The Duality of Appalachian People

My favorite pictures. James W. Stinson and his wife Nannie Virginia Hale Stinson of Princeton West Virginia, I like these two photos because they show the ability of the Appalachian people to be.....I'd call it multi-cultural. We have ways rooted in the past while adapting to living in the present that make us seem to be two types of people.

  Well I was so excited, I sent out my blog to everyone I knew of kith and kin. But right off the bat, I was criticized for the stories of my dear sweet great-grandparents, who taught me so much, as putting a "redneck backwards identity" to our family.
  My first reaction was, "Oh for Heaven's Sake, get a grip!" But then I pondered on this for a bit and yes to me there were two ways of living in Appalachia as there are throughout the world or in every community.  One of means and one of using the resources you scrounge for that you take out of nature or reuse.  

Appalachian people have survived through many changes since the Revolutionary War. The industrial revolution as with all economic upheavals, did not necessarily bring everyone prosperity. But there were always prosperous Appalachian people that never lived like my Grandfather and Grandmother Burress.

  Our family is a microcosm of people with some always better off than the others. Rich vs Poor and the effect that had on both, living in Appalachia, isn't any different from anywhere else in the world. We had ancestors in just about every occupation and level of economic standing. We have business owners, farmers, railroad workers, miners, loggers, teachers, military men and a couple were rumored to be "wood's colts" of a doctor and the other a judge. Underneath all of this we were mountain people shaped by the area we lived in.

  The one thing I can say is regardless of our stations, most of us were handed down knowledge about how to live in these mountains and could carry on the "old ways" to survive when times were tough and you lost all your money, if we needed to.

  Grand pa and Grand ma Burress surely would have loved to live in a really nice big house. But instead they lived in a small four room house they built with their own hands, with gravity flow water and an outhouse on 26 acres. They raised cows, chickens, a pig or two and a garden. Both of them worked outside the home. They used the old ways out of necessity to make ends meet. They lived this way in the 1960s.

  On the other hand. I had a Grandfather that was listed as a farmer that lived on a large nice farm, in a five bedroom Victorian house with two staircases and a chandelier. He used the old ways because he could. This is the duality of Appalachia. Something all of us of Appalachian heritage must accept to understand who we are as a people.

  I've been researching my family history for over 25 years. I was struck once looking at a census record, this one family of ancestors, in 1860 who began with a mother, father and siblings could all read and write. Some of the children had actually gone on to higher education. But by 1930, their grand children could read but barely went to the 2nd grade in school.

  My grandmother and her sister Callie were two of these folks. Why? Industrialization! You didn't need an education to work on the railroad or pull mules in a mine at the age of 11. You didn't need an education to work in a factory or as a waitress and everyone had to work to make a living for the family to survive. Resources were not as available and cost more, even with more jobs. 

  The couple in the picture are James W. Stinson and his wife Nannie Hale Stinson who lived at the intersection of where 460 and Interstate 77 meet in Princeton, West Virginia today. Their farmland long since sold for economic growth and prosperity. Now there is an Outback Steakhouse, a Walmart, Appleby's, Hotels, and the only thing left with the family name is the Stinson Methodist Church and a cemetery in the middle of all that.

  I have a letter from 1916 posted from Hallie Stinson to her sister Maggie Stinson Imhoff. In the letter Hallie is telling her that their Uncle William had died.  That Papa (James) is serving on a jury. His sons Coon and Carl, who ran the Klondyke Saloon in Bluefield WV were hand digging the grave.

  This couple along with their son Coon are buried behind Appleby's in a graveyard that is so overgrown. We believe Hallie and Uncle William are there too but can find their markers. Hallie died in 1918 during the flu epidemic.

  We are afraid to clear off the graves because the area is so developed with businesses, especially catering to people from out of town, we are afraid it will attract people and they will vandalize the grave stones.

  Today we still, in some sections, "hand dig" graves in family plots. My brother hates when it's on a steep hillside, as the last one was a year ago.  Could NOT get a back hoe up that mountain. So instead, the men and boys took shovels, rock bars and a couple of cases of beer and dug it in an afternoon

  The highway systems in Appalachia were designed in the 1940s as population centers. The idea was to get the mountain people out of the mountains into "growth centers." And it has worked. Nothing is crazier to some of us as our people selling off the farm to move to town. Or tearing down the old homeplace to replace it with a double wide trailer.

  

But we each had to do what we needed to do to survive and we are STILL HERE. Many have moved away and stayed gone, never to return. Many have moved away, made their fortune and returned "up home". Many have moved in not from the area at all, but love it for it's scenic beauty and charm.

  

I began this blog to share the Appalachia I knew, I know and hope to see in the future. I began this blog to share with my grandchildren. They are in the new computer age. We are beginning to talk like everyone else because of media reaching us on a daily basis. Even our speech dialects are seeming to die out.

  I miss the old dialect. They will never hear my grandparents voices or my Great Aunt saying "If 'n ye a mind to, you can do just bout in'er thang". 

I miss it and I celebrate who we were and the resourcefulness of our people in the past. I celebrate who we are and who we will become. If it is stereotypical to talk of the old ways...to still use the old ways.... well .....just get over your perception and understand the different ways of the people who called themselves Appalachian still exist and call ourselves Appalachian today. We will take the old and the new and SURVIVE.