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.