Seedtime on the Cumberland

Author’s Acknowledgments

337 Author’s Acknowledgments This work is not a history, nor is it concerned with the lives of famous men and women, nor does it pretend to be an exhaustive study of the pioneer. I have tried to re-create a few of the more important aspects of pioneer life as it was lived on the Cumberland by ordinary men and women. I owe the bit of knowledge gleaned entirely to all the other people, those now dead who took the time and trouble to save a store account or write their memoirs, and the living who furnished material, told me where it could be located, or answered questions. I can’t remember my first question about the past; there was for many years no conscious hunting. I took the tales and songs that came my way with half a listening for many of the voices belonged to the very old and I was very young. I cannot even acknowledge them, not knowing exactly who told what. It was not until I was eighteen years old, away from home in a remote place, that I made my first note—a description of a shot bag of ground hog hide, realizing as I looked at the old, worn thing that when the great storytellers died and mice and rats and time had their way, many little things of the ordinary people would be lost. I wrote in time of younger days, but through all the writing there were the reminders of a way of life long dead for most—a word or phrase, a song, a game, a plant used for medicine. Notes for a work on the past went on and the background reading. I at first hoped to write of the old days and old ways of our world in Kentucky—the country of the Big South Fork and the Cumberland below it down to Tennessee. Readers of my fiction sometimes suggested I try such a work; one of the most interested was Mr. Marcellus B. Frost in Nashville, a sender of notes and clippings. Ten years or so ago the hunt quickened, and all reading became centered on the past, but soon I realized that we in Kentucky south of the Cumberland with neither roads nor railroads, only the river, had had no world of our own. The past and the future for the old had been in Tennessee—all things went down the Cumberland, all goods up. Nashville was their town. 338| Author’s Acknowledgments Thus it was that my searching centered in the Tennessee archives at Nashville. Mrs. Gertrude Morton Parsley, Reference Librarian, State Library Division, Tennessee State Library and Archives, was for many years an unfailing source of information on where to find what and sometimes on what, both in person during my several trips to the Library and in the furnishing of photostats, sketches, and microfilm, with many letters to clear up doubtful points. Mr. Robert T. Quarles, Jr., in his dual role of President of the Tennessee Historical Society and Director of the Archives of the State of Tennessee, gave me in conversation some of the history of early settlers he carries in his head, and guided me to many helpful manuscripts. I, in time, approached Dr. Henry Lee Swint, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University, to ask the very great favor—would he read the manuscript? He not only agreed but in the course of conversations through the years gave many helpful suggestions on possible source materials. Another most helpful in suggesting sources and furnishing photostatic material was Dr. Josephine L. Harper, Manuscript Librarian, State Historical Society, The State of Wisconsin. Help came also from members of the staff of the Joint University Library of Nashville, Homer Chance and staff of the Ann Arbor Public Library, Dr. Jacqueline Bull, Archivist of the University of Kentucky Libraries, the New York Public Library, and, of course, the Detroit Public Library where the work began. I am particularly indebted to Chief James M. Babcock and staff of the Burton Historical Collection, and to Mrs. Frances Brewer of the Rare Book Room, both in Detroit. The work could not have been completed without the use of the libraries of the University of Michigan, and for permission to use them I am deeply indebted to Dr. Frederick H. Wagman, Director of the University Library. Particularly helpful were Miss Margaret I. Smith and staff of the Reference Department and Miss Ella Hymans of the Rare Book Room, though I...