|
My Appalachian Heritage
by Douglas Ferguson, MHC '33
Douglas Ferguson wrote the following description of his heritage in 1979 for the dedication of Heritage, a ceramic mural at the entrance to Blackwell Hall that he created and donated to Mars Hill College. Born in 1912, he grew up on a farm in Yancey County. Many of the tools and household items that he grew up with are depicted on the mural -- spinning wheel, hay rake, churn, andirons, plow, oxen yoke, church steeple, wagon wheel.
The tools panel
|
Back in the late 1700s and the early 1800s, when the first settlers came into the Southern Appalachians, our whole country was so distinctly marked by a handicraft way of living that many rural Sections were about 95 percent self-sustaining. There was an abundance of natural materials that could be transformed into handcrafted articles of usefulness and beauty. Farmsteads had to be self-sufficient. In this mountainous area it was "make do or do without."
Our homestead was surrounded with wild locust, sourwood, oak, tulip poplar, chestnut, and pine bordered by tangles of laurel and rhododendron.
My boyhood days in the mountains of North Carolina were terribly important to me. Everything that is depicted in this Appalachian mural is an artifact that I grew up with on a mountain farm in Yancey County.
At an early age I helped my mother by churning the butter in a yellow poplar handmade churn. The butter was pressed in a one-pound mold, which had a sweet birch leaf design. All surplus butter was sold in the country store.
I used an oak split basket to collect the eggs. I also used baskets for gathering apples, digging potatoes, berry picking, gathering wood chips for starting fires, and many other daily chores.
During the winter months I gazed every night at the wood fire burning back of our large sturdy andirons. Early to bed, I slept on a goose feather ticking, the feathers that I yearly plucked from a flock of 10 to 12 large geese. Covering me were handmade comforters and quilts, stuffed with wool sheared from our own flock of about 60 sheep.
Our cast iron teakettle was used on top of our wood-fired cooking stove to heat water. It was also used in the autumn by the fireplace to boil freshly gathered chestnuts. In winter we boiled frozen apples in a teakettle by the fireside.
We always had several cedar piggins around the house. Spring running water always tasted better from a wooden piggin or a gourd dipper.
The beautiful glass-type kerosene lamp was common during my early childhood days. This type of lamp was made after 1850.
Sunbonnets were very common in my community. I first noticed how individual and colorful handmade sunbonnets could be when I had my first Sunday date at the age of 16.
My mother was an expert at spinning on the large spinning wheel. She knitted all our woolen long socks, mittens and heavy woolen sweaters dyed a beautiful blueblack.
Our field crops were corn, oats, rye, potatoes, and hay for winter feed. Sorghum cane was grown and also, broom-corn and popcorn.
I have seen old timers use the adze and broad axe with amazing skill and speed, and I have used the broad axe to make one-horse sleds from locust trees.
The reaping hook was not used much during my childhood but was sometimes used to cut grains that had fallen on the ground or to cut selected grains for seed. The grain cradle was used to cut oats, rye, and wheat.
The hillside plow was one of the most useful of farm tools. I was 16 years old and weighed about 135 pounds when I first used the plow on a steep hillside.
Our very large yellow poplar oxen yoke was last used in 1922 on a big pair of oxen pulling logs to a saw mill.
At sheep shearing-time our wool was weighed on scale beams or steelyards.
How well I remember our farm wagon! I learned how to grease the axles; and when the metal tire became too loose in dry weather, my job was to soak the wheel in the creek to make the wood expand, thus making the tire tight.
Logs and firewood were sawed by two people with a cross-cut saw. The buck-saw was used by one person, usually to saw small materials.
I can remember making chestnut shingles to cover our house. I soon became skilled in the use of the frow and hickory mallet.
I used the drawknife to taper the sides of shingles, to fashion axe, rake, and other tool handles, and to make stool legs. The drawknife was very popular.
Religion played a large part in mountain consciousness. I attended a Baptist meeting-house, a large one room building. In the evening the room was dimly lighted by a kerosene lamp on the organ and another on the pulpit. The body of the church was filled with plank benches.
Educational requirements or special denominational training for the preacher in the old-fashioned mountain churches were negligible. Singing conventions offered each church a chance to show off its choir, usually recruited from the congregation. Using hymnals with shaped notes, the choirs sang in competition without organ accompaniment, their choir leaders launching them into the hymns with a tuning fork. Afterward, relatives and visitors from other parishes were invited to help themselves to the platters of fried chicken and roast meat, cold sweet potatoes, cake, pickles, canned peaches, and stacked pies. Thus the people came together for their social events.
HOME
| 
