<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap">xt7dbr8md91k https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7dbr8md91k/data/mets.xml Hughson, Walter. 1908  books b92-151-29579531 English Church Missions Pub. Co., : Hartford, Conn. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Missions Southern States. Episcopal Church Missions. Church's mission to the mountaineers of the South  / by Archdeacon Neve, of Virginia, Archdeacon Spurr, of West Virginia, Archdeacon Wentworth, diocese of Lexington, Reverend S.C. Hughson, O.H.C., of Sewanee, Tenn., Reverend E.N. Joyner, diocesocese of Asheville, and Reverend W.S. Claiborne ; compiled by the Rev. Walter Hughson of the district of Asheville. text Church's mission to the mountaineers of the South  / by Archdeacon Neve, of Virginia, Archdeacon Spurr, of West Virginia, Archdeacon Wentworth, diocese of Lexington, Reverend S.C. Hughson, O.H.C., of Sewanee, Tenn., Reverend E.N. Joyner, diocesocese of Asheville, and Reverend W.S. Claiborne ; compiled by the Rev. Walter Hughson of the district of Asheville. 1908 2002 true xt7dbr8md91k section xt7dbr8md91k 

The Church's Mission
to the Mountaineers
of the South: : : : :


Compiled by Rev. Walter Ilughson

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The Church's Mission
         to the
Mountaineers of the South

 
SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES, JULY, I908
          PUBLICATION No. 41

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The Church's Mission to the

Mountaineers of the South


By ARCHDEACON NEvE of Virginia, ARCHDEACON SPURR,
of West Virginia, ARCHDEACON WENTWORTH, Diocese
of Lexington, REVEREND S. C. HUGHSON, 0. H. C.,
of Sewanee, Tenn., REVEREND E. N. JOYNER, Dio-
cese of Asheville, and REVEREND W. S. CLAIBORNE.


  Compiled by the REV. WALTER HUGHSON
         of the District of Asheville


    Church Missions Publishing Company
           Auxiliary to the Board ot Missions
         2 x State Street, Hartford, Conn.

 
        Copyright, 1908
By Church Missions Publishing Co.


                 Contents
                                       PAGE
Preface   .   .   .   .   .   .   .     vii
Introduction    .   .   .   .   .   .     I
         By the Reverend Walter Hughson
The Church and the Mountain People       19
        By the Rev. S. C. Hughson, 0. H. C.
The Missions of the Blue Ridge    .     29
           By Archdeacon F. W. Neve
Missionary Work in West Virginia        49
           By Archdeacon B. M. Spurr
Missions and Schools in the District of
  Asheville   .   .   .    .   .   .    72
        By the Reverend Walter Hughson
Statistical Table, District of Asheville     78
Comparative Expenses       .   .   .     79

Valle Crucis Mission and School  .   .  80
          By the Reverend E. N. Joyner
Christ School, Arden N. C. .   .   .    103
The Work of the Church in the Moun-
  tains of Kentucky   .    .   .   .   105
         By Archdeacon F. B. Wentworth

 
iv              CONTENTS

The Work at Sewanee, Tennessee   .  . 114
        By the Reverend W. S. Claiborne
Sketches: A Postal Card and its Message I I 7
         "Hit"                        123
         An Incident               . 127
         Easter in a Mill Mission  .  130


Illustrations


A Mountain Cabin    .   .    Frontispiece
                             Facing page
A Glimpse of the Mountain Scenery vii
Rev. Walter Hughson    .    .    .
A Mountain Home in Tennessee   . .   4
A Mountain Flower Garden      .    .  8
The Squirrel Hunter  .   .    .    . I 2
An Improved Chapel in Tennessee   .I6
St. Andrew's School, Sewanee  .   . 19
St. Mary's Girls, Sewanee.    .    . 20
St. Michael's Monastery, Tennessee  .  24
Children Filling Shuttles in the Weaving
  Room, St. Mary's Training School  . 26
Archdeacon F. W. Neve  .    .   .    29
First School House, Simmon's Gap  .  32
Whittle Memorial Chapel.    .   .    36
A Surgical Operation on a Mountain Boy 40
Home of the King of Muttin Hollow  . 44
Beacon Hollow School Chapel .   .   46
Rev. B. M. Spurr   .   .    .    .   49
The Reynolds Memorial Hospital  .   59

 
ILLUSTRATIONS


St. Andrews On-the-Mountains .  .   6I
The Sarah Sprague Upham Memorial
  House   .   .    .   .    .   .    62
The Lippitt Memorial Hall   .        64
The Mission Home To-day, Asheville
  District  .   .    .   .      .    72
Grace Hospital, Morgantown, N. C. .  75
Where a Mission Started.    .   .    76
The New Chapel .    .    .    .   . 78
Holy Cross School, Valle Crucis, N. C.  8o
Where an Outdoor Service was Held  . 86
Gathering the Hay  .   .    .   .    96
The Wagon Factory       .    .   . 100
Group of Basket Workers .    .   . 105
Cooking Class  .    .   .    .   . Io8
Cumberland Gap in the Distance      I I I
St. Mkary's on the Mountain, Tennessee 1 14
A Mission Service in the Mountains  . 1 17
Quaker Meadows       .   .      .   1 20


vi

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Preface


  For a long time there has been a demand
for literature in regard to the work of the
Church in the Mountains of the South.
Small illustrated pamphlets have been dis-
tributed by the local workers of different
dioceses in their appeals for assistance, but
never before, as far as I know, has there
been any concerted effort towards presenta-
tion of the different parts of the field in one
publication. Again and again have we felt
the necessity for it and when the offer came
to publish a book the writer immediately
conferred and communicated with his co-
workers in other districts and dioceses.
This book presents the work and needs of
almost all the fields from their standpoint
and with their local coloring. The men
who have been the most prominent in this
mountain work are the Archdeacons and

 
PREFACE


priests in charge of the missionary efforts,
not because the Bishops were not interested,
but because the mountains and the work in
them were only a part of the whole work of
the dioceses of Virginia, West Virginia, Ten-
nessee, and Kentucky. The Missionary
work of the District of Asheville is almost
entirely given up to work amongst the moun-
taineers. We have all found that the Church
is particularly influential in education, both
religious and secular. The work has almost
always begun in that way, but in reading
the records the readers will see how we have
all taken up the hospital effort as a natural
sequence when we saw the need of such
means of amelioration amongst the people
whom we have learned to love and with
whom we sympathize. The deplorable lack
of care in sickness, fully equalled in impor-
tance the lack of education. Success has
followed every effort where school and hos-
pital have gone together. If the readers
could see the changes that have come and
the blessings that have followed our efforts


.iid

 
PREPACE


the whole Church would rise up and help us.
The middle-west and the southern moun-
tains have been woefully neglected by the
Church during the past century. In the
marvellous development of her work in
great cities and in foreign parts, that in small
towns and little settlements, particularly
amongst what might be called the native
born American population has been for-
gotten. In fact we have failed to be the
"American's Church."
  A striking illustration came to our atten-
tion this year. A family, which had moved
from Western North Carolina, the father and
mother both strong members of the Church,
had raised a family of thirteen children, all
of whom were lost to the Church save one,
because when they became scattered they
found no services of the Church in the small
towns where they went to live.
  Archdeacons Spurr, Neve, Wentworth and
Father Hughson and Claiborne, have given
their lives to these people, with what success
these pages will tell.


1iC

 
X               PREFACE

  Hoping that the immensity of this prob-
lem will appeal to the reader and student of
missionary efforts, we again leave it all to
your prayers and generosity and to the
blessings of the Heavenly Father which
have been granted to us so abundantly in
the past.
                 Faithfully yours,
                     WALTUR HUGHSON.
  Whitsun-tide, 1908.  Waynesville, N. C.

  I beg to acknowledge our great indebted-
ness to Rev'd. Dr. Samuel Tyndale Wilson's
book "The Southern Mountaineers," from
which we have quoted many facts.-W. H.

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REWV. WALTER HUGHSON

 
                     t

                In MEemoriam
        Walter Bugbton, priest
                    t855O1908

  A little less than two years ago the Rev. Walter Hugh-
son, sometime Archdeacon of Asheville, projected this
book. Little did we who were called upon to co-operate
with him think, when we felt the thrill and pulse of his
great enthusiasm for God's poor, that he would not be
spared to see his work come from the press. But God
willed it so. On September 4, 1908, at the Morganton
Hospital, which he had founded, the end came after an
illness of only a few hours.
  Walter Hughson was born in Poughkeepsie, N. Y.,
fifty-three years ago. He was trained for a business
life, but from his youth his first interests were always
those of the Church, and in the midst of absorbing busi-
ness cares he found time for regular and aggressive mis-
sion work, wherever the services of a layman were needed.
In 1885, he was ordained to the perpetual diaconate by
the late Bishop Starkey of Newark, and five years later

 
he removed to Spokane, where he was an energetic pioneer
for the Church in that rough western country. In 1895
there came to him the call to abandon his business life,
and give himself wholly to the ministry of the Church.
Accordingly he returned to New York City, and entered
upon work at Calvary Church, under the rectorate of the
late Bishop of Washington, preparing himself in the
meantime for the priesthood. In 1897 he was called to
Holy Trinity Church, Detroit, and was there priested by
Bishop Davies. His four years' ministry in Detroit was
greatly blessed, but it was not until in 1901, when he
entered upon the mountain work in the District of Ashe-
ville, that he came to the task for which God had been
all the time preparing him. The undeveloped possibili-
ties of the Southern mountaineers fascinated him, and he
threw himself heart and soul into the work of bringing
to them the religious and educational advantages
which for generations had been denied them. Succeed-
ing the late Rev. Churchill Satterlee as rector at Morgan-
ton, he carried on to splendid results the work that had
been begun so ably by his predecessor. In the pages of
this book he has himself told much of the story of this
work. Those who were privileged to be with him won-
dered at the ceaseless energy and enthusiasm which
marked all that he undertook. Although for years a
sufferer from the disease which at last proved fatal, he
excused himself from nothing because of it.
  Always in and out among his people, travelling great
distances over the roughest mountain trails and by the
most primitive modes of conveyance, sharing the hard-
ships of the cabin life, by the force of the love that they
saw he bore to them, he won his way into the hearts of
the mountaineers as few missionaries have done. Mis-
sion after mission was established and strengthened,

 
schools and hospitals were built, and the contagion of his
enthusiasm brought into the work helpers who caught
from him the vision of what the love of God could do in
the hearts of these long neglected people. In 1907 he
was transferred to Waynesville, N. C., where the same
devoted course was pursued, and where men were made
to feel as they looked into his eyes and heard his words,
that here was one indeed who longed to spend and be
spent for the love of the Master.
  In July last, worn with his many labors, he consented
to take his first vacation since entering the field, and
spent some weeks on the North Carolina coast recuperat-
ing. On his return he stopped for a few days at the
Morganton Hospital, which perhaps more than any other
work will be the monument to his loving energy. He
had been used to say that he hoped the last days of his
life might be spent in the care of this work, and God in
His tender Providence willed it so. In the midst of his
working and planning, he was suddenly stricken, and
fortified by the Sacrament of the Church, he passed to
the reward that is prepared for the faithful laborers in
the vineyard of the Lord. His body was laid to rest in a
quiet corner of the grounds of the Hospital he loved so
much.


i


I

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Introduction


      BY THE REVEREND WALTER HUGHSON

  In June, 1907, President Roosevelt said
in a public address: "In the South there is President
                                             Roosevelt
a population peculiarly fitted to profit by on the
schools, a population which has been gen- Mountain-
                                             eers
erally referred to as 'poor white,' a popula-
tion of splendid capacities and almost
purely of the old native stock, which simply
lacks the opportunity to develop a degree
of industrial efficiency unsurpassed elsewhere
on this continent. It is a matter for con-
gratulation that there is such a steady in-
crease of interest in the Southern states
in everything pertaining to children. This
has already markedly shown itself and I
hope will still more show itself in the future. "
  I do not know of any better description
of these people of whom we are writing than

 
9


The Mountaineers


,"The   that which is found in Mr. Winston Church-
Crossing" ill's book, "The Crossing," and Mr. Fox's
         book, "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom
"Little  Come." In these books we are much im-
Shepherd  pressed with the sterling quality of the peo-
of       ple of the mountains of Western North Car-
Kingdom
Come"    olina and in the other parts of the Appalach-
          ian country.
            What the President speaks of and what
          Mr. Churchill and Mr. Fox describe is the
          Church's opportunity.
The         Primitive but sturdy pioneers' descend-
Pioneers  ants, few of them having had any of the
          opportunities of their co-pioneer brethren,
          are the people in whom we are interested.
          The Appalachian hills have been a stone wall
          of hindrance to thousands of people. In
Stone Wall past generations, either because men and
of        women were satisfied with the everlasting
Hindrance hills, or because they were discouraged in
          their efforts to cross them, hundreds of fam-
          ilies remained and endeavored to work out
          their temporal salvation in the mountains,
          and the coves and valleys between them.

 
of the South


Slavery, perhaps, was well enough from a
business standpoint for the flat country and
that warmer lowland where cotton and to-
bacco could be raised; but up in the moun-
tains it was not in anyway feasible. Conse-
quently the planter of the lowland grew rich
and important, while his neighbor, "the High-
lander," grew poor and ignorant. There
grew up also, perhaps on account of the con-
trasting conditions, a great repugnance to
the negro on the part of the mountaineer.
There are places, and in some localities whole
counties, where no negro can go. The
mountaineer did not like the negro for many
reasons. The slave labor, to him, was un-
fair competition. The negro knew "quality,"
but he failed to appreciate the nobility of
the man who against conditions was able to
live and rear a family in a poor country and
in a state of loneliness. Anyone who knows
the real mountaineer realizes that he has
come from good, sturdy, brave, self-denying
stock, stock that availed itself of the little
opportunity offered. For generations they


.3

 
The Mountaineers


        fought it out alone. They were little thought
        of. The men in the mountains were as
        foreigners to the people who had estates.
        They were not even in demand to care for
        farms until the time after the war. They
        were isolated in more senses than one. They
        had taken up little farms on the hillsides,
        planted corn and a few fruit trees. One of
        them here and there got a mule and perhaps
        a cow. They cut down the trees and made
Settling log-houses, cabins, often of but one room.
In homes These sufficed for the family comfort for
        generations. They raised what was neces-
        sary for bare existence. They spun and
        wove to make their own clothing. The
        mountains are fine places to raise apples,
        pears, potatoes, and cabbage. They made
        their own wagons and in the fall went further
        south with a load of produce which could not
        be raised in the low country. With the
        proceeds of this annual expedition they
        bought what was necessary, and existed for
Liquor  another year. They made their own liquor
        for generations, because they knew how,


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of the South


and their "still" was their equivalent to the
sideboard of many of our ancestors. They
were absolutely independent and "knew no
king." This, undoubtedly, is one of the
reasons why the mountaineers have been
considered generally lawless and why they
naturally persisted in continuing their dis-
tilling. The civil war made a great change.
Many of them went to fight, as their ances-
tors had done in Revolutionary and even
earlier times. They were good fighters; Good
perhaps too independent to be of the high- Fighters
est quality of soldiers in the ranks, but in-
dividually the bravest of the brave.
  Their isolation and the indifference of
their neighbors caused them to become very
illiterate. Ten years ago there were settle-
ments where three-fourths of the people
could not read nor write. In i9oo the census
gave the following statistics in the Appala-
chian region as to illiteracy amongst the
white voters:
West Virginia,  io.68 per cent. illiterate  Illiteracy
Virginia,       I5.94    ,P


5

 
The Mountaineers


         Kentucky,       21.65 per cent. illiterate
         North Carolina, 19.83
         East Tennessee, i8.34
         South Carolina, 13.37
         Georgia,        17.72
              Average,    I 6.34
            "Figures for illiteracy may not be very
         accurate, but, where sixteen per cent. of the
         white voters report themselves to the census
         as illiterate, it means that at least fifty per
         cent. of the white population over ten years
         of age is wholly without letters." Not to be
         able to read seems to the writer to be the
         nearest thing to the "blackness of darkness"
         spoken of by' the prophet. No knowledge
         of the world except by the means of conver-
         sation with a more or less educated man,
         not able even to read the Holy Scriptures,
         was sufficient excuse for many of the failings
         of this otherwise wonderful people.
Conditions  The conditions have improved greatly
Improved  within the past few years. Intelligent in-
          fluence from the religious side has been a
          great inspiration for better and higher things.


6

 
The State has been aroused to the condition,
and the "free" school has been greatly im-
proved. I believe that in the next census Next
no part of the country will show greater im- Census
provement, comparatively, than these same
states.
  The great lumbering interests in the mount-
ains, and the development of the coal and labor
iron mines in Tennessee and Virginia, and the
cotton mills in the Carolinas, have brought
about a demand for labor. Six years ago a
woman would work for twenty-five cents a
day. The little farms have been deserted,
that is many of them, and the whole family
has been brought to the towns which have
become the centres of trade and manufac-
turing.
  Under the influence of the larger com-
munity life there has been greater opportun-
ity. Schools, state and Church, have had
an influence for good on the children who are
to-day the first of many generations of in-
habitants to havethis opportunity. The states
have done excellent work, especially since


of the South


7

 
The Mountaineers


i900, in the way of education; but secular ed-
ucation is by no means the only thing to
bring to these people. They must have also a
proper religious influence. In 1776 of the
twenty-one men from the Southern States,who
signed the Declaration of Independence
nineteen were Churchmen. Those from
New England were all from without the
Church. To-day there is one communicant
in one hundred and fifty of the population
in North Carolina, while to-day in Connecti-
cut the proportion is about one in twenty.
The Church lagged in the South in the days
after the Revolution and in many places it
became the religious home of the better class
only. The new religious movements were
very strongly developed in the South. Emo-
tionalism appealed to the people and soon
made hosts of converts. In some of the
mountain places to-day the scenes during
religious excitement are almost beyond de-
scription. Emotionalism grew to such an
extent that religion, teaching them to dis-
criminate between right and wrong, almost


8


A MOUNTAIN FLOWEiIt GARDEN

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of the South


stopped.  Even   now  "to  get religion"
amongst these people is to get into a frenzy
of excitement; whole communities
are sometimes "converted", and then the
whole community often has a relapse where
the last state is far worse than the first. The
ten commandments became practically a
dead letter. Education was really decried,
and ignorance was exalted and put on a
pedestal. The mountain preacher became
a class by himself. He often could not read
or write, and yet he was supposed to be a
teacher of righteousness. When the Church
came back to this part of North Carolina in
the latter part of the i9th Century there
were many places where the ten command-
ments had never been heard of.
  In looking over this region, the Church
and some other religious bodies saw the ne- Relous
cessity of education with a proper religious Education
instruction. This effort has brought about
a remarkable change of conditions. The
good stock responds to the opportunity
offered and to-day education is sought after.


9

 
The Mountaineers


The barn of a school-house with its compara-
tively ignorant teacher is fast disappearing.
Here and there, following the example of the
Church schools, good buildings are being
erected. The school terms are very short,
but they are growing longer from year to
year. The Church school has its own follow-
ing and to-day is also supplemental to the
"free" school. From i9oi to i907 we looked
on a transformation that was brought about
by the splendid sac ifice of scores of educated
and refined men ard women, who had "come
here" to help.
  There are two hundred and twenty-six
counties that may be said to make up the
Southern Appalachian region. In the census
of i goo the population was found to be
3,92I,555 people-more people than the com-
bined population of the ten states of Montana,
Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah,
Nevada, Idaho, Washington and California;
in which states the Church now has thirteen
Missionary Dioceses and Districts and as
many Bishops.


The People
and Land


10

 
  The people are a composite race, the prin-
cipal element being Scotch-Irish. There
are also people of Huguenot, English, and
German origin. The latter probably came
here by way of Pennsylvania. A letter re-
ceived from one who is greatly interested
tells us that most of the English settlers in
this part of the country came from the par-
ishes of Stepney, Stoke-Newington, and
White-chapel of two hundred years ago.
  The mountaineers are divided into three Clses of
classes:                                    Mountain-
  (i). The valley dwellers, so called, who eers
have built up the centres and cities, stand for
the best of the four millions.
  (2). The class that we have already spoken
of, living nearer the hills and having some of
the opportunities of the first, but having all
that attractive ruggedness that we find in
those who live far back from all participation
with the world.
  (3). This "class consists of the drift, the
flotsam and jetsam that are cast up here and
there among the mountains. There are the


I I


of the South

 
The Mountaineers


       shiftless and ambitionless such as are found
       wherever men are found. Usually they
       own little or no land and eke out a precarious
       existence, as only a beneficent Providence
       that cares for the birds and other denizens
       of the forest can explain." Of this class we
       get the majority of the people who are com-
       ing to the mill settlements and are being im-
       proved by their contact and opportunity in
       the world-a very little world, but one which
       they have never before seen.
War      The war record of all the mountaineers is
Record long, inspiring, and splendid. From   the
        times before the Revolution, when they de-
        fended their own homes, to the battles of the
Revolu- Revolution where they took distinguished
tionarY  part. When the battle of "King's Mountain"
War    came, when Washington said, "I have al-
       most ceased to hope," the little band that
       was mustered in Wautauga County, not far
       from the present Valle Crucis, went forth
       on September twenty-fifth, 1780, and a few
       days later surrounded the English forces.
          "That glorious victory" said Jefferson,


12


THE SQUIRREL HUNTER-A TENNESSEE TYPE

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of the South


"was the glorious annunciation of that turn
in the tide of success which terminated the
Revolutionary War with the seal of inde-
pendence." In the Mexican War and the Mexican
War of i 812 they were ever in the place of War
danger and always brave. The Civil War Civil War
found them on both sides, and many men
of the mountains now receive pensions from
the government for the valor they showed
on the federal side. The Spanish War ap- Spanish
pealed to many of the young men of the
present generation. It is said that the
mountaineers have furnished to the armies
of the United States more men in proportion
than any other people in the whole land.
  These people are not only native and Amer-
ican stock by name, but they have done American
their duty to their country as none others Stock
have done it. With those who live in com-
munities where there is a cosmopolitan popu-
lation it is almost impossible to understand
what a strictly native population is. "In
the mountain regions in West Virginia there
are five mountain counties that have an


13

 
The Mountaineers


        average of less than seven persons of foreign
        birth to each county. Kentucky has one
        county with no foreigner, and thirteen coun-
        ties with only from one to seven of foreign
        birth. Virginia has thirteen counties with
        eight or less. Tennessee has twelve counties
        with seven or less. North Carolina has six
        counties, containing altogether but eleven
        foreigners. Georgia has seven counties with
        eight or less. Alabama has three counties
        with a grand total of fifty one."
          In this land we seem to have the faculty,
        which is a remarkable one, of assimilation,
        and the making of a citizen in a generation
        or less. So far we have failed to realize our
White  responsibility to our brethren of long stand-
Problem ing. This is certainly the "white problem."
          These people have always had the repu-
Intem- tation of being very intemperate. In a meas-
perac   ure  this is true.  All Southerners who
        drink, drink whiskey, and most of them
        drink nothing else. The use of light wines
        and beers is almost unknown. As an illustra-
        tion, at Christmas they think it is their


14

 
of the South


bounden duty to drink heavily. Those who Christmas
never get drunk at any other time have done Drinking
so regularly Mat this sacred season. A few
years ago, at the close of a Christmas service
and celebration at one of our missions, two
men were engaged in a fight just outside of the
chapel. The person who had accompanied
me in my buggy was a very small man and
was of little service in such an emergency,
and so I was forced to "go it" alone. I sep-
arated the men and told them to go home
and apologize to the teacher in charge with-
in twenty-four hours. They made their Effect of
apology as required as they were afraid we Preaching
                                           temper-
would have "the law on them" and, as the ance
law in North Carolina is very strict in regard
to the disturbance of public worship, they
respect it. At the first opportunity I
preached on the proper observance of Christ-
mas day, and told them that on that day,
above all others, they must keep their bodies
clean and pure. Two years afterward one
of the older men came to me after service
and said, "Preacher, I always used to drink


15

 
The Mountaineers


        corn liquor on Christmas day because I
        thought I had to, but since I heard you
        preach about our Lord being born on that
        day I have never let a drop touch my lips
Encour- on that day." This was enough encourage-
agement ment for a whole year's work. During the
        past few years a great wave of temperance
        has passed over this portion of the South.
        I think it is safe to make the assertion that
        a majority of the mountain counties have no
        saloons in them. Illicit distilling, though
        carried on to a limited extent in some places,
        has been mostly done away. Last summer
        the writer had been making a speech at a
        temperance meeting in the "South Moun-
        tain" district, and after the meeting one of
        the men came up and said, "Preacher, you
        couldn't have made that speech here ten
        years ago. This country was full of whiskey
        then." The men in that district, with one
        exception, signed the petition to take liquor
        out of the country. The city of Asheville
        in I907 by a vote of three to one put the
        saloons out.


16


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  We have often wondered how many fam- Original
ilies were in the original mountain settle- families
ments. Beginning two hundred years ago
with a few hundred they could easily have
become the present four millions. Moun-
tain fecundity has been the only cause of the Mountain
great population of to-day. They have Fecundity
certainly obeyed the command, "Be fruit-
ful and multiply." We often find families
of from twelve to fifteen. The children
marry very young. In many places there
has been an inter-marrying that has not been IEvl t
good for the race. The results of this have marriage
been particularly impressed upon us since
we opened the hospitals.
  The reader will appreciate, by this very
short account of the striking characteristics
of these people with whom we labor, how
wonderfully attractive is the work amongst
them. Archdeacon Neve has graphically Archdea-
described the manner of organization of a con Neves
mission settlement and the gradual building
up of the work. It is by becoming one of
them in their life, in its pleasure and in its


of the South


17

 
18                    The Mountaineers

trials that the worker makes a success and
an impression. The mission house centre
or the rectory centre have been the most
successful plan. From this, naturally, come
first the visiting nurse, and then the dispen-
sary, and after that the hospital with all its
tremendous field of </pre>