"If I had a Remembrance Book..."

Do you remember Laura Ingall's opening line, "If I had a remembrance book..." as she thought of all the things she would surely write down?  Do you have such a book?  Are you one of those folks that has volumes of bound books lined up on a shelf with all of your thoughts and emotions carefully chronicled?

I know that journaling can be a wonderful tool for many people.  Whether you are writing your deepest thoughts or jotting down craft ideas, just putting pen to paper sorts thoughts and solidifies ideas.  I confess that I have never consistently kept a journal even though I realize the benefits.  But I sure am glad other folks have kept them and today I want to share one example with you.

Lottie Perie Todd was my great-great-grandmother.  She lived her entire adult life in Martha Washington, Tennessee where she raised eleven children, encouraged innumerable neighbors, helped to start a Sunday School and finally passed away in 1948 at the age of seventy-six.  During the last few years of her life she was bedridden and during this period which she recorded many of the ordinary happenings in her home.

She records major historical events such as, “Surrender of Germany May 7, 1945”.  She records the weather, “Snow December 31, 1945”.  She records both visitors to her home and visits made by her household, “April 5 Thomas came,” and “April 6 Delsie visited Mrs. Cooper”.  She records purchases made for the household, “November 12 Dad got a well chain…” as well as gifts given to them, “April 29 Tom gave me a tablet”.  She records the progress of the family canning, “July 24 canned four jars of preserved peaches and eleven quarts canned peaches and thirteen quarts of blackberries and eleven jars of cucumber pickles”. 

When Lottie’s health rendered her too weak to write, her daughter Delsie assumed the responsibility.  Do you imagine that while Lottie was feeling low, the continuance of this report was a comfort to her?  September 16, 1946 she notes “The last letters I wrote.  I have quit my writing.”  This must have been a very sad day for her.  However, by July 1947, a new book opens with, “Clarence, Mary [and] Jerry went to visit Dewey and Ova [and] went fishing.  Mary picked blackberries.”

There are several little books that span 1944 through 1948.  They mention what today would seem a tiny gift such as fifty cents but there is also a silk gown gifted to Lottie.  She is sending grandsons off to war while welcoming new babies.  She records purchases of a broom, mop and hog feed.  Cows have calves, her son-in-law’s mare dies and all are noted.  From these simple facts jotted down in plain notebooks, we glimpse the daily life of her extended family.

It isn’t hard to read between the lines and see real emotion.  With a family tree beside the books, it’s easy to trace the identities of most of the characters and if you know the community, the neighbors come into focus as well.  Lottie worries for family members and neighbors equally.  Her concern is clear for a grandchild receiving treatments for eczema and for her daughter who will have to pay $40.50 to have her son’s tonsils removed.   When Cal Farley dies suddenly, her heart goes out to the Farley family and her husband and daughter go to visit the widow.  When she learns that a neighbor’s son has received a prison sentence for an accident resulting from drunken driving she is as shocked and hurt as his own parents.

I’ve read through this diary several times and I find myself more interested each time.  Somehow, it draws me into their lives just as a well-written novel does and I find that truly funny since I spend so much energy trying to develop characters and plot lines that leave my readers glued to the pages.  This is the original reality show and today’s often-bizarre reality TV has nothing on it. 

It is beautiful to see the constant stream of visitors coming to see this invalid.  On her seventy-fourth birthday she is surrounded by loved ones including Reverend Bilbrey, Reverend Robinson and Reverend Tinch – three preachers and let me assure you that there were no mega-churches in the vicinity employing a full preaching staff. 

Sweeter still is that this little home was so open and welcoming.  People must have enjoyed being there or they would not have come again and again.  People came to stay the night or the weekend; they brought what they could spare and shared whatever the Todds had.  While Lottie lay bedridden, her family came alongside her and continued to manage the garden, livestock and household making her final years no doubt as joyous as though this illness had never befallen her.

She also kept a scrapbook with cards, newspaper clippings, a few letters she received as well as small gifts.  There are several souvenir handkerchiefs from France and Belgium as well as a Japanese Yen no doubt sent by family and neighbors serving in World War II.

I suppose the primary reason I’ve never kept a journal was simply lack of anything to record.  Mrs. Lottie Todd might have thought she had nothing exciting going on in her little world, yet she has left a work that four generations later is still touching hearts and bringing smiles.  Do you think in sixty or seventy years our children and grandchildren might be interested to read about the things we do in our simple little lives? 

Like it or not, Things Change

WIlder, Tennessee
This beautiful picture of autumn colors is perfect for our subject since the boom town of Wilder has seen so many changes over the last century.

Photo courtesy of Donnie Douglas

For those of us who love history and historical things, change can seem anything but encouraging.  I am not a fan of change – in fact, I downright dislike it.  Yet in the same breath I will tell you that I love both Spring and Fall and both of these are seasons of change.  One of my favorite, historic places has recently undergone a great, and seemingly devastating change.

Key Town, which you have read about many times in my writings, has fallen to the logger’s saw.  It’s not the first time trees were harvested from this little patch of land, and no doubt it will again produce a harvest of hard woods.  And I do enjoy the products of logging, everything from Kleenex to photographs and for Pete’s sake, I’m a writer and I do want my books printed on actual paper.  Still, it’s hard to look at the land stripped bare in places, at the old roads obliterated by a skidder’s tracks and rutted by heavily loaded trucks without feeling a pang of heartbreak. 

I try to avoid places like that because I know it will just hurt my feelings to see it.  And then I listen to the rustle of drying leaves blowing in a gentle autumn breeze and the smile it brings to my face reminds me that all change is not bad.  In fact, even negative changes make way for something good.

I recently had the opportunity to revisit Key Town.  It isn’t as it was in my childhood – and in those years, it was not as it had been in my grandmother’s youth.  Thinking about the changes this place has seen turned my thoughts to change in general.

My current writing project is inspired by a woman who lived eighty-nine years, passing away in 1959.  She was born just four years after the end of The Civil War (her father was a veteran of that war) and she lived through both world wars (she saw her grandson march off to WWII) as well as the Korean Conflict.  Her life began by candlelight and ended with not only electric bulbs but radio, television and the harnessing of nuclear power.  Do you think this woman knew about change?

She would have known Key Town very well and I wonder how she would feel walking along the loggers’ roads.  I imagine she would mourn the loss of the homes where friends had lived and the memories that were created there.  She would think of the families and the hardships and the joys they experienced.  And probably, she would rejoice that the timber was harvested rather than wasted.  I believe she would embrace much of the change that has taken place not just in tiny Key Town, but across the whole Cumberland Plateau.

As I slowly walked my horse along the new paths in Key Town, I couldn’t help but reflect on the changes that must have taken place here over the years.  You will recall the story a few weeks ago about the Indian paintings at Bridge Rock.  Those first Americans walked across the mountain leaving only a few arrow heads and paintings to mark the way for those to come behind them.  Then, European settlers began to infiltrate Appalachia first with the long hunters then families hacking out tiny homesteads.  When the homes of Key Town were built – the homes that my grandparents remembered – the land would have already witnessed many changes.  Then, when the roadways passed the little community by and the last homes were abandoned, the forest began to reclaim it.  Trees grew, along with blackberry briars and weeds which made passage increasingly difficult.  By the time I was out of high school, a thicket of pines had so filled one of the little fields that I could no longer comfortably get my horse through them.  Now, in this latest phase of changes, the removal of so many trees allows easy movement through the whole area. 

My generation has seen a lot of progress as the computer industry has reached into and affected every aspect of our lives.  But those changes pale in comparison to what was seen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  They saw their lives radically changed, but in ways that we now take for granted to a degree that we would be hard pressed to live without them.  I know that lots of the innovations of the industrial revolution were initially scoffed at and rejected.  But inventors persevered, just as the loggers persevered through hot weather, mud and broken equipment to see the mature trees hauled out of Key Town.

Even as I continue to resist many changes – razing of historic buildings or submerging farms and cemeteries to ensure flood control of other lands – I realize how much I enjoy the roads that now run through what used to be historic neighborhoods and the power generated by hydro-electric plants.  In a similar fashion, the bright red of dogwood leaves and golden yellow on maples which I am enjoying today will quickly give way to barren limbs and the stark greys of winter.  But only by facing that bleak landscape do we catch a glimpse of glittering snowflakes, evergreens contrasting against a blanket of snow and finally crocuses peeking through brown leaves and melting ice.

This new look at progress and change cannot dull the pain of lost pieces of history.  Still I have my memories – and along with a number of other folks, I am striving to preserve those memories and stories and to share them with you.  It makes me feel that the most beautiful things we have from yesterday are the stories that we tell today.  I am so thankful for the family and neighbors who have told the old stories again and again until they are written in my heart.  It’s that wealth of tales which allows me to create the fictional characters in historical novels who will remind us of so many who went before, and it is my hope that those characters will reach out to readers for years to come and reveal to them the beauty of our home and our heritage on the mountain.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”  Romans 8:28

Was Grandma a Clotheshorse?

Let’s talk about fashion – historical-fashion.  I want to confess right up front that I’m a fine one to be blogging on fashion.  You are more likely to find me in faded jeans than a stylish dress - sneakers instead of shiny pumps, and frankly I do not understand why anyone would choose low-rise-skinny jeans or platform shoes.  However, as I develop characters for historical novels, I find that I really need to decide whether the farmer's wife is trailing skirts through the mud or if she donned a pair of baggy overalls.  Were those women who spent their days beside a spinning wheel or pulling the beater of a loom wearing hoop skirts?

 Fashion has long been advertised.  Women of the nineteenth century didn't have the dozens of glossy magazines that assault us in every grocery aisle, but they did have Godey’s Lady’s Book to inform them of the latest trends, how and when to wear the popular fashions.  The question I've been asking myself was just how much were our neighbors of yesteryear driven by fashion trends?

Today, anything goes.  I occasionally see pictures from the big fashion shows, but I've honestly never seen most of those styles on the street.  I suppose I would assume that we are more influenced by designers and the styles of celebrities today because we are much more exposed to them.  We see them captured by the paparazzi in every phase of their lives.  It wasn't many years ago that unless you happened upon them in Hollywood or New York City, the only face of an actor you ever saw was the one he presented to his public.   So, it's hard to imagine Clark Gable mowing the lawn in a stained t-shirt, or Vivian Leigh grocery shopping in sweats.  But if I write about a lady trying to make her living as an actress in the 1930’s then I need to decide how she spent her off-camera hours, and what she chose to wear in those times.

My time period is usually half a century before that, and fashion changed a great deal in that span of time - which leads me to my second confession of the day.  Try though I may, my image of history is colored by the classic movies that have portrayed those periods.  Hence I turn once again to Gone With The Wind... (Mammy in her full skirts giving Rhett a tiny peek at her red silk petticoat and Scarlett declaring she’ll wear an off-the-shoulder dress to the barbeque at Twelve Oaks despite the scandal Mammy is sure it will cause.)  The beautiful dresses that David Selznick dressed his actresses in represented a fashion trend that lasted only a few years. 

Hooped skirts measuring up to six feet and corsets cinching waists down to eighteen inches were the culminations of several decades of ever-widening skirts.  Initially the look was achieved with layers of petticoats.  The use of a hooped cage allowed the volume without the layers and weight. 

As I read and researched, my question really was how popular were the voluminous garments?  I was just sure that only the very fashion-conscious, higher society folk were wearing them – certainly no one who worked for a living or did their own cleaning would own one, it just wasn’t practical and we know that poor people are always practical, right?  Wrong.  These new crinolines were very economical, allowing all classes of women to afford them.  The invention of the sewing machine in 1851 and the development of commercial weaving through the nineteenth century further allowed less expensive clothing that more women could have access to.

There are no statistics that register how many women in each socio-economic classes bought crinoline cages, so I have to derive popularity from other factors.  One article noted that every week there was a newspaper notice about a fire starting when someone’s skirts overturned a candle.  Additionally, the mills and factories established policies that crinolines were not to be worn to work.  These two stories certainly indicate to me that truly all classes of women were enjoying the hooped skirts.  We should certainly note that for the lady of class, who wore several different dresses each day, the crinoline was not usually worn with her work dress.  This lady would wear a small crinoline with her day dress which she wore after her chores were completed, then larger hoops in the evening with her evening or ball gown.

Certainly the urban environments were more driven by fashion trends.  Rural folks changed their styles far less often and definitely dominated the group requiring serviceable clothing.  Moreover, factory-made cloth was still less available in the country where spinning and weaving were still being done in the home well into the 20th century in Appalachia.  However, periodicals were readily available even in rural America and while there were no glossy photographs with close-ups of details, the details of the fashions were described.  For women skilled with needle and thread, that is all that would be necessary for them to sew very fashionable clothing for their families.  These seamstresses would be able even to alter hand-me-downs or last year’s dress to tailor the previously-puffed sleeves, smooth the front of a full skirt and add a bustle or remove the lace collar that is no longer desired.

And now I am reminded why I have to continually research – the twenty-first century invariably affects my perception of history.  If I intend to paint a reasonably accurate word-picture of the ladies in my books, I have to start with the right image in mind.  So when I picture the hard working, often impoverished women of rural Appalachia in the mid-nineteenth century I know their clothing reflected a necessarily practical way of life but I must also remember that they took pride in their appearance and when they had the opportunity to go to church, a wedding or a party, their clothing would mirror the description presented in last month’s edition of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the letter from a second cousin who visited the big city or what was in the pattern books at the general store.

Godey's THE BOOK of the 19th Century

After working on Makin’ Music last week, I was researching a completely unrelated subject when, guess what – I fell into another historical entertainment subject.  Reading.

Okay, reading is a very current – actually timeless – mode of entertainment.  And surely, those of you who would want to read this blog would undoubtedly be prolific readers.  Did you ever wonder what folks read in years past?  Sure, we have lots of books written over the last two hundred years that have been re-printed and we are still enjoying them.  But what about the time we spend reading magazines and newspapers?  How was that different in years past?

Until very recently, newspapers were a primary source of news and information in our country.  Even in our digital age, we still have newspapers printing every day in every major city and most small towns in the country.  We know that historically news was disseminated via periodicals that were read and re-read.  My grandmother tells of a neighbor’s home that was papered in newsprint and she was so starved for reading material that she would stand and read the walls when visiting there. 

Certainly, libraries have long maintained vast collections of historical periodicals but now we have a growing online collection as well.  Project Gutenberg exists “to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks” (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Project_Gutenberg_Mission_Statement_by_Michael_Hart).

It is thanks to Project Gutenberg that I was able to read an entire issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, January 1851 and I’ve got to tell you, I was fascinated!  First of all, a word about the Lady’s Book – it was a premiere lady’s magazine published between 1830 and 1896 with a peak subscription of 150,000.  (The U.S. population in 1860 was 31 million, so that’s a readership of ½ percent of the population.  If that doesn’t sound like much, the top women’s magazine today is Better Homes and Gardens with a readership of just 2% - and the literacy rate in the U.S. is now 99% compared to 75% in the mid-nineteenth century.)  Whew, that sounded like a statistics report – suffice it to say that Godey’s was big in its day.  Of course, the selection of magazines was very different; in 1900 the country had 3,500 magazines compared to almost 7,400 today.

I must confess I’m not a big magazine reader.  So after reading this 1851 issue, I took a look at a couple of current, women’s magazines and was pretty shocked by the comparison.  Some of the differences are certainly to be expected from a basic understanding of the technological differences.  I do not have any idea how a big magazine is really printed, but since I can print beautiful color pages on my cheap little home printer, I can just imagine the power of commercial printing equipment.  And we can certainly see the product in glossy, full-color pages.  In fact, as I flip through the pages of today’s periodicals, they seem to be nothing but pictures.  The advertisements are pictures – and advertisements seem to occupy the lion’s share of the book.  The text of the magazine consists of blocks wrapping around images of fashion, cosmetics, furnishings and clothes. 

One of the magazines I reviewed was a Christmas edition and it is stunningly beautiful as decorations have been assembled in everything from cottages to mansions - in fact, one article was titled Merry Mansions. 

Compare all of this to Godey’s whose printing was largely limited to black-and-white and very heavy on text.  In fact, there are no less than three novels included in part within the issue.  The Gutenberg Project did not include page numbers in the digital rendering but the editor refers to the large size of the publication.  One the current magazines I used for comparison had one hundred ninety-three pages and only one page was predominately text, there were no fictional stories and certainly no poetry. 

Godey’s included numerous poems, a house plan and a description of proper fashion for the opera versus a party or informal dinner party.  I guess I was a little surprised that there weren’t more recipes and articles on homemaking.   However, there were several articles with directions for chenille work, making a head-dress and undersleeves.  Also, there was “A New Receipt for a Washing Mixture” which details a means of washing that require very little hand rubbing and I’m sure would have been most welcome by any homemaker of the 1850’s.

Rarely do I find modern writing that presents a value system and directly says, ‘this is what you ought to believe or how you should act’.  Certainly, most authors endeavor to persuade their readers in some point.  However, the editor’s page in 1851 pulled no punches on the “special gifts of God to men” and women’s unique talents.  This is in no way a religious publication, but she directly asserts that “these Bible truths will be the rule of faith and of conduct with every American wife and mother”.  Surely there is a social commentary there on the focus of Americans and the American media of that day.

Finally, a note on advertisements – and I include this in the end because that is where Godey’s placed their ads.  Instead of the colorful pictures of products, Godey’s listed numerous businesses complete with address and a word about their merchandise or services.  So small is this section that I could scarcely find it for reference.  Perhaps the publisher relied less on advertising dollars than we do today for it seems a subscription would cost ten dollars for ten years, a price vast enough in its day that groups of ladies pooled their money and shared each issue.

Makin' Music

Entertainment.  Billboard reported last year that by 2016 the entertainment industry would top two trillion dollars. Entertainment is pivotal to our modern lives – we think about it, we plan for it, we pay for it.  But how often do we work for it?

T.E. Hixson pictured with instruments he made.  Photo from article published in The Tennessean, no date is given on the clipping.

Can you imagine the day when if you wanted to hear music, you played it or sang it?  Such was the world for the Hixson family at the turn of the twentieth century.  T.E. Hixson fathered ten children, his brother Steve had six.  They entertained themselves, their families and neighbors with homemade instruments and God-given talent.  None had ever had formal lessons but they filled every venue they played – of course they played in living-rooms and front porches.  It was a weekly event and they had the reputation of being incredible musicians. 

The music was native to the mountains.  A mixture of Scottish, Irish, and African influences the lyrics praised God, mourned lost love and celebrated family.  They sang about the struggles they faced and the joys they celebrated.  Today we call this mountain music Bluegrass and Kentuckian Bill Monroe is known as the father of the genre.  But long before Mr. Monroe’s 1911 birth and far from his birthplace in Rosine, Kentucky, the Hixson family were enjoying the same music in Tennessee’s Sequatchie Valley.

Steve and Elbert (as T.E. was commonly called) grew up on the banks of the Sequatchie River where they farmed the rich bottom land, trapped and fished to churn out a subsistence living.  They were not accustomed to a lot of ‘store bought’ goods and at a young age each learned to make what he needed.   The boys talked little of their father in later years; he would pass down to his sons the farm and farming skills as well as a love of music and rich talent.  The talent they passed to their own children who played alongside them.  Outside of large orchestras, we are accustomed to bands of three to five members.  Of course the whole bunch wouldn’t have played at the same time when the Hixson families met, but it would surely have been closer to orchestra numbers than the Country and Western bands we know today. 

Bluegrass music is known for its improvisation.  These brothers and sisters who played alongside each other day after day could surely have anticipated the chord changes, the added notes and when each instrument would insert a quick run of notes instead of holding a single, long note.  They might have thought the word belonged to another language, but they improvised naturally. 

In that secluded valley, there were no music stores and no one importing finely crafted instruments from European master-craftsmen.  The Hixsons scarcely knew they were missing anything for they made their own instruments.  Whatever their Mountain Music required, the men made from the resources available to them.  Fiddles, banjos, mandolins and guitars were crafted for each member of the family.  When Elbert’s oldest daughter gave him his first grandchild, he declared she would be a fiddle-player and he made a child-sized instrument for her.  Over the next four years, four more grand-daughters were born and for each a small instrument was built. 

Elbert Hixson became so adept at and accustomed to building musical instruments that in his later years he sought new challenges.  He built a fiddle made entirely of matchsticks which was photographed and documented by numerous periodicals.  That one was a novelty and could never produce the sound he’d sought from earlier instruments – instruments that were played for years and in fact some of which are still around and in very playable condition after a hundred years of musical service.

T.E. Hixson holding a mandolin made from a gourd; his daughter Opal Hixson holds the match stick fiddle.

That beautiful valley still seems secluded despite modern roads, power lines and internet service.  It isn’t hard to imagine I can still hear a lingering hum of a dozen instruments celebrating the beauty of the harvest season and foretelling the gloom of winter.  I find myself inspired by these men who created music out of raw materials that valley produced and then passed the beauty of it to their children.