Mountaineer families lived off the land

K.W. Stanley / "History in the Valley"
Published: April 22, 2008

Mountaineers by the early 1900s were regarded as primitive, uneducated and backward by urban progressives who pursued a modern lifestyle. They failed to understand mountain families who preferred a simple life in mountain areas living off the land. After World War I, these urban progressives and businessmen encouraged elected leaders to acquire mountain and forest lands for parks to promote tourism. By the 1920s, the U.S. Forest Service purchased large forested areas in Appalachia known as the Shenandoah and Natural Bridge in Virginia; the Boone (Pisgah) in North Carolina; the Nantahala in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia; the Cherokee in Tennessee; the Unaka in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee; and the Monongahela in West Virginia.
Mountaineers of Scots-Irish and English descent resided in the Appalachia and Blue Ridge since the late 1700s. These people traded in a barter economy before the Civil War and a cash economy after the war. Mountaineers hired out for seasonal work in orchards or on farms to earn cash for basics.
Distilled “corn squeezings” were sold as “shine” for cash in the Valley. Mountaineers cut wood to build cabins, barns and fences, and use in heating and cooking. Other forest resources were used for clothes, dyes, medicines, food and sweets.
Clothing was made from bolt cloth purchased in general stores and from beaver, muskrat, gray fox, raccoon, possum, and deer furs. Dyes used for clothes included blue from indigo and red from madder, while butternut, walnut, bloodroot, hickory, oak, poke berries, sumac and goldenrod provided shades of brown, yellow and green. Homemade medicines included wild cherry bark for cough medicines; sassafras, catnip, horehound and pennyroyal for upset stomachs; willow leaves for fever; pitch pine for wounds; cooked pine needles for toothaches; and rhododendrum oil for rheumatism.
Mountain families cultivated corn and other vegetables in small gardens, had a cow for milk, some chickens and a few pigs to slaughter in the fall for cured hams. Chestnut and hickory nuts were available from the forests and traded at general stores. Berries were found at the edge of forests, including huckleberries, blackberries and raspberries. Deer, grouse, gray squirrels and bears were hunted for meat. Stone ground cornmeal or buckwheat were available from gristmills. Apple trees provided fruit. Sweetners were made from honey found in hives. Syrup was made from sorgham or maple tree sap.
Each fall, mountain families came together to make apple butter and play mountain music using the fiddle, dulcimer and banjo. Apple butter was made in a big copper kettle and stirred with a long-handled wood paddle. Mountain women gathered Pippin apples, then peeled, cored and sliced five bushels. Snits (sliced apple sections) were kept overnight in a stoneware crock. The cores and peels were cooked in the kettle to remove the copper taste. The kettle was then cleaned with vinegar and salt. Before sunrise the next morning, the kettle bottom was covered with water, and pennies added to keep the apple butter from sticking to the bottom while stirred. Apple snits were added in an amount that could be stirred continually. The kettle was brought to a boil and allowed to continue bubbling. More apples were added as they cooked down. The stirring continued. After six hours, 20-25 pounds of sugar were added. Before the kettle was removed from the fire, an ounce of flavoring would be added, such as oil of cinnamon. The apple butter was then put in glass jars and sealed.
This apple butter and music tradition is celebrated each fall on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Mabry Mill and on the Skyline Drive at Skyland Resort.
K.W. Stanley is a Waynesboro resident, historian and TNV correspondent. Contact him at .