Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland

8. "Now, There's a Story"

140 ALLISON ENSOR 140 Chapter 8 ”NOW, THERE’S A STORY” The Literature of the Upper Cumberland ALLISON ENSOR At one time it was common for teachers and scholars to dismiss the whole of American literature as insignificant compared with British and continental literature. Once American literature came to be appreciated , there was still little regard for Southern literature. And when Southern literature came into its own, there was little concern for the literature of Appalachia. In most studies of Appalachian literature, the higher mountains to the east have received the greatest attention from scholars. Yet it should be evident from all that has been said that the Upper Cumberland has made its appearance in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction . This would surely have been news to me during the sixteen years that I was a student in Cookeville, for it seemed that almost everything important in American literature happened in New England, New York, or Chicago or perhaps the Mississippi RiverValley or the far West. I saw little evidence that anyone had ever written about my place. The rivers, lakes, mountains, and most of all, the people of this area have their place and will continue to figure in the literature of Appalachia, the South, and the United States. In one sense, the literature of the Upper Cumberland begins with the various nonfiction accounts of travelers as they passed through “the wilderness,” land that was controlled by the Native Americans as late as 1805. The eighty-mile road traversing the region was familiar to such travelers as Andre Michaux, French botanist (1795 and 1796); Reverend Green Hill (1796); Francis Bailey, an Englishman (1797); Abraham Steiner and Frederick Schweinitz, Moravian missionaries (1799); Francis Asbury, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1800 and 1802); “Now, There’s a Story” 141 and botanist Francois Andre Michaux (1801). All left a record of their journeys, though few are more eloquent than Francis Bailey: “I saw the base of the mountains ranged in majestic orders before me, bidding defiance to my approach, and indicating the difficulties I should have to encounter.” Again and again accounts mention the landmarks of that hazardous journey: Fort Southwest Point (Kingston), Spencer’s Hill (Crab Orchard), Daddy’s Creek, Drowning Creek, the Flat Rock (Monterey), Blackburn’s (Baxter), Flynn’s Creek, Fort Blount. Interestingly, none of those authors mentioned the famous Standing Stone, a remnant of which has stood for years in Whittaker Park in Monterey. There may have been a number of nineteenth-century diary keepers in the Upper Cumberland, but I am aware of only one whose work has been published. At a men’s boarding school called Cumberland Institute in White County, about eight miles from Sparta (and the same distance from Cookeville), Amanda McDowell kept a diary throughout the Civil War era. Her father, Curtis McDowell, built and operated the school where they lived at the time. Her diary, edited by her direct descendant, Lela McDowell Blankenship, was published as Fiddles in the Cumberlands (1943). The book contains portions of Amanda’s diary and a number of letters and documents.1 Entries began May 4, 1861, less than a month after Fort Sumter was fired on, and ended July 11, 1866, over a year after the conclusion of the war. Her very first entry demonstrates her horror at the outbreak of hostilities: Little thought have I had that I should ever live to see civil war like this, our goodly land, but so it is! The Southerners are so hot they can stand it no longer, and have already made the break. There will be many a divided family in this once happy Union. There will be father against son and brother against brother, O, God! that such things should be in a Christian land. That men in their blindness should rush so rashly to ruin. . . . They are taking on considerably at Sparta. Have raised a secession flag and are organizing companies at a great rate. . . . God grant that it may not prove so serious a matter as we are all fearing!2 It was Easter Monday, April 17, 1865, before Amanda and her family learned that the Confederacy had been defeated. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox had occurred more than a week earlier, on Palm Sunday, and Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday, though Amanda was unaware of it. The text of the diary was seriously damaged when Amanda 142 ALLISON ENSOR decided...