Joe Penland on Madison County History

Partial Transcript: I love how these film people can puff everything up. I'm very flattered, thank you. As he said, my name is Joe Penland. I am from Madison County, I live in Marshall now. We have a farm over in what we call Sodom, if you live there. The Presbyterians named it Revere, and some people prefer to call it that. That's what it is on the map. It was a great center of balancing in the 20th century. Mostly, it was a center because it was so isolated. And the electricity wasn't there (unintelligible 00:0:57) usually buy then. I'm a little confused about exactly where I'm supposed to do. I've read plenty of descriptions. I'm not really good at boring history talks. So we'll go through it a few things about Madison County fairly quickly and we'll get into something I really know about. I will tell you that the first white man in Madison County was a guy named James Needin, and a fellow by the name of Gabriel Arthur, who were both killed by Indians in 1677. In 1778 a group discovered Hot Springs, called the Warm Springs. An interesting thing is that in 1790 Hot Springs' population was over 1000. And Morristown, which later became Asheville, its population was 200. Continued through the 19th century being a place where people came and visited sometimes with some wonderful hotels, North Carolina's first golf course was there. All of the rest of—

Partial Transcript: Stand back. Hello, hello. Now, now oh, yes. All right. Thank you very much. Well, here we are. I see that we have some North Carolina natives here. How many of you are North Carolina natives? And how many of you are from 'off' as we say? And you got here as soon as you could I expect? I had a really good friend in Madison County, a wonderful artists who, in the early 70s, raised his children in Madison County. But he was a little too vocal for his own good. And every time he went to any kind of political or educational meeting he would was shunned. And he came to me after one of those things and he said, "Joe, listen, I've lived here for over 30 years. I've raised my family here. Majority of my life has been in Madison County, how long before I'm not an outsider?" And I said, "As best I can recollect that would be about four generations." But we're awful glad that people have moved into here, especially in Madison County. Because, like has happened several times before in history, the culture of the people of the Appalachian Mountains has fallen out of fashion. My daddy called the ballads 'that old hollering'. Now, he listened to the very same songs on the radio sung by the Carter family, just with music and a chorus and that made all okay. But there was such a stigma attached to ballads and the arts of the mountains and fiddling, you know, of course, was associated with the devil. But that stigma was attached to poverty. And it's true that in the very poorest regions that's where the culture continued longer than anywhere else.
And I was very lucky that my best friend when I was growing up with guy named Jerry Adams. And Jerry's dad would take us over to Sodom on Saturday mornings and we'd go up to Lee and Berzilla Wallin's and shoot the big guns and sing the songs, eat cornbread right out of the stove on the wood stove. I'll be telling some of those stories tonight, too. So I hope you'll come, tonight I think will be a little more fun than this afternoon. Because I generally don't think all that is exactly history, it's history according to me. But the nice thing you all know is that the older we get the more history according to us is really the history. Traveling through Madison County, of course, is transverse by the French Broad River which, according to geologists, may be the third oldest river in the world, the oldest mountain chain in the world. The river was actually there before the mountains came, it's one of the few rivers—one of two rivers in America—that don't have any shell culture of fossil culture. The oldest river in the world is also in North Carolina, and that's the New River. So to think that old things die hard is very easy to remember when you think about where we are and where we come from.

Partial Transcript: There's a couple of interesting facts I found, or even some wonderful books have been written about Madison County Western North Carolina. It was—once Hot Springs was discovered and people tried to find ways to get there, there became an interest in acquiring the land that went forever after Buncombe County—Burt County first then Buncombe County—and then that extended all the way to the Mississippi. People wanted to acquire that land. And there was a man named want from down at the eastern part of the state who acquired 320,640 acres of land with a grant. And that was in the last part of the 18th century. And kept it for five years but didn't pay the taxes on it and it was sold off to one of his friends. And then when that land was sold, it was sold at one penny for every 109 acres. And that was passed through hands and divided up. It was not all the land because some people had claimed the land, especially round Hot Springs, already. And his landholdings excluded that small amount, but that amount was less than 2,000 thousand acres in all of what we call Madison County today. So there was an interest. People knew that things were going to happen. The problem was transportation. Now, people started making rough roads. A man named Philip Houdinpal settled in Hot Springs, had an inn there and he did very well. There was no bridge, he had a ferry and operated that. And he built a makeshift road from Hot Springs—called Warm Springs then—down through Painted Rock, which is near the Tennessee line, and it connected so that people could come in from that direction.

Then later on other people saw the need for people to get from Morristown or Asheville and that direction. And so they started making primitive roads down into Madison County. But for years, decades, the way to Madison County was either over the mountains over a treacherous, treacherous path or through Tennessee back end, which it was not even Tennessee then it was the state of Franklin into Hot Springs, or Warm Springs, and then moving up as settlers moved on up the river. The biggest change came about when the legislature in 1826, I think was right, funded and authorized what was called Buncombe Turnpike. And when they authorized that people got really busy. And within two years the road, a passable road, ran all the way from Asheville to Paint Rock. And it was a turnpike, and the people who had bought into it charged tolls for people to be on it. Now, when that happened, and there was a way, stock stands started jumping up everywhere along the river, every six or seven miles there was another stock stand because the Turnpike was used not only for transportation of people, that was a very minimal use of it, it was meant for driving livestock between Tennessee and South Carolina. And herds of cattle, horses, hogs, turkeys, and even ducks were herded this long way between Greenville, South Carolina and Greenville, Tennessee along the Turnpike. Obviously, they had to stop and rest with the drovers and the livestock had to be replenished.

Partial Transcript: One of the ones I want to talk about today is the one that's in a place called Lapland, which is very dear to my heart, because it's where I live now. And Zeb Vance's father opened a stock stand there. And in one month he has records that he fed 90,000 hogs in one month. So he was the center of commerce. All the farmers around raised food to sell to him to sell to the drovers as they went back and forth. Of course, they also sold alcohol, food, and lodging, which was a big thing. Young Zeb Vance grew up there until his father died. There were other stock stands, Chungs had one at Alexander. There was a place called Barnard Today, a man named Barnett or Barnard had a stock stand. He, just to top Mr. Vance, said he fed 130,000 hogs in one month. But these places were very prosperous and people made a lot of money. Commerce began, towns start popping up. In a place called Jewel Hill, which for some reason was appointed a court capital if nothing else, of Buncombe County to the West. It was where all courts took place. And names that we all know if we live around here: Budger, Merriman, Vance those people were the lawyers and judges who went there to hold the makeshift court in a church or school building or whatever was available. And it was quite a wild time. A lot of lovely stories about what went on outside the courtroom, much more interesting than what were on inside the courtroom. Because anytime there was any kind of celebration like that, which people are drawn to celebration and there's not much to do in Madison County now, there was less to do then. They would show up and the first people that would be there would be the whiskey chuggers.

People would stay sometimes several days after the court session because the libation was flowing freely and generally there was a cause for another court session after that there were several—one time one of them was called Jewel Hill. And I was just out there with an old friend talking about shootings that happen at Jewel Hill or, Walnut it later came to be called when the Presbyterians came in and tried to civilize all of us in the very net last part of the 19th century. And a personal note is that my maternal great-grandfather ended up coming to Henderson County. The story in the family was he asked my grandmother to go with him, but she didn't go but he had to leave because he had witnessed a murder. Now, common sense would tell us that he is probably a very close witness to the murder is why he had to flee and never come back. And my mother only saw her grandfather twice, her father brought her here to Henderson County to see him over here. So it was the Wild West. It was a frontier, which is an important thing to remember as we move through the history of Madison County, that it was the frontier. It was not an established, settled place. Into the next century, into the early 19th century almost, and especially during the time of the Civil War. Zeb Vance, in 1852, granted 50 acres of land independent of his father's stock stand. And there was another fellow, granted 25 acres adjacent to that, to be the county seat. Well, nobody wanted Marshall to be the County seat, which was called Lapland at that time. And there had been a bill passed in the legislature in 1852, to establish a county seat in Madison and establish the counties to come from parts of Heywood, Yancy, and Buncombe County to be established as a government, an entity of its own, and be name Madison after James Madison. Well, this went for years, this fight, which was a fight until finally an election was called in 1855 between Jewel Hill and Lapland. Lapland won by one vote. And the story is that the lawyer named Goodger met a man and asked him if he was willing to vote and he says, "No, I'm not going to vote. I'm going to plant turnips," on that day. And he says, "If you'll come with me and vote I'll give you all the turnip seed you can carry." And he want and he voted for Lapland, and Lapland was changed. The name was changed to Marshall, it became the county seat of Madison County. There is still argument in old families about how that transpired. And, of course, the nicest thing about it is we were all cantankerous.

Partial Transcript: No, we were very friendly. Used to be people called Madison Bloody Madison. Have you ever heard that? Which has a long history, and we'll talk about that some in a little bit. When I was growing up we sort of liked that because if we came to Asheville, a group of us boys, usually nobody would mess with us because they're from bloody Madison. The truth is we were not afraid of people in Ashville but we were very deathly afraid of people from Cobb County, Tennessee. So we could only come to the East, we wouldn't dare go to the West because those people were a lot meaner than us. But Marshall became founded, a courthouse was built, and a jail—the first two things. The stock stands had started slowing down at that time. But there was still a lot of commerce because that was the only way really to go west was along the Buncombe Turnpike. And the railroads had been built all around us, and even into Asheville, you know, they got to the old Fort Mountain and they just threw their hands up and they said, "What can we do?" Now, the Western North Carolina Railroad was also authorized by the legislature to be built all the way to the Tennessee line. And bits and pieces were built all along, but it was only in 1882 that the railroad all the way from Greenville, South Carolina to Greenville, Tennessee was complete. It changed everything. Now the railroad actually followed the old Buncombe Turnpike. So things that had been moved by hand stopped happening and people would move things by railroad cart, which was much more efficient and there was also a much more efficient way for people to come visit places that they wanted to visit, which it was only Hot Springs. There was a path through which I'll talk a lot about that tonight-how Marshall kind of suffered being an, excuse the expression, but the hind tip of Madison County. We weren't as tall as the people in Mars Hill and didn't have as much money as the ones in Hot Springs. Which there's some—this could be a two-week course if we could go through all the exciting things that happened in Madison County, bringing us towards the 19th, 20th, 21st century. But I'm going to skip a lot of that because, like I said, I want to talk about music, the thing I love.

Madison County, in 1861, was a place of great provision. People in Ashville and in Marshall, where there were lawyers and doctors and people to explain secessionism and in Mars Hill around Mars Hill College, secession was a big topic of conversation. And in Hot Springs, secession had been a topic of conversation for years. Because many of the people who came to Hot Springs were wealthy plantation owners from South Carolina, Georgia, and Eastern North Carolina and Virginia. People came here from all over the world. But only the very rich people came to Hot Springs. In '62 there was a man named James Patton, John O' Patton Avenue if you ever been there you hope you never have to go back to it in Ashville—came here and he was an Irish immigrant. He built a hotel in Asheville, the first hotel was not nearly as well as luxurious as the one he built later. But he also went to Hot Springs and he bought the tavern there and built an inn and started promoting the medicinal qualities of the spring water. People kept flooding in. But I get ahead of myself, because I was talking about 1861. The people in the townships were for a secession. And if you read what Zeb Vance said, he said his hand went up in the legislature but his heart dropped. Because basically he believed in the union of the United States of America. But it was passed unanimously in the legislature that North Carolina would secede. North Carolina was the last southern state to secede. In Madison County, just like we have anywhere you've got guys that want to fire a gun. So they're the first ones anytime there's a war or whatever they think they want to go because they've never been to one before. That's the truth of it, I've been one. But they want to have a gun and have a horse and do all these things. So these great regiments were founded in Madison County and the Confederate constriction went on. One of the men who wanted to lead an army was quite proud of himself, He was 29 years old and is a clerk of Superior Court in Marshall. His house still stands, it's the oldest wooden structure on the Main Street. And his name was James Allen. And he first wanted to have a mounted Calvary because it sounded so good. And he established about 61 members of this little mounted group until somebody thought, well, if you want to be a soldier we're going to make you a soldier and made him a colonel and told him that he had have infantry. So he went ahead and he organized infantry. And another person took over the Calvary. But it was still called Allen's Rangers.

Partial Transcript: There's a quote, I hope I have a here, it's a wonderful quote that somebody said when 40 years after this time when they were talking to Mr. Allen how he was described. And I would just have to read it to you. Well, I'm sure it's here somewhere. But basically what it said was—and if you go to Marshall there's a historic plaque at his house—that he was not a very handsome man to look at, in fact, quite the opposite. But was known for his bravery. So he was well respected by his troops, and he was all over the state of North Carolina and into Virginia during the first parts of the Civil War. In 1863, a group of union sympathizers came to Marshall, because they had been denied salt and other supplies just because of their affiliation. What was supposed to be, like, a peaceful sort of demonstration—and like all of those things we see on the television, it got out of hand. And salt was not the only thing it took it was an armored bay. And they came into town and they stole anything they could. One of the places they broke into was Colonel Allen's house where his wife was residing and his three small children. Two of those children had pneumatic fever. The raiders went so far as to steal all the blankets from the house, and they even stole Mrs. Allen's shoes. And two days later, one of the children died, and three days later, another child died. There was a lieutenant colonel named Keith, who was a good friend of Allen, who was charged to look into that. And he did look into it. He took the group and he went to Shelton Laurel where this group was known to be from, and he rounded up every boy or man he could find. He took 13 of them to the edge of the Laurel River, made them kneel down, and summarily executed them without trial. The two youngest were 13 and 14-year-old boys who had not been a part of the raiding party. But the report went to Governor Vance at that time that a few people have been killed in an ambush and they had taken 20 prisoners and they were bringing them back. Well, he sent his good friend Augustus Merriman to check it out, who was the Superior Court Judge at that time in Madison County. And he was wrote back to Vance, that is not what happened, these people were slaughtered and buried in a shallow trench. Governor Vance called for criminal proceedings and a court martial against Colonel Keith, but somehow it never happened. The end of the story, after the war was over, Keith came to Madison County and was arrested immediately for murder. But then President Johnson issued a summary of clemency for soldiers of the war and he was excused. But he rapidly left Madison County and never returned because there was hostility. People were very hostile to him and still are today. I know, in Marshall we still have a book club, but it used to be just full of prim and proper very southern ladies. They had their book meeting once a month. And for some reason the Shelton Laurel Massacre come up in one of their meetings, and before it was over Ms. Hattie McElroy had Mrs. Tweed down in a headlock and they were arguing about who is right over what happened. And that has been in my lifetime. So, you know, it's not forgotten. There's a new documentary coming out about that time and some other things that happened.

But the Confederates were not the only ones who committed atrocities during the war in Madison County. I'll talk tonight, and maybe this afternoon, about a woman named Mary Sands whose stepfather was a union recruiter. He was home visiting his family when a group of Confederates came through. He tried to run for it and they shot him in the back in the cornfield. What I was getting to a minute ago is people in the towns were big on the war. You know, they were for secessionism, and the first two recruits were only enlisted for six months because they thought that's all it would take to get it over. But the people who lived in the valleys and farms and along the hidden coves in Madison County had no slaves. They had no allegiance to this kind of fight. They didn't want to fight anybody. They liked the United States of America, they liked that government mainly because that government didn't bother them very much. Didn't know they were there. And so they stayed true to the union. Many of them escaped over into Tennessee and joined Union troops. Some people who were conscripted in the Confederate army, actually over a hundred of them, deserted from the Confederate army and joined union troops. Brother against brother was a thing that happened there and throughout Madison County. There was an old woman who lived up on Shelton Laurel and her name was Nancy Norton I believe, her maiden name was Norton or Shelton I guess was her married name. And she had for boys, no husband at the time, according to the census of 1860. And a group of union men, led by a man named Kirk, came up and were combative and she told her sons to grab their rifles and make a stand. Even though they were not soldiers of any kind. One of her sons was actually gone, so there was three boys there and Nancy. But what took place was pretty much a massacre on its own, except for the youngest boy ran under the house, the log cabin. And when people, the Union soldiers, would try to get under there and get him out he killed two of them trying to crawl in there. So they couldn't get him to get out. They took his mother out and tied her to a tree and tortured her, he still didn't. She yelled for him not to come out to stay there. So they decided the only way to get him out was to burn the house down on top of him. And that's exactly what they did. They lit fire to the house and when they finally he finally came out then they beat him to death with a rifle butt in front of his mother. And during the melay a Union soldier with a pistol shot at Nancy Norton Shelton because she was screaming, I'm sure hysterical. But he missed her and shot off a lock of her hair.

Partial Transcript: That sort of died down for a long time until something happened at Mars Hill College, which is something I haven't mentioned it. You know, Mars Hill College was founded in the 1850s and was certainly interrupted by the war effort. But after the war, they hadn't managed to come up with all the money to start building the other building so they hired masons and bricklayers and carpenters. And a young boy who happen to be a student at Mars Hill College was from Shelton Laurel. And he was helping to raise some of his tuition with some of these bricklayers and one of them started to tell him the story the about how he was at that and Nancy Franklin or Shelton's or whatever her name was. Genealogy is another thing that takes a long time in Madison County. He was there and he says, "You know, I could normally knock a squirrel's eye out at 75 yards, but I shot at that old bag and I didn't do anything but shoot off a lock of her hair." That weekend he went home and he met Nancy's brother, whose name was Norton. He told him the tale he'd heard. And from somewhere he came up with a five dollars gold piece, and he told the boy if he would take him back to Mars Hill and identify the man who told him that story he would give him the five dollars gold piece, which was a tremendous amount of money. So he did, and he took it. And not only did he point out the guy, the guy was happy to rehash the whole story. When he almost exactly, like it was rehearsed before, and when he got to the point, "I shot the old bags lock of hair off," her brother pulled out a pistol and shot him in the gut, which, as you know, is not a merciful way to be shot. So it took days for him to die but he did. But anyway, Norton ran off into the woods or wherever and was not found for several weeks. When he was found, he was taken to trial in Yancey County for some reason. And he gave his testimony in front of the jury of what happened. But Nancy Franklin Shelton Norton rode a mule all the way into Yancey County to testify. And when she got on the stand and described the events of that day, the prosecutor knew he had lost. So he says, "Is that the way you would raise your children to go out and fight people coming up in the yard?" She said, "No, Sir, I raised my boys to be Christians. To be honest, to be truthful. But you've got to fight you better die with your teeth in someone's neck," that was her words. And her brother was exonerated. It was a justifiable homicide. And there's hundreds and hundreds stories in Madison County, and I'm sure throughout all the southern states, of the atrocities of the war. Those are some that are very true stories and that pretty well sums up how we all felt.
Most of us, like I said, most people in my family were Union supporters. They had no reason to support anyone else. One of the interesting things that happened in the beginning of Mars Hills College was that they hired a builder to build the first building but they ended up short of money. So the Reverend, who I have names for we can all look them all up, there owned a slave named Joe. And the builder took him, seized him and put him in the Buncombe County jail until the funds were appropriated by the Baptist Association to pay for the building. Let's just jump around, one of the things I want to talk about is the Patton hotel. Because that hotel burned, Mr. Patton built back not just an inn, he built back a hotel. Hotel that had 13 columns in front for the 13 original colonies. It had a dining room that could seat 1000. Big, big place. And people flocked there from all over. And there's testimony throughout the healing properties of the Hot Springs' water. They had baths but they were fairly primitive at that time. The tragedy about the hotels in Hot Springs is they never lasted over a few years before they burned to the ground, even though Patton, at that time, had built a brick building, still the building caught fire and burned down. He built back sort of a hotel and ended up selling to a man named Romo, who had moved in who owned a stage line that went from Greenville, Tennessee to Greenville South Carolina. Well, obviously with the railroad coming the stage line wasn't really a great way to make a living. So he decided to go into the hotel business. And he did and lucky for him, they the hotel burned and he built back a Grand Hotel that had a mile and a half of veranda porches. It had North Carolina's first golf course, as I said. Mr. Romo made it an all-inclusive resort, fishing expeditions, camping expeditions, hunting expeditions. People from all over, not just the country, but the world would come there and stay in a hotel that was unequal in the Western North Carolina.

Partial Transcript: That hotel burned. And he didn't want to build it back anymore so he sold it to a group of New York investors and they built an even grander hotel. They built it so grand that they couldn't pay for it. So in a couple of years Romo bought the hotel for a fraction of what he had sold just the grounds for before. And he continued to run that hotel until the turn of the 20th century. It was not the last hotel. It was called the Mountain Park Hotel and you can look it up and find photographs of it. It was a beautiful Château-type building. It even had glass panels to go on the verandas so they could be utilized in the wintertime. There you go rambling on. Boy, I tell you what, it doesn't take long for me. Somebody in England told me when I was over there, they said, "You're really a storyteller teller." I said, "No, I'm a ballad singer." He says, "Well, you just kind of talk on." And I said, "That's right." Just a couple of other things I want to bring up about Madison County history. The railroads, 1882, the railroad was finally completed that changed everything. People came through there, the road along the gorges, without having to fear for their life with a wagon or a stagecoach turning over and falling into the river, and they saw how beautiful the landscape was. Businessman came there and they also saw virgin forests which David talk a little bit about before. Before long, railroad—mining camps and logging camps were all along the French Broad River and the railroad line. Millions the millions of board feet of lumber were taken from the Laurel areas, all of Madison County, and floated down the Laurel River from dams. There was a railroad that they ran up to Shelton Laurel, to carry logs down through there. Several big families had made quite a fortune. There was communities all along the river that have more population than any of the cities in Madison County today. Now there's nothing there but foundations.

But when they cut the timber, it would appear 1882 or 1885, right on up until 1925/28 they didn't just cut selectively, they cut everything. And then the land started to erode, it was a tragedy for man and earth. Farmers had sold all the timber because that's money. One thing in Madison County, I tell everybody we were always rich. We had everything we could ever want, except for dollars. And it's still that way a lot today. And I try to tell my children that the amount dollars you have doesn't tell you—it doesn't make you wealthy. But they sold—at any opportunity to get US dollars—they sold their timber. And that was a terrible downfall. If I hadn't been for people living in there with new agricultural techniques to be able to terrace the lands and bring back the farms, Madison County would have been nothing but a canyon along the rivers. The other great thing has to do with transportation, too, is—there's a lot of lovely stories I'd like to tell you. All of a sudden there was the automobile. Well, if you're going to have an automobile you've got to have a road, right. So in 1912, I think there was 110 miles of roads in Madison County. That is everything from a sled path to a passable wagon road really. There were almost no automobiles at all. But then the legislature signed that we needed to build another road that connected Greenville, Tennessee and the Tennessee boundary from Asheville and they the highway 20 which came right down the Main Street of Marshall, which later became highway 2570—which I'll talk a whole lot about tonight because that changed Marshall in a tremendous way. Two of the first federally funded highways in the United States, and one ran Brunswick, Georgia to what we call Detroit, Michigan. North and South and from New Bern, North Carolina all the way to Los Angeles, California. So for a period of time in the 30s every piece of road either going north or south came right down the streets of Marshall and right through the streets of Hot Springs. And the economy flourished, even through the depression.

Partial Transcript: Of course, people from North Carolina—Madison County, North Carolina served in both world wars. They were the first ones to go up and do whatever they had to do. My grandfather's brother had been in the Army and he had been discharged in 1960. And when the war broke out, he rejoined the Army and then he was killed six months later. The same way in Second World War, there were so many people there, including my father, who served that were. So Madison County people were isolated, but when it came time for them to be called up and do their duty to were right there to do it. The 50s were a time of great prosperity. Schools, I didn't mention much about schools. We had a Board of Education in Madison County as early as the 1860s. The problem was there was no money for schools or teachers. In 1912 they had one school bus for all of Madison County. But luckily, since the Catholics had already come into Hot Springs, and the Baptist had a huge presence at Mars Hill, the Presbyterians thought, well, these are all Scotch-Irish people here, they're Presbyterians. We better get off our hinny and do something for them. And the Women's Mission Society of the Presbyterian Church first funded what was called the Dorland Institute in Hot Springs, which some of my great aunts attended. It had dormitories and it taught young women to the point that they became educators. The Presbyterians opened 14 missionary schools throughout the back lands of Madison County and provided a teacher and a preacher. Now, my father-in-law was a preacher. Actually my wife's grandfather came in 1918 to Madison County from Kansas to be a missionary and his wife, a teacher. Now, in Kansas his family have been Lutheran, but the Lutherans weren't hiring anybody. So he became a Presbyterian and they came all the way out here and he moved into the Laurel area and he had seven church-schools. And he wrote road in circuit to those churches and served those people in those little schools. And he and his wife lived in one of the schools up in what was called Coop farm. And she taught and there was other teachers that they boarded with people who were in the community that is taught the children. And over 80% of Madison County students were young people or young people were enrolled as students at one or the other of the schools. They opened the school in Marshall Academy, they open another school and Walnut called the Belle Academy, which were places where—and the Belle Academy and the school of Hot Springs and Dorland were for women only. They had dormitories where they'd take in women who lived too far out to come in, and my great aunts were two of those. And my grandfather jumped a trained to Marshall to get a job so that he could help fund those girls education, because it was not free. And he stayed in Marshall and opened up a business there.

And in 1927 funds were appropriated for high schools from the state. And in Marshall, we had one problem if you've ever been to Marshall you can see—I'll say this again tonight so I don't want to ruin it for you—but Marshall's been in the Guinness Book of World Records three times. I'm going to tell you about two of them now. One is called 'The Town That Couldn't Grow.' And if you get there you'll find out why because there's a rock cliff and it's about 150 feet tall on one side, and there's he French Broad on the other side. So they call it a mile wide, a street wide, and hell deep. Well, since there was no place big enough to put a school except for an island in the middle of the river, that's where they built the high school. That was another huge controversy but the truth was there was no other place to put it. So for over 60 years, Marshall, North Carolina had the only inland Island school in America. And now if it snows they don't have school. Well, my friend said we actually waded water to get on the school bus one time before they let school out. And our bus driver used to put chains on the buses. We went to school, there was no laying out and not doing your homework, you know, we went to school. And of course we did—people say, "What do you do if it floods?" And I say, "It's not if it floods, it's when it floods." I got ahead of myself, I'm trying to tell the story about my wife's grandfather who was German. We were talking about that that he moved into the Scotch-Irish-based community. And Dellie Norton, a folksinger, a wonderful folksinger said, "You know, when we started out here with just the Scotch-Irish things were a lot of fun." Said, "The English came over and they were pretty much fun too. But when the Germans came the fun stopped." And it was mostly the Presbyterians who came in and really tried to show people that singing the old love songs was not a proper way to do it, we should sing some Mormon hymns. But Grandpa Zimmerman was out riding his circuit one day and he was approached by a mountaineer. He came up and grabbed his horse by the bridle rein. He looked at him, he says, "You're that new Presbyterian preacher." He says, "Yes, Sir, I am." He says, "You believe in—what is that called—you believe that a man's got a time to be born and a time to die?" Poppa Zimmerman say, "Yes, predestination that is part of it." He says, "Well, you believe that?" He says, "Yeah, I do believe that." He says, "Well, why are you carrying a rifle in your saddlebag?" And Poppa Zimmerman didn't bat an eye, he said, "Well, it might be somebody else's time to die." All right, we're going to take a little break and we're going to come back and talk about music. Ii will say in shameless commerce we do have CDs for sale over here and T-shirts you can wear out in this nice weather. And thank you for being so attentive. Next hour will be much more active. So fasten your seatbelts, and we'll take off. Thank you very much.

Partial Transcript: sawmills were everywhere. Everybody had one, everybody could get timber down to the river to get sold. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this because we have a lot to talk about. There's them buildings of the roads and that's how they did it. That's Road Ashley but in Marshall we call it corkscrew. It was called Dozier Avenue, now someone decided it should be called Hill Street. One of the houses on Main Street in Marshall. One of the things I'll talk about tonight—there's the old jail in Marshall—I'll talk about the flood of 1916, and all of the events that led up to that, which coincide with the visit of Cecil Sharp in 1960. That's two sheriffs in Madison County. One is Branson Merrill, I don't know who the other one is. This a gathering of Confederate troops after the war in the turn-of-the-century. That is a Halloween party, believe it or not, from the Presbyterian school, Marshall Presbyterian Academy and here's some of the students in regular dress. Obviously we didn't have one of those stores we could buy all those fancy masks and things. I knew some of the people standing by the river at the depot, just some of the people who populated Madison County. I'm going to stop that there and talk about something I know something about. Maybe I will in a minute. Technology is the thing that escapes me.


And that's who I am, of course, I hope I don't think I owe anybody here any money. I want to talk to you—I call it keepers of the old songs. I'm going to sing you a song and show you a few slides, some you might have seen before of my favorite ballad. I learned from Cash Wallin and it's so perfect for today's time in that people were so hungry to come to America. Can you imagine it's almost even more hard to imagine than us going somewhere and getting in a space shuttle and going off to another place. And that's what my ancestors, and I'm sure many of yours did, in the 15th and 16th century. They got in ships not even knowing if there was a place at the end just because their life was so bad. They had no opportunity to marry who they wanted, own land, to prosper. Only way a man could get ahead in the 15th, 16th, and 17th century in Europe was to be in the Army and come out ahead in a great battle. Chances for an everyday person were very slim for any kind of happiness in life. And this is a song about that. But America is made up of immigrants. My first European ancestors came—well my first relative was born in 1640 in a place called old Scots in east Jersey. But I have other relatives I'm sure you can tell by looking at me, they were here a lot longer before that. ♪♪When I first come to this country in 1649, I saw many fair lovers, but I never saw mine. ♪♪ I view it all around me, and I found I was quite alone, and me a poor stranger and a long from my home. ♪♪ It's not this long journey that I'm dreaming to go, nor the country I'm leaving for the debts that I owe. ♪♪ Oh nothing so grieves me or troubles my mind, as leaving my darling pretty Sadie Rowe behind. ♪♪ It's my true love, she won't have me, and this I understand. She wants a freeholder and I have no land. ♪♪ Oh if I could maintain her on silver and gold I'd buy her all of those fine things that my love's house could hold. ♪♪ Yes, I wish I was a poet and could write some fine hand. I'd send my love a letter that she might understand. ♪♪ I'd send it by the islands where the waters would flow, I'd dream of mice Sadie Rowe wherever I go. ♪♪ Yes, I wish I was a turtledove and had wings and could fly. Straight away to my loves, lodging this night I'd draw nigh. ♪♪ And in her lily white arms, all night I would lay, and I'd watch them little windows for the dawning of the day. ♪♪ As I've strolled 'or these mountains and I've strolled 'or the plain I strove to forget her, but it was all in vain. ♪♪ On the banks of the Ocoee, on the Mount of Sai Rauel, I once loved her dearly and I don't hate her now. ♪♪ "That's Pretty Sadie Rowe".

1916, we almost got there a few minutes ago, didn't we? 2004, how many of you lived here in 2004 when we had a little water event in Biltmore and a few places, I expect maybe even a little here. We had a little water event in Marshall, the building where I lived had 30 inches of water in it. I had just been to England and I flew back just before—when the first flood occurred and got back before the second. And I remember flying into the airport out here and I says, "You know, I don't remember all those lakes." When I got home I found there had been a flood of the French Broad River, and then of course the next week we had an even more significant flood. In 1916 the same thing occurred, two hurricanes one at the East Coast and one in the golf hit within a week of one another and they took a beeline for Western North Carolina. Well, in 2004 we certainly saw that results. In 1916 on July 16 there were 13 1/2 feet of water in my building. The building was only six months old. And that was right up to the top floor, the ceiling of the lower floor of space and right under where I live now. So you see there was a little bit of difference in the magnitude of the flood. It was a terrible flood, nobody knows how many people died in that flood. And I'll talk a whole lot about the flood tonight, some truth and partly fiction, just stories I was told by my great uncle Hubert about that time. But the thing I want to talk about right now was the arrival in Asheville of English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, who the head of the English Dance and Folk Society is quartered in a place called the Cecil Sharp house in London. He was quite a renowned collector of song and country down dance. He founded a country dance society here in America that's still vibrant. He was enticed by Dane Olive Campbell, who is married to John C Campbell of the folk school. She had been out in the mountains collecting songs and listening to these people sing these ancient versions of ballads. She went to New York where Mr. Sharp was helping to choreograph a Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, with dancing in it. And she talked to him about it and asked if he could possibly come down and she can introduce him to some of the singers. And she brought some of the songs and she sang them the best way she could and she just transcribed them. He said he certainly would love to come. So he came about the 21st of July, or is that 25 days after the flood. Now everything was disrupted. Railroad tracks were washed away at Alexander and below Marshall, Roads and highways were washed away. The great industrial complex on the river in Asheville was largely washed away. Horse and buggy sometimes was the only mode of transportation. He describes coming through Marshall, because one of the places he wanted to go was my favorite place, Shelton Laurel or the Laurel valleys: Big Laurel, Little Laurel, Shelton Laurel, Sodom Laurel, and other little branches that are named something about Laurel. And I mean it because it if you get there you'll see that it's all full of thickets of rhododendron, which we call Laurel.


He came down and he describes going through Marshall. He said that Marshall was a terrible place. That he was in a buggy and mud was up to the axle on the main—what was supposed to be the main highway. The truth is, 53 houses washed away in 1916 in the town of Marshall. We didn't think we had 53 houses. Most of the businesses, most of the stores were gone. And like I said, nobody knows exactly how many people died, but between 90 and 150 people disappeared during that flood. But Mr. Sharp was determined he was going to make it over. And luckily, as I mentioned, the Presbyterians had these outposts in Laurel. And he was able to contact the missionaries there, and he went first to a place called Alice Stand. And if you were in England you were talking to people about his visit over here they would say, you know, all the singers were picked for him by the Presbyterians. He really didn't get out and see the people. That's not true, he did get out and find his own way about the communities of Laurel. He trekked up and down these highways over there, and walked hundreds of miles with his secretary, Maud Karpeles collecting these songs. He collected 252 English folk songs in Madison County. He called Madison County, the largest repository of the English folk song in the world. It didn't make many people happy, but he collected over 70 songs from Jane Jenthry in Hot Springs, a woman I'm especially fond of, Mary Sands—which I should enunciate S-A-N-D-S like a Sandy River bottom—sang for him 25 songs and done a record, it's called the Mary Sands project. It's got only one recording, there will three recordings in the book that will come out hopefully in the next five years about her remarkable life. It is remarkable to me, excuse me, because the songs that Mary Sands sang for Cecil Sharp are the very ones that were taught to me on Lee and Berzilla Wallin's porch in Sodom. Now both of them did read and write, but none of us had never seen his collection of folk songs that have been published in 1918, 1932, and then 1950. Nobody had a copy of that. You can talk to my friend and grandmother-in-law Shelia Adams, she'll tell you that, like me, it was in the 70s before we ever saw one of these books. So Mary Sands was especially dear to me. And she met him on July 31, 1916, and sang for him some wonderful songs. And I'll tell you a story about her tonight, a very long and flowing beautiful story about her relationship with Cecil Sharp. Now, I wanted to show you here, this—I wanted to show you something. The Catholics built a mission in Laurel from contribution in Sodom, as a matter of fact, And it's called the Church of the Little Flower. Every year on the Sunday closest to the 16th of September I do a presentation, which is a longer presentation than I'm going to give you today, about the singers and their songs. In this church one of the great singers of my age that I learned from was Dellie Norton and she's buried in the cemetery of this church. There were not very many communicates at this Catholic Church because it was heavenly Baptist but of course the Presbyterians were working, too. But it's a beautiful, beautiful chapel. If you ever get a chance to go there and see it, you will be inspired. It's an instrument in itself. So it's a pleasure to sing and perform in it.


But here we're going to get down to the real roots of things. The old man over there is Lee Wallin, the young man is my friend, Jerry Adams, who introduced me to him. And that's a hog rifle, which is a muzzle loader, but not the normal kind, it shoots a 50 caliber ball, it weighs about 49 pounds. Lee Wallin was the national hog rifle champion for over eight years. People would come and get him, Lee Wallin never owned an automobile. People came to Laurel, picked him up, and took him to these shoots, and he would always win. When he finally was defeated at the very last meet he attended he was 82 or 83 years old. And he was beaten by 15-year-old girl that he had trained to shoot. But he always said, "I still have the very best shot of the day," and he did. Here's a picture of Lee with his rifle. Lee was not 7 feet tall, Lee was about 5 feet 6 inches tall. So you can see that's quite a piece of equipment to carry about. And here's a picture of him shooting the rifle. And you would lay down—at his house we would lay down with a bale of straw and we'd shoot it. And for a Presbyterian lad who was raised by a Baptist mother who never was allowed to fire a gun, going to Lee and Berzilla's was an extra treat just because of that very thing. And we could never tell our mothers that we had been over there firing these big guns. Of course we were both lousy and both had a blue place on our shoulder from shooting it but it didn’t diminish it at all. Lee was one of the proudest men I ever met. This is a picture of Lee and his wife Berzilla when they were married, and if you can see closely his shoes almost have no bottoms. But you can see he is very proud, and Berzilla was a beautiful, healthy woman. Well, everyone knows how they say men who are married live longer. But they also know how hard it is on women. So here's a picture of Berzilla a little bit later, she weighed about 83 lbs, but Lee always maintained his healthy demeanor. In fact, when he died he weighed the heaviest he had ever had in his life.

This is a picture of Berzilla's holding of the family band. It was a precious thing to her. And in those days, you know, people had black-and-white photographs if they could get them. And if you really cherished it and could get enough money you would send it off and the pictures would be hand-painted. And this was the only one in their house that they had. Their house had no indoor facilities, but it had a great kitchen with a wood cook stove, they had milk cows and lots of farm animals and always plenty to eat. To get to their house was literally a dog trail. Luckily, my friend, Jerry Adam's dad had the first formal drive in Madison County and it didn't roll up there it kind of stepped from rock to rock to get up to their house at the end of the branch. Here's a picture of it, the colors faded out of course, but it was certainly Berzilla's prized possession. That's Lee and three of his sons. I think Doug is actually playing a guitar, he was one of the younger sons, and he was great mentor to me. He stayed on the farm with his parents until they died, he never married himself. This is Berzilla dancing with her cousin playing the fiddle. There was always music at their house of some sort or the other: banjo, guitars, fiddles. Banjos and guitars were a scarce thing until the 1920s, when there was actually mail delivery and Sears and Roebuck catalogs. But fiddles came over on the boat. And this is Earnest Franklin playing the fiddle that he made himself. Here's a picture of Berzilla singing in a folk festival. We are so lucky that—anybody remember hootenanny and the folk revival of the 60s? If that hadn't come about so many of these singers would never have been recognized and thee songs probably, even with me learning them as a boy, would've died away. My friend Sheila was interviewing an NPR one time and she talked about they said, "Well, heaven's sake, you're one of the last of the dinosaurs." And Sheila said, "No, I lived to see the last dinosaur." And that's pretty much the way it was. We were so lucky. There was no pencil and paper when you learned songs from these people, you had to sit down and learn it the way they did. They called it knee to knee. Berzilla or Lee would sit down in a chair and they'd sing a verse to one of these ballads you were expected to sing it back to them. And as soon as you had that down they'd sing two verses and you were expected to sing that now. And then they'd sing three reverses. Some of these ballots had 48 to 96 versus. You could not be dull-witted and sing the dang things, you know. But that was the way they insisted because they insisted that they had to learn to sing the songs that way. This is a picture that I usually love to show at night and tell about Lee and his family. But that's his last daughter, Bertha, who died two weeks ago. Somebody came up there to hear the songs in the 60s. It was probably John Cohen or somebody came and we're so appreciative. Actually they were afraid of Lee, but they brought him as a gift, a pair of African geese. And after that there was never a dog on the premises. He didn't need it if he had the African geese, they were a much better watchdog than any dog could ever be.

They had a particular affinity for the back of my leg. I was—I'll tell more about that—but I was scared to death. I was a town boy, I was scared to date death of these geese. They never seemed to bother anybody but me. And they would sneak just to get me. So I mentioned they didn't have any indoor facilities. So there was difficult times when I had to leave the porch, out of necessity, which as I say I'll talk more about tonight. But I want to share their picture, this is the way Lee looked must of the days when he worked on the farm. We saw pictures of him dressed up, we say him sitting there proud with Berzilla when they got married. He was just as proud of the way he looked then as when that he was in his finest clothes. And is a fine man, he was a fine father, had 12 children. Raised them all on the farm. He would walk as much is 5 miles to Marshall to get some cash work working with—one of the things he worked with—he worked with agriculture extension agent. In those days we all raised tobacco, all of us did. That was the main cash crop. And Lee raised the cash crop, but he worked with the farmer's extension agent. He walked over all the way over into Walnut Creek and he stayed with Mr. Ramsey for about a week. And they would go out and measure crops of tobacco because nobody had figured out the idea that you could have so many pounds of tobacco on a lot. I mean, everybody had an allotment and you couldn't sell more than that. It was based on acreage. So you either had a quarter acre, half-acre, an acre and a half or whatever. And the farm agents would come out after your tobacco was already about this tall and they would measure your field. If anything was over that it was chopped down right in. Well that was part and Lee helped them measure that. And I talked to—I guess maybe I did it was Lee's funerals in 1973 and one of the daughters of this farm agent was at his funeral. She came up and talked to me and said, "Oh, I remember Mr. Wallin well." Said, "He came and stayed with us every year." Said, "He would sit and play the piano and sing." Bertha was with me and she said, "Well, my daddy didn't play the piano." She said, "Well, the truth was he was singing so loud I couldn't hardly tell."

I'm going to sing some of these songs tonight. I tell everybody, a lot of times I forget, so I'll put this in now. You know, you need to tell your own stories. You need to collect your stories. If you have an elder still living that you can get stories from, you need to see him. Not tomorrow, not next week, you need to talk to him now. If you have these stories your grandchildren are very interested. And we're too old to be ashamed of what we did in those days or what grandma did or whatever. You need to tell those stories. The story recording is a wonderful way to do that. You can hook up with David or other people to be able to tell those stories or you can do it for yourself. That's how I made my first recording. I thought was going to die, I wanted my kids to be able to hear what I heard when I was 14. Obviously, I'm too mean to die, that didn't happen. They were all wrong. Doctors are not always right. The day they told me I was going to die has been 15 years now. So they must have got something wrong. This is Kaz Walnut and his lovely wife. They were both singers. Virgie was her name. She was Ray by maiden name. Kaz was Lee's brother and he was one of the great ballad singers. And he lived long enough to get recognition with some of the women and actually go places to folk festivals and sing songs. He was a very difficult character, and the only man that was included on the tours. He was, how do I say it, he was highly sexually motivated. So he had a liaison that was attached to him 24 hours a day to make sure he didn't get into any mischief. I'm telling you the man was 80, but that didn't slow him down at all. He went to the Smithsonian, they were there for the Centennial Bicentennial celebration in 1976. And they had a big concert I guess at the Lincoln Center. And after there was a huge reception full of be-jeweled ladies everybody in their finest. And there was Kaz in his overhauls and a jacket. And the people are coming down and they really were interested in what these people had done on the stage and they wanted to talk to them. And everyone was really nervous about this, but it happened. This gorgeous woman of taste and class with a wonderful gown on, she was maybe in her late 50s, early 60s certainly white-haired, large diamond necklace around her neck, and her dress had a big cleavage. Well, Kaz was only 5'4" tall. So when he she came up to shake his hand you can imagine where his eyes were planted. And she was telling him how much he appreciated and he is looking at this woman and he couldn't help himself, and he reached behind and he pinched her on the fanny. She said, "Oh," and the liaison jumped out and said, "He doesn't mean anything by it. He's an old man from Sodom." She said, "Where is Sodom?" Said, "I think I'd like to go there."

This is another picture of Kaz and Virgie. I met a lot of collectors in England and other places in the last 20 or 30 years. And I met one particular collector who had come to Sodom in the 80s. And he tried to get songs from anybody who would give them to him. Which was not a lot of people because people were not really that trusting of people who came in. People, when Cecil Sharp came in, they thought he was sent by the water department because they'd understand that Marshall wanted to build a huge reservoir and they were going to build it in Sodom and build a big dam and everybody would lose their farms. Then they thought he was a German spy. Finally, when they found out his intentions were honorable then people did sing for him, but a lot of people didn't. And that carried on through all the other collectors. In the 60s there was some controversy over the collectors. One of the collectors, my friend Doug Wallin who was Lee's son, politely stood up and knocked him off the porch and told him he better think about coming back. Well, he obviously did come back, brave fellow. This collector particularly was over in Sodom collecting songs. And I had a friend who had moved from New York who was living in Sodom at that time, a great singer, a great folk singer. And she lived in the traditional way, no running water in the house, wood heat. And that she was friends with all these folks and took them places. Now, Virgie didn't seem very much. Shelia will contradict me and say she sang lots of songs. Well, she sang them all to the same tune. Well, she didn't sing that much because Kaz sang all the time and you couldn't get a word in edgewise with Kaz. He was a very animated singer and he did sing all the time. But my friend said, you know, he says, "I got a song for Virgie." And I said, "Really?" So I started investigating and what happened was, I didn't realize it but he was actually paying people as much as $50 to sing for him. Well, everybody was getting paid but Virgie. And she thought there has to be some solution do this. So she went to my friend Mary and ask her about teaching her a song. So Mary happened to have this Cecil Sharp book and she taught her a ballad from out of the Cecil Sharp book. Well, she remembered the words but she forgot the tune. But she decided the way to do it is when the collector was going to be there she would be out in the garden hoeing and singing the song. And that's how he said, "I discovered Virgie out in the garden singing the song." And he name the song and he says, "But you know it had the most peculiar tune I have ever heard." And the folk processor whatever gave her $50 and she was happy. Kaz sang a lot of songs that had to do with, of course, sexuality. Of course, a lot of the ballads do deal with that. It's the same thing—the stories are the same as we see on TV and movies. You know, a boy meets a girl, one of them is attached to somebody else, but they have all these feelings for each other and they give into their temptations. There's a tumble in the hay, they're discovered and somebody gets killed. You see it every day. I'm going to sing you one where people do get killed but the heroes of the story make it out. And this is one of Kaz's songs, it's called 'Little Soldier Boy'. It's a very short one. ♪♪ There was a little soldier boy who had lately returned from war. He courted a handsome lady, she had had more laid in store. ♪♪ Her riches was so great they scarcely could be told. And she loved that little soldier boy because he was so bold. ♪♪ She said, 'See here little soldier boy I'd freely be your wife if I thought my cruel 'ol father would only spend your life.' ♪♪ He drew his sword and pistols and put them by his side. He says, 'Honey, we'll get married whatever might be tried.' ♪♪ Now, as they had been to church and was returning home one day they met her cruel 'ol father and seven armored men. ♪♪ ♪♪He said, 'If you are determined to be this soldier's wife down in this lonely valley we'll surely take your life.' ♪♪ 'Oh,' said the little soldier boy, 'I'm in no fix for battle. I am here in this world and no need of this prattle.' But he drew his words and pistols and caused them to rattle, the lady held the horses while the soldier fought the battle. ♪♪ Well, the first one that he come to he run him through the mane. The second one he come to he served him just the same. ♪♪ 'Let's run,' said the rest, 'I fear we'll all be slain, to fight this little soldier boy we see it is a vain.' ♪♪ Then up stepped her own father a speaking mighty bold. He said, 'You can have my daughter and 1000 pounds of gold.' ♪♪ 'Fight on,' said the lady, his pile it is too small.' 'Oh, stop,' said the old man, 'and you can have it all.' ♪♪

This is a wonderful picture of Kaz and I have great stories to tell about this last picture he made before he died which has another great long story tied with it. He was actually kicked out of the nursing home because he couldn't behave himself. This is Dillard Chandler. He's one of the singers I knew, but we weren't allowed to hang out with him much. He was a drifter and a rounder and he came to Ashville and he worked and went home. He lived in a little one-room cabin with no electricity and no water, and outhouse all his life. But he was a great, great singer, knew hundreds and hundreds of songs. Now, and he was illiterate, couldn't read or write one thing, but he knew these verses to all these songs and had a beautiful singing voice. He was a little peculiar. Here's a statement that was taken down from him, I'll just let you read it yourself and see if you can figure out what his thoughts were. Somebody asked him about where his mailbox was. He says, "Don't have no mail box." He said, "Why would I want a mailbox, I can't read? If they sent me something I wouldn't know anything about it, best thing is just not to have it at all." And he was right. A great singer, I could give you a short song maybe, most of his songs are documented. You can find them if you'll just go to the great knowledge in the sky and type in Dillard Chandler you'll come up with lots and lots of things. In fact, John Cohen made a documentary film about him, which is not always so flattering to Madison County, and it took us a long time to get used to it, but we're so glad that he preserved the moment. ♪♪ A soldier traveling from the north where the moon shone bright and gaily, the lady knew the gentleman's horse because she loves him dearly. ♪♪ She took his horse by the bridle rein and led them to the stable here's hay and oats for your horse, my love, feed him you were able. ♪♪ That she took him by his lily white hand and led him to the table, here's white a cake for you, my love, come eat and drink your welcome. ♪♪ Just then she pulled off her blue silk down and laid it 'cross the table, and he pulled off his uniform suit and did as he was able. ♪♪Hark, I hear a trumpet sound and I must go and meet it. Oh, soldier, dear, don't leave me here for I am ruined forever. ♪♪ Oh, when we you return, my love. When will we be married? ♪♪When conch shells turn to silver bells, that's the day that we will marry. Oh, soldier, dear, don't leave me here for I am ruined forever.♪♪

This is his cousin, first cousin, Floyd Chandler. He probably did sing for Cecil Sharp, even though Mr. Sharp wrote his name down as Floyd, who was a great wonderful, singer but he became a man of the cloth and he quit singing most of the love songs as we call them. This is a picture of him in a place called the prayer rock. He was an evangelist, he traveled all over the United States. He has been credited by some for writing the song 'Conversation With Death' or 'Death 'O Death'. And there was a great controversy and lawsuit that was founded by folklores of Texas trying to prove that. If it had been proved, even though he was dead, it would have been the largest copyright infringement settlement in the history, of copyrights. If Floyd had been here I'm sure you would've told you he didn't write it at all. It was, the song was his invitational. We all seen Baptist invitationals where, 'Just as I am, without one plea'. The primitive preacher did not always have that arsenal for himself or people who were that willing. He actually preached and taught through the Machiavellian principle that the people should love you—and if they love you they'll do whatever. If they don't love you, then they have to respect you. And if they don't do the first two, they have to fear you. His kids told me he would come home from being out for six weeks teaching revivals, preaching revivals, and singing schools all through the south. And they'd have a letter about the day he would come and they'd all be watching for their daddy to come home. And they'd see him, this skinny skeleton of a man with the Bible under his arm and a coat across his shoulder walk up to the yard.


The yard was a thing that enclosed chickens in those days, it wasn't a lawn. And he would hug and greet all of them, and he would make them all join hands and they would go out where his big rock is and the kids would play but he would go up on this rock and pray, thankful to be home. And she says, we called that place the pray ground. They played there at his prayer rock and that was it. A very devout man, a very wonderful man, very few pictures of him. I did know him. I loved him, he was a wonderful, wonderful singer. He would always just emaciated—he would be baptizing two people—I have enough time, I will do this. I'll sing that song for you if I can. ♪♪Oh what is this I cannot see, with icy hand lays a hold on me. ♪♪ Oh, I am death none can excel I'll open the gates to heaven or hell. ♪♪Oh, death, oh, death, how can it be that I must go come and go with ye? ♪♪ From time to time I've heard it sung, I'll close your eyes I'll lock you jaw. ♪♪I'll lock your jaw so you can't talk, I'll fix your feet so you can't walk, I'll dim your eyes so you can't see, this very hour come go with me. ♪♪ Oh, death, oh, death, consider my age and do not take me at this stage. My wealth is all a joke then if you will move your icy hand. ♪♪ The old, the young, the rich, the poor, alike with me will have to go. No wait, no wealth, no silver, no gold nothing satisfies me but your poor soul. ♪♪ Oh, death, oh, death, please give me time to fix my heart, to change my mind. ♪♪ Your heart is fixed by your mind is bound. I have these shadows to drag you down. Oh, death, oh, death, please let me see if Christ has turned his back on me. ♪♪When you were called and asked to bow, you didn't take heed, it's too late now. ♪♪ To late, too late, too old farewell too late, too late I'm silenced to hell. ♪♪ As long as God in heaven shall allow your soul, your soul shall scream in hell.♪♪


Now, Floyd was Berzilla Wallin's brother, great singers in the Chandler and the Wallin family. This is Dellie Norton, she's just a prize a great singer. She was more of a character in the age that I knew her because she was very old. Which, she knew hundreds and hundreds of songs. She was a widow the whole time I ever knew her. Sheila calls it her granny, she was her great aunt. I was married, my first wife was her granddaughter. I didn't mention that before I guess I have been married more than once. The girls I married were cousins and school teachers. I explained to somebody else you always want to marry a schoolteacher because they always had a job and insurance and stuff and are off in the summer to help you on the farm. But Dellie did most of it by herself. Just a great mentor to David Holt, Rob and Josh Goforth, of course, a Madison County boy one of the most talented people I ever knew. Met him when he was five or six and was astounded every time we met after that. And still today, so you don't want to miss it when they come here. Dellie sang lots of songs. She was a lusty old gal and raised tobacco by herself. I may have some pictures of that, I'm not sure, not on this slide I don't. But one of her favorite songs was the song called 'Young Emily' which is, interestingly enough, a story that's been told forever about boarding houses along the French Broad River, the tale of somebody coming there and being robbed and murdered in the night. Which probably did not take place at any of those. They used to say at Chungs boarding house it happened. The Chung family is one of the most respected in the community and in Western North Carolina. Certainly it didn't happen, but it was a tale. This is sort of it. Young Emily was a pretty fair miss. She loved—that's not right, I am sorry. ♪♪ Young Emily was a pretty fair miss. She loved the driver boy who drove the stage of gold down in the lowland low. ♪♪ My father owns a public house down on yon Riverside. Go there, go there and enter in with, me this night abide. ♪♪ Be sure you tell them nothing, nor let my parents know that your name it is young Edmund who drove in the lowland low. ♪♪ Young Edmund fell to drinking and then off to bed. Little did he know the sword that night would part his neck and head. ♪♪ Young Emily in her chair chambers she had an awful dream. She dreamed she saw young Edmund's blood go flowing like a stream. ♪♪ Young Emily rose in the morning putting on her clothes, said, 'I'm going to find my driver boy that drove in the lowland low. ♪♪ Oh, father where's that stranger came here last night to dwell? His body's in the ocean and you no tale must tell.' ♪♪ Oh, father, Oh, cruel father, you'll hang a public show, for the murdering of my driver boy who drove in the lowland low. ♪♪ I'll wait and tell some counselor to let them deed be known of the murder of my driver boy who drove in the lowland low. ♪♪ My true love lies in the ocean, the fish swim 'or his breast. ♪♪ His body's in a gentle motion and I pray his soul's at rest. ♪♪
Thank you so much. Thanks to the singers for inviting me to come over and share some Madison County with you. I hope you'll come tonight, we're going to have a great big time. My compadre Kathy Ayer will be there keeping me straight. Once again, thanks for coming out in this cold weather. I expected three to be about four people here. I've enjoyed this immensely and if you'll happen to take one of my cards if you ever decide you want to come down to the wilds of Madison County, give me a call and if I'm around I'll show you where it is. God bless you.