Homesteading Through the Generations

 

Just got done catching up on this weeks’ mowing, and my mind wonders back to what the folks in my lineage thought about things. Now I am an educated man, sometimes dumb but still highly educated. However, that does not preclude me from being spiritual in any shape form or fashion. Some days when I am working on my little homestead I feel God is there with me. It is not that I have set out to pray or that I am thinking about the churches of my youth or my upbringing. It has nothing to do with any of that. There is a time when a small still voice calls to my very soul. It comforts me and lets me know that it is near. It happens in the mornings just as the sun is rising on my homestead and I am caught by the beauty around me or late in the evening as the days’ chores are done and the last of the suns’ rays are spraying across the valley. It blows in the breeze as I am on my hands and knees with my hands in the dirt. I wonder if my ancestors felt the same way!

Now I come from a long line of homesteaders and farmers. Part of my ancestors came over with William Penn and helped establish Pennsylvania. No they were not Quakers. They were actually Scottish Mercenaries that came over to guard the colony. He was part of the militia of the day. After fulfilling his job duties he headed into the Appalachian Mountains to seek his fortune, I often imagine the "Highlander" was home. The other side of the family came over as farmers. Now, I don’t know how they got here. They may even have been indentured servants when they arrived. But every ancestor I have whose name appears on the census is listed as a farmer, all sides.

That being said, I can’t find all sides of my ancestry. I know my father came from German and Scottish ancestry. I can trace that lineage all the way back to Castle Critch in Scotland and Wittenburg Germany. On the other side I have no clue about the Eldridges nor the Webbs. The Clouds came from England in the 1700’s. I am sure none of them were descended from royalty. My dad used to say that they were all either preachers, bootleggers or whorehoppers and there was no middle ground. I asked him one time what was he and he responded “I would have been a whorehopper but I was too afraid of your mom!” Well, I don’t necessarily agree with that but I can assure you of one thing – they were all homesteaders!

Whoa now Joel, how can you make such an assumption about so many people. Well, coal is king in Appalachia where I was born. It is the dominant industry in an area with very little in the way of other industries – I would add on purpose but that is not what this blog post is about. Prior to about 1909 and the industrial revolution coal was not used much in Kentucky. However with that being said, coal had been used in Europe since Roman times. There were active coal sales going on in Germany and England in the 1200’s. So my ancestors were definitely aware of the value of coal as a heat source and I am sure they took advantage of it.  But, they were not employed in coal extraction until the mid 1900’s with my two grandfathers. Every census record lists them as farmers.

Now the Appalachian Mountains are VAST! I know you look at them on the map and you just don’t fathom how vast they really are. The Appalachian Mountains span some 737,000 square miles.  That is some big country spreading from Georgia to Canada and Pennsylvania deep into Ohio and Kentucky. As a matter of fact it is bigger than 24 Scotlands or 4 Germanys.  The first settlers were homesteaders taking bare land and putting it to the plow. German, Scotch, English, and Irish immigrants flocked to the mountains and when they got here it was so much like their native homeland that they put down roots and said ‘we are home.’

This love of the land carries over into today. Back in the 60’s my parents packed everything they owned and headed for Michigan. But the call of the mountain was great on her children. Many an Appalachian youth stirred to go north only to return in a few years. The homestead lifestyle can only be enjoyed by so many. Once the land is full there you are. The hard scrabble life was hard for non land owners. Poor mountaineers were many. They still have left marks on our land. Sayings in Appalachia like the “Jeff Turner New Ground” a place not owned by Jeff Turner but owned by an absentee landlord such that they didn’t pay any attention to what was going on. So it was cleared and planted by whoever was there. Little tar paper shacks dotted the hills, many just squatting on the ground that was there but now owned by someone far away and uninterested in the surface. Little places with names like Holmes Mill lets you know what the people were doing there. Mills were the life blood of little farming communities.

The number of people in the Appalachian mountains at the turn of the 20^th century was small indeed averaging only 6 per square mile. People were living subsistence lifestyles raising sheep, pigs, and cattle. Homesteaders who raised what they ate and ate what they raised.

My Great Grandfather at this time lived in a little community called Childs Creek – Pronounced “Childses Crick.” He had married his wife in Punkin Center and had migrated across the mountain to a little piece of ground and established a small homestead. Growing his own food and 14 kids, that lived anyway. Working in the log woods when there was work available, he never turned to mining to make his living. Many of his children and grandchildren continued this homesteader lifestyle. A few went to the big city to find work but many bought and operated small homesteads of their own.

I wonder if they could hear that small still voice like I do. It calls to me and lets me know that I am where I am supposed to be. I am alright and it is okay. The world might seem to be endlessly spinning but I am firmly rooted like a big sugar maple just listening to the wind blowing around me but knowing I’m not going no-where. It often reminds me of the important things in life, being a good neighbor, being a good dad, being a good husband, being a good steward of my land and the world in general. It also reminds me that Life, Like Homesteading, is a Marathon not a Sprint – Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride.