Cades Cove During the Nineteenth Century

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-1976 Cades Cove During the Nineteenth Century Durwood Clay Dunn University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Dunn, Durwood Clay, "Cades Cove During the Nineteenth Century. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1976. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1623 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Durwood Clay Dunn entitled "Cades Cove During the Nineteenth Century." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. LeRoy P. Graf, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Charles O. Jackson, John Finger, Lee Greene, John Muldowney Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduat e Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Durwood Clay Dunn entitled "Cades Cove During the Nineteenth Century ." I recommend that it be accepted in partial fu lfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philo sophy, with a maj or in History. We have read this dissertat ion and recommend its acceptance : Accepted for the Council : Vice Chancellor Graduat e Studies and Research -; ; , . I ·l ' i CADES COVE DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A Dissertat ion Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Durwood Clay Dunn August 1976 �; 1"'·c·,....,,.� sa L.J:... G) Copyright by Durwood Clay Dunn 1976 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Although the Southern mountaineer has emerged as a distinctive figure in the fiction of local colorists since the 1880's, few actual historical investigations of specific locales in the region have been undertaken to examine the confusing plethora of stereotypes and hypotheses surrounding the Appalachian South . Using fami ly records, oral hi story, and manuscript census returns, the present study of Cades Cove, a small mountain community in East Tennessee, attempts to remedy this situation by carefully analyzing the nature and degree of change within the community, and the extent to which cultural continuity existed throughout the nineteenth century . Enormous economic and social changes marked the cove 's development from its fir�t settlement by the Oliver fami ly in 1818 through the decade of the 1850 's. During this period of growth, new immigrants brought both cu ltural diversity and innovative ideas ; entrepreneurs such as Daniel D. Foute and Dr. Calvin Post undertook numerous proj ects to improve and develop the cove 's economy; and the regional boom in farm prices combined with the high fertility of the soil allowed the av erage farmer greatly to increase his hol dings and per capita income. The period was also characterized by movement of families in the mainstream of the Westward Movement into and out of the cove from many parts of the United States and several foreign countries . Pol itical change in the form of the Civil War drastically altered the lives of the cove people, however. Rejecting innovation in the iii iv political order, they opposed the confederates surrounding them, and were in turn brutally attacked by North Carolina guerrillas whose retaliatory pillaging of the community systematically destroyed both lives and property. The resulting postwar bitterness brought a basic change in the inhabitants ' attitude; they became suspicious of strangers and hostile to many types of innovation . Their social retrospection was underlined by a continuing postwar regional depression in agricultural prices which slowed , but did not completely destroy, their market economy. Cultural continuity was also evident in the cove 's development . The surrounding wilderness remained a constant factor in their lives throughout the century. The difficulties of initial settlement and the later ordeal of the Civil War bound the community closely together , and this closeness was reinforced after the war by the growth of large, extended families. Religion also provided a thread of continuity as the dominant Primitive Baptist church attempted to maintain its orthodoxy in the face of many secular changes. Out of their sense of community and desire for continuity emerged a distinctive folk culture, marked by a shared communal consciousness--of one another , incidents in their lives , and an int imate knowledge of the cove 's geography. This study concludes that the people of Cades Cove appear far more comp lex in their historica l development than the standard stereotypes of the Southern mountaineer in fiction or popular literature would indicate. In the final analysis, they were representative of the broad mainstream of nineteenth century American cul ture and society from whence they carne , v and their condition at the end of the century is explained both by the enormous changes in their political and economic environment , and by the continuity of their communal life style and geographical iso lation . PREFACE Although the mountain people and culture of Southern Appalachia were not identified or seriously examined as a separate entity from mainstream America until the 1880's, in the intervening years they have become the subject of both enduring stereotypes and literary, if not scholarly, debate . Before 1880, only three humorists--Augustus Baldwin Longstreet , George Washington Harris, and Harden E. Taliaferro--had considered the Southern mountaineer noteworthy or distinct enough to caricature . With the advent of local colorists such as Mary Noailles Murfree, however , the entire mountain cul ture was depicted in fictional 1 works which brought national recognition to the area . Murfree painted a sympathetic--if unrealistic and highly romanticized-- portrait of the mountain people. By the late 1880's, however , a rival group , motivated by both genuine reformist impulses and a naturalistic reaction to the saccharine excesses of the local colorists, began a systematic literary counterat tack . These "Mountain Muckrakers," obsessed with the degradation and misfortune of the mountain people, depicted them as living lives of stark brutality and desperation, an existence 2 particularly characterized by excessive cruelty to women and children . Yet another group of writers at the turn of the century idealized the 1 Robert Love Taylor, Jr ., Mainstreams of Mountain Thought : Attitudes of Selected Figures in the Heart of the Appalachian South, 1877-1903 (Doctoral dissertat ion , University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1971) , 2-22. 2 Ibid . vi vii Southern mountaineer as the last vestige of "pure" Ang lo-Saxon Americans living an existence far superior to their fellow Americans in a nation beset by the complications of burgeoning industr ialization , urbanization , and an influx of "un-American" foreign immigrants. Confronted with this bewildering plethora of stereotypes, few scholars have made any effort to analyze the conglomerate area we call South ern Appalachia. The present study of Cades Cove, a small mountain community in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains , was undertaken to examine a specific geographical entity as it grew and developed throughout the nineteenth century. The advantages of such a study in considering basic questions about the larger region are obvious . Was Cades Cove a "neo-frontier ," a frontier ar ea which had simp ly never developed further , or a frontier which had retrogressed due to particular geographical or environmental factors? How did the cove develop in relation to the region and state? Was it always backward , or had its comparative position in, say, 1840, been much closer to the mainstream of the Westward Movement than after the Civil War? When and how did its citizens develop a separate culture , and what were the distinguishing characteristics of that cul ture? In all these questions, the key prob lem throughout this study has been the origin , degree, and nature of change--how and when Cades Cove deviated from regional and national norms of development--and the causes of this change . The goal of this dissertation--to analyze carefully the development of a single community in Southern Appalachia--imposes critical limitations viii on forming broader generali zations about the region as a whole, however . Key features in the cove 's development, notably the high fertility of its soil from the days of earliest settlement , determined that the community would develop quite differently from other less fortunate areas of the larger region . Actual ly, the uniqueness of these individual mountain communities, often situated only a few miles across high mountains from each other , yet quite distinctive in their cul ture and economy, demonstrates the dangers of making any broad generalization about Southern Appalachia or the mountain people. With these limitations clearly in mind , the present study should

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