowing Rock, frequently dispatched and received couriers from Red Springs, but made a point to spend the entire vacation with his family.25 Both Martin and Vardell were enthusiastic amateur architects. Vardell had not only selected the lumber and helped to build his mountain house; he designed the main building at Flora MacDonald and laid out the school gardens as well. Martin had seen to the building in Davidson of a house for his mother and sisters after the death of his father.26 Now another project began to occupy them during the summer of 1905: a new and larger church for Blowing Rock's Presbyterians. The 1886 chapel had been hit by lightning sometime during the 1890's, a frequent hazard in the mountaintop community, but one not often mentioned by the town's boosters. The building was propped up to compensate for the lightning strike, but must not have been very attractive afterwards; "on a windy Sunday it groaned and creaked and was uncomfortable." The growing summer crowd, besides, had begun to spill out of its doors. The church they planned was of mountain stone, in a simple, gothic style, with a seating capacity of about 220. One Sunday just before church, they discussed with Tufts the "rough pencil sketch" Martin had prepared. The whole idea seems to have been theirs, not the preacher's, but, builder and promoter that he was, Tufts undoubtedly was quickly and easily persuaded to go along.27 Martin and Vardell had the blessing of Dr. Rumple in the new enterprise. Now well over seventy, Rumple had acquired an assistant pastor at his church in Salisbury and was no longer so active in the church's work. His wife, who "was shared with me for forty-five years," as he said, had "entered into a much needed rest" three years before.28 Dr. Rumple lived to see the project well launched. At his death in early 1906 the dedicatory stone, which later gave the church its name, memorialized his many contributions to the church's founding. Another involved in starting the building project that summer of 1905 was Edwin M. Williamson, also a summer resident and another Vardell brother-in-law. A textile merchant from Fayetteville, Williamson had married Vardell's sister, Catherine, in 1902; long active in the First Church of Fayetteville, he was a ruling elder and clerk of the session there. He, too, had his summer cottage on Chestnut Hill.29 But also by that summer, another important Presbyterian pastor had become a seasonal regular at the Rock: the Rev. James Isaac �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 45 Vance, D.D. (1862-1939). Vance's persuasive preaching helped draw the funds needed for the building from pockets of visiting worshippers over the next several summers. And for a generation thereafter, his frequent appearances in Rumple's pulpit would be a prominent feature of the resort's season. His oratory would also be invoked on Grandfather Home Sunday for nearly twenty years. "Dr. Vance was a man among a thousand, a preacher among ten thousand. In the mature years of his life he was accounted one of the twenty-five best preachers in the United States."30 What initially attracted Vance to Blowing Rock as a summer haven is not known. He bought land, from Joe B. Clark, Blowing Rock's first mayor, and his wife "Lou," adjoining the Moses Cone property on the northwest side of town, in 1901. By the next year he had completed the summer house to which he and his family returned for the rest of their lives. At this time Vance was preaching at the North Reformed Church in Newark, New Jersey, where he served from 1900 to 1910. But his roots were in the Appalachian mountains. Born in Arcadia, Tennessee, not far from Bristol and Blountville, Vance could trace his family ancestry to the Scotch-Irish pioneers who founded the Watauga Settlement in the days just after the American Revolution.31 Graduating in 1883 from King College in Bristol, Tennessee, Vance entered Union Seminary that fall. He received a master's degree from the college at the same time he finished seminary. His first church was in Wytheville, Virginia, but he did not stay long: his skill in the pulpit must have attracted the attention of larger city churches. He preached successively in Alexandria and Norfolk, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee, before his call to the Newark church in 1900. By that date he had already written four of the more than twenty books he published during his life. In 1910 he returned to Nashville and the pulpit he had previously filled at First Church (now called Downtown Church), Nashville, where he spent the remainder of his years.32 These men —Martin, Vardell, Williamson, Rumple, and Vance — formed the building committee to start work, "Without a dollar, but in faith."33 "A Sabbath was appointed on which Dr. Vance was to preach and present the proposed action to the congregation." Over the next few days, funds were solicited, not only from Presbyterians, but from "many summer visitors and residents of Blowing Rock of other denominations." Treasurer for the project at first was Gaither W. Hall, who had moved to Blowing Rock from Banner Elk and transferred his membership from Tufts's congregation there in December 1902. When Hall moved to North Wilkesboro in 1907, Martin took over that part of the job as well. �46 / Chapter Two In the early fall of 1905, Martin submitted the plans for the church to Charlotte architect C. C. Hook, "to judge whether the roof structure was so designed as to be safe in high winds and to pass on the general lines of the building." Hook, who had begun his career as a school builder in Charlotte, was the first professional architect that city had ever had.34 He found the plans in order, but added "one member to the roof timbers" and made "slight changes in the window and door arches." Hook presumably also prepared the working drawings for the builders* use. A curious feature of the building's design is that the roof timbers were so spaced as to be aligned over the peaks of the gothic windows, rather than over the more substantial, unbroken wall areas. The load of the roof was thus supported by the pillars at the corners of the building, and by outside buttresses, not by the walls, which nevertheless were substantial: three feet thick at the base and eighteen inches thick at the top. The inward-tapering slope of the building's exterior, though, was pleasing. The church exterior displayed a "firm foundation" (the walls began two feet below present ground level), even as it subtly embraced the worshippers within. The enormous roof expanse was steeply pitched, the better to shed the weight of heavy winter snow. Its shape drew joking references to "St. Rufus" from local Episcopalians or to "the ice house" from other town residents. A widely-distributed photograph of the church in winter, taken about 1960 by Thomas W. Reese, showed the wisdom, even the romance, of Martin's design. Drifted snow, piled nearly to the roof's edge, seemed almost to replace the walls as support for the roof's prominent peak. At the rear of the building is a semi-detached bell tower of a slightly lower height than the main roof. Exactly when it was built is unclear. It may well have been part of the structure Martin designed. But a Sunday school room was added at the back of the church in 1921 and removed in 1936; the tower may also have been added at that time. Two April 1921 entries by treasurer Will Holshouser in the church records noted, "Paid Freight on Bell, $14.32," and "Paid for Bell, $68.20." Presumably the bell from the first building had been sold, or damaged in the lightning strike during the 1890's, and not replaced until 1921.35 No session had yet been formed at the church to keep formal minutes when the building started, so no record of the reactions of the local communicants has been preserved. But, as with the construction of the medieval European cathedrals, the project soon came to involve numerous workmen from all over the community, who left their own �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 I 47 peculiar cultural marks on it. The most locally-famous story concerns the rock used for the church interior. Dr. Martin recalled that he gave orders that the rock for the arch and the pulpit furniture be carefully selected. When placed on the ground, while approving of the rock, he noticed some stains on some of it. He inquired of the man who hauled it as to the source of the rock and was told that if the truth were told it would not be used. On being pressed he confessed he had taken it from the chimney of an abandoned moonshine still house! This rock is in the arch and in the pulpit, glorifying the God who created these oldest of mountains of which they are a part. Current member and longtime elder at Rumple Church, Perry Lentz, remembers some of the local details: much of the rock for the church was supplied by his grandfather L. M. Frye from sites above what is now Flat Top Road; he hauled it for the church at $1.75 for two wagonloads, twenty-five cents off the going rate, because, as his grandfather explained, he was a member of a Masonic Lodge and the project deserved to get a break in the price. Some of the stone, specifically that used on the north side of the building, came from Frye's own land. As for the still, Lentz in his childhood was shown its exact site: under a poplar tree on a branch, on a piece of the family's property which has long since been acquired for the Blue Ridge Parkway right of way. The story that has come down in his family, however, has it the still was not illegal: his great-grandfather Frye produced white "blockade liquor" with a license.36 Building supervisor for the project was local resident Joe White, Sr., later to become one of the first members of the church session. Hall and Tufts in November 1905 let the contract for the stone walls to George Duncan for $750, "with any additional rock work to be done at $3.50 per cubic yard."37 The attractive but extensive building wound up costing some $2500, according to Martin. This "reasonable cost was due in part to the fact that [White] and most of the workers charged less than their customary wages for their labor on the building." The work lasted seven years. As Martin recalled the timetable, the old building came down at the end of the summer, 1905, and was sold for $100. Work on the new one started that fall. By spring 1906 the walls had been built and the roof put on. Rough flooring was laid early in the summer of 1906, the pulpit platform framed, and rough boards laid down, so that services could be held for the season. "In order to get the building in shape for use that summer, everyone drove hard to finish the roof and lay the rough floor. �48 / Chapter Two Even Drs. Vardell and Martin turned carpenters and framed the pulpit platform and later helped to lay the rock in the pulpit furniture. Indeed during the summer construction of the building, both Dr. Vardell and Dr. Martin spent most of their time watching, directing and assisting in the construction." By 1908, enough money had been obtained to finish the interior maple flooring. The rock arch over the pulpit went up, and "the grounds were graded and sown in rye" the same year. Money for the construction was raised, after the first year, by contributions from Sunday to Sunday. According to Dr. Martin, "the congregations were very patient and co-operative with the repeated calls, even when on one occasion Dr. Vance announced, 'Dr. Martin will now make the financial report and take up the congregation^ " Work on the new building was virtually complete by 1912, when the ceiling and trusses were cased in oiled chestnut wood. During these years the building could not be used in winter. Father Savage allowed Tufts's little year-round flock use of the Episcopal church, then farther up Main Street than it is now, in the off-seasons. Episcopalian layman W. W. Stringfellow, builder of the Chetola estate, also aided the Presbyterians by designing the pews still used in the sanctuary. Two memorials to Rumple were included in the new building. On one pillar of the porch, facing the street, was erected a polished stone marker, carved with the words "Rumple Memorial." It was presented to the Blowing Rock congregation after the pastor's death by his Sunday school classes at the Salisbury Church. The stone, which was moved in 1928 to the rebuilt portico, may well have been intended to mark the name of the church; but the change was not made official until 1940.38 In addition, an unusually attractive and ornamented stained glass window, of Tiffany style, was installed in the choir loft sometime during construction, "In loving memory of Rev. Jethro Rumple, D.D." No record indicates who provided it, or which firm supplied it; no doubt members of his family moved to have it done. Its representation of the open Bible, against a backdrop suggesting the everlasting hills, has symbolized for three generations the contribution the church's founder made to the mountain community he loved, and the faith by which he lived. A brilliantly jeweled crown at the apex of the window unmistakably recalled the Scriptural text, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Rev. 2:10). And the golden pathway shown leading from the Word to the crown depicted the heavenly reward of the believer, the eternal city where the "street was pure gold, as it were transparent glass" (Rev. 21:21). The "Rumple Window" is one of the most beautiful to be seen anywhere in the region. �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 49 As the rock church went up, new members came in.39 Most important for the future work of the church, three men and their families: W. L, "Will" Holshouser in July 1911, Edward G. Underdown and Joseph N. White in November 1912, joined the fellowship. On March 23,1913, these men were elected and installed as ruling elders, thus constituting the first church session. Holshouser was also elected clerk and treasurer of the session, and the church's first lay delegate to Concord Presbytery, which met that fall in Lenoir. According to the Presbyterian system of government then prevailing, an elder's term of service was not limited. Each of these men thus held office at his own and the church's pleasure indefinitely. Holshouser served as elder until his death in March 1942, at age seventy-three. Underdown ended his service at about the same time. White's term was the longest: he was still an elder when he died in February 1952. The extended families of all these men, especially Holshouser's, have provided many faithful members to Rumple Church ever since. One son, Howard P. Holshouser, Sr., is elder emeritus. Another of Will's sons, J. E. "Peck" Holshouser, after three years' service on the session at Rumple, left to become ruling elder at the newly-organized Presbyterian Church in Boone in 1939. His son, James E., Jr., baptized at Rumple in 1935, served as governor of the state from 1961 to 1969. Numerous others, related by marriage, have made the extended Holshouser clan one of the most active throughout the church's history.40 One of the first decisions of the new session was to pledge $150 per year for the pastor's salary, beginning in April 1914. Holshouser's treasurer records show the sum was paid, in monthly installments of $12.50, beginning on schedule and continuing until 1919, when the sum was raised to $20 a month, or $240 annually. By that time, the "high cost of living" had become a national concern and the pay increase must have been justified in those terms. The church had paid a little over $2 for "2 loads wood" to fuel the stove in the stone church in 1915; by 1919 it cost $3.50. Two interesting facts emerge from the early financial records. First, collections at each Sunday service in summer were substantially higher than they were during the winter. In 1917, for example,/ the collections from January through May averaged less than $5 per monthly meeting, while for July, August, and early September, each service, held almost weekly, raised about $22; by year's end, the last months' offerings each brought in about $2. Given the seasonal nature �50 / Chapter Two of the church's activity, and the comparatively greater affluence of the summer visitors, the pattern is not surprising. Without the summer contributors, the local congregation would have been hard pressed to pay the pastor's salary. But the surprise in the records is that for more than two years, beginning in 1913 and going on into 1916, Tufts had his Blowing Rock winter congregation devote their monthly contributions almost exclusively to support the Grandfather Home. The sums were not large: $1 to $4 per service. Holshouser faithfully gave the preacher, each Monday after his visit, a check for the "Orphants Home" which came to the full amount collected in the previous day's offering plate. Such was the need, and such the concern for Tufts's work, that the little year-round congregation and their pastor must have cooperated in this arrangement. In effect, then, the church depended entirely upon summer receipts to pay the preacher. During those same years, one collection each summer month was also designated for the Home, although none was exceptionally large. It was not until 1918 that Dr. Vardell, visiting Tufts in Banner Elk and seeing for himself the great need, returned to the summer congregation to make a plea for a special offering on the Home's behalf. Vardell told his listeners that two weeks hence he would take up the special offering and he expected $1000 from them that Sunday; scoffers were silenced when "$850 was counted on the table and the balance of $150 came later."41 From that summer to the present, Rumple Church has continued giving to Grandfather Home; not only have far larger sums been raised from these annual appeals, but the budget of the church for its regular program has also been more conventionally covered. Many more years would go by before the church became fully self-supporting; but its sense of sacrifice for the needs of others had been early aroused. By the time of World War I, mission work had captured the imagination of the entire denomination-indeed, of most of Protestant Christianity. Domestic missions of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., were benefitting both from a restructuring of support and organization, and from the renewed zeal with which pastoral and lay leaders had turned to the cause of evangelizing the world with the gospel. �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 751 In 1893 the General Assembly adopted a new plan for home missions which, while continuing to encourage presbyterial and synodical efforts, also provided for two Churchwide offerings annually to support the Assembly's own such work. Weaker, poorer, and more remote churches and schools now got more direct funding. Areas in Appalachia were almost immediate beneficiaries. In 1896 Asheville Presbytery was created, covering eleven North Carolina counties west of the Blue Ridge hitherto part of Mecklenburg Presbytery. "By 1903 there were five mission schools within its bounds. In this same year, the General Assembly's [executive] committee [on home missions] began its work in the mountains. Through the gift of a Christian philanthropist, Nacoochee Institute in north Georgia was opened; the capacity of Lees-McRae Institute in Concord Presbytery was doubled; financial assistance was given to the five schools in Asheville Presbytery." Laymen's organizations such as the Society of Soul Winners, founded in 1897 by the well known Kentucky Presbyterian doctor turned preacher E. O. Guerrant, crossed denominational lines to gain support for work among the mountain people.42 Work of a more secular nature, associated with the Peabody Fund, the Grange, the Conference for Education in the South, and other such philanthropic agencies, helped to turn the nation's eyes to the southeastern highlands. Even the emergence of good roads movements in North Carolina and elsewhere was having a similar beneficial effect.43 A prominent lay leader in such movements locally, and one of the most noteworthy, was Dr. W. J. Martin's sister, Mary Turpin Martin Sloop. She also was an M.D., a 1906 graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. At thirteen she had confided to Dr. Rumple that she wanted to be a medical missionary, thinking of the foreign field. The practical pastor, who knew her parents well, wondered what her mother's reaction would be—not to her vocation of missionary but to her intent to study medicine. " 'I believe it'd kill her,' " she told him. But she persisted in her ambition. To please her parents she attended Statesville Female College (she hated the school's name) but also took courses at Davidson, where she met her future husband, Eustace Sloop. Then for several years after the Colonel's death, she had to help care for her aging mother. By the time she was twenty-nine, in 1902, with one year of study behind her at the North Carolina Medical College in Davidson, where she was denied entrance into an anatomy class, she learned that the denomination thought her already too old, and physically frail, to handle the rigors of the foreign mission field. Almost fifty years after, both rejections still rankled. She determined to finish her medical studies, and as her relationship with Sloop gradu- �52 / Chapter Two ally deepened, made with him the "momentous decision" to "settle down in the North Carolina mountains" after they were married. "If we could not be foreign missionaries, we could serve at home."44 Sloop, or "Doctor," as Mary Martin called him, had meanwhile completed his degree at the North Carolina Medical College and had taken postgraduate study at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania. Returning to North Carolina, he had begun his practice at the tiny community of Plumtree, in what was then Mitchell County. Here the Rev. Joseph P. Hall, Tufts's brother-in-law, had already begun a school not unlike Tufts's own, but for boys; the schools would later merge at Banner Elk after a devastating fire destroyed the Plumtree dormitory in January 1927. The Sloops believed the place the ideal mission field for them. But first came the wedding. On July 2, 1908, they were married at Blowing Rock, in the Presbyterian church her father had helped to found and her brother had helped to build. They may well have been the first couple to take the marriage vows in the almost-completed stone sanctuary. Dr. A. T. Graham of the Davidson College Presbyterian Church, the Martins' pastor and friend, came up to officiate. The ceremony was simple: the couple was, after all, by the standards of the day, already middle-aged. The bride wore a plain white linen suit, the groom a black one which she later cut down for their son to wear. The "children of Blowing Rock" had decorated the stone church with "mountain flowers and evergreens, simply but most effectively, and they had been so interested in doing it."45 The story of the Sloops1 work at Plumtree, and at Crossnore, where they moved a few years later, there to practice medicine and found the Crossnore School, has been well told in the 1953 book, Miracle in the Hills, M. M. Sloop was the nation's Mother of the Year in 1951. Dr. W. J. Martin actively supported the mountain work of his sister and brother-in-law in numerous ways, not the least of which was financial. One of the Sloops' first rescue operations was to save a twelve year-old girl from a premature marriage match to "a drunkard and a moonshiner" by sending her off to Lees-McRae with money and clothing supplied from Davidson friends and relations.46 More personally, the professor helped them in 1909 when he bought out his sisters' shares of the family property in Blowing Rock. The Sloops seem to have used this money to acquire a stake in the work Hall was doing at Plumtree, but for some reason, perhaps because of differences between Hall and the Sloops, the arrangement did not work out. In 1912 presbytery ordered Hall "to refund out of the funds of the Plumtree school, to Dr. E. H. Sloop, the money invested by him in the Plumtree property at the earliest possible date; and in view of �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 I 53 Dr. Sloop's urgent need of these funds, we suggest that a negotiable note be given him in case the cash is not soon available/' Martin at that time lent the Sloops an additional sum to get started at Crossnore.47 There the Sloops were careful to keep their work nonsectarian, no doubt to enhance its acceptance by the local people they were trying to help. Mary Martin Sloop wrote about 1928, "The family is Presbyterian and democratic, and when they came to Crossnore they found that there were but few Presbyterians, and that democrats were still more infrequent." Sloop would later find many sources of private support for her work, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, in which organization she was entitled to membership through her mother's family.48 In addition to the direct support he provided his sister's work, Martin promoted many of the church's larger missionary causes during his active years. He was elected Moderator of the General Assembly in 1914, a highly unusual honor for a layman in that era.49 In that capacity, and from his own interest, he participated in the February 1915 meetings of the Laymen's Missionary Movement to speak on "Our Increased Responsibility" in "carrying out the great commission of our common Lord and Master." Held in two locations, Charlotte, North Carolina and Dallas, Texas, these meetings drew a total of 4,370 people. In attendance at the Charlotte meetings were, among many others, the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. C. G. Vardell of Red Springs, and elder Will Holshouser from Blowing Rock. The "Great War" then raging in Europe, although not yet involving the United States, was heavy on Martin's mind, as it was for many of the other speakers at that conference. He pointed out that the war had started not "in heathendom but in the center of so-called Christian Europe." It had come about, not as a failure of Christianity, but as "the failure of people who, while professing Christianity, have failed to live as Christ taught." Martin said, "Only when we literally obey Christ's commands will we have peace. . . . Throughout Christendom Christ's followers have been busy, but not about their Father's business. In the temple of life we have been money changers, and Christ is now scourging us with war and tumult, with unrest and unhappiness, and He will scourge us again and again until He brings us to a faithful obedience to His command." He considered the opportunities for American mission efforts overseas greatly enhanced because of the pullback of Europeansponsored missionaries. Americans would have to emulate the sacrificial spirit of Christ's own service to others. "What we need is more men, more money, more faith, more prayers, more unselfishness, more sacrifice, more Christ-likeness," he concluded.50 �54 / Chapter Two When within another two years the United States did enter the World War, a different kind of sacrifice was demanded of Americans. Yet the church also found other opportunities for ministry. One of Blowing Rock's regular summer pastors, Dr. James I. Vance, had done what he could, following the lead of Presbyterian President Woodrow Wilson, to remain neutral and work for peace before American entry into the conflict; thereafter he was active in numerous war-related efforts in Nashville and throughout the Church. Vance was equally as interested in missions as his friend Martin; he served thirty-two years on the Executive Committee of Foreign Missions of the denomination, 1895-1901 and 1911-1937. During the war he visited the front several times, and spent time with American soldiers in the immediate postArmistice period. On his return he published a book, Silver on the Iron Cross, a collection of his observations in Europe and his sermons to the troops. In 1918, Vance was also elected Moderator of the General Assembly. By a curious coincidence, then, Martin held that post at the outbreak, Vance at the end, of World War I. During the war years, as yet another part of its mission thrust, the Presbyterian Church, U. S., restructured its synod and presbytery boundaries, the better to highlight and support its work in the Appalachian mountains. A primary proponent of the reorganization was the Rev. R. F. Campbell, D.D., of Asheville. His work had drawn General Assembly support since 1903. To him, the creation of Asheville Presbytery in 1896, which had then been evangelized with synod support, was a model for the larger church to follow: by setting up the new synod as a mission field, work there could draw support from the entire General Assembly. At the 1913 meeting of North Carolina Synod at Greensboro, he urged all synods concerned with mountain home mission work to overture the General Assembly in the interest of erecting a "Synod of Appalachia." Only the Synod of Tennessee at first responded favorably to the idea; "strongest opposition was encountered in the Synods of North Carolina and Kentucky," both of which by now had long years of experience at synodical missions. Virginia, too, at first objected; but Dr. Campbell, and the Rev. C. C. Carson of Bristol, carried the case around the region and in 1915 the synods gave their approval. In May the General Assembly approved the new boundaries, which encompassed 67 counties in five states.51 Edgar Tufts was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the new arrangements. As much as anyone in the church, he knew the isolation of the region and the difficulty of raising funds for his work. So, although other, more settled churches in Concord Presbytery at first opposed the plan, Tufts pressed for including the mountain counties of �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 55 Concord within the new Synod's boundaries. As ordered in 1915, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, and Yancey Counties were taken from the Presbytery of Concord and became part of the historic, twelve-county Presbytery of Holston, formerly in the Synod of Tennessee. The arrangement continued until 1969, when the churches in Watauga County rejoined Concord Presbytery.52 Entry into Holston Presbytery and the Synod of Appalachia turned out to be important for Rumple church. For although the move undoubtedly did something to loosen its traditional ties to the rest of the state's Presbyterians, it was drawn more closely into the kind of mission work for which the synod had been created: extending education and planting other new churches. It also brought increased exposure and funding for its pastor's enterprises in nearby Banner Elk: Tufts not only got continued support from Concord, but from Holston Presbytery and from the General Assembly as well. It later helped the small congregation pay the salaries of ministers who succeeded Tufts, as the church was as yet unable to cover its own costs and depended on presbytery supplements. Finally, through its place as a mission work of Holston Presbytery, the church first formed its relationship with a man who not long after came to be superintendent of presbytery's home missions and would one day become Rumple's own beloved pastor, Walter King Keys. ***** Never physically strong, the dedicated Edgar Tufts had risked his health in his work ever since he had arrived at his mountain post in a snowstorm in 1895. On his way home to Banner Elk after preaching his December sermon at Blowing Rock in 1922, yet another exposure to the bitter wind and cold brought on a bout of pneumonia. His weakened lungs gave out on January 6, 1923.53 Tributes to Tufts and to his work appeared widely in the religious and secular press at his death. The Lenoir News-Topic of February 8, 1923 reprinted several of them, including two which appeared in the Presbyterian Standard, written by James I. Vance and Mary Martin Sloop.54 Vance's was the more elegantly phrased: "The people of the mountains are in mourning. They have lost their best friend. Edgar Tufts has gone home." Vance had received the news by telegram at his church office in Nashville, "and as the yellow paper fell from my hands to the floor, my heart cried, �56 / Chapter Two "Oh, God, how can they get on up there in the mountains without him?"... For I know how they love him, how absolutely they trust him. For 25 years he has been their sky-pilot, pointing and preaching and leading the way to the country lying out there beyond their own fair, far skyline, and he has always led them straight Edgar Tufts, slight of figure, weighing little more than a hundred pounds, never of robust health, twice laid aside from his work by tuberculosis, but sent back to his work apparently cured, so diffident and modest and retiring that he would escape notice when men of bigger bodies but smaller souls were on the stage, . . . he was the biggest little man it has ever been my privilege to know. ... The great peaks could not forget Edgar Tufts.... The winds as they sing through the great timbers will be chanting their "Te Deum" for a man who "was an hiding place from the winds and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Mary Martin Sloop's tribute was more rooted in the reality of the place and time in which Tufts worked. She and Tufts had endured similar severe weather and hardships but had persevered out of similar motives. She wrote a description of the service held for Tufts at the church he served in Banner Elk: Bitter weather and terrible roads deterred the great crowds that came some 50 miles to that beautiful rock church—"Mr. Tufts's Church" —to show what his life had meant to them. Twas a typical afternoon. As they bore the casket from the home to the church, the sleet and mud reminded us of the many years of faithful service in all sorts of weather, when this servant of God had failed not once to meet his speaking appointments, often in the furtherest cove of the bleakest mountainside. During the funeral service, the flood of sunlight that poured through the beautiful windows of the church, typified God's rich blessing of Mr. Tufts's tireless efforts. As the sun faded, the flood of the electric lights bore witness of his vision of what might be accomplished in the mountains-of the mountains-and for the mountains. And at the grave the complete lining of green galax and silver pine, which loving hands had so skilfully prepared, proved how his love of the beautiful had met a response in their hearts. We left the grave praising God for the endless influence of such a life-a life whose secret was unselfish faith; a death whose keynote was victory. And we thanked God for the son and daughters who can go on with his work. Much of the little preacher's work would indeed be carried on into the next generation by his son, Edgar Hall Tufts, who had just graduated from Davidson, and who took over the school, the orphanage, and the �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 57 hospital work. The younger Tufts soon combined the Banner Elk enterprises his father had begun into the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association, which still functions. The pastoral responsibilities Tufts had laid down, however, required an ordained minister; Blowing Rock and all Tufts's churches awaited a new leader for the flock. �58 / Chapter Two Notes for Chapter Two 1. In 1889 a Synod evangelist was appointed, the Rev. William D. Morton, to try to "meet the 'destitutions' that existed in all of the presbyteries." Morton served until 1893; his work seems to have had little to do with mountain communities. His successor, the Rev. John M. Rose, worked out of Morganton for about eighteen months in more remote areas. Although there is no record of it, he may well have preached in Watauga. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 400, 402, 425. 2. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 406. The Elk Park church did not survive long; Margaret Tufts Neal does not remember her father ever preaching there. A much more substantial wave of church planting in Mitchell and Avery counties came after the turn of the century, as part of the work of the Rev. James P. Hall, of whom more is said below. 3. Synod of North Carolina, Records of 78th annual session, Durham, 1891, p. 535. Rumple was on both the synod and the presbytery committees concerned with the topic of "The Church and Christian Education" in 1891, although he resigned from the synod committee that same year. Both these groups, according to McGeachy, adopted resolutions of support for Pell's educational efforts in the mountains (see below). 4. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 414-415, 420-423. "Skyland Institute, 1897 [sic: 1887]-1912," and "Miss Emily Prudden Writes Autobiography," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, pp. 74-77. Pell's interest in female education was clearly keen. He later served thirty years as president of Converse College, in Spartanburg, S. C., retiring in 1932: Eleanor R. Millard, comp., A General Catalog of Trustees, Officers, Professors, and Students of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (n.p., n.d. [Richmond, VA: 1977?]), hereinafter cited as Union Seminary, General Catalog. 5. Hugh Talmadge Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, The History of a Southern State: North Carolina, 3rd ed. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1973), pp. 537, 590, and passim. 6. Hope Summer ell Chamberlain, brought up in Rumple's church in Salisbury, recalled that in those days "a Presbyterian child must learn the Shorter Catechism. That was the law in our house. I was expected to learn it thoroughly — by question and answer-by pages-by wholes, without one word or one comma misplaced. I was not expected to understand it. It was considered a deposit laid up for the future in the bank vault of my mind. If ever I changed my early beliefs, as everyone is liable to do, it would furnish a comprehensive statement from which honestly to dissent, not a fog bank to fight against, or the ghost of an ancient authority to be exorcised." This Was Home, p. 178. 7. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 420-423. See also Thompson, Presbyterians, II, 341-352, for debate in the denomination over public vs. parochial education during the 1870's and 1880's. The classic study on the general subject is Charles W. Dabney, Universal Education in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936). Thompson notes, III, 164, that Southern Presbyterians were long divided over whether to support state-controlled schools, �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 59 but the majority by the turn of the century had come to back the public school movement; thus the denomination participated fully in the "long-awaited renaissance of Southern [public] education" after 1900. The church had rarely ever in the last part of the nineteenth century explicitly combined teaching and preaching functions for its pastorate, except at the college level; many of Davidson College's faculty, for example, were ordained ministers but did not minister to a congregation; pastors at churches were not expected to teach. 8. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 432. If Munroe was temporarily discouraged, he did not let it affect his assignment. His reports over the next several years showed growing success at church planting. Munroe held his post until ill health forced him out in 1917, at age seventy-three. He died at Davidson in 1919. 9. Letter to "Miss Bessie" (Mary Elizabeth Hall), May 13, 1895, quoted in Margaret Tufts Neal, And Set Aglow A Sacred Flame; History of the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association 1895-1942 (Banner Elk: Puddingstone Press, Lees-McRae College, 1983), pp. 7-8. Hereinafter cited as Neal, Sacred Flame. I am grateful to Margaret Tufts Neal for several interviews during 1986 and 1987. 10. Ibid., p. 8. The other seminary field worker in the mountains that summer was licentiate Edward Douglas Brown. The Rev. Brown later was stated clerk and held several charges in Concord Presbytery: Concord and Clio churches in Iredell County, 1907-1916; Thyatira and Back Creek, 1916-1927; Fifth Creek, Third Creek, and Elmwood, 1927-1940. Brown was briefly Munroe's successor as chairman of the home missions committee in 1917. He died in 1946. McGeachy, Confronted, pp. 482, 484, 567. 11. Ibid., p. 5. 12. Ibid., pp. 6, 3. 13. Ibid., pp.13, 18-19; McGeachy, Confronted, p. 443. 14. Rev. W. W. Moore, "A Constructive Christian Worker," The Pinnacles, Memorial Issue, Vol. VII, No. 8 (March 1923), pp. 1,6. 15. Conversation with M. T. Neal, summer 1986. Tufts had also spent somewhat less than a year in the Presbytery of Savannah, Georgia, from the fall of 1901 to sometime in 1902. This interlude is reported on somewhat contradictorily in Synod and presbytery records. Mrs. Neal believes he went to his native state at the urging of some relatives, but "always his heart was with the little white church in the mountains and the school he had started." Sacred Flame, p. 31. He returned to his work in Banner Elk either in June (Synod of North Carolina, Records, 1902, p. 635) or October (McGeachy, Confronted, p. 447). 16. Oral Interview with Helen Weedon Deaton, summer 1986. The "Fairview Plat," laid out by J. M. Howell in August of that year, was the second plat ever accepted by the Register of Deeds in Watauga County. Watauga County Court House, Register of Deeds Office. �60 / Chapter Two 17. WOC History, prepared by Mrs, H. F. Ingle, 1937, at Historical Foundation, Montreat. Laura Clampitt Holshouser, a Hickory native, married Will Holshouser in 1896. She died in 1962 at age 87: press clipping, RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 18. Oral interview with Hattie Brown, July 1987. "Miss Hattie" completed her education at Claremont College, now defunct, in Hickory. After her marriage in 1916, in Mortimer, N.C., "the town that was washed away" in the flood of that year, she and her husband lived in Nashville, where she knew the Rev. James I. Vance, although they did not attend his church. For years after her return to Blowing Rock in 1942, she headed the music department at the Sloops' school in Crossnore, and also taught at the old Blowing Rock High School. She played the piano for the combined Sunday school opening service for many years. "Miss Hattie" has said that Rumple Memorial church has been one of the major vehicles of her Christian life. The sister, Rose McDade, taught Sunday school, and played the piano and the organ at Rumple for several years during the 1920's. 19. James B. Sill, Historical Sketches of Churches in the Diocese of Western North Carolina Episcopal Church (Asheville: Publishing Office, Church of the Redeemer, 1953), pp. 58-60. 20. Letter, W. L. Savage to Mrs. Edgar Tufts, March 22, 1923, kindly provided by Margaret Tufts Neal to the author. 21. Neal, Sacred Flame, pp. 18, 28-30. 22. Ibid,, pp. 64-66. NeaTs account is most likely authoritative; other reminiscences, including VardelFs in the "1936 History," trace the origins of Tufts's sheltering ministry to 1912. 23. The Cannons' gifts to Rumple Church are discussed more fully in the next chapter. But it should be mentioned here that their support for the Grandfather Home continued until their deaths. Among the structures for which their contributions were largely responsible were a cottage for little boys in the 1920's, and an administrative unit completed in 1941, just before the death of the younger Tufts. Neal, Sacred Flame, pp. 72-74, 145. 24. Special Staff of Writers, North Carolina, Rebuilding an Ancient Commonwealth, North Carolina Biography, 4 vols. (Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1928), IV, 220-221; hereinafter cited as North Carolina Biography. Ministerial Directory, 1950 edition, p. 697; Davidson, "A Collection of Letters"; The Blowing Rocket, special edition, old advertisement, p. 10. 25. Watauga County Court House, Register of Deeds Office. Martin and Vardell were joint executors of Rumple's estate when he died in 1906. His property at that time passed in shares to his daughter, Linda Lee Vardell, and his grandson, James Malcolmson Rumple. She exchanged her share of the property in Blowing Rock for a share of her nephew's inheritance in Salisbury, so J. M. Rumple became sole owner of the land on Main Street. 26. Information from Linda McNett Yarnell of Laurinburg, N.C., Vardell's granddaughter. Early photographs of the school show a substantial brick �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 61 building similar in design to "Old Chambers" at Davidson, though smaller, and crowned with a dome instead of a columned turret. Symmetrical wings, each three stories high, extended from the taller, pillared central structure. As for the grounds, the flat, piney fields on which the campus was built had badly needed beautification. Vardell drew on his brother's knowledge and interest as a landscape architect in Charleston to improve the campus appearance, bringing in azaleas and other shrubs. For Martin's project, see Davidson, "A Collection of Papers," p. 2. The house is on Concord Road across from the campus; it is not known how much Martin had to do with its design, however. 27. Martin, "1936 History," p. 4. 28. Letter, J. Rumple to Jno. Allen Brown of Salisbury, July 16,1902; original in records of First Presbyterian Church, Salisbury, copy in author's possession. 29. Obituary of E. M. Williamson, July 26, 1934, reprinted 1971 in The Blowing Rocket, clipping provided by Linda Yarnell. According to Mrs. Yarnell, the Williamson house on Chestnut Hill is the only one on the old Vardell compound which still has a view of Grandfather Mountain. Dr. Vardell had advised his brother-in-law to climb a tree to see what the view would be from the intended site of his house, which he did, and so picked the perfect orientation for it. Williamson's children maintained ties to the property until recent years. Mrs. Yarnell also said that James Malcolmson Rumple, the preacher's grandson, was raised by the Vardells. Close in age to Vardell's oldest boy, Charles junior, he felt more attached to his uncle's family than to his stepfather, Dr. Martin. 30. First Presbyterian Church of Nashville, "JAMES ISAAC VANCE," (3-pp. typed MSS., n.d), p. 1. Copy at Historical Foundation. Several sources refer to Vance's selection as one of the nation's best preachers, by the religious periodical The Christian Century, about 1925. 31. Ibid., p. 2. Vance registered the property in the name of his wife, Mamie Currell Vance. They purchased an additional two acres in 1905 when the Clarks rerouted a road connecting the land to the "Caldwell and Watauga Turnpike." Watauga County Courthouse, Register of Deeds Office. 32. A brother, Joseph Anderson Vance, two years younger, also became a Presbyterian minister, following in James's footsteps to King College and Union Seminary. Joseph, too served mostly urban pastorates: in Louisville, Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit (the latter two in the USA Church). Like his brother, he was a much-published author. Each was moderator of his denomination's General Assembly, James of the PCUS in 1918, Joseph of the PCUSA in 1935. Ministerial Directory, 1942 edition, pp. 729-730. 33. "1936 History," 5-pp. section, "History of the Building of the Rock Church." Original typescript in RMPC records, signed by William J. Martin. The story of the building of the rock church took up more than half the account of the church's history prepared by Martin and Vardell in 1936. Martin meticulously wrote that part of the story, looking back over thirty years; his is apparently the only first-hand account which has survived. Because the 1936 sketch has been so often reproduced and distributed locally, his narrative �62 / Chapter Two has entered the community lore. But it still leaves several questions unanswered: Why such a large structure? Why was no local session established before the work started? What became of the old building? Where did all the stone come from? What ever became of the plans? Since these are questions which would be of particular concern to local, not summer people, it becomes even more apparent that the entire project was conceived by and for visitors, not the permanent residents. The author has searched Dr. Martin's papers at Davidson College for some of this information, without result. 34. Jack Claiborne, The Charlotte Observer, Its Time and Place, 1869-1986 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 94-95. 35. RMPC session records, old book, p. 115. According to Neal, Sacred Flame, p. 91, Tufts was informed on his death bed in January 1923 that the Banner Elk church had just installed a bell in its tower. It is not inconceivable that Holshouser had ordered that bell on behalf of the Banner Elk congregation. 36. Oral interview with Perry and Shirley Lentz, December 1986. But according to historian Dr. Carl Ross of Appalachian State University, the term "blockade liquor" referred to illegal whiskey. How the term originated is unknown. 37. "1936 History," pp. 5-7. Duncan appears on the 1900 census: as of that date he was twenty-four years old, with a wife and two small children, and listed his occupation as shoemaker. 38. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1940 meeting, p. 22. 39. In the summer of 1906, Munroe toured the mountains three times on behalf of the Home Missions Committee and reported "progress of an encouraging character" everywhere except at Cove Creek and Blowing Rock, where there had been "great numbers of removals of members to other sections and places." He recommended the Cove Creek congregation be dissolved and its five members assigned either to Blowing Rock or Banner Elk, with Tufts to get possession of the building at Cove Creek "to be used in any part of his work most needed at Banner Elk." None of the five seems to have joined RMPC at that time. Indeed, from April 1906 to April 1909, no new members joined. When the Rev. and Mrs. John Ingle joined RMPC in November 1912, the jam seems to have broken. Accessions, some from the Reformed church, picked up; but many of those added before 1920 were by transfer from other Presbyterian churches off the mountain, including in April 1909 Mrs. Dan Klutz (Miss Cordelia Williams) from the Davidson church. 40. RMPC session records; Ross, 1900 Census, Presbytery in that era held two regular sessions per year. Each church ordinarily sent its pastor and its clerk of session, or another session member nominated at a prior session meeting. A review of presbytery records shows Rumple's session was rarely represented all through the 1910's and 1920's, although Tufts attended relatively more frequently, often in the company of an elder from his Banner Elk congregation. Local business obligations, as well as difficult travel conditions, probably precluded Rumple's elders from going very often. 41. "1936 History," "The Church and Grandfather Orphanage," p. 7. �The Tufts Era, 1897-1923 / 63 42. Thompson, Presbyterians, II, 30-32, 100-103. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 444. The work of the Society of Soul Winners, primarily educational, was turned over to the General Assembly in 1911: Thompson, Presbyterians, p. 104. 43. Elizabeth R. Hooker, Religion in the Highlands. Native Churches and Missionary Enterprises in the Southern Appalachian Area (New York: The Home Missions Council, 1933), pp. 204-206; George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), pp. 254-262. Both Martin and the Sloops were active in the good roads movement; Martin and all Davidson College celebrated when what is now state highway 115, "the Statesville highway," was completed from Charlotte to Davidson about 1916: photograph, Davidson College Archives. M. M. Sloop made several trips to Raleigh during the early 1920's on behalf of road improvements for Avery County; she was especially concerned that local farmers have access to more distant markets for their cash crops: Sloop, Miracle in the Hills, pp. 124-129. 44. Sloop, Miracle in the Hills, pp. 13-20. 45. Ibid., pp. 21-22. According to McGeachy, Confronted, p. 473, Graham had left the Davidson pastorate in September 1907 to take a charge in Lexington Presbytery. 46. Ibid., pp. 68-74. 47. Minutes of Concord Presbytery, Spring 1912 meeting, p. 98. Martin told Tufts in 1912 that because he had had to lend the Sloops additional funds in order for them to build at Crossnore, his own "benevolent fund" was fully committed and he could not respond to Tufts's plea for help in getting his electric power dam started at Banner Elk: Letter, Martin to Tufts, June 11, 1912, W. J. Martin papers, Davidson College Archives. At the same presbytery meeting at which Hall was ordered to pay the Sloops back, a call to Hall for his pastoral services from Plumtree and Powder Mill churches in Mitchell county was "stricken from the docket," perhaps indicating that Hall was under something of a cloud with presbytery for the incident, although he was apparently never censured. He continued to be listed as "evangelist," residing in Plumtree, in presbytery records until 1925. After a brief service as stated supply pastor at Hughes church in 1925, he was listed as "without charge" in Holston Presbytery until 1942. His status from then until his death at Plumtree in 1953, at age eighty, was given as "infirm." Ministerial Directory, 1956 edition. 48. North Carolina Biography, IV, 601-603. Sloop, Miracle in the Hills, passim. 49. Martin was only the second layman ever chosen as moderator of the General Assembly. He belonged to several PCUS permanent committees over the years: Permanent Committee on the Sabbath, 1908-1914; on Systematic Beneficence, 1911-1913; on Education, 1915-1918, 1920-1931; on Stewardship, 1922; and on Men's Work, 1922-1927. My thanks to Bill Bynum at the Historical Foundation for searching out this information from the General Assembly records. �64 / Chapter Two 50. Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Facing the Situation: Addresses delivered at the Fourth General Convention of the Laymen's Missionary Movement, Presbyterian Church in the U. S., Held in Charlotte, N.C., Feb. 16-18, 1915, [and] Dallas, Texas Feb. 23-25, 1915 (Athens, Ga: Laymens' Missionary Movement [PCUS], 1915) pp. 119-126. 51. Craig, Rev. Edward Marshall, comp. and ed., Highways and Byways of Appalachia; A Study of the Work of the Synod of Appalachia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1927), pp. 10-12, and fold-out map attached to back flyleaf. Hereinafter cited as Craig, Highways. See also Thompson, Presbyterians, III, 104-109. 52. The Lenoir Church strenuously opposed the creation of the new Synod. Its session overtured Concord Presbytery in the fall of 1915 to stop Tufts's attempt to add Caldwell, Burke, and McDowell Counties, too, to the new Synod. Tufts's motives are understandable, but, as the church pointed out, the "railroad communication [in these countiesl is altogether East and South of the Blue Ridge." Lenoir Presbyterian Church, Session minutes, September 2, 1915, p. 136. 53. Neal, Sacred Flame, pp. 90-92. In December 1913, Munroe wrote Martin that he had visited Tufts at Cragmont Sanatorium in Asheville where, he reported, Tufts was "very cheerful in spirit and .. . looking remarkably well." His doctor had told him "that in 4 or 6 months he will be entirely restored. His malady according to Dr. [W. C.] Tate and Drs. Brooks and Archer is an acute attack of tuberculosis." Tufts's condition at that time was indeed serious; before he had entered the sanatorium "he got the elders of B. E. church to gather around his bed & they agreed to pay $300 & and [provide a] manse for Rev. L. C. Vass," who had assisted Tufts in Banner Elk the previous summer. With Tufts's approval, Munroe had begun making plans for Vass to take over Tufts's work. Vass, wrote Munroe, "can be secured for $700" a year, with Blowing Rock paying $100 of his salary. Tufts apparently rallied from this illness, however, and the arrangement was not needed. Letter, Munroe to Martin, December 20, 1913, in Martin Papers, Davidson College Archives. Tufts continued to draw his $12.50 a month salary from the Blowing Rock Church during this time, but Savage may have preached at least once for him in the winter of 1913-14. Savage made a $10 contribution to Tufts's salary in April 1914, as did several others, including Mrs. E. R. Stewart and R. A. Dunn. Presumably the church was taking a special collection to help Tufts cover his medical expenses. By April, Tufts was present to preside at a session meeting, the first held since October 1913 at RMPC: Session Records, 1913-14. 54. Lenoir News-Topic, February 8, 1923, p. 6, clipping preserved at RMPC. Also included in the News Topic article were columns reprinted from the Wilmington Star and the Charlotte Observer. �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 IN THE SAME YEAR Edgar Tufts died, Blowing Rock suffered another loss: a disastrous fire which burned half the business district of the town—and led to the establishment of the town's first volunteer fire department soon after. Town residents that autumn of 1923, after trying to stop the blaze's progress with bucket brigades and pails of salt, watched the fire burn itself out against the firebreak of Sunset Drive just before it reached church member Luntz Holshouser's grocery store. Ironically, the best vantage point from which to watch the fire was the porch of the old Watauga Hotel across Main Street, a building which three years later itself went up in smoke. The Episcopal reading room, the post office, and several business structures had been destroyed. But as the Watauga Democrat predicted, "The city of Blowing Rock may be expected to rise from the ashes phoenix-like within a short while." The next year, the "biggest building year" in its history, "six hotels or boarding houses, twenty-six new houses, five businesses, and as many restorations" were undertaken. Some six hundred carpenters were kept busy during this "building epidemic."1 Already the town was profiting from the post-World War I boom in tourism: the Charlotte Observer in 1920 wrote of the "magnificent public highways" which brought Blowing Rock and Linville in "easy reach of Charlotte," especially the much-improved Lenoir Turnpike to Blowing Rock, and noted the "great influx of tourists to the Carolina mountains who formerly sought out the beauties of the Rockies and other places in this and other countries."2 The Yonahlossee Turnpike between Blowing Rock and Linville, completed as early as 1891, was improved for motor traffic in the 1910's; both these toll roads were taken over by the state and operated as free roads after 1921.3 That year Dr. Martin boasted in 65 �66 / Chapter Three a letter to his son that the trip from Blowing Rock to Davidson, via Lenoir, Hickory, and Mooresville, took him only four and a half hours by car (today one can drive the distance in about half that time).4 Few local residents joined the growing numbers of the nation's drivers at first. Rumple elder Will Holshouser reportedly bought the first automobile in the community in April 1913, a motor truck which he used in his dry goods business.5 But already summer tourists had been driving to the mountains: that same year some four hundred ten automobiles were reported to have visited the village. Many would have been chauffeur-driven.6 Also with the end of World War I came a new interest in leisure activities. One new national sports craze of the 1920's was golf, soon to be denounced from many a church pulpit for keeping Christians on the links instead of in the pews on Sundays. Blowing Rock visitors, as at resorts elsewhere in the country, were no longer content to sit on hotel porches and rock, or merely walk in the woods for exercise. In 1920 the Blowing Rock Development Company, a group of local and summer residents, voted to put fifteen thousand dollars toward a golf course for Blowing Rock. "Additional funds will be spent upon other amusements and attractions, and before another season is on Blowing Rock will be provided with the various sports and amusements which have contributed to the success of other resorts," the Observer reported in 1920.7 The year 1923 also saw the beginning of the Blowing Rock Horse Show, at first a rather casual affair of the summer people, but soon to become a major social event of the season.8 As the town became more accessible and active, and as new buildings replaced the destruction along Main Street, the home building boom, which has never really ended in the resort community, began. Houses in the neighborhood of Mayview Park came to typify the newer summer residences. Developed during the 1920's by Walter Alexander of Charlotte shortly after starting construction of his Mayview Manor Hotel, Mayview's winding, graveled streets opened up building lots carefully selected for their views of the John's River gorge. Compared to more recent town development, Mayview Park, and a bit later Laurel Park, grew rather slowly. But their designs seemed suited to the area, and adapted to the automobile. Large, rambling "cottages," usually furnished with servants' quarters, driveways, and garages, in rustic style and shaded by shrubs of laurel and rhododendron, attracted the prominent and wealthy summer population which by that decade was giving a more elegant cachet to the resort town. The newer hotels were drawing summer people from places as distant as Florida. "The Blowing Rock" was changing from a �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 67 local natural curiosity to a tourist attraction: its legend was being embroidered and repeated far and wide, drawing the curious and helping to launch a family's fortune. Blowing Rock was never Newport, Rhode Island, or some similar playground for the ostentatious rich; nationally, the income tax was making it harder for millionaires to maintain a money-is-no-object approach to summer leisure. Nevertheless, for many Southerners, and for visitors from farther afield, Blowing Rock was becoming fashionable. Mayview, which for a while in those years also was the name of a small golf course, was an address which conjured up a carefree but comfortable summer style.9 Some summer residents in this era brought with them, too, the freer, "modern" social habits which still could shock the older generationand even younger traditionally reared Presbyterians. "At about the time Mayview was starting up the whole community was in a twitter. The Bridges twins, Ernestine and Ruth, had walked down Main Street in their riding pants!"10 A young seminary student and recent Davidson College graduate, Thomas Hugh Spence, Jr., son of a Presbyterian minister, recalled seeing "my first woman in the act of smoking a cigarette" on his way from a preaching appointment in Blowing Rock in 1922.11 Making possible the development of the town had been the mundane but significant provision of public services during the immediately preceding years. If electricity and telephones were still mostly absent in the early 1920's,12 another vital improvement had begun: better control over the community's water and waste. Public health concerns in Watauga County had attracted the attention of James Edwin Brooks, M.D., former superintendent of the State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis, who came to Blowing Rock to retire in 1914. He was aghast at the opportunities that the tourist center offered for the spread of contagious diseases. Conditions were no doubt similar in most of the mountain villages, and the crowding in of summer visitors made the dangers of epidemics even greater. . . . Within the village the average family had a stable for the horse and one or more cows, a pigpen, a chicken lot, an outdoor privy, a spring, and a garden. No screens were used to keep the flies out of the houses. Garbage was thrown out to the pigs and chickens. Making matters worse, according to Dr. Alfred Mordecafs later account, every hotel had "a retinue of stable boys and domestic servants, who were very prone to use the back lots and bushes instead of the surface privies provided for them." Thus epidemics like typhoid, �68 / Chapter Three smallpox, and diphtheria had become serious matters in Watauga County. Dr. Brooks's solution was to call local townspeople together around his fireplace, where he patiently explained the health threats these habits were creating. "At 'smokers/ suppers, and other meetings the local citizens were roused to action." Speaking out at these meetings were, among others, two prominent Presbyterian summer people, the Rev. James I. Vance, and Charlotte lawyer and politician Cameron Morrison, who was elected Governor of North Carolina in 1920 and shortly afterward built a home in Mayview. "Soon the fly breeding places were eliminated. A chamber of commerce and other civic organizations developed from Dr. Brooks's work."13 ***** "But who will preach for us and advise when dark days are near?" asked a long time Rumple church member, Mary E. Weedon, at Tufts's death in 1923.14 She and other members had for a quarter century been reassured by the continuity and comfort Tufts had provided for the congregation at Blowing Rock. But as the town found itself increasingly transformed by the postwar boom, so, too, did Presbyterian work in Watauga and Avery counties. In 1922, when Spence was invited to preach in Blowing Rock, he was "mildly thrilled at the prospect of speaking to such a congregation of the elite as assembled for worship at this resort." But he was not yet ordained, nor was he ever called to Rumple. Two years later, just out of seminary and on a drive with friends to Banner Elk, Spence found that Tufts's church in Banner Elk still had no pastor. To this post he was called, and in October, 1924, he was ordained by Holston Presbytery, then in session at that place.15 Spence preached at Banner Elk, and at the chapel Tufts had established at nearby Arbor Dale, but did not assume his predecessor's other pulpits. In the meantime, the work Tufts had begun at another of his outlying preaching points, Shulls Mills,16 had also passed to another man-and altered dramatically by the rapid development of timbering in the area. Tufts had held occasional services from 1917 on at the commissary of the Boone Fork Lumber Company, owned by William Scott Whiting. Logging and sawmill operations had brought some one thousand residents to the community by that time. In 1919, Joseph Shull, a descendant of the original eighteenth-century settler for whom �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 69 an earlier grist mill was named, gave land upon which to build a Presbyterian church. And from New York the next autumn came thirtythree year old Charles G. McKaraher, Jr., a graduate of Columbia College and the Bible Teachers' Training School of New York, to serve as religious director for the employees of Whiting's company. Before his move South, McKaraher had worked in New York city missions and with immigrant labor, and had served as YMCA Secretary in Lockport. Licensed in 1919 in Mecklenburg Presbytery, he was ordained in October of the following year in Holston Presbytery, and installed as pastor of the newly-built Shulls Mills Presbyterian Church.17 As is apparent from his background, McKaraher took a major interest in Christian education and in work among disadvantaged of all sorts. He was evidently drawn by the "Industrial Democracy" philosophy espoused by Whiting at the lumbering operation in Shulls Mills. Workers were to follow the principles of the Golden Rule; leading classes and meetings to inculcate such principles was apparently one of McKaraher's duties for the company. It was an era of corporate paternalism in many Southern industrial towns.18 Whiting, an elder in McKaraher's church, seems to have been more concerned than some with the welfare of his work force and their families, as is evident from his support for MeKaraher's religious and educational efforts. McKaraher was to spend the last years of his life in Shulls Mills, as were the Whitings, even after the timbering ended and the company's operations and most of its employees moved elsewhere.19 Meanwhile, Blowing Rock Presbyterians still had no regular pastor. Spence seems not to have preached in Blowing Rock after his experience in 1922, but McKaraher came over from time to time during 1922 and 1923. Rumple Church records show him moderating the infrequent session meetings after Tufts's death. In May 1923 a congregational meeting discussed calling a minister; "it was decided to work out means and a way to secure a resident pastor which all agreeing was necessary for the best interest of the church." As McKaraher was then living in Shulls Mills, it is not clear whether this decision was intended as a way of encouraging him to settle in Blowing Rock, or whether the church at that point hoped to secure some other pastor. Just where a resident minister would have lived in 1923-24 is moot. Not until December 1926 were Joe White, Paul Klutts (sic) and Eugene Pitts appointed to a "building committee looking to the erection of a manse for the pastor," and five more years would go by until a house was built. By April 1924 the session had decided to call McKaraher to the �70 / Chapter Three Blowing Rock charge, for one-half his time, "beginning April 1st 1924." A congregational meeting to confirm this decision was held in December. The formalities of the call were observed at the spring meeting of Holston Presbytery in April, and McKaraher was installed at the church on May 7, 1925. "Present were Rev. W. C. Young, Rev. D. B. McLaughlin, Rev. McCoy Franklin, Rev. T. H. Spence, Jr., and Elder W. S. Whiting of Shulls Mills Presbyterian Church."20 McKaraher served the church until the end of 1928. During his pastorate a number of "firsts" were observed. New members received into the fellowship included Ethel Holshouser and William L. Holshouser, Jr., Paul Kluttz, Dennis Underdown, Helen Underdown "by letter from Stephens Lutheran Church, Lenoir," Pauline, Doris, and William White. For the first time the session was enlarged, by the election of Howard Kluttz as elder in December 1926. The first deacons, Eubert Holshouser, Howard Holshouser, and H. C. Hayes, were installed that same Sunday. The first every member canvass since 1921 was undertaken by the deacons in 1926; it must have been successful, as another was authorized the year following. Another "first" was the printing of programs for the July and August services, for the summer crowd's support of church operations continued to be crucial. Many of the summer people directly involved themselves at the church whenever they were in town; among those long remembered from this era were the Knox sisters of Salisbury, members of Rumple's former church, all of them "maiden ladies," as the expression went, who often taught Sunday school in the summers and who, late in life, provided a memorial stone for a substantial tract of land in Banner Elk which their father, J. M. Knox, had given the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association in 1924.21 For the first time, too, the church building underwent a major facelift.22 During the summer of 1927 an "advisory committee," consisting of Dr. Vance and summer resident Charles Cannon of Concord, met with the session "relative to recovering the Church and making necessary repairs." According to the session minutes, "W. L. Holshouser was instructed to buy slate roofing to cover the church as soon as approved by the architect." Dr. Martin a few years later recalled that the slate for the roofing project "was secured by Dr. Vance at a greatly reduced rate from a friend in Pennsylvania"; a receipted statement in the church records shows that Holshouser paid the Albion Vein Slate Company of Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania $333.94 at the end of 1928. In addition to whatever break in price the company offered, it gave another two percent reduction to the church, perhaps for cash payment in full. Architect for the project was Henry C. Hibbs (1882-1948) of Nash- �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 771 ville, a designer of ecclesiastical and educational buildings and an elder in Vance's church. Hibbs redesigned the facade and added the present portico, replacing the original porch.23 Hibbs's remodeling, which extended the rustic gothic features of the main building, gave the church a much more harmonious appearance. A comparison of photographs before and after the renovation shows that the work was considerable: the entire east wall of the church was faced in stone all the way to the roof peak, covering the wood siding which had originally begun about nine feet above ground. New windows, to let more light into the sanctuary, were added about halfway up the facade. The redesigned entrance portico admitted worshippers through outside doors facing north and south, rather than through a door directly at the end of the main aisle. The east wall of the new portico, constructed of the same stone as the rest of the building, provided a recessed opening, framed by a stonework arch, which in the summer of 1929 was filled with a stained glass window depicting Christ praying for His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. The window was given in memory of the church's first pastor, the Rev. Edgar Tufts. But as in the case of the Rumple window, no record of the contributors or of the window's manufacturer remains. The stone marker, "Rumple Memorial," was transferred to the new portico, but the carved stone lintel from the original porch was put to a curious use: part of it became a step to the new portico. Its abbreviated inscription, "fort Ye My People," is still legible to churchgoers entering the south door. What happened to the rest of the inscription (a portion of the famous verse from Isaiah 40:1, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, Saith the Lord")? No one now knows. Perhaps the stone broke when the old porch was taken down, or perhaps the lintel was just too long for a step and was cut to fit the space. While the remodeling project was underway, the Episcopalians were completing Saint Mary's of the Hills Church across the street. According to local lore, when the builder, Marshall Foster, wanted a particularly suitable rock for the keystone in the arch of the main entrance, he found the one he needed in the pile the Presbyterians had gathered for their own remodeling. And thus the Rumple congregation was able to recompense its neighbors for the frequent use it had made of their old building in earlier days. "So the Presbyterians say the keystone of the Episcopal Church is a Presbyterian rock."24 Redesign of the church entrance also served another function. The main door had been in direct line of sight of the pulpit; preachers had found themselves distracted during prayers and sermons by members of the congregation arriving late or departing early. The new portico did indeed place the entrances out of the line of the aisle, but the heavy �72 / Chapter Three solid doors created another problem: no one inside could see who was coming in. In the early 1960's elders Rudolph Greene and Owen Coffey cut small windows in the doors, solving the problem in an attractive way.25 ***** At least half of the Rev. McKaraher's time, and no doubt an even larger part of his energy, he gave to a school at Shulls Mills, the Boone Fork Academy. It was one of several institutes or academies in the Synod of AppalacWa which by the 1920's were nominally under Presbyterian control. As a function of home missions, presbyteries appointed their boards of trustees, but the schools actually depended almost entirely upon private funding; presbytery did little but commend them to the churches as worthy of support and encourage special offerings on their behalf.26 In Holston Presbytery the churches themselves could not be counted on for much help: there were "few selfsupporting churches within her bounds and none that could be called rich. . . . In taking over the four counties of North Carolina she assumed a tremendous Home Mission burden."27 Tuition at such schools was of necessity kept very low; many poor children attended free. At Boone Fork in 1924, "Two dollars paid tuition for one month for a day student; five dollars, tuition for one month and board for one week; . .. twenty-five dollars, a teacher's salary for one month."28 As of 1926, there were thirty-four pupils receiving scholarships, eighteen in the high school department. A teaching staff of five included the Rev. and Mrs. McKaraher. In 1924, partly with funds raised in presbytery, a boys' dormitory was erected. By about 1925 some $8,000 had been invested in the school; but in that year presbytery decided to discontinue further funding. The school's operating debt reportedly reached $1,950 by 1926. The 1921 deed to the school property had been made in the name of a joint board of trustees with the Shulls Mills Presbyterian Church which was to serve "for a term of five years, or until such time as the indebtedness upon the school property shall have been liquidated, at which time the school is to pass entirely under the care and control of Presbytery."29 That time never came. Logging and milling operations in Shulls Mills were being terminated by 1926; employees were moving away. The following year, presbytery recommended discontinuing its supervision of the Boone Fork Institute, and, although Mrs. McKaraher �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 73 apparently purchased a part of the property in her own name early in 1927, the prospects for the school were dim. Its last year of operation was 1928. At some time during that year, McKaraher seems to have made a desperate effort to revive the failing academy: a minister who was a member of a Mississippi presbytery, and something of a professional fundraiser, made a special appeal for money for the Institute during a service at the Blowing Rock church. Some $700 was raised, no doubt largely from among the summer people. When it was discovered that presbytery had not authorized such efforts, McKaraher had to appear before a special commission of Holston Presbytery to explain his actions. In October, in executive session, the commission found MeKaraher's explanations unsatisfactory; it also voted to lodge a complaint against the Mississippi-based preacher with his home presbytery. At the fall meeting of presbytery, McKaraher resigned as pastor of both the Shulls Mills and Blowing Rock churches, and was dismissed to the Presbyterian Church, USA. It was a sad end to a worthy effort. By 1928, however, the public schools, and the roads, had improved enough to permit the dwindling number of Shulls Mills youth the chance to continue their education at Cove Creek Elementary and Banner Elk High Schools. As for McKaraher, he spent the years 1931 to 1935 back in a Southern Church pulpit, preaching at the Burnsville and Low Gap Presbyterian Churches. In 1936 he and his family took up residence in Shulls Mills; the Ministerial Directory listed him as "without charge" until he died on November 5, 1972 at the Watauga County Hospital.30 If the actions against McKaraher seem unduly harsh by today's standards, they highlighted a chronic conflict in mission work and mountain education: schools provided by local governments continued until the 1920's to lag behind those available in larger towns and cities, thus encouraging home mission field workers to persevere in operating academies in rural areas where clear need existed. Yet the isolation and poverty of such regions made money-raising difficult and reliance on outside funding almost inevitable. In a lengthy report to Holston Presbytery in 1929, the home missions committee reiterated that the "policy of the committee and the Presbytery with respect to schools and educational activities during this period [1925-1929] has been to eliminate as rapidly as possible all competition with public schools and at the same time to standardize the school work which is carried on. The result of this policy has been that most of the small schools of the church have been discontinued or consolidated with the public schools. The entire educational program �74 / Chapter Three of the Presbytery, with respect to work above the elementary grades, now centers at Banner Elk where we have an accredited high school and a potential junior college."31 A similar policy was being pursued throughout the denomination. In 1931 an ad interim committee of the General Assembly "acknowledged that mission schools had been planted too promiscuously and sometimes poorly located"; the Assembly that year reconfirmed its intent to turn over its work to public authorities wherever possible. "In 1925 fourteen mountain [high] schools were maintained by the Assembly's Home Missions Committee. By 1934, there were only three, all in Kentucky."32 An era in mission education was ending. The collapse of the work at Shulls Mills must be seen as part of this larger trend. The departure of McKaraher again left the Blowing Rock church without a pastor. For more than a year the pulpit was officially listed as vacant. But in the interim, as he reported to Presbytery in 1929, "The Blowing Rock field has been supplied by the Superintendent of Home Missions and others." This superintendent was the muchtraveled Walter King Keys (1893-1973), who since 1925 had overseen "some remarkable advances" in home mission work in the region. Keys was a son of the Appalachian mountain region; he was to serve it and its people for most of his preaching career. One of three children born in Washington County, Virginia to a country storekeeper, the young Keys experienced early the heavy responsibilities that often went with life in the economically dependent area. His father lost the store, and his land, in the depression of the 1890's; then in 1904 he died, of exposure and cold. Keys's mother continued working in what had been the family business, but the eleven year-old boy had to drop out of school and take various lumbering and sawmilling jobs to help support the family. At his mother's insistence, Keys at sixteen went back to school. Early in life he had felt a call into the ministry. His father had nicknamed him "little preacher" even as a small child. And so, after finishing high school in Washington County and teaching school himself for a year, he entered King College in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1912. King was one of a number of small Southern Presbyterian colleges struggling early in the century to serve both church and the community. Founded shortly after the Civil War, its original board hoped it �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 75 would become a theological seminary. Many of its first students were Confederate veterans who wore their old uniforms to class. But the school soon blossomed into a liberal arts college, with a curriculum modeled on that of the University of Virginia. It did produce numerous ministers, including the Revs. James I. and Joseph Vance, whose father was at one time president of its board of trustees. Tuition was minimal. A tiny endowment raised by the founders prevented it "on more than one occasion . . . from closing its doors."33 Here Keys could study while living at home, repeating the experience of the Vance brothers. His classmates soon recognized Keys's talent for public speaking. He was elected senior class president and was valedictorian of the class of 1916. Keys stayed on to work for the Master's degree in 1917, then entered Union Seminary in Richmond, where he received the B.D. in 1920.34 In the fall of 1921, Keys married Eleanor Fell Fickle, of Bristol, Virginia. He was called to a group of churches in Charles City and New Kent Counties, Virginia, from 1920 to 1922, and then to Providence Forge and Cool Springs churches, also in rural Virginia, until being named superintendent of home missions and evangelist for Holston Presbytery at its spring 1925 meeting. From then until a breakdown forced him to resign his post in 1930, Keys traveled some ten thousand miles each year, visiting the churches, holding evangelistic services, and overseeing the various educational and fundraising operations of presbytery. Presbytery minutes of these years often included lengthy reports Keys prepared on his work. Two of his interests are especially evident from the record: his awareness of, and indeed promotion of, the area's potential for rapid economic development; and his concern to extend and upgrade the work and life of the region's churches. To Keys, the industrial growth of the area, and the newer type of agriculture which was producing crops for more distant markets, were bringing greater economic opportunity for the mountain people. "Huge enterprises and manufactories such as our fathers never dreamed of are rising in our midst," he wrote in 1929. "Certainly the outlook for this section is not a gloomy one. This means that there will be more people coming here all the while and more souls to be saved." To meet the need, he continually exhorted the churches to increase their level of giving while practicing "the utmost economy" in his own work.35 During 1929 Keys moderated five session meetings at Rumple Church. Late that spring he conducted special services for several days which brought a number of local residents forward to be baptized and received into the church: Lois Klutz, Mary Klutz, Edith White, Oma Green, Mrs. Cecil Critcher, Opal Pitts, Mae Tester, Beulah Lee Tester, �76 / Chapter Three and Cameron A. Williams. "Mrs. Lillie Hartley was received on statement of her having been member of the Reformed Church and restatement of her faith in Christ." Keys also urged the session to "place an electric sign board on the church yard, to have window cards, hotel signs, and a church paper covering the entire summer program printed." The session may well have considered calling Keys to the pastorate at Rumple, but early in 1930 his health failed him and he was forced to resign his post.36 In 1934 Keys and his wife moved with their three children to Roan Mountain, Tennessee, where both taught school until 1939. But his work at Blowing Rock had made an impression on the congregation. In 1940 he would receive the first of two calls to Rumple Church. ***** During 1929 Keys recommended that presbytery "authorize the grouping of the Banner Elk, Blowing Rock, and Shulls Mill [sic] Churches under one pastorate, and approve the appointment of a committee . . . to confer with said churches in effecting arrangements for such grouping," But this virtual recreation of Tufts's charge never occurred. In 1929, after five successful years, which had included a year and a half s leave of absence for additional study in Edinburgh, Scotland, Spence attempted to resign his pastorate at the Banner Elk Church and accept another call; his church did not want to let him go. A committee appointed by presbytery, after investigating the matter, recommended he be allowed to move. At the spring 1930 meeting of presbytery, the "Banner Elk-Blowing Rock field" was reported vacant. "Earnest effort is being made to secure God's man for this field soon."37 In the summer of 1930 another mountain preacher, the Rev. William R. Smith, Jr., a graduate of King College, 1915, and Union Seminary, 1924, left the pulpit of the Spruce Pine Presbyterian Church "to accept work as the director of religious activities with the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association at Banner Elk." Smith had spent a summer in the field at Shulls Mills while in seminary; he had served since 1926 on the staff of the Grandfather Home in Banner Elk. He would already have been familiar to many in the Blowing Rock church. On June 11, 1930, the session at Blowing Rock, moderated by the Rev. T. P. Johnson of Holston Presbytery, asked that Smith be appointed stated supply "until the next meeting of presbytery. The relationship is to con- �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 11 tinue until the request is made by session to discontinue it." On June 26, Smith got permission to "give to the Blowing Rock Church onefourth his time as stated supply." For almost exactly one year, until June 30, 1931, the Rev. Smith fulfilled his duties at Banner Elk and Blowing Rock, until he was granted a letter of dismission to Bluestone Presbytery in West Virginia. The Clerk of Presbytery at that time was "directed to write Mr. Smith a letter of appreciation of his services at Spruce Pine, N. C. and Banner Elk." Nothing was said of his services to Blowing Rock. Apparently Smith moderated just one session meeting (recorded only on a loose sheet of paper stuck in the minute book) during his year as stated supply; he undoubtedly considered his duties at Banner Elk his primary responsibility.38 This time the Blowing Rock pulpit was not vacant for long. On June 26, 1931, the recently ordained, twenty-nine year-old Grundy Sexton Buchanan, originally of Rich Valley, in Smyth County, Virginia, took over as pastor. He had been evangelist in Holston Presbytery for several months, working out of Rogersville, Tennessee, since graduating from Union Seminary in 1930. Buchanan had entered King College "late in life" (he was twenty-two) because it had been necessary to go away to high school, in Abington, to complete his secondary education; he graduated from King in the class of 1927. The minister later recalled he had "Godly parents" who saw that the large family was "trained in the true teachings and Doctrines of the Holy Bible and in the Traditions of the Presbyterian Church." Married to Nita Kensinger in May 1930, they had four children: Andrew Sexton, John Gatewood, David Campbell, and Betty Graham. His call to the church was formalized at a congregational meeting in September 1931, at which he was unanimously chosen as Rumple's first full-time pastor. A presbytery committee installed him on November 8. Buchanan served in Blowing Rock until April 1939. He later went on to a long ministry, mostly at mountain churches in Virginia. He died in 1986 at age 84.39 One of Buchanan's first actions was to attend to the spiritual life of his new congregation. "The session felt the need of a series of evangelistic services in the church and [set] the last two weeks in September" as the date, but for some reason the meetings were postponed until November. The Rev. John Martin assisted in these services. As often happened in such instances, the session shortly afterwards was called upon to examine individuals who presented themselves for baptism and church membership; some were relations of church members, a few were new to the fellowship. Joining in December 1931 were "Master William Teaster [sic]", William P. Klutz, Gladys Teaster, Bill White, �78 / Chapter Three and Miss Helen Sudderth. Mrs. Don Johnson also joined at this time, transferring her membership from a Baptist church, and her "little infant son, Steven Hawthorne Johnson" was baptized. The Rev. Martin attended this session meeting, no doubt to celebrate with the pastor the call of God to these new Christians.40 By the end of the church year 1931, membership stood at fifty. Another of Buchanan's obligations was to insure the church observed the Book of Church Order. Session meetings were to be held quarterly; they had been infrequent during the nearly two years the pulpit was vacant. The sacrament of communion was to be celebrated quarterly. And, "Due to the fact that the present plan of church finance seems inadequate, the Session unanimously adopted the envelope system and orders that it be put in practice immediately." The Depression years, and the absence of a regular pastor, had indeed been hard on the church's finances. Total giving for all causes during 1930 had been only $975, but in 1932 the church reported $3340 in receipts. The new pastor's salary still was supplemented from presbytery home mission funds, but increasingly the local congregation was being drawn into the support of the church, which grew greatly under his leadership.41 According to the Watauga Democrat in June, 1933, the "Rev. Buchanan has been taken in by the people of Blowing Rock and accepted as one of them and has made myriads of friends throughout the county." It was probably he who provided the church's nickname, "The Friendly Little Gray Church on the Mountain Top": the church was so "known to the thousands of tourist and resort followers" who visited in this period.42 Buchanan also helped to build the congregation's physical resources. During his years at Rumple, two structures which served the church for more than a generation were completed: a manse and a Sunday school plant. And as had become the pattern, summer residents played a major part in helping build his legacy. A fulltime pastor with a growing family needed a house to live in. For five years such a project had been stalled. But at the first session meeting Buchanan moderated, the decision was made to build a manse "on [the] church lot at [the] rear of [the] church"; it was actually built on the south side of the church, approximately where the 1970 educational building now stands.43 Dr. Vance preached a sermon and asked for a special offering on the fourth Sunday in July, 1931; $787 was collected toward the project in that Depression summer. The session authorized elder Joe White to draw up the plans and go ahead with the building, "appropriating money as far as [it] would go, and to secure as much free labor as possible." By November the job was done, at a cost of $2,000. It is not clear from the record how the rest was raised, or �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 79 which local people supplied the labor, but in March 1935, Eubert Holshouser, deacon and church treasurer, reported that "all bills were paid and obligations were met." March, 1933, marked a major psychological turning point in the economically depressed nation. Renewed public confidence had its reflection in Blowing Rock. When the church elders and deacons met around the pastor's supper table at the new manse on March 7, just three days after the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "a general discussion was held regarding the world condition relative to the church." The Rev. D. C. Amick, presbytery evangelist, was present to "bring out the church's need and God's challenge to his people." At a well-attended preaching service afterwards, Amick took his text from Malachi 3: 8-10: "Will a man rob God? ... Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." "The sermon was helpful and forceful," the minutes recorded. "We hope much good will come from this meeting. A determinate manifestation was to continue work by the help of God. Plans were made to have every member canvas on Sunday, March 19th." During the summer of 1933, the church co-sponsored with the Banner Elk Presbyterian Church a Bible conference which brought the Rev. Dr. F. Crossley Morgan, "one of the greatest living expositors of God's Word," to lead a week-long series of meetings at both places. "Trained for the Christian ministry by his father, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan," the well-known author, minister, and Bible teacher, the younger Morgan had been decorated for service in the British Army during First World War, and for several years had served Presbyterian pulpits throughout the South before going full time into Bible conference work. His appearance in Rumple's pulpit indicated the nature of the outreach the church was making to residents and summer people alike.44 As the church's membership increased, so, too, did its need for additional space. Sunday school enrollment by 1935 had reached 145, including the Cradle Roll, with a total of ten teachers and officers. But local resources remained inadequate to enlarge the church plant: out of a total of seventy-eight on the church roll, thirty members subscribed to the every member canvas in 1935, but their pledges toward local work and benevolences combined came to only $561.45 In its need, the session did not hesitate once again to turn to summer residents for help. The first Sunday in August, 1935, was set aside �80 / Chapter Three for a special offering "for the general expenses of the church." No record remains of the amount collected, but it must have come nowhere near what was hoped. At a congregational meeting that September, "A question was put before the house as to whether we would try and build a Sunday School plant or install a heating system in the main summer auditorium—there was [a] unanimous vote to install heat . . . and due to lack of funds . . . trust to future for our cherished dream of a Sunday School plant." By November 1935, excavation work and installation of the first central heating system for the stone church was completed. The Sunday school building would have to wait.46 ***** As the summer of 1936 approached, Blowing Rock Presbyterians began making plans to observe the church's fiftieth anniversary. One of the curiosities in the church's history is the decision to pick 1936, and not 1937, to celebrate the occasion. To be sure, the building had been erected, and dedicated by Dr. Rumple, fifty years earlier. But such careful followers of the Book of Church Order as the Revs. Buchanan, Vance, and Vardell, and Dr. Martin, must have known that until presbytery orders a church name entered on its roll, and accepts members, formal organization has not been effected. In Blowing Rock's case this did not occur until July, 1887. What clues exist for the decision to celebrate the semicentennial a year early? Still at the church are some of the materials collected for the event. Someone, presumably Buchanan, obtained in 1936 excerpts of Concord Presbytery records from the Historical Foundation at Montreat. These materials, along with some information on the church's current affairs, he turned over to Dr. Vardell, who seems to have been the guiding spirit behind preparing the sketch of the church's history. Vardell, in turn, delegated to his brother-in-law, Dr. Martin, the job of writing up the story of the building of the rock church. The original typescript of several pages covering only that subject, signed by Martin, is still extant in the church papers. These two men, along with elder Eubert Holshouser, would read the history to the congregation on July 26, 1936. Interestingly, the typed pages obtained from Montreat were "corrected" in longhand at some point by someone to make 1886 instead of 1887 the date for the church's organization. So a mis- �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 81 taken choice of date, if there was one, would most likely have been made by Vardell. Perhaps he had actually convinced himself that the records of Concord Presbytery were in error! But another clue exists as to why the celebration took place in 1936. By that year, all the church's living links to its founding were in retirement. Vardell had turned over leadership of Flora MacDonald to a younger man in 1930. Martin had retired as president of the Assembly's Training School in 1933. And in 1936 Dr. Vance stepped down as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Nashville; ill health now plagued the once-powerful preacher who over the years had done so much for the Blowing Rock church and community. No doubt all three men were feeling keenly their own mortality. It is significant that Vance apparently took no active part at the 1936 anniversary service, although he was most certainly in attendance. The celebration seems to have been entirely the idea of these men, in any case; nothing in the minutes shows the session ever discussed the matter. Might they not have feared that at least one of their number might not live to see the true anniversary date? Whatever the motive, the celebration was observed on July 26,1936. The program included an organ prelude played by Dell Bernhardt (Mrs. Henry) Wilson, a summer resident from Lenoir, who would later write The Grandfather and the Globe, a fictionalized account of local experiences during the Civil War. Hers was one of four generations of the Bernhardt family to summer in Blowing Rock. A soprano solo was sung by Christine Henkel, member of a "transplant" family originally of Lenoir and Statesville risen to prominence by its real estate transactions and ties to the summer community; but she was not a Rumple Church member. The choir sang an anthem by composer Charles Gounod, "Father of Heaven," which, the bulletin noted, had been played at the dedication of the first church.47 This fact could have been known to only a few people living. Perhaps Linda Rumple Vardell, herself an accomplished musician, knew it from her mother. The main address that Sunday, "Our Church-What She Has Done, Is Doing, and May Do," compiled by Vardell and Martin and later retyped and widely circulated locally, has served until now as the only written history of the church and has been cited frequently in this account. Several items in it of interest as of 1936, however, should be noted, as should some of its omissions. First, it included a page tracing the relationship between the church and the Grandfather Orphanage in Banner Elk. Vardell recounted his visit to Tufts's work in 1918, described his first collection of $1000 from the summer congregation at Rumple, and listed the amount of �82 / Chapter Three the annual offerings to date. The source for the figures Vardell gave is not known; if any records had been kept at the church, they have since disappeared. The Grandfather collections were at this time usually kept "off the books," anyway; they were not tallied among other church benevolences in the annual reports to the General Assembly. Possibly the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association supplied the numbers, but more likely they came from Vardell's own accounts, since all along the project had been dear to his heart. Up to 1936, the highest annual amount collected was $4,421.39 in 1925; but the 1927 sum was almost as high: $4,305.07. After reaching $4,000.00 in 1930, collections dropped to a Depression low of $2,530.73 in 1933; but by 1935 the amount had crept back upward to $2,660.78. Altogether the church had contributed $43,364.61 to the Home by 1936. By including in the church's history an account of the work done on the Home's behalf, Vardell undoubtedly did much to hallow the tradition. New promoters were soon to step forward who would help raise the amounts collected to even greater heights, but Grandfather Home Sunday has remained the single largest benefaction ever undertaken at Rumple Church. Another segment of the church's history described the support provided to the work of Mary G. Warfield, M.D., who had moved to Blowing Rock "In the providence of God" and at the urging of a number of local and summer people concerned especially for the "care of the mountain women at the time of childbirth." In 1928 she began a medical practice which lasted almost twenty years. Dr. Warfield joined Rumple Church in 1941. Her clinic was consistently supported, both by the local members and the summer residents, from the time of her arrival; she made many house calls as well. The care of infants and children was her chief interest: she held free "well baby" clinics and "tonsil clinics" for local residents, and as her practice grew, she needed a more permanent facility in which to work. A building just behind Rumple Church was erected and equipped for her between 1933 and 1935. Up to 1936 church members and summer people had donated more than five thousand dollars' worth of land, labor, and materials, while church offerings had procured several items of specialized equipment. To Dr. Warfield's work may be traced the origins of today's Blowing Rock Hospital. She retired to Tryon, N.C. in early 1947, turning over her practice to Dr. Charles Davant. And so the church had played a part in providing the community with its first modern health care facility. The sense of mission which Presbyterians had so often dis- �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 83 played in their dedication to schooling and to medical work had left another legacy of community service in Blowing Rock.48 The 1936 historical account said nothing about the important activities of the local Women's Auxiliary, or as such groups were becoming known in the denomination by the 1930's, the Women of the Church. As another form of community service and as a means for encouraging women's devotional worship, however, it deserved mention.49 The first record of women's work at the Blowing Rock church went back to 1906, when Mrs. Gaither Hall attended a meeting of the Women's Home and Missionary Union of Concord Presbytery, held in Salisbury that September. She was elected vice-president of the group for Watauga County. No records show the extent of that body's activity locally, and as Mrs. Hall moved away in 1907, it is uncertain who, if anyone, provided leadership after her departure.50 Then "on a cold, snowy day, January 30,1930," Mrs. J. H. VonCanon and Mrs. W. C. Tate, two prominent members of the Banner Elk Presbyterian Church, came over to meet at Mrs. W. L. Holshouser's home with a number of the Blowing Rock church women to help organize an Auxiliary. The original officers were: Mrs. H. F. Ingle, president, Mrs. H. P. Holshouser, vice-president, Mrs. E. G. Underdown, secretary, and Mrs. W. L. Holshouser, treasurer. "Friends from the Baptist church and the school... joined the Auxiliary in the observance of the day of prayer for schools and colleges." That summer the women of Holston Presbytery held a group conference at Rumple Church; "there were fifty-six ladies present, also several resident summer visitors." By the late 1930's, some of the projects which the Women of the Church had sponsored included: serving for Grace Hospital, and sending sheets and baby gowns to that cause in Banner Elk; taking collections for the "Birthday Projects" supported by the denomination's Women of the Church;51 holding "weeks of prayer and self-denial" and Bible study classes for the membership; sponsoring the first Daily Vacation Bible School in the summer of 1933; canning goods for shipment to Grandfather Home, starting in 1934; and making curtains for the new Sunday school building in 1936-7. Combined membership in two WOC circles by the time of the semicentennial stood at 25.52 The educational and service function of this organization is difficult to calculate, but it must have been great. For many women it served as their chief social outlet; for the church it was an important source of strength, both spiritual and material. It continues to play a key role in the life of the church to this day. �84 / Chapter Three ***** Annie Ludlow Cannon loved children. By 1936 she had generously supported for more than twenty years Presbyterian causes in Concord, in the mountains, and elsewhere. She and her husband Joseph F. Cannon during the 1920's built "Miramichi," the summer cottage in Mayview Park where she lived for some forty years. Nearby was the summer home of her brother-in-law, Ross Cannon, and his wife. Other Cannons, Charles A. "Charlie" Cannon and James "Jim" Cannon, also had summer places in town. All attended Rumple Church and aided its work; but Annie Cannon was closest to the young people. Probably no layperson so touched the lives of Rumple children as did Annie Cannon. Not only have both the church's educational buildings been made possible by her generosity; she was herself a dedicated Christian teacher. Many now in middle age remember her "Good News Bible Classes," which were open to all the town's youth. Her teaching was strikingly visual, and to a generation that had never seen television, and rarely a movie, her method left behind vivid impressions of the Biblical scenes and spiritual lessons she described. Using an easel to hold her large storyboard, she placed her oil-painted characters and symbols, backed with felt, against a flannel background, where they adhered during the story, or were easily moved as appropriate to the lesson. If now and then a piece fell to the floor, it only added to the children's delight. Her work was sponsored in Blowing Rock, Concord, and other places by the interdenominational Child Evangelism Fellowship. In her mature years she carried her lessons widely to other churches, local summer camps and adult groups as well. For the teenagers and young adults of the community, the Cannons' house was frequently open on Sunday evenings for hymn singing, refreshments, and fellowship. Older summer residents, too, often attended; here the generations met and some of the barriers between "local" and "summer" people were overcome.53 Until her death in March, 1965, at Blowing Rock, Annie Cannon seems to have demonstrated the gift of Christian charity to all she knew. She commanded nearly universal affection and respect, for despite disparities of wealth, she mixed amiably with many local people, regularly visiting prayer circle meetings, for example, at the home of Mrs. Martha Tester, who counted Mrs. Cannon "one of her dearest friends."54 Born in Winston-Salem in 1887, the same year Rumple Church was organized, she and her husband reared three children of their own, as well as a granddaughter, Anne Cannon Reynolds, who in 1938 joined �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 85 Rumple Church on profession of faith at age eight. By 1936 Mrs. Cannon had convinced her husband that she should provide in her will for Rumple Church; she was determined that the children she had come to love would have adequate facilities there, and that the congregation would be able to worship comfortably all year around. Yet she was not satisfied. It took some more convincing, but in that year she persuaded Joe Cannon that the project should not have to await her death.55 And so on Sunday, May 24, 1936, after church, she met with the session and "expressed her desire to build on adequate Sunday School rooms to the church and ask[ed] the permission of the session to do so, which was done with a deep appreciation of what Mrs. Cannon is and does for our church. The session voted to maintain said building after it is builded." Mrs. Cannon and Buchanan named the building committee: "Rev. G. S. Buchanan, ex-officio; Howard Holshouser, chairman; Joe White, Ed Underdown, Clark Brown, Mrs. W. L. Holshouser, W. L. Holshouser. The committee was to begin at once to plan and begin building." Everyone on the committee was a long-time local member except for Brown; he and his wife and two daughters lived three years, 1935-1938, in Blowing Rock, then returned to Jefferson, where they rejoined the Jefferson Presbyterian Church.56 By the semicentennial summer, then, work on the building was well underway. Contractor for the project was Cameron A. Williams, a church member after 1929 and builder of a number of homes in Blowing Rock. The work was done the old-fashioned way, with mules and drag pans; no mechanized equipment had yet appeared in town. Numerous local men worked on the project. Former clerk of session Rudolph Greene remembers helping lay floor tiles and doing other jobs; he was fourteen at the time.57 The building measured twenty-eight by fifty-four feet and was two stories high. Detached from the stone church, it projected some ten feet beyond the line of the original building on the north and came about even with it on the south. A covered alcove allowed passage from the two buildings; here the choir would wait on summer Sundays to enter the choirloft of the main sanctuary directly from an outside door. Above its rock foundation the new wing was finished in wood shingles. "On the first floor is a large room for the infant class, three other classrooms, a kitchen, a hall measuring 27 feet long by 10 feet 6 inches, and a furnace room that can be used as a classroom. The second floor is an auditorium with a rostrum and floor space measuring 40 by 27 feet."58 Over the next thirty-five years, the structure served as Sunday school plant and winter chapel as well; for it had become clear that �86 / Chapter Three the heating system just installed in the rock church was inadequate. The "auditorium," considerably remodeled and refurbished in recent years, still serves as winter chapel. In April 1987 it was named the Keys Chapel "To Honor the Ministry and Lives" of Dr. and Mrs. Keys, "Whose service to this Church and the Community of Blowing Rock endeared them to all." Sunday, October 4,1936, the day after the building was completed, a special all-day program celebrated the event, "setting [the new structure] apart to the teaching and preaching ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ." A "Rally Day Program" called "The Lighted Way" involved all the children—membership in the church school had reached 175 by 1936-during the morning. Buchanan delivered an address. Dinner on the grounds was served afterwards "to a large gathering." That afternoon "appropriate dedication services were held," the pastor preaching from Matthew 16:18: "I will build my Church." After the consecration, "The service was appropriately closed by the observance of the Lord's Supper." In a "Historical Note" for the session records Buchanan wrote, "This building was presented to the congregation by Mrs. Joe Cannon who paid for the erection of the building. May God bless her richly for this glorious deed and service to Him who is the great head of the Church."59 The new facilities led to an extension of the church's Sunday school program, and permitted other, wider outreach. The 1937 records provided a full list of teachers and workers then active: J. E. ("Peck") Holshouser, superintendent; L. D. (Dow) Tester, assistant superintendent; Mrs. W. L. Holshouser, treasurer; and Bob Hardin, secretary. Teachers were: men's Bible class, the Rev. Buchanan; women's Bible class, Mrs. W. L. Holshouser and Mrs. L. D. (Martha) Tester; young people's class, Mrs. Jane Story; intermediate girls' and boys' class, Mrs. Don Johnson; junior girls, Mrs. Buchanan; junior boys, Mrs. Jessie Burns; primary department, Mrs. Bill Holshouser; beginners' department, Mrs. J. E. Holshouser. A nursery and cradle roll department was unassigned that year. In 1937, the church gave over use of its new facilities to the fall meeting of Holston Presbytery. "The session voted to buy necessary foods which would not be donated such as the meats for the dinner to be served to Presbytery on Tuesday, October 5, 1937. And all necessary arrangements were made to cooperate in making Presbytery comfortable and happy while here."60 In 1938 session also voted to "sponsor the Boy Scout Troop No. 42 of Blowing Rock for the coming year 1939."61 The church at last had a plant which met the needs of its year round membership and allowed it a greater community role. �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 87 ***** During the interwar period, and for many years to come, the color line was still observed in Blowing Rock. The town had practically no permanent black residents. But the black "help" many of the summer people brought with them-chauffeurs, cooks, "nurses" for their children-were not accepted in the local churches. Rumple Church apparently allowed "the colored people" to use the old Sunday school room for services on Sunday evenings; it is not clear when this practice began. At a session meeting in June, 1932, the matter was discussed: would the practice go on that summer "as usual"? The session declared itself "not in favor of granting this permission, due to the fact that the young people of the church had spent a considerable sum of money to fix up the Sunday School room for their own use. The session advised, however, that the authorities be notified to this effect, and that special effort be made to secure another place." If none was found, the session agreed to reconsider the matter.62 Apparently none was. In early July the session met again on the issue. "It was decided to grant them permission, but should Dr. Vance, Dr. Vardell, or Dr. [sic] Dunn or other ministers decide to have services for them they are welcome to do so, but we refuse to turn over service to colored people without white supervision." The following summer the session was even more negative: the "colored people's" use of the building conflicted with Rumple's own evening program; "some among us feel offended"; the building was "in constant use" on Sundays, which prevented it being used by others; "we feel constrained to refuse the use of the church to the colored people. . . . The pastor was ordered to write the session's action to these colored people requesting services."63 But next month the session members relented a bit. Perhaps Vance, Vardell, and Dunn convinced them to permit use of the Sunday school room for a service on August 6,1933; "this is not a permanent arrangement."64 No record shows what happened in 1934, but in July 1935 the session met at Will Holshouser's store to go over the issue again. "All objections were brought out coming from others. After thoughtful and prayerful discussion, it was unanimously decided . . . to permit the colored people to use the Sunday school room with the understanding that the service was to begin at 8:30 p.m. and close at 9:30. This was due to the fact that long services have been held heretofore —to the interference and disturbance of the hospital at rear of church."65 Here �88 / Chapter Three matters stood for several years; not until the late 1940's, and another generation of leaders emerged, would new arrangements for the blacks' worship be worked out. ***** By the end of the 1930's, Rumple Memorial's membership had increased to 116. A fulltime pastor had obviously proved of enormous benefit to the congregation's growth and outreach. But the church's budget still did not allow for full support of the pastor's salary; Buchanan continued to get supplements from presbytery's home missions committee. Despite a doubled membership at the church, the minister got only one salary increase in seven full years of service, from $810 to $900 in 1934. The amount of presbytery's support had risen from $400 to $480 by 1939. His housing was of course taken care of. It is quite possible that some summer residents assisted him with gifts which went unreported, and he got paid for an occasional service conducted in some other church. Still, with a growing family to support, his checks would not have stretched far. The grand total raised in the church year 1938 from the permanent membership, for current expenses and for regular benevolent causes, was only $1505.96. The congregation had for several years been taking up a special summer collection to help cover its regular expenses; and in March 1939, as budget time again approached, the session discussed "raising our unsubscribed budget by private subscription among summer friends, thus eliminating the annual summer offering if possible." But the following month, after the session had accepted the next year's budget, which again foresaw no salary increase for the pastor, Buchanan asked to resign. Although the record says nothing of his reasons, he may have been discouraged by the church's inability to pay aU of his support.66 Buchanan's request touched off nearly a year of difficult times. The congregational meeting called to discuss his resignation resulted in a vote to keep him on; another meeting had to be convened to release him, for Buchanan had by then accepted a call to the Mount Carmel Church in Lee County, Virginia. A pulpit committee met several times, apparently without result, and Dr. Vardell was asked to "assist in supplying the pulpit until a pastor is secured." A "Rev. Mr. Fox" assisted at several services; he preached on the Sunday Mrs. Cannon joined by transfer of her church letter, on October 8,1939. A congrega- �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 89 tional meeting later that month called the Rev. Frank King, then serving several churches in and around Bristol, Virginia. But King did not come: he soon became instead assistant pastor at Idlewild Church in Memphis. The Rev. John Yelton, home missions superintendent for Holston Presbytery, preached and also moderated a number of session meetings during this period. A product of Plumtree School and a summer worker at Shulls Mills in earlier days, Yelton would have been familiar with the area, and also with the recovery to health of the man who had been his predecessor at presbytery. It was Yelton who, at a meeting in March, 1940, "after telling of the life and work of Rev. Keys, asked the congregation to vote by ballot on the question of calling Rev. Keys to the pastorship." The vote was overwhelmingly in favor. Keys was given the annual salary of $1500, only about $120 more than his predecessor had received, but subventions from presbytery were no longer requested. Keys was to be the first pastor at Rumple Church fully supported from locally-donated funds. A new and still more active chapter in Rumple Memorial's history was about to open.67 �90 / Chapter Three Notes for Chapter Three 1. "Business Section of Blowing Rock Almost Completely Destroyed," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 12. "Around Town," ibid., p. 37. 2. "From the Charlotte Observer: Improvements Made In Blowing Rock," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 13. The Observer's owner from 1892 to 1914, Daniel A. Tompkins, had a summer home in Blowing Rock from 1909 until his death. The newspaper, under his successors, was a strong supporter of the North Carolina "Good Roads" movement, which was a great benefit to the state's mountain regions. Claiborne, The Charlotte Observer, pp. 141,143. 3. The road from Valle Crucis via Shulls Mills to Blowing Rock was also apparently a toll road until about this time: Lois Hayes, "An Account of the Shulls Mills Settlement Until 1940," in Sanna Gaffney, et. al, The Heritage of Watauga County, North Carolina, Volume I, 1984 (Winston-Salem, NC: Hunter Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 71-73. Hereinafter cited as Hayes, "An Account." 4. Letter, Dr. W. J. Martin to W. J. Martin III, July 13, 1921, in W. J. Martin papers, Davidson College Library. By this date the Martins also had a summer home at Montreat; Martin had bought a lot there in 1913. The family spent part of each summer at each place. 5. "Around Town," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 7. 6. "Autos Brings [sic] About Early Changes," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 62. 7. "From the Charlotte Observer: Improvements Made in Blowing Rock," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 13. 8. "Early Horse Show Days Recalled," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 66. 9. Vardell-Gage, "Blowing Rock Memories." According to Gage's recollection, Mayview was named by artist Elliott Dangerfield for his first wife. 10. Ernestine may thus have attracted the eye of Mayview developer Walter Alexander; she later became his wife: ibid. 11. Thomas Hugh Spence, Jr., An Annotated Autobiography (Montreat, NC: For Private Distribution, 1981). p. 39. Hereinafter cited as Spence, A u to biography. 12. William C. Cannon of Concord, who has summered at Blowing Rock since he was a year old (he was born in 1913) recalls that his family's place, now owned by his sister and her husband, Mariam and Bob Hayes, across from the Green Park Inn, had its own electric generator and water supply, a tank in the attic supplied from a spring which had to be filled every day. Oral interview, January 1987. See also Vardell-Gage, "Blowing Rock Memories," section titled "Utilities." Rumple Church seems to have been wired for electricity in late �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 91 1923; the first record in Holshouser's accounts of a bill "for electric lights," in the amount of $6, was paid in November of that year. RMPC Session Records, old book, p. 115. 13. Ina Woestmeyer Van Noppen and John J. Van Noppen, Western North Carolina Since the Civil War (Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1973), pp. 110-111, citing Alfred Mordecai, "James Edwin Brooks, M.D." (North Carolina Medical Journal [June, 1958]). 14. Letter, M. E. Weedon to Bessie Tufts, 4.20.23., kindly provided to the author by Margaret Tufts Neal. 15. Spence, Autobiography, pp. 39-42. 16. The name of the settlement is spelled alternately ShulTs Mill, Shulls Mills, and ShulFs Mills in various accounts. It seems the church, when it was registered in Presbytery, was called the Shulls Mills Presbyterian Church. 17. Ministerial Directory, 1940 edition. Neal, Sacred Flame, p. 78. Hayes, "An Account," pp. 71-73. The Shulls Mills Church was organized October 10,1919, with eleven charter members; W. S. Whiting and C. D. Fox were elected and installed as elders: Minutes of Holston Presbytery, fall 1920 meeting. 18. Tindall, Emergence of the New South, pp. 326-330. Kate Peterson, "Boone Fork Institute," Watauga County Times... past (September 1984), pp. 2-5. 19. Hayes, "An Account," p. 73. 20. RMPC Session Records, pp. 20-23; Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1925 and fall 1925. The Rev. Christopher McCoy Franklin, a Crossnore natve, was "president and co-founder" of the Crossnore School and pastor of the Crossnore Presbyterian Church, 1920-1933; Ministerial Directory, 1975 ed. 21. Neal, Sacred Flame, p. 116-117; and oral interviews with Jo Greene, July 1987, and William Cannon, January 1987. The Cannon home was next door to the Knoxes, across from the Green Park Inn. Cannon remembers the Knox sisters as "wonderful neighbors" and loyal Presbyterians; they always kept his family informed as to who was preaching each week at the church. None of the sisters ever married; the story went that their father never found any man worthy enough for them. 22. In 1921 a Sunday school room had been added at the rear of the church, with $450 borrowed from Lees-McRae Institute. No picture or description of this room has survived. It was removed during the construction of the chapel wing in 1936: RMPC session records, p. 18. 23. RMPC, Session Minutes, Book I; Martin, "1936 History," p. 6. Hibbs also designed the new Maxwell B. Chambers building at Davidson during this period. In 1929 he received gold medals for his church and college building architecture at the Southern Exhibit in Memphis: Who's Who in America, 1948-49 edition. 24. Vardell-Gage, "Blowing Rock Memories." �92 / Chapter Three 25. Interview with Rudolph Greene, December 1986. Greene recalled that while he and Coffey were working on the project, Rev. Blake Brinkerhoff drove by the church and saw the work in progress, but did not notice Coffey, who was working inside. The next Sunday in church the preacher told the congregation what a great job Greene had done, not acknowledging Coffey. Greene remembered he "felt like falling through the floor," but Coffey "got a kick out of it." 26. The Manual of Abingdon Presbytery charged the home missions committee "To have the oversight of mission schools, the superintendent visiting the schools and examining the pupils on their Bible course ... [and] to guarantee the salaries of all workers, seeing that as much as possible is raised in the field, and the balance paid from our treasury." Presumably Holston Presbytery had similar arrangements: Edward Marshall Craig, comp. and ed., Highways and Byways of Appalachia: A Study of the Work of the Synod ofAppalachia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1927), p. 31. 27. Ibid., p. 47. 28. Peterson, "Boone Fork Institute," pp. 3-4. 29. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, fall 1921 meeting. 30. Ministerial Directory, 1956 edition; information on his death from Watauga County Register of Deeds Office. 31. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1929 meeting. 32. Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterian Missions in the Southern United States (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1934), p. 239 and passim. 33. Tilden Scherer, "King College," in Highways and Byways, pp. 101-110; quotation on pp. 108-109. Scherer had been chosen president of the college in 1911. In 1917 King moved to a new campus outside of town; in 1931 it became co-educational when mounting debts forced the closing of Stonewall Jackson College for women in Abingdon, which was consolidated with King: Thompson, Presbyterians, III, 171-173. 34. "This is Your Life," scrapbook complied by Carolyn Forrest, 1963, as a tribute to Keys at his retirement from Bee Ridge Presbyterian Church. Lent to the author by his daughter, Julia Keys Williams. 35. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1929 meeting, pp. 29-30. The section Keys prepared on "Home Mission Work in Holston Presbytery," in Highways and Byways, pp. 41-50, also touts the scenic splendors of the region; Keys asked his readers, "Would it not be both delightful and profitable for the members of our churches to visit the Home Mission work of Holston Presbytery and at the same time see the wonders of the country in which it is being carried on? Let's 'See Holston Presbytery, and the Synod of Appalachia, first.'" Keys later became one of Blowing Rock's most enthusiastic promoters of tourism: during the early 1950's he served as secretary of the town's chamber of commerce; see next chapter. �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 93 36. RMPC Session Records, pp. 30-32. Early in 1931, Mrs. Keys wrote to Presbytery gratefully acknowledging the continuation of Keys's salary through the year 1930, but told Presbytery it "had done all they had a right to expect, that there was no possibility Mr. Keys would soon be able to undertake the strenuous work of superintendent," and that the committee should seek another for the position: Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1931 meeting. 37. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1930 meeting. 38. Ibid., spring 1931 meeting. RMPC session records, old book, pp. 33-34. UTS General Catalog, p. 199. The work Tufts and McKaraher had done at Shulls Mills was a seedbed of later service: in addition to Smith, another summer field worker, the Rev. John Yelton, would go on to hold important posts in Holston Presbytery. Still another who worked there during the 1920's was R. H. Hardin, M.D., whom Whiting had hired to provide medical care for his employees. In 1925 Hardin moved with his family to Banner Elk, where he became a permanent member of the staff at Grace Hospital: Neal, Sacred Flame, pp. 148-150. 39. RMPC Session Records, Book I, pp. 24-27. Perhaps as a way of learning the church's history, Buchanan in 1932 copied in his own hand all the earlier session minutes into a new book. Comparison with the original records shows he made a few errors; to this point I have cited the original records. His installation: Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1932 meeting, p. 12. His service: Ministerial Directory, 1983 edition, and "A Reflective Autobiographical Sketch of the Life and Ministry in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. of Grundy Sexton Buchanan," in WOC History of Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church, Hot Springs, Va., for 1971, at Historical Foundation, Montreat. Buchanan later called his ministry at Blowing Rock "a most happy" one. In addition to the building of the manse and educational building, he recalled that "the foundation for a church was laid in the nearby town of Boone" during his time. 40. RMPC, Session Records, Book I, pp. 38-39. The Rev. Martin held another series of services in late November, 1935; fifteen additional members were added at that time. Most were descendants of the various families who by now were making up much of the local membership: Greenes, Walsers, Whites. 41. Ibid., p. 34. Excerpts from statistical tables in Minutes of General Assembly of PCUS, prepared for the church March 13, 1933 by Historical Foundation, Montreat, N.C.; in RMPC records. 42. "Little Stone Presbyterian Church At Blowing Rock Attracts Visitors," Watauga Democrat, June 1, 1933, p. 3. The article by Arnold Coffey gave a short history of the church, used a picture of Dr. Vance as illustration, and listed the entire fifty-seven person membership. Jim O'Dell, ASU graduate student and son of former elder Jim O'Dell, kindly supplied this reference. 43. The building of the manse necessitated moving some grave markers which had stood on the church's south side, presumably dating from the congregation's earliest days. Old photographs show a few headstones on the site; these were apparently put under the stone church at this time. �94 / Chapter Three 44. "Bible Conference," pamphlet for August 6-11, 1933, services, in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 45. RMPC Session Records, new book, p. 57. 46. Ibid., pp. 61-62. 47. Church Bulletin, July 26,1936; original preserved in Perry Lentz's family, copies in church records. 48. 1936 History," p. 8; "Mary Campbell Warfield Was Dedicated Doctor of 1930-1946," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 21. Much of Dr. Warfield's work must have been done at virtual charity rates. Rudolph Greene recalls that once when he received a leg injury on his job with the telephone company, Dr. Warfield dressed his wound and treated him for thirty cents — and that included the cost of the bandage: oral interview, December 1986. 49. Perhaps because VardeU and Martin were summer people, they knew little of the women's work; it would be uncharitable to think they considered it unimportant, especially as Vardell's school, Flora MacDonald, considered one of its major functions to be the training of young women for the life of Christian service, whether at home or in the church. 50. Minutes of Stated Meeting of Concord Presbytery, September 1906, p. 195. 51. For the denomination's WOC activity and its attitude toward women generally in this era see Thompson, Presbyterians, III, 384-402: Southern Presbyterian women were slow to organize, compared to other Protestant groups in the United States, and they encountered some opposition from conservatives within the church; a denominational Women's Auxiliary can be dated to 1912. From 1922, the tenth anniversary of the organization, a "birthday gift" offering was authorized each year to be raised by the women for one of the church's many worthy causes at home or abroad. By 1959 "the total of 38 birthday gift offerings was in excess of three and a half million dollars. The abiding value of these gifts, for a wide variety of projects, often imaginatively conceived, is beyond estimation." Ibid., p. 393. 52. "History of the Woman's Auxiliary of Blowing Rock Presbyterian Church," historical sketch to 1937 written by Mrs. H. F. Ingle; at Historical Foundation, Montreat. The WOC histories for RMPC, and other churches in the denomination, are an important local history source at the Foundation. A rare honor is to be chosen "Honorary Life Member" of the WOC; since its founding only eight have been so designated: Alma Robbins, Mary White, Sarah Payne, Ethel Burns, Alice Lentz, Mabel Holshouser, Merle Weakley, and Mary Smith. Information supplied by Mary Smith and Bernie Greene, November 1987. 53. So, too, were the barriers overcome between employer and employee: in the Cannons' employ for many years were Wade and Jeba Klutz, who came with them each summer to Blowing Rock; the couple participated actively at Rumple Church, frequently assisted Mrs. Cannon with her "scene-o-felt" lessons, and took part in all sorts of community activities. A close friend recalls that Wade Klutz had been hired by Joe Cannon to look after his wife and her �From Mission to Mainstream, 1923-1940 / 95 business affairs sometime in the early 1930's. Klutz, originally from near Salisbury, had been an automobile dealer in Charlotte when Cannon met him. The Klutzes accompanied the Cannons on their annual trips from Concord to Blowing Rock to Pass-a-griUe, Florida, where they later had a winter home. Oral interview with Jo Greene, July 1987. See also "Mrs. Cannon's Work Long Remembered," The Blowing Rocket, special edition, p. 28. 54. Oral interview with church member Gladys Tester, daughter of L. D. and Martha Tester, December 1987. 55. Interview with Jo Greene, July 1987; as someone very close to the Cannon family —she practically raised Annie Cannon's grandson, Zack Tate—Jo Greene was in a position to hear many of the family stories which have been passed on about the Joseph Cannons. No record remains locally of the cost of the 1936 project. 56. RMPC Session Records, Book I, pp. 74-77. For the Browns: entries for December 1, 1935, and December 11, 1938, pp. 65, 101. Brown was elected deacon in April, 1936, serving until he was "reluctantly granted" his letter to the Jefferson church: ibid,, Register of Deacons. 57. Oral interview with Rudolph Greene, January 1987. 58. "1936 Church History," p. 4. 59. RMPC Session Records, Book I, p. 77. 60. Ibid., p. 89. 61. Ibid., p. 102. 62. Ibid,, p. 31. 63. Ibid,, p. 31. 64. Ibid., p. 40. 65. Ibid., p. 60. After that summer R. A. Dunn wrote his "personal appreciations for the way the church provided religious worship for the colored servants during summer. Also a check [was] presented for church expenses to the amt of $25.00. The clerk was ordered to acknowledge by letter the same." Ibid., p. 63. For more on Dunn, see chapter five. 66. Ibid., pp. 104-107. 67. Ibid., pp. 109-114. Ministerial Directory, 1986 edition, and Neal, Sacred Flame, p. 78. �This page intentionally left blank �trr^gg ;:s=p> Main Street, Blowing Rock, in the 1890's. The first church structure is visible through the trees on the left in this, the only known photograph extant of it. �The Rev. Jethro Rumple, D. D. The Rev. C. A. Munroe, pastor of the Lenoir Church and chairman of the home missions committee of Concord Presbytery. This picture must have been taken about the time he was active in the establishment of the Blowing Rock Church. �The Rev. Dr. James I. Vance, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Nashville, summered in Blowing Rock beginning about 1900, preaching often and powerfully at Rumple Church, His eloquence helped bring in the funds which made possible the building of the stone church and the congregation's support of Grandfather Home for some twenty years until his death in 1939. The Rev. Dr. Charles G. Vardell, first president of Flora Macdonald College in Red Springs, labored energetically on the stone church building project along with his brother-in-law, Dr. William J. Martin. His fundraising abilities were extended for years on behalf of Tufts's work in Banner Elk. Dr. William J. Martin, son of Col. William J. Martin of Davidson College. Dr. Martin, president of Davidson, 1912-1929, summered in Blowing Rock most of his life and designed the present stone sanctuary in 1905-6. "The Drs. Sloop," Mary Martin and Eustace H., in the early 1950's. Their 1908 wedding may have been the first in the stone sanctuary, which had been designed by Mrs. Sloop's brother. They devoted their adult years to medical and educational work in Crossnore. �^ ^* ^ ^ O*^ ^%^^^t^^^^>C^ <?<**M--C j^^^^*— &~~]jf frr&***~~fr~*~ &~&sl^£. ^^t^^^^^^L^^L^^ . '^f^l^&^l^ ^- f /fV ^.. • ^ ^CX • * ' ^ * ' • ^ / I / jT . ^ . ^ '. '-./?" ^ ^ 4<^<e^^<^^^ . "• \*:^e^t^*:' '(^^^^^ A letter in Dr. Rumple's hand, written from Blowing Rock to one of his Salisbury parishioners at the time of Rumple's wife's death. Photocopy of original at First Presbyterian Church, Salisbury, NC. �^ir^^-^^'T^^-ty^- ^^^^^^^%^?^'^/^^ >^TM^~ 1?c *>^&<y3s jg&wx?'^ -^^ -^^7ty*?2' '^^ ^ -^o^^^^'^^^ ^ t ^ 7^"%r^ *y t " �Rose Young McDade, sister of Hattie Young Brown, poses beside the rock church, about 1922, when she was twenty-two, and an organizer and teacher of Children's Day programs at Rumple Church. Reproduced from a postcard; the church was a popular backdrop for photographs for many years. Courtesy of Mrs. Brown. �Skyland Inn Here's a house founded on a rock, Forming a terrace overlooking The View, Where lovely vista is visualized, And Dreamland seems to be true. The grounds are just as they were created, With rocks of peculiar forms, Rhodendron and azaleas in gorgeous splendor, And trees that have braved many storms. A page from a pamphlet on Blowing Rock, published in the mid-1920's. Mrs. Emma R. Stewart, who first promoted the cause of building the church, ran the Skyland Inn for many years. Much altered, it is today the Farm House Restaurant. Pamphlet (cover is missing) from the VardellMcNett family records, courtesy of Linda M. Yarnell. �On the steps of the Vardell family summer residence, on Chestnut Hill, Blowing Rock, summer 1926: a photograph remarkable for its many Presbyterians. Back row: Jennie Rumple Martin, Dr. William J. Martin, Edward H. Williamson, Dr. Alexander Sprunt II, Katherine Vardell Williamson, Mrs. Alexander Sprunt II, Charles G. Vardell holding Libby V. McNett, Linda Lee Rumple Vardell, Ruth Vardell Gage; center row: James Murray, Elizabeth Vardell McNett, Charles Gildersleeve Vardell, Kitty Martin, Kitty Williamson, Vardell Williamson, Mary Linda Vardell (later Mrs. Ellison Smyth); front: Jane Dickson Vardell Murray, Eleanor Vardell Sprunt holding "Margita" Vardell, Edwin Holt Williamson, Eloise Martin Currie, Margaret Vardell Sprunt, Dr. Armand L. Currie, Alexander Sprunt III. Dog is unidentified! Photo courtesy of Linda McNett Yarnell, with additional identifications provided by Mary Linda Vardell Smyth. �FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the c 1 Blowin£> (R,ock Presbyteriaii Quireh B L O W I N G ROCK, N. C. Rev. G, S. B u c h a n a n , 1 5 astor July 26, 25, 1936 The Session R r v . G Sexton flue'in n a n , Mi>u<:rator E. G. Umienlown I l o w a n i Klutz J. E. Holshouser Joe W h i l e \\* L. H (i Is fit/ us t»r. CHTK The "Fiftieth" Anniversary Bulletin �Mr. and Mrs. L. Dow Tester, in their yard, taken about 1940. Both were very active church members in that era. Photo by Emerson Humphrey, courtesy of their daughter, Gladys Tester. A Grandfather Home Day during World War II. In The Blowing Rocket the original caption read, "Sparkplugs of the Grandfather Home Day celebration at Blowing Rock. Left to right: Miss Anne Bryan, superintendent of the Orphanage, Rev. Dr. Walter K. Keys, pastor of the Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church where special service was held, Dr. W. T. Tate, president of Edgar Tufts Memorial Association, and the three nationally-known artists who appeared at the service, Stuart Ross, pianist, Jean Watson, contralto, and Mac Morgan, baritone. The youngsters in front are three happy orphans from the Home." �David Ovens, Charlotte merchant and Blowing Rock summer resident, sponsor of the Grandfather Home benefit concerts from 1940 to his death in 1957; from a portrait by A. P. Fox. R. A. Dunn, Charlotte banker and Blowing Rock summer resident; his endowment for the youth of Blowing Rock still supports Christian activities through the church. Photocopied from a frontispiece to a pamphlet he prepared in 1932 on the history of Charlotte's First Presbyterian Church; copy at the Presbyterian Archives, M on treat. Interior of the stone sanctuary, decorated for Christmas, 1945. Note the absence of overhead lighting. The heavy exterior door, to the left in the picture, has been replaced with an interior one since the addition of the Cannon education building. ��Mrs. Maud Ingle, first president of Rumple Memorial's Women of the Church organization. Mrs. Joseph C. (Annie Ludow) Cannon, who over the years was Rumple Church's largest single benefactor. Her "scene-o-felt" Bible Classes were widely attended and loved by Blowing Rock children from the 1940's to the early 1960's. Photo taken about 1962. Building the Cannon education wing, 1969. This photo shows the original dimensions of the 1936 chapel building, and the covered connecting passage to the stone church. It ran in The Blowing Rocket that summer with the caption, "Dreams Come True." �Rumple Memorial... "Rumple Memorial . . . Through The Years": These drawings and photos were assembled about 1980 for the first Rumple Church Pictorial Directory. (1) Artist Jerry Miller's sketch, dating from about 1980, was used on note paper and on Sunday bulletins in recent years. (2) The original porch on the stone church, before the 1928-29 remodeling; comparison with later photos shows that the remodeling was extensive. (3) A fuller view of the original stone church, issued as a hand-colored postcard during the Tufts era. Barely visible at the left are a few gravestones. (4) The church in the 1930's, showing a corner of the first manse, later used as a fellowship �Through The Years building, and a street sign erected at the Rev. Keys's urging. (5) In the 1940's, the church displayed a new sign, and the spruce tree, once a shrub, dominated the south entry. (6) By the late 1950's, a still more elaborate sign had been erected; the spruce tree had overgrown the entry. (7) Shortly after the Cannon Educational Building, visible at the left of the photo, was completed in 1970, the spruce was cut down. (8) The architects' 1969 drawing of the proposed educational building has a minor inaccuracy: it shows more of the winter chapel than was actually incorporated in the new structure. .,. . -f? If ', ' :'jj;:3i::a,t4a :,}{; J,, *:?JSS=a-t;«5»«?i 4pi>**Mi .-*wSa9P*^ ««»<«i*%*^«i a'O«\ :?'•• -"',:'*; -/- '•:*"".., -~x. SSS-'^;' ^ IT' ^c^^ftsi^pPicS?: - it' " >? * • ; * " - ^%ptf|?lt|^^! ^fiST;';::- - . f7 ;: �Centennial feat 1887-#87 J887-J905 I ! Ml ^«;:W iff £-vif-5;'ivi jLj'~t;;-fc>j| -*'* 7b oil ar0 to all to to to ail are all -its5 Blotoing Minister AM The One Hundredth Anniversary Bulletin sin. a �Of JUNE 14, IN AWO THE 1n A of the and It A In This For C. for this In this for «nd and tnd for is t In *nd ; go on thy One : ¥11 Jtff Or. flit Tht Ibt Tht 8. i . of flit of ttf : Stil of tht : of tit i . : Tht &r» Earl V, E. of ti* : U.S. of 4«d BiWt to tht 1887 , of N£. 1 Jr. of and of CIN TO 10 TIC PEW AND PASS IT TO CtC TO SIGN THE ARE PAO ON f€MT TO YOU.) of and the if of 6. 8. of N.C. �AH ON THE By V. of I ^ of th* , and your gifts to your servant -Jethro of these gifts as of churches, es o in proudly bears his THE For We of Or, as he to and Divine grace to the you for his of the THE For We and and as the w« you for his as of this you and the of up his of the of v* §011 In servant Jethro to proclaim the of Christ, in spite of the tragic toss of his and the life's companion Jennie. 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I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................... and .............................................. by the of in and the Dr. NC Dr. the Dr. and W.J. and at the ). and the the this Is a Dr. and the of the ( ). % «,i-.i % / I ^ I Jr. of of the its G. W J, of �The Rev. Edgar Tufts, 1897-1923 (photo courtesy of M. T. Neal) The Rev. W. R. Smith, interim, 1929-1930 The Rev. G. S. Buchanan, 1931-1939 The Rev. W. K. Keys, 1940-1948, 1956-1960 The Rev. R. D. Earnest, 1948-1950 �The Rev. S. Cappel, 1950-1951 The Rev. L. T. Newland, 1951-1956 r . J<5* " The Rev. A. B. Brinkerhoff, 1960-1965 The Rev. J. R. Holshouser, 1965-1973 The Rev. F. C. Collier, 1973-1978 The Rev. V. E. Hartsell, 1980- �On "Rumple Sunday," June 14, 1987, all persons in the congregation with connections to Davidson College were asked to pose with the minister; the college was celebrating its own sesquicentennial in 1987. First row, L to r.: The Rev. Vaughn Earl Hartsell, minister of Rumple Memorial; Rand Hartsell, his son, '86; William L. Holshouser of Banner Elk, '33; Mariam Cannon Hayes, member of Board of Trustees; William C. Cannon, Jr., '36; The Rev. L. C. Gibbs, '25; Jane Campbell, '87; Rupert Barber, professor of theater and coordinator of the college's sesquicentennial celebration; Jay May, '70, director of alumni affairs. Second row, 1. to r.: The Rev. Dr. John W. Kuykendall, '59, president of the college; the Hon. James E. Holshouser, Jr., '56, former governor of North Carolina; Allen Mast, '86, his nephew; Allen Compton, '88; Charles Fleming, '50, college director of personnel and administrative services; Rutledge Miller, MD, '39; Dr. Donald B. Saunders, '62; Prof. Emeritus and College Archivist Chalmers G. Davidson, '28. �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 BY 1940, THE YEAR Keys was called to Blowing Rock, war clouds loomed over the United States; Europe and Asia were already ablaze. Presbyterian missions abroad had been seriously disrupted. Two foreign missionaries whose work was cut short would later minister at or near Rumple Church: Leroy T. Newland and Thompson B. Southall, Jr. Both men had served in Korea. Dr. Newland spent nearly thirty years there, from 1911 to 1940; Southall returned from three years' service in 1941. Newland took the reins at Rumple later during the 1950's, while Southall was called to the Banner Elk Church upon his arrival back in the United States and served there until 1946. He was among several guest speakers at Rumple during the summer of 1941. It was also SouthalFs duty to lead the funeral service for Edgar H. Tufts, who died in June 1942 at the age of 42, and was buried alongside his father near the Banner Elk church.1 In many other ways, too, the World War II era affected the life of the larger church. Holston Presbytery had reported a decline in support for home missions between 1929 and 1941: the number of workers in the field had dropped from fifty to seventeen. "In the same period of time our income from Presbytery's Home Missions has decreased almost one half, and our work has increased about one third." But the home missions committee reported by 1941 that "more interest has been [shown] in assuming more of the financial responsibility and in local improvements" in the churches.2 Churches were temporarily less mission-oriented and more attentive to needs at home. The war was soon to bring increases in chaplaincies and in "camp" work at military bases. One who served as chaplain, and later bought a summer home in Blowing Rock and often preached in Rumple's pulpit, was the Rev. Charles Lynnwood Brown, a 1937 Davidson College graduate who fin97 �98 / Chapter Four ished his degree at Union Seminary just as the war began. He saw duty with the 82nd Airborne Division from 1942 to 1946. Rumple Church conformed in several ways to the denomination's pattern of experiences during these years. Keys came as its first pastor fully supported by the local congregation, and beneficiary of the recently completed education building. Yet his own family's lives, and those of many in his congregation, were soon to be troubled by the events abroad. Relatively little in the wartime session records reflects the losses and uncertainties the fellowship suffered through this period. To all appearances the church went from success to success. The membership numbers continued to climb, as did Sunday school enrollments and the number of infant baptisms. Blowing Rock's "baby boom" started early: the term is usually given only the generation of children born after World War II. More adults than children still were baptized during the war, however. And while gasoline was rationed and construction work on the Blue Ridge Parkway was suspended, summer people did not stop crowding into town; the session minutes for September 1942 claimed the summer had seen "the largest crowds and the largest offering in the church's history." The annual August services all through the war achieved ever higher levels of support for Grandfather Home. In August 1940 the first special Sunday service of sacred music was held, arranged by David Ovens of Charlotte; it featured the Charlotte Festival Singers, an eight-person group accompanied by Margaret Vance and two others. The next year Ovens brought "Miss Agnes David and Mr. Benny DeLoache of New York, Mr. Norman Cordon of Linville and New York, and the special Quartet made up of outstanding North Carolina singers." The performers had first sung in Banner Elk, to celebrate the opening at the Home of a new administration building, made possible by a gift from the Joseph Cannons. When they also successfully appeared at Blowing Rock, a tradition was begun which lasted more than twenty-five years. Beginning after 1945, the sacred music concerts became linked to the annual Grandfather Home offering at Rumple Church; but for the war years they were held to augment the church's own receipts, at "Home Church Day" services.3 Yet the records do show that periodically the war's turmoil on distant shores touched the small mountaintop community. In August 1942, Mr. and Mrs. Wade Klutz, longtime employees of the Joseph Cannons, transferred their memberships to Rumple Church, as did their son, Sgt. John Allen Klutz. He is the first individual of military rank to be mentioned as joining the church; his brother Jacob, also a member of the armed forces, joined two years later. Other young men �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 I 99 would soon be called up for duty: they and often others in their families joined the church in which they had grown up, anticipating the separation and danger the war would bring. Among these were the young Lentz cousins, Perry and William Lewis, and Lewis's sisters, Recie and Nancy. During the war years, too, the church had an unusually large number of transfers of membership, both of departing and arriving people. In 1943, "It was unanimously ordered that the annual Every Member Canvass be made by letter inasmuch as such a large percentage of the membership are away from home." Among the many arrivals of the period were Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Brown and several members of their family; among the departures, Mr. and Mrs. William Holshouser, Jr., dismissed to the Church of the Pilgrims, in Washington, B.C. Some sort of record must have been set by Mrs. Lyles Harris when she joined the church: "inasmuch as her present membership is in the Church of England in the British Isles, she was received on statement of her continuing faith and her desire to bring her membership here. She was received into full communion and fellowship of the church" in March 1944.4 Also in 1944, the session voted special sums to presbytery on behalf of "Defense Service" and the Home Mission Emergency Fund. That same year requests came in on behalf of three service members overseas to be enrolled in the church: Jule Welch Tate, Cecil Ray Critcher, and Grover Clifford Walters. By the time the request from Tate's chaplain to this effect had arrived, Tate was dead; he had lost his life in the Mediterranean theater. "By unanimous consent he was enrolled posthumously on the rolls of the church. The other two candidates . . . were received . . . pending the ordinance of baptism." When hostilities ended, both these men did indeed receive baptism and took their places in the Rumple congregation. Another new member was serviceman James M. Critcher. Others who joined had seen their lives forever touched by the war: among these during 1945 were Pauline Castle Stone, and her daughter, Donna, who joined the fellowship and were baptized. "Mrs. Stone's husband, Sgt. Harold Stone, was killed while on a bombing flight over Germany."5 During these years the session periodically voted Keys a few extra dollars to cover postage expenses: he sent out monthly newsletters from the church to every service member from Blowing Rock, whatever his denomination and however remote his duty station. Many of the war's survivors came back remembering this kindness and the link Keys had provided to loved ones back home. Some have saved these bulletins to this day.6 The pastor filled them with trivia about Blowing �100 / Chapter Four Rock's erratic weather, results of ball games at the high school, news of weddings and of the boys who had returned home on leave, his own success at the local fishing streams; he also gave assurance that all service members were being remembered in prayer by folks at the church. He sent on the addresses of all who served and whatever news he had received from them, so that a network of information tied them together around the globe. Keys's own two sons, Bill and Tommy, saw active duty, as did his daughter Julia's husband, Blowing Rock native Bill Williams; "her Ta'" had married them in March, 1944, he proudly told the boys at Easter of that year.7 Perhaps as a way of keeping his mind off the dangers his own loved ones were facing, Keys threw himself into many civic and community affairs. When the mathematics teacher at the high school was called into the Navy, the pastor, a former teacher himself, pinch hit for him. He served on the Watauga County War Ration Board. He pushed hard for the creation of a town park; in 1944 he reported to the servicemen that a special referendum had been called to vote on a bond issue to purchase the Coffey property [site of the old Watauga Hotel] for the establishment of a Memorial Recreation Park in honor of all you folks to whom this letter is being written. There is some opposition but we think it will be approved. We know that you would rather have such a park, equipped for bowling, swimming, tennis, shuffle-board, boating and many other sports than to have a marble shaft reaching to the skies erected on Main Street. Keys was surely right, even if his vision for the park proved to be bigger than its realization. The park would not be finished until 1950, but it is in many ways a legacy of Keys's energy, the love he felt for his adopted home, and his dedication to a parish which for the war years, at least, was worldwide.8 The church continued to observe its "usual summer program," which for Keys as for his predecessors meant, besides Grandfather Home Sunday, the frequent appearance of outside preachers. By the early 1940's, though, many of the pulpit veterans who had often assisted in days past were gone. James I. Vance died in Blowing Rock on November 24, 1939, at the age of seventy-seven; his body was returned to Nashville for burial. According to a tribute in the Christian Observer, Vance "had an understanding with his church [in Nashville] that he would spend a portion of each year in evangelistic work. And this he did as long as he was physically able. It is significant to note that his physical collapse came during one of these meetings."9 During Vance's �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 101 final summer in the mountains, he asked to preach at a tiny Baptist church in the Mulberry community not far from Blowing Rock, because he wanted a last chance to speak from a small country pulpit of the sort in which he had first begun his ministry.10 Ever a man of peace, Vance was deeply grieved at the outbreak of another world war. One of his last responsibilities to the Presbyterian Church, U. S., was to represent it once again on a Permanent Committee of Protestant Relief in Europe, just as he had after the First War. His daughter, Margaret, was treasurer of this committee.11 After his death, Margaret Vance and her mother moved more or less permanently to Blowing Rock, where the preacher's widow died in December of 1945. For another twenty-eight years "Miss Margaret" played the organ at Rumple Church, and took an active community role. No longer just a summer resident, she had become a "transplant." So another generation of the Vance family continued to support the work of the church. In 1940, members of Vance's family and others contributed a stained-glass window, depicting Christ the Good Shepherd, to Rumple Church in Vance's memory. Then in September, 1943, Dr. William J. Martin died, at age seventyfive, and was buried beside his parents in the old Davidson College cemetery. He had spent most of his retirement years in Davidson after leaving the presidency of the General Assembly's Training School in 1933.12 To Martin, at the time he retired from the presidency of the college in 1929, Vance had written a letter of tribute recalling their joint labors at Blowing Rock:13 We have tramped and camped together. We have slept by the streams and on the mountaintops. We have been thrown into the most intimate relationships with each other. We have looked down on God's great acres from the roof of the world, and we have toiled side by side to build for Him and for His cause a little house where we both have spent many a Sunday in the worship of a Divinity that is real. Through all this, I have learned to love you as a brother, and my wishes now for you and yours are only such as come from a friend. It had been both men's unshakable faith that they would one day "look down on God's great acres" from a still higher vantage point; now their friendship had been renewed in the presence of their Lord. Another who joined "the church at rest" during these years was elder and clerk of session William L. Holshouser. A tribute In Memoriam appeared in the church bulletin after his death: �102 / Chapter Four In the passing of Mr. W. L. Holshouser each of us as individuals and our church as an organization has lost a great and true friend. For fifty years he was a merchant in Blowing Rock and a friend to all who were in need. For thirty years he was an elder in our church and deeply interested in its welfare. Only in the records of heaven could one discover all the good deeds of his life; for he was not disposed to publish them to the world. Faithful, honest, kind, just, devoted to his family, his friends, and his church, he was in the rarest and truest sense a GOOD MAN —a man after God's own heart. His going away has left a vacant pew in our church... and a vacant place in our hearts that only God can fill. . . ,14 The old enemy which was causing so much loss around the world had also claimed three of Rumple church's faithful "founding fathers." But coming out of the world's trial would be a new generation who over the next years would help to fill the gap with renewed energy and vigor. During Keys's first pastorate new additions were made to the session who served the church for several years — although their terms of service could not match those of the original members. L. D. Tester was elected elder in 1941; Howard P. Holshouser and Richard Oxentine were added in 1943; and John P. Lyon, a new resident who, with his wife, had transferred their membership from the Presbyterian church at Burnsville, was elected in 1946. The diaconate, too, was increased: Collis Greene was added in 1941, Dan Klutz, Jesse Burns, Cameron Williams, and Bill Williams in 1943, and in 1946 four returning veterans: William Keys, Robert Hardin, Howard Holshouser, Jr., and Clarence Berryman. Within a short time, all these men were at work on new church projects. During 1945 "extensive improvements were made on the manse." The next year much work went into the church grounds, and a new concrete floor was laid in the stone church. A permanent committee on maintenance was established to make repairs, beginning with the slate roof, in 1946. In 1947 that committee made still another attempt to provide adequate heat to the sanctuary: the Sunday school was asked to help raise $375 for a new oil burner. In short, the church seemed increasingly supplied with workers and with enthusiasm as it faced the postwar age. The end of the war also brought the summer visitors back in full force. For a time it must have seemed that "business as usual" had been resumed in the life of the summer community. When in September 1946 former pastor G. S. �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 103 Buchanan was invited to preach at "Rally Day" services, he must have been encouraged by the progress at his old charge.15 But all was not well with pastor Keys. In 1946 his alma mater, King College, recognized him for his mountain mission work with the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. But the pressure of his responsibilities had for a second time strained his nerves and sapped his strength. Already by spring, 1947, his "continued illness" was of concern to the session. At a meeting in May moderated by the Rev. Roswell Long, president of Lees-McRae College, it voted to send a call to the Rev. David Baker "to serve as supply pastor for the summer months . . . during which time the regular salary shall be paid to Dr. Keys."16 Keys was back that fall to lead a session meeting which voted to receive by letter Margaret Vance, Sarah Payne of Charlotte, and Mr. and Mrs. John C. Thompson of Coral Gables, Florida, into the fellowship of the church. But in January, 1948, at a joint meeting of elders and deacons, Keys asked for a leave of absence: his physicians had advised him to spend "the hard part of the winter in Florida." He offered to return in March to "hold services and help prepare the reports for the church year" and to resign effective March 31. The session, believing that "the church is urgently in need of immediate active leadership," felt the congregation could not wait. It accepted his resignation effective March 31, 1948, "or earlier if a new pastor is secured," and conditioned his leave of absence "on the understanding that salary payments will be made only insofar as the church finances will permit and subject to approval by church officers."17 A pulpit supply and pastoral committee, consisting of Howard Holshouser, John P. Lyon, L. D. Tester, and Joe White, elders, and deacon Bob Hardin, secured various visiting ministers, including on at least one occasion the Rev. Buchanan. On February 15, a letter from Keys was read to a congregational meeting, in which he recalled the "delightful and happy associations" he had had with Rumple Church and thanked God for His "evident approval of what has been accomplished insofar as the increase in membership and in giving to all causes is concerned. No more lovely place than Blowing Rock in which to live is to be found anywhere," he asserted. But he submitted his resignation, hoping in future to find "a field of work . . . without the extremes of climatic change, and also without the unduly heavy burdens of a resort church." The congregation voted, with eight dissenters, in favor of accepting his resignation. Keys served a pulpit at the Bee Ridge Presbyterian Church, near Sarasota, Florida, from 1948 to 1950. He returned with his wife to live in Blowing Rock for much of each year �104 / Chapter Four beginning in late 1951, but by then he had left the ministry; he was recalled to Rumple in 1956.18 On March 15, 1948, the congregation called the Rev. Robert D. Earnest, then preaching in Bessemer, Alabama, to fill the vacancy left by Keys's departure; Keys returned from Florida to moderate this meeting. Earnest would receive a salary of $2875 annually, plus congregational contributions to the Ministers' Annuity Fund, moving expenses, and use of the unfurnished manse. The new minister was installed at a "delightful service" on May 2, at which the Rev. D. B. Gregory preached a sermon on "The Genius of Presbyterianism" and the "choir added to the service of worship with special music." Membership in the church stood at 190 as of April 1948; its total annual budget for 1949 was projected at $5000, plus the Grandfather Home Day offering. Among the first decisions made by the session with the new preacher were to set the date for Grandfather Home Day, and to receive another "Home Church Day" offering during the summer of 1948.19 Financial weakness still clearly plagued the church—and clouded the new minister's future. ***** The summer 1948 Grandfather Home Day drew a wider notice than usual. The Charlotte Observer Sunday column, "Captain Mecklenburg," on August 8 saluted David Ovens as "outstanding benefactor of Grandfather Orphanage because of the large amounts of money that have been raised for its support" at the programs he had helped to sponsor at Rumple since 1940.20 The collection received that day was $11,500; later ones would top even that large sum. But while the amount of the collection would be still greater in later years, it seems appropriate to describe the relationship Ovens had with Rumple Church at this point in its history, because of the impact of that relationship upon the new pastor, the Rev. Earnest, and his successors. Ovens was already one of the best known figures in North Carolina when he had Cameron Williams build a vacation home, "Pineacres," for him in Blowing Rock during the mid-1930's. A native of Canada, Ovens arrived in Charlotte after having lived in several Southern cities, in 1903. J. B. Ivey took him on as a partner in his department store a short time later. Ovens worked with three generations of the Ivey family before his death in 1957, and he helped the store grow to a sizeable regional chain. �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 105 He was a born salesman. During his early years with Ivey's his "tart comments" were a regular feature of the company's ads in the Charlotte Observer, he had a "wicked sense of humor,"21 which he turned as often on himself as on others. Working his way quickly into the Queen City's coterie of the self-styled elite, Ovens loved to poke their ribs, figuratively, for their pretentiousness and narrow-mindedness. His memoir, If This Be Treason, published in 1957, is full of clever stories about the people he knew and admired- and some he did not-who led the city he came to know so well. Ovens was a ceaseless promoter of his adopted city through channels both public and private: he was the first president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, president of its Merchants Association, and in many other ways a sparkplug to Charlotte's growth for nearly half a century. His "honors and activities" take up a full page of small print in his autobiography.22 Perhaps his two favorite diversions were culture and religion, both of which Ovens was convinced needed to be nurtured by the town's business community. In Charlotte he actively encouraged the performing arts, personally seeking the backing of the city's leading citizens for everything from circus appearances to opera to theatre. When in the mid-1950's the auditorium which bears his name and the nearby coliseum were built, he received an appropriate monument, even if he did not much care for the architecture.23 And although he often called for greater ecumenism among the Christian denominations, and had a sneaking admiration for the Baptists with their "simple ritual,... profound conviction of the power of Christ to save souls, and . . . humility,"24 he remained a staunch Presbyterian. Ovens was chairman of the building committee and a generous benefactor of his home church, Myers Park Presbyterian, built in 1926, and of Charlotte's Presbyterian Hospital, completed in 1940.25 The two Southern Presbyterian colleges in Mecklenburg County, Queens and Davidson, each named buildings in tribute to his generosity to them. Such an energetic and dominant personality, and such a clever tongue, did not really relax on holiday. Ovens even had some frank things to say about his adopted summer home town:26 Blowing Rock is developing into quite a fine resort. It has a number of excellent hotels, and one, the Mayview Manor, attracts the rich because of its high prices and good food. The high prices alone would be enough to fill the house, because people like to send cards back home from a place like that. Nor did he much approve of the Blue Ridge Parkway: �106 / Chapter Four I had quite forgotten to mention the Blue Ridge Parkway, which we are all paying taxes to build. We could do very well without it, and there are very few accommodations on the route. The speed limit is definitely prescribed, and most people prefer the regular road. They are extending it this summer through the Cone Estate in Blowing Rock. As I spend some time there each summer, I go out to see the progress they are making. The speed isn't much, but the expense looks to be terrific. Since we are mortgaging our future to take care of it, we could get along without it. One wonders what Ovens would have thought of the complex and expensive Linn Cove Viaduct around Grandfather Mountain, which in the summer of 1987 completed the last link in the Parkway's route. Dr. Keys later wrote that Ovens's house overlooking the golf course in Blowing Rock was host to "the great and the near great, the talented and the famous, the rich and the poor, all [of them] thankful that they have been permitted to share in the hospitality and gracious living within [its] walls." To this house Keys had been summoned in 1940 when he first came to Rumple's pulpit: " 'Come out here NOW/ " he remembered Ovens ordering. " 1 want to talk to you/ " "The first question asked by Mr. Ovens was, " What are they paying you here?'" After Keys gave him the answer, Ovens "snorted and said, That's not enough to starve to death on decently, must [sic] less send your children to school. I'll call Luther Snyder, Bob Dunn and Charley Cannon to join me, as a Committee to see that you get a supplement to this each year/ " Ovens also wanted to know what Keys thought of Grandfather Home Day, which, Ovens said, " 1 seem to have inherited from Dr. Vance. Not that I'm worthy to have blacked Dr. Vance's boots; but somebody has to carry on.'" Keys praised the project as " 'the greatest thing any church could sponsor.'" " Then let's make it the biggest thing on the mountain,'" Ovens replied, indicating his intention to get several of "the great stars of the musical world" to perform at the church on the Home's behalf.27 Beginning in 1941, then, as we have seen, the Grandfather Home Concerts did indeed become big-time entertainment. But more than that, an ad hoc committee of summer residents had decided to supplement the preacher's admittedly-small salary, starting with Keys's. Ovens, with his sharp wit and strong personality, had begun to play a well-meant but potentially divisive role in the affairs of the church. The next pastor at Rumple turned out to be less willing to accommodate the vigorous Charlotte merchant. Robert Doggett Earnest's background was not much different from �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 107 that of his two immediate predecessors: he was a native of Chuckey, Tennessee, a small Appalachian mountain town about halfway between Johnson City and Greeneville, where he was born in 1911. The family was modestly well off, but not wealthy, and by the time Earnest was ready for college, his father thought he had accumulated enough money to see his son and a daughter through school and to have a comfortable retirement. Then came the 1929 stock market crash and the Depression. The banks failed; the elder Earnest lost his entire savings; and he was found to have terminal cancer. Young Robert Earnest first attended nearby Tusculum College, walking or catching a lift to the campus four miles from his home. In 1931 the family moved to Johnson City, so that his sister could attend East Tennessee State Teachers' College. The widowed mother rented two upstairs rooms to college students to help make ends meet. Earnest finished at King College in 1933, where for the first year his only source of income was a scholarship for playing the Sousaphone (an instrument he had never picked up before) in the college marching band. For two years after graduation he worked to help his sister finish school; then a family relation helped in turn to support the would-be ministerial student for a year's study at Columbia Bible College, in South Carolina, and at Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Georgia; here Earnest earned the B. D. degree in 1939. After a short pastorate in Decatur, where he met and married Katherine Erwin Belser, he served on the mission field in Brazil for three years, 1940 to 1943. There the first of the couple's four children was born. But Katherine Earnest's health was increasingly at risk: she had developed diabetes, and they were forced to come home. Returning first to another charge in Georgia, Earnest was called to the North Highlands Church in Bessemer, Alabama, in 1945. Two more children had by now arrived. Their youngest, a daughter, would be born during their stay at Blowing Rock. The call to Rumple Memorial must have seemed to the Tennessean an opportunity to return with his family to the region of his roots.28 Earnest's brief tenure provided him an opportunity to reorganize the Sunday school teaching staff and the Men of the Church, see alterations in the board of deacons (Doss Keller, Sr., and Rob Walser were elected in July of 1948), hold evangelistic meetings late in that year, and, in March 1949, attempt a Visitation Evangelism Program. Under this program, then in vogue throughout the denomination, the pastor was to train carefully-chosen laypersons to go two by two into local homes and "in a friendly manner . . . secure decisions for Christ and membership for the church." Across the South the program had great �108 / Chapter Four success during the late 1940's and 1950's; it seems to have gone nowhere in Blowing Rock.29 Several young people joined the church during Earnest's pastorate, but most had grown up in the Rumple congregation: Jerry and Judy Burns, Janice Coffey, David Greene, Mary Keller and Doss Keller, Jr., and Joe White and Thomas Buxton (who soon transferred to the Episcopal Church). Earnest took part in an unusual ecumenical event during the summer of 1948: he performed in a series of "religious dramas" put on by representatives of all Blowing Rock faiths "as part of a move to cultivate more dramatic interests here." According to the Blowing Rocket, a cast which included Dr. Morris Lazaron, the Rev. Oscar Harris, Bishop Thomas C. Darst, Earnest, and several local laypeople from various churches, gave a dramatic stage presentation of the Book of Judith, directed by Professor H. E. Spence and Mrs. Margaret Reineking. "Such an enthusiastic reception was given [this drama] which was presented in the Baptist Church that it was decided to hold another." The second play, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," was "selected from Dr. H. E. Spence's book, Old Testament Dramas" and was given at Rumple church accompanied by "a suitable program of music and worship." Besides cultivating "dramatic interests," Earnest may have thought to hit upon a way to draw a crowd to Sunday evening worship service. The experiment seems to have been called off after a few weeks, however.30 Earnest also discovered upon his arrival in Blowing Rock that he and Margaret Vance were distant cousins, through his mother's family. He furthered his musical interests by getting "Miss Margaret" to give him organ lessons on the Rumple instrument. But if the new pastor was enjoying some of the opportunities which serving a resort church had to offer, some of its other features were not to his liking. The little town of Blowing Rock was growing in the postwar years. Earnest recalled one of his pastoral tasks as helping in the "recovery of people from the ravages of the war." More money was in town by this time. Links to the larger North Carolina tourist industry were becoming more extensive. The highway 321 bypass around the east side of town was under construction, Earnest remembered, during his years in Blowing Rock; and as more visitors than ever flocked to the town, the inevitable growing pains, perhaps not yet eased in the village, began to have their effect. By 1948, national Prohibition had been for fifteen years a memory, but it was still impossible to get a (legal) bottle of whiskey in Blowing Rock. This suited Rumple's preacher and his wife just fine, but not a lot of the summer crowd. A campaign to put an ABC store in town began that summer, and Earnest joined most of Blowing Rock's other �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 109 preachers in opposing the idea. In taking this stance. Earnest reflected what had been for more than sixty years the stated policy of the denomination. In 1891 the General Assembly had spoken out against "the traffic in intoxicating liquors as a fruitful source of abounding iniquity and misery" and had "urged its people to use all means, which might be approved by their Christian conscience and judgment to remedy this evil." Individual abstinence remained the basic position of the church for the next half-century or more.31 Some militant Presbyterians did as individuals support the work of Prohibition political parties, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Womens* Christian Temperance Union, in ridding states and communities of liquor, but the church's highest court refused to endorse the specific political remedies often brought before it for support, on grounds of the separation of church and state. During Prohibition, the General Assembly and other church courts did of course heartily favor upholding the law of the land. But after Repeal, "It gradually became clear . . . that total abstinence was no longer accepted, as it once was, as the ideal by the average church member, by officers of the church, and even by ministers."32 The denomination, with much reluctance in some synods and presbyteries, was slowly coming to the view that "there were devoted Christians who maintained that temperance, rather than abstinence, was the true Christian ideal."33 Earnest, and many others in his congregation and community, were hardly ready for such an attitude. In any event, taking a drink in private was less the issue than the threat to public morals, especially among the youth, which the open availability of liquor, it was believed, would create. The sale of alcohol in any North Carolina community long has been a fool proof issue for dividing the public and rousing emotions. In Blowing Rock the matter tended to pit many of the summer people, an increasing number of whom were not native to the state, and, less openly, a few of the local people who profited from tourism, against the mass of the churchgoing population and their preachers-and a few bootleggers who had long earned a few dollars supplying their local and out of town customers with the home made product. Blowing Rock did not approve an ABC store for another twenty-two years, in 1965. But Earnest apparently had earned few points from some of his summer parishioners for his outspoken opposition to the idea. Ovens, for example, believed that "If you want to cut down on the consumption of intoxicants in our city, it cannot be done by law, but must come about through the teaching in the home, the churches, and �110 / Chapter Four perhaps our schools and colleges as well." He was speaking in this instance of Charlotte, where, he said in his memoirs, the ABC "method of supplying the demands of the liquor drinkers is generally considered acceptable," although he regretted that "too much liquor [is] used in Charlotte" and that "such boring things as cocktail parties are becoming more common all the time." Ovens's influence in the Blowing Rock summer community was always strong. In late 1946 he had proposed to pastor Keys "a plan to build a church for the colored people who came [to Blowing Rock] during summer months as employees of summer residents." As has been shown, the black community had long worshipped Sunday nights at Rumple Church. The new project bore fruit during Earnest's pastorate: an incorporated, non-profit "Blowing Rock Community Church" was organized, with an all-white board of trustees which included Annie Cannon, Ovens, Grover C. Robbins, Mrs. Julius Cone, C. G. Beck, J. Luther Snyder, and C. H. Berryman. The trustees were to "establish and maintain suitable places for religious worship and recreation for negro people at Blowing Rock" and to "purchase, lease and otherwise dispose of all kinds of property, both real and personal" in the prosecution of their purpose.34 A building was soon erected, by local contractor Will Castle, on two acres of property off Possum Hollow Road donated in 1948. Keys later remembered that Snyder, a textile mill owner from Gastonia, was the largest contributor to the building fund.35 Equipped at first with chairs borrowed from the Horse Show grounds, the little chapel not long after was fitted with pews and walls of white pine (Mrs. Cannon reportedly insisted on the best building materials). Sometime later a community center was built on the same property, which, with kitchen facilities, became the scene of social gatherings of the black community. The building was refurbished in 1955, at which time Dr. Keys, having returned to town, was elected chairman of the board of trustees, and Howard Holshouser its secretary. The minutes of an August 1955 board meeting show that "Mrs. Cone was asked to compose a letter to be sent out to all summer home and business owners who employed colored help, soliciting contributions for repairs and maintenance." The buildings served their purpose until the dwindling number of parishioners forced them to close during the 1970's. In 1982 the church building was leased to the First Independent Baptist Church; the community center building still stood vacant as of 1987. Numerous members of the Rumple summer congregation served on the board over the years, including Gwyn Harper, Jr., Anne Snively, Kirby �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 /111 Brown, wife of the Rev. Brown, by then pastor of the White Memorial Church of Raleigh, and others. For some fifteen years after his retirement in 1960, Eugene S. Bowman, of Mocksville and Blowing Rock, an active leader among the Rumple summer crowd, preached regularly for the black congregation. He recalled in a 1968 article in The Blowing Rocket the sense which he and other whites felt, that their work provided them "a tremendous opportunity to help make right some of the things so wrong among people of different races."36 To what extent that motive prevailed when the original plan was put forward by Ovens in 1946 would now be difficult to judge, as the great divide in race relations had not been crossed before the 196(Xs. Nevertheless, the monetary generosity and the sense of responsibility exhibited by Ovens and his original collaborators, including Keys, cannot be questioned. It is perhaps significant that, although Keys was later to take an active part on the board of the Negro Community Church, and to preach there at least once each season, the board did not include Earnest, the Rumple Church pastor, when it was incorporated in 1949. Earnest recalled in 1987 that during his stay at Rumple he found it difficult to relate to the summer crowd around Ovens. He did not play golf, nor did he enjoy the country club life or attending the parties of the summer people. And, he recalled, he was rather young then; he was perhaps less tolerant, he has said, than he might be today, particularly on the sensitive issue of strong drink. It especially did not "set right" with him that summer members would personally supplement the minister's salary. When a summer resident made an exploratory approach on the subject, Earnest did not respond. The summer people, he believed, should make their contributions directly to the church treasurer.37 For this point of personal principle Earnest suffered some financial hardship. In November 1949 the session informed him "of the likelihood of the church not being able to pay his salary," $2875, in full. His subsequent efforts to "build up the treasury" from among the active membership seem to have had little effect. In January 1950, the session agreed to provide the pastor with a month's paid vacation in March, and an unpaid leave of absence for April, in order for him to complete the Master's of Theology degree at Columbia Seminary. He studied there, living with his wife's family, until he finished his work. Meanwhile he paid attention to the possibilities for changing churches. Armed with a call to a pastorate in Louisiana, he returned to Blowing Rock and at a congregational meeting in May announced his resignation, effective on or near June 1, 1950. "The congregation voted to �112 / Chapter Four receive the vote on the resignation by standing vote." By twenty-five to five it gave Earnest "a vote of confidence and protest against the pastor leaving but with the understanding also that the Presbytery would dissolve the pastoral relationship."38 For six months thereafter the pulpit was vacant. Various pastors filled in, including, during August of that year, the Rev. Oren Moore, Jr., of the McKinnon Presbyterian Church of Concord, and others. The bulletin for the Sunday Moore preached noted that the church budget was $5000, "and about two-fifths of this must be received through special contributions. This is the only way we can continue as a selfsup[porting] church and secure a resident year round pastor." Visitors were urged to contribute or make a pledge to the cause.39 Not until the very last day of December, 1950, did the congregation meet again to receive the recommendation of a pulpit committee, consisting of clerk of session J. P. Lyon, H. P. Holshouser, Sarah Payne, Margaret Vance, and C. R. Walser, to call a new pastor to Rumple Church: the Rev. Sam S. Cappel. The twenty-six year old Cappel was accepting his first pulpit call. He had in fact not yet received his degree from Columbia Theological Seminary and was not ordained by Holston Presbytery until April 1951. A native of Alexandria, Louisiana, Cappel had attended Louisiana State University and Louisiana Tech, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1948. Married that year to Mary Ann Denny, a native of Weaverville, North Carolina, Cappel and his wife eventually had three children. Cappers year at Rumple was almost too short a time to leave a lasting impact, but he is remembered in the community for his zeal on the issue of illegal alcohol. Like his predecessor, he was against it. But his crusade extended beyond the pulpit or the parlor: his frank opposition led him to carry the war straight to the perceived enemy. In that era the most notorious hangouts for moonshiners were in certain homes barely a block off Main Street, As the new preacher saw it, the openness with which the stuff was being dispensed was a community affront. Invoking the law, he helped set up a few, frustratingly ineffectual raids. The network of small town connections must have been too dense to overcome. More than a decade would still be needed to change the community's habits concerning home brew. Did Cappel realize that in taking out after the bootleggers he was only helping to provide an ultimately successful justification for moderate drinkers to seek a legal source for their booze? Cappel was as zealous for his understanding of the faith as for public morality. Although there is little in the church records to reveal his �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 113 sermon topics or his Sunday school lessons, all indicators point to a strongly conservative bent. He persuaded the session to begin again holding Sunday evening church services "after the Young People's Meeting." He urged support for a "city-wide Revival" planned for April of 1952. And he arranged a Bible Conference at Rumple Church in late August, 1951, conducted by Dr. R. A. Forrest, of the nondenominational but conservative Toccoa Falls Bible Institute in Georgia. In the short time he preached at Rumple he seems also to have run up against resistance in the session and board of deacons; clerk of session John P. Lyons, although usually in attendance at meetings, seems never to have signed the minutes; Cappel kept them himself. One elder and one deacon resigned during his pastorate, although their reasons were not recorded. By December, 1951, an uneasy relationship came to an end with CappeFs decision to take a chaplaincy in the United States Navy: the Korean War was underway and Cappel must have welcomed the black-and-white certainties of that cold war struggle turned hot. He was back in Holston Presbytery just over a year later, preaching in Tennessee, but he eventually split with the denomination and joined the strongly conservative Presbyterian Church in America.40 Cappel's departure brought another period of drift at Rumple Church. From the end of 1951 to April 1953 the session held only two recorded meetings, one to authorize a tribute in memoriam to the last of Rumple's original elders, Joe White, who died in February, 1952. In the summer of 1952, the pulpit was filled at least part of the time by the Rev. Warren Thurston, pastor of the Hendersonville Church, who served communion at Rumple in July and was given session approval to "conduct radio devotional[s]" during the weeks of August 3-9 and 17-23, 1952.41 Finally in April, 1953, with the Rev. J. K. Parker of the First Church of Boone moderating, a congregational meeting unanimously called the Rev. Leroy T. Newland from Union Point, Georgia, to fill the long-vacant pulpit, at $3600 a year plus a "sum equivalent to 7 1/2% of the salary base" into the Ministers' Annuity Fund. Newland's pastorate would run for a little more than three years. While Cappel had come to Rumple for his first pastorate, Newland came for his last. Already sixty-eight in 1953, Newland had given the most vigorous years of his ministry to the mission field at Chonju, �114 / Chapter Four Korea. There he and his wife, Sarah Louise Andrews, had reared seven children, including a son, H. Reid Newland, who also entered the Presbyterian ministry and who attended his father's installation service at Rumple to preach the sermon, on July 26, 1953. The elder Newland was born in Galva, Iowa, and was a 1908 graduate of Davidson College and of Louisville Theological Seminary, where he received the B. D. degree in 1911; he had taken furlough from his Korean work to complete a Master of Theology degree at Union Seminary in 1926. Davidson awarded him the Doctor of Divinity degree in 1933. From his return to the United States in 1940 until his call to Rumple, Dr. Newland served a group of churches in Union Point, Georgia. Among Newland's lifelong avocations was writing poetry. In 1963 he published privately an eighty-six-page book, So Rich A Crown, containing poems from his years in Korea, Georgia, and North Carolina. If his poetic language and meter were rather heavily borrowed from the King James version of the Bible, and his subject matter mostly fairly traditional, some of his poems showed an ability to speak of faith in simple but moving terms. One, "A Christian's Death," was reprinted in the notice of Newland's own death in the Christian Observer, it may originally have been composed in tribute to L. D. Tester when he died in Blowing Rock in 1953:42 And what is death? A sudden stopping of the breath That one may breathe a rarer air Where all is fair. You say he died. Can life be greater glorified Than to unclose pain-wearied eyes In Paradise? Is this the end? He has but gone to meet a Friend And, dying, found a way To endless day. Another of Newland's poems, "A Little Child's Gift," put in poetic language an unusually-imagined scene of Christmas: I wonder if a little child Saw Jesus as he lay Within a manger rude and old Upon the soft sweet hay? �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 115 I wonder if a little child Smiled back to meet his smile, And gently touched his dimpled cheek And held his hand a while? I do not know what children did In days so long ago But I can give myself to Him, Because He loves me so. Several displayed a deep love for his wife and his family, and an eloquent affection for the North Carolina mountain region in which he spent his last years. In Korea, too, he lived "in the midst of the mountains." When he later wrote a tribute to Walter Keys upon Keys's retirement from the Bee Ridge Church in Florida, Newland's prose reached poetic heights: he reminded his friend that they shared "memories of Thunder Hill Overlook with Blackberry Valley far below," and the "delicate perfume of shy, half hidden trailing arbutus sprinkled on the robe of winter as it welcomes the return of spring." He urged Keys to store up his "recollections until one day, when the purpling shadows slip into John's River Gorge and the rays of the dying sun are rekindled in the winking lights of homes hidden by the darkness and you lift your eyes to see a thoughtful sun spread a rose colored mantle over the rock hewn Grandfather who sleeps endlessly on a distant mountain top, then surrounded by the grandeur of a mountain sunset you will 'see your heavenly home and take flight.' "43 With a change of place names, Newland might well have been describing the sights from his own retirement home, at Black Mountain, where he died in 1969. Newland and his wife arrived in Blowing Rock in April, 1953. The first session meeting at which he moderated received Cecil E. Rhodes into the membership by transfer of letter from the Crab tree Baptist Church in Hendersonville; Rhodes would take an active role in the Sunday school, on the board of deacons, and later as elder, until his death. But the frequent pastoral changes and the gaps in church leadership during the preceding two years had affected the church's work. Newland's responsibility included training or retraining the church officers in their duties; stressing tithing and the every-member canvass; and arranging special services led by such preachers as the Revs. H. H. Van Cleve and William Henry Crane. At a session meeting in November 1954, "A list of men and women in the community who should be in the Church was read by Dr. Newland who urged all officers to talk with and invite them to Church." Home visitation, by the �116 / Chapter Four pastor and his wife, and church officers, was frequently invoked to stimulate church attendance. In early 1956 a series of cottage prayer meetings and early morning Bible studies was arranged in anticipation of another round of special services to be led by the Rev. Thurstonbut Thurston was forced to cancel his planned appearances when his mother became gravely ill in April. The Newlands' stress upon attendance, participation, and giving seem to have had their effect, however; where membership had declined under Cappel (during his year the roll had apparently been reviewed and some names of inactive members removed), it increased again somewhat under Newland. For 1956 the church membership was reported at 127, up from 112 in 1951; Sunday school enrollment was 89, compared to 81 five years earlier. And the budget for current expenses had increased from $2106 to $6061.44 During late 1954 the congregation met to approve unanimously a premature but significant request to Holston and Concord Presbyteries: it asked to rejoin the Synod of North Carolina and the Presbytery of Concord. On the grounds that part of the town was in Caldwell County, which was still in Concord Presbytery, and because of its highway links and the educational connections of its college-age student membership, it sought to be taken back into the presbytery of its birth. The church acknowledged "a lack of close personal interest in most of the debate carried on in [Holston] Presbytery and the plans for expanding the work" there, which primarily involved planting churches in the "fast growing cities and their environs in east Tennessee." Not until 1969 was this petition made again, and granted. Holston Presbytery disapproved of the original request; there is no evidence that Concord Presbytery discussed it in 1954.45 In February 1956 Dr. Newland informed the session of his intention to retire on June 1. He had already stayed a year beyond his seventieth birthday.45 The church, and region, although they did not know it, were poised on the brink of even greater changes. If the 1950's have been characterized as an era of national complacency in many historical accounts, the attitude may be excusable in the local case. Material growth was clearly perceptible; the generation which had fought two wars overseas was busy raising families at home and finding itself increasingly linked to a state and nation led by men proud to have built a country that was the envy of the world. It is thus perhaps not surprising that for its next pastor, Rumple Memorial decided to go with a proven leader: it recalled the Rev. Walter K. Keys. The Lord, Keys later remembered, was not through with him yet. �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 117 Notes on Chapter Four 1. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring meeting 1941, pp. 32-33; ibid., fall meeting 1941, pp. 15-16. Ministerial Directory, 1956 edition. "Blowing Rock is Grieved At Death of Edgar H. Tufts," The Blowing Rocket, June 20, 1942, p. 1. Southall later served as executive secretary of the Presbytery of Concord from 1954 to 1966, the period just before Rumple rejoined that presbytery. 2. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, spring 1941 meeting, pp. 32-33; and fall 1941 meeting, pp. 15-16. 3. RMPC Session Records, [1932-1948] pp. 117, 125; printed program for 1940 concert in RMPC Scrapbook, Volume 1. See also copies of session reports to the General Assembly for these years, in Session Records. In the summer of 1941, $3894 was raised for the work of Grandfather Home; in 1942, $4810; in 1943, $5475; in 1944, $6886; and in 1945, $7060: ibid., pp. 124, 128, 132, 136, 141. Local residents sometimes forget that the singers Ovens brought to town almost always gave concerts at Banner Elk while they were in the area. These were attended by the summer community there as well as children from the Home and students and faculty of Lees-McRae. Income received from the concerts in Banner Elk usually went to support the work of the hospital there. Ovens, never a poor salesman, made sure that the artists got to see first hand the causes for which they were working. Neal, Sacred Flame, pp. 141-147, and oral interview with M. T. Neal, summer 1986. 4. RMPC Session Records, pp. 126, 130, 131. 5. Ibid., pp. 125, 126, 130, 131. The clerk of Holston Presbytery questioned the procedure whereby a deceased person was put on the church roll; but there is no indication of any further action on the matter in the session or presbytery records: ibid., p. 135. 6. I am grateful to Perry Lentz for allowing the church to copy two such bulletin-newsletters, from Easter 1944 and Easter 1945; copies now in church records. 7. RMPC bulletin, Easter Sunday, April 9, 1944. During the summer of 1942, Julia and Billy Keys, along with Ann Coffey, edited The Blowing Rocket. 8. RMPC bulletin, Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945. 9. Christian Observer, January 17, 1940, tribute "placed by the Executive Committee of Foreign Missions." Vance served on this committee from 1895 to 1901, and chaired it from 1911 to 1937. See also obituary in New York Times, November 25, 1939, p. 17. 10. Interview with Rudolph Greene, December 1986. 11. Minutes of General Assembly and Executive Committee Reports, 1939, Appendix, pp. 103-106. 12. See obituaries, New York Times, September 8, 1943, p. 23, and Charlotte Observer, same date, second section, p. 1. �118 / Chapter Four 13. Letter, Vance to Martin, May 31, 1929, in W. J. Martin Papers, Davidson College Archives. 14. RMPC Session Records, p. 123, clipping from church bulletin. Holshouser died March 29,1942, after an illness of about two weeks. The records show he acted as clerk at session meetings until January of that year. He was seventythree. His widow, Laura, was eighty-seven at the time of her death in May 1962: clipping, The Blowing Rocket, in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 15. RMPC Session Records, pp. 119, 126, 137, 140, 143, 145. 16. Ibid., p. 145. I can find no record of a David Baker in the Ministerial Directory; was he a member of another denomination? 17. Ibid., p. 147. At presbytery that spring, when the minutes were examined, these procedures were questioned, but no indication was given that they were found irregular: "Report on minutes of the session of the Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church," inserted at ibid., p. 154. 18. Ibid., p. 149. 19. Ibid., pp. 151-157. 20. "Observer Lauds Orphanage Day," The Blowing Rocket, August 13,1948. On J. A. Parham's column, which ran from 1926 to 1951 in the Observer, see Claiborne, The Charlotte Observer, pp. 232-233. 21. Claiborne, The Charlotte Observer, p. 160. 22. David Ovens, If This Be Treason: A Look At His Town and Times (Charlotte, NC: Heritage House, 1957), p. 215 and passim. This book was published a few months before his death. See also his obituaries, New York Times, September 7, 1957, p. 19, and The Charlotte Observer, same date, p. 1A. The Observer editorialized on the next day that at age eighty-four, Ovens had "seemed ageless — a mood more than a man, a provocative spirit sprinkled with impertinence, an elfin sage with a Midas touch and a social conscience... .He was vain in the manner of men who recognize their capacities. His wit could sear as well as enchant. His bias, though limited, was often pronounced. But David Ovens added a sound, impressive sum in a time of fractional standards. . . . His contributions to Charlotte, and to his fellow man, were many and meaningful. His achievements remain as a lasting testimonial to human nobility." "David Ovens, The Books Closed," ibid., September 8, 1957, p. 2C. 23. Ovens, If This Be Treason, p. 32. 24. Ibid., pp. 51-52. 25. See Thomas F. Clark, History of Myers Park Presbyterian Church 1926-1966 (Charlotte, NC: Myers Park Presbyterian Church, 1966), passim. 26. Both quotations are in Ovens, // this Be Treason, p. 83. 27. Keys, "Reminiscences Of The House That David Built," Blowing Rock Journal, August 16, 1960, clipping in Keys Papers, Historical Foundation, Montreat. �Rumple Goes to War, 1940-1956 / 119 28. Dr. Mary Warfield drove Mrs. Earnest to North Wilkesboro for a Caesarian delivery of their fourth child, Lynn. One of their sons, Robert, is retarded; they recalled in 1987 that many church members were extremely kind to the boy and to the family during their years in town. From Blowing Rock, Earnest went to Maplewood, Louisiana; he was Stated Clerk of Louisiana Presbytery until 1957. He then became executive secretary of Augusta-Macon Presbytery, Georgia, retiring in 1974. Earnest and his wife now live year-round at a home they built in Montreat in 1957. As of this writing, he is stated supply at the Bethel Presbyterian Church outside of Waynesville, N. C., preaching twice a month. Ministerial Directory% 1983 edition, and oral interview with Earnest and his wife in Montreat, August 1987. 29. RMPC Session Records, "Book No. 2," pp. 3, 5. For the larger story: Thompson, Presbyterians, III, pp. 407-409. Earnest recalled that the session at Rumple seemed reluctant to take part in the program. It was one of the frustrations he experienced in what he felt otherwise was a pleasant pastorate in Blowing Rock: oral interview, August 1987. 30. "Baptist Church To House Coming Play" and "Second Religious Play To Be Sunday," The Blowing Rocket, July 16 and August 13, 1948. References kindly supplied by Karen Lohr. 31. Thompson, Presbyterians, III, p. 234. 32. Ibid., p. 512. 33. Ibid., p. 513. 34. "Certificate of Incorporation of Blowing Rock Negro Community Church, Incorporated," copy in RMPC papers. Other references in the following paragraphs are in the same folder. 35. Keys, "The Church and Community Center for Colored People," 1 p. typescript in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. 1. 36. Bowman, "The Community Church," The Blowing Rocket, August 29, 1968; clipping in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 37. Oral interview with Earnest, August 1987. 38. RMPC Session Records, "Book No. 2" [1948-1965], p. 8, and insert between pp. 178-179. 39. RMPC Sunday bulletin, August 27, 1950; in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. 1. 40. Ministerial Directory, 1983 edition; oral interviews with Perry Lentz and Rudolph Greene. 41. RMPC Session Records, Book 2, pp. 16-17. Thurston was pastor at Hendersonville from 1952 to 1961; he preached frequently at Rumple during the 1950's, holding a series of evangelistic meetings almost every autumn in those years. 42. Christian Observer, September 10, 1969. Gladys Tester has preserved a copy of the poem on RMPC stationery which Newland gave to her mother, "Written in memory of my dear friend L. D. Tester at the time of his death." �120 / Chapter Four But the published version, in Newland, So Rich a Crown: Poems of Faith (Atlanta: privately printed, 1963), p. 39, uses feminine pronouns. "A Little Child's Gift," ibid., p. 23. 43. Letter, Newland to Keys, "This is Your Life" scrapbook, n.d. [1963]. 44. RMPC Session Records, pp. 22-35; Minutes of the General Assembly, Statistical Reports for 1950, 1956. During 1953 the date for submitting church year statistical reports was changed from April 1 to December 31. 45. Copy of petition in RMPC Session Records, "Book 2," p. 186. Without much evidence, the author suspects that the Rev. Keys was the instigator of this request. Comparison of typed documents prepared by Keys with those from Newland's typewriter would indicate that the petition was typed in Keys's own, instantly-recognizable typing style: it shows strikeovers, absences of space between sentences, and vigorous strikes on the period key, all typical of Keys. Since by 1954 Keys was living more or less full time in Blowing Rock, it is at least possible he typed the draft version which is in the records. 46. Ibid., pp. 38-42. �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 BY THE SPRING OF 1956, Keys was sixty-three. He and his wife, Eleanor, who worked as a secretary and receptionist for Dr. Davant at the Blowing Rock Hospital, had been living in Blowing Rock for much of each year since late 1951 at the family's cottage, "the Keyhole," which they had built during his first pastorate. They attended Rumple Church regularly during this period, and, of course, were well known to most former members. Blowing Rock was home, and much of the town had taken them to its heart. Keys had found employment with the Chamber of Commerce and had directed the town's youth work. He had joined numerous civic organizations, including the Rotary Club, which he had helped to found during his earlier years in the community. In April a pulpit supply committee consisting of Mabel and Howard Holshouser, Margaret Vance, Collis Greene, and Bob Hardin, reported that its members had been in touch with Dr. Keys and obtained from him an "outline and memorandum . . . relative to plans and proposals for his present work and services he could devote to this Church as Temporary Supply." Upon approval by presbytery's Commission on the Minister and His Work, Keys was engaged to preach temporarily, beginning upon Newland's retirement. Reluctance on the part of the session was clear, however. For some, the question was whether his health would permit him to resume full time pastoral duties at the church. In August Dr. John Yelton came over from Holston Presbytery to explain that recent revisions in the Book of Church Order made it possible to engage Keys as occasional, rather than temporary supply pastor. The session so voted, without objection.1 But Keys was apparently able to dispel some doubts about his capacities during the summer. In September a congregational meeting voted 42-19 to call him full-time. When on October 1, Mr. and Mrs. 121 �122 / Chapter Five Joel McCurry gave a reception at their home in Mayview Park for the retiring minister, Newland, and his wife and for the newly-installed Keys and his wife, over a hundred people attended, "of all churches" in town and from many other places. The reception was noted in The Blowing Rocket as "the outstanding event of the 'turn-of-theseason.' "2 For at least the next three years, Keys proved able again to cope with the burdens of the resort ministry. His success was due in large part to the high quality of lay leadership he raised up and inspired at the church during this second tour of duty. Joint meetings of deacons and elders were held quarterly. Two additional elders, Wade Kluttz and Rudolph Greene, son of elder Collis Greene, and a deacon, Cecil Rhodes, had been elected in January of 1956; two more deacons, Joel C. McCurry and Thomas Wright, were chosen the following January. Regular additions were voted in each year during Keys's ministry. By June 1958, deacons Hardin and Rhodes were elected to membership on the session, and Dr. Curtis McGown, W. C. Lentz, Perry Lentz, and Robert L. S. Snyder had become deacons. All these men quickly took up important roles in the life of the church. A major task of the diaeonate all through these years was the every member canvass and the personal contact program needed to follow up pledges of support given on "Volunteer Day" Sunday each October. Perhaps the liveliest scene of lay activity during Keys's second pastorate was at the Sunday school, and especially in the men's Bible class. Former elder Rudolph Greene recalled being asked by Dr. Keys to help him get this class off its feet and make it a means of reaching men in the community who otherwise had no church affiliation. The existing class membership was divided into two teams, each headed by a "captain," which then competed for new members. The original captains, Perry Lentz remembers, were Gus Deaton and "Old Mr. Ed Love," a Gideon member who suffered from diabetes. Into the class were drawn —sometimes literally —men who had never darkened the door of any church in their lives. Even passersby on the sidewalk were urged to come in for study and fellowship. "Come on in, brother, you're welcome. This is the house of the Lord," Love would say. "I came in to get away from that big feller [Love]," at least one new member told the group. Once inside, all joined in the spirited hymn sings led by George Grove on the piano, who always "played with a little rhythm in his hymns," and heard a lesson given by Dr. Keys. Attendance soared, from a handful to, on occasion, more than fifty. Within two years, Rudolph Greene was made Sunday school superintendent, and Rhodes was president of the men's Bible class.3 Total reported Sunday school �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 123 attendance in all classes, 89 during Newland's last year, rose to 221 in Keys's. Church membership also went up remarkably during the period, from a reported 139 during Keys's first year, to 208 in 1959. The pastor obviously had found much local response. Wise in the lore of the mountains, sharing in the pleasures of hunting and fishing with many of his flock, and always exhibiting a common touch and a faith in his fellow men and women, he won the loyalty of many. The church bulletins of the later 1950's often reprinted Keys's sermons; others were collected in a pamphlet, "Meditations at Sunset," published not long before his retirement. Warm and earnest in tone, his sermons stuck close to the Scriptures and followed a numbered outline in the old-fashioned way. They invariably included an exhortation to listeners to the Lord's service which, if not of the altar-call variety, was distinctly "evangelistic." In other ways, too, Keys often sounded an old-fashioned note: by the 1950's his career had spanned the era of great growth and change in his beloved mountains. In the 1920's he had enthusiastically hailed the coming of economic development. A generation later he could reminisce fondly, in a sermon entitled "Big Business," about "the days when the village blacksmith, the dusty miller, the country merchant were the biggest business men we knew anything about." If it gave him "pause to know that the basic control in our huge defense production is so preponderently [sic] exercised by a few concerns," he nevertheless still believed that "the Biggest Business" of all was the work of Jesus, who had come "'to be about My Father's Business.' "4 Keys cooperated regularly in the inter-church work so necessary in a small town like Blowing Rock, especially during the off season. A Baptist-Presbyterian Easter sunrise service became tradition during these years. Joint Thanksgiving services would follow. And in 1958 another round of ecumenical summer programs was held at Rumple, led again by Father Spence, "Rabbi" Lazaron, Mrs. John Reiniking, and Keys. Grandfather Home Day services, always heavily attended by persons of many denominations, continued to be big items on the summer calendar of the resort community. The collection in 1958 raised $17,767 and in 1959, $18,578, the largest amount up to that time. Keys's second pastorate brought another important ecumenical legacy, a sign of the involvement of lay people and summer people in the welfare of all Christians, including the young. The "Dunn Youth" work was provided from the income which the church began receiving from a fund established by Robert A. Dunn of Charlotte to support Christian �124 / Chapter Five and recreational work among the youth of Blowing Rock. Robert A. Dunn was for many years a prominent Charlotte banker. He had first summered on the mountain in 1913, when he rented Dr. William J. Martin's cottage, "Chestnut Knoll." At that time Dunn was in the wholesale drug business. He wrote Martin after that summer that he and his wife had "tucked the house in with care" and had left the key "subject to yours only" with "Mrs. Levi Crisp at the Tappen Cottage. We enjoyed our stay in your house very much. If ever the road becomes dependable I should, I think, become one of the 'regulars' there." When the roads improved, Dunn did indeed become a "regular": he purchased a sizable tract of land and built a large home across from the Green Park Inn, where he and his second wife summered every year until Dunn's death in 1945. Dunn was an Alabama native of North Carolina stock whose Presbyterian faith expressed itself in service all his adult Hfe. He was an elder and taught a young men's Bible class at First Presbyterian Church in Charlotte for many years. Davidson virtually adopted him. Although he had earned no degree from any college, it awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws in 1925, selected him for its Board of Trustees in 1929, and made him the board's president emeritus in 1940. In 1931 he was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., the third prominent Blowing Rock summer resident and Rumple communicant to hold this high office.5 Upon the death of Dunn's wife, the legacy he had established in his estate began providing income for "Christian work among the youth of Blowing Rock, North Carolina." Under the will's provisions, five percent of his estate went to the Trustees of the General Assembly and to the Presbyterian Foundation of Charlotte, for such work, either in the form of a Young Men's Christian Association (Dunn's cousin, Lex Kluttz, was at the time secretary of the Charlotte YMCA), or, if no YMCA existed in Blowing Rock, "said funds shall be used through the . . . Presbyterian Church at Blowing Rock and/or the Board of Home Missions of the Presbytery of which said Church may be a part." The Rev. Mr. Keys was to have care and supervision of the work, according to the original terms. Dunn also left another five percent of his estate "for Christian work among the negro youth of Charlotte," to be administered through the YMCA there. It was his "desire that [the work in both places] shall include Bible study and instructions in Christian doctrine and belief, as well as provision for gymnasium indoor sports and outdoor sports, so that the mind, the body, and the spirit may all be developed in accordance with Christian doctrines." Since the inception of the "Dunn Youth" work, countless projects �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 125 have been undertaken, almost always with ecumenical backing among the town's churches, for projects meeting Dunn's original specifications. The fund has made possible a small salary for a part-time "Dunn Youth Worker," and has been used to send children to church camps, buy sporting equipment, and fund nursery school projects, to help with the costs of special scouting programs, rent films, and hold seasonal celebrations. That Keys's ties to Dunn, going back to his first pastorate, had much to do with getting the fund established, is clear. It was a gesture on both their parts which has touched numerous young lives and hearts. Local congregational needs were by the late 1950's also becoming apparent. In August, 1958, the session discussed buying or building a new manse, and using the older house as additional space for educational activities. A committee consisting of Bob Hardin, Curtis McGown, Dan Kluttz, Bill Lentz, and Howard Holshouser recommended that "an effort be made to solicit gifts and pledges toward a goal of $25,000 for a new manse," no doubt from among the usual local and summer supporters.6 In May, 1959, "a suggestion for new lighting in Chapel & placing shutters on the windows to control outside light was presented by Dr. Keys for further study," but not acted upon. The project for a new manse was embraced, however. Bob Hardin was named to head a committee to organize the fundraising, with Bob Snyder as co-chair; other members were Bill Lentz, Mr. and Mrs. H. P. Holshouser, Sr., Jean Bolick, and Nell Greene. The session also voted to employ "regular cleaning women to clean Church and Chapel."7 Later that year Keys "went public" with his requests for improvements. It was a last request to the congregation he had twice led. He printed in the church bulletin "An Allegory by the Church," in which, assuming the persona of the church structure, he pointed out that "not more than $2500 in real cash was ever invested in my building," which had served God's cause for over a half-century. Even "my 'alter-ego,' the Chapel, . . . was provided by the liberality of one great Christian." He invoked the programs the church had housed and supported over the years: the Grandfather Home offerings, the Good News Club, the "great men of God" who had preached from its pulpit: among them, "Rumple, Vardell, Vance, Tufts, Hoey, Broughton, Hodges, Cunningham, Jones, Gutzke, and, next week, Thompson." But "to be made comfortable for my people," he wrote, some changes were necessary: "a few well-placed heaters," "good lighting," a new organ, and, in the Chapel, better lights and "shuttered screens." He also indirectly appealed for relief from his own tasks: "I need the ringing voice, the alert �126 / Chapter Five step, the hearty handshake of a young man, called to be my minister." But, he warned from experience and from behind his thin disguise,8 1. DON'T call any man unless you make the call unanimous. 2. DON'T call any man until you have a suitable home in which he may live. 3. DON'T call any man unless you are ready to provide him with an adequate competence for living; at least the average for town and city churches. 4. DON'T call any man unless you resolve to give him your presence at church and your prayers for his strengthening. By that autumn Keys was approaching his sixty-seventh birthday. He had usually been able to get away on short vacation trips to Florida, or preach occasionally for other churches in his native region of Southwest Virginia, during his second stay at Rumple, but a certain restlessness seems to have taken him as retirement loomed. At a congregational meeting moderated by the Rev. Dr. Yelton on September 27, 1959, he read a statement announcing his intention to step down from the Rumple pulpit on the first of January of the following year. He said he intended to "ask Presbytery to give me, at least for the time being, the status of Honorably Retired with the privilege of doing evangelistic and supply work in the Presbytery and other areas." He intended to be available to his Rumple charge for supply work, and pastoral care, until a new minister was called, and, since he planned to "make Blowing Rock my latter-days home," to "be ready to help [the church] in anyway possible when needed." But he properly noted his expectation to "always be approached only through" the pastor and to consider "no church endeavors except at the invitation of the active pastor." He was, he said, in no way dissatisfied with Rumple Church or its work, but sought to do only "whatever work the Lord may have for me to do in the days ahead." By unanimous vote, with several members making regretful comments, the congregation voted to accept the resignation.9 In many ways Keys's retirement was the end of an era at Rumple Church. For nearly forty years he had been active, at presbytery and in Blowing Rock, on its behalf. Despite swings in his health and relocations to other responsibilities, he had made himself a part of the mountain resort community as perhaps no pastor has done before or since. Upon his death in 1973, he was buried at Blowing Rock, the only Rumple pastor whose remains rest among the mountains he knew and loved so well. Even more important than this earthly connection, he had put a spiritual stamp on his parishioners in the interest of his Master's cause. Several members of a generation raised under his �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 127 preaching still attend Rumple Church and remember him as one of the town's own. ***** Keys turned over the pulpit in 1960 to a representative of the younger generation, much as, nationally, the torch of government was passing to the young John F. Kennedy, the first president born in the twentieth century. If the Rev. Austin Blake Brinkerhoff was not the first Rumple pastor born in the current century, he was the first to bring a contemporary approach to much of the church's business. Yet he was building on a foundation which had been well established by his predecessors. He recalls today that he inherited a generally smoothfunctioning and harmonious organization with no major problems. His five years were, for the brand-new pastor, personally rewarding; his congregation seems to have returned the compliment. Gracious, considerate, and sensible, he made many friends in the town. He and his wife, Jacqueline Spaulding, had two sons, Charles Edward ("Brinkie," during his childhood) and Austin Blake, Jr., ("Audie"), born in Blowing Rock; a third, Louis Robert, was born in Florida during his father's present pastorate at the Highlands Presbyterian Church in Daytona Beach. Brinkerhoff, a member of the Davidson College class of 1956, entered Union Seminary in the fall of that year. Remarkably, three of the men in that entering class would one day become Rumple pastors: Brinkerhoff, the Rev. Richard Holshouser, and the Rev. Vaughn Earl Hartsell. Ordained and licensed in the summer of 1960 in Holston Presbytery, he moderated his first session meeting in Blowing Rock on August 2, 1960 (curiously, there is no record of the congregational meeting which must have been convened to call him). The Brinkerhoffs were to be the first residents of the new manse, already under construction. A special "Manse Day" service to raise money was held on August 28. The Farm House Singers provided the music (the first record of their appearance at the church), and, by vote of the session, Dr. Keys delivered the message. Perhaps the former pastor was picked because the project had been of such concern to him, and his fundraising talents were already known, while the new preacher was not yet a proven commodity. The plan had been sparked in 1958 when Mrs. Annie Cannon and another summer resident, Earl Searcy of Valdese, purchased two lots �128 / Chapter Five on South Wallingford Street and donated them to the church; over the next year the committee appointed to consider the matter moved slowly in planning for the new structure. "The very presence of the wooded area marked by the sign, 'site of new Presbyterian manse' struck fear in the hearts of many even as it brought hope to those who were cautiously optimistic."10 Advance pledges did not begin to meet costs, but work started in the summer of 1960. By September, builder Owen Coffey reported that an additional $7000 would be needed to finish the job. It is not clear how much had already been spent up to this time, or how much was raised from the August service at which Keys preached, although the statistical report to the General Assembly for 1960 showed that $4055 was raised that year for building expenses. Virtually all work was being done by local members: excavation, framing, plumbing, wiring, even making curtains. That fall, with full cooperation from the pastor, the elders and deacons began what was to stretch to nearly two years of fundraising effort. Chicken pie suppers were held almost monthly at the high school, with the deacons, chaired by Bruce Greene and motivated by Bob Hardin's enthusiasm for the project, doing most of the cooking. Another means of raising money was the sale of memorial plaques for the church pews; deacon Bob Snyder took charge of this part of the fundraising activity, which by the summer of 1961 had brought in some $1,500 from Sunday school and church members. Today about one-fourth of the pews bear these memorials. During 1961, after much discussion, twenty-five church members voluntarily signed bank notes for $200 each to underwrite the remainder of the building costs. No project the church had undertaken up to this time had involved so many members so directly. It was a sign of the church's maturity when, in the fall of 1961, clerk of session Rudolph Greene turned down Annie Cannon's offer to pay off the remainder of the manse obligation. She called him to her house at the end of the season and expressed her interest in the project: "I'd like to see the debt on the manse paid off," she told Greene."Do you think I should offer to the session to pay off what's left?" "No, ma'am, I don't think you should," he replied. "This is something we should do for ourselves." Greene later remembered that "she broke out in a big smile and gave me the biggest hug. And I don't believe the church was ever closer than when we were working on that project." The effort continued into 1962. By late summer, the entire note had been paid off and a grateful session held a ceremonial note-burning on the manse lawn.11 During Brinkerhoff's pastorate another national trend caught up with Blowing Rock. He and the other ministers of the county had a hand in defusing a drive to exacerbate racial tensions in the mountain �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 129 community on the part of that old instrument of hate, the Ku Klux Klan. In late 1964 the short-lived independent local newspaper The Blowing Rock Journal carried an ad inviting anyone who was a "Native-Born Loyal United States Citizen, 18 years old, a White Gentile Person of Temperate Habits, of Protestant Faith, and believe[d] in White Supremacy and Americanism" to join "THE UNITED KLANS OF AMERICA, Inc., KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN," which organization, readers were assured, "is absolutely Non-Subversive with no criminal accusations against it." This was a way to "FIGHT COMMUNISM," which "is being taught in some of our Public Schools and Colleges" and had "infiltrated many key Government positions. .. .Even some of our preachers are including Communist ideas in their sermons," the ad proclaimed.12 In reply, Brinkerhof f sent the paper's editor an open letter, published under the heading "Why I Oppose the KKK." He provided some local details: "On Friday, three men approached some of the merchants of our community and individuals on Main Street soliciting membership" in a new "Klavern" of the Klan to be formed in Watauga County. "Letters were mailed to members of the community, and membership cards were passed out... .Indeed, many have become active members." Brinkerhoff reviewed for his readers the history of the Klan's early post-Civil War activity, concluding that by the end of that era "Responsible men began to turn away from violence." "Today," he observed, "there is no need for the Ku Klux Klan. Responsible citizens have declined to become members of it, and only people who feel inferior themselves, or are deeply frustrated, or ignorant of what they are getting into, become members of the Klan." Even if violence was no longer the hallmark of today's Klan, he said, "its purposes are the same as before: to intimidate people by fear"; and its "foundation principle [has not] changed—racial superiority." Further, its members, by hiding behind sheets and hoods and profaning "the name of Christ by using the lighted cross as their symbol," were showing a cowardly unwillingness to assume responsibility for their actions. Striking a patrician's tone toward the end of his letter, Brinkerhoff recalled that the "stern, moral" ex-Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, when he became head of the Klan in 1868, had "openly denounced the lawless elements of the organization and ordered that the Klan be disbanded. If the general were alive today and lived in Watauga County, I suspect that he would be indignant enough to chase the hooded cowards over Grandfather Mountain." By the spring of 1965, Brinkerhoff helped mobilize the Watauga �130 / Chapter Five County Ministerial Association into opposing the Klan. Its twenty members present at a meeting on April 5 unanimously resolved: Because we believe that the relationship between the races in Watauga County is good, and that progress is steadily being made in communication and co-operation between our Negro and White communities; and Because we believe that this relationship can only be retarded by the establishment of a Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan, and other extremist groups; and Because we are unalterably opposed to communism but believe that the Ku Klux Klan is an ineffective way of fighting communism; and because as Christian ministers we feel that many of the principles, and the irresponsible actions of the Ku Klux Klan are contrary to the teachings of Christ, We hereby recommend that the citizens of Watauga County refrain from membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Brinkerhoff carried a slight variant of this resolution to the next meeting of Holston Presbytery in Kingsport, Tennessee, which commended the Ministerial Association for its "clear, courageous, [and] forthright stand" and endorsed its action. The resolution was published in the digest of Presbytery's activities prepared for all member churches and thus was widely distributed and read to boards of elders and deacons throughout the region.13 The ecumenical effort against the Klan was largely successful; few open incidents marred race relations between Watauga County's whites and its almost non-existent black population during these years of turbulence on the national scene. Rumple Church had already anticipated its own response if black worshippers sought to be seated in Rumple's congregation. In May, 1963, the session, noting that "racial demonstrations elsewhere" in the South "made it necessary to ... discuss what our church should do in the event any group of colored people should visit us," had agreed that "any person or persons wiU be treated courteously, and should be seated without special recognition."14 No one today can recall any such incident ever taking place. Although the church today has no black members, its policy with respect to courteous treatment for all, so far as is known, has never changed. The church had come a long way from sponsoring the late evening services for blacks during the 1930's and 1940's, through the "separate but (almost) equal" era of the Negro Community Church of the later 1940's to 1960's, to its present policy of open acceptance of all worshippers, of whatever race. And while race relations were the object of much anguish, individual heroism, and rapid rethinking throughout the denomination during the 1960's, the issue has lost its edge as an �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 131 object of controversy, since almost no blacks live in the county-and few, if any, summer residents bring servants, black or white, to the mountains any longer.15 The youthful Brinkerhoff faced another generational change during his pastorate as well: an alteration in the town's role as a tourist resort. By the early 1960's, many older members of the summer crowd were gone or passing away. A more sophisticated, more demanding group began to take their place in the community. For many years the "locals" had mingled freely with the summer people, both at the church and on the street; a mutual economic dependency had long existed, and a kind of personal respect had usually marked relations between the groups. When he or she needed a building contractor, an appliance, a repairman, a grocer, a gardener, or even a caddy or a groom for a horse, the summer resident had traditionally turned to some local resident, whom he or she was very likely to know personally. And, as has been shown above, when some "worthy cause" had needed support, the local leadership had for years been able to turn for help to concerned summer residents, whether to improve local sanitation, equip a hospital, raise money for an orphanage, or build a church plant. Presbyterians, indeed, had not been alone in this regard: Blowing Rock Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, even the few Roman Catholics and Christian Scientists, owed much, if not most, of their support to the summer residents. But times were changing. First came skiing, a new sort of "service industry," bringing a different kind of weekend tourist to the mountains —and in winter! The area now known as Appalachian Ski Mountain was first promoted as Blowing Rock Ski Mountain, and its upper slopes were by the 1960's lined with new chalets in pseudo-Swiss style for sale to short-term vacationers. The "services" they demanded were increasingly provided by middlemen, or by local people they rarely knew. Better roads, and increased affluence, were also making it possible for a new type of visitor, with different demands, to make more frequent appearances in Blowing Rock. By this time the grand old hotels were fading, if indeed they had not already been pulled down: the Green Park was acquired by the Broyhill Furniture Company and was no longer much favored by the public; Mayview Manor was abandoned, stripped of its elegant rusticity, and would soon be �132 / Chapter Five demolished for condominium development. Motels, a new national symbol of America on the move, accommodated the changed attitude toward travel: not the individuality and personal attention of a hotel and its dining room, but the anonymous and reassuring sameness of a private room and parking place, and a look-alike fast-food eatery, were all motorists seemed to want in the modern age. Blowing Rock, like many American communities, was fast becoming more a tourist stop for sightseers and less a summer resort for part-time residents. But even for those who still wished to avail themselves of a mountain resort, the definition of "exclusivity" had also come to acquire a new and more literal meaning. Typical locally of the new approach to "resort living" was the development in the 1960's, near the no-longer extant town of Shulls Mills, of Hound Ears Club, with its for-membersonly golf course, its restrictive lot sizes and building requirements, its exclusively upper middle-class clientele, and above all its gate house and gate guards. Such literal barriers symbolized the growing sense of difference between some local residents and the newer arrivals. Many of the new resort residents there and elsewhere found they could get along just fine not associating in any personal way with the "natives," while local residents came to resent, with some part of their minds, the condescending treatment, and the unthinking display of wealth, which seemed typical of so many of the new outsiders. The new "exclusivity" began to work both ways. Yet the local community, too, was changing. Many young people had benefited from improved educational opportunities of the wartime and post-war period; they shared the rising expectations of an increasingly consumer-oriented secular culture. Some were moving away to "make it" in bigger and fastergrowing cities in the piedmont or out of state. Those who stayed faced the perennial difficulty of earning an adequate living in a small, seasonal resort town. A split grew between the locals who could accommodate to, and profit from, the newer, more specialized service needs of tourism, and those who resented and feared the new climate. Brinkerhof f hit upon two solutions, one personal, the other organizational, to deal with the effects these divisions were having upon his own charge. He has recently recalled that "on Saturday nights I would go over and shoot pool in their basements with my local elders, and on Sunday mornings get up and preach from the pulpit to my millionaires."16 He did, of course, more than this for both groups. Locally, he and his wife, young themselves, took strong support roles with many of the young couples in the church, and their small children. Jackie Brinkerhoff for a time had charge of the Dunn Youth work, arranging programs for the town's youth, finding volunteers to provide them hot �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 133 dog suppers in the church fellowship building (a function filled by the old manse after 1962), chaperoning them to summer camp, and similar functions. Blake Brinkerhoff helped organize a bowling league of church men, worked to revive and lead a Boy Scout troop, and in many other ways accommodated himself to his parishioners. He repeatedly inspired them to service, both at the church and in the larger community. During this era, the Sunday school secretary, Jay W. Greene, and his wife, Bernie, took the lead in extending the annual Christmas program of the Sunday school from a simple party for the children to what has since become an annual tradition of gift-giving, exchange of Christmas treats, and a visit from Santa Claus. Brinkerhoff helped ensure that the season's spirit was extended beyond the walls of the church, when, with members of the diaconate and the session, he had baskets of food collected at the service and distributed in the community to anyone who needed such a helping hand. This "White Christmas" tradition has continued to the present.17 The pastor on several occasions urged church officers to take more active roles: for a time the "Shepherd Plan" was tried, "whereby each officer . . . would be in charge of visiting and meeting the needs of approximately seven families" in the church. Session members were asked to impress the need for infant baptism upon parents in the church who had small children. The pastor visited regularly in Sunday school, explaining the meaning and function of the church to young people looking toward full membership. He held communicants' classes, and even led a vocational guidance class; for all these efforts he drew warm praise from the leadership.18 To minimize problems between the local and summer congregations, Brinkerhoff also took to heart St. Paul's injunction, "Let all things be done decently and in good order" (I Cor. 14:40), and gave form for the first time to a Summer Residents Committee. His hope was that accommodation could be reached between the disparate, sometimes mutually-suspicious groups in his charge. Brinkerhoff s most enthusiastic and sympathetic supporter in the new organization was Eugene S. Bowman of Mocksville. Bowman is the sort of man who never met a stranger. Long a resident of the Hershey, Pennsylvania area (both children and adults remember that for years at church he always had a pocketful of chocolate kisses which he loved to pass out when introducing himself), he and his wife, Ruth, bought a vacation house in Blowing Rock in 1960. After his retirement in 1964, they spent most of every summer on the mountain; they later also wintered in Florida. Bowman, as has been noted, immediately took an interest in the activities of the black Community Church. For eighteen years, until the congregation �134 / Chapter Five had shrunk to a tiny handful, he preached there most every summer Sunday afternoon. It was a labor of love, for Bowman, a native Pennsylvanian who had cut his teeth on powerful Presbyterian preaching, was an enthusiastic, self-taught student of the Bible and of church doctrine and practice. He also took several turns teaching the men's and women's Sunday school class at Rumple during the summer. With Brinkerhoff he found at least one immediate point of agreement: however attractive Rumple Church's appearance on the outside, its interior remained barnlike and unadorned (Keys would probably have agreed, but might have put it more gently). Indeed, except for the stone pulpit and f lowerstands which had gone in when the church was built, and some English-style, electrified wall sconces, a plain communion table at the foot of the pulpit platform was the only interior decoration-although flowers and greenery often made up for the church's plainness on special occasions. Brinkerhoff and Bowman agreed that a set of table appointments would dignify and complement regular congregational worship. But while such a project was an initial point of departure for the cooperation of the two men, the larger need for a formal organization and procedure for channeling the support of the summer people was by the early 1960's glaringly apparent. The death of David Ovens in 1957 had removed one of the most dynamic, if occasionally controversial, supporters of the church's cause with the summer crowd. (Ovens's death also had, as will be shown in chapter six, an effect upon Grandfather Home Day.) It was time to draw together the remaining loyal supporters from the older generation, and forge a group which would carry on the work in unison with a new one. With a glad hand and unquenchable enthusiasm, Bowman found some nine other men whom Brinkerhoff asked in September 1962 to form a "Special Planning Committee." The name was subsequently changed to the "Summer Residents Committee" (SRC), and membership quickly grew to eighteen, with a mailing list of more than 150. It was directed to familiarize summer residents with the church's activities, to welcome and assist in ministering to them, and to offer suggestions and help in planning for and achieving the church's long range goals. In 1967 the group adopted a formal set of by-laws. Along with Howard Walker and Bill Matson, Bowman was to be its leading spirit for twenty-one years, a term of service to Rumple Memorial almost as long as Ovens's-and one which, while not always perfectly harmonious, was certainly less disruptive to the church's pastoral and budgetary activity. For where Ovens and his friends of the previous generation had concentrated on local benevolence projects like Grandfather Home and a pastoral salary supplement, which had always been �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 135 "off budget" gifts, Bowman's committee raised funds for various improvement projects at the church, and channeled them through the church treasurer. Rumple's treasurer was in fact made treasurer of the SRC. The pastor was always invited to attend, and was kept informed of every committee action. This wise and farsighted arrangement has continued to this day.19 Funds raised by the SRC freed up locally-raised monies to go to support the larger mission of the church, whose long list of benevolences by the 1960's included presbytery, synod, and General Assembly causes, some designated for specific agencies or organizations, others for more general purposes such as church extension. Thus by the end of Brinkerhoffs pastorate a congregation slightly smaller in numbers than it had been at the end of Keys's was giving somewhat more to benevolences. Meanwhile the projects of the SRC had an effect on the church's appearance and the congregation's comfort. A simple brass cross and candlestands were purchased for the communion table. New electric lanterns were hung over the seating area, providing additional illumination and complementing the increasingly English countrychurch look of the sanctuary.20 Pew cushions were purchased shortly after. And in May 1963, William W. Matson of the Summer Residents Committee appeared before the session to report "on plans for heating the stone sanctuary. The plans were wholeheartedly adopted, along with other attendant minor specifications."21 That summer a whole new heating system, and additional ductwork, was put in place. For the first time in fifty years, a satisfactory means of heating the building had been found. In 1987 local and summer resident contributors replaced that furnace. And although the smaller number of wintertime worshippers still makes it too expensive and impractical to use the main building after Thanksgiving or before Easter, fall and spring services in the stone sanctuary have been considerably more comfortable since the 1963 work. Through the years the SRC's gifts have proved enormously beneficial to the life of Rumple Church. In a February 1978 letter to Concord Presbytery, Bowman estimated that up to that date the committee's "total gifts to Rumple Church were in excess of $180,000," an amount which included some $100,000 from various individuals toward the Cannon Educational Building between 1965 and 1971. The total has grown considerably larger since then. In 1974 the committee purchased and later had paved a lot for parking at the rear of the church. Its gifts have made possible a long list of other refurbishing and maintenance projects, without which the physical plant would inevitably �136 / Chapter Five have fallen into serious disrepair: refinishing the ceiling, beams, and pews in the sanctuary; building new sidewalks; rebuilding the stone pulpit platform; replacing (more than once) the aisle carpeting; stripping and repainting the wood siding on the chapel wing; and several times making repairs to the slate roof. Some jobs the committee did with their own hands: a group spent several days one summer stuffing insulating material between the rocks in the sanctuary walls. The organ currently in use in the stone sanctuary was largely paid for by SRC donations. Summer resident Anne (Mrs. Thomas V.) Snively, Sr., to augment the seasonal music program, subsidizes individual members of the Farm House Restaurant Singers each summer to join with the Rumple choir. Her support, which began during Brinkerhoffs time, has added much to the summer services; it continues today.22 During the 1980's such projects as a vestibule for the chapel, and reroofing the Cannon Educational Building, have continued to find SRC support. Many other mundane but necessary items, such as duplicating machinery, folding chairs and tables, and choir robes, have been acquired through SRC contributions. Simply put, proper upkeep at Rumple Church, without the continued help of the summer people, would be an almost impossible burden to the permanent congregation. And because the projects have been coordinated through the church treasurer and the session, the process Brinkerhoff began has worked reasonably well to allay unwarranted interference, or resentment, between the two groups. But just as important as the material benefits which the SRC has made to Rumple Church has been the spirit in which their work was led. In his own often-eloquent but idiosyncratic style, Bowman tried in 1978 to put into words something of that spirit:23 You and I know that many things in human life bring joy; from the sense of a healthy body and the exhilaration of a sunshiny day . . . to the deep satisfaction of home and summer friends in the mountains, there ARE numberless sources of happiness. But man has always been athirst to find joy in thinking about the TOTAL meaning in life. I feel that, if when he thinks about God, he can, like the psalmist, rejoice in the future ahead of him, then all his other blessings ARE illuminated. Truly, not only are there happy things in life, but LIFE ITSELF, is, fundamentally blessed. For me, it seems that the thought of God in terms of friendly personality is the most joyful idea of him that man has ever had. Isn't man's thirst for joy one of the sources for his faith IN a personal God? Isn't this what man wants, what the Apostle Paul called "joy �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 137 and peace in believing"? And in DOING? So, let all ... believe, AND DO! Other organizational matters which were attended to during Brinkerhoff s pastorate included a changeover to the rotation system for deacons, beginning in late 1961. One-third of the board was replaced that year and each year thereafter, each new "class" serving a three year term. It is not clear from the records why the church did not apply the rotation plan at the same time to the members of the session; a system of rotation for elders, with one being replaced each year, was agreed to in 1969. This system was followed until 1977, when the church adopted the "unicameraT system of church government, in effect abolishing the diaconate by combining its responsibilities with those of the session of elders.24 Brinkerhoff also for the first time organized several standing committees to more formally involve laypersons in the life and service of the church: a Committee on Strengthening the Church, on Service, on Witness, and on Commitment. During his last year in Blowing Rock, Brinkerhoff set in motion the plans which would culminate, under his successor, in a new Sunday school building. Annie Cannon had entered her decline. She was in and out of the hospital in Blowing Rock for several months during late 1964 and early 1965. Her will, written long before, provided for Rumple if the executor-members of her family concurred. Brinkerhoff and others in the congregation kept close to her, not only for the sake of the church's future, but in gratitude for all she had already done. Brinkerhoff remembers that, although he did not always share some of her more conservative theological views, they had a deep mutual respect and shared a genuine desire to serve the same Savior. Her death, on March 10, 1965, removed one of the last links to Rumple Memorial's past. She had been born December 9, 1887, the same year as the Blowing Rock church; she had loved and taught generations of its young people; and, along with her family and many others whom she had touched, she provided for a lasting monument after her, both for the work she had done for others and for her Lord. Brinkerhoff conducted her funeral service. "Wednesday, March 10, 1965, was Easter Morn for Mrs. Annie L. Cannon," he told a crowded church. "This was the day she had achieved her victory." Her friend Nell Greene wrote in The Blowing Rocket the following week:25 "Although Mrs. Cannon lived a full, rich life for the Lord, her problems, as well as her joys, were numerous. But her problems were shared with a higher power that made them easier to bear. . . .Perhaps the most fitting tribute paid to Mrs. Cannon was the anthem sung by the choir �138 / Chapter Five at the close of her committal service. The anthem was sung at the close of each Sunday morning scene-o-felt presentation for more years than anyone can remember by the children she loved: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace." ***** Brinkerhoff turned Rumple Church over to his lay committees in January, 1966, after having accepted a call to the Highland Presbyterian Church in Daytona Beach, Florida. Several preachers filled in over that winter, among them the academic dean and professor of Bible at Lees-McRae, Dr. Robert G. Newman, who in this period also supplied the pulpit at the Baird's Creek Church. But Rumple's regular operations: the Sunday school, the Men and the Women of the Church, the Dunn Youth, and others, ran on smoothly. Considerable responsibility fell upon the clerk of session, Rudolph Greene, and elder Bob Hardin, hardware store owner and mayor of Blowing Rock from 1953 to 1971, who moderated the session meetings that winter. The lay training the preceding pastors had provided was being put to the test, and succeeded. But unfortunately for Rumple's more recent experience, serious trouble lay ahead. As the sage of Proverbs knew, "pride goeth before a fall." The church as a whole had much to be proud of by the mid-1960's, and more would be accomplished during the next several years. But both the strengths and the shortcomings of the generation the church had raised up by this era would leave a legacy with which the current crop of leaders still has to contend. When he left, Brinkerhoff wrote that Rumple Memorial was a "most unique" church that "provides fine year-round opportunity for building leadership" because of its "tremendous outreach in the spring, summer, and fall" to a summer congregation containing "college presidents, vacationing ministers, townspeople, and visitors from all over the nation. Also, a very welcome characteristic of this church is its unity." He and the session in late December 1965 carefully filled out a "Church Data Form" for the Assembly's Committee on the Minister and His Work, to assist in the search process for a new pastor. As a benchmark for comparison with earlier and later summaries of the church's condition, it should be cited in some detail.26 �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 139 In 1965 the church employed a full-time pastor, at an annual salary of $4800, plus a $600 car allowance and another $600 utility allowance. It contributed on the pastor's behalf to the Minister's Annuity Fund, and provided a rent-free manse and a month's paid vacation. Others on the staff included a choir director (that year a young graduate student in music at Appalachian State Teachers' College, Tom Forrest), at $700 a year; an organist, Margaret Vance, at $480; a janitor, at $500; and a Dunn Youth Worker, at $300. Nine men made up the session; their average age was fifty-five. On average they attended eighty percent of the session meetings, and ninety-five percent of the worship services. The nine-man board of deacons averaged thirty-eight years of age, attended ninety percent of their meetings, and came to church ninety percent of the time. Of 139 active members on the roll, an average of ninety attended services in the winter; attendance in summer was estimated to average 215. Sunday evening services were no longer held, but eight to twelve persons attended a mid-week Prayer and Study Service. "Many" of the members were under age twenty, or age twenty to sixty; "few" were over sixty. Of the occupational listings given on the form, "many" were reported in the business, clerical, laborer, professional, and retired categories, "few" were farmers. A total of 117 persons were enrolled in Sunday school, sixty of whom were under age eighteen; forty-six adults, nine teachers, and two officers were indicated. Sixty women, and thirty men, were active in their respective church organizations. The church conducted Vacation Bible School, communicants' classes, church workers' conferences, and "occasionally" held a leadership training school. It hosted Scouting programs for boys and girls under twelve, and youth organizations for "Pioneers" and "Seniors." Its budget, which in 1965 totaled $13,079, was jointly prepared by the elders and deacons, and raised by "pledges and gifts"; an estimated fifteen percent of the membership tithed. All its buildings, valued at a total of $75,000, were free of debt, in "good" repair, and insured for near their estimated value. The religious education building, which dated to 1936, was considered inadequate for "present and future needs," however. The new manse was equipped "in all essentials"; parking around the church was "fair"; a volunteer choir of fifteen, an organ in "good" condition, and "sufficient pianos" for the educational plant completed the music program. The congregation sang from The Hymnbook. As for the character of the community in which the church was located, Blowing Rock was described on the form as a "Tourist" town, with "small businesses and tourist attractions" making up its leading �140 / Chapter Five industries and occupations. Its winter population was 700, the summer population, 6,000; ninety percent was estimated to be native-born white, 9.5 percent "foreign-born," and one-half percent "Negro." The townspeople's religious affiliations were put at eighty percent Protestant, five percent Roman Catholic, three percent Jewish, and twelve percent "Unchurched." Rumple Church claimed as a "special emphasis" its "ministry to tourists and summer community; special summer residents committee composed of leaders from many churches in [the] Southland." It had added five new members on profession of faith, six on transfer of membership, and two on restatement of faith in 1965. And it indicated its members were "cordial to visitors and prospective members, effective in assimilation of new members," welcomed members from various economic levels, and cooperated in all denominational programs. From this base of success, then, the congregation began its search for a replacement minister. During early 1966 two other pulpit candidates were considered before the congregation decided on May 29, at a meeting moderated by the Rev. L. B. Gibbs, executive secretary of Holston Presbytery, to call the Rev. James Richard Holshouser, then pastor of Acme Presbyterian Church at Riegelwood, North Carolina. The new pastor was provided an annual salary of $6500, of which $500 was to be considered manse expense, and $1000 as car expense; plus the now-standard contributions to the Ministerial Annuity Fund, group health insurance, and a month's paid vacation. The nominating committee introduced him to the congregation in its report as a native of Mooresville, North Carolina, a Davidson graduate, class of 1956, and a 1960 Union Seminary graduate. Holshouser had "studied for a year at a Seminary in [Montpellier,] France as an Exchange Student," and had been ordained in Wilmington Presbytery on July 31, 1960. Married to Sadie Rebecca Rigler, the new pastor and his wife had three children, Natalie, then five, Laura, three, and Andrew, two and a half months old.27 The Holshouser name, of course, was a familiar one in the community, but the new minister was only distantly related to the local Holshouser family. Richard Holshouser had been involved in denominational activities for much of his life. Even before college, he had been a leader at Presbyterian young people's conferences, and presided over the Youth Council of Concord Presbytery during his senior year of high school. He first gained experience at money-raising for worthy causes when he led the Youth Council's campaign to buy a Jeep for Presbytery's Camp Grier during 1953.28 A major achievement of Holshouser's time at Rumple Church would be to head up the raising of more than $143,000, from all �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 141 sources, for the Annie L. Cannon Memorial Education Building. It remains the most lasting physical legacy of his ministry to the church and the community. In an interview during 1987, Holshouser, who currently pastors at two churches, Clinchfield and Conley Memorial, near Marion, recalled his years at Rumple by identifying people with whom he worked, and who served the church with him during that period. But his first thoughts upon taking the job, he remembered, were of the young people of the congregation and the town of Blowing Rock. It was to the service of this group that he directed a large share of his energy. The Dunn Youth stepped up activities, led by Ginger Smith and Susie Greene, during the summers. So did the Scouts. Holshouser took student groups to summer camps in Holston and later Concord Presbyteries. Buses carried youth groups to Charlotte, to visit various interdenominational outreach programs among that city's homeless and drug-dependent. All these activities brought increased numbers of young people into contact with Rumple Church. In their interest, Holshouser focused the session's attention on the inadequacy of the church's physical plant. When the new manse had been completed, some seven years previously, the old one had been remodeled as a fellowship hall, but it could not begin to accommodate the growing number of groups needing meeting space. The lower floor of the 1936 building lacked adequate lighting and ventilation (it has since been renovated by volunteer labor with Dunn Youth and other funds from the Summer Residents Committee, and one of its rooms furnished with attractive antiques and dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Ethel Burns). For two or three years, the church arranged to lease the American Legion building for its youth activities. Meanwhile, the legacy to the church from Annie Cannon's estate, provided by her daughter, Mary Morris of Greensboro, and granddaughter, Anne Reynolds Forsyth, was drawing bank interest. Elder Howard P. Holshouser, as chairman of the building committee appointed under the previous pastor, had solicited various members and friends of the Cannon family, and had had sketches prepared for an addition somewhat smaller than the one which finally took shape. Estimates in 1965 put project costs at about $75,000, of which some $43,000 was on hand as of September, 1966. The new pastor continued to promote the project; planning moved ahead more rapidly-and became more elaborate. The architectural firm of Malcolm and Higgins, of Charlotte, was engaged in early 1967 to design a larger, threestory building. The new plans allocated space for several spacious rooms for men's, women's, and young people's Sunday school classes; a �142 / Chapter Five fellowship hall and kitchen; and a room for pre-schoolers, which would soon come to house a weekday "Good News" nursery school. The structure was designed to wrap around the south end of the winter chapel building, allowing for a new choir loft and elevated pulpit area there. It connected to the stone church as well, providing a unified plant for the first time. A new heating system served both the new wing and the old chapel, but not the stone sanctuary. The old manse was to be demolished. Consideration was given to facing the new building in stone, to match the existing sanctuary, but the idea had to be dropped as prohibitively expensive. As Holshouser recalled it, the necessary rock work would have cost as much as $100,000. Pointed arches on the exterior porch, facing the street, and a beige tone of brick, supposed to harmonize with the slate roof then on the stone sanctuary, were the only concessions to the country gothic style of the building to which the new wing was to be attached. Its flat roof was perhaps its most unfortunate feature, both from an aesthetic and practical standpoint: had the architect considered the problem of snow build-up, as did the amateurs who had designed the original stone church? Within three years the new building had to be re-roofed to stop leaks, while its energy inefficiencies became a problem when the cost of fuel oil soared after the 1973 crisis in the Middle East. Still, the plant's utility has made it a substantial asset both to the church and to the community.29 As it was, the only bid made on the project in late 1968, for $184,500, far exceeded the session's expectations. Rather than take that bid to the congregation, acceptable means of financing what had become a much more expensive undertaking than initially supposed had to be explored. After some months the congregation approved a plan to issue $120,000 in 6% bonds, but later voted to accept a conventional twenty-year loan for that amount, secured by the church property. Work began in spring 1969 by the Wilkie Construction Company of Lenoir, at a contract price of $178,000. A handsome eight-page brochure was printed to lay the plans before the resident and summer membership.30 The whole town watched the building take shape, in pictures printed in The Blowing Rocket at frequent intervals over the next two years. The paper also carried regular notices of the fundraising bake sales, bazaars, and ham suppers (one of which, in August, 1969, drew more than four hundred people) sponsored all through 1969 and 1970 by the Men and the Women of the Church. On Sunday, August 16,1970, in an impressive dedication service, the Rev. Holshouser led the con- �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 143 gregation in a "Litany for the Church" which concluded with a prayer "for God's blessing on the Church in this place: Here may the faithful find salvation, and the careless be awakened. Here may the doubting find faith, and the anxious be encouraged. Here may the tempted find help, . . . and the sorrowful comfort. Here may the weary find rest, and the strong be renewed. Here may the aged find consolation, and the young be inspired.31 After a sermon by the pastor, "Led Forth in Joy," on a text from Luke 24:44-53, several members of the congregation took part in the dedicatory: Owen Coffey, most recent chairman of the building committee, presented the keys to the building; Rudolph Greene, clerk of session, accepted them. Wayne Craig and Gail Lentz spoke on "the hope of the youth," and Mrs. Everett Widener, president of the Women of the Church, expressed that organization's gratitude. Then a "Litany of Dedication" committed both the building and congregation "to continue the vision and sacrifice of Christ's servants in our midst who have taught the Word of God in years gone by" and to "the broadening of spiritual horizons and the deepening of Christian trust, that young and old may be awakened, enlightened, and strengthened." After giving thanks "for those in our community, in our nation, and throughout the world who depend on our committed efforts," the litany also thanked God "for the numerous and far-reaching bonds with gentle, persevering Christians throughout many states who fill this church with their presence, love, and prayers during every season of the year." It was a fitting acknowledgment of the union which bound winter and summer residents in a common worship of the same Lord. Then "after they had sung an hymn [*O Zion Haste, Thy Mission High Fulfilling'], they departed."32 But the project was not over. Holshouser and the session continued to urge upon the congregation the need to pay off the building mortgage early. In November 1970, summer resident Marian (Mrs. William) Nebel offered anonymously to match contributions to the building fund by June 1, 1971, up to $45,000.33 This generosity inspired increased efforts, beginning at a Christmas season Love Feast, to pay off the remaining obligation, some $90,000, during the next several months. Another round of bake sales and suppers followed, as did behind-the-scenes prayers, and solicitations from summer residents. An "Expect a Miracle" fellowship supper was scheduled during the spring of 1971, to tally up the receipts of the previous six months and to seek redoubled giving from all present. Holshouser recalled that when the count was completed, the total was $4500 short of the �144 / Chapter Five amount needed to pay off the whole mortgage. At that point, Opal (Mrs. C. A.) Lynch, a summer resident, a Roman Catholic, who had attended the supper in the company of John Miles and Caroline Abernethy of Newton and who was interested in youth work in Blowing Rock, asked the preacher if she could give the amount in the memory of her late husband, who had been a Presbyterian. With that gift, the "miracle" had occurred.34 Not all gifts were so large, of course, but many were sacrificial. Later that same evening, Holshouser took two plates from the supper to a local couple whose families had long had ties to the church. Holshouser recalled that they gave him a $50 bill that night, to help defray the expenses of the dinner. Later a church member commented that, considering the record of hardship, sickness expense, and low levels of income in that family, such a gift was perhaps equal to $1000 from someone else. And so a major milestone had been passed. To Holshouser, and to many year-round residents, the new educational wing was a sign of the increased independence and responsibility of the local congregation. In just over two years, more than half the cost of the building had been raised locally, or at least on local initiative. The generosity of many in the summer congregation had been very important: Marian NebeFs challenge gift was the largest single benefaction the church had ever received at one time. But a few other members of the Summer Residents Committee were critical of the considerable investment the building represented. Had the church relied only on the summer residents, the project might have continued to languish many years. Once the educational building was completed, the session next authorized some $20,000 worth of repairs to the stone sanctuary and the purchase and paving of a lot for parking at the church's rear. Most of the funds came from summer residents, but the often-outspoken Holshouser made clear that the church session was the final decision-making body on all local matters. Having convinced themselves of the need, the pastor and the lay leadership were together displaying the confidence, and independent decision-making, which marked a community coming of age. ***** Another milestone of the Holshouser era was reached in July 1969, when the Presbyterian churches of Watauga County rejoined the Pres- �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 145 bytery of Concord and the Synod of North Carolina. The Synod of Appalaehia had been created in the Tufts era. A new network of ties had since strengthened the county's connections to its home state and had considerably lessened its dependency upon the inter-mountain structures which Tufts's generation had created to serve what had been perceived as a common cultural unit. Ironically, the break with the Synod of Appalachia came at about the same time the federal government was rediscovering Appalachia, and increasing amounts of attention and tax dollars were being funneled, mostly through the Appalachian Regional Commission, into the area. Church links were being cut just as political ones were being created. The idea of returning to Concord Presbytery, as has been shown above, had first been broached almost fifteen years before, and was now thoroughly restudied by Holshouser and at several joint meetings of elders and deacons. The proposal reached a formal petition stage again in October 1968, when a congregational meeting voted 49-2, with six abstentions, to ask for the transfer. The initiative may be seen as part of a general move then underway throughout the denomination to restructure presbytery and synod boundaries.35 Locally, it was linked to the concern of both the Boone and Blowing Rock churches to minister more effectively to Presbyterians in the county who, if not fulltime local residents, were from North Carolina. Two groups were singled out for mention: the students at Appalachian State University in Boone, numbering some 5500 by the late 1960's, and the tourists and summer residents of Blowing Rock. Both groups' ties were predominantly within the state; neither Holston Presbytery nor the Synod of Appalachia was making any special effort to reach them. Other significant factors supporting the move, according to the petition, were the work and commuting patterns of Rumple's membership, and the difficulties of travel within Holston Presbytery. Blowing Rock itself, since it straddled the line between Watauga and Caldwell Counties, was "surrounded on three sides by the boundary of Concord Presbytery." A chart appended to the petition showed that the farthest point in Concord Presbytery was only 115 miles by road from the town, while a corresponding point in Holston was 170 miles distant. The church "had only happy relationships" with its previous home presbytery, and did not intend by its request, it said, to complain or criticize; it simply felt isolated from the majority of Holston's "fine work... .The fast-growing cities and suburban areas of east Tennessee are properly known best by elders and ministers of Tennessee," the petition concluded. After several procedural delays, which included having to hold an �146 / Chapter Five extra congregational meeting at the B ami's Creek Church to meet fully the letter of the Book of Church Order,m the three churches in Watauga County were officially dismissed to the Synod of North Carolina in July, 1969. Nothing perceptible happened locally. As in the past, the relationship between Rumple Church and Grandfather Home continued. Receipts from the annual August collections now were channeled through Concord, rather than Holston Presbytery: both had been supporting the Home since the birth of the Synod of Appalachia in 1915. Rumple Memorial was indeed now within easier commuting distance of centers in Concord rather than Holston Presbytery; and in the controversies which would come to disturb the church during the next decade, the new connection meant that the court to which the delicate matters regarding Holshouser's successor would be referred would be made up of more locally-accessible representatives. For by an unhappy twist, the new connection had its first test when outside authorities had to be drawn in to adjudge matters on which the church would soon become deeply divided. �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 147 Notes for Chapter Five 1. RMPC Session Records, pp. 39-42. 2. Clipping from The Blowing Rocket, n.d., in "This Is Your Life" Scrapbook. 3. Oral interviews with Perry Lentz and Rudolph Greene, December 1986; RMPC Sunday Bulletin, September 28, 1958, in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. 1. Grove's daughter, Jean Chater, and her husband, Bill, are current members of RMPC; as of 1987 she served as secretary of the Watauga County Hunger Coalition in Boone, while Bill taught the Couples' Sunday school class and sang in the choir. 4. RMPC Sunday Bulletin, December 8, 1957, reprinting sermon of November 10, 1957, in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. 1. 5. Letter, Dunn to Martin, September 26, 1913, W. J. Martin Papers, Davidson College Archives; and information from Chalmers G. Davidson. See also "Robert A. Dunn Dies After Brief Illness," Charlotte Observer, February 22, 1945, p. 1.1 am grateful to summer resident Jim Love of Mount Holly for this reference and for information about the Dunn house and property. For terms of the Dunn legacy: 1970 Yearbook, RMPC. 6. Trouble also again plagued the heating system: in December "the offer of Geo. Sudderth, Jr., to look after furnaces was accepted. . . ." RMPC Session Records, Book 2, pp. 56-57; and General Assembly Statistical Reports for 1958, 1959. 7. RMPC Session Records, meeting of May 27, 1959. 8. Copy of portion of RMPC church bulletin, fall 1959, exact date unknown. As Holston Presbytery met in Blowing Rock that fall, the Rev. Dr. E. T. Thompson, Moderator of the General Assembly that year, mentioned as preaching "next week," would have been present in that connection. Others on the list Keys gave who have not previously been noted in this account include: three North Carolina governors (Hoey, Broughton, and Hodges), a president of Davidson College (the Rev. Dr. John R. Cunningham), a well-known Christian author and professor at Columbia Theological Seminary (the Rev. Dr. Manford George Gutzke) and a Union Theological Seminary president (the Rev. Dr. James A. Jones). 9. RMPC Session Records, Book 2, pp. 63, 192. 10. "Rumple Memorial Presbyterians Pay Off New Manse Building Debt," The Blowing Rocket, August 25, 1962; clipping in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. Searcy was a co-founder of the Waldensian Bakeries in Valdese and had a summer home in Mayview: information from Perry Lentz and Rudolph Greene. 11. Oral interview with Rudolph Greene, December 1986. See also RMPC Session Records, Book 2, pp. 57-95, passim. 12. Advertisement, The Blowing Rock Journal, no date, copy of clipping kindly supplied the author by the Rev. Brinkerhoff. �148 / Chapter Five 13. "Resolution," undated newspaper clipping; Digest of Meeting of Holston Presbytery, First Church, Kingsport, April 6,1965, copies of each supplied by Brinkerhoff. 14. RMPC Session Records, Book 2, p. 108. 15. See, for example, Thompson, Presbyterians, III, 538-551. In 1964, the PCUS's Directory of Worship was amended to make "unmistakably clear" the position that "No one shall be excluded from participation in public worship in the Lord's house on the grounds of race, color, or class"; ibid., p. 549. 16. Oral interview with Brinkerhoff, July 1987. 17. Jay Greene later served eighteen years as superintendent of the Sunday school, for nine years as deacon, and twelve years on the session. At his death in 1981, members of his family, and friends, at the urging of his niece, Gail Ford, and nephew, Terry Lentz, established a memorial fund in his name, the income of which still supports this annual event at the Sunday school. Information supplied by Bernie Greene. 18. RMPC Session Records, pp. 106, 112, 117, 122. 19. See folder, "Summer Residents Committee," RMPC records files. Beginning in early 1962, the church treasurer's job fell to Everett Widener, who, with a committee of deacons, thoroughly overhauled the church's budgetary procedures and, probably for the first time in Rumple's history, had the church books audited. Widener was followed as treasurer by deacon Bob Hardin when he was elected elder in late 1963. 20. Until at least the mid-1930*s, the original "great old chandeliers with their dozens of lamps" still hung in the church; these were apparently not suitable for electrification, or had already been disposed of by the 1960's. "Little Stone Presbyterian Church At Blowing Rock Attracts Visitors," Watauga Democrat, June 1, 1933, p. 3. 21. RMPC Session Records, Book 2, p. 111. 22. Ibid., p. 123. 23. Letter, Bowman to the Rev. Perry Mobley, February 25, 1978. Other information in this section from oral interview with Bowman, January 1987. 24. RMPC Session Records, Book 3 [1965-1976], Congregational meeting of April 27, 1969; the congregation rejected a proposal to adopt the unieameral system in 1971: ibid., congregational meeting of September 19. See chapter below for more on this issue. 25. Nell Greene, "She Was God's Great Lady," The Blowing Rocket, undated clipping in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 26. Church Data Form, December 13, 1965, 5-pp., RMPC Session Records, Book 3. 27. RMPC Session Records, "Report of Nominating Committee," Congregational Meeting of May 29, 1966. �Leaps of Faith, 1956-1973 / 149 28. McGeachy, Confronted, p. 573. McGeachy noted the unusually large numbers of young people involved during the mid-1950's in Concord Presbytery's youth activities who later entered the ministry or other full-time Christian work. Included in that number were Gregory M. Grana, who served on the Youth Council in 1954, also attended Davidson College, and was "ordained by Concord [Presbytery], July 26, 1964, upon his appointment as an overseas missionary to the Congo (now Zaire). Family illness, while he was in language school in Belgium forced his return home and he was employed by the Board of World Missions." Ibid., p. 574. Grana and his family have been residents of Blowing Rock and active in various ways at Rumple Church since 1985. 29. Holshouser recalled in 1987 that during the building campaign a summer resident approached him, quite irate that the building would not match the original stone sanctuary very well. But upon being informed of the costs involved, he gave a generous donation anyway. Oral interview with the Rev. Richard Holshouser, Old Fort, N.C., September 1987. 30. RMPC, Scrapbook, Volume I. 31. RMPC service bulletin, "The Service of Dedication for The Annie Ludlow Cannon Memorial Education Building," August 16, 1969, in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 32. Ibid. The bulletin also acknowledged Owen Coffey, who had "freely given many long hours in the planning and carrying-through of decisions"; the summer residents (it noted that "each month of the entire year is increasingly filled with the coming and going of so many who are truly a part of us"); the architect, John Higgins; and the construction supervisor for the Wilkie Construction Co., Joe Dobbins. A member of the building committee was the late Cecil Rhodes, who died during the years of construction. A carpenter, Rhodes was severely injured during a fall at a building site at Hound Ears and died a few weeks later. He had been superintendent of the Sunday school and an enthusiastic promoter of the new building. Oral interview with the Rev. Holshouser, September 1987. 33. The Women's Sunday school classroom was named in Mrs. Nebel's honor as a tribute to her generosity. Marian Nebel was the second wife of the late William Nebel, a German immigrant early in the twentieth century, whose fortune had been made in the hosiery business in Charlotte. The Nebels were also benefactors of Lees-McRae College: a residence hall there is named for them. A longtime summer resident of Blowing Rock, Mrs. Nebel as of 1987 still spent much of each year at her summer home on Chestnut Drive and attended services at Rumple. 34. See several press clippings from The Blowing Rocket and the Lenoir News-Topic in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 35. "A Petition from Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church, Blowing Rock, N.C. to Holston Presbytery, Synod of Appalachia and a Study of Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church's Relation to Holston and Concord Presbyteries," 5 pp., n.d., in RMPC Records; see p. 1 for a series of brief excerpts from General Assembly Minutes back to 1960 concerning the issue of realignment and restructuring court boundaries. Some of these denomination-wide restruc- �150 / Chapter Five turing efforts came as part of the growing movement toward reunion with the Northern Presbyterians: Thompson, Presbyterians, III, 522-582. 36. Minutes of Holston Presbytery, Adjourned Spring Meeting, April 12, 1969, p. 126; and Stated Summer Meeting, July 18-19.1969, p. 3. Holshouser served for over a year as temporary supply pastor at Baird's Creek during this period. He oversaw improvements in its physical plant and growth in its congregational membership. Since 1971 its pastor has been the Rev. Spears Alexander, whose wife, Joyce, is principal of the Blowing Rock Elementary School, and an active member of the Boone Presbyterian Church. �6 Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 RICHARD HOLSHOUSER and his family enjoyed, and still enjoy, Blowing Rock. During his time at Rumple he bought property not far from town and some years later built a year-round house which the family still uses for summer vacations and occasional days in the high country. He intends it for a retirement home. But when in 1972 he suggested to the session that he vacate the manse and receive an allowance for living in a home of his own, the idea was turned down. Session memories were too fresh of local efforts which had been put into building the barely ten-year-old, church-owned house on Wallingford Street. He encountered resistance as well to a suggestion that the church adopt the unicameral system of government, then being instituted at many smaller churches in the denomination. Consolidating the board of deacons with the session of ruling elders was rejected by a congregational vote in September 1971.l In 1972 the minister was voted what amounted to a $200 raise for 1973, from $6800 ($800 of which was a child allowance) to $7000 (with no such allowance).2 Another $350 salary raise was voted for 1973. During seven years, the number of church members had grown considerably, but a review of the rolls in 1972 identified some forty-five persons who had attended no function, or made any financial contribution, in a year. As the church newspaper "Slate and Stone" put it, "Even with this very easy standard, from the approximately 240 members on roll there are 195 active members. Various inactive members do not attend or give at all because they say they have been offended by the minister, the officers, or other members." The paper invited inactive members to "Come to study Jesus in Sunday School and worship God. Instead of letting your soul be eaten up by insult, come join other believers who continue to praise God for all his mercies to us."3 151 �152 / Chapter Six Still, the issue of inactivity had apparently become serious. Some of the summer people had also shown a lessened interest during the last year of Holshouser's pastorate.4 Holshouser himself recalls that he had begun to feel he had done all he could do —and he had done a lot—in Blowing Rock by the summer of 1973. In July, he asked a congregational meeting to dissolve his pastoral relation with the church. On a vote of 49 to 13, his request was granted. Two members with long ties to the church, Sarah Payne and elder Bob Hardin, expressed the congregation's appreciation to the Holshouser family for their years at Rumple, and their personal regret at his departure. Holshouser received a standing ovation at the end of the meeting. But unlike the mood at the previous minister's departure, this time the congregation seemed less certain how to proceed. The session had to decide afresh whether to continue with a number of the church's programs and ways of doing things: Rudolph Greene, again clerk of session, found it necessary to take votes on whether the church secretary, Mary Shore, should continue, and continue to put out the newsletter, "Slate and Stone," which had begun under Holshouser; whether a covered dish supper would continue monthly; and whether Jean Bolick, now church treasurer, should pick up the mail (the session answered all these questions affirmatively). Likewise the chairman of the pulpit committee, Jim O'Dell, had to ask all members of the session and diaconate to "list what they considered to be the goals of our church," and reported that presbytery had requested the Rev. J. K. Parker, Jr., of the Boone church, to work with Rumple in securing a new pastor.5 Among the guest preachers who filled in that summer and fall was the Rev. Dr. Ellison Smyth, of Blacksburg, Virginia, who had retired in 1968 after more than thirty years of service in churches throughout the middle South, and whose father-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Charles G. Vardell, had so often preached at Rumple in the years before his death in 1958.6 Several others, including the Rev. Lynn Brown, also assisted on occasion. Not until April of the following year did O'Dell bring to the session, and then to the congregation, the name of "the only minister to date that the entire Pulpit Committee had agreed would be able to serve our church," the Rev. Mr. Francis C. Collier.7 Collier was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Fifty-three years old when he arrived in Blowing Rock that summer, he and his wife, Dorothy Jean, had three sons. Educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he had received the Master's degree in 1943, Collier had spent some years in British military service, and had taught in Siam: he wrote a commentary for teachers on five plays of Shakespeare, in English and �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 153 Siamese, published in 1959, and a book of English lessons for Siamese children, published in 1960 and 1961. Rumple's was his first pastorate after completing a Master of Divinity degree from Union Seminary in 1974. He was ordained on July 14 of that year, in a service held at Blowing Rock.8 Session minutes covering the Collier years at Rumple, 1974-1978, are lengthier than for any previous pastorate. Indeed, together they run to about half as many pages as the minutes for all previous meetings since a session was organized in 1913. They reflect not only the growing complexity of the church's many concerns, but also a level of tension, which seemed high almost from the start. Matters substantial and trivial came up for session consideration; a few issues obviously divided the new pastor from some elders quite early on. Steeped in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition, Collier delighted some with his brogue, and his thoughtful, learned sermons. His pastoral counseling style and faithful visitations in homes and hospitals drew appreciative comment from many. He observed holy days with "high church" dignity, reflecting what was perhaps a part of his British heritage and a growing denominational trend. But some felt the new pastor's approach to worship departed too much from Rumple's traditions. Soon after his arrival he urged the session to order monthly, instead of quarterly, observance of the Lord's Supper; the session tabled the matter for months, agreed to give it a trial over the winter of 1974-5, then voted to drop it. Collier persisted, holding out for greater ceremonial meaning at worship. In 1975, "it was determined to hold celebrations of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper quarterly on the old quarter days of Candlemas (February), Whitsunday (May), Lammas (August), and Martinmas (November), with additional celebrations at Christmas and Easter, etc." This attempt to reproduce the pattern of the Scottish church year might well have accorded with the wishes of some summer residents as well, as it would allow the sacrament to be celebrated with a larger of their number. The old dates were nevertheless quietly restored upon Collier's departure.9 Another uncomfortable situation was created when the new pastor took offense at the appearance in the parish of his predecessor, to whom many in the congregation still felt attached. The session had earlier given Holshouser approval to perform a wedding in the stone sanctuary, and to baptize in a private ceremony a baby born to a member couple. Collier focused on these infractions of the Book of Church Order, brought them forcefully to the attention of the session, and threatened to raise the issue at presbytery if such practices did not cease. He seemed impervious to arguments that, in the first instance, �154 / Chapter Six the marriage in question was to occur before he himself had been installed, or even ordained; and that the private baptism had been canceled, once all parties realized the request was impermissible. Vigorous, even pedantic, in his conduct of session meetings, Collier thereafter felt it necessary to open each meeting not only with the usual prayer and Scripture lesson but with a reading from the Book of Church Order as well. He began keeping the minutes himself, having them signed after the fact by the clerk.10 Difficulty, probably unrelated to the new pastor, who clearly wished its success, also soon arose with the music program. Organist "Miss Margaret" Vance had died in November 1972, after having played faithfully for more than thirty years. Holshouser conducted her funeral service. He recalls that during 1970, while the chapel was undergoing renovation and it was necessary to meet all winter in the stone sanctuary, he personally drove "Miss Margaret" from her home to the church in his four-wheel drive car and helped her wrap up in blankets in the choir loft; but she had never missed a service.11 A memorial concert was presented in December 1972 by the new church organist, Darrell Blake, and the choir room in the new educational building was dedicated to her memory. But the choir director, Faye Parker, soon resigned, and Blake himself departed shortly after. An unhappy pattern was developing. Since 1972, a succession of organists and choir directors have come and gone at Rumple Memorial, and debates over their pay and their duties have chronically occupied the session. One factor in this pattern may have been that, since Margaret Vance had played virtually for free for years (her salary during her last years was $10 per Sunday), a session accustomed to getting such services so cheaply, for so long, has ever since had difficulty accepting the need to pay professional wages to professional musicians.12 Yet the church has always wanted a music program. In 1977 it purchased a new Allen digital computer synthesized organ for the winter chapel: the fundraising committee was headed by Bernice Keppel, widow of Dr. Alvin C. Keppel, president of Catawba College, 1942-63, and the organ was dedicated in memory of nineteen year-old Marian Coffey, daughter of members Mr. and Mrs. Owen Coffey, killed in an automobile collision in May 1977.13 But problems with the music program have complicated the responsibilities of every pastor for the last fifteen years, and Collier was no exception. Thus, while most of the church's activities in the community continued, and Collier received warm support from many, grievances accumulated. The minister's own perceived brusqueness and tenacity sometimes made communication difficult and led to behind-the-scenes �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 155 dissatisfaction. Perhaps too much local pride led to intolerance. Eccentricities of dress (his tarn o'shanter cap was a familiar sight around town, and he loved to don a kilt for ceremonial occasions) seemed harmless enough at first, but became to some objects of silly gossip. Ministers in small towns can have no secrets; even the behavior of their families reflects directly upon their good intentions. So while many were prepared to go a certain distance with him and with his family, no limit was set beforehand, making Collier's job harder. By the summer of 1976, the nation's bicentennial year (Blowing Rock made much of the festivities), several members of the session had taken offense at one thing or another and were no longer attending meetings. Budget discussions in the board of deacons that autumn were difficult. The pastor wanted the church to increase its benevolent giving and at the same time grant him a cost of living raise as recommended by presbytery, from $13,475 to $14,280. The deacons' draft budget provided for both, but a majority of session members present at a November meeting refused to go along. Their own budget proposal, involving no pastoral pay increase and a reduced level of benevolences, was thoroughly discussed at a congregational meeting in midNovember. The complexities of procedure under the Book of Church Order confused and frustrated many church members. Unless the elders recommended it, no budget could be voted on by the congregation; yet many members clearly favored the original budget proposed by the deacons. And as the treasurer reported from the floor, a surplus in the previous year's budget made both increases possible. By late in the year, three members of Concord Presbytery's Commission on the Minister, two pastors and a lay elder, had to be called in as observers to the budget making process. The congregation, by secret ballot, rejected the elders' budget, 38-20. In January, a revised budget proposal, granting the minister's raise and modestly increasing benevolences, passed the session and was adopted by the congregation in February.14 But by now Collier had, at great cost to the peace of the church, also taken up the cause of unicameral church government, which the congregation had rejected only six years before. He was warned that his desire to reduce the number of officers by combining the deacons and elders into a single board might lead to more friction. He defended himself by saying the move "was not intended to hurt anyone," but the church had "not enough qualified, willing men to fill 18 officer posts." The congregation met on February 20, one week after final passage of the budget, to elect officers —elders and deacons—under the regular �156 / Chapter Six rotation plan. But Collier ruled that since elections was the general topic of the meeting, the issue of a unicameral system could be discussed before voting. Here he probably thought he had the majority of the congregation's support: a petition had earlier been circulated asking the session to consider the new system and allow the congregation to vote on the matter. Discussion at the meeting revealed that only three elders now made up the session. The other six had resigned or were refusing to serve. None of the three wanted a unicameral system. Opponents of the new system refused even to serve on a proposed "working group" to consider the matter further. The meeting broke up without result. It again became necessary to appeal to presbytery for advice. In April a committee to consider unicameral government was elected at a congregational meeting. All summer the committee met, weekly with few exceptions, interviewing all parties concerned and getting advice from presbytery representatives. By September, their report was ready. Mailed to every member, it advocated the one-board system, and proposed an election and rotation plan which would permit open nominations at a congregational meeting for the first unicameral session (of nine members) to be elected. A "broadly representative" nominating committee elected by the congregation would thereafter propose names annually to replace members rotating off the session, with other nominations taken from the congregation. All current officeholders were to resign, but were eligible for re-election. A congregational meeting on September 25, moderated by the Rev. Clements E. Lamberth, Jr. representing Concord Presbytery, after many questions were raised and answered, adopted the new plan, by secret ballot, but by the slim majority of 36-25. So although the issue had been formally resolved, divisions had been revealed which were not to be easily overcome. That October, Concord Presbytery granted special administrative powers to its Commission on the Minister, to deal with the continuing problems at Rumple Church. By January 1, 1978, a new session had been elected, ordained, and installed, but the church was not yet out of the woods. Through the winter, despite frequent visits from a committee representing the presbytery's commission, and even as the new officers were receiving training sessions in their spiritual and organizational duties, and the entire congregation was being assigned to "task groups" to encourage lay involvement, tensions persisted. On March 19, the commission issued a three-page, single-spaced report, saying it had found the church's difficulties "numerous and complex" and a hindrance to Rumple's "potential for bearing a strong and effec- �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 157 tive witness to Jesus Christ in the community of which it is a part." It ordered both the pastor and the session to change their behavior: Collier was to participate in a "clinical pastoral education program," while the session was to "cease the divisive practice of holding private meetings which exclude some members of the session in order to discuss and make decisions on matters to be brought before session." Further, the church roll was to be carefully scrutinized for inactive members and purged, to end disputes as to who really made up the membership.15 Division now was open. One contingent in the congregation clearly resented outside interference, whether by presbytery or by some summer residents, who on arriving that spring, expressed their desire to continue an active role but sided with Collier in all disputes. Some oldtimers sniped at the new governance system; one of the recentlyelected session members resigned. Relative newcomers to the community who had had little previous experience with the Presbyterian system of government, or with local politics, were drawn into service on various task groups, but not much was accomplished. Attendance at worship services dropped. The pastor himself asked to be excused from a congregational meeting called to pick the nominating committee for new officers for the coming year.16 In short, all the problems of "group dynamics" were being acted out. The crisis broke late that summer. At an emotional meeting on September 7, attended by two presbytery representatives and the entire session, absent the member who had resigned, three alternatives were discussed at length: 1. decide that we were capable of solving the problem and able of putting the answer into effect, 2. that we felt it was impossible for us to solve the problem and we ask the Commission to make the decision for us, 3. ask for a Congregational Meeting and ask the congregation to ask Presbytery to remove Frank [Collier]. The session voted 8-1 for a motion "that we accept defeat and ask Presbytery (or the Commission) to solve our problem, with our help, and that this be brought up at their meeting on Sept. 12." After a few reminders of upcoming events, the meeting adjourned with prayer around the circle.17 Three weeks later, after the commission had met at presbytery and had a further interview with Collier, the minister announced to the session his intention to resign. "He explained that he felt that his leav- �158 / Chapter Six ing was not going to solve all... problems but some they would and it would create other problems. He urged both sides to use his going not as added trouble but a way to the first step of making peace. . . ,"18 And, slowly, peace was restored. The commission presented to the church its five possible options to bring resolution to its work: dissolving the church altogether, assuming jurisdiction in the name of the presbytery, asking all elders to resign, elders and congregation dissolving their relationship, or working through the current session to solve the problems. Session urged the commission to choose the last option, but promised to accept whatever decision the commission reached.19 On October 17, the full commission dissolved Collier's pastoral relationship with the church, effective October 31, and had him vacate the manse at the end of November. He was to be paid by Rumple Church through the end of the year, having already accrued a month's paid vacation. And the commission continued its oversight of the church, naming the Rev. James N. Murray interim moderator of the session. It discussed assuming original jurisdiction over the church, but declined in light of the session's plea to be allowed to work with the commission.20 Neither the session nor the pastor appealed this decision. A hard case had been settled in an unhappy way; blame enough could be apportioned all around. And although many church programs-the Dunn Youth, the Summer Residents' Committee, the music program, and others—remained in place, they, too, had suffered from the lack of leadership, the uncertainty and the infighting. As from a rock thrown in a pond, the ripples created by the Collier case have taken a long time to die down. ***** Just over a month later, Rumple had a new pastor living in the manse-and another one visiting him most weekends. The Rev. David Rice Holt II was assigned by presbytery as interim pastor in November 1978, and his call was confirmed by Rumple Church. He served until September 1979, at a monthly salary of $1000 plus the usual pension contributions and allowances. His new wife, the Rev. Daisy Glenn Holt, (they had been married the previous March in Atlanta, each for the second time), was completing her studies at Columbia Theological Seminary, and so commuted much of the time back and forth to Atlanta. Holt, fifty-three, was the son of a Presbyterian pas- �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 159 tor, a World War II veteran, and a graduate of the University of Florida and Union Seminary. He had held churches in the Virginias and in Missouri before coming to Blowing Rock.21 Holt's call was for an indefinite period, but as his salary was stated in monthly figures, it was clear his time would not be long. It passed quickly. Officer elections, held just before his arrival in November, saw two (out of three) new elders chosen who had been nominated from the floor rather than by the nominating committee- a sign, perhaps, of the congregation's lingering suspicion of the unicameral system and its procedures. Still, the relative harmony on that occasion was a blessing for which the session could be grateful. By May, the Commission on the Minister reported the church no longer needed its supervision; "some [session members] felt we had no problems, others felt we had problems but were able to work these problems out."22 In July the session made recommendations for a new, five-member pulpit search committee: "in order to have every aspect of the church represented," one elder, one member each of the Men and Women of the Church, and two at-large members would be chosen by a congregational meeting. Such a committee was duly nominated and elected on July 22, 1979, balanced not only among the different groups but among old and new members. At the same meeting a nominating committee for choosing candidates for elder was also elected by acclamation: remarkable unanimity, considering the church's recent storms.23 By December, the pulpit committee had its candidate to fill the pastorate, the Rev. Vaughn Earl Hartsell, forty-five, a native of Spartanburg, South Carolina. A graduate of Mississippi College and of Union Seminary, his most recent church had been in Mullens, West Virginia, where he had preached for ten years. Clerk of Session Mary Shore wrote to all members of the congregation:24 He is very strong on stewardship and benevolences. His personal approach and style as a pastor is "a pastor to my flock." The purpose and nature and his practice of preaching is "I believe that preaching exists for the proclamation of the mighty acts of God, not for the propagating of views, opinions and deals. Preaching is to tell the story that in Jesus Christ, God came into human history, took flesh, and dwelt among us. I preach as *a dying man to dying men.' 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. . . .' (Matt. 11:28) are words of our Lord that I think need to be repeated often to His people. I attempt to do this in my preaching. . . . I try to preach according to the Scottish recipe: remember your own sins and preach against them to the congregation. For most people, life is hard and only in Jesus �160 / Chapter Six can one find the peace that passeth all understanding. We do not know what the future holds but we do know that He holds the future." Hartsell was called as pastor by unanimous vote of the congregation on January 6, 1980. With his wife, Elaine, and their three children, Rand, Molly, and Paige, he arrived in Blowing Rock that winter and settled in to a manse which had been somewhat neglected during the pastorates of his predecessors (improvements in the manse he had made a condition for accepting the church's call). The session felt reassured that his salary and benefits, $12,410, plus a $2,000 travel allowance and insurance and annuity payments, were actually several hundred dollars below what it had been paying Collier during his last year. A major rebuilding job lay ahead. The organist and choir director positions were again vacant: the most recent choir director had resigned in December, citing "irreconcilable problems . . . and hostilities" among choir members; no one headed the Men of the Church; the church no longer had a secretary; the session had recently voted to have two treasurers, one for receipts and one for disbursements, but one of those jobs was still vacant; the Sunday school needed teachers; lingering uncertainty pervaded the SRC; and the Dunn Youth was having problems getting other local churches to cooperate with its planned activities.25 HartselFs talents were thus almost immediately tested. But he found his task invigorating. Equally as fond of the town and region as any of his predecessors, in a remarkably short time Hartsell made himself knowledgeable about the community, the congregation, and the town's permanent and summer resident families. Hartsell's personal style is cheerful and friendly—his familiar whistle announces his arrival just about everywhere he goes —as well as warm and enthusiastic. Yet for all his lightheartedness, he has his earnest and serious side. His carefully prepared prayers from the pulpit are often moving and eloquent; his visitations have also helped bring comfort to many facing despair, or encountering the last enemy, death. But to be "all things to all men," as St. Paul said, is for any Blowing Rock minister a daunting challenge. His reception by the SRC, chaired since 1985 by Charlotte native Henry Neely, was especially supportive.26 That organization's members have continued in recent years to underwrite improvement to the church's physical plant, including providing new carpeting in the stone sanctuary and in the Keys Chapel, a new sidewalk and path lights, and a vestibule for the chapel. Stained glass windows in the vestibule, depicting the old and new official seals of the Presbyterian Church, were donated in 1986 by �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 161 the family of local architect and "transplant" church member Jack Moberg, who designed the structure, and who died of cancer in late 1986 at the age of 37. Hartsell also quickly learned about other church traditions. He recalls that during his first year, when something was said at a session meeting about "Grandfather Home Sunday," he had no idea of the importance of that long-standing but unique event on the church's calendar. He turned the occasion over to the session and took a vacation-and no special service took place at all that year. The situation was remedied the next summer. The last appearance of operatic stars at those occasions, which had been sponsored since Ovens's death by Robert and Mariam Hayes of Concord, Banner Elk, and Blowing Rock, had taken place in 1966. New staff members at the Home and at the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association then apparently decided that the Home's children, not outside musicians, should highlight the service. For several years thereafter, young people from the Home themselves conducted the August programs. But in 1971 and 1972, the Rev. Holshouser personally arranged once again for appearances of visiting artists: in 1971, Ruth Robertson, a contralto who had toured extensively from her home in Hollywood, California, where she often soloed with the First Presbyterian Church, sang as part of a regular worship service; and in 1972, the "Singing Sheppards," a husband-and-wife duet from Kentucky, presented two programs of widely varied sacred music at both a Sunday worship service and an evening concert on the preceding Friday. By 1975, during Collier's years, the concert approach had been revived, and since that time the Farm House Singers, under the direction of Shirley Blackwell, have given afternoon concerts, usually to a packed church. Several of this group of college students from all over the Southeast, who are brought to Blowing Rock each summer to wait tables at the Farm House Restaurant and are trained as soloists and as a chorus, have gone on to careers as professional musicians. For the past three years, at Hartsell's suggestion, the pulpit on Grandfather Home Sunday morning has been filled by Dr. Bradford L. Grain, president of Lees-McRae College-so that the long ties between Tufts's work in Banner Elk and Blowing Rock continue to be emphasized. "Grandfather Home Sunday," then, while no longer drawing the revenues of earlier years, continued under Hartsell as a tradition of joyful musical celebration and service.27 Hartsell started two other important annual events which in updated ways helped bring Rumple back to its historic roots. Beginning in 1981, he arranged an annual July "preaching mission" at the church, �162 / Chapter Six inviting well known Presbyterian minister-authors and teachers of the Word to lead in study, worship, and outreach. Somewhere in this generation the Church had lost its way; old-fashioned revivals became an anachronism to many who have soured on a diet of television evangelism and emotional gospel hucksterism. But the historic truths of the faith have never lost their power to convict, to edify, to persuade, and to build up believers in the body of Christ. The thoughtful, often powerful messages conveyed during these preaching missions have shown that the word "evangelism" must not be dropped entirely from the church's vocabulary. In 1981, the Rev. Dr. I. Howard Chadwick, a native of WinstonSalem, director of the Outreach Foundation of the Presbyterian Church, who had preached for several years at the Westminster Church in Charlotte, delivered five sermons on the theme "Eternal Questions for Contemporary People." The 1982 addresses, on the subject "The Spiritual Renewal," were given by the late Rev. Dr. William A. Benfield, Jr., a 1936 Davidson College graduate, former faculty member at Louisville Seminary, and long a distinguished minister in the Church; in 1970 he had been Moderator of the General Assembly. In 1983, and again in 1985, the Rev. Dr. George M. Docherty, author of a well-received autobiography, I've Seen the Day, and minister emeritus of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C., where he succeeded the Rev. Peter Marshall, held the services. The speaker in 1984, the late Rev. Dr. Kenneth G. Phifer, a distinguished preacher and widely-published theologian, addressed sermons to the topic, "It's easy to say. . . ." The 1986 services were led by the Rev. Dr. Ernest T. Campbell, former senior minister at The Riverside Church in New York and professor of worship and preaching at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and a nationally-known preacher, who addressed the subject of the gospel's personal and social dimensions. During the centennial summer, the speaker was the Rev. Dr. J. Randolph Taylor, PhD., a Davidson graduate, class of 1951, president of San Francisco Theological Seminary and previously pastor at Myers Park Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, Church of the Pilgrims in Washington, D.C., and Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. Dr. Taylor had been chosen the first Moderator of the General Assembly of the newly-reunited Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1983.28 With the session's endorsement, Hartsell also instituted an annual "Rumple Sunday" each June, a service which had the potential to take the place of the old-time "Homecoming" or "Rally Day" Sunday of a previous generation. To these services have been invited guest �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 163 preachers who, through family or school ties, have reason to know about and to celebrate with the congregation the legacy of the work of Jethro Rumple, the causes with which he was associated, and the faith of which he was so vigorous a spokesman. They follow, too, in the tradition of Vance, Vardell, and other powerful preachers of earlier generations who had often so ably filled Rumple's pulpit in the summers. The 1987 celebration of "Rumple's Hundredth" also owed a great deal to HartselTs energy and dedication, as well as to an active lay committee whose hard work and "broadly representative" composition augured well for the church's approach to future problems. Recruiting experienced lay leadership, as at many small churches, remained difficult, however. Rumple's congregation is still diverse: the church continues to attract a wide variety of worshippers in summer, but must count on a much smaller corps of the faithful over the winter. Many, though by no means all, of the year-round membership can trace family connections at the church back for several generations. The inevitable disenchantments resulting from the turmoil of the 1970's have taken their toll on older members, and even on younger members of old families whose historic ties to Rumple Church have been frayed or broken. Nearly half the present membership has joined the church since 1980; many have quickly been given roles in the church's programs and in the active committee structure which is a legacy of the "task groups" formed during the Collier controversy. In some cases the enthusiasm and energy of these new leaders has benefitted the church; in others, their inexperience has sometimes led to false starts, or bruised feelings. The numbers attending Sunday school have dropped. Blowing Rock's population, like that of the nation, seems to be aging, as many young people have moved away and retired or semi-retired have arrived to take their places. But both membership and giving at the church have continued to grow. The church rolls reflected a sharp drop in membership at first, from 225 reported members in 1980 to 109 in 1981, as over one hundred inactive names were removed that year, but by the end of 1986, membership had increased to 158. During HartselTs time the church's budget has risen from about $36,000 in 1980 to some $95,500 in 1987. Benevolent giving has also increased as a proportional share of the budget. The church has recently pledged a substantial contribution over the next three years to the expansion campaign currently underway at Lees-McRae, thereby continuing another custom of its founders. But the work of hands and heart, as much as gifts of money, displays true service to the Master's cause. A recent, unique memorial to a longtime member, Alice Frye Lentz, may be seen as an expression of the �164 / Chapter Six kind of gratitude which has developed locally for the work of Rumple Memorial: the Women of the Church, Circle two, in 1984 fashioned a funeral pall, decorated with fine needlework, and used for the first time at Mrs, Lentz's funeral service. Displayed at a church reception shortly afterward, the pall is available for any member's use, and is lovingly stored by her daughter, current Sunday school superintendent Bernie Greene.29 In short, at its one hundredth anniversary, Rumple Memorial maintained its traditional witness and had carried much of its best heritage into a changing world. Rumple Church celebrated its centennial over twelve Sundays in the summer of 1987. Each service was an occasion of pride and satisfaction; each was designed as a rededication to the aims of its founders a century ago, who were, as we have seen, determined to build "For His Cause A Little House" and for His continued service. The events of that summer deserve to be recorded as a tribute to the pastor, the Rev. Vaughn Earl Hartsell, the special Centennial Committee which handled many of the arrangements, the choir, the membership, regular and seasonal, and the many notable guest participants who led or shared in the regular and special activities of the summer. It was a time of fellowship luncheons and receptions on the church lawn, of prayer, praise, music, and preaching. Only time will tell the extent to which the "handful of corn" sown anew on the mountaintop will ripen to maturity. "Rumple Sunday," on June 14, marked the first appearance in Rumpie's pulpit of the Rev. Dr. John W. Kuykendall, president of Davidson College and member of its class of 1959. Long articles in The Blowing Rocket the preceding and following Fridays highlighted Dr. Rumple's career, and described the entire service; the church bulletin for that day has been reproduced elsewhere in this volume.30 When the Rev. Dr. L. B. Gibbs, former executive secretary of the Presbytery of Holston, presented Dr. Kuykendall with a rare copy of the so-called "breeches Bible" of the fifteenth century for the Davidson College Library, the service became in another and unexpected way a reminder of the links which have so long bound the church to its founder and the college, as well as of the congregation's long ties to the former Synod of Appalachia, and the Reformed tradition's high regard for the vernacular Scriptures. For the Rev. Hartsell, Gibbs's appearance on the �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 165 podium also held a more personal meaning: Dr. Gibbs, "Uncle Pete," is the uncle of his wife, Elaine. The Bible had been given anonymously in HartselFs honor to Dr. Gibbs for presentation to the college. Dr. Kuykendall's sermon that day, "A Sense of Place and a Sense of Purpose," developed a text in Joshua 4:1-9: the congregation was reminded that for them, as for the people of Israel, stones had been raised at God's command; they are to be a memorial forever to God's mighty acts, so that "when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?" they will have an answer. Other participants in the service included the former governor of North Carolina, Blowing Rock native James E. Holshouser, Jr., who had been baptized at Rumple Church in 1935 and whose family had long been active Presbyterians in the county. Greetings to the congregation from the current governor, James G. Martin, like his predecessor a Presbyterian and a Davidson graduate, were read by Mary Smith, clerk of session. Special music composed for the "Rumple Sunday" service by choir director Noel Lovelace also bore a personal dedication to Hart sell, and to the choir Lovelace had been directing for some five years. The relationship between the Hartsells and the Lovelaces, and between the choir and their director (Marion Lovelace had been church organist for the years her husband directed the choir) had been close for some time. Few in the congregation that Sunday knew the Lovelaces' resignation had already been given. All too many churches underpay their music professionals, despite the demands and expectations they place upon them; Rumple Church has been no exception. Hartsell and several members of the choir had made the case for a ten percent salary raise to the Lovelaces for 1987, but the session imposed provisos for granting it which, from the Lovelaces' perspective, would have taken more time than they could give to the job.31 Later that summer, Lovelace resigned as well from his job as director of choral activities at Appalachian State University and took a full time position at a large church— with a large budget-in Charlotte, Myers Park Baptist. His installation there was attended by several of his friends from Blowing Rock; for them the occasion was bittersweet, but it marked a substantial professional advancement for the highly talented composerdirector, nephew of the noted sacred music composer Austin C. Lovelace. For the rest of the centennial summer, substitute organist Suzanne Dettbarn, and choir directors Amanda Klutz and Charlie Lentz, all of whom had local or church family ties, successfully filled in the music �166 / Chapter Six program. In the autumn of 1987 Rumple secured a new music team: to lead the choir, David Gaston, band director at Hardin Park School in Boone for twelve years and an accomplished flutist; and as organist, Jimmy Dettbarn, a promising student of that instrument, and a member of a musical family of local note. On June 21 of that centennial summer, the Rev. Dr. John M. Handley, general presbyter of the Presbytery of Concord, delivered the sermon. A native of Richmond, Handley was also a graduate of Davidson, class of 1955, and of Union Seminary. His D.Min. was from the McCormick Theological Seminary of Chicago. On the staff of Concord Presbytery since 1974, Handley was well known to many in the congregation. The following Sunday Dr. A. P. Perkinson, Jr., president of St. Andrews Presbyterian College and a 1955 Davidson alumnus, delivered the sermon. Dr. Perkinson's presence was a reminder of the many years during which the Rev. Dr. Charles G. Vardell, founder and first president of Flora Macdonald College, a predecessor school to St. Andrews, had regularly appeared in the Rumple pulpit. Then on July 5, the Rev. J. Allan Smyth, Rumple's great-grandson and VardelFs grandson, preached from the spot where his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had stood in former years. Smyth, a Davidson graduate, class of 1959, is current pastor of the Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Huntersville. His family still maintains its ties in Blowing Rock. Each year they open the summer home Vardell built on Chestnut Hill, and numerous Rumple-Vardell-Martin descendants visit. One of Smyth's sons is named after his great-grandfather Vardell.32 Smyth's sermon attracted perhaps the largest number of any preacher's during the centennial. Two of the special services also highlighted other parts of the church's summer program: the preaching mission and Grandfather Home Sunday. The Rev. Dr. J. Randolph Taylor, president of San Francisco Theological Seminary, mentioned above, delivered the message on July 12, remaining in town to lead services on each of the following three evenings. He was present to assist in the dedication of a handsome new sign for the churchyard, given that summer by Libba Boyd, in memory of her late husband J. Reed Boyd, who had long been active at the Myers Park Church in Charlotte, and at Rumple Memorial following the couple's retirement to the mountains. Dr. Bradford L. Grain, president of Lees-McRae College, spoke on Grandfather Home Sunday, August 9. Also present that day was Margaret Tufts Neal of Banner Elk, author of And Set Aglow a Sacred Flame, A History of the �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 167 Edgar Tufts Memorial Association, a book which has helped to keep alive the memory of her father's work. Three former pastors of the church also returned to greet old friends in the congregation, reminisce a bit from the pulpit, and call on the church to renew its Christian commitment. The Rev. David Holt, interim minister in 1979, now retired and living in Nashville, preached on July 19. He and his wife, Daisy, who accompanied him, were warmly received. On August 2, the Rev. Blake Brinkerhoff and his family came over from the summer home they maintain at Montreat to deliver the sermon and join the membership at a well-attended luncheon. Since leaving Rumple, Brinkerhoff has been minister at the Highlands Presbyterian Church in Daytona Beach, Florida. On August 23, it was the turn of the Rev. J. Richard Holshouser, minister at Clinchfield and Conley Memorial churches near Marion since leaving Rumple in 1973, and his wife, Rebecca, to be welcomed back by many members and friends in the community. Another who led in worship, on August 16, was the Rev. Dr. Daniel Patrick McGeachy, Davidson class of 1951 (and nephew of longtime pastor and Concord Presbytery historian Neill Patrick McGeachy), now minister of the Downtown Presbyterian Church of Nashville, Tennessee. That congregation's historic building once housed the First Presbyterian Church, formerly the Rev. Dr. James I. Vance's parish. McGeachy's service was certainly the most unusual of the summer: he not only preached but, accompanying himself on the guitar, sang his message of faith, hope, and love. He had the whole congregation joining him. The last guest speaker in the pulpit that summer was the Rev. Dr. John D. MacLeod, Jr., general secretary of the Synod of North Carolina, and a nominee, although not elected, for Moderator of the General Assembly of the PCUSA during 1987. Dr. MacLeod was a 1942 graduate of Davidson College. He extended greetings from the rest of the state's Presbyterians, who had only in 1969 welcomed the congregation back into the fellowship from which it had originally grown. The Rev. Hartsell, who led in worship each Sunday but who preached only once, took the opportunity on July 26 to deliver a centennial sermon of his own entitled, "Our Memory is our Life." Citing places in the Bible where God commanded His people to remember Him and His acts, and reading what amounted to a roll of the saints of the church in former days, Hartsell pointed out the need for present members to keep alive the memory of their own forebears at Rumple, and to recall their own dependence upon the remembered truths of the faith. �168 / Chapter Six And so the circle had come complete: Rumple's parishioners had been reminded of their history, and of their eternal faith, by many of the denomination's present leaders, three of their former ministers, three Presbyterian college presidents and a seminary president, and their own minister. They could now turn to look forward to another century of service for their Lord and for His cause in Blowing Rock. By the 1980's, Blowing Rock has come to display many of the characteristics of small towns throughout its region and the nation. It profited from the renewed ecological concerns of the post-Silent Spring era and the back-to-the-earth movement of the 1970's: many new residents moved in, preferring the rural life of the exurbs, although total year-round population has not increased much. A few who arrived have also since departed, as better job opportunities "off the mountain" have become available. Like many places in the country, Blowing Rock is more than ever a town of people on the move. Some of the new arrivals brought with them sophisticated tastes and city ways which have had many local repercussions: from Art in the Park, dinner theaters, and craft shops, to gourmet restaurants, Blowing Rock can now offer residents and visitors alike a variety of diversions quite unexpected a generation ago. The town also has experienced a "gentrification" unknown even in its earlier heyday as a resort. Property prices have skyrocketed, some buildings have gone up in haste whose designers, one hopes, are repenting at leisure, and town services have become strained—and expensive. The successful recent refurbishing of the Green Park Inn is a good example of the way the town can hang on to its heritage while meeting modern needs. The condominium craze, which, among its other manifestations, strewed the grounds of the old Chetola estate with clumps of uninspired "multi-unit" dwellings, is a less fortunate recent innovation. Numbers of Blowing Rock's native sons and daughters still are forced to leave the town and region to find remunerative jobs. New highways—the four-laned U.S. 321 to Boone a few years ago (the "James E. Holshouser, Jr., Memorial Highway"), the completed Blue Ridge Parkway during the church's centennial summer—bring ever more traffic and parking problems to the little mountain community. Many local Presbyterians continue to take their civic responsibilities seriously: they run for local office, volunteer for the fire �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 169 department and rescue squad, participate in civic and fraternal service organizations. Yet it seems difficult, in an age of increasing centralization and bureaucratic regulation, to channel "progress" in coherent ways. The Rev. Earnest, reminiscing in the summer of 1987 about his days in Blowing Rock thirty-five years ago, recalled pulling his children on a sled from the church to the post office and back on snowy winter days, never seeing a car. Blowing Rock in the 1960's experienced the unwelcome phenomenon of becoming the only social outlet for thousands of Appalachian State University students, so that its streets were full all winter. But by the mid 1980's, when strict enforcement of alcohol and noise laws led most of the student-oriented establishments to close their doors, and Boone opened its own alcohol outlets, some in Blowing Rock had reason to regret the loss of revenues —even if it became less expensive to police the town and pay for trash pickup. The public voted in liquor by the drink in 1986. Yet for all its recent changes, Blowing Rock has remained a pleasant town in which to live. Its zoning restrictions, and concern for uptown beautification, have prevented the decay of its Main Street. New neighborhoods of attractive, landscaped homes, tucked away on winding roads, open onto the spectacular views for which the town has always been justly famous. Improved access to Boone has drawn Appalachian State University faculty and employees, attracted by the town's quiet and culture, into the community as permanent residents. Fewer problems plague its schools; greater opportunities for neighborliness still exist to retain new residents. Blowing Rock has never been the isolated backwater which has stereotypically and incorrectly described many Appalachian mountain communities. And in its midst, for one hundred years, Presbyterians have come and gone, witnessing the town's changes, and taking part in all of them. A classic sermon illustration has it that the Church is both an organization and an organism. As an organization, it all too frequently betrays the imperfect, human characteristics of its collective membership. Presbyterians have always advocated a system of elected, representative government which, at ever higher levels, can help to correct errors of judgment, and provide opportunities for appeal and guidance. Many at Rumple Church and throughout the nation have rejoiced at the reunion of Southern Presbyterians with the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., effected in 1983 after years of debate and compromise, which has restored partial unity and enlarged the witness of at least one arm of the Christian body on earth. Yet no serious claim need be made that this is the only practical, much less Scriptural, or even Reformed, church structure.33 For the church is also an organism: it is called the �170 / Chapter Six "Body of Christ" and its Head is therefore its eternal and risen Lord. It belongs, according to Christian doctrine, to Christ and is, like Him, alive, and ever renewed. As a community of believers, it exists to display joyful and visible evidence of the saving power of the grace of God to its own members, its community, and the world at large. The Holy Spirit is its only true enabler and comforter. What has been accomplished at Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church in Blowing Rock, therefore, through one hundred years, is, like all things human, imperfect, partial, and mortal. But the faith the church has maintained in the community is the work of its Head. That faith, believers know, will one day be perfect, as He is. �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 /111 Notes for Chapter Six 1. RMPC Session Records, meeting of June 5,1972, and congregational meeting of September 19, 1971. 2. Ibid., congregational meeting of November 28, 1971. 3. "Slate and Stone," September 1972, file at RMPC. The church paper consisted in this period of eight to twelve legal-size mimeographed sheets. Its major writer-editor-printer-distributor was Mary Shore, now Mary Smith, then church secretary and secretary at the Blowing Rock School. Active at the church since her childhood, the faithful and cheerful Smith has held more positions at the church than anyone can remember (including herself). She was clerk of session as of summer 1987. 4. Letter, Bowman to Mobley, September 25, 1978, in RMPC files. 5. RMPC Session Records, meeting of August 29, 1973. 6. Smyth graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1925 and from Union Seminary in 1930. He and his wife, Mary Linda Vardell, whom he married in 1937, have three children, Susan, Ellison Adger, Jr., and another Presbyterian preacher, the Rev. James Allan Smyth, a 1959 Davidson graduate who holds the B.D. degree from Union Seminary, the D.Min. degree from McCormick Seminary: Ministerial Directory, 1983 edition. For VardelFs death at age 98, see New York Times, Sunday, May 4, 1958, p. 89, and Charlotte Observer, same date, p. 5D. Members of the family donated RMPC's fourth stained-glass window in the stone sanctuary, a depiction of the Ascendant Christ, shortly after Dr. VardelTs death. 7. RMPC Session Records, meeting of April 9, and congregational meeting of April 21, 1974. 8. Ministerial Directory, 1975 edition. Collier also taught in Thailand and Sudan. For a time in 1966 and 1967 he taught school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, after emigrating to the United States. Assisting at Collier's ordination and installation were, among others, the Rev. Dr. Fred R. Stair, president of Union Seminary: RMPC Service bulletin, July 14, 1974, and "Rumple To Welcome New Pastor On Sunday," The Blowing Rocket, May 17, 1974, clipping in RMPC Scrapbook, Vol. I. 9. WOC History, 1975, at Historical Foundation, Montreat. 10. RMPC Session Records, meetings of June 17 and July 18, 1974. Nothing in the Book of Church Order requires that the minutes be physically written by the clerk, only that he (or more recently, she) "record the transactions [of session meetings] and preserve the records." Some pastors previous to Collier also apparently kept the minutes, which were almost invariably countersigned by the clerk. But by the 1960's, as is apparent from the style, clerks kept the minutes themselves. A clear change of writing style, including the appearance of British spelling, marks the place at which Collier began keeping them in 1974 —and stopped after commission oversight began in early 1978. �172 / Chapter Six 11. Oral interview with Holshouser, September 1987. 12. During the celebration of Rumple's centennial in summer 1987, the unfortunate pattern repeated itself: see below. 13. The Keppels were very active at Rumple Church during their retirement years in Blowing Rock: he as church treasurer for a time during the 1950's, she as officer in the WOC: see numerous clippings in RMPC Scrapbook, Vols I and II. 14. RMPC Session Records, Book 4 [1977-1979], meetings of November 4 and 8, and December 9, 1976; congregational meetings of November 14 and December 16, 1976, and February 13, 1977. 15. "Findings and Actions of the Commission on the Minister," with cover memorandum dated March 19, 1978, appended to RMPC Session Records, meeting of same date. When Hartsell arrived in early 1980, this last condition had not been carried out. 16. RMPC Session Records, meeting of August 29, 1978. 17. Ibid., session meeting of September 7, 1978. 18. Ibid., session meetings of September 7 and 28, 1978. 19. Ibid., session meeting of September 28, 1978. 20. Report of Administrative Commission Regarding the Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church, in Minutes of Concord Presbytery, called meeting of November 21, 1978, pp. 89-91. 21. Ministerial Directory, 1983 edition. 22. RMPC Session Records, meetings of May 20 and July 5, 1979. 23. For about three months that fall, the Rev. Frank Alfred (Al) Mathes, recently retired from the Huntersville Church, and a summer resident of Blowing Rock, served as interim pastor. Mathes has preached numerous times at Rumple. He and his wife, Jackie, spend winters in Birmingham, Alabama, with their daughter, Rachel, a teacher of music and a gifted soprano who has sung with the Metropolitan Opera and in Europe. Rachel Mathes's occasional appearances as soloist at Rumple are always a treat for the congregation and choir. 24. Letter, signed by Mary Shore, December 20, 1979, in RMPC Session Records. 25. Statistical Report for General Assembly, for Year Ending December 31, 1979, copy in RMPC Session Records. 26. The SRC has had four chairmen since its creation during Brinkerhoffs pastorate: Eugene Bowman, of Mocksville; Andy Nimmo, of Dunedin, Florida, now a full-time resident of Blowing Rock; Henry Enterline, of Sarasota, Florida; and Neely, who has recently taken up permanent residence in town. �Shocks and Signs, 1973-1987 / 173 27. File, "Grandfather Home Day Materials," RMPC records. Oral interview with Jim Swinkola, present executive director of Grandfather Home, October 1987. The mission of the Home has itself undergone change since the mid1960's. It is presently far less engaged in long term child care and custody, and does considerably more family counseling and placement of children with foster and adoptive homes. 28. RMPC service bulletins for annual preaching missions, prepared and supplied by the Rev. Hartsell. 29. RMPC service bulletin insert, "The Alice Lentz Funeral Pall," 1984, supplied by Bernie Greene. In her memory, the family also donated a bronze plaque for "her" pew in the church in 1985, and the next year gave vases, reminders of Mrs. Lentz's frequent gift of flowers to enhance the beauty of the church service. 30. "Jethro Rumple's Life Had Impact All Across North Carolina," and "Presbyterians To Observe 'Rumple Sunday/ " The Blowing Rocket, June 12, 1987, p. 15; "Sunday Was Historic Day For Rumple As Church Celebrates Centennial," ibid, June 19, 1987, p. 2. The service was videotaped by Blowing Rocket editor and church member Jerry Burns, and tape recorded by the minister. Audiotapes of all the services are at RMPC. Much of the information in the following paragraphs came as well from the pamphlet "Centennial Celebration 1887-1987," prepared by the Rev. Hartsell. 31. See paper prepared for session members by Lovelace, 1985, in RMPC records; and information from the Rev. Hartsell. The session wanted them to take full responsibility for a children's choir in exchange for the raise-a change from the job description under which they had been employed. Their combined salary in 1987 came to $6,600. 32. Oral interview with Smyth, June 1987. 33. The classic little book by the Rev. Dr. Walter L. Lingle, Presbyterians: Their History and Beliefs (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978; first published 1944) has been revised and updated by the Rev. Dr. John W. Kuykendall, president of Davidson College and Rumple Church's guest preacher on Rumple Sunday, 1987. It is an excellent introduction for the layperson on both the organic and organizational characteristics of the denomination. �This page intentionally left blank �BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Nancy. Here Will I Dwell: The Story of Caldwell County. n.p. Copyright by author, 1956. Arthur, John Preston. A History of Watauga County, North Carolina, With Sketches of Prominent Families. Richmond: Everett Waddey Co., 1915. Repr. 1976. Beaty, Mary D. A History of the Davidson College Presbyterian Church. Davidson, NC: Davidson College Presbyterian Church, [1987]. Blackmun, Ora. Western North Carolina: Its Mountains and Its People to 1880. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1977. Brooks, Maurice. The Appalachians. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. Chamberlain, Hope Summerell. This Was Home. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1938. Claiborne, Jack. The Charlotte Observer; Its Time and Place, 1896-1986. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Clark, Thomas F. History of Myers Park Presbyterian Church, 1926-1966. Charlotte, NC: Myers Park Presbyterian Church, 1966. Craig, David Irvin. A History of the Development of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, and of Synodical Missions, together with Evangelistic Addresses by James I. Vance, D.D., and Others. Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1907. Craig, Edward Marshall. Highways and Byways of Appalachia: A Study of the Work of the Synod of Appalachia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1927. Daingerfield, Marjorie. "Old Blowing Rock." n.p., n.d. Typescript at Community Library of Blowing Rock. Davidson, Chalmers Gaston. The Plantation World around Davidson. Rev. and enl. ed. Davidson, N.C.: Briarpatch Press, 1982. First publ. 1969. �176 / Bibliography Davidson College. Sketches of the Graduating Class of Davidson College North Carolina 1872-1876. n.p., n.d. [Davidson, NC: 1916?]. Dixon, Max. The Wataugans. 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Machlin, Milt. Libby. New York: Tower Books, 1980. Melton, George E. "St. Andrews: A Brief History." Laurinburg, NC: St. Andrews Presbyterian College, 1978. Mitchell, Elisha. Diary of a Geological Tour by Dr. Elisha Mitchell in 1827 and 1828. Introduction and Notes by Dr. Kemp P. Battle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1905. James Sprunt Historical Monograph, No. 6. Moore, Walter W. Appreciations and Historical Addresses, n.p. [Richmond]: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, n.d. [1913?] Morse, H. N. Home Missions —Today and Tomorrow. A Review and a Forecast. New York: Home Missions Council, 1934. Neal, Margaret Tufts. And Set Aglow a Sacred Flame; History of the Edgar Tufts Memorial Association 1895-1942. Banner Elk, NC: Puddingstone Press, Lees-McRae College, 1983. �178 / Bibliography Nelson, Hart M. The Appalachian Presbyterian: Some Rural-Urban Differences, A Preliminary Report. Bowling Green, KY: Western Kentucky University College of Commerce Office of Research and Services, Research Bulletin #5, 1968. Noble, M. C. S. A History of the Public Schools of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930. Ovens, David. If This Be Treason: A Look At His Town and Times. Charlotte, NC: Heritage House, 1957. Parker, J. K., Jr. "A Study of the Needs, Growth, and Development of the Presbyterian Church of Boone, N.C." Master's Thesis, Appalachian State Teachers College, 1955. Peeler, J. Banks. A Story of the Southern Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, Published under the supervision of the Board of Editors, and authorized by the Synod, n.p., 1968. Peterson, Katherine J. "Boone Fork Institute." Watauga County Times Past No. 14 (Sept. 1984). Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Facing the Situation: Addresses Delivered at the Fourth General Convention of the Laymen's Missionary Movement, Presbyterian Church in the U.S., held in Charlotte, N.C., Feb. 16-18, 1915, Dallas, Texas, Feb. 23-25, 1915. Athens, GA.: Laymen's Missionary Movement, (PCUS), 1915. Powell, William S., ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume I, A-C. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Raine, James Watt. The Land of Saddle-Bags: A Study of the Mountain People of Appalachia. New York: Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1924. Special edition publ. by Presbyterian Committee of Publication, Richmond, VA, 1924. Rumple, Jethro. A History of Rowan County, North Carolina; Containing Sketches of Prominent Families and Distinguished Men. Bicentennial Edition. Repr. with a new Index by Edith M. Clark. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Co., 1974. Orig. publ. Salisbury, NC, 1881. Repr. 1916, 1929. . The History of Presbyterianism in North Carolina. Repr. from the North Carolina Presbyterian 1878-1887. With Appendixes. Richmond: The Library of Union Theological Seminary, 1966. Historical Transcripts No. 3. �Bibliography / 179 Shackelford, Laurel, and Bill Weinberg, eds. Our Appalachia; An Oral History. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Shaw, Cornelia Rebekah. Davidson College. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1923. Sill, James Burges. Historical Sketches of Churches in the Diocese of Western North Carolina Episcopal Church. Asheville, NC: Publishing Office, Church of the Redeemer, 1955. Sloop, Mary T. Martin, with LeGette Blythe. Miracle in the Hills. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953. Smith, C. Alphonso. Presbyterians in Educational Work in North Carolina Since 1813. Address at the Centennial Celebration of the Synod of North Carolina, in Alamance Church, Guilford County, October 7, 1913. Offpr. from Union Seminary Review, Dec.-Jan. 1913/14. Smith, John Robert. The Church That Stayed: The Life and Times of Central Presbyterian Church in the Heart of Atlanta, 1858-1978. Atlanta, GA: The Atlanta Historical Society, 1979. Spence, Thomas Hugh, Jr. A Memoir of Elizabeth Holman Spence. Montreat, NC: for private distribution, 1981. . An Annotated Autobiography. Montreat, NC: for private distribution, 1981. . The Presbyterian Congregation on Rocky River. Concord, NC: Rocky River Presbyterian Church, 1954. Synod of North Carolina. Centennial Address. Delivered at Alamance Church, Greensboro, N.C., October 7, 1913. n.p., n.d. [1913?]. Thompson, Ernest Trice. Presbyterians in the South, 3 volumes. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1963-1973. . Presbyterian Missions in the Southern United States. Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1934. Tindall, George Brown. The Emergence of the New South 1913-1945. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Van Noppen, Ina W. and John J. Van Noppen. Western North Carolina Since the Civil War. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1973. Vance, James Isaac. God's Open: Sermons that take us Out-of-doors. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1924. �180 / Bibliography Whisnant, David E. Modernizing the Mountaineer. People, Power, and Planning in Appalachia. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1980. Whitt, Anne Hall. The Suitcases; Three Orphaned Sisters In the Great Depression in the South. Foreword by Charles Kuralt. Washington, DC: Acropolis Books Ltd., 1982. Wills, Jesse. "The Towers See One Hundred Years: The Story of the First Presbyterian Church Building, Nashville, Tennessee." Church Pamphlet, 1951. Woodside, Robert Edward. "The Educational Development of Avery County." Master's Thesis, Appalachian State Teachers College, 1952. �Index / 181 Index Note: Entire family is often indexed under same last name entry Appalachia, region 51, 54, 145 Appalachia, Synod of 54-55, 72, 145-146, 164 Baker, D. 103 Beall, B. L., R. L. 10, 16, 18, 19 Bernhardt 21, 81 Blacks, worship arrangements for 87-88, 110-111, 130-131 Blackwell, Mrs. E. J. (Shirley) 2, 161 Blake, Darrell 154 Blake, J. R. 5 Boone, town of 5, 10, 15, 49, 113, 145, 152, 166, 168, 169 Bowman, E. S. 111, 133-136 Brady, Mrs. M. J. 6, 23, 43 Brinkerhoff, A. B. 127-138, 167 Brown, C. L. 97, 111, 152 Brown, Mrs. C. F. (Hattie) 39, 99 Buchanan, G. S. 77-80, 85, 86, 88, 102-103 Burns, Mrs. J. (Ethel) 86, 102, 108, 141 Campbell, E. T. 162 Campbell, R. F. 54 Cannon, Mrs. J. C. (Annie) 42, 70, 84-86, 88, 106, 110, 127, 128, 135-137, 141 Cappel, S. S. 112-113, 116 Carson, C. C. 54 Coffey, O. 13, 72, 100, 108, 128, 143, 154 Collier, F. C. 152-158, 160, 161, 163 Concord, Presbytery of 3, 7-9, 11, 19-21, 24, 34, 35, 38, 49, 51, 54, 55, 80, 81, 83, 116, 135, 140, 145, 155, 156, 167 Critcher 38, 75, 99 Davant, C. 82, 121 �182 / Index Davidson College 1-5, 7, 8, 20, 42-44, 51, 52, 56, 66, 67, 97, 101, 105, 114, 124, 127, 140, 162, 164-167 Dunn, R. A. 87, 106, 123-125, 132, 138, 139, 141, 158, 160 Earnest, R. D. 104, 106-112, 169 Farm House Singers 127, 161 Fawcette, E. W. 16, 19 Frye, L. M. 47, 163 Gage, G. 14 Gibbs, L. B. 140, 164 Grandfather Home for Children 42, 45, 50, 76, 82, 83, 98, 100, 104, 106, 123, 125, 134, 146, 161, 166 Green Park Hotel 14, 17, 124, 131, 168 Greene 72, 85, 102, 108, 121, 122, 125, 128, 133, 137, 138, 141, 143, 152, 164 Hall, J. P. 52 Hall, G. W. 45, 83 Hardin, R. B. 86, 102, 103, 121, 122, 125, 128, 138, 152 Harper, G. W. F. 14, 21, 34, 110 Hartsell, V. E. 127, 159-165, 167 Holshouser, J. R. 140-146, 151-152, 153, 154, 161, 167 Holshouser, W. L. 39, 40, 46, 49, 50, 53, 65, 66, 70, 79, 83, 85-87, 99, 101-103, 110, 112, 121, 125, 127, 165, 168 Holston, Presbytery of 55, 68-70, 72, 73, 75-77, 83, 86, 89, 97, 112, 113, 116, 121, 127, 130, 140, 145, 146, 164 Holt, D. R. II 158-159, 167 Hook, C. C. 46 Ingle, J. 15, 17, 83 Keys, W. K. 55, 74-76, 86, 89, 97-100, 102-104, 106, 110, 111, 115, 116, 121-128, 134, 135, 143, 160 Kluttz (Klutz) 15, 70, 75, 77, 98, 102, 122, 124, 125, 165 Knox, J. M. 70 Lees-McRae Institute, later College 39-41, 51, 52, 103, 138, 161, 163, 166 Lenoir, town, Church in 1, 2, 11, 16, 17, 19-21, 24, 34-36, 49, 55, 65, 66, 70, 81, 142 �Index / 183 Lovelace, N. 165 Lentz 47, 99, 122, 125, 143, 163, 164, 165 Lynch, Mrs. C. A. 144 Martin, W. J., Col. 2, 4-6, 8, 19, 20, 43, 51 Martin, W. J., Jr. 5, 8, 42-44, 45-48, 51, 52-53, 65-66, 70, 80, 81, 101 Mayview, neighborhood of 66-68, 84, 105, 122, 131 McKaraher, C. G. 69, 70, 72-74 Moore, W. W. 37 Moore, 0., Jr. 112 Morris, W. M. 3, 6, 13, 18, 23, 34 Munroe, C. A. 1, 16, 18-24, 34-37 Nebel, Mrs. W. 143, 144 Newland, L. T. 97, 113-116, 121, 122, 123 Ovens, D. 98, 104-106, 109-111, 134, 161 Parker, J. K. 113, 152, 154 Payne, Mrs. S. 103, 112, 152 Payne, C. M. 12 Pell, R. P. 23, 33-36 Plumtree School 52, 89 Rhodes, C. 115, 122 Rumple, J. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-20, 23, 33-35, 42, 44, 45, 48, 51, 80, 81 "Rumple Sunday" 162-163, 164, 165 Salisbury, town, Church in 2-4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 16, 44, 48, 70, 83 Savage, W. R. 41, 48 Shulls Mills, town, Church in 39, 68-70, 72-74, 76, 89, 132 Sloop, M. M. 5, 51-53, 55, 56 Smith, M. S. 151n, 159, 165 Smith, W. R. 76, 77 Snively, Mrs. T. V. (Anne) 110, 136 Southall, T. B. 97 Spence, T. H. 67-70, 76, 108, 123 Stewart, Mrs. A. M. (Emma) 1-3, 14-16, 24 Stringfellow, W. W. 48 Summer Residents Committee (SRC) 133-136, 140, 141, 144, 160 Tester (Teaster) 75, 77, 84, 86, 102, 103, 114 �184 / Index Thurston, W. 113, 116 Tufts, E. 17, 24, 33, 35-42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 52, 54-57, 65, 68-71, 76, 81, 82, 125, 145, 161, 166, 167 Tufts, E. H. 56-57, 97 Underdown, E. G. 49, 70, 83, 85 Vance, J. I. 45, 48, 54, 55, 68, 70, 71, 75, 78, 80, 81, 87, 98, 100, 103, 106, 108, 112, 125, 139, 163, 167 Vance, M. 101, 121, 139, 154 Vardell, C. G. 6-8, 42-45, 48, 50, 53, 80-82, 87, 88, 125, 152, 163, 166 Walser, R. 22, 23, 38, 107, 112 Warfield, M. G. 82, 107n Weedon, H. W. 23, 38, 39, 68 White, J. 47, 49, 69, 70, 75, 77, 78, 85, 103, 108, 113 "White Christmas" 133 Whiting, W. S. 68-70 Williams, C. 76, 85, 100, 102, 104 Williamson, E. M. 44, 45 Women of the Church 39, 83, 138, 142, 143, 159, 164 Yelton, J. 89, 121, 126 �ABOUT Church, DONALD B. SAUNDERS is a of at his B.A. in Ph.D. in University of North in 1974. He has a of the at 1971. He the University in Phi He in 2009. He his in at to � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publications Description An account of the resource This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Appalachian Consortium Press Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. June 1, 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource <a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a> Publication Digital Publisher Digital Republication Appalachian State University Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource For His Cause A Little House: A Hundred Year History of Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church Description An account of the resource <span>Through text and photographs, Donald Saunders explores the history of the Rumple Presbyterian Church in Blowing Rock, NC, as well as its members from the Blowing Rock community.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jtBn2tDFvcYE5p2_dePnRXeUkcxmH_YP" target="_blank">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469642017/for-his-cause-a-little-house" target="_blank">UNC Press Print on Demand</a> Subject The topic of the resource Rumple Memorial Presbyterian Church (Blowing Rock, N.C.)--History Blowing Rock (N.C.)--Church history Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Saunders, Donald B. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Appalachian Consortium Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF E-books Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Blowing Rock (N.C.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a> Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980s Blowing Rock history NC Presbyterian Church religion https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/74f1927f4e7baa04fde1ffc3c674d110.pdf 2cee9b841fba1c3ba7b9ee2453db9121 PDF Text Text Tape # 46 Outline I. Name and birthplace of parents. II. Parents schooling. III. Occupation. IV. Churches in the area. V. Community A. Formation. B. Change. C. Decision makers. D. Minority groups E. Population. VI. Politics A. Change. VII. Transportation A. Layout of roads and railroads B. Building of railroads. C. First cars. VIII. Mountain crafts and customs. A. Courting. IX. Outlaws X. Legends, folktales, supersitions XI. Depression XII. Shull's Mill XIII. Honorary degree of Kentucky Colonel. �This is an interview with Mr. N.D. Shull for the Appalachian Oral History Project by Bill Brinkley on March 27, 1973. Q: Could you give me the name and birthplace of your parents? A: Well, my father was born here at Shull's Mill. My mother was born over on Cove Creek. Q: What were their names? A: R. L. was my father's name; Mamie D. Graybeal was my mother's name. Q: Did you have any brothers and sisters? A: None alive. Q: But you did have some? A: Two. Q: What were their names? A: They died when they was small. William, and I forget the other one's name. Q: How much schooling did your parents have? A: I have no idea. Q: What is your occupation? A: Engineer. �3. Q: When you lived in this area, what sorts of churches were here? Have you lived here all your life? A: Well, I was born here and stayed here until I was about 18. Q: What sorts of churches were in this area when you came back, or in the earlier days? A: Well, in the early days the same churches were here except Hebron bought out the Presbyterian Church. The other churches were the same. Q: To which of these churches did most of the people belong? A: Well, they were divided. There was no particular preference. Q: How do you think that they have changed over the years, if any? A: I can't see any change. They still have the same beliefs they had earlier. Q: HOT# did this community get its name? A: Four brothers came over, one of them settled here, had a mill out here on the river, and it was called Shull's Mill. Q: How was it formed in the first place, just because of this mill? that reason? A: That's where it got its name. Q: How do you think the community has changed over the years? For �4. A: It was strictly a rural farming area, and now it's gone into a summer resort area. Q: Who have been the community decision makers? Mainly the Shulls or other people involved also? A: I don't see that there was any one person that was the community decision maker. It was all handled through the individuals that owned the property. They made their own decisions. Q: Are there any minority groups in the community? A: None. Q: Has the population changed greatly in the community? A: Well, since Hound Ears and some of the other resorts being here, of course the population has increased. But if you discount that, the population is about the same as it was when I was growing up. Q: On politics* do you have any memoires of specific elections, local or state? A: When I was growing up, they always had a big fight, and everybody got about half drunk, that's about all I remember. Republicans wouldn't vote a Democrat ticket, or vice versa. Q: How do you think the politics have changed over the years? �5. A: I don't think it's as clean now as it was; it's a dirty bunch of politics, a dirty bunch of politicians. Q: How did the people get around in the community? What sort of transportation did they use? A: Horse, buggy, foot. Q: Where did the roads and the railroads run? A; Well, the railroads ran from Johnson City to Boone, that was Tweetsie. With the exception of this new 105 they built in here a few years ago, the old roads were essentially in the same location, but they weren't hard surface. They were just dirt roads, the first ones, maintained by county labor. Q: When were the railroads built? A: About 1914. Q: Do you remember the first cars in the community? A: Well, my father had about the first car that was right in this community. It was, I believe, a 1914 Ford. That's somewhere around '20 I guess, '18 or '20 when he got it. Q: Do you know very much about the mountain crafts and customs? Soapmaking, curing, weaving, anything like that? A: No. �6. Q: Are there any mountain cures that you are familiar with? A: Well, there's an awful lot of them that people use and talk about, but I'm not familiar with any of them. I believe in a good ol' doctor. Q: How would you compare the courting then and now? Dating back then? A: Well, back then you either walked or rode a horse. You usually stayed at the girl's home, didn't wander around much. Now, I don't do any courting now. Looks to me like they're all over the country. Q: It was more back then, you traveled in groups didn't you? If you went to the girl's house, weren't you more with a group than like now it seems that they're alone so much? A: No, I'd say you were more by yourself back then. Q: I was thinking that maybe a group of them got toether in a horse and buggy, went somewhere, picnicking or something like that? A: Oh, well. When you got together, that's right, on an outing or something, you traveled in groups. When you went courting, you went by yourself. You had no competition or interference. Q: Bedtime was pretty early back then wasn't it? A: They sure was, but getting-up time was a lot earlier. Q: Were there any badmen back in the area during that time? �7. A: Oh, sure. We had a few that were considered a little wild, but I don't imagine they would be considered bad now. Q: No outlaws ? A: Not in this particular section that I know of. Q: Are there any folktales and legends associated with this community, or any superstitions that were maybe passed down from your father or mother? A: There's a lot of tales about how tought living was back then, as far as legends, I don't know . DEPRESSION Q: When did it start as best you can remember? A: Started in the early '30's, maybe '29. Q: How many years did it last? A: Well, I believe you could feel it up until the war started in,the '40's, '41. Course, it wasn't as bad in the latter part of the 30's as it was in the early part. Q: Were you living here at the start of the Depression? A: No. Q: Where were you living then? A: Tennessee. �Q: How many were in your family? A: There was just my mother, my father, and myself. Q: Did anyone else live with you? Any boarders? A: No. Q: What was the effect of the Depression on your family? A: Well, you just didn't have the money t o spend, didn't buy the clothes and food that you normally would. You made do with what you had. Q: How did it effect the working conditions? A: There was no work to be found. Q: Were you working during the Depression? A: No, I was in school when it started. I got out in '32. Q: Did you ever hear of any government projects, WPA, CCC? A: Yes, had WPA here, and CCC camp was not too far from here. It wasn't in Watauga County. Q: What did they do exactly? A: Most of the WPA workers worked on the roads, including the roads, highways; and the CCC Boys were brought in and taught how to survive in the wilderness. They built trails, and I think they grew some timber. �9. Q: When did the welfare program, start? A: Are you still speaking of WPA, CCC. . . ? Q: Yes, something like that. A. Best I recall, it was in the early '30's. Q: Was any of your family affected by those projects? A: No. Q: Was there a scarcity of food? A: Not in this particular section, because as I said before, this was strictly a rural area and all the local families raised their own food. Q: What crops did you raise? A: Oh, outside the gardens which we raised everything we ate, main crops were cabbage and potatoes. Q: Did you have any animals? A: Well, we always kept a cow. I had a pony when I was growing up. dogs, normal animals on a farm. Q: Were prices higher or lower during the Depression.? A: Prices were lower. Cats, �10. Q: Were there any new ways of making money that arose, such as maybe people took up making moonshine, gathering ginseng? A: Well, I don't know if people took it up or not, but that's been going on in this section of the country as far back as I can remember. And it's still going on. Q: Do you remember any of the banks closing? A: I remember when the President closed the banks in order to get them reorganized back then. Q: Do you remember any in this area particularly that closed? A: Well, they were all closed for a few days. Q: What was the community reaction to the banks closing? A: Oh, I guess, it was pretty evenly divided. Some thought it would never open again, and others agreed with the President's idea. Q: What date was it that the banks closed? A: '31, 1931, I'm sure. Q: How was the community affected? Was there any profound effect, or did things stay pretty much the same? A: Things stayed pretty much the same. �11. Q: Was there anyone that you blamed for the collapse of the banks? A: The bank's didn't collapse here. The banks were financially in good shape. And as for other sections of the country, I have no idea, poor management, I guess. Q: Did the schools change during the Depression? A: Yes, they did. We had better buildings, we built some new buildings. Course, I believe we had better schools. Q: How about the churches and businesses, the country stores? A: They was about the same. Q: What do you think caused the Depression? A: Well, looked like the stock market was in pretty bad shape; too many people over bought, caught up with them and from that it snowballed into a very uncomfortable situation. Q: Who was hurt worst by the Depression? A: Small investors. Q: Do you think there was anything particularly good about the Depression days? A: Well, at least during the Depression days a dollar was worth a dollar, and if you wanted somebody to work for you or if you wanted to work for somebody else, you could put out a day's work. All in all, I think our economy �12. was healthier than it is now. Q: How is life different today than from the Depression, such as the family life, education, etc. ? A: Back then, all you had was a newspaper and a radio, and the newspaper got here when the mailman rode his horse. Now, you got television, good automobiles to travel, and naturally you have a little more interest in what is going on. Q: What do you like best about today's way of living? A: Retirement. Q: If you could change anything about the way they are now, what would that be? A: I'm not too fond of these subsidies that the government hands out for not growing some crops. I believe that the old law of supply and demand would help us a lot. Q: What I want to get you to do now is to tell me all about Shull's Mill if you would? The founding. It's effect on the community. The history of it. A: Well, the founding and the effect of the community, I don't know anything about that. My grandfather was the postmaster back in 1879. That's a grant that was given to him. The fact that the railroad came in here, and then Whiting Lumber Co. moved in here, and cut out all the timber on Grandfather. �13. Had a little narrow gauge railroad that went up to Boone's Fork, hauled logs in on that. Plants were just across the river from here. They had quite an operation here. At one time they were here. We had a hospital, summer drug store, a big commissary, theatre, I think it was 500 families. large, or larger than Boone at that particular time. It was Course, after the timber supply was depleted on Grandfather Mountain, they all moved to Butler. Families, of course, migrated out of here. There's very few of them left, in this section now. The older families that were here before the mill, their descendants are here. Q: What was the mill exactly? A: Just a lumber mill. They made lathes, you know wooden lathes, that they used in place of metal lathes. They were strictly a lumber mill. They cut timber in the woods, hauled it in, ran it through the mill. Then they dried it and sized it and shipped it out. Q: Did they ship it all over the United States, or just to North Carolina? A: It was shipped out of here on Tweetsie. After it got to Johnson City, I don't know where it went. Q: What is the Kentucky Colonel over there? I noticed that last time I was in here. A: My wife and I both were appointed Kentucky Colonels a few years ago. �14. Q: What is that exactly? A: It's an honorary appointment that you get from the Governor of Kentucky. Q: What is that for? A: It's just one of those honorary commissions that they give you. Q: You got it from the Governor of Kentucky? How did you manage that? A: Well, it was managed through my sister-in-law. She's the one who had the influence. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Scanned by Wetmore, Dana Equipment Hp Scanjet 8200 Scan date 2014-02-19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with N.D. Shull, March 27, 1973 Description An account of the resource N.D. Shull was born in Shull's Mills, North Carolina and worked as an engineer throughout his life. Mr. Shull and his wife were appointed Kentucky Colonels through the Kentucky governor. Mr. Shull describes his childhood including topics such as church, politics, and transportation, specifically cars and the railroad. Mr. Shull lived in Tennessee with his parents during the Great Depression, and describes what that was like. He also explains the background of Shull's Mill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brinkley, Bill Shull, N.D. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/27/1973 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 14 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource document Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 111_tape46_NDShull_1973_03_27M001 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Boone, NC Subject The topic of the resource Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Watauga County (N.C.)--History automobiles cars Great Depression Kentucky Colonels Politics railroad religion Shull's Mill transportation https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/e636a1c24a35eef6eb8b63791acd88aa.pdf 1871f19e81f8d8301afa6b6ae0ad4878 PDF Text Text Page 1. This is an interview with Mr, Dave Hodges for the Appalachian Oral History Project by Bill Brinkley on March kt 1973. Q: Could you give me the name and birthplace of your parents? A: They were born in Watauga County here, about two miles west of here, Q: Did you have any brothers and sisters? A: Yes, I have one brother and one sister living, and one sister dead. Q: What are the names of the brother and sister living? A: Bessie, she was the baby girl, and Dallas Hodges is my brother that lives at VIlas, Q: Do you have any childhood memories of what life was like? A: We had an awful time; we had to v/ork awful hard to make ends meet, you know, but we growed up, I started in working when I was 1^ years old. I went to work on Tweetsie when they was building it in here, cutting the right of way. I helped build the right of way and helped lay the steel and helped run it into Boone when it came in here. I was just a boy, Q: How would you compare the way that children worked back then to the way they work now? A: They're a lot of difference. We had to help make a living, get out in the field and work, farm work, Q: Do you think that as a result of that, the children of today are becoMng a little bit dissatisfied with the way things are? Do you �think if they had that hard work to do they wouldn't be quite so rebellious? A: I believe it would have something to do with it. Q: Maybe hard work would tame them down? A: Yeah! It was real hard work. You had to hoe corn and stuff was hard anywhere. You didn't get much, if you got ^-00 a day for your work from daylight to dart, stayed in the field and hoed corn. You would bring your dinner to the field and you'd stay there all day long, plus up til sunset, quitting hours, Q: I've heard my mother talk about working in tobacco from early morning til late at night and make 50<i a day. She was really proud of that; :;he thought it was a lot, A: Yeah. That way people raised everything they eat. They raised their garden-their potatoes, their corn, their beans, and stuff like that. Wife: Your daddy ran a store and he run the post office. You worked up there, too, A: I worked in the store and the post office when I was a little boy. Q: How much school i np; did your parents have? A: They didn't have too much; they had up to about the seventh grade. Q: How about your brothers and sisters? A: About the same I guess. Wife: twelve. Oh, his daddy, they was twelve of his father. He's one of �Page 3. Q: Now do you think that the schools have changed over the years? A: They.....I believe they're different. They was pretty if you didn't do what the teacher said you got paddled. You had to mind pretty good, Q: Do you think they're a little bit easier on them now? A: I think they are a little bit easier on them now? Q: What were the schools like back when you went to school? A: I don't know how to answer you on that. Q: Well, describe the school situation, maybe, like a one room school? A: They was two rooms. The younger ones went in one room and the older ones in another, They was two rooms and two teachers when I started in going to school, and I remember once somebody passed outside and they killed a black snake and I run to the door to look at it and the teacher gave me a whooping. Q: -Cause you got out of your seat? A: Cause I jumped up. Wife: He would jump onto that teacher everytime he would see her in the grocery store after they both was old. I told he could have waited a little while and not told it so many times, but it was right funny you know, He would tell it on her. Q: Do you remember any of the books you had back then? A: There was that old Brown back speller; I don't know whether you remember that; I forget the name of it. Then we had arithmetic,geography, history, and English book, it was a green book. It's been so lon^ that I can't remember what. �Q: I've heard some people talk about a Blue back speller. Did you have something like that? A: I didn't have that; mine was a Brown back. They had it before I started. Q: How many months did you go to school whin you first started? A: We'd go from,,, about three to four months. We were out at Christmas, about four months school is all we had each year. Q: Did you ever fro to what they call subscription school? A: No, I didn 1 t. Q: What have your occupations been? A: Well, T graded lumber from the time I was IB years old for 37 years. I graded.,.was a lumber grader, lumber inspector, rather; and after that I worked as Justice of the Peace for ID years here in Boone. I'll tell you something else, I had a lot of weddings to come before me, Q: .Probably young people sneaking off, didn't want anybody to know anything about it? A: They was from every state in the Union to get married, Q: When do you think times were hardest to get a job? A: That was the time when Hoover was in,,.President. That's the only time in my life after I was married that I ever was broke; I got broke under his administration. Got down to a nickel and bought a cake of soap with that nickel. Q: How has the work changed over the years? A: Well, they v/as a right smart. I believe it's not as hard as it was when we was folks. �Page 5. Q: And it's more toward...it's educated oriented. You have to have a certain amount of education to even get a job, A: You do now, nearly a college education to get any job, Q: But you know, I think so much emphasis is being placed on this, I think it is eventually going to get to the point where the common laborer will make more than the college graduate. A: It may come to that later cause the college (graduates) want easier jobs, Q: Well, I've been to college four years and I know that when I get out, I don'T want a job out here digging ditches. A: Well, you have worked toward it, Q: It will get to the point where these "high-up" jobs run out, A: They will run out; they ain't_ enough jobs for them. Q: Right, and you have got to have somebody down here to dig the ditches, and raise the vegetables, raise the hogs, and do the farmwork, and things like this, and that price will go up awfully high that people get paid. Q: V/hat sorts of churches were in this area? A: They was a Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian Churches at that time. That's about the number of churches, Q: To which church did most of the people belong? As Well, when I was growing up, most people belonged to the Baptist Church. Q: What were the churches like back then? �A: In what way? Q: Well, their functions, status in the community. Church going was about mandatory, wasn't it? As Yes, you went to church. You didn't miss a service hardly, Wife: Well, you looked forward to going to church; you planned on it, and you enjoyed it. Q: And now, it's getting,.,? A: V/ell, you're supposed to be there, but 1 feel like people aren't as anxious to go as they once was. Lot of people; some aren't. Q: Do you think it's now more a. tradition or custom rather than the person's wanting to go? A: V/ell, I wouldn't know about that, but I can tell by myself that I used to be more interested in going;, I guess it's just,,.and a lot of people, I've heard them say, I've heard young people say that was older than I am, whenever they run a revival, I heard some folks say, some girls and boys, they said they would stop the revival unless they would come up and show an interest unless they believed, you know, that salvation, ,,, corning to the alter, you knowr and so they said, well, they wouldn't run the meeting any longer; they'd close on Sunday night. So they all made up their minds to everybody go up to be prayed for in order for the service to go on; so I really feel like the young people aren't much different, there are just'more of them. Q: How do you feel that the churches have changed over the years, if any? A: There's quite a bit of change. There's a difference in the preachers; most of them just preach for the money anymore. �Q: And they preach what the people want to hear instead of stepping on their toes a. little bit? A: Yeah, If they step on their toes, they want to get rid of them e Q: They're not the old-fashioned hell-fire and brimstone preachers? A: Right, I know that when we was growing up and then after we was first married, we'd cook all day on Saturday and get ready for a revival, and nave cakes and pies and everything fixed in order so we could go to them, day and night. They'd have services at 11:00 o'clock in the daytime and then at night, Q: I've heard my grandmother talk about cooking on Saturday. A: You didn't do much cooking on Sunday. Q: She didn't cook at all on Sunday, You ate what she cooked on Saturday, or you didn't eat at all, Ai That's the way people would do, Q: How did this community get its name? I've heard it was from Daniel Boone, is that correct? A: Well, that's what we've always heard, but then we have heard, I don't know whether you have or not, that Watauga came from an Indian name. I don't know. Q: What was the meaning of that name? Do you know? A: Rivers, I think. There's a river down here named Watauga River, Wife: No, back west. This 5s New River. Q: How was the community formed? A: (Wife) Well, they had the first jail.,.they used it for a jail. �rage o. It: wasn't a jail; it was an old barn righl". over here close to Grady Farthing's farm, just this side, They held court there, and then they built a jail. Wasn't the first jail here in Boone burned up? I think it v/as. QJ V/as it just a regular feed barn? A: Yes, it was just an old barn, and they said the fleas like to eat them up, It was riffht down here, and they tied their prisoners to a wagon wheel, Q: They didn't lock him up in a room? A: No, they had no room to lock him in. They had nothing; no place to lock him. They tied him to a wagon wheel. It's right in sight down here where we live, Q: It's still standing? A: No, it burned; it's not still standing, (Wife) It was 20 * years ago; they tore it down. Cause we could see it from our back porch, Q: How has the community changed over the years? A: Well, it's all together different from what it used to be. It wasn't so many people like it is anymore; it's thickly settled now. They's so much difference from what it used to be when we was growing up. You had to work so much; all the time you had to rest was on Sunday. You worked six days a week, I can remember the first automobile that came to Boone, I got to ride in the first one that ever come to Boone, The man picked me up and let me ride a little. Q: Do you know whose it was? �y. A: Jeff Robins was the one that had it at the time from Lenoir; he drove up here. That's the first one I ever seen, Q: What kind was it? A: Model T: straight fenders, brass radiator, Q: My grandfather had the first one in our community, and he didn't know how to drive it. The man who drove it over thought that he knew how to drive it. He got in it, and cranked the thing up and took off, ran over the top of a woodpile and about killed everybody in there. What was the reaction to the cars coming into the community? How did the people feel about that? A: They thought there wasn't nothing like it. When anybody got enough money to buy one, they didn't cost much back then, you could buy a new Model T for $700. Q: That was a lot of money at that time wasn't it? A: It was a lot of money; you didn't make nothing. Like I told you a while ago, hoeing corn for ^00 a day. I graded lumber for 21 years, and most I ever got at that was 350 an hour, Q: Were there any horses running away, or rearing up, as the cars came by? A: No, not any. The road was narrow, and if they passed, you'd have to pull out to let things pass, just a one way back then. Boone here was just... don't think they had any streets, It was just a one way road through here, and our first mayor,,,I seen our first mayor that ever was in Boone, Q: Who was that? A: Lewis Bryant, the first mayor that ever was in Boone. �Q: Do you know the date when he was the first mayor? A: No, I can't answer that. That was years ago. Q: That's interesting, though, that you remember seeing him. A: I talked to him. He lived right where the police station is now. Q: Have there been any people in the community that you would call the decision makers of the community? Who had a big effect on the outcome? A: I can't recall, their names, Q: Do you feel that there are any minority groups in the community? A: I don't think thai; they are, I think that one's about equal to the other one. Q: I'm sure that some families we,re really poor back then, A: There was a lot of them. The county took care of that; they had a county home built over there. One time my granddaddy went on a bond for the sheriff, you know; and they didn't have no money. The sheriff ran away with another woman and took the tax money, The county home property was his, and he had signed for the sheriff. I can't recall the sheriff's name. (See story at end of Transcript.) Q: The county home was whose property? A; It was my Granddaddy Hodges', Holland Hodges, He didn't have the money to pay the bond off, it was about a $500 bond, and they took it must have been 100 acres. (Wife) The health office is there on that property now. Q: That was the county home? �Page 11. A: That's where it wan; the land. Q: Is that the same thine; that they called the county poor house? A: Yes, the county poor house. Q: Well, did the people in the community, too? A: No, they,..the county put a man and his wife in to look after them, Q: What did they do? Serve food? Clothe them? A: Yes, a place to sleep. Q; Do you have any memories of specific elections in this area? Any colorful events or happenings? A: I don't believe so; they're all about the same to me. Q: Democrats fighting Republicans, Republicans fighting Democrats? A: That's always going on. You can hear that anytime; same today as it was back then. Q: Did you have any knifings, shootings that arose from politics? A: -I can't recall any, Q: How did the people in the area tend to vote? Did they lean toward one party more so than the other one? A: They did at'that time. Most everything was Democratic back then. (Wife) Up til this past year.) It changed a few years ago; more people cone in, and the population has grov/ed so, you don't know who's who now, Q: I was talking to this one man, and he said that there for a while you could predict an election accurately by the way people were registered and the people in the area. But he said that it's changed so much that there's no way. �Page 12. A: That would weigh the Democrats having a majority registered here in Watauga County, They have about, seems like almost 600 more Democrats registered than Republicans, but it don't go like they're registered. You know about that, Q: Do you think that politics are dirtier now than they were? A: Yes! I think they are...think they are. Q: In what way, would you say? A: There's too much money being spent to buy votes, Q: Too much passing under the table, so to speak? A: Yes. Q: Do you remember any political figures in the community that particularly stood out back then? A: (Wife) There's a lot of them. There;s a few living, but there's a lot of them that's gone on that was outstanding. Right at the present, I can't call too many of their names. But I can remember my daddy, hearing him say when I was just a little child, that he followed his father to the election when he was 10 years old. His folks were Republicans, and he came back and told his mother, he said, "Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to be a Democrat.", and he was one of the strongest Democrats there was in the world, I guess. So, naturally we couldn't be anything else but a Democrat, and I don't want to be. So- I'm so happy that they were Democrats when we married, because if he hadn't been, I don't know what would have taken place. We might not be living here together for over 50 years. Q: Have ya'll been married 50 years? �A: 52, will be 52 years this fall, 51 years last November, So it's been wonderful that he was Democrat, too, and I think that he feels the same way about me. Cause he might have took the club to me if I had been...my politics had been something else. All my people on both sides are Democrats, Q: Well, the Brinkley family over all tends to be Democratic, or in our area they are, A: That's what makes them good people. Q: That's the key to it right there? A: That's the key to it, Q: How did the peoole get around back then? What types of transportati did they use? A: They went around in a buggy or wagon, horseback, steer wagon a lot of the time, Q: Where did the roads run? A: .The road come right through Tennessee plumb, just one road on into Lenoir, that way, just one road, There wasn't any side roads much, Q: It was probably just a mud road? A: Just a mud road. Through the winter, mud was axle deep to the wagons. Right through Boone, it was a mud hole through there, (Wife) It took a week to 'go to Lenoir and back with a load of produce in the v/agon. It would take that long to sell it, (Husband) We would go to Tennessee and haul groceries back to my Daddy's store and be gone a week to Lenoir, and take a week to go down there and back in a wagon. �Page Q: Where did the railroads run? A: There was one run in here,.,There never was but one that come in and that was Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina.. It came out of Johnson City, Tennessee; that's the one I told you I helped them build from Shull's Mill into Boone. Q: I bet you could tell rne some experiences you had doing that, couldn't you? A: Yes, I worked for...my boss man learned me how to, in grading off the right of way, he learned me how to use dynamite and blow out stumps. He learned me how to blow out stumps with dynamite and black powder, and to drill in and go through a rock, you know on 105 there's a rock cut down there where the railroad come through, I carried steal to the steam drill over there when they was building that cut, Q: How much did you get paid working on the railroad? A: I got 150 an hour, 10 hours a day, Q: When did you start building that railroad? A: It was in.,.it come in here 1917-18. Q: When was it finished? A: I can't recall, I can't recall that; I don't remember. I forget my dates. Depot still stands at the bus station. Q: Is that where it was? ' A: That's the depot. You can see it right there; go up there and look at it, Q: I remember seeing it now that you mention it; I'd never even th <~>11 crh + a'hn!l+ -t-Vi Ei -t- " h » T v-i rr i.rh o +• i + i.ioc- o 4- n i l �Page 15. A: That's ET and WNC depot. Q: Did you ever hear it referred to as "Eat Tatars and Wear No Clothes"9 A: That's exactly it; "Eat Taters and Wear No Clothes." That's the name of it. I didn't know whether you heard that. I quoted that different times. Q: I was listening to a tape of a fellow who lived over in Avery County. It stuck in my mind; I'd never heard it referred to as that before, A: I've heard it many times. Q: I'll bet you can probably remember the first telephone in the community? A: It's the kind that hang; on the wall and cranked, you cranked up. Q: What was the community reaction to telephones coming in? A" You'd have to...if you wanted to telephone anybody, you'd have to go a lone; ways. There wasn't many in the community, just one once in a while. Each person didn't own one. The merchant would own one; my dad owned one at the store, post office; and that's the only one in our settlement. (Wife) Well, I was waiting for you to tell what some folks said about your daddy and the telephone. You want to tell him about that? (Mr. Hodges) You go ahead. (Wife) He was talking on the phone and there was some folks that went in to buy some stuff, groceries or some things. When they got back they said, theri mother said these boys were, I don't know how many there was, "Where's the stuff I sent you for?" They said, "We couldn't get nothing. That Bill Hodges was talking to the wall, and he wouldn't �16. Wait on us. " Q: That was pretty good about talking to the wall. A: That really happened. Q: Well, I bet a lot of people.... new things coming in like that people weren't used to, lots of people probably thought people were acting strange because of that, maybe. A: (Wife) I had two uncles that was jealous over each other, and so I was visiting. They lived right close, and they were jealous; they were brothers, you know. They were always seeing which one could raise the biggest stuff, you know. My uncle said, ^ "You run over to your Uncle John's and tell him I want to borrow the cross cut saw. I want to have your aunt make us some punkin pies; I want to cut a punkin in two." So I went, and my uncle said, "Well you go back and tell your other uncle,'George, that I'm half through with a tater, and he can have the saw soon as I get through." Q: Sounds like a tale to me. A: That's more like a tale, isn't it? Q: Did you ever do any soapmaking? A: Yes, I helped make it...help my mother make it. lye outside in a big ol' pot, you know. Made it out of �Q: There wa.s something about pouring water over wood ashes, A: Ashes would make your lye. You'd have a hopper to put your ashes in and the water. It would come out down here at the bottom, and you would catch it and make your soap with it. Q: Did you ever do any weaving? A: No. Q: Chairmaking? A: Yeah, I've made some chairs; make them yet. Q: I'll bet you're familiar with a lot of the old mountain cures aren't you? Such things as making a poltire out of mud and putting it on an area, A: Make it out of catnip, make tea out of catnip. (Wife) I've seen my mother use, when children had chest colds, she'd use lard, you know, and terpentine, and put salt, I don't remember how it was made, Anyhow she rubbed that on, put it on warm on the chest, That was supposed to draw out the cold, and I noticed in the Democrat where Whitener had a piece in the paper about it. It brought back memories, you know, what he had written. Q: Were there any spring tonics? Do you remember any of those? A: Oh yes, Q: What were they? A: Molasses and sulfer. That was terrible. Oh goodness, they had to run me down, I had just soon about,,,They said we were run down, you know, and I didn't mind being run down, but I didn't like the sulfer and molasses. Q: What was that supposed to do? �A: I don't know; 1 don't have no idea. Well, yes, I do. It was to build up your blood, Q: Sassafrass tea was supposed to thin your blood, wasn't it? A: Yeah! But they used it, I guess that's what it was for, I'm not too sure about that. And what other kind of tea? (Mr. Hodges) Spicewood tea. Did you ever hear tell of spicewood tea? Q: Spicewood tea? No, I don't think so, A: It grows up around, . .makes awful good tea. People use that at the table, drink it just like you would coffee, Q: Does it have a spicy flavor? A: It's little twigs; you break it up and put water in it and let it...just like you would tea leaves. Q: I've never heard of that, A: There was a man that said he was going to bring; him some. Around Beaver Dam, plenty of it grows there. Up here where I was raised, there's plenty of it grows there. Grows anywhere that it's wet. Q: I've heard of people using hemlock too. If they had trouble with their false teeth, they'd rinse their mouth out with the hemlock tea and it would toughen their gums, they said. 0 Why don't you tell me a little bit about the work you do, Mr. Hodges? The carving and woodwork you have downstairs? A: I make a little of everything from picture frames, men and v/omen, a Hi Q boards, doll cradles, well, I can't think of everything. There are so many things that I make. You see a lot of my picture frames there, the inlaids. �Q: Did you make these? A: Yes. .Q: Do you ever make any pictures out of inlaid wood? A: No, I never have done that, made a few letters, cut out a few letters and made inlaid, Q: What do you do with your stuff? A: I give most of it away; I've sold a little, not too much. A woman out of Virginia bought some: these novelty places around here once in a while want some washboards, (Wife) Dr. Dean's wife bought some of the Hi Q boards and sent them to Georgia. He has things a long ways from here. Q: How big are the little washboards? A: They're 2J- inches by about '•K inches, Q: I can remember we had a big one; my grandmother used to wash clothes on it when I was a child, A: Then I got to making them mushrooms; I don't know if they would sell or not. Q: I'm sure they would, too. You'd be surprised. Did you ever make any molasses? A: Oh yeah'. Set up of a night and make them, put them in a boiler, cane mill. My granddaddy grind it; I'd raise cane and make molasses and help make them. Put them in a big boiler and a little wood fire under them; boil them, Q: Did you make that (a mushroom pin cushion)? A: Yeah, he took off downstairs. That's where he got his pattern; just looking at that. �Q: What do you use that for? A: That's a pin cushion. The bottom, top, and stems are stuffed with cotton. Q: Did you make these too? (mice) A: Yes. Q: What is in these? Some type of gravel? A: Beans. Q: Beads? A: Beans, or you could use birdseed. Q: Surely you sell those to craft shops. A: I make them things like that, them cabinets, Q: You made that cabinet? A: Yes, I'm in a little bit of everything;. Made a boy's wagon. Q: Did you ever hunt any gens ens? A: No, never did, I don't know what it is. I might if I was to run right onto it. My dad used to hunt it. Q: How about flax? I'm riot really sure what that is. Maybe I'm getting that mixed up with something else. A: You must be; I've never heard of that. . Q: Have you ever heard of anything called a May apple? A: Yes, I've dug that many times. Q: What is that? A: That's a little...it grows up this way and then you dig the roots and they have a little May apple on them. �(Wife) That's a puzzle-ball pin cushion; it's a puzzle everytime you put it together. It has 24 pieces. What I mean by puzzle everytime you put it together, you have to learn everytime you put one together. Here's Humpty Dumpty, Q: How was the courting back then? A: You stumped me on that. They weren't calling it that when we were dating, but our parents, they'called it sparking. Q: I've heard that. My father picks at my sister a lot, you know, and says, "Who're you sparking now?", or something like that. A: Our niece came down from Baltimore, and she had a friend with her and they said, "Are you sparking any?", and she said, "Beg your pardon?" He said, "Are you sparking?" "Beg your pardon?" So I said he means are you courting, and the niece knew what he meant, and she said, "Aw, what they mean is -are you dating?" Well, boys had to come to the door, Q: Well, I think that is gentlemanly, A: I do too, I wouldn't allow it today if I had a girl. Q: Nothing makes madder than to hear of a boy driving up and blowing his horn, and here the girl grabs her coat and she goes running out the door. I think it's a disgrace. A: Well, I was used to horses; I didn't care where I run out, Q: Well, the horses didn'.t blow their horn did they? A: No, they had to come in, but when dark came, that was it. Boys left. We went to church together, and I think the most fun we had was walking a mile to get to ride a mile on the Tweetsie. I think you paid the big amount of 110 for each one, �22. Q: Were there any outlaws, or badmen that you remember back at that time? A: Yeah, there was some. I can't remember the first, but they were; meanness has never stopped and never will. They'd steal and rob back then, and everything. Q: Were there any legends or superstitions that you remember in this area? A: There's been some around that I've heard. Now,, my Uncle Preston,, Jerome Preston, they claimed was over there where the Yankees come through. He said he could hear the chains rattling of the captured prisoners; he could hear the chains rattling though. It might have bee in his mind; it was a haunted place down off the mountain. Q: Any superstitions? I'm sure there are several superstitions. A: Yeah, there's a lot of them; some people are scared of their own shadow. Q: Do you remember any of thase specifically? A: I can't remember those; Q: When did the Depression start as best you can remember? A: That was back in 19...just after, the Depression was right after Hoover was elected in 1928. I tried to forget them. It started and lasted the whole time his four years in there, and never stopped 'til after Roosevelt was elected, and then we could see our way. go to work. We could find a job and They fixed places for us to work; a day and work. to start with. we could get a dollar Sometimes you had to take it up in a grocery store You'd work that day and take you to the grocery �23. store and get some groceries that day. haven't had no Depression since that. And after that was over, we That's all I remember. (Wife) We were awful lucky we didn't have to go on relief} or call for relief cause we raised garden and had plenty of food to can, you know, and like that. So that helped, and we had two children at that time. Q: Now that's the way my mother's family was; they had a farm and raised everything. But my father was brought up in a city and they didn't have any areas to plant a garden,, thens and I've heard him talk about eating fried pumpkin three times a day. A: Oh, yeah. like that. You just had to boil potatoes and have milk, and thing? And when you had money, you bought peanut butter, salmon, or something like that. Q: You were living here in this area during the Depression? A: Yes, we lived a mile west of Boone. Q: How many were in the family then? A: There was four of us. Q: How old were the children during the Depression? A: The oldest was 10, and the youngest was 8. Q: How did the Depression affect working conditions? A: You couldn't find a job. (Wife) There just wasn't any jobs and there's hardly a day passed that there wouldn't someone that would come to your door and ask for something to eat and they would just look so pitiful. If you had anything at all to divide, you divided �24. with them. Q: Did you change jobs during the Depression? A: No„ I was working for J. Walter Wright Lumber Company at that time, grading lumber. being sold. We couldn't sell anything; no lumber was You'd get a day now and then. Q: How much did you make at that time? A: I didn't make but...the most I ever made at that time was about 15C an hour, when I got in any hours, $1.50 a day. Q: You're familiar with government projects, such as WPA, CCC...? A: (Wife) Our son, he joined up with CC Company. Q: What was that? A: It was a...you mean where was it? Q: What was it? What was the purpose of it? A: . Well, it was kind of a training like, you know, when they took their basic training,, something similar to it, only they took boys younger, so much younger than.... He was about 15, I guess, 14 or 15; but he didn't like no part of it. He just wouldn't stay. had two friends that he wanted to go with so bad. He And then they had a, I can;t remember what it stood for, but NYA, they had that in our community after the school was, they brought the children to the Boone School in town, and this was to learn the girls and they got paid for that, young girls. �25. Q: What crops did you raise during the Depression? A: Corn and potatoes, wheat, nearly everything you raise in a garden Q: Did you A: Cows. Q: You made your own butter? A: Yes. Q: How did you keep that? A: Put it in the pen. Q: Did you can the meat? A: Yes, we canned it and put it in salt. it, too. have any animals? We raised hogs for the winter's meat. Made sausage and canned You had to grind it on a hand-grinder. got so we'd take it to the meat market. Well,, finally we You know you never find any sausage that tastes like that today. Q: I guess it's because you had to put so much work into it. A: It must have been. Q: Were prices higher or lower during the Depression? A: Oh, things were lower then. little then. Your meat didn't cost but very You could buy, they called it fatback then, side meat. Didn't cost but very little then. �rage Q: Were there any new ways of making money that arose? A: There was a lot of moonshiners. They'd git out in the hills around the mountains and make moonshine and sell it. Happened very often, Q: Do you remember any of the banks closing;? A: Yeah. I remember the Bank of Boone closing one time. It went out during the Depression, People lost what they had in it. People's Bank and Trust Company and Watauga Company Bank, It didn't close. You couldn't git no money back then. It was awful, rough to get any money. Q: V/hat was the community's reaction to the banks' closing? A: Oh it worried the people about that, A lot of people what had a few dollars in there, they didn't have much. It worried them awful, They never did git it. I don't know whatever happened to it, Q: Is there anyone in particular you blame for the banks closing? A: No, I didn't have any money in at that time, so I didn't blame nobody. I didn't have nobody to blame, Q: Did the schools change during the Depression? A: Well, there wasn't much difference in the schools then, Q: How about your father's country store? A: He credited it all out and went bankrupt. He lost everything he had. He credited it out. I think he had $5000 on his books back then, and he couldn't buy no more, Q: That was a. goldmine~$5000. A: Yes, you had plenty if you had $5000, He credited it out on the books he kept. I don't know whatever went with the books he had. �Q: Was there any change in the churches? A: No, there didn't seem to be any change then, Q: V/hat do you think caused the Depression? A: I can't answer that for I just don't know, Q: Who was hurt worse by it? A: Poor people was hurt worse than anybody. (Wife) The working man. My daddy told about a man saying that during the Depression, that he was supposed to be a Democrat; he'd be hap^y if a Republican went back in cause he could save more money while the Republican was in because he didn't have to pay as much for his work hands, Q: What do you think was best about the Depression, if anything? A: I didn't see nothing best about it, That's the worst ever... (Wife) Well, the neighbors, I think, loved each other more. I think that was a good thing. And when any neighbor got sick in the community, they wasn't just one would go to see about you. They was a lot of good things in that way. Q: What do you like best about the way things are today? A: Well, I enjoy good roads. Q: How about you, Mr, Hodges? A: Well, I find that today, you can go wherever you please and stay wherever you please. Q: If you could change anything about the way things are today, what would they be? A: (Wife) I'd wish for peace all over the world more than anything else, and I'd love to have our children close to home for one thing. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Scanned by Wetmore, Dana Equipment Hp Scanjet 8200 Scan date 2014-02-17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dave Hodges, April 4, 1973 Description An account of the resource Dave Hodges had many different careers throughout his life including working at a lumber factory and serving as justice of peace in Boone. Mr. Hodges talks about religion and what church was like as a child in the early 1900s. He also explains the community of Boone including the history and the differences in the years passed. Mr. Hodges explains the reaction of the community to new inventions like the car and the telephone. He also talks about local traditions such as home remedies, carving and wood cutting, and dating. To end the interview, he discusses his memories of the Great Depression and the effect it had on the community. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brinkley, Bill Hodges, Dave Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 4/4/2014 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 27 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource document Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 111_tape56_DaveHodges_1973_04_04M001 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Boone, NC Subject The topic of the resource Mountain life--North Carolina--Watauga County--History--20th century--Anecdotes Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Depression--1929--North Carolina--Watauga County Boone N.C. carving Great Depression home remedies religion wood cutting https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/f1daede26e6085477bed589e881132d4.pdf e0df37b0de4f025a1c45a3cf9ce5a5e2 PDF Text Text �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kirby and Eller Family Letters Description An account of the resource The Kirby and Eller Family Letters contain correspondence between the Kirby and Eller families of Ashe County, North Carolina. The letters focus mainly on day-to-day events such as planting and harvesting crops, health and illness, and household tasks, but also include references to the Civil War. The original letters of Collection 495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters, 1826-1938 are in the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection. <div class="subnote "> <p><span class="less">Elizabeth “Bettie” Kirby (1851-1925) was born on February 15th, 1851 in Meadow Creek, Virginia, to parents Joel Kirby and Frances Roberts. Millard F. Kirby, Samuel J. Kirby, Emory T. Kirby, and Ada B. Kirby were her siblings. She married Joseph Lafayette Eller on September 22, 1875 in Ashe County, NC, where she lived until her death on December 9, 1925.<br /><br />Luke Eller (1806-1883) was born on June 8, 1806 in Ashe Co., NC. He was married to Sarah King<span class="elipses"></span></span><span class="more"> on March 27, 1829 in Ashe Co. He is the father of Joseph Lafayette Eller (Elizabeth’s husband), Hansford Eller, and Aswell Eller. Luke Eller lived in Ashe Co. until his death on December 6, 1883.</span></p> <span class="note-content readmore expanded"><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165#" class="expander">See less</a></span></div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letter from Sally King to Luke Eller and Sarah Eller, 19 July 1867 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1867-07-19 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Letter_07_19_1867.pdf Description An account of the resource This is a letter from Sally King to her aunt and uncle Sarah and Luke Eller. Sally talks primarily about her strong religious belief and talks about her fears that several of her family members won’t go to Heaven because they aren’t as fervent believers as she is. Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a> Subject The topic of the resource Faith Salvation Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title=" Kirby and Eller Family Letters" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/17" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Kirby and Eller Family Letters </a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4453028/ashe-county.html Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Letters (Correspondence) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Ashe County (N.C.) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1860s Eller family letter Luke Eller Moses Brooks Nancy Brooks religion S. King Sally King Sarah Eller Tennessee https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/e12d02e8b7f0af2f04fe9b0c66c9c42a.pdf 535429053c186959442e4f0ed30ed013 PDF Text Text �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kirby and Eller Family Letters Description An account of the resource The Kirby and Eller Family Letters contain correspondence between the Kirby and Eller families of Ashe County, North Carolina. The letters focus mainly on day-to-day events such as planting and harvesting crops, health and illness, and household tasks, but also include references to the Civil War. The original letters of Collection 495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters, 1826-1938 are in the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection. <div class="subnote "> <p><span class="less">Elizabeth “Bettie” Kirby (1851-1925) was born on February 15th, 1851 in Meadow Creek, Virginia, to parents Joel Kirby and Frances Roberts. Millard F. Kirby, Samuel J. Kirby, Emory T. Kirby, and Ada B. Kirby were her siblings. She married Joseph Lafayette Eller on September 22, 1875 in Ashe County, NC, where she lived until her death on December 9, 1925.<br /><br />Luke Eller (1806-1883) was born on June 8, 1806 in Ashe Co., NC. He was married to Sarah King<span class="elipses"></span></span><span class="more"> on March 27, 1829 in Ashe Co. He is the father of Joseph Lafayette Eller (Elizabeth’s husband), Hansford Eller, and Aswell Eller. Luke Eller lived in Ashe Co. until his death on December 6, 1883.</span></p> <span class="note-content readmore expanded"><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165#" class="expander">See less</a></span></div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letter to Mary Eller from Jennie King, 1860 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1860 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Letter_1860.pdf Description An account of the resource This is a letter from Mary Eller to her cousin, Jennie King. Mary asks how Jennie has been since they were last at camp meetings together, and then Mary demands that Jennie continue to live a religious life and that Jennie must make Joseph King, her father, live a religious life as well. Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a> Subject The topic of the resource Religious life Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title=" Kirby and Eller Family Letters" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/17" target="_blank"> Kirby and Eller Family Letters </a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4453028/ashe-county.html Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Letters (Correspondence) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Ashe County (N.C.) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1860s Camp meetings Eller family family letters Jennie King Joseph King letter Mary Eller North Fork religion https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/8dbedf96c327ec4c5b9324e1a5715d20.pdf 156e623e4cad419ceb22d4ef530606af PDF Text Text �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kirby and Eller Family Letters Description An account of the resource The Kirby and Eller Family Letters contain correspondence between the Kirby and Eller families of Ashe County, North Carolina. The letters focus mainly on day-to-day events such as planting and harvesting crops, health and illness, and household tasks, but also include references to the Civil War. The original letters of Collection 495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters, 1826-1938 are in the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection. <div class="subnote "> <p><span class="less">Elizabeth “Bettie” Kirby (1851-1925) was born on February 15th, 1851 in Meadow Creek, Virginia, to parents Joel Kirby and Frances Roberts. Millard F. Kirby, Samuel J. Kirby, Emory T. Kirby, and Ada B. Kirby were her siblings. She married Joseph Lafayette Eller on September 22, 1875 in Ashe County, NC, where she lived until her death on December 9, 1925.<br /><br />Luke Eller (1806-1883) was born on June 8, 1806 in Ashe Co., NC. He was married to Sarah King<span class="elipses"></span></span><span class="more"> on March 27, 1829 in Ashe Co. He is the father of Joseph Lafayette Eller (Elizabeth’s husband), Hansford Eller, and Aswell Eller. Luke Eller lived in Ashe Co. until his death on December 6, 1883.</span></p> <span class="note-content readmore expanded"><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165#" class="expander">See less</a></span></div> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letter from Aswell Eller to Luke Eller, 21 January 1857 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1857-01-21 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Letter_1857_01_21.pdf Description An account of the resource This is a letter from Aswell Eller to his father, Luke. Aswell apologizes for not writing a letter to his father sooner, explaining that the weather saw temperatures that were thirty degrees below zero and the river froze so no mail could be sent. He finishes his letter by saying he fears ending life a beggar so he must remain a Christian. Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a> Subject The topic of the resource Weather Religious life Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. <a title=" Kirby and Eller Family Letters" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/17" target="_blank"> Kirby and Eller Family Letters </a> Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. https://www.geonames.org/4453028/ashe-county.html Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Letters (Correspondence) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Ashe County (N.C.) Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1850s Aswell Eller Eller family family letters Hawkins County letter Luke Eller religion Tennessee Weather William Rufus King https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/3aeeaf308ceb052510e4cdf8e87ad22e.mp3 0b9d918f32fd32d6133a1758eb93924f https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/830a6f5fc4916a88e5a974b7ed6225dd.mp3 0a59da7c9ba4a294023e100f4787e639 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/15afd20c10710e9d450e93672c800166.pdf dd10ff6e97edcf57fea25183a452af40 PDF Text Text Oral History Transcript Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 34 Interviewee: Edward Blackburn Interviewer: Bill Ballock 2 March 1973 BB: Bill Ballock EB: Edward Blackburn OB: Ollie Blackburn BB: This is an interview for the Appalachian Oral History Project with Edward Blackburn at Todd, North Carolina, on March 2, 1973 by Bill Ballock. Tell your name and start out from there. EB: I’m Ed Blackburn and I live at Todd, North Carolina. I’ve lived here for 80 years and I’m a preacher. I have, in the past been a mail carrier, but today I’m trying to preach. Lived here in the mountains and worked with mountain people, think they’re the finest people in the world. That’s not belittling anybody else, but I appreciate and honor them. Want to be an honor to the mountains. Is that thing (the tape recorder) running now? BB: Just don’t even pay any attention to it. EB: Now, you go ahead and talk to me. BB: Okay. Can you tell me something about your childhood? EB: Yes, a little bit. I remember not too much about it. I remember many years back, born here in Ashe County and lived here, as I said once, all my life. Went to school here, what little I went, and went to the First World War. Went through the First World War through the entire was except for 14 days. Came back and lived here ever since. This has been my home ever since. All my life this has been my home. I have seen Boone when it was just a few white houses there and the streets were two feet deep of mud. If you got across the street you got across on a pile of ashes. You missed the ashes and you went in the mud to your knees. I’ve seen West Jefferson come from a house or two to a nice town. Seen the railroad come in here and helped work on it. I drove pegs for the engineers, helped work on the track and I’ve seen it come and go. BB: What about the railroad? What did you do on the railroad? EB: I helped the engineer survey it and worked on the track work. And then I helped grade it, helped grade the whole thing. Helped make it, everything but the coaches and the engines. 1 �BB: Where did it start out? EB: Where did it start from? Abingdon, Virginia. Came to Todd, 76 miles, 76 miles and so many tenths to Todd. Came in and out once a day. Stayed all night here and then went out in the morning, came back in the evening. Todd used to be a business place. Had a bank, drugstores, and how many grocery stores I’ve forgotten. Lots of numbers of people lived here. It’s just a ghost town now because all the old people are dead and all the young people have moved away. And the banks are gone, the money is gone, the timber is gone, and most of the land is gone. BB: How did people feel about the railroad here in Todd? EB: Well, they wanted it to come in you know. They didn’t know it was going to ruin us and take all our timber out and leave us nothing. We wanted it to come in. BB: So you think after it left it was bad? EB: Yes, yes. It left us in a lot worse shape. All of our timber gone and not anything to show for it. OB: It should have gone on up to Boone. EB: Sure, if it went on up to Boone it would be running today. West Jefferson over there is a thriving town and it came into West Jefferson now one or two times a week. (The railroad) hauls freight in there. No passenger trains, no mail. Used to run a passenger train in there and carried the mail. BB: It did run a passenger train? EB: Yes, oh yes. Two times a day the Lord blessing. One in the morning and one in the evening. In and out. Passenger train and freight, sometimes two freights. Loads of them, double heading out here, a number of cars loaded with timber. BB: So if you wanted to change it back, you wouldn’t let the railroad come back? EB: No. I wouldn’t work on it. In fact, I would get other people not to. That’s right, keep what we have. BB: Well, they tell me you are a preacher. Can you tell me something about how you got started in that? EB: Yes, well the Lord called me. Yes, I’m a preacher honey. Got a lovely church over here. The finest people in the country come there. I got started because the Lord called me to be a preacher. I didn’t want to be a preacher. I wanted anything in the world besides being a 2 �preacher. I really wanted to be a drunkard, and drink liquor and carouse around. But the Lord saved me. Then He called and saved me and delivered me from drinking liquor. He called me to be a preacher. And now I’m preaching and wouldn’t do anything else now. I’m not much of a preacher, but I’m the best preacher I know how to be. God bless you. BB: When did it start? EB: When did I start preaching? I started preaching in about 1922 or ’23. BB: What brought it on? Did you go to school? EB: No, never been, just went through the schoolhouses. Ran a mill, only school college I’ve ever been in. I used to run a mill in Todd and sell meal to the Boone College. That’s the only college I know anything about; selling meal. I’ve been to college anyhow selling them meal. BB: So you just took the preaching on your own? EB: Yes, thank God. On my own. Lived by it. Only way I have of getting a penny is what people give me. Nobody behind me but the Lord and that’s enough. God called me and I’ve worked with everybody that needs help. OB: He’s worked all his life and got Social Security. EB: I draw Social Security, but not enough. BB: Do you get paid for preaching? EB: Yes sir. Got a lovely congregation. Get a little, sometimes get more than others. Take an offering every morning when I preach. I just preached over here at the tabernacle two times a month, second and fourth Saturday. And somebody takes an offering for us. BB: What’s the name of the church? EB: Blackburn Memorial Church and Campground. I want you to go out and get a history of it, get you to look at it and take the history down off of the sign. BB: How did it come about that you’re preaching? How were you called? EB: Well, the Lord just called me you know. I got saved from being a drunkard and the Lord called me to be a preacher. Why, I don’t know, but He called me to be a preacher. I just went to doing things that preachers ought to do. Not like other men can, but the best I could. And God called me to be a preacher and I’ve been faithful to the job ever since. OB: He gets busier everyday about it, counseling with somebody. Some drunkard or some 3 �family having trouble. BB: What people come here? EB: Drunks, folks trying to get delivered from liquor, folks having marriage troubles, about to separate, parting, fussing and fighting. Come here day and night to be prayed with and counseled with, talked to and prayed for. Thank God. God had blessed us so far with a fruitful ministry. BB: They told me that once you got sick. Could you tell me something about that? EB: Once I was seriously sick. So sick they thought I would die you know. They sent me to the hospital against my will. They sent me to West Jefferson and the hospital at Jefferson kept me 18 or 19 days and couldn’t find what was the matter with me. And they sent me from there to Winston-Salem. When I got to Winston I was so near dead they gave me eight pints of blood. And that’s about all of it. But I stayed down there 18 or 19 days and they were going to operate on me, but I couldn’t take it. I was weak. I couldn’t stand an operation. I prayed and before the Lord and the host of heaven, God healed me and I came home the day they were supposed to operate on me. That night – the doctors and nurses came in to get me ready for an operation and I told the nurses, “God’s healed me. I’m going home. I want you to send me home today.” That excited the nurses and the doctor came in and told him that, and then he went out of the room. And several other doctors came in. They pushed me and then rolled me, then looked in my eyes, looked at my fingernails and examined my feet and had a counsel and told me I could go home. But when I got ready to come home there were a number of people there that came to set up the operation. Felt sorry for my mom you know and my children. I was getting my clothes on and getting ready to come home and I told the doctor, “I’ll never be back down here unless I come to pray for somebody.” I’ve been back twice, or three times. OB: Why don’t you tell the whole story? EB: Well, I’ve told enough of it, haven’t I? BB: I want the whole story. OB: The night you were healed, don’t you remember? EB: Yes, yes. I was praying you know, the night before the operation and a nurse came through and turned my pitcher upside down, the water pitcher, and I knew that was bad business. I was burning up and wanted water. The nurse came in and turned my water pitcher upside down, no 4 �more water for me. If I had money I would have hired somebody to pour water for me, but I didn’t have that kind of money and had to depend on the nurses and the orderlies. The nurse came through or one of the aides came through and turned my pitcher upside down and I knew that there was no more water for me. I knew what was coming. I knew that I was so weak and couldn’t take it. I was already dead. I just told God that I couldn’t take it. And sometime through the night, somebody came to by bed and called me name and said, “You don’t need an operation.” Next morning I was able to come home. Thank God. And I’ve been home ever since and I work like a slave, day and night. I haven’t ever been sick any more and I’m 80 years old this coming August. Thank God. That’s what God done for me. BB: You sure don’t look 80 years old. EB: I have been out here sawing wood. BB: My father is 50 years old and you look twice as young as he. EB: What about that? Bless your daddy honey. BB: What about the community itself? What do you think of the Todd community? EB: I think its marvelous and wonderful. One of the best anybody ever had the privilege to live in. Thank God. The best neighbors that God could set down around you. Anything you need, somebody will bring it to you and see about you. That’s what I think about it. It’s so good I nearly disgraced it by living here, that’s what kind of place it is. Marvelous. OB: Tell him how we worship. EB: Well, just like anybody else so far as I know. We go to church. OB: Well, I mean we’re all one. EB: Sure, sure. Our prayer meetings, we all worship together you know. We have a prayer meeting in the Baptist church, and we’re known as Holiness people. We go to the Baptist church and the next night they come to the tabernacle church, and the next night we go to the Methodist church. We worship all the way around. And nobody knows whether uncle Ed belongs to the Baptist church or the Methodist church. And I don’t know whether the Baptist church belongs to our tabernacle or the Baptist church. We don’t pay any attention to that, we just worship God, and get along good. It’s a marvelous community. Nobody’s got a better one. BB: As time goes on, do you think that it’s losing out, that people are getting away from each other? 5 �EB: Yes, I do believe the young people are as time goes on. Yes, I do. And the old people are dying and that cripples us some. But so many of our young people have moved off from this country see, they had to leave here to get a job. And we just get them through high school and many of them through college and they’ve got to go somewhere else to get a job you know, to work out a living. So that just leaves the young and the old folks. You know the old folks die one by one and leave. And then these other children go to college and then they get…raised. Ma’am and me raised five children, two boys and three girls. Our baby is in New Jersey, she’s a librarian. I got a boy in Virginia Beach, Virginia; he’s a printer for the United States government. He has been thee a long time, soon to retire. And I got a boy that lives at Cherryville. He drives for the Carolina Freight and he’s been there for years. We have a daughter that lives in Abingdon, Virginia. She married a builder contractor and they have a supermarket. They are building a supermarket. Our oldest daughter married a sanitary and county health officer and they live here in Ashe County. Five lovely children and all of them seem to be doing well. BB: That’s just great. It’s just beautiful out here. I don’t see why any young people would want to leave. EB: Thank you, it is beautiful. And we live in an old house. OB: I’ll tell you why the young people, our children…every one of them get so homesick to come to the mountains to live. But you see, where we made the mistake was selling every stick of timber we had here for the railroad and letting the companies come in here and carry it off, haul it off on the train out away from here. And wouldn’t let companies come in here. We could have had factories up here, all kind of furniture factories and everything if we hadn’t loved our little dirt. You see we loved the dirt better than if we loved… EB: Sure. They wanted to buy land for factories. OB: And we wouldn’t sell them land. And see that’s the reason our children now had to reap the results of it. They had to get an education and go somewhere else to get a job. BB: What do you think about somebody who would want to come out here and farm and try to preserve what you have? EB: I think it’s wonderful. I think that young people can come and live conservative and buy a farm and get rich, thank God. Say raise enough cattle to get rich. Right here in these mountains, men are doing it. I don’t. I don’t have a cow. Don’t have anything but some fish and wild ducks. That’s all the property we’ve got. I own 27 acres of land here and this old house is over 176 years old, where you’re sitting now. 6 �All handmade, all worked with hands. And there’s a door that doesn’t have a nail in it unless I put it in. The house is put together with wooden pegs. It’s been here we know for 176 years and we think several years longer. BB: Do you know who built it? EB: We think we know. We think a man by the name of “Younce,” who has been dead for many many years you know. We think he built this house here. This house and the soldiers, Northern soldiers came down and burned my grandfather’s house down. This was his workhouse where he loomed, had looms, and wove their cloth and cooked here. OB: Made their shoes. EB: The fireplace was six feet across and I filled it in. But this was just and outhouse. Northern soldiers burnt the house down out here and left our people with nothing. Took their meat and the horses, and burned a lot of their clothes. Just left my grandparents with nothing. BB: So you remember your grandparents talking about the Civil War? EB: Yes, I just barely can, the Lord bless you, just barely. OB: His mother was 11 years old. EB: Yes, when they burned the house and she’s been dead for years. BB: So they did come through this way? EB: They did come right through here and burn the nice home out here on this hill right out here. You can go out there and dig up charcoals from it right now. BB: And you’re 80 years old? EB: I’m 80 years old this coming August. BB: Okay. What do you think about politics? EB: Politics? Well, I think that we need two kinds. I think we need two good parties and I think that both sides do so sorry that I’m ashamed of both sides. I vote for one then I wish I had voted for the other because we do things. They tell us we’re not going to do one thing and the next day they do it. Then I think I ought to have voted for the other fellow. I think we need two good parties and men to be honest and upright and tell us the truth and do the best they can for us and quit lying to us. We know they can’t do all the things they tell us they’re going to do because we haven’t got enough money to do it. 7 �BB: Do you remember the first election you voted in? EB: No, I can’t remember darling. No. BB: Who was the first president that you remember? EB: Oh, I remember Teddy Roosevelt and Mr. McKinley. I remember, I was just a boy though, but I remember when the news traveled so slow you know, about killing McKinley. I remember that. BB: What did you think of Roosevelt? EB: Well, I was just a boy. Didn’t make any different to me darling. Just another man and I heard by father and mother talk about him you know. Teddy Roosevelt. BB: What about Truman? EB: Yes, I loved Harry Truman. I think he was an excellent president. He would tell you what to expect and then he did it. And if you didn’t like it he would fight you if you wanted to fight. I think he was fine. BB: What about Eisenhower? EB: I think he was great. BB: You did? You liked Eisenhower then? EB: Yes, I liked him good enough to vote for him. BB: What about Kennedy? EB: Not struck on Kennedy. I’ll not comment why, but I’m not struck on him. I didn’t give a dime if it’s on the signboards in Broadway, New York City. BB: What about Johnson? EB: I liked Mr. Johnson, thought he was a nice, fine gentleman. BB: What about Mr. Nixon? EB: I think he’s fine. I quarrel with him sometimes, cuss him sometimes for things he does and don’t do. But I think he’s going be a fine president. I think he’s doing the best he can. BB: What was World War One like? 8 �EB: It was rough, rough, rough. World War One was rough. I volunteered and went. The war was declared the 6th day of May and I enlisted in the World War the 17th day of May. I wanted to go to the war and then I went, but wanted to come home. Went to France and fought through the Meuse-Argonne Forest, Mont Saint-Michel, close to Verdun, and sector near Verdun. I saw the Hindenburg line broke where Von Hindenburg said there wasn’t enough men this side of hell to go through that line and the American soldiers went through it and tore it all to pieces and whooped their hind ends off. BB: And you were in it? You were fighting? EB: I was there. Came out of the lines on November 11th, 1918. BB: And then you went to World War Two? EB: I wasn’t in World War Two, no. BB: You were at home right? EB: I was at home, yes. BB: Were you preaching then? EB: Yes. BB: What was it like during World War Two? EB: Well, I wasn’t in it. I just knew all the men that was in it. I knew lots of the men that did go you know. But I wasn’t in it. I didn’t have any part of lot in it except to work you know. I worked in the defense plant, the most of the time during the Second World War in Coats, Pennsylvania for a steel mill. A big steel mill. BB: What about Vietnam? What about the people here at home? How do they feel about it in your community? EB: Well, I think the majority of us thought that we had it to do. That there wasn’t anything else to do is what I think. They didn’t fight as rough as I wanted them to fight. I wanted them to thrash the face out of them and get out of it. Give them a thrashing and come home, but we just played along with them and didn’t whoop them. I wanted to whoop them good and come out. BB: Are you glad that the Peace… EB: I am delighted! I want to be a peacemaker honey. That’s my business, being a peacemaker. But if I have to fight you I’m going to fight awful rough while I fight. 9 �BB: What about the Depression? EB: Yes, I lived through that. It didn’t make much difference to me because we’re kind of depressed every day anyhow. But we did get through it, but it was a hard time, the Lord bless you. It was a hard time. BB: What did you do during the Depression? EB: Well, I lived right here and raised cabbage and Irish potatoes and sent children to school, right here. BB: Do you think that it was easier for the people, the farmers than it was for the people in town? EB: Yes, I do. The man that had the farm knew how to work it and to manage. He had a better chance of surviving than the people in town because they didn’t have anything. They were just out. BB: You didn’t have any trouble getting clothes or shoes and stuff did you? EB: Oh, no. No, we had clothes, had shoes, and had plenty to eat what it was. But we didn’t have any money. BB: You wouldn’t want to see another Depression would you? EB: No, no. Never want to see another Depression. Don’t ever want to see ten-hour workdays come back. I want good wages and honest work. I do believe in a man that’s getting two dollars an hour ought to be able to put out and work for two dollars an hour. BB: I reckon that you remember the flood of 1940 too, don’t you? The flood? EB: Yes, I do. BB: I reckon as a preacher that you had right much to do? EB: Yes, I had much to do the entire time son. OB: When was the flood? EB: 1962, wasn’t the flood the one I’m thinking about here in ’62? We about washed away in this country. I think it was in…no, in 1943, wasn’t it ’43? BB: Yes, somewhere in there. Do you remember it? 10 �EB: Yes, oh yes. I had a mill down here in this little village we call Todd. And I came home and when I came around the curve coming out of Todd, there was a high place there. I turned around, looked around and told God and to myself, “This is the last time I’ll ever see Todd if it doesn’t quit raining.” And that night two or here buildings went out of Todd all together like an ark. The buildings went right down the stream all together. There was a mill there, a big mill. That mill was taken out, a store on the other side of the creek away from the water; the rain took the store just like an ark was floating down the creek. But God ceased the rain and that is the only reason that Todd didn’t wash away. OB: Right here, over there came a big crack on the hill. EB: Yes, the mountain cracked there. And had it slid off, there wouldn’t have been anything left in the village. It would have all went out; too much dirt and water. I saw that. BB: Did anyone come to your house for refuge? EB: Yes, we had company. Some of our kinfolk were here. They got caught in the storm here and had to stay here. BB: Were all of you scared? EB: No, we weren’t scared here on the hill. We thought my, lots of water, but we didn’t think it would get to us and it didn’t. BB: I was talking to Miss Trivette and she said their house almost washed away. EB: Oh, yes. All around them. BB: I reckon that was a pretty bad time. EB: Yes. Serious time, serious time. BB: Getting back to your childhood, what can you remember about it now? Was it like growing up in the mountains? EB: Marvelous, wonderful. I had a good daddy and a good mother and didn’t know what trouble was. He was a hard worker and had a good farm and made all the things we needed to live on except clothes and shoes. It was marvelous. I would love to go back and live through it again. Didn’t know what trouble was. Didn’t know we would ever see a day that we didn’t have enough. Thank God! BB: What kind of games did you play? EB: We just played what we called back in those days “Base.” We didn’t know anything about 11 �baseball and things like that. We just played Base, “Dare Base” and would run like wild men. We would see who could outrun the other and who could break the other side. If we ever made a circle around the others man’s home, we would break him up and had to start over again. If we would catch his men off a base, we would put them in jail. We would get all of his men until he was overpowered, why we broke him up again. BB: What was it called? EB: We called in “Base,” or “Dare Base.” We would have a line and dare a fellow to come put his foot on a line. Then we would take out after him and if we caught him before he got back to his base, why we would bring him and put him in a jail. But then we had to guard him and if another man left his base and came over, we could touch him. But if he touched the guy in jail before we could get to him, then he would get out. But he watched that and if we caught him, we put him in jail. That was our job. The fellows that got the most men in jail or one of our best runners made a circle around the other man’s base, that broke him up and we won the game. Just like war. He just had to surrender, that’s all. OB: Then at night, we danced in the homes. Barn dances. EB: We would have parties in the night. Play the banjo, the violin or fiddle. We danced all night, thank God! Had a good time. BB: Did you know anybody that played the fiddle? EB: They are dead now. Knew a lot of men, but they have gone to heaven now. OB: My daddy played for the parties. My granddaddy played the violin and my daddy played the banjo. BB: Would it be every night? EB: No, we couldn’t take it every night. About two nights a week. BB: Would you all be drinking moonshine? EB: Not much, sometimes. Usually wine, grape wine. Sometimes we had the real stuff…moonshine. BB: Did your dad make moonshine? EB: No sir, he was a Christian gentleman. He didn’t even drink it. My father’s brother was a 12 �Congressman. There is his picture on the wall. Served two terms in the United States Congress. And my father was against liquor. BB: What was his name? EB: E. Spencer Blackburn. Honorable E. Spencer Blackburn. BB: What was the year that he was in Congress? EB: Well, I’ve forgotten little darling boy. I was just a boy. In 1906 and 1908 I expect (Edmond Spencer Blackburn was a Republican U.S. Congressman from 1901-03 and 1905-07). You better put a question mark on that honey, because I was just a little boy. But he would visit my father often. Had a big, high silk hat and fine clothes. BB: What kin was he to you? EB: He was my uncle, my father’s brother. End of side I BB: Have you hunted and fished a lot? EB: Yes, fished a lot. Yes, it wasn’t against the law then to take a net and go into the river and catch fish by the bushel. BB: What about legends and stuff? Old folk tales and myths. Do you remember any? EB: No, not many. People used to tell us ghost tales and that would scare us nearly to death. BB: Who would tell them to you? EB: Old people. But they are all dead and gone many years ago. They would come by and tell us ghost stories you know, and we were afraid to look out of the house after the sun went down. BB: Do you remember any? EB: No, I can’t remember them. One old man lived down here on the river and a man went missing and the people never could find him. They thought he went and jumped in the river at a hole where it wasn’t frozen over. But never could find him. But then in the spring when the ice went out, the ice flow went out, why this old man down here on the river found five bones. What the doctor said was they were five bones of a man and he took them home and put the bones in the loft. He said that every night the five bones would just beat the floor all night. I’ve heard him tell that story many times. He said there was a beat on the floor. But he still had so far as I know, when he died – still had that beating on the floor. 13 �BB: Do you believe that? EB: Don’t believe a word of it, no. But I do believe that he had the bones because I heard people talk about the man disappearing. The man’s name was “Lookabill.” Something happened to his mind. A nice man, but he disappeared and never was found. That’s as close as anything that would come to a ghost story. But that’s just to me a folktale. I know nothing about that, only what was told. BB: Do you remember any old sayings? EB: No, I’ve forgotten them all. We used to have many of them. And they were all so good that they ought to have been remembered. BB: You ought to have written them down. EB: Yes, by all means. BB: If there was anything that you could change back, what would you change that’s now gone? EB: Well, if there was anything that I could change back I would have gone into preaching when I was 14 years old. And I went into the First World War without ever being a Christian. God wanted me to be a preacher when I was 14 years old, but I wanted to drink liquor and I put off preaching until I was about 22 years old. I would change that. BB: Is there anything that you would change in the community? EB: No, I doubt it. Just let her roll, just like it did. BB: Is there anything else you want to tell me? EB: Bless you. I don’t know much more little lad. The Lord blesses you. I never thought about anybody coming to talk to me about things like this because there are so many men that can tell you so much more than I could tell you. But there is nobody in this country much older than I am. BB: They say you are the oldest around? EB: I don’t know any men that are older than I am. I know one lady down here. No, not in this vicinity, I don’t know of any man that’s older than me. BB: And this is your mother? OB: This is my wife and she’s 81 years old. 14 �BB: What’s her name? EB: Ollie Blackburn. OB: I was Ollie Clawson. EB: She was a Clawson. OB: I waited through the war to marry him. EB: We were supposed to get married anytime, but I went to the war and left her here you know. BB: Were you raised here in Todd too? OB: No, I was raised in Watauga County. BB: In Watauga County? OB: Yes, this is Ashe County. EB: Yes, here we are across the line about a hundred feet. When you came up that road you were in Watauga; when you turned in to our house, why you are in Ashe County. BB: So you all live in Ashe County? EB: Just across the line. We pay our taxes on the Ashe side. BB: What was your childhood like? Did your mother teach you how to crochet and all? OB: She taught me how to sew and I sewed and made all my children’s clothes. During the Depression we had some pretty well to do folks and they gave us second hand clothes and I made them over for my children. Some of them got the prize for being the best-dressed in school there. EB: Out of second handed clothes. BB: During the Depression they got the best-dressed? EB: Yes, I guess it was during the Depression. They went to school well-dressed by ma working over old clothes, redoing them. BB: How long have you two been married? 15 �EB: Going on 54 years. We had a 50th anniversary three years ago this June. So this June we will have been married 54 years. BB: Have they all been good years? EB: All have been wonderful. Thank God, I would like to live them all over. Been good years. Ma’s been a darling. BB: How many grandchildren do you have? EB: Fourteen. BB: I bet you have a big Christmas don’t you? EB: Yes. Fourteen. And two great-grandchildren. BB: Do they all usually get home for Christmas? EB: Yes, usually. BB: What’s the difference in Christmas when you were small and Christmas now? EB: Oh, so much difference. When I was small if we got two sticks of candy and an orange we were well fixed. BB: Do you remember any great presents that you once got during Christmas? EB: No. I got a toy truck; as far back as I can remember and thought that was the greatest thing that could be delivered to anybody. OB: Tell him about your pistol. EB: Yes, I used to have a little gun when I was six years old. Lots of folks won’t let boys have pistols and I had a gun. I think this is the same one if I can find it here. OB: I guess it’s gone. EB: I had one like this when I was just a boy and I’d hunt with it you know. I would shoot grouse and rabbits when I was six years old. BB: So it’s a real pistol? EB: Oh, it’s a real .22 pistol. Break it down. That’s a real gun. Dangerous, it would kill you. Single barrel, a Stevens. 16 �BB: Do you still hunt? EB: I still hunt. BB: Do you still hunt with this? EB: No. I carry an automatic shotgun. BB: What do you think about the tourists? EB: Well, I think that they have ruined the mountains, is what I think of them. We can’t go anywhere and get anywhere but they do bring in some money but we were living well before they came. That’s not belittling them; that’s just what I think about them. BB: So you think that Beech Mountain and Sugar Mountain… EB: Yes. I think its hurt the morale of the country. I do. And that’s just what I think. That’s my personal opinion. BB: Well, I agree with you. EB: Yes. I think its hurt the morale of the country. I do. And that’s just what I think. That’s my personal opinion. BB: Well, I agree with you. EB: Thank you dear. Bless you darling. Just about ruined us. BB: I hate to see the mountains torn down too. I think it’s real sad. EB: Thank you honey. BB: Is there anything that you want to tell me? Just anything that you would want somebody to know about you as a man? EB: No, I didn’t do well enough to want anybody to know anything about me darling. BB: I think you being a preacher… EB: I’ve done my best on that line. But we got many preachers. BB: Do you baptize? EB: I do. Baptize and marry folks. 17 �BB: You have a license to marry? EB: I do have a license to marry, yes. And to baptize and to establish churches. BB: What was your education? You got as far as… EB: Oh, I wouldn’t know. I just…it pushed me to get through the seventh grade I guess. We just had three months of school you know, when I went to school. Always commenced in September and would be out by Christmas. And we had to walk three miles. We have to walk three miles when I went to school most of the time. BB: So you got about as far as the seventh grade? EB: Yes, I guess it pushed me to go through the seventh grade. BB: Learn enough just to read and write? EB: I can read and write. And I can… OB: Figure (mathematics). BB: I would like to come down to your church sometime. EB: Well, you ought to come darling. You ought to come. You ought to bring some friends. I want you to go up by and look it over darling before you leave here this evening. Open the door, it will not be locked. Just open the door and go in and look around. What God has done. BB: How long has that church been there? EB: Well, this one has not been there that long…I guess 38 or 40 years. That right ma? About 38 years. BB: Is this your first church? EB: Yes, but the first church was burned down over there. BB: I know a good question. Do you remember the first time you preached? The very first time that you preached? EB: No. I don’t remember the first time I ever got up and took a text and preached from it. But for years before I ever went out into the ministry, before I was ordained I would hold funerals you know. So many people would send for Uncle Ed you know, to come and hold funerals. But I can’t remember the first time. 18 �BB: What were the funerals like? EB: Well, they haven’t changed much. They have gotten finer, but the same mode and the same lines. When I was growing up we didn’t know anything about undertakers in the mountains here. Just neighbors, dress people and made their caskets and put them in the ground. BB: When was the first time that you can remember that you preached? EB: I can’t remember. Can’t remember the first time that I ever was called to a funeral. Wish I could. I would like to try and recall the feeling, but I can’t remember to save my life. I’ve had hundreds of them. BB: It wasn’t a good feeling I guess. EB: Wasn’t so good. I was scared. Still am. BB: Are you still scared? EB: Still scared. Scared to death. BB: Do you preach from a text or do you just get up and talk? EB: I preach right out of a book. Never write down a note or take a note and just read by chapter – what I’m going to preach from and go to preaching. If there is one certain verse in it that I want to dwell on and talk about, I pick out such and such verse in such and such chapter and tell my people all I know about it. BB: Do you all have Sunday school? EB: We do have Sunday school every Sunday. One of the finest in the county. BB: What time does preaching start? EB: Eleven o’clock. Every second and fourth Sunday. BB: So you only have preaching the second and fourth Sunday? Why is that? EB: Well, because we found it’s the best. And because my people are not… OB: Well, he preaches in other places. EB: Yes, I’m gone a lot of the time and that gives me a chance to preach here twice a month and go somewhere else two times. 19 �BB: Oh, so you go other places? EB: I go to other places. BB: Where do you usually go? EB: Well, the last meeting I was in was at High Point. Evangelical Methodist in High Point. And next to that one, I go anywhere they call for me…anywhere from Ohio to Pennsylvania. BB: You’ve been up to Pennsylvania? EB: Yes sure, give two meetings in Pennsylvania and two meetings in the city of Baltimore. BB: Well, thanks a lot. EB: Honey, have I been any help to you? BB: I think you have. EB: Have you? Do you? God bless you. (Gives a prayer) “Father in heaven, here’s a lovely, pretty boy. I’d give a billion dollars, God, if I could be like him. But it’s gone from us God. And now Lord we pray that as long as he lives let him remember the two old people, the Blackburn’s on the hill. Came in to have an interview with them and we wasn’t wise enough to give him much of an interview. After he leaves we’ll think of many things that happened to us that might have been amusing to him. I pray you will take good care of this little boy God, and make his successful in the world. Help him to be a Christian gentleman. Because if he gains the whole world and loses his soul, what would he give for that pearl of great price, which is his soul. Take good care of the little boy. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen and amen. Bless you darling. You’re lovely.” End of interview 20 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/4615ce05bbb84565ef0b344f0a035eb4.jpg 817b249715bed6fffbc7216c9a3995e5 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 244 Height 293 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/7cdc319b184689f75ef7c4c69e5fbddc.jpg de048c4d6d65cd672c31b574af86b508 Omeka Image File The metadata element set that was included in the `files_images` table in previous versions of Omeka. These elements are common to all image files. Width 235 Height 278 Bit Depth 8 Channels 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Artist Blackburn, Edward (interviewee) Ballock, Bill (interviewer) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:04, Reflects on Todd and Ashe County, 00:32, World War One Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Edward Blackburn, March 2, 1973 Subject The topic of the resource Blackburn, Edward (1893-)--Interviews Todd (N.C.)--History--20th century Todd (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Clergy--North Carolina--Todd--Biography Railroads--North Carolina--Todd--History--20th century Lumber trade--North Carolina--Todd--History--20th century Description An account of the resource Edward Eugene Blackburn was born on August 29, 1893 to Alex (b. 1852 – d. June 1, 1926) and Rhoda Howell Blackburn (b. February 12, 1856 – d. December 6, 1934). He was married to Ollie Clawson Blackburn (b. July 29, 1893 – d. June 1985). He grew up in the Todd community of Ashe County and served in the U.S. Army during the First World War with the 318th Field Hospital of the 80th Division. He experienced combat in France, which is briefly mentioned in the interview. Many affectionately knew him as “Brother Ed” or “Uncle .” The Reverend Ed Blackburn and his wife took over the leadership of The Tabernacle, a non-­‐denominational Holiness church across the hill from his childhood home. This church later became the Blackburn Community Church, was originally started by his father around 1910. His uncle was U.S. Congressman Edmond Spencer Blackburn (b. September 22, 1868 – d. July 21, 1912) who served in 1901-03 and 1905-­07. During the interview Ed Blackburn talks about growing up in rural Ashe County. Topics include explaining the rules to a game called “dare base,” and his experience working at a grist meal and laying railroad track as a young man. He also discusses the railroad in Todd, timber stripping, religion, and family. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2-Mar-73 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 20 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Document Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant <kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0"><Folder><name>OpenLayers export</name><description>Exported on Thu Oct 24 2013 13:40:14 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)</description></Folder></kml>||||osm Todd (N.C.) Ashe County childhood games Civil War folklore ministry railroad religion timber Todd Watauga County N.C. West Jefferson World War One https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/65294dd3a42086d804b328b5020c7683.pdf 8f3e93d509b1a8423ede8ffc3295b8e0 PDF Text Text Oral History Transcript Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 249 Interviewee: Early Earl Interviewer: Barbara Greenberg 22 August 1974 Transcriber: Marty Tschetter, October 2011 Background Early Earp was born on July 31, 1891 in the Bairds Creek Community of Watauga County, North Carolina and died on December 25, 1988. His parents were Lewis Calloway Earp (b. June 5, 1844 – d. November 11, 1919) and Rebecca Williams Earp (b. May 15, 1861 – d. March 27, 1937). They were farmers and raised a family of fourteen children. Many of Mr. Earl’s siblings had long lives. His parents were originally from Wilkes County and his maternal grandfather was killed in the Civil War. The interview took place at his house, the original property that his parent’s owned. TAPE INDEX Counter Index Topic 06 Introduction including when and where he grew up. Early wages. 146 Farm work, briefly mentions working in a Burke County sawmill, and the U.S. Army during World War I. 328 Mentions his living brothers Willie and Coy, and sister Nora. 429 His parents grew up in Wilkes County. His maternal grandfather was killed in the Civil War, and his father died in 1919 at age 74, his mother died in 1937. 546 Parents names were Lewis Callaway Earp and his mother was Rebecca Williams Earp. His father bulldozed the original family home place circa 1900. 643 Entire family worked on the farm, mentioned that only other work for females might be in someone’s house. Wages were typically fifty cents a week. 749 Talks about how crops were planted, and how the quantity was determined. References growing sugar cane for 1 �molasses, selling wheat for flour, canning vegetables, drying pumpkin, and helping neighbors hoe crops. 1052 Recalls a corn shucking held by a neighbor Mart Isaacs (b. October 1851 – d. March 1938). Describes the specifics that include shucking until 3am, food was cooked by the women and there was a large gathering. 1215 Explains how farmers used to plant by the moon. 1326 Making sauerkraut, selling it in Lenoir, Gastonia, and Charlotte. Emphasizes that it had to be made at the ‘right’ time. 1443 Growing up his family had plenty of food, even during the Depression. 1537 Breakfast typically included biscuits and parched their own coffee. Later they purchased a local brand called Pilot Knob. 1701 Price for coffee used to be five cents a pound, and sugar was three to five cents. References the Smithey Store opening up in Boone. Mr. Smithey was from Wilkesboro. 1812 Talks about the Depression, did not affect his family too much. His father positioned himself never to be in debt to others. References the Federal Farm Loan Act enacted under President Woodrow Wilson in 1917. Recalls a conversation that his father and neighbor Mr. Moody had about the program. 2102 Briefly talks about the 1940 flood in Watauga County and what he recalled about ending the Tweetsie Railroad service. 2115 Talks about cash crops, he started raising tobacco in 1931, bringing it to market in Abingdon, Virginia and Johnson City, Tennessee and also selling Cabbage. He sold beans in Mountain City, Tennessee. 2419 Did not get rich selling produce, did not own a lot of farm machinery. Mentions Frank Taylor in Valle Crucis told farm machinery, and then in 1944 he entered into the cattle business. 2 �2815 Talks briefly about the county agriculture agent and his opinion on his services. SIDE TWO 03 Continues with his feelings about the county agriculture agent. 210 Talks about the school he attended including the location. He only obtained the seventh grade. His teachers were Powell Harmon, Frank Wilson, and Marion Thomas. 346 He attended a school for only three to four months of the year. He estimated about forty students. 509 He reflected on his schooling and how education had changed in the 1970s. He felt that current students did not have a lot of direction. His teachers were very religious people and had students read a passage from the bible every morning. As a result he felt that that was a positive that he experienced in school. 654 The Baptist denomination was the most dominate. Also recalled a presence of the Methodist Church. He shared his personal disdain for the growth of the Catholic Church in western North Carolina. 830 Funerals were held at the home and all the arrangements were taken care of by family and neighbors. 1003 The Danner Cemetery was a local community plot. A lot of his family was buried there. It was named after Fred Danner, the first person buried. 1100 Briefly talked about local stores. Newt Mast had a big store in Cove Creek, and Will Mast had one in Valle Crucis. Remembers older residents playing checkers. 1217 Asked about what was happening in Boone during the 1910s-20s. He recalled county judge Greene, Rob Laney, and the Councill family. 3 �13:42 Talks about the first car that he saw in Boone, was owned by man from Lenoir. People were mesmerized. He bought his first car in 1924, the first resident in his local community. 1539 Talks about hauling people in his car, owning a Model-T Ford Roadster, there were no speedometers on cars at that time. 1647 Community leaders during this time were his father, Lindsey Trivett, and Lane Farmer. He felt they were respected because they were older. 1805 Reflects how times have changed. He felt that in the past, people cared more for their neighbors well-being, especially when sick. 2212 There was not a lot of formal entertainment. He recalled corn shucking’s, log rolling’s, and talking as fellowship. Movie theatres did not exist when he was growing up and were subsequently not important at this time in his life. 2315 Expressed how growing up people helped each other out. If his family had excess produce, they would share it with neighbors without expecting payment in return. 2454 Asked about superstitions, he remembers people talking about witches, but he did not believe in them. He did share a story about his brother attending a funeral circa 1900. His brother had planned to meet up with a friend afterward. They both road horses and it was dark. They also both wore white shirts, which they faintly could see each other, which ‘spooked’ both men. 2756 Talked about his mother spinning yarn and wool to make socks and their clothes for the family. His family did not have excessive clothes, but enough to last. He recalled being a mid-teenager when he bought his first pair of clothes from a store. 4 �BG: Barbara Greenberg EE: Early Earp 0:06 BG: This is a recording of Mr. "Early" Earp done by Barbara Greenberg at his home on Bairds Creek Road. Today's date is August 22nd, 1974. BG: Well Mr. Earp -- do you want to start off by telling me a little bit about yourself -- where you were born and when you were born? EE: Well, I was born in 1891. I grew up right up in the field there, no houses matter fact. (Rooster in background). BG: Is the house still standing? EE: No, its been torn down for seventy-five years. So I was raised up top there. I live on the place I was born on (laughs)....and own the land I was born on... BG: Great. EE: There are not too many men that can say that. BG: Right. EE: So we had a hard time coming up. When I got big enough to work, we worked for twentyfive cents a day. And it was....I guess for about ten years before I ever got more than twentyfives cents a day. Because I started when I was small. We finally got up to where we could make a man's wage and it was fifty cents a day and sometimes it was seventy-five (cents). 1:46 BG: What would you do, what kind of work? EE: Farm work, farm work. Oh no, there was no work like any public works in this country at that time. BG: Wow. EE: You see, there was for years and years -- I can't even tell you how many years it was before anything...and sawmilling was about the next industry that we had in this country. When I was 16 years old I went to...down in Burke County to (inaudible) Sawmill, a (inaudible) and worked for him and got a dollar a day (laughs)…and board. And so, and then in 1917, they took me in 5 �the army. I spent two years in the army and then came back and have been a farmer practically ever since. BG: Okay, tell me...you said that you were born right now the road here, did your parents own that land? EE: Ma’am? BG: Did your parents own the land that you... EE: Yes ma’am. BG: How many acres did they have? EE: Well, I wouldn't be able to tell you lady...I guess...well, they owned way up above where I do now. I guess it was one hundred and twenty-five or fifty acres in all. BG: And how many acres do you own today? EE: fifty-six. 3:28 BG: Did you have any brothers and sisters? EE: Oh yes, I have one sister living and two brothers. Willie Earp is the oldest...he is seventyone. No wait a minute...eighty-one. And then Coy, he is about seventy-five. And Nora is eightyone. That's my brothers and sister. They live…Nora lives about two-three miles over here. And Willie and Coy live just up the road here -- the first two houses above here. BG: That's great that y'all still all live so close together. 4:20 EE: Oh yeah. BG: That's nice. EE: So, we were born right around here and we stayed pretty well put together ever since (chuckles). 4:29 BG: Did your parents…were they born in this area? 6 �EE: No, my father and mother both were born in Wilkes County. I can't tell you exactly where…but they were raised both up to (inaudible). And then mother she came with her mother to Ashe County and stayed over there a year, then moved here to this county. And that's been a long time ago (both laugh). My grandfather on my mother's side got killed in the Civil War. And then my father, he lived until he was 74 years old and nine months. I believe he died in 1919. 5:46 BG: What was their names? EE: Well, my father was Lewis Callaway Earp (b. June 5, 1844 – d. November 11, 1919) and my mother was Rebecca Williams Earp (b. May 15, 1861 – d. March 27, 1937) (chuckles). And she's been dead for thirty-eight years. Of course we (inaudible) on the farm (inaudible) and well, I went 'up north' and worked in Cleveland for a little while, but practically I’ve been right here in close. My daddy bulldozed it, the place, right up here, where my brother lives and we moved up there in 1909. And we've been right here ever since. 6:43 BG: Did your brothers and sisters, did you all share doing the work on the farm? Did your sisters do one thing or did you all work together? EE: We worked together. There was a big crowd of us (laughs) and it took us all to make a living. You take (inaudible). I was young, a lot younger than I am now (both laugh). There wasn't any work at all for anybody unless it just…work for a woman, a girl could get a job maybe staying with someone for fifty cents a week. And that was about the wages, about fifty cents a week. But we always worked and managed together. 7:36 BG: How did you determine how much of each crop you should plant each year? EE: Each crop? BG: How much did you, you know, how did you decide how much to plant each year? 7:49 EE: (Chuckles)...my father, always thought that he didn’t have around fifteen acres in corn, than he wouldn’t have corn (inaudible). Now of course back in his day, they figured it out...twenty or 7 �something like twenty or twenty-five bushels to the acre...is as much as they could produce. Well now, you can go way up to a hundred and fifty -- two hundred. That’s a lot different between now and then. And we always had a cane patch to raise molasses and that was our major sweetener. There was no such a thing as buying sugar in a store at that time. We had always sold our wheat and then sold our flour. We raised it in the garden to get things...vegetables. We had 'canning'. There was not any canning back at that time (referring to canned products bought at stores). We had to dry most of our stuff that we preserved for food. I don't expect that you've ever heard of drying pumpkin? (Laughs). BG: Drying pumpkin? No, I.... EE: We used to dry pumpkin, and that was...we would hang it up on poles over the fireplace and dry it. And then beans, dried beans, and fruit, and peaches. Stuff like that. We didn't have any canning, couldn't can. Lord I was...I don't know...we didn't have any canning and the thing about it...for a long time. I can't tell you...my memory is too short (chuckles). So that is just about the way we lived. We worked together, farmers worked together then. You know what I mean? We would help our neighbors hoe their crop and then they would help us to hoe ours. We would work them out, and then we would do the same thing. We would have logrolling, corn shucking... 10:42 BG: Can you remember any particular log rolling or corn shucking that you could tell us about…something happening or something like that? 10:52 EE: Well, I can remember corn shucking. There was an old fellow Isaacs, uncle (James) Mart Isaacs (b. October 1851 – d. March 1938). Right up here on this hill, up on top of the mountain. He had a big field of corn and invited all of his neighbors around to help him shuck corn on a certain day. Well, we shucked corn until dinner then we went back and shucked until night and they all agreed that they would shuck until they were done if they had supper. And they sent to the house...the women folk fixed supper and carried it up on the mountain and shucked until we got done at three o'clock the next morning (laughs). And he had six hundred bushels of corn. 11:50 BG: Oh. Wow. 8 �EE: That's about the best of them that I can remember (both laugh). But we (inaudible) corn shucking and log rolling and things like that anymore. That doesn't happen much any more. 12:15 BG: Did your family believe in planting by the moon? EE: A lot. Yes, they did. They wouldn't plant corn on the new moon at all. They thought that it would grow too tall and that there would be no ear on it? And it don't. You plant a crop of corn in particular on the new of the moon and the ear will look about 'so long' (uses hands to show size) sticks right up like that. And you plant it at the right time and the ear will be that long (uses hands again to show size). 12:59 And in fact I believe in...I believe in signs...which, probably you don't. BG: I do, I do. EE: (Laughs). BG: I do, very much so. EE: Well I do. The Bible speaks of signs....and says you will 'watch the moon' and 'watch the stars' or so and so. Well, we both do it. BG: I think so. 13:26 EE: You take for making kraut (sauerkraut). If you make kraut when the signs are wrong your kraut will be slimier or kind of (inaudible) not good. But if you make it at the right time, it’s good. BG: When is the right time for making kraut? I'm getting ready to make some and I don't want to do it on the wrong day (both laugh). EE: Well, I'm about to tell you...when it’s a good time to make it. I used to know. I've told a hundred thousand women when to make kraut. I used to truck it and down the country, down in Lenoir, and Gastonia, and Charlotte, and down in that way. And women folks would always know…would want to know what time was a good time to make kraut. And I had to tell them (laughs). So that's just about the story now...(laughs). 14:43 9 �BG: Well, now tell me...were there any years when your family didn't grow enough food to keep you all winter? EE: Not that I remember of. There was a big crowd of us as I told you. We had lots of help...and we put out enough that we (inaudible) a few times. We would run out of corn in the summertime and then just buy it by the bushel if you could find it. Very few times. 15:37 Back when I was just a young boy (inaudible), we didn't have biscuits every morning for breakfast. There was just no flour to be bought in the bag at all. You had to take it to the mill where they grind to make flour. So it was harder to get flour than most anything. And coffee...buy green coffee and parch it...on your fire…fireplace. BG: Did that coffee taste as good? EE: I believe it was better (laughs). If you got a good parch...we just used to call it parching coffee. If you got a good java done it made a delicious coffee. And then...later on in the years we got to buying coffee from the stores. I forget the name of the brand of coffee...Pilot Knob was one. 17:01 BG: Pilot Knob? EE: Oh yes, you've seen that I guess.... BG: I think so, I think so.... EE: Well that had come in three pound buckets...and it was good...and others. But coffee used to be five cents a pound. And sugar was three to five cents (laughs). And it doesn't sound possible does it? BG: Sound great (both laugh). Sounds great. EE: This Smithey...that used to be over...well, the Smithey Store its in Boone today. There was an old man from Wilkesboro (who) came up here and built a store in Boone and his name was Will Smithey. And he sold fatback meat for three cents a pound, and coffee for three cents, and sugar for three cents. But now its...past (laughs). BG: It has, for sure. 18:12 10 �BG: When the Depression hit did that have much of an affect on your family? EE: How's that? BG: When the Depression came in 1929, did that have much of an effect on your family? EE: Well, not too much. We...we tried the farm to make enough...it didn't hurt us. There was no work to do and we got along just about as good as usual. It didn't affect us or me individually much more than any other time. My daddy would never go in debt, above what he thought he could come out at. When he made a debt he promised when to pay it and he wanted to pay it when that time came. And he always made plans to do that, so he wasn't in debt when the Depression came. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson put up the share of Federal Land Bank business. He is the one that organized federal land. A neighbor up here Mr. Moody...he was talking to my daddy one day about how great that federal land bank was and would be for the farmer. And my daddy, he told him that he didn't believe in it. And Mr. Moody said that was one of the greatest things that (inaudible). He said (his father), “Mr. Moody -- there will be lots of men that will lose their home right over that one thing.” Well, in the Depression it came true. Now my daddy he wouldn't give a mortgage on his place to the Federal Land Bank or nobody else. So when it came it didn’t affect him…we just…. BG: Kept on... EE: Kept it going. And today, I don't believe in putting yourself under a bigger obligation than you can ask. BG: That's right, that's right. You can get in trouble. 21:02 BG: Tell me, what about in 1940 when the big flood came. Did it flood this area very bad? EE: No. The biggest hurt in this county, we had a little railroad coming from Johnson City to Boone. When that ‘40 flood came it washed the railroad tracks out from Linville to Boone. They had to…I think the train itself was on the other end of the mine…at Johnson City. But the flood, it didn’t come in…so they took the track up and hauled it to Johnson City or somewhere. But individually it didn’t hurt this county too bad, only the railroad. And it’s known as “Tweetsie” now (laughs). BG: Right, right. 11 �22:15 BG: Did you family ever have any cash crops? EE: Cash crops? Well, in 1931 I began to raise tobacco. You could sell tobacco for three and four cents a pound. (Laughs). We hauled it to Abingdon, Virginia and sold it for three and four cents. Of course that’s not much of a ‘cash crop’ (laughs). At that time of course tobacco (inaudible). Last year (1973) it sold for better than a dollar a pound. BG: Did most of the farmers that did raise ‘cash crops’ would they sell to large businessmen or to small businessmen? EE: There were not many ‘cash crops’ that I can recall. Now tobacco and cabbage were the main money crops. We had to haul our cabbage down south to Salem. And tobacco we had to haul to Abingdon (Virginia) or to Johnson City, Tennessee. Because there was no other market. Now beans, we raised a lot of beans for a good part of the year in this county. We sold them in Mountain City, Tennessee. 24:19 BG: Was there any politics involved with who you sold your crops to, or what kind of price that you got for your crop? EE: Politics involved? Not that I knew of. We sold to just some company that was put up at Mountain City at these tobacco markets and I don’t reckon there was any politics. We didn’t get rich out of it anyway (both laugh). I raised one crop of tobacco and took it to Abingdon and sold it and I didn’t have quite enough to pay for (inaudible) bill (laughs). We didn’t get rich. BG: Yes, I understand that. What about farm machinery? EE: Farm machinery? Well, now (inaudible) in my shed I’ve never owned any…farm equipment…very little. I’m not a big farmer. I just tried raise enough to carry me over from one year to the next (chuckles). If I had to have any machinery I would just hire it from someone. BG: Now when all the modern farm machinery started coming out, did this have much of an affect on the farmer? EE: Oh no (emphatically). BG: It didn’t? EE: Very little. For years and years…in 1915 or ’16, they gradually picked up this and that and the other in farm equipment. Now I believe that the corn planter was about the first thing that I remember. Then this fellow (inaudible) [Krueger??] with a fellow Taylor. 12 �Do you know Frank Taylor? Over in Valle Crucis. His daddy sold turning plows and corn planters and stuff like than and finally got to selling mowing machines…driven by horses. Then he went out of business. And they kept getting a little bigger and a little bigger, and a little bigger. And then in 1944 I got into the (inaudible) cattle business. And I raised (inaudible) cattle business for…I guess ten or fifteen years. BG: Who would you sell your cattle to? EE: Just to whoever would (inaudible) (laughs). I took them ….I sold them up at Bristol and sell them at (inaudible) market and then I would take them to Statesville, North Carolina and sell them. BG: How often would you take them there? EE: Truck them. Haul them in a truck and then we…sold them off individually. Somebody would come along and want to buy something…a male or a nice heifer, and just the two of us would make a deal. 28:55 BG: Were there any government agencies that helped the farmer at that time? EE: Well, not that I know of. The county agent came into this county about…1930 or along about there. But I never thought that he requested too much of the county or any body else (both laugh). BG: Well, I didn’t say that. EE: What? BG: Well, I didn’t say that. EE: Well (emphatically), anything he tried to get people to do never did help us any. I think a county agent works at the ‘wrong end of the line’. A county agent lady, is to…for instance say you’re a man now and you own a little farm out here…. 30:10 END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE; BEGIN SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE BG: …and the big farmer doesn’t give the little farmer a chance. 13 �EE: Well, of course…if the county agent would work with the little farmer and tell him plans…work related…he would improve farms all over the country…. BG: Would that cause prices to come down because there would be more produce? And than prices would come down…is that right? EE: No, I wouldn’t think so. It would help us all. We would have more of bigger things and that would open up better markets, bigger markets all over the country. If we had the cooperation of the county agent and so on….I think that it would be beneficial to everybody. 1:17 Now when I was in the (inaudible) business we had several folks in this county that were raising cattle. Well, the county agent worked with the ‘big man’ and he wouldn’t try to help the ‘little man’ at all. That was discouraging to us. So that’s…the better your products and the more of the ‘right’ kind of products that you got to sell will bring people in that would never see you otherwise. BG: Yes, yes. EE: Wouldn’t you think so? 2:10 BG: Yes. Now tell me a little bit about your schooling. Was there a school around here? EE: Yes, there used to be a schoolhouse up here at the forks in the road…where you turn down this way (gestures with hands). Where you turn down there used to be a schoolhouse just above the road after the forks in the road. One teacher schoolroom. I started school in that building. I forget of my teacher’s name at that time. It was a woman but I can’t tell you her name. Eventually we built another schoolhouse down this way (points with arm) from that one. I went to two schoolteachers…from the name of Powell Harmon and Frank Wilson. Oh I had three, and Marion Thomas. I never got any farther up than the seventh grade. But the seventh grade was not as far as teachers got at that time (both laugh). 3:46 The first school I went to was three months long. Well, we had three months a year of school for….I don’t know how many years. The last school I went to was four months. We had to study like everything to make it (laughs). BG: How many students in their schoolhouse? 14 �EE: How many rooms? BG: How many students? EE: Students? Well, I declare I couldn’t hardly say. But I guess it was thirty-five to forty with all the children in the community there…and just one teacher now had to do it. He had to start at the beginning of the day at 8 o’clock and work till four or five to get home from school (chuckles). BG: Tell me, do you think that the school system was better then with all the small community schools or do you think its better now with the one great big school that busses children in from all over the county? 5:09 EE: Well that’s a hard question (laughs). In some way I think the old way was best. For the teacher taught the young the ‘right way’. Now they just about turn the students loose and let them learn themselves how. We got teachers that ought to be ‘digging roots’ for a living (both laugh). Now, my teachers that I had…the biggest part of them were religious teachers. One teacher was a preacher and he taught school (rooster in background) throughout the year and he did teach us ‘right’. Well, the other two were religious men but they were not preachers. But they taught us and they had prayer in the schoolroom every day, every morning. One of the students had to read a verse or two in the scripture and then they would pray themselves (rooster in background). So I would say that I appreciated the ‘old way’ better (laughs) than what we got now. 6:54 BG: What church was the most dominate around here at that time? EE: Church? Baptist. BG: Baptist. EE: Well, we had the Methodist Church over at Valle Crucis and (inaudible). But the Baptist was the leading church. I don’t know if you want this, but in World War II, when Kennedy (quickly corrects self) Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States, the Catholic Church – now you may be a Catholic? (to the interviewer and laughs). But the Catholic Church…the closest was about forty to fifty miles in Spruce Pine over here. And when he went out of the presidency there was a Catholic Church in Lenoir and Johnson City and Boone and…I mean in Blowing Rock and Lenoir and all around here. Of course they were small, but they came in and now they are all over the nation. I am not trying to fight any denomination but I think that we 15 �could have gotten along just as fine without them (both laugh). 8:30 BG: What were funerals like and weddings? Were they held at the church? EE: I didn’t understand you. BG: Were funerals and weddings held at the church? EE: Funerals? Well, sometimes. There was a long time that they were not. But weddings…it was just the right thing to have a wedding in the church. But now back (to funerals)…there was a long time that for a funeral they just sent out and got some preacher who would come and preach the funeral and the neighbors took care of everything. Of course I am not fighting the funeral home, they are nice but it took a lot of the love out of the people. Don’t you think? BG: I think so, I think so. People used to be buried wherever they owned land, is that correct? They didn’t have big graveyards like they do today. 10:03 EE: Well, I wouldn’t think that they had (graveyards) just on their land. But a lot of them, you are right. There has always been – ever since I can remember – a cemetery right up here on the hill. It goes with the Danner Graveyard and there was a family of Danners’ that lived right across the hill over there. Old uncle Fred Danner was the first ever buried up there and it started from that name and it goes with the Danner Graveyard. Some of my people are buried up there. Well just about all my people that are dead are buried up there. 11:00 BG: You started to tell me before we started that there were only two stores in this county. You want to tell us about those and what when on at the stores. Did people gather there and sit around and play banjos? Tell us what it was like? EE: (Laughs) Well, I couldn’t tell you much about that now lady. That’s all I knew about the stores. Some of the men would gather in to play checkers but that’s about all I could tell you (laughs). Now Newt Mast ran a big store on Cove Creek and Uncle Will Mast over here at Valle Crucis, but ah… 16 �BG: Were those two Mast related? EE: I’d say distantly related. I couldn’t tell you just exactly how much, and I wouldn’t try. 12:17 BG: What was happening in Boone at that time? EE: What was happening in Boone? Nothing. (Both laugh). BG: What was there? EE: In Boone? BG: As far back as you can remember. EE: There was a family in the name of Harding, and some of them (inaudible) over there. The Judge Greene, he was the county judge and he lived over there back when I was small. Rob Laney and the Councills’. There is one Councill over there now – Jim Council. But the rest of them I reckon have passed on. Now that was just about Boone (laughs). 13:42 I can remember when mud was that deep (gestures with arm) in the wintertime in Boone. And I can remember the first car that ever came to Boone. And now you can’t get a parking place anywhere (both laugh). Fred (inaudible) from Lenoir called up here and told him that he was coming through Boone that day with a car. And I happened to be over there. It wasn’t the first car that I had ever seen. I had seen one just before that. BG: What kind of reaction did the people have towards this car? EE: Just about like a circus would now (both laugh). It was a new thing (emphatically). Of course we had heard about them, but seeing is believing you know. It was right smart scenery so people had never seen one. BG: Did it have much of an affect; did it bring about a lot of changes when people started getting into buying cars? Did a lot of changes take place then? EE: Well, not too much. I was the first to ever buy a car on this creek here (laughs). BG: Oh yeah? EE: I bought my first car on August 10th, 1924. I just bought it for my own use and then others 17 �began buy them, but it didn’t have too much of an effect on them. Everybody tried to be neighbors and so on. 15:39 [Sounds as though the tape cut-off and starts again in the middle of a new conversation. Where the conversation picks-up is out of context] EE: And I’ve hauled people from Winston-Salem to all over the country; never charged a nickel yet (chuckles). BG: What was the price of gasoline in 1924 when you first bought your car? EE: Lady, I couldn’t tell you (laughs). It wasn’t what it is today. I believe it was around twenty cents. Now I wouldn’t tell it for certain. But it strikes me that it was around twenty cents. I paid four hundred and ten dollars for my first car. (Rooster in background). BG: What kind of car was it? EE: Model-T Ford. Ford Roadster. BG: What kind of gas mileage did you get? EE: I couldn’t tell you that (laughs). There was no speedometer on the car so we couldn’t… (both laugh). BG: Oh, I see. 16:47 BG: Who were some of the community leaders around this area? EE: Well, I couldn’t hardly say (long pause while he thinks about question). I guess some people might say my father was one (chuckles) and the “Smoke on a Trivett” over here, Lindsey Trivett and Lance Farmer. BG: Why were they considered to be the leaders? EE: Well, they were older. And people looked (up to) and listened to older people and (inaudible) you have to understand. I guess that would be the biggest thing, and there was a lot of religion then. And if that wasn’t it, I couldn’t tell you. BG: Just respect. 18 �EE: Yes. 18:05 BG: Tell me, what are some of the changes you’ve seen take place in people then compared to now? EE: Lady I could not even start to tell you (both laugh). Back then, when I was a kid now, if people did get sick – we didn’t have any hospitals. If you got sick, people would come in and help in every way they could. Cooperation was the best thing then. Well now, if you get sick they take you to the hospital and your neighbor doesn’t know anything about it. I’m like the old man; I like the old way best (laughs). You know we have a neighbor up here...she went to the hospital on Sunday…and she stays by herself. I happen to be in Boone on Monday, I believe it was Monday or Tuesday – one. And somebody told me that she was in the hospital. Now I wouldn’t have known (inaudible) unless I happened to run into him. Well, back when I was a kid, you get sick and people would let you know it and talk about through other people and it went by the word of mouth faster than it does now on the radio (both laugh). BG: Why do you think people were so much closer then than they are now? EE: Well, that’s another hard one (laughs). Let’s not answer that one (laughs). BG: All right, all right. It’s really kind of strange to me, I can’t really understand. Because it seems that people your age, that lived in your lifetime…they are so much warmer and deeper and they can ‘feel’ whereas people now…they don’t care… EE: Don’t care is right (sternly). They don’t care for one another anymore. BG: It’s not good I don’t think…not at all. EE: I don’t think that it’s the right thing to do, but we were living in that (inaudible). You get sick now and it’s just…let them die and (inaudible) they don’t care and they know it. A couple of years ago my wife got sick and I had her in the hospital and there were very few people that found it out when she came home. So it’s just a change, a big change…that’s all I can say. 22:12 BG: What did you use to do for entertainment? EE: Well, there wasn’t too much entertainment back then…only to get together and have as I 19 �said a while ago…corn shucking and log rolling and the younger folks would meet up at homes, just to talk and pass…fellowship I say just as much as anything. Anymore and you have different entertainment all together. A lot of people have to go to the theater to these shows…well, I wasn’t raised to do that (child in background). 23:15 BG: Was there very much of a barter system, trade system when you were a boy? Did people trade their excess to their neighbor for whatever they had? EE: No, not too much. If your neighbor needed anything and there was more giving than there was selling. We tried to work to one another’s advantage. For instance let’s just say that we had too much vegetables say, we would divide it with our neighbor and never charge anything for it. Just give it. But now it’s entirely different. Just for instance, I have a few beans and a neighbor that lives on (inaudible) came over here the other day and wanted to buy them. Well, I couldn’t sell them to him because I promised them to him a year ago. Instead I gave to him…he offered me $5 for a bushel for them…the green beans. When I was a youngin, we gave them to somebody if needed. You see that’s the tilt of change…completely turned over. The ‘right’ thing. BG: Yes, seems to be. 24:54 BG: Did people believe in witchcraft and superstitions very much? Folktales? EE: Well, we’ve always talked of witches. But never did believe in them (laughs) and so I couldn’t tell you. BG: Do you remember any of the tales that the people used to pass down? EE: Well, I don’t think I could. I never did believe in ghost stories (laughs). I’ve heard people tell ghost stories but I always doubted them. BG: Never did scare you? EE: No. Way back…it’s been about seventy-five years ago (Circa 1900), this fellow died up here, was buried up here at the graveyard, the cemetery. My brother was out that night and he had on a white shirt…he had been to the funeral. And then another fellow…he had on a white shirt. I guess both of them had been to that funeral. They were coming to meet one another. They used to say that there were ‘things to be seen’ up here at this spring just up the road from here. 20 �Each one seen the other one coming and they stopped, they didn’t know what in the world to think. My brother, he never seen anything that he didn’t investigate. He stopped and he said he made up his mind and said he would find out ‘what’ it is. He got right up to that fellow and that fellow said to him, “Tony (or Toby) is that you?” (Both laugh). Well, that is the only thing that got (inaudible). So, that’s just one of those things (both chuckle). 27:43 BG: Was your family involved in any type of crafts? EE: No, not that I know of. 27:56 BG: Did you know to make your clothes? EE: Oh yes. She would spin her yarn…her wool and knit her own socks…and weave her own clothes…all that she could weave. And make her own clothes. She had a loom setup in the living room. She would run that old loom all day long, weaving this and that, and the other you know. That was the only way to get any ‘new’ clothes, you had to make it. Entirely different the way it is now. BG: Did you have a lot of clothes or did you have just one or two pair of pants? Did they last a long time? EE: Well, we made them last (laughs). No, we didn’t have too many clothes. We just made out the best way that we could. I was...I’d say sixteen or eighteen or seventeen years old when I bought my first clothes out of a store. I’d work and had five dollars, that’s what I remembered that I had… 30:07 Tape Ends 21 � https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/bb6f971b68648ed498fbec173e7716fa.mp3 179799a3d9e970c3a7d50c991e489d8a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Artist Earp, Early (interviewee) Greenberg, Barbara (interviewer) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01, Corn shucking Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Early Earp, date unknown Subject The topic of the resource Earp, Early (1891-1988)--Interviews Vilas (N.C.)--History--20th century Vilas (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Agriculture--North Carolina--Vilas--History--20th century Farmers--North Carolina--Vilas--Biography Description An account of the resource Early E. Earp was born on July 31, 1881 in the Vilas community and Bairds Creek community of Watauga County to Lewis Calloway Earp (b. June 5, 1844 – d. November 11, 1919) and Rebecca Williams Earp (b. May 16, 1861 – d. March 27, 1937). They were farmers and raised a family of 14 children. Many of siblings lived long lives. He parents were originally from Wilkes County and his maternal grandfather was killed in the Civil War. He passed away on December 25, 1988 at the age of 97. During the interview he talked about early wages, farm work, how crops were planted and how the quantity was determined. He discusses growing sugarcane for molasses, selling wheat for flour, canning vegetables, drying pumpkins, and planting by the signs. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource unknown Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 21 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant <kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0"><Folder><name>OpenLayers export</name><description>Exported on Thu Oct 24 2013 13:55:07 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)</description></Folder></kml>||||osm Watauga County (N.C.) Bairds Creek car cattle Civil War Danner Cemetery farming funerals planting by signs religion Vilas Watauga County N.C. World War One https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/11d2a7d693590e36fc8e3964164d2bda.mp3 d5fc2a65acdc244f09c9aa240c17ab22 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/5529024b8af3927f0db09abbf5db45ec.pdf 1ff1ba879a7ad11aa89876d06d82abc2 PDF Text Text Oral History Transcript Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 26/27 Interviewee: Bill Brinkley Interviewer: Lester Harmon 1973 February 8 Introduction Snow is falling outside and we have just settled down in the Brinkley home after a delicious dinner. Bill’s home with his wife Rosemary reflects his love for people and nature. Family portraits flank the walls. Bill, over six feet tall, is a very stalwart man. His hands tell the story of a life of hard work, and his eyes speak to you in an honest, cheerful way. He is very attentive to my questioning and is very interested in our oral history project. A very congenial and intelligent man, Bill has lived in Elk Park all of his life and runs a hardware store there. He has much to offer about the Elk Park and Avery County area and is very genuine and entertaining in is delivery. This is an interview with Bill Brinkley in Elk Park, North Carolina on February 8, 1973 for the Appalachian Oral History Project by Lester Harmon. LH: Lester Harmon BB: Bill Brinkley Pam: Pam ?? Mrs. Brinkley: Mrs. Brinkley LH: Would you give us the name and the birthplace of your parents and the number and names of your brothers and sister and their ages? BB: My father was D.G. Brinkley, and he was born in Grassy Creek, which is near Spruce Pine. He was born about 1885. My mother was a Carroll. She was born in Chester, South Carolina about 1888 or 1889. My oldest brother lives in California named Edwin who is about 70 years of age. My father was 91 when he died and he’s been dead about two years. My mother is still living; she’s 88 and living in Florida with my sister. There were six children; the eldest was Edwin. My oldest sister is about 65 and she lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. My next brother is about 63 and lives in Los Angeles, California. The next child in line is another sister who is 60 years old; she lives in Los Angeles. Then my brother and myself are twins. We’re 56, born in 1917 in two different months – June and July. LH: Is there a story behind that? BB: We were actually born in June, but at that time of course the roads were very bad, and 1 �there was not much transportation. The doctor that brought us in, when he listed our birth in the courthouse in Newland, why, he must have gone over in August. He said, “Well, they were born the 27th of the last month.” So I have two birthdays. That’s the reason I get so many presents! LH: When did you come to Elk Park? BB: I was born here. LH: Can you talk a little bit about what life was like as a child? Did you live on a farm and grow your own food? Do you remember any scarce periods? LH: Well, as a child no. That was before the Depression. My father was a merchant, and we did raise right much food that we ate, but that was customary with everybody in this section, of course. I had a very good childhood. I had my twin brother, always had someone to play with, of course. So, as I remember, I had a very happy childhood. We didn’t realize any Depression until about 1929-30. It was about 1929 when the Depression started. It wasn’t too bad in this mountain area because people, most everyone had land, and they did raise most of their food. Maybe not a big variety, but a sufficient amount of food. Our worst period was between 1929-33. At that time, there was scarcely any money, and of course, we had very little clothing, except about one change, and that was it. But by 1935, we had about come out of the Depression, this whole area really. Although the WPA lasted until about almost up until World War Two started. The lady next door to us, she was a great hand at canning, especially peaches. She had several hundred cans of peaches, and she canned them all in usually ½ gallon jars, fruit jars, or quart fruit jars. She dated them all, and she had some that were 14-15 years old. She didn’t have any children, so it was just her and her husband and she canned peaches every year, no matter what. I’m sure when they both died; they still had some peaches in that basement. Pam: Would you tell him about the Sunday suit you had? BB: Well, the first suits we got were about 1933 or 1934; we each got a suit of clothes. My brother and I put it on to go to Sunday school. We got up the road a ways, at the time we lived across the street from here, and we looked at each other. One, I don’t remember which, but one called the other one and said, “Well, you look like a Philadelphia layer.” We just turned around and came back in, and took the suit off. We put on our overalls and went to Sunday school. That same suit after I had it just a short while. I was playing on Sunday, and it got warm, so I took it off and laid it across this fence and forgot it. Of course, we didn’t remember it, because we didn’t wear the suit except on Sundays, and it was on a Sunday when I took the thing off and hung it on the fence. 2 �The following Sunday, I couldn’t find the suit. I couldn’t remember where in the world that coat was, and it was during a rainy period. Oh, two or three weeks later, I happened to look up where we played that Sunday, just glanced up that way, and I saw the coat hanging on the fence. And of course it was ruined, so I didn’t have another suit until about 1937, somewhere along there. But, as I say, by that time, the Depression was over with as far as we were concerned, and most people in this section. I really don’t think the mountain people felt the Depression nearly as hard as the people in this section. We have been classified as a poverty area along with the Kentucky group and so on, but in my opinion, Avery County is really not a poverty stricken country, never has been. LH: You were saying that you were living here at the start of the Depression, and were all the kids in the family here, or did any of them leave home during the Depression, or did they leave home because of the Depression? BB: No, my two eldest brothers left during the Depression, but not because of it. They went west to seek their fortunes, and they’re still out there, living in California. But it wasn’t the Depression that made them leave. The oldest one I think left before the Depression even started. LH: Your father and your mother, did the Depression have a big effect on their jobs, or did they change the jobs during the Depression, or were you working during the Depression at all anywhere? BB: Well, my father had a store and of course my mother never worked. I graduated from high school in 1934 at the age of 16, and I went to work in that store soon as we were out of high school. Of course the Depression was practically over then, well it wasn’t over, but times were certainly better by 1934. But we didn’t have enough money to go to college, and we did have to go to work. LH: You’re talking now a little bit about school. Can you tell me if your parents went to high school or if they went to college? Tell me about your brothers, sisters, and about your school life and some of the teachers or schoolmates that you had and how the schools have changed around here in Avery County and Elk Park since you were there? BB: My father went to college two years at N.C. State. My brother went to Davidson, my oldest brother. He was going to be a minister but he changed his mind on that. None of the other children ever went to college. LH: Do you remember anything about how the schools were when you were in grammar school and some of the good times that you had and what the schools were like then? BB: Well, I remember of course, the first day that I ever went to school and remember my first teacher. Her name was Miss Bean. Back then it wasn’t the first grade, your first grade was called the “Primer,” and that was because of a book that you had was named The Primer. That’s 3 �why you never went to the first grade, you went to the Primer. Then you went to the second grade. The schools were very good, but by the time we were in fourth grade, they combined two grades, the fourth and the fifth. We had the same teacher for the fourth grade and the fifth in the same classroom. She’d teach the fourth half a day and the fifth grade half a day, and the other half of course was supposed to study. Then, that grammar school was here in Elk Park, and in the sixth grade we were transferred to the high school building. It started, you weren’t in high school, but the sixth grade was taught in the high school, and the seventh grade, and then your freshman year in high school started in the eighth grade, and of course we only had four years of high school, so you were out at the eleventh grade. LH: You graduated from Cranberry School? BB: Yes, Cranberry High School. LH: The building looks a lot like the one that my dad went to school in. I think he’s 59 now, but he graduated from a school that looked a whole lot like the Cranberry School out here. BB: Well, we had very good teachers in high school, I thought, and I still think so – looking back. We had an excellent English teacher. If I learned all that she tried to teach us, I would know a lot more English I’m sure. But her primary interest thought as in literature rather than English grammar. But she was an excellent teacher, and I had her for four straight years. But she was very hard, and a lot of students tried to get another teacher if they possibly could. So her classes were never too large; really we learned more in her class, I thought, than the other ones that went to the English teacher. LH: You say that when you got out of high school, you and Bob went to work at the store. After the store, what did you do? Or have you stayed with the store up to now? BB: I’ve never done anything else other than extra things that I’ve gotten into, but primarily I have never left the store. LH: How has the store changed since back then? A whole lot? BB: Of course we started in an old building, but we built a new store that we’re in now. We built in 1940, just before World War Two started, and since that time, I built on it in 1957, built an addition on the east end and built the post office on the west end. But the building is really comparatively new although it was, part of it was built in 1940, but it’s a solid brick building. The old store was a wooden structure, very commonplace with what you would think of as an old country store. 4 �LH: Wasn’t it a good grocery store then? BB: We had general merchandise. We had groceries, dry goods, shoes, a little hardware, practically anything you would want. LH: It’s mainly hardware now, isn’t it? BB: Yes. LH: What kind of churches were in the Elk Park area or in the Avery County area then? What was the main denomination of most of the people around here? What were the churches like and how much have they changed since then? BB: They haven’t changed a great lot. I’m Methodist, my father was Methodist, and my mother was Baptist, but we all went to the Methodist Church, and it’s the same church we’re going to today. Of course the first church burned; then it was rebuilt and remodeled. The Baptist Church, of course they have done quite a bit of remodeling on it, but it’s in the same place and primarily the same church as when I was a boy. And the Christian Church here was an old wooden structure when I was a boy; it was torn down and has been a new church built since that time, but the church – the Christian Church is approximately 65 years old. The first structure is primarily the same because it was a brick building, and it burned, and it just burned the inside out and the roof off of it. It was built back just like it was except a little more modern. LH: Did a lot of people pitch in and help build the church, a lot of community people? BB: Yes, it was built and rebuilt entirely by people, by members of the Methodist Church and some of the friends of Methodists from Memphis. There was no outside help at all except from the Memphis Conference did, I think – maybe gave us 1,000 dollars, something like that. The church burned about 1952 and cost about 20,000 dollars to rebuild. LH: Is that Elk Park Methodist Church (pointing)? BB: Yes. LH: How did Elk Park get its name? Do you know? BB: Well, I’ve asked that question to many an old timer and I don’t believe any of them really ever knew. But the only tale that I have ever heard was that they claimed that the elk, which was the deer of course, because we had no elk, never had, but the deer well, this was one of their stopping places. You know deer migrate and they usually run within a certain area, and they were supposed to have had a place here that they stayed for a time, and that’s why they named it Elk River. 5 �I really don’t know whether the deer had anything to do with the naming of all this Elk and Banner Elk. I do know that Banner Elk was named particularly from, mainly from the fact that it was – everyone that lived there practically were Banners; they settled the town. But Elk Park at the turn of the century was the hub of this whole section. The railroad came here. Elk Park was about three times as large as it is now. They had the railroad, which was narrow gauge of course, coming to the Cranberry mines, which was mining iron ore. The town had a depot, had three hotels, it had a bank, had a sawmill. It had three livery stables. A livery stable is where people went to rent a horse and a buggy or a horse. There were three large ones so everybody came into this area stayed in Elk Park, and the community grew out of here to the various other places in the area. Salesmen and so on came from Johnson City from wholesale places that came up here selling goods. They all rode that train to Elk Park. LH: What train was that? BB: Tweetsie. LH: Tweetsie, that’s in Boone now right? BB: That’s right. Narrow gauge and it ran to Boone, but we had a flood in 1940, either 1940 or ’41 and the flood washed the railroad out, practically all of it out from Cranberry to Boone. And it was beginning to be a losing proposition, so they were allowed to not build it back. Got certain laws and regulations about busses and trains; you can’t just stop them whether you lose money or not. You’ve got to carry on. So they came on the Cranberry for a number of years until 1950. I believe the last run that Tweetsie made was about 1952, and they were allowed to cut the railroad out. Of course it was really more expensive to get anything in on the railroad by that time than it was by truck, because it being a narrow gauge, everything had to be transferred. It came by rail, and it was transferred to Johnson City to this narrow gauge train. We sold sheet rock and bought it by the carload out of New York and it costs us less freight to get it from New York to Elizabethton or Johnson City than it did by rail from Johnson City on up here, which is only 30 miles away. Of course the mines were operating too at that time. LH: Mines around here? BB: The Cranberry iron ore mines that was only two miles from here. One of the biggest belts of ore in this selection known anywhere, magnetized ore that is. It is magnetized, but it’s a low grade, and that’s why they are operating. The cost is no greater to get out; in fact, it’s less because granite is so strong. 6 �They didn’t have timber in any of the mines; they just left a pillar of granite every so often. They didn’t have to timber the mine with wood, so it wasn’t any more expensive to get out but the grade was so low, the ore grades were so low that it got to where it wasn’t profitable to operate. Some of the mines closed sown about 1930, somewhere long then. LH: How did Elk Park start? I mean, who first settled here and was it because of mining that the town got started? BB: No I think…deer hunting, elk hunting. I don’t know where he went (telling a story of a local old timer), maybe to Montana or somewhere northwest, and he was telling this group of people when he got back about what all he had seen, how it was way out west, what a big country it was and said, “The forest was so thick,” he said, “You can’t even walk through them, the trees were so close together.” And he said, “Elk,” he said, “You’ve never seen such elk. They had horns this large” (used his hands as wide as he could spread them). Finally somebody stopped him in the middle of the story, and they laughed and said, “If the elk had horns that big, how did they get through those trees that were so close together?” This gentleman didn’t even slow down on his story, he just looked at the man and said, “That’s their story.” This was typical of the type of stories that he told, and I guess if somebody kept a record of all of them, it would really had been a best seller. He certainly was surely full of them. Oh, he told another story about hunting. He was a great hunter and said he saw twelve turkeys sitting on a limb and he said, “I checked my gun and only had one cartridge. I jerked up my gun and got all twelve of those turkeys.” Somebody said, “Well, how in the world (laughing) did you get all those turkeys with just one shell?” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you. I shot and split the limb and when the limb went together caught all the turkeys’ toes and held them there until I got up and killed them.” But he was full of stories. We have had lots of characters like that. LH: How about some of the community leaders or decision makers, like the rulers of the town and everything over the years? BB: Well, I have been mayor of Elk Park myself and an Alderman two or three times. I had the distinction of running for mayor against the only woman that ever ran for mayor. Of course she campaigned like everything and I didn’t campaign, but I still won. She is to my knowledge, the only woman who ever ran for mayor of the town of Elk Park. LH: How long ago was that? BB: That was in 1939 or ’40, about then. We’ve had some good men, had a Harmon by the way, good community leader. He taught Sunday school and taught the men’s class for about 15 or 18 years in the Methodist church. I was superintendent at the time, the superintendent for 17 years, of the Sunday school up until the time I went into the army in fact. But Mr. Harmon, he became a U.S. Marshall under the Eisenhower administration, and he had some sort of illness 7 �and died. He wasn’t too old of a man when he died, but he had left Elk Park of course when he became a U.S. Marshall and moved to Asheville. LH: You have said that Elk Park used to be bigger than it is now. Has the population decreased that much, or just the general size? BB: Well, Avery County has grown less in population until the last three or four years. Now, what happened there was, of course, a lack of jobs, and a lot of people who moved away to get these jobs during the war, stayed so the population went down from 14,000 to 10,000 at one time, and it was because of lack of jobs. There was no industry to amount to anything for a number of years, the mines had closed. After the war, they started coming back a little bit, but not too much, but then “tourism” has done more to increase the population – to get the population back to closer to the point where it was, than anything else. People who are retired want to come to the mountains to lived because they know this I the finest place on earth. A lot of people like to come here and there’s been a good deal of the land that’s been sold to outsiders who want to come here, and will be here for the rest of their lives. LH: Has the tourist industry had, in your opinion, a bad effect on the natural beauty of the mountains around? I know like Beech Mountain and some of the bigger places used to be, well nothing there and a lot of people feel like it has done more harm than good. I was wondering how you feel about that? BB: Well, of course there are several thoughts on that. The county as a whole felt like tourism was the only way out of growing. Naturally they wanted to grow and they hated to see the population decreased. So they tried to make it as attractive as possible for the tourists. But it was slow coming for the simple reason there were no accommodations and so people didn’t come because of that. And then on the other hand, people are afraid to build accommodations because the tourists aren’t coming. But it made a vicious cycle out of it. These resort areas such as Beech Mountain and Sugar, ski places, some people resent them because for one thing, it has made land go sky-high, and it’s gotten where it’s hard to even buy a piece of land in Avery County unless you pay what I would say, an exorbitant price for it. Really, in that respect it’s (tourist industry) hurt. Of course, there’s not, well, there a few fairly big landholders in the county, but the land isn’t for sale. Meade Corporation owns about 4,500 acres and they sell it sometimes. They are the biggest owners. LH: Who is that? BB: Meade Corporation – they are a paper company of course, and they recently sold 40,000 acres in Jackson County. That’s been a big, well, quite a bit in the paper about that because they didn’t sell it to the Forest Service, but they offered it to the Forest Service and they said they would like to have it but they didn’t have the money. Then Meade was ready to sell and 8 �these developers from Florida bought it and gave them five million (dollars) for it. And now, of course everybody over there’s hollering that they really didn’t give the government a chance to buy it – that’s neither here nor there, I don’t know how much truth there is to it, but I do know from personal experience that the government is tied up in too much red tape when it comes to something that they would like to have, that they don’t do anything about it until it’s too late. I had 500 acres in the middle of crops that they owned all around and they wanted to buy it. They never did buy it, and finally I sold it to another party. So, I expect that’s about what happened to Meade. BB: At the beginning of the Depression, for this area, when the government decided – I don’t know; they had been giving help elsewhere, but the way it was started here, the help situation from the government, they have you a little piece of paper that said that you were entitled to so much food money and you took that to the store. We took it just like it was a five dollar bill. For instance, this allowed you to buy that much food, or whatever it said. And of course the amount was given accordingly to the number in the family. Now this was a monthly thing. LH: Rations? BB: No, it was – I forget what they called it, but anyway – it was the largest amount that I can remember anybody getting was one man that had 13 children, he got $21 per month. He spent half of that for tobacco and snuff, his wife dipped snuff and he chewed tobacco. And he spent the rest of it for essentials that they could not raise. And they existed on it; nobody actually thought they were poor, poverty stricken, or anything else. So it just shows you that really – well, there was no great need for money. That man raised practically everything that they are, with few exceptions, but that $21 helped out with him using half of it for snuff and tobacco! LH: How many were in the family again? BB: Thirteen! He had 11 children plus himself and his wife. Then at a later date, I knew a man that had 19 children and he and his wife, and he was never on welfare and never had a job. He pulled moss, dug herbs, and that sort of stuff for a living and yet he raised 19 children. LH: You said welfare – are you talking about the… BB: I’m talking about a later date, such as when the welfare program started after the war. What we called the welfare program that started after World War Two. And this man was never on welfare, and yet he never had a job working for anybody unless he just wanted to. He made his living out of…well, off the land. Mrs. Brinkley: Did they pick Galax? BB: Yes, Galax and moss and dug ginseng and crabapple roots and so on. Ginseng is a root 9 �that’s very valuable, even to this day. The Chinese use it extensively for medical reasons of some reason or other, but that’s where it was all sent from, but it’s always brought anywhere from $15 to $40 per pound, and of course it’s very scare. But I had known people that found patches of it where they’ve gotten out 800-900 pounds and made themselves quite a bit of money. But that hasn’t happened but very few times. LH: Do you remember the change in the schools or the churches or the country stores around? Do you remember any great changes in those during the Depression? Working in the store (Brinkley Hardware Store), you probably saw some changes in the store there? BB: Well, I don’t quite know what you mean by change. We saw, naturally business get better as people got more money, and as the Depression ended. Of course, the war naturally created – between the WPA and the war – they created many more jobs and there was money around. So, the volume of business gained constantly. Pam: What about the packaging in the store? How has that changed? BB: Well now, that’s changed completely in my day. When I first started working in the store nothing was packaged. Sugar came in 100 pound bags and we poured it in a barrel. People never bought more than five pounds, something like that. Most people bought a quarter’s worth, which was about five cents per pound. You had to weigh it out on a scale and tie it up in a bag. Lard or shortening came in a 100 pound drum. You opened the top of it and there was a little paddle that you took, you put the lard in a tray and sold whatever the amount they wanted from a nickel to 50 cents worth. Flour was not sold in anything less than 25 pound bags. Meal was not sold in anything less than 25 pound bags. Self-rising was unheard of. Peanut butter came in a 25 pound can; you sold it similar to lard, in a little wax tray. Bologna didn’t have to be refrigerated; you had no refrigeration to start with. Rather it came in a white cloth sack and it would keep, we hung it from the ceiling. Bananas we bought by the stalk. Sold two, three, or four – they wouldn’t ask you for pounds. They would say give me five bananas or a half dozen bananas, or whatever. Pam: Do you want to tell him about the time when you stuffed your banana – was it a banana? BB: It was a banana yes, that’s a – I don’t know whether it’ll help his story or not. I was – that was before I was out of school of course, and my daddy had the store and we would go in there in the afternoons and try to steal us a little piece of candy or something. We didn’t have to steal it, he was very liberal – he would let us have it, but you would ask and he’d say how much you could have. So we got in this stalk of bananas, which was very unusually in that day and time. The stalk was as green as a gourd. But we wanted one so badly, he finally let us have one and I decided that I’d get me another one, and I didn’t ask for it. About that time I got it about half eaten, my daddy came around the counter. I just stuck all of it in my mouth and swallowed it, 10 �and that night I nearly died of a stomach ache. But, we finally had oranges and that sort of stuff at Christmastime – in the store. There was really nothing packaged. LH: Did you have the pickle barrel and the cracker barrel? BB: Had a pickle barrel, pigs feet – pickled pigs feet. Sold fish from a big barrel, salted fish that you could keep from now on. People had to take them home and soak them all night, and they usually ate them for breakfast. By the way, the main reason for that is they had to soak that salt out of them before they could eat them. They would soak the fish during the night and it was just a breakfast food to the mountain people at that time. Nuts, we never sold any nuts except at Christmastime. Oranges, tangerines, and all that – just Christmastime. Saw very few toys and we had a tin can for a car – played around with the bank and make a road out of it with a tin can, an empty tin can. Pam: What about buckeyes? BB: Buckeyes were very similar I appearance to a chestnut, except much larger. And a lot of people had the superstition that to carry a buckeye was lucky. This one boy was very superstitious. He carried a buckeye for about 20 years that I know of. But, he got in trouble one time, and he was telling the story later, he said, “I promised the great Lord and this buckeye that if I get out of this, I’ll never do it again!” You were talking about calamities…I guess the biggest calamity that ever hit this section of the country was the blight of the chestnut trees. I don’t know really what extent it was here, but I think the chestnut tree was about the majority of the types of trees all through the Appalachian area, probably and maybe all the way to the West Coast, I don’t know. LH: A lot of barns were built from wormy chestnut weren’t they? BB: That’s right. And now its worth anywhere from 1,000 dollars to 1,200 per thousand board feet. I bought it for $15 a 1,000 board feet, sawed and planed - $15. But the chestnut tree was one of the biggest losses we ever had in many ways. The loss of the timber, the loss of the chestnuts to the animals of course, the squirrel, deer. Practically all of the animals ate chestnuts and by losing the chestnuts, why, it badly affected the wildlife of this area. But, you really didn’t realize how many chestnut trees there were until they all died. I can remember going from here to Blowing Rock on what we call the Yonahlossee Trail, which is still there any is part of the (Blue Ridge) Parkway now. You can see a great distance along that road, up the mountain and below the mountain, and before the leaves would come out, or just when they would begin to come out, you could see all these dead chestnut trees. I’d say ¾ of the trees were chestnut trees. But they would stand out at that period you see, and you could tell that they were dead chestnuts. It was a great loss to the whole country. 11 �LH: What was it that caused the… BB: The blight? LH: Yes, the blight. BB: Somebody brought in a chestnut tree either from China or Japan, and it was diseased, and it gave the blight to the chestnuts in North America, and that blight spread. They never found anyway to stop it, and it killed every chestnut tree in the United States. LH: They can’t grow them anymore, can they? BB: Well, they have found one that’s blight-proof, but it’s really, its what they call an English Chestnut. It’s much larger than our chestnuts. You’ve got to plant it and take care of it, like you’re taking care of an apple tree or something. Pam: Well, what kind is it that the Penland’s have? They have one in their yard; we eat chestnuts from it all the time. I think it’s a Japanese kind or something? BB: Well, it probably one of those English Chestnut trees – they call them “Horse Chestnuts” because they’re larger. They are really not a true chestnut as far as the chestnut we had. I’ve never heard of anybody cutting the timber from them, because we don’t have that many of them. The chestnut timber now, if you can find any that were sound, some were found even years afterward, and they were able to cut a lot of the logs found on the ground or still standing and cut the sound wood out of them. It brought big money because it was scarce wood, and everybody like those worm holes. LH: My sister and her husband got a wormy chestnut bookcase for a wedding present and they said that was the best present they got. It’s really beautiful. BB: But, the funny thing about the chestnut tree. If it was cut but not soon enough, it got shaky and a shaky chestnut lumber was worthless and still is even today. If you had it, it would be worthless. In fact, a man offered me 40,000 board feet about five or six years ago. I had a wood working shop and we had a lot of demand for things made of chestnut lumber that was cut, so he offered the 40,000 feet for $35 a thousand feet. I didn’t know that much about it. So, I went to somebody that did and asked, “Out of 40,000 feet, surely to goodness you could cut enough good out of it to get five or six thousand feet,” and he said, “No, if it’s shaky chestnut, you cannot get anything good out of it. If you had ten million feet of it, you couldn’t.” So I didn’t buy it. About all you can use it for is for sheathing for a barn or something like that, but it won’t last anytime you see. Once it’s exposed to the weather, it doesn’t last. 12 �LH: Comparing childhood during the Depression days, when you were growing up – what did you like best about those days? What were some of your best days? What do you like best about living now and what did you not like back then? BB: It would take a long time to answer all than, but quickly: The Depression didn’t bother us because I was too young, and we were in a business where I guess, we made money faster than the common run of people. So I had a car when I was 17 and have had one ever since. The first car I ever bought was the only one I was ever able to pay cash for, I think. I guess that I was better off between 1935-45, than I ever have been since! LH: I guess that’s something you don’t like about now, the way everything cost a lot more. BB: Well, it’s really harder to accumulate anything or make any money this day and time than it was in those days because of high taxes and the high cost of living. Bought insurance back when it was cheap and had the money for it. If you had the money today it would be worth well, what is it worth now? A dollar is worth about 40 cents. I doubt that it’s even worth that. The government’s index claims that stuff has risen so much, that I can remember the first car that I bought in 1935, brand new Deluxe Ford cost 600 dollars. And of course, everything is not that much difference of course, but that is an example – that’s why I said with a little money back in those days, you could really have yourself a ball, because it didn’t cost anything. Go on vacation, I’ve gone to Florida and spent less than $200, now it will cost you that and a little more than that to buy a plane ticket there and back. LH: Or just to stay down there a while in a motel. Forty dollars a day in a motel for practically all of them. What do you like best, if you can pinpoint anything, about today’s lifestyle, the way things are now? BB: Well, I like the improvements man has made, certainly. A lot of people say the “Good old days.” When I say that, I’m talking about the fact that stuff didn’t cost much. But I still appreciate the fact that we have all these “luxuries” like dishwashers that do a lot for the housewife. But the trash-smasher, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, -- that’s one thing we’ve always had, so that doesn’t mean as much to me, but I do – from the fact that until after the war, there was more than 10% of the people outside of the town that had lights. Everywhere now rural districts have lights, and that is to be a very, certainly a luxury for them. Bound to be, and that was the first thing that everybody did after the war that could get them of course, these other things could come in such as washing machines, refrigerators, whatever. But I do like the fact that man has made all the progress he has. I’ve certainly seen more progress made in my lifetime than was made for previous, well, some people say millions of years. Some people say 10,000 years, or whatever. But that’s up to the individual to think what he wants to about it, but I think more progress has been made in the past 25 years than ever 13 �has been made before. And maybe in the next 25 years it will be – it’s hard to imagine, but maybe just as much or more. LH: If you could change something right now, what would you change? BB: Well, that’s hard to keep from thinking of personal matters, and that wouldn’t have anything to do with what you’re asking. 14 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Artist Brinkley, Bill (interviewee) Harmon, Lester (interviewer) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01, Buckeye luck charm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill C. Brinkley, February 3, 1973 Description An account of the resource Bill Carroll Brinkley was born on July 27, 1917 in Elk Park in Avery County to David Brinkley (b. July 24, 1879 – January 1971) who was from Grassy Creek near Spruce Pine, North Carolina and Carroll Ivey Brinkley who was from Chester, South Carolina, and he had five siblings including a twin brother. He graduated from Cranberry High School in 1934 then started working in the family hardware store and served briefly in the U.S. Army enlisting in February 1945. He died on March 20, 2001 at the age of 83. During the interview he reflects on a happy childhood during the Depression partly because everyone was self­‐sufficient and raised their own food. He provides several anecdotal stories about his education, the family owned Brinkley Hardware Store in Elk Park, religion and local churches, the origin Elk Park, the railroad, the Cranberry mine, and tourism in Avery County. He also discusses collecting herbs and rationing during the Depression and relates stories about panthers and the Brown Mountain Lights. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brinkley, Bill Carroll Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3-Feb-73 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 14 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant <kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0"><Folder><name>OpenLayers export</name><description>Exported on Thu Oct 24 2013 14:11:05 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)</description></Folder></kml>||||osm Elk Park (N.C.) Avery County (N.C) Subject The topic of the resource Brinkley, Bill Carroll--Interviews Avery County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Depressions--1929--North Carolina--Avery County--Interviews Farm life--North Carolina--Avery County--Interviews Christian life--North Carolina--Avery County--Interviews almanac Avery County car Depression Education Elk Park farming folklore religion tourism https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/936e6f52f780827e40452b70eb72a431.mp3 5ccd3d80a8ccf0bddb7a634f21bb9a34 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/bedd31c9c73c23cdd89582e7759e5255.pdf a5c32ef7cf88a6112dc82dc1ac669f07 PDF Text Text Oral History Transcript Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 92 Interviewee: Viola Greer Interviewer: Karen Ward 16 June 1973 KW: Karen Ward VG: Viola Greer This is an interview with Viola Greer by Karen Ward for the Appalachian Oral History Project on June 14 at Mrs. Greer’s house. KW: Mama Greer, where were you born? VG: In Tennessee. KW: Where? VG: Crandall, Tennessee. KW: When did you move to Watauga County? VG: I didn’t move here until after I was married and my first baby was about…oh, I guess two years old. KW: Do you know how long you have lived in Watauga County? VG: I’ve lived in Watauga County ever since I moved here, then I moved away several different times and lived other places for a while. I went to west to Montana and lived there for one spell and then we lived down in Ashe (County) one time, and then we went down to Zach’s Fork near Lenoir for a few months one time. And all of my children were born here. KW: In this house? VG: All but two. Two were born down at mama’s, down the road a little piece. The first that I went to school was in Ashe County over at Pine Swamp. Then we moved from there to the Fleetwood School and that’s all the school that I went to. KW: What year were you born in? VG: 1906. 1 �KW: So that makes you how old? VG: I was 66 in March. KW: What were your parent’s names? VG: Arthur and Martha Nichols. KW: Where were they born? VG: In Wilkes County. KW: Both of them? VG: Yes, but they moved to Tennessee. Both families (had moved from Wilkes County to Tennessee) but they didn’t meet until after they moved out there and then got married. The first four children were born there (Tennessee), two were born in Wilkes County and three in Ashe County. KW: So you had nine in your family? VG: Nine children. KW: Can you tell me all of their names? VG: Yes. The oldest was Monroe, then me, then Chow, then Emma, Hattie, Ethel, Florence, Minnie, and A.F., Jr. KW: What was your father’s job? VG: He was a sawmill man and lumbered you know. He bought timber and sawed it, that type of work. KW: You told me where you went to school. How long did you go to school? VG: Well, I didn’t go very much. I just went off and on. KW: About how many years all together do you guess you went? VG: Oh, I don’t know. I only went about four or five years. I would go some each year and that’s all. KW: How many months out of the year was school going on? 2 �VG: Six months. KW: Six? Did all of your brothers and sisters go to school? VG: Yes, they all went some. The last ones, well I don’t know. I reckon they finished high school, but the first ones…we had to stay home and work and they didn’t have a law to make you go to school and with that big a family we had to work. We farmed and dad had the sawmill too. KW: Did your family have a big farm or garden? VG: Oh, yes. KW: What kind of crops did you all raise? VG: Oh, corn, potatoes, and beans and just everything. KW: Did you sell it or just use it (the crops) for yourself? VG: No, we ate it. The twelve of us ate it. KW: What were the teachers like in your school? VG: Well, at that time there was only one teacher. One-room schoolhouses and one teacher. KW: Were they strict on you? VG: Yes, it was different to what it is now. You really had to learn and had to get your lessons or you would be punished. Either whipped or either kept in during all the play periods and dinner hour you know. Back then every morning we had chapel, you know. The teacher always read the Bible and then we had prayer and we would sing a couple of hymns, every morning before we started. KW: They don’t do that in schools now. VG: I know and the teachers, they were good and they loved to teach the children religion. KW: What kind of subjects did you learn? VG: We had arithmetic, history, geography, and spelling. KW: You had the same type of subjects that we had. VG: Yes, we didn’t have science like they do now. 3 �KW: Do you think the schools have changed quite a bit? VG: Oh, yes. KW: How? VG: Well, I don’t think they are as strict as they used to be when I went to school. The children were quiet. They were really quiet. We just played ball or something during our play periods. Of course there were not a lot of children in one little school, maybe twenty or something like that. KW: Is that all? VG: Yes, because there was a little school in every community you know. Children in each community went to that school. KW: Did you ever work anywhere besides just your house? VG: No. KW: Just worked in the garden and at your house? What different types of churches were in your community when you were growing up and at the different places where you lived? VG: Well, as far as I can remember, I have always gone to the Baptist church. I’ve gone to the Methodist church only when they were having a revival. When I was young we used to walk up to Mill Creek when we lived in Ashe (County) when they were having a revival. Some of the people that lived around us were from there. Their parents would go. We would either walk or somebody would take a wagon with horses and we would fill the wagon full with everybody. KW: What church did most people go to? VG: Well, in all the communities that I lived in, people went to the Baptist church. KW: Do you think that religion has played an important part in your life? VG: Oh, yes. Sure do. KW: How do you think it has? VG: Well, I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t Christian and didn’t go to church and did all these things. I’ve gone to church all my life, expect for the period when I was raising my children…I didn’t go very much at that time. But since then, when I have had a chance, I attended church. I have always gone to the Baptist church everywhere that I’ve lived. The community church was Baptist. 4 �KW: Do you think that the churches that you used to attend have changed with the churches you go to know? VG: Yes. KW: Are they better or different or what? VG: Well, I think that they might be. They are not as strict as they used to be. I can remember if a church member did something….for instance, if a girl had a child, they (the members) would turn her out of the church if she didn’t come and repent. Yes, they used to do that to people years ago; they would turn them out if they didn’t come back and repent. Now, they don’t seem to pay any mind to anything that happens. KW: What kind of sermons did the preachers preach back then? VG: Oh, I couldn’t tell you. There were ‘old timey’ preachers who didn’t go to the seminary. Just old country preachers that would preach for hours until you would just about lose your mind. You would be starved to death and you couldn’t stand it. And they sang a lot. KW: Did you have a piano or any type of music back then? VG: No. KW: Just sang without music? VG: Some churches had organs, but not very many. We just had somebody…who used what they called a ‘tuning fork.’ Do you know? KW: Yes. VG: Some of the churches had them (tuning fork) and some didn’t. KW: What about the church that you went to most of the time. What did it have? VG: Nothing. KW: You just got there and sang? VG: Yes. We would have ‘singing schools’ and then the singing leaders would always have a tuning form. But otherwise we always just had a leader, somebody to lead and we just sang. KW: Well, it sounds like fun. 5 �VG: It was fun. I just loved the old songs but I can’t remember half of them. I can remember a few. I can remember the preachers preaching so long, most of them did. KW: Did you ever have any dinners after church on the grounds like they do now? VG: No. Sometimes, I guess it was ‘homecoming.’ We would have a big dinner. KW: But you didn’t do it like we do now? VG: No. Back then we had associations and we always had a lot of good food then. KW: Can you remember anything about politics when you were growing up? VG: No, I never paid any mind to politics. In fact, I just didn’t hear much about it. I can remember when (President) Wilson was elected. That’s the first election that women could vote. I remember, I was married then. I remember my mother going (to vote) and she didn’t want to. I was married, but I wasn’t old enough to vote. KW: How old did they (women) have to be to vote? VG: Twenty-one. KW: Twenty-one back then? VG: Yes. KW: Well, can you remember how people would tend to vote…Republican or Democrat? VG: I can’t remember it a bit. Women didn’t talk politics, and you know men…they just went and voted and back then you didn’t hear anything about it. Now they just really carry on, but really I can’t (remember). That’s the only election (President Woodrow Wilson) that I ever paid attention to. Now, dad didn’t talk politics but he was a Republican and my mother’s people were Democrats. But she always voted Republican after she started voting and all the children… KW: Republicans? VG: Not Ethel Clawson. She married a Democrat and the first time that she ever voted after she was married was when Eisenhower was elected. But all the rest, like my sister Hattie…she married a Democrat but they never voted. She’s never voted since she’s been married. She voted one time before she was married and her husband didn’t vote, so she didn’t vote. 6 �KW: Do you know why? VG: No. Well, she wouldn’t have voted for a Democratic ticket I guess. Maybe she just wasn’t interested enough to care whether he (her husband) voted or not. But he never did vote, nor has she ever voted since she’s been married. I doubt she voted in this last election. I don’t know. KW: How did people get around for transportation when you were growing up? VG: They walked and rode in wagons. KW: Covered wagons? VG: Some covered and some just bare. Everybody had a team of mules or horses and had a wagon. When they went somewhere that was too far to walk, they rode a wagon. KW: Did you walk a lot? VG: Yes. I’d rather walk than ride the wagons. We walked everywhere we went, unless it was too far to walk. KW: How far was ‘too far’ to walk? VG: Well, when we went down to Wilkes to visit some of dad’s people. KW: I agree that was a little far. VG: My mother used to walk from Tennessee to Wilkes (County0. Yes, before she was married she walked it once a year. She would go back and visit some of her brothers and sisters. KW: How long did it take her? VG: Two days I think. They just spent one night…you know back then, whenever it began to get real late they would stop at somebody’s house and ask if they could spend the night and they (the house where they stopped) always took them in. Back then people just took-in anybody. KW: You couldn’t do that today, could you? VG: No, no. KW: Can you remember when you saw your first car? VG: Yes, that was when I was a little girl. I lived in Wilkes (County) and I can’t remember the man’s name, but they had this T-Model (Ford) and we lived right down the road…a dirt road. I 7 �would see him go back and forth and everybody would just run to see that car. But in Ashe County when I was just a little girl, the first car I saw there my daddy bought it. A Buick Touring Car. We would ride the old dirt road you know…and then come to this steep rocky bank. You would get out and push the car over this bank, ride some more until you came to another steep area and then push it again. KW: Can you remember how much cars cost back then? VG: No. KW: Not hardly as expensive as they are now. VG: Lord no. But I don’t remember (the cost). I probably didn’t even know what dad paid for the one he got. Then my brother when he got grownup, he bought a T-Model. KW: What did you think when you first saw the car? VG: Oh, I was scared of it. The first one that I saw, I was scared of it. The car made a lot of racket and noise and I was really scared of it. I didn’t see how people could get along without a horse or a mule or something to pull a wagon. KW: In previous years, did you ever make soap or quilts, or weave? VG: Oh, I’ve quilted all my life. No, I never weaved. KW: What about making soap? Did you make soap? VG: Well, the kind that my mother made was called ‘coal soap.’ People would have a lot of grease and then they would add lye. I never did make any myself and I can’t remember how much lye was used. But mama would make soap and she called it ‘coal soap.’ It was white, just as white and she would cut it up into bars. I have seen the old soap that people used to make. They would save all the old meat skins and meat scraps and everything and boil them. I’ve heard mama tell that they made their own lye out of ashes to eat up the old meat scraps and then it would be yellow and soft. You just get a handful and put on your clothes and scrubbed them on the board and put a whole lot in the big old wash pot and boil the clothes. Keep jabbing the clothes with the stick, a paddle or something…you scrubbed the clothes on the washboard. KW: You used washboards? VG: Yes. 8 �KW: How long did it take to wash all your clothes doing that? VG: Oh, all day. But there were so many clothes to wash for a home and my mother was so particular. Everything had to be just so clean. You would scrub them to get all the dirt out on the washboard and then you would put the clothes in the pot and boil them in lye or that soap. Mama used to just cut that white soap she had made. She just cut up a whole lot of the soap in the pot and let it dissolve. Then she put the clothes in or had the pot usually hanging on poles over the fire and you put wood underneath and boiled the clothes. KW: Boy, I bet it did take a long time. Well, you said that you quilted. Do you still quilt? VG Yes. KW: Do you enjoy doing that? VG: I love it. KW: Did you do this one here (pointing to a quilt)? VG: Yes. KW: That’s pretty. I like that. VG: I have made quilts all my life. KW: Really? Do you sell them or give any quilts away, or just keep them? VG: Oh, I have given them away. But you know, people used to…they had to have lots of quilts because they didn’t have warm houses like they have now. We just had fireplaces. You had to have lots of quilts for every winter. Mama made quilts. I have quilted ever since I was old enough to quilt. Ever since I have been married, I have not made as many. Well, I’ll say that I haven’t made quilts in maybe two years. I love to make quilts in the wintertime. KW: Do you do it with other people? Do you get together? VG: Sometimes. KW: I bet that’s fun. VG: It really is. Last winter, a year ago now, I made three and Ethel, my sister, came up and helped me finish the last one. I haven’t made any this winter. I’ve been lazy. 9 �KW: Catch up next winter I guess. VG: I love to piece the tops, all different designs and they are so pretty when you get them done. KW: They are pretty. When you were growing up can you remember any ‘outlaws’ in your days? VG: No. KW: None at all? Did you ever hear of any murders or stealing? VG: Yes, I had heard of stealing’s. I guess there were murderers, but not around here. But over in Ashe (County) there were a bunch of children…they were about grown…but they would just steal everything that was loose. They would steal from anybody that had a barn and a lot of chickens. They would steal the eggs and chickens. KW: Just for meanness? VG: Well, I suppose that maybe they would cook the chickens and eat the eggs. I don’t know what they did with them, but I know that bunch of children used to get our eggs and steal our chickens. They did that everywhere. KW: Can you remember any superstitions when you were growing up? VG: Yes, one was not to walk under a ladder. KW: That one still exists today. VG: Yes. Everybody always thought that Friday the 13th was unlucky and everybody would try to be so careful. Another one was not to cut your fingernails on Sunday. KW: Why? VG: I don’t know. KW: I have never heard that one. VG: People said that it was ‘bad luck’ to cut your fingernails on Sunday. KW: Did you ever plant your garden by signs? VG: Well, I didn’t know what the ‘signs’ were, but my mother always planted by the signs. This 10 �lady Mrs. Trivette that lives across the way over there in the white house…she always planted by the signs. KW: A lot of people do that still today. VG: I know. My mama always said to plant cucumbers and beans when the signs were in the ‘Twins’ (the Gemini astrology sign between May 21 to June 21) because there would be a higher yield. She would have a lot more beans and cucumbers and they would make kraut. Well, they still do that and pickle beans. Mama always made it (sauerkraut) when the sign was, I believe, in the ‘Head.’ And pickled beans. KW: Well, did the Depression affect your family very much? VG: No. KW: Really? You always had what you wanted? VG: Well, not what we wanted, but you had enough to get by. KW: Were you married? VG: Yes. KW: How many children did you have? VG: Two. Ages two and three. Fayne was born during the Depression. KW: Oh, was he? VG: We bought this home here. Bought the land and we eventually got the house built on it. We built the house enough so we could live in it and we just kept building. But I really didn’t….because I have always made gardens and grew all the vegetables. We used to always keep hogs. We never did keep beef, but we always bought half of beef or something in the fall then would ‘can’ it. KW: That helped a lot. VG: Sure did and we had our own pork you know. I was having a hard time, but I had one before. I don’t know if they were any different. I still just work as hard as I can. KW: Good for you. VG: I love to work. 11 �KW: What was your husband’s job during the Depression? VG: Truck driver. He owned his own truck and hauled lumber all the time. KW: You said that you always had enough food during the Depression, right? VG: Always had enough food. You could take fifty cents and buy a whole shopping bag (of food). KW: Could you really? VG: You could really buy just as much food. KW: What did you do about lights before electrical appliances came in? VG: We had lamps, kerosene lamps for several years before we got power. We had two Aladdin lamps and then just lots of little lamps. Just all over the house and we would go around and light them. KW: And blow them out when you went to bed? VG: Blow them out when you went to bed and light them when you got up. We just washed the lamp chimneys and trimmed the wicks. KW: What was your first electrical appliance? VG: A washing machine and an iron. KW: Was that after you were married? VG: Oh, yes. We didn’t have power until, I believe Kent was a baby before we got power through here. I don’t know how long it’s been…it was the REA (1935 Rural Electrification Act). KW: That is what you had? VG: Yes, and we got it just as soon as they were available and then a washing machine and an iron. KW: I bet you were tickled with that? VG: I sure was and I also had a refrigerator. Kerosene I believe and for several years before we got power. We had a Delco light plant (a small generator that farmers used for electricity). We had lights and we had a refrigerator that you had to run this plant (the Delco) to build up the power. We didn’t have (consistent) electricity until the power line came through. 12 �We had this Delco plant for several years before the power line came through. I forgot about that. We had a building up here in the back with that light plant in it. KW: Where is it at now? VG: Oh, daddy sold it years and years ago. I can’t remember who bought it. Somebody back in the country bought it before they got power. I can’t remember who. KW: Tell me about some of the homemade remedies you had for medicines when you were younger? VG: Well, I’ll just have to tell you what mama did. If some of my children got sick, she doctored them for years. She would make catnip tea and onion poultice (Onion poultices are used for moving toxins out through the blood, lymph and skin in cases of bruising, swelling, and inflammation that causes pain). Now, I don’t know how she made them, but she roasted an onion poultice and I can’t remember what she put with it. But she would make that when one was so tight in the chest. Put that on the chest. She used to make pennyroyal tea. Do you know what pennyroyal is? KW: No. VG: Well, it grows out in the fields. It has a little blue flower on it and I don’t know what she made that for. I mean, I don’t know what she doctored for, but I remember making it. That’s about all I can remember other than salves and stuff like that. She used Vicks salve as far back as I can remember it. KW: Do you remember who was the first doctor in your community? VG: After I moved up here, Dr. Blackburn. He lived in Todd, but he was our doctor and you had to ride horseback, the doctor would. He was with me when my first baby was born and when Fayne was born. Dr. J.B. Hagaman, Sr. was with me when Anna Lee was born. Dr. Triplett from Wilkes was with me when the rest of them were born. They were all born here at home. KW: In your opinion, what do you think makes a good mother? VG: Well, I think being Christian and I think staying home with your children and raising them yourself and not leaving them with somebody else. I think correcting them and making them mind, making them work. All of these things is what I did. I punished them if they didn’t… KW: How did you punish them? VG: I whipped them with a hickory (switch). That’s the way I punished them. Walter was always 13 �gone. He was just always away from home and I was just here with the five boys and you know how they can fight and carry one. So I just whipped (them). KW: Do you think people raise their children different today? VG: Oh, yes. You know when I was a girl, girls didn’t ever go anywhere by themselves or with a boyfriend. There were always somebody with them and they didn’t date like they do now. What we did on Sunday afternoons were all the neighborhood children would get together and play ball or some kind of game. One Sunday we would gather and play at someone’s house and another Sunday, another house. Just a whole bunch of boys and girls. We played all kinds of games. We used to ride horses, take turns you know. Someone would take a ride and then another would ride. Things like that. There was nowhere to go except church. We went to church and you would come back home and you had dinner. Several would be there for dinner and we would go home with each other from church and spend the evenings together and have a good time. KW: Sounds like you did. VG: We did have a good time. But everybody went home in time to do up the evening work. They had their chores to do and they had to go home and do them. They knew better than not to (to neglect chores) because back then children, they would mind their parents and if they didn’t they got in trouble. They would tell their children what time to come home and the children were there at that time. KW: What did people when they were dating each other? VG: They went to church and the boys would go home with the girls from church. That was all we did. We just went to church. KW: It’s different from today isn’t it? VG: I know. There were no shows (movies) to go to like they do now. There just wasn’t anything to do but go to church and sometimes in the fall, we would have corn shuckings. Just a whole bunch of people getting together…young people and shuck corn and we’d play games. I can’t remember how the game worked exactly, but every once in a while you would find a red-ear of corn and you would get a prize for that. I can’t remember what the prize was. That’s all we did. If children now were like they were back then, they would have had a much better time than now because there wouldn’t be so many things to do and they would be happy just to get to play. I always had to work, I didn’t have much time to play. I was the oldest girl and there were eight children (siblings), so I took care of them, washed and cook. I was always busy. 14 �KW: Okay, mama Greer, I want to ask you one more question. If you could change anything in this world, what would you change? VG: There are so many things that I’d change. I wouldn’t know which would be the most important one. I really don’t. I just don’t know. KW: Is there more than one thing that you would like to change? VG: Yes. There are a lot of things that I want to see changed. KW: Well, tell me one or two of them. VG: Let me see…..one thing that I would change is the way young people do and I’d also change a lot of things that the older people do. I’m just ‘old timey’ and I just like things to be done right and good. I just want everybody to do what’s right. KW: That’s the best way to be isn’t it? VG: Oh, I’d just give anything if my children were all Christians and just lived life that I would love them to. I think that I would be the happiest person in this world to see all my children ‘saved’ and all of them in church with my grandchildren. END OF INTERVIEW 15 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Artist Greer, Viola (interviewee) Ward, Karen (interviewer) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:33, Making 1uilts Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Viola N. Greer, June 14, 1943 Description An account of the resource Viola N. Greer was born on March 27, 1906 in Crandall, Tennessee, moving to Watauga County after she married Walter Greer and had two children Walter and Annie Lee. Her parents were Arthur and Martha Nichols Smith who were from Wilkes County, but had met in Tennessee. Her father bought timber for sawmills. As an adult she lived one year in Montana, then Ashe and Lenoir counties before returning to the Deep Gap area of Watauga County, where her children were reared. She died on November 2, 2003 at the age of 97. During the interview Mrs. Greer talked about her parents, the importance of religion, quilting, making soap, superstitions such as walking under ladders, and planting by the signs. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Greer, Viola N. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 14-Jun-73 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 15 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant <kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0"><Folder><name>OpenLayers export</name><description>Exported on Thu Oct 24 2013 14:19:10 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)</description></Folder></kml>||||osm Watauga County (N.C.) Subject The topic of the resource Greer, Viola N.--Interviews Christian women--Religious life--North Carolina--Watauga County Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century Tennessee--Social life and customs--20th century Quilting--North Carolina--Watauga County Deep Gap making quilts religion Tennessee Watauga County N.C.