Gift from the Hills

Miss Lucy Morgan's Story of Her Unique Penland School

Lucy Morgan

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781469610320
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

Miss Lucy went to the North Carolina mountains in 1920 as an apprentice teacher, but she soon discovered that the kind of teaching that she wanted to do was not in the fields in which she was trained. What interested her most was already there among the mountain people--the ancient arts of hand-weaving and vegetable dyeing. Her campaign to revive interest in these native crafts has resulted in the internationally respected Penland School of Handicrafts. Originally published in 1971. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

CHAPTER 1

THE WHISTLE TOOTED, the smokestack belched a round puff of white steam and black smoke, the little locomotive groaned, gasped, lunged and fell back, strained and went forward, and with much bell-ringing, drive wheels clutching at rails, and accelerated puffing, began to catch speed.

And there we stood, our valises at our feet, our heads twisting.

Then from around behind the tiny railroad station a woman came running, arms outflung toward us.

“Lucy Morgan!” she screamed at me. “Mabel!” She grabbed us. “Welcome to Penland!”

Our embraces accomplished, we stood back from each other, and she looked Mabel and me up and down. “We’re so happy to have you here,” she declared, and then as she noticed our surreptitious glancing about she laughed. “If you look sharply, from here you can see a church and three houses. But in the wintertime with the leaves off the trees you can see five houses.”

It was June 1,1920. We were standing beside the tracks of the Clinchfield Railroad at Penland Station in Mitchell County, North Carolina, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Our greeter, who had come down from the Appalachian School up on Conley Ridge above the station, was Miss Amy Burt, who in the regular school months was Dean of Women at the normal school at Mount Pleasant, Michigan. She was a friend of my brother, the Reverend Rufus Morgan, an Episcopal minister and founder of Appalachian School, and it was through their friendship that I had been able to take my teacher-training work at her school. Mabel Fauble, who had got off the train with me, was a good friend who had also completed the two-year course at Mount Pleasant. Miss Burt had been spending what she called her summer vacations at Appalachian, an Episcopal institution under the supervision of the bishop of the diocese. We were soon to find, however, that vacation was hardly the word for what she did there.

“While we’re waiting for the wagon to get down the hill,” said Miss Burt, “I want you to meet some of our Penland neighbors. You’ll soon be discovering for yourselves that they are wonderful folk.” Whereupon she took us into the station and introduced us to Mr. Henry Meacham, station agent and telegrapher and, we would not be long in finding out, a distinctly unique individual. “A delightful character,” Miss Burt said of him as we left. “I’ll tell you more about him. But now we must go to the post office and pick up the school mail.”

In addition to the station and five houses, Penland had a post office and a general store. The community sat in the heart of a region abounding in mica, kaolin and feldspar, and its people were for the most part engaged in the mines.

At the post office we met Mr. A. C. Tainter. Miss Burt told us that he owned and personally operated the general store. He also kept books for one of the mining companies. If Mr. Tainter had been wearing a red suit trimmed in white fur we would have thought we had found Santa Claus in the flesh. He not only looked like the old gentleman from the North Pole country and had the same proportions, but he also had the same twinkle in his eyes and the same genial countenance; and we were reminded of a bowlful of jelly as he laughed. Through the weeks and months and years ahead we were to learn that Mr. Tainter was not just the keeper of the general store; he was the town’s creditor, the community’s friend, a friend of everybody, but particularly of the fellow in need, as I myself happily would learn.

He took us over to his store, where we met some other people of the community who had walked down to see the train pull in and to get any mail that might have come on it. About that time the wagon from the school drove up.

“I don’t see any place for us to sit,” I said.

“Sit?” Miss Burt laughed. “The wagon’s for your baggage,” she revealed. “We’ll walk.” She waved her hand in the general direction of Conley Ridge. “It’s just up there a little way. The road’s too rough for riding. Going up there in a wagon would shake your teeth out.”

We loaded the heavier luggage on the wagon, and it started up the hill. We picked up the smaller pieces and started walking. About halfway up the mile slope—and I’m certain that must have been one of the longest miles I had ever walked, though I had been born and reared in the mountains and all my life had been accustomed to walking—we paused for breath under the spreading arms of a giant oak. Then we struck out again up the steep, rocky path, through a blind gate, through a strip of dense woods, and across a vegetable garden that we learned was the school’s. Finally, there was the school itself.

We stood a moment and looked at the school. Then we turned and looked down the twisting, tortuous steep path we had surmounted. It had been a hard climb, and we had come a long way up; but we were here. Later I would realize that the climb from the station to the top of the ridge had been only the beginning of the path of my life’s work. That path would continue to offer me just as steep a grade, just as many stones over which to stumble, just as twisting and challenging a course. But when I look back now over the way I have come, I see ahead spiritual vistas just as beautiful and rewarding, promising and challenging as I saw in actuality on that first day.

The Appalachian School was a gracious bungalow with a wide porch. Originally built as a rectory, it had grown and developed through the care and efforts of my brother Rufus and his interested friends and church groups. We hastened inside to discover an oak-paneled living room about eighteen by thirty feet in size, with great oak beams overhead. There was a huge fireplace, and on this cheerful day casement windows let in floods of sunlight.

Miss Burt told us that shortly before our arrival bedrooms had been added by completing the second floor, which had been accomplished with the installation of dormer windows. Also, with the aid of government bulletins, Rufus and Mr. George Tim Wyatt, the school’s farmer, had recently put in plumbing. They had bought a water wheel for the cold spring and piped the water into Morgan Hall, the name Miss Burt had given the structure in honor of my brother.

Now, ready for the students when they arrived in the fall, was a bathroom! And in the mountains four decades ago a bathroom with running water was something to talk about.

Rufus and I had grown up in another mountain community in far western North Carolina, before good roads and accredited schools had penetrated that region. Even before his high school days were over Rufus had dreamed of such a school for his beloved mountain people. In later years he, together with our bishop, had planned to build a school in some community where the opportunities he wanted to offer were lacking, a community whose people were of substantial stock, the sort in which one might build with success.

I was soon to realize that no happier choice could have been made than Penland. These were great people, choice Americans. Here families of Buchanans still read their Bibles brought from England and traced their ancestors to President Buchanan’s brother. The family of our Mr. Wyatt had emigrated from Virginia to Penland, and in the Wyatts flowed the blood of Sir Francis Wyatt, a colonial governor of Virginia. Here was a family in which inherent culture lay, here was a whole community of such blood and bearing.

In these mountains, I hasten to say, is the purest Anglo-Saxon stock in the nation. The people have been isolated in the main for some two centuries and consequently their blood lines from England and Scotland come down unmixed with other people’s. Even today you frequently hear in the mountains words and expressions that those who do not know better may think are mispronunciations and bad grammar; actually they have come down, excellent English and Gaelic in their day, from the times of Shakespeare, and even, say the students of language, from Chaucer. Isolation has preserved the blood lines of these people, their language, their inherent naturalness, their basic culture.

The Clinchfield Railroad had come into this country only twenty years before that June day we got off at Penland Station, and it was the only dependable artery of travel. There were no hard-surface highways then; the famed North Carolina mountain highways that now carry you on broad strips of asphalt to the tops of some of our highest peaks, including Mount Mitchell, the loftiest in eastern America, were but engineering dreams.

It was into such an isolated community that Rufus had brought his Boston bride. At first they even lived in a one-room cabin with a lean-to. It was entirely foreign to Madeline’s way of life, as difficult for her as Boston would have been for me, no doubt. Soon they had the more comfortable arrangements in the rectory, but even then she was not happy, especially after the two babies came along. She had become convinced that it was absolutely necessary for Rufus to accept work in some city where there were what she termed advantages for the children. So Rufus had moved away from Penland and the Appalachian School, but his heart was still here in these hills.

Morgan Hall was not our only building; we also had Ridgeway. This was a long, two-story structure resembling a barracks, which had been put up as a boys’ shop. But it would actually serve as a classroom and library, with one room set aside as a chapel where we could hold Sunday school classes and Sunday worship services as often as some clergyman could get to us.

We felt almost wickedly luxurious as we settled in Morgan Hall with its running water and bathroom, three bedrooms, office and a study, all on the first floor. With Miss Burt, Mabel and me were two other women who were combining a vacation with hard work. It was to be a busy and interesting summer. We cooked, canned food for the winter, conducted Sunday school, discussed farming problems with Mr. Wyatt, did everything we could toward getting Morgan Hall and Ridgeway ready for the opening of school in the fall. And for recreation we visited the neighbors.

One of these neighbors was Aunt Susan Phillips. Rufus had written me about her. She lived some distance away from the school, Rufus had said, but he didn’t say how far. And he had added what he knew would be for me an intriguing note: Aunt Susan had done a sizable amount of hand-weaving. In those years little hand-weaving was being done in this country, and we were growing desperately afraid that if something were not done quickly to revive the craft, it would soon become a lost art.

Rufus had written that he hoped I could learn to weave at the school, and possibly interest others enough to revive an art that had lingered longer in the mountains than anywhere else. He told me that Aunt Susan was the only person he had found in the county who had ever done weaving. And Aunt Susan was in her nineties!

So we determined that at the first opportunity we would go to see Aunt Susan. She lived over on Snow Creek, we found out, but no one seemed to know just where. Mr. Wyatt thought it was about two miles and a half, but he wasn’t sure.

The day finally came when we could spare the time, and we started off to visit the venerable old lady. It was just after breakfast when we left Morgan Hall. We walked down hill and up, and down again, over rocky, furrowed roads, through short cuts, along bypaths, around big rocks, over fallen tree trunks. After miles of walking we met a man and asked him how far it was to Aunt Susan Phillips’ house. He puckered his brow and studied a moment. “Well,” he opined, “from here I reckon it must be nigh on to two miles and a half.”

“Well,” my friend suggested, “we may be treading water, but we aren’t walking backwards anyway.”

So we trudged on, relieved when we came to a downhill stretch but discouraged when we began another uphill climb. We crossed small streams, pushed brambles and vines out of our way to keep to the twisting path, and plodded across hollows. Then we met another man. We told him we were on our way to the home of Aunt Susan Phillips.

“Can you please tell us about how far it is from here?” we asked.

The stranger assumed an air of solemnity and carefully considered our question, and only after due deliberation did he answer:

“Right from here, best I can figure it, ’twould be about two miles and a half.”

We thanked him wearily, and resumed our walking.

“I’ve never walked so long and so far in my life to stay in one place,” Mabel observed, not too happily. We were sure we had more than walked Mr. Wyatt’s two miles and a half and we were confident we had trudged the first stranger’s two miles and a half. But we were not willing to turn back, even though we were very footsore and hungry by now.

When we were certain we had walked that third two and a half miles, we came to an open place and saw in the field down below us two sunbonneted women planting corn. We called down to them: “Could you ladies please give us directions how to get to Aunt Susan Phillips’ house?”

One of them pointed to the other. “Here she is.”

And there she was indeed, ninety-four years old and planting corn!

They came in from the field, put on dinner over the open fire in the fireplace; they hung pots on the crane and laid out bread in a Dutch oven set on the hearth over a bed of bright red coals. And that meal! We were as hungry as bears after having walked so far, and the food was delicious. I shall never forget how good it tasted. There were corn pone and steaming biscuits, ham and gravy, beans and potatoes, homemade cheese, jams, jellies. It was wonderful. Fresh sweet milk and buttermilk, cold from the spring, coffee, and I don’t remember what else.

But an even more wonderful treat was awaiting us. When we had eaten until we were stuffed, Aunt Susan showed us all of her hand-woven coverlets, some in blue and white, some in rose madder, blue and white. Most of them were woven in the traditional pattern called Cat’s Track and Snail’s Trail.

Nor were these the only prizes we were to see that day. Aunt Susan and her two daughters (one of whom had been planting corn with her) were wearing linsey-woolsey skirts and basques; they showed us yardage in reserve for future needs. Aunt Susan had woven all this years before, when her eyes were much younger and sharper.

We noticed that most of the materials were of a brown color, dyed, they told us, with walnut hulls or walnut roots, whichever happened to be handiest at the time. At the bottoms of the skirts there were stripes in various vegetable-dye colors—indigo blue, the yellow of hickory bark, tan from onion skins, green produced by dyeing yarn first in the ooze of hickory bark and then, after it had dried, in an indigo bath.

There was nothing harsh in Aunt Susan’s colors; all were soft and mellow and rich. For me her coverlets were the greatest attraction; I fairly ogled them, I felt their softness and perfection of texture, I marveled at their color. I yearned to know how to create such materials and such patterns. All the way home I thought of those beautiful specimens, each worthy of immortality in some museum, and of what a tragedy it would be were the art of creating such things lost to succeeding generations.

We got home that night in time for supper, after walking three times the two miles and a half to Aunt Susan’s, and the same distance back. It had been a big day. More importantly, it had deepened my determination to do everything I could to help preserve for America and the world the rapidly dying handicraft skills, particularly hand-weaving, that had been for so long a distinctive part of living in our North Carolina mountains.

Later one of our teachers bought a pedometer and we took it along the next time we walked to Aunt Susan’s. The distance recorded, we were not surprised to discover, was seven and a half miles. Things are big in our mountains—the hills, the hospitality and genuineness of the people, the love of freedom, the flowers, the trees, yes, and even the miles.

We often took walks in those days. We visited other neighbors who lived in the vicinity of the school, but we also went to see special beauty spots in the region.

Frequently acting as our guide on such occasions was a neighbor whom I shall call by the admittedly fabricated but nevertheless descriptive name of Tippytoe Golightly. I have heard it said that Tippytoe took pride in the fact that the revenue officers had never been able to pin on him any charge related to the manufacture or dispensing of a liquid product derived from corn grown in his vicinity and rather widely known—and, I should add, appreciated—by the name of moonshine. That I can easily believe. Tippytoe knew the woods and all living things in them, and he was familiar with all the hidden places. He and nature were in tune.

Somebody told me a story about Tippytoe, which I like. It went something like this: My brother Rufus was the first Episcopalian to live in this neighborhood, and also the first man these people had known who never wore a hat. Ergo, Episcopalianism and hatlessness were related. Well, Tippytoe was in a secluded spot back in the hills one day, having just run off a batch of moonshine, when the revenue officers came crashing through the bushes. But the moonshiner managed to get away just in the nick of time. Later, however, the officers spotted Tippytoe and arrested him.

“For what?” he innocently asked the revenuers.

“For making moonshine liquor, of course,” they replied, and they described the exact location of his still. He protested that he knew nothing about it. Whereupon they produced his hat, which in his hurry to get away he had left behind.

“Tippytoe,” one of them said, “we got you this time, and you know it. You ran out from under your hat. We found it right there at the still and the hat puts you there. You know that’s your hat; we’ve caught you not far away and you don’t have a hat on. How do you explain not having a hat?”

“Easy,” said Tippytoe. “I’m an Episcopalian.”

Tippytoe was locally famous for his ability to outrun the revenue officers, many of whom were themselves fleet of f...