The Communities and Characters of Tennessee Mountain Stories

Whenever I have the opportunity to meet folks who are interested in reading my Tennessee Mountain Stories, I am often asked which book comes first – where you should start.  Until now, all of the novels were stand-alone, independent stories.  Now, of course, Gracie’s Babies is a sequel to Margaret’s Faith.

However, because all of the stories are set on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau and largely around the Martha Washington, Campground and Roslin communities, there is a natural overlap of characters.  I don’t care to admit that it is a challenge to keep them all straight, but it’s one of the things I love about telling these stories based on actual history. 

These days we don’t much know our neighbors, and that’s a very sad evolution in American communities.  If you’re sick you can go to a doctor who doesn’t live anywhere near you, doesn’t know your history beyond the medical facts he has in his chart, and certainly doesn’t know your family.  If you’re in need you can go to the government welfare office and they will give you vouchers for groceries and pay your bills without the concern for your eternal condition that the church would have shown back when they were the ones helping the needy.  In the same way, your neighbors may never know when your children are baptized, when you overcome a bout of depression that threatened to suck the life from you, or when God blesses you till your cup overflows.

Back in Gracie and Stephen Ingle’s day, things were different.  Women had no doctor or hospital to run to when they were expecting their babies, they relied on local “Granny-Women” to assist them in labor and delivery.  When sickness struck a home and the man of the house was unable to work the crop it was the neighbors who had to come to the rescue; neighbors came and prepared the body of loved ones who had passed away; and entire communities rejoiced when a family was blessed with a child or visitor or abundant harvest.  The sense of community was strong and somehow despite the lack of modern conveniences and long days of really hard work, neighbors knew each other and spent time fellowshipping together.

I write in Gracie’s Babies that the Ingle family goes all the way to Clarkrange to church, a distance of about 3 ½ miles (on today’s roads) and that they only periodically have a circuit preacher visit.  They were travelling to Bruner’s Chapel which is now known as the Clarkrange Methodist Church.  A few years earlier they would have travelled about the same distance to the Campground Church which was a building shared by the Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist congregations.  The Martha Washington Freewill Baptist Church would be established some time later only a mile from the Ingle farms.  It doesn’t seem like a long distance to us, but aboard a buckboard wagon or walking in the cold, I imagine it was quite a journey.  Yet that was the best time for fellowship and I even imagine the trip itself was a time to visit as individuals and families would join you along the way.  Even with just two choices of churches, if you weren’t in the same congregation with one of your neighbors then you wouldn’t be quite as close them, as was the case with the Ingles and the Englands.

As I look down the road to future books, I’m eager to continue to weave this tapestry of lives and families that populated our plateau communities.  Of course there were new people coming and going, especially as economic opportunities grew with mines and timber operations, and we’ll get to know some of those folks as well.  Maybe some of these characters will even inspire you to spend some time getting to know your modern-day neighbors.

History, TImeline and Setting of Gracie's Babies

Gracie’s Babies opens in about 1890 – if you preveiously read Margaret’s Faith, remember that Gracie was born while The Civil War still raged, and she’s just about 18 now.  She has grown up on her grandparents’ Tennessee farm in northern Cumberland County.

This community of Elmore may not quite be a ghost town as there are still families calling it home.  However, you can no longer walk to the railhead in Isoline – in fact you’ll have to drive completely off the Cumberland Plateau to see a real, live train – except for the sand train that’s running in Monterey these days.  Elmore never had its own post office, but they had a school – and if any reader has a picture of that school, I would dearly love to see it and share it with the rest of y’uns.

Within a few chapters, Gracie moves with her new husband to Martha Washington.  There, a large family had relocated from Virginia in the years following the war.  They had a school at Martha Washington but had to go all the way to Clarkrange to get their mail.  The Martha Washington community is still alive today with families and farms, just as Elmore is.  However, the school moved first to Clarkrange (in about 1962) and then to Grimsley in the 1990’s.

The Martha Washington Road was re-surfaced and re-routed in the 1970’s and by-passed the location of Uncle Bill’s grist mill on Slate Creek.  The “new” road cuts right through the pasture field and path between Gracie and Lottie’s homes.   The Todd family, who are the inspiration for the Ingles, are still present in one form or another, and many still live along that Martha Washington Road.  However, properties have sold and other families are now interspersed in the area once home to the large family. 

With indoor plumbing and blessed automatic washing machines, ladies no longer need to gang up and go to the spring to do their laundry – somehow I think laundry might not be quite as much fun now, although it is considerably easier.

The route from Elmore to Martha Washington was the Kentucky Stock Road.  Now known as Highway 127, it was also re-routed in the 1970’s and there’s still a considerable descent down toward Clear Creek, however, the car’s brakes don’t screech and there’s no need to stop at the bottom and let the old horse blow – your car will just cruise right up the other side.  Somehow there’s not so much adventure in the trip anymore and the swinging bridge across the Ferry Hole is long since gone – I know of it only from stories and never saw it myself. 

So many things have changed, I hope that both these blog stories, as well as the setting of books like Gracie’s Babies can paint you a mental picture of the life on the Cumberland Plateau 130 years ago.

The Inspiration for Gracie’s Babies

aunt Gracie, PICTURED WITH HER HUSBAND, Stephen, AND HER FATHER

The Inspiration for Gracie’s Babies

If you’ve been reading Tennessee Mountain Stories for long at all, you will know that the novels I write are inspired by local characters – and we’ve had some real characters to choose from! 

Because these stories are fictional, I do change the names and don’t often say a whole lot about where the inspiration originates.  However, the inspiration for Gracie Ingle in my latest book, Gracie’s Babies, is so widely known and loved that she can scarcely be anonymous.

I’ve written before about Aunt Gracie Todd and all of the lives she touched as a local midwife.   Here was an article here about the records she left behind of some of the births she assisted.

As I talked to some people who knew her well, they could only praise her.  In fact, one neighbor called her an “angel among women.”  As I researched other mountain midwifes, I found similar sentiment.  Either this was the nature of a woman who would rush to your bedside at any hour of the day or night, or maybe you’d naturally feel that affinity for someone who came to help you in one of your most vulnerable hours.  Whichever the case, Aunt Gracie Todd was much loved and today, some sixty years after her death, her name is still often spoken and fondly remembered.

Aunt Gracie’s granddaughter, Kathleen Carroll, grew up in the house with her and she has been a real blessing to me as I sought to learn about this woman who would star in my story.  Many little details from the story are true to Gracie’s life.  She did make a habit of changing her dress before going into her house, lest she bring home unwanted pests from some of the sadder places she visited.  However, there was never any mention that there were places she was not willing to go to help someone in need.

The property where I’ve set Gracie’s Babies was the home place of Ray Buck’s grandparents.  So he spent a lot of time there through the years and certainly heard stories about it.  He talked about the ladies of the family gathering at the spring to do their wash and that was such a neat thing I’ve included it in the story. 

These real-life facts are so interesting to me that I know I could not imagine better scenes to include in my books.  And I am more grateful than I can express to the people who answer my endless questions and share their memories of these precious people from the past with me.

Announcing Gracie's Babies

I don’t think I can ever explain to you how much it moves and honors me when I meet readers or receive email from you saying that you enjoyed one of my books.  When you ask if there’s another one coming it’s especially exciting.  Honestly, when I wrote Margaret’s Faith I don’t think I imagined I’d ever write another one.  Then there was Replacing Ann, followed by Plans for Emma, and I am so thrilled to tell you that Gracie’s Babies is now available!

In the next few weeks I’ll tell you a little more about the story, the inspiration behind it and even my plans for the next book. 

The books are available online at Amazon.com – both in print and ebook formats.  By next week you’ll be able to pick-up a copy at Hall’s Family Pharmacy in both their Jamestown and Clarkrange locations, the Homestead Tower Museum in Crossville, or, if you’re up in the Smokies, you can find a copy at French’s Shoes and Boots either in Sevierville or in Pigeon Forge.  As I make those deliveries, I’ll post on Facebook so you can have realtime updates if you follow Author Beth Durham  (@AuthorBethDurham).

As always, I really hope you will leave a review on Amazon as that’s a great way to spread the word that the book is out there and worth your time to read it.

Following is the synopsis from the back of the book so you’ll have an idea of what’s inside:

While accompanying her grandmother on a neighborhood visit, Gracie Berai learns a skill that will change her life when she must deliver the young woman’s baby.  Gracie is terrified as events spin around her but Grandma Elmore immediately recognizes that Gracie has a gift for midwifing.  Gracie continues to learn from her grandmother and when she moves to Martha Washington with her new husband word quickly spreads and her help is sought again and again.  Is this really the role God would have for a newly-married girl?

Soon Gracie has a thriving practice.  She’s happy to serve God and her community in this way; however, her own dream of a large family is not materializing.  She struggles with the Lord and feels His promise that He will bless her with children if she will obey him.  She never doubts God will be faithful to his word, but how long must she wait?

As you walk with Gracie among her mountain people, you will see her own faith grow as she shares God’s love and healing with her family and neighbors.

Gracie’s Babies is a sequel to Margaret’s Faith.

Revival Meetings

Revival MeetingsMy church has been in revival this week and coincidentally there’s also a revival meeting in the early chapters of Gracie’s Babies.  So, as we met an evangelist and prayed for the Spirit to move, my mind had already been on a “protracted meeting” and I couldn’t help but make a mental comparison.

You may recall in some of the writings by Callie Melton that I shared here last year, she talked about preachers coming into the neighborhood to hold “protracted meetings” – I like that term.  I guess that while we schedule special gospel meetings for 3-5 days they opened a revival and kept it open so long as the Spirit was moving.  And the Spirit did not disappoint in many of those meetings. 

Meeting in brush arbors or hot church houses, the crowd would often be standing room only.  Families walked, rode a mule or drove rough wagons sometimes for hours to attend.  Even in the 1980’s I remember revival meetings that were standing room only, and we didn’t have air conditioning for those August dates either. 

Today we’ll drive to church on smoothly paved roads in temperature controlled cars, sit in cool sanctuaries on padded seats.  There will be electric lights so no matter how late the preacher holds you, there’s little chance you’ll be sitting in the dark and a sound system ensures even those in the back of the building clearly hear the sermon.  Yet we’ll be lucky to have half the seats filled (okay that statement was void of any faith, wasn’t it?)

In the upcoming book, the Clear Creek Baptist Church hosts a traveling evangelist who preaches for a full week.  Gracie, the book’s protagonist, has to miss the first meeting as she attends a sick neighbor.  While she’s deeply blessed to be at the bedside there’s a pang of regret at missing the revival service – and all the action her sister comes home to report.  Not to fear though, Gracie and her family will make it to every other meeting that week as will young people from all of the surrounding communities.  It’s clear that the Bible lessons are only part of what those teens want from the services yet they eagerly participate in that part as well as the fellowship with old and new friends alike.

In fact, the meetings of old truly did revive those attending.  I’m not sure what’s changed in our crowds or our hearts since then but I sure wish we could get back to something close to the spirit of those protracted meetings.