Gimme That Old Time Religion

Protestantism is the most dominant denomination in Appalachia, although there is a significant presence in the northern half of the region and in urban areas. The region’s early Lowland and Ulster Scot immigrants brought to Appalachia, eventually organizing into bodies such as the . English —most of whom had been influenced by the and movements—were also common on the Appalachian frontier, and today are represented in the region by groups such as the , the , , and “old-time” groups such as the and . such as helped spread to Appalachia in the early 19th century, and today 9.2% of the region’s population is Methodist, In religion, the choice of joining formal congregations was limited. Old Catholic families could not find a priest except in the represented by such bodies as the , the , and the . movements within the region include the (based in ) and the . Scattered colonies coastal cities or in Maryland. Presbyterian ministers had to be ordained at Princeton or at the Log College in Pennsylvania – but exist throughout the region.

even so, the graduating classes were miniscule, and many Presbyterians settled in with the Baptists or for no denomination at I should mention a personal observation gleaned from visiting the mountains for over 30 years: there’s institutional

all. Even so, some of the diaries of the 18th century refer to the pioneers of Southwestern Virginia as being “Scots-Irish: real prejudice afoot in many of the missionary statements. For better or worse, the mountain people have always been and still remain Presbyterians.”

“Christian” in almost every sense by which the northerners take it. All generations are familiar with churchy stuff: turn on the By the end of the 19th century “Tent Meetings” had become popular, and the stereotype of evangelical preaching remains radio on a Sunday morning and you hear the preaching; listen to Bluegrass music and you hear the cadences of the churches, the associated with the Appalachian region – and the style of delivery can still be heard on the local radio stations: “lining out,” air Bible quotations, the reverence for the Christian tradition. Sit on a porch for a few hours and you can identify the morality and gasping, emotional epiphany, and the integration of sermon with song.

ethics as taught from the Old Testament; go to a funeral in the mountains, and you won’t mistake it for a Jewish or Hari Krishna Yet, although the mountain south has become synonymous with religiosity, the missionaries who rode into the mountains service.

during the 19th century believed they were bringing that “Old Time” religion to “heathens,” or at least helping these “lost” souls That the people of the mountains remain ruggedly independent (although the government still has hopes of eliminating

to rediscover their Christian roots; and many of them felt their purpose especially urgent because they were ministering to, what it) is undeniable. They are still not particularly joiners – and when they have joined anything in the past – whether it was the one preacher called, “the last pure remnant of the Anglo-Saxon race on Earth.”

brigades of the Revolutionary War, the troops who went off to fight for the South or the North, a hanging or a lynching or a jail They were wrong on both counts.

break crowd, they could and did as easily unjoin it when the need to do so enspirited them.

First, the “pure Anglo-Saxon race” the missionaries “discovered” was barely Anglo-Saxon. Second, contrary to their current Institutional professionals hate them: missionaries, generals, do-gooders down from Washington. They do what they

reputation, most of the Southern pioneers had remained conversant with the Bible thoughout their supposed mountain “exile”

have to do – or what their “leaders” expect them to do - but just for a while: and when the urge to leave hits them, they’re out from civilization. The prayers they said and the religion they had practiced remained close to the Calvinist tradition, and whatever of there. They join a church and accept their savior, and then the preachers don’t see them anymore; they join the troops, shoot knowledge of the Bible or Christian could not be transmitted from generation to generation because of illiteracy, was passed on a passle of Indians, Englishmen, Northerners, and then they desert; they sign up for welfare programs, government make work by traditional church music.

projects, and TARP sponsored rehab initiatives, and show up sometimes or hardly ever.The government and the media call them Christianity – a people’s version – was universal among the mountain people; clergy were self-appointed, and “institutional irresponsible; but they are simply acting as if their freedom is self-evident. They really believe the following sentiments, though religion” was looked at skeptically.

they may never have read them, even though one of our relatives put quill in hand and actually wrote them:

Further, the records of deed, lawsuits, and genealogical information gleaned from family Bibles – as well as the tradition of

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with

Bible reading in the home – seems to indicate that illiteracy may never have been as widespread as the world outside the moun-

certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights,

tains has wanted itself to believe. Schools were maintained, and they must have been more efficient than those of the present day,

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any

because, as our own family tradition recalls, only one or two years of sometime attendance in the lower grades was often more

Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute

than enough to teach the basics.

new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most

The people in the mountains had always been religious – although the missionaries who “discovered” them in the 1800s said

likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

they were not. Joining a church, however, (the end game of many a Northern missionary group) was something different than what they may have been used to - or wanted – and the mountain folk used it as often a temporary measure: sinners were often

“saved” and “lost” many times in the course of their lives. It is still common in the mountains to refer to church goers as “righ-teous hypocrites” and “so-called Christians.”

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14

THE “REMOVES”

United States has, until recently, been east to west: Southerners end up Texas; Northerners end up in California or Washington, or Oregon).

Even if it took each family group multiple generations to get to Ganderbill from their points of origin, the distance traveled was not very far. It is only 600 miles from Philadelphia to Lexington, KY “as the crow flies” today – maybe as much as 800 miles on the route that was taken two hundred years ago. It is only 361 miles from Washington, D.C. to Abingdon, VA. Of course, the trip took longer on a wagon road than on Interstate 81, the superhighway which runs the length of the Shenandoah and which V

parallels Rte 11, roughly the original track of The Great Wagon Road; still, even traveling 10 miles a day, The Great Wagon Road adventure could be completed in a month.

The Wikipedia entry for The Great Wagon Road is virtual triptik of our ancestors’ progression of our families from northern Virginia down to southwestern Virginia and into Kentucky:

The Great Wagon Road was a improved trail transiting the from to , and from there to .

The Great Wagon Road was the heavily traveled main route for settlement of the Southern United States, particularly the “”.

This was the area that received the great proportion of migrating , , and settling from other parts of and , as well as smaller but The “Removes”

still significant immigrant from and other German states allied to Britain in the 18th century. The English, Anglo-Scottish, and Scots-Irish from the area were the largest group of settlers from the British Isles before the American Revolution.

Beginning at the port of , where many immigrants entered the colonies, the Great Wagon Road passed through the towns of and in southeastern . Portions of the Great Wagon Road traveled to present-day , about 30 miles (48 km) northwest of York.

Mechanicsburg derives its name from the many mechanics who set up shop there to do business with the numerous wagon trains Many of our ancestors came to these shores alone (as in the case of Peter La Foucate), but apparently either sent for or had made traveling through town.

prior arrangements with their relatives back home urging family members to join them (as is likely with the Combs). Some even Turning southwest, the road crossed the at and entered the at , continuing south in the valley via the (also called the , as traveled back to Europe to bring wives back with them (as with Thomas Noble and Mollie Gilbert).

on this map), which was established by centuries of travel. The had established colonists’ rights to use the Indian Road. The Once settled on this continent, they often relocated in the same manner (one member going ahead, others following, as is the Shenandoah portion of the road is also known as the (U.S. Highway 11).

case with the Fugates of Southwestern Virginia). Along the way if not before their “removes,” families became interrelated, and South of the Shenandoah Valley, the road reached the at the town of Big Lick (today, ). South of Roanoke, the Great Wagon it is no surprise that the same last names appear in the records grouped together at different times and in different places.

Road was also called the . At Roanoke, a road forked southwest, leading into the upper and on to the in the upper . From there, My research 20 years ago concerning the neighbors of Peter La Foucate in Maryland, demonstrated that the same fami-the led into .

lies (Overton, Hall, Landrum) who were neighbors then, were still neighbors two hundred years later, but now in Virginia and Once in the four state area where Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky meet, settlers could “switch” to The Kentucky. This could be because a relatively few families had a lot of children and they took the same paths (such as The Great Wilderness Road – although our ancestors who settled Eastern Kentucky, took the overland route from Abingdon, which now Wagon Road) to the same places as each new area was opened up and/or made safe for settlement; or it goes could further than runs through Coeburn VA (Rte. 58), and through Wise, VA and through the Pound Gap (Rte. 23) and into Kentucky at what is this: early on – if not before they got here – loosely connected “clans” could remove as an entire community, or a part of it.

now Jenkins, KY.

This should not imply that everyone in a family always left at the same time or eventually left to join their relations. Each Wikipedia again:

generation almost always produced at least a dozen children. If there were many to “remove,” there were also many would would The Wilderness Road was the principal route used by settlers for more than fifty years to reach from the East. In 1775, blazed remain close to their places of birth – and they left a genealogical trail. For example, Fugates can still be found in Maryland, a trail for the from in through the into . It was later lengthened, following trails, to reach the at . The Wilderness Road was steep Virginia, and of course by the bushel load in Kentucky. Neaces family can still be found in Pennsylvania. Collins’ (worth), and rough, and it could only be traversed on foot or horseback. Despite the adverse conditions, thousands of people used it.

Combs’, and Noble families are similarly scattered;and this pattern continued after members of the Kentucky clans decided to In 1792, the new Kentucky legislature provided money to upgrade the road. In 1796, an improved all-weather road

“remove” into Indiana, Missouri, and the rest of the continent.

was opened for wagon and carriage travel. The road was abandoned around 1840, although modern highways follow much of The Nobles, for example, when they left the Northern Neck of Virginia, were said to be striking out for Missouri. Quite a few its route.

got there (Noble, Missouri in the Ozarks, near Branson is an example). Some got there and returned and named their children after their brief adventure (Missouri Ann Noble is one example). The first settlement in Indiana was begun by Sam Noble of Virginia (he became the first senator from that state to Washington), and Nobles later returned “home” for visits to Kentucky after settling in Georgia, Maine, and even Australia.

This is because Kentucky was a destination for some family members but a jumping off point for others – another “cradle” -

both in earlier generations and in those which came afterwards. Eventually, Kentucky was considered as much “The Old Country”

to these related southerners, westerners, and plainsmen, as New England was to other American colonists.

For the purpose of this short history, the movement of our ancestors is traced from their arrival on North American shores to their settlement in Kentucky – and then to those who settled Ganderbill, and finally, to Inez Fugate Liftig, my wife, and to our children Anya and Dorothy, who were raised in Connecticut, where – incredibly to us at the time – we found other Kentucky Fugates who had also relocated to Connecticut (I use “incredible” here, because the traditional direction of emigration within the 15

16

FROM THE NORTH DOWN TO KENTUCKY

During the , the , a pro-Independence , formed in the town of Culpeper. They organized in what was then known as “Clayton’s Old Field,” near today’s Yowell Meadow Park.

The Culpeper area can therefore be seen as staging area #2 for the movement down The Great Wagon Road to the area

around Abingdon, VA – with staging area #1 being their points of arrival along the Chesapeake: Baltimore, Southern Maryland, the Potomac. The Fugates and the Combs’ are the exception, having settled along the Rappahannock and the James, respectively.

The Fugates, though, also “came down from the North” (the Northern Neck of Virginia), to Southwestern Virginia; and,