South Mountains Pipe Maker: Sally Michael

South Mountains Pipe Maker: Sally Michael Steve Shaffer Steve Shaffer is a free-lance writer in Hickory, North Carolina. Interested in the early craftspeople who inhabited the region, he has done considerable research on the subject. 32 The South Mountains spur of the Appalachian range is the forgotten child of the Southern Highlands. Spilling across Burke, Rutherford, and portions of Catawba, Cleveland, and Lincoln counties in western North Carolina, these rugged, laurel-covered ridges have yet eluded development. The steep, winding mountain roads are mercifully devoid of golf courses, condominiums, and souvenir stands. They are lined only by massive outcrops of gray stone and a rich variety of native flora. The landscape has remained much as it appeared when the first white settlers carved out rough-hewn homesteads in its deep, isolated hollows. During the 1800s, one such homestead was the dwelling of a determined, resourceful, and proud woman, Sarah "Sally" Michael, whose handcrafted clay smoking pipes were destined to be celebrated far and wide as the finest pipes produced anywhere in the country. Many details of Sally's ancestry and early life went, literally, up in smoke when a great part of the Burke County courthouse records were destroyed by Union raiders during the Civil War. It is known, however, that she was born in 1792 and eventually married Thomas Michael, a farmer of German descent who struggled to reap a bare subsistence from his 100-acre farm located in a high gap between Burkemont and Kaylor's mountains. Although no photographs of Sally or her high mountain homestead are known to survive, a contemporary who visited her humble cabin later recorded that "she lived in a small, two-roomed cabin on a little mountain 2,500 feet above the sea. The structure was of hickory logs, chinked with clay, and the chimneys of stone, roughly shaped and irregularly placed. The rooms, about ten by eighteen, were cozy and comfortable. Well do I recall how Sally Michael looked the day I saw her. She sat in front of a baking fire, in a large, comfortable home-made arm chair, working away at her table . . . "Sally Michael was not a mountain beauty but had a strong face and a good heart," the writer continued. "Although not educated at school she was intelligent, and knew the mountains and the mountain people. She was a student of nature and loved her home. Her clothes were plain but substantial and comfortable. On her head she wore a clean white handkerchief, and in her older years, used spectacles. She was about five feet in height and weighed 140 pounds." Where Sally learned the art of pipe maldng, and where she secured her pipe molds, remain a mystery. It is plausible that she had a connection with one of the numerous Catawba valley potters in neighboring Lincoln and Catawba counties, an area once famous for its pottery industry. Armed only with several sets of molds and an ancient 33 horse, Sally became, quite probably, the area's first businesswoman. Her skill at producing clay pipes no doubt contributed substantially to her family's financial state. More importantly, it carved a colorful niche in the already rich history of Western North Carolina. Swinging aboard her long-toothed white horse, Sally would ride down the crooked mountain paths. Her destination: deposits of fine kaolin clay which she had reputedly discovered along the banks of two local streams known as Hunting Creek and Silver Creek. After excavating the bluish-gray colored clay from the stream banks in blocks, she returned home, carefully keeping her load wet to ensure the clay's workability. Once home, Sally "wedged" her clay, washing, beating, and kneading the mass much as a baker prepares dough. She worked until all of the lumps and other impurities disappeared and the clay reached the proper consistency and became the color of milk. Transferring the clay to a heavy plank table, she rolled it into round cylinders and cut it with a knife into the proper lengths. The clay cylinders were then packed into heavy, handcarved soapstone molds. The two halves were fitted into a carved wooden block with a wooden wedge driven between the block and...