Living Stories : An Investigation of the Perpetuation and Importance of Folk Ballads in
the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains
A thesis submitted
To Kent State University in partial
Fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Master of Arts
by
Andy Alex Martinez
August, 2018
© Copyright
All rights reserved Except for previously published materials TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………………..iii LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………..iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………v
I. INTRODUCTION……...………………………………………………………...1 THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS.....…………………………………………5 METHODS……………………………………………………………………....8 LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………………..9 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS……………………………………………...15 II. STORYTELLING AND OLD TIME…………………………………………...18 OLD TIME MUSIC……………………………………………………………..20 STORYTELLING………………………………………………………………25 III. FRANKIE SILVER……………………………………………………………..30 PRESENT DAY..………………………………………………………………34 FRANKIE SILVER IN POPULAR CULTURE……………………………….40 FUNCTION……………………………………………………………………..41 IV. TOM DOOLEY…………………………………………………………………46 PRESENT DAY………………………………………………………………..48 THE CASE……………………………………………………………………..50 INFLUENCE……………………………………………………………………53 TOM DOOLEY IN POPULAR CULTURE…………………………………...56 V. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………62 VI. REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………64
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Map of the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains………………………………19
Figure 2. Recreation of Frankie Silver’s Cabin……………………………………………..36
Figure 3. Tom Dula in Confederate Uniform………………………………………………..50
Figure 4. Dr. Carter’s medical bag…………………………………………………………...54
Figure 5. Tom Dooley Posters………………………………………………………………..57
Figure 6. Playbill for “Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend”……………………………58
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I owe a great many people a great debt for making this paper possible. First and foremost, my aunt and uncle, Donna and Benny Lail, without whom I could not have done the fieldwork required to explore this topic. My best friend Tricia, my roommate
Alary, my sister Ashley, and my parents Tony and Maria have had to listen to me talk about this endlessly for years, and I thank them for their support and patience and for frequently acting as a sounding board. I thank Margaret Martine of Whippoorwill
Academy and Village for her enthusiasm and her work in keeping history alive in Happy
Valley. I thank Jeff Stepp, of the Caldwell County Historical Museum, for his support and his excitement about this project, which he unfortunately did not live to see completed. And of course my utmost thanks go to my committee, Dr. Richard Feinberg and Dr. Jennifer Johnstone, without whom this would not have happened at all and my thesis chair, Dr. Evgenia Fotiou, who guided me through this entire process.
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Introduction
Music is an important part of life – or at least a relatively omnipresent one – for most of us. We have radios and CD players, even things like Sirius and Pandora, in our cars. Most stores and restaurants play music. Our television shows have opening and closing theme songs and background music throughout; even the commercials often have jingles and background music. When we go out or have a party, we usually have music. We celebrate important events – birthdays, weddings, graduations, and many religious festivals – with music. And there are certain songs we expect people to know, and to know the place of, because they are so omnipresent in our culture.
This is also true of regional styles of music. There are certain songs that people in certain areas and subcultures place significance on and expect one another will know. There are sounds we associate with these groups as well. The Appalachian
Mountains have a distinctly American sound. Their music is the result of the mix of different cultures that have come together over time. This brought instruments, melodies, and musical elements that shaped the sound of the mountains.
Music is a critical part of the culture in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains.
It helps to define the local cultural identity. It is, and has been for generations, a form of entertainment and sociality. It also provides a way for
1 people to relate to each other and to the history of the area. The melodies, instrumentation, and lyrics of the music performed there can all be traced back through the region’s history to reveal the diverse origins of the area’s distinctive culture.
Growing up, I spent part of my summers in Western North Carolina, in the Brushy
Mountains. The Brushy Mountains are a small, low spur of the larger Blue Ridge, which is in turn part of the Appalachian Mountain Range that stretched from New York to
Georgia. They are separated from the rest of the Blue Ridge by the Yadkin River. Most residents will refer to the Brushy Mountains as “the foothills” rather than as actual mountains, despite the abundance of named peaks. The area is still relatively isolated, although not to the same extent as deeper parts of the range. The Brushy Mountains are almost like a gateway from the mountains to the lowland.
Although I grew up in the North, my family has lived in Western North Carolina for centuries. Because of that history and these trips, I was raised in part around this unique culture and its music. I have fond memories of relatives singing ballads, of an uncle playing the banjo on my grandmother’s front porch. That porch was the center of community life in the tiny town my mother’s family comes from. My grandmother’s house was an old farmhouse, more than a century old and built by relatives on a plot that has been in the family for over 300 years. As was common in farmhouses of the era in which it was built, it had a long, L-shaped, covered porch out front. That was where people in town would gather in the evenings and for special events. We would sing, cook, and tell stories.
I was always aware that the sorts of stories and songs I heard there on that porch were something my friends up North were not familiar with. They were not
2 something I heard at home in the Ohio suburb where I was raised. I never placed any importance on that when I was young. It was not until I got older that I recognized the uniqueness of the area’s culture and of the songs and stories I grew up with.
The town has grown since then. It has taken traveling there on my own to realize that perhaps the place I remember does not quite exist anymore, at least not the way I remember it. Things have changed quite a bit since the early 1990s. But one thing that has not changed is the importance of music and storytelling. Those things are still a thriving and critical part of the fabric of the region.
This connection is what led me to research the importance of music in the local culture of the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. It has also leant me a significant advantage in making connections, as very often the people I was speaking with were able to pick out some way in which we were kin to one another. When examining the music, I chose two journalistic murder ballads from Western North Carolina: Hang Down
Your Head Tom Dooley and The Ballad of Frankie Silver. I chose these two ballads because they are based on relatively well documented true events and because their stories occurred only thirty-five years and one county apart. Because these are based on true events, it is possible to find the families connected to them, most of them still living in the same places where the stories occurred. And people are aware of their connections to these stories. These are not just local legends; they are embedded in family histories.
When I first started this project, I had an idea that I was going to be able to examine and compare the role of gender in the way that these ballads are constructed and perpetuated. That, however, proved impossible. In part this was because of the
3 huge popularity of “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley,” the Kingston Trio’s recording of which catapulted it into the international spotlight in the late 1950s (Cohen and
Donaldson 2014, 94-5, 118). With the ballad having this sort of notoriety, there was no way to determine what in its transmission had to do with gender and what had to do with its place in the larger popular culture. A better ballad would have been “Omie Wise,” which recounts the 1808 murder of Naomi Wise by John Lewis. Although the ballad had a fair amount of success during the folk boom, it did not achieve the same ubiquity as
“Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley” (Underwood 2016, 19). As this ballad has had a history with popular culture that more closely resembles that of “The Ballad of Frankie
Silver,” it would have made for a much more accurate comparison.
Another reason this was not possible was because of the vastly different histories of the two ballads. Thirty-five years does not sound like much in the larger scheme of history, but in the South at that time it was a sufficient span to allow for a massive upheaval of the cultural and legal landscape. Frankie Silver’s story occurred before the
Civil War and before the breakdown of coverture laws, which essentially made women wards of their fathers or husbands, began (Seigel 2002). Thomas Dula’s story, on the other hand, was largely shaped by the end of the Civil War.
So, realizing that I would not be able to pursue my original line of inquiry at this time, I turned my focus instead to the importance of these events and their stories in local culture. This I have been much more successful with. There are many ways in which the local people have kept these stories alive. They have appeared in all sorts of media, from song to film to written word. All of this speaks to a deep devotion to these stories. They are, and always have been, an important part of not just the regional
4 identity, but the personal identity of the people connected to them. They provide a sense of place and a means of relating to the area and its history, as well as a means of relating to others in the area. It is this that I will examine here.
Theoretical Orientations
Folklore serves several functions within society. While many of the stories we tell and are told may not seem as though they hold much significance, they are part of a bigger picture. Stories tend to reflect on the people telling them; their own beliefs and ideas. This much is evident from the wide variation of stories across cultures. Different cultures have different values and therefore tellers from different cultures tell different stories.
In anthropological theory, functionalism dictates that everything within a culture has a distinct purpose. This purpose may not be apparent but can be discovered if one considers the broader conditions of society. Spiro, for instance, states that the purpose of ghost stories on the island of Ifaluk is to maintain peace (Spiro 1954). Ifaluk is a tiny island nation where everyone relies on their neighbors for survival, so it is critical that people get along. By blaming evil spirits for anything that goes wrong on the island – including acts committed by humans – it allows for the community to come together against the problem and prevents blame and anger towards other people.
Perhaps not everything within culture has an absolute purpose. And even when it does, that purpose may be nothing more than entertainment. Storytelling and ballad singing may be done simply for entertainment in some instances, but even when this is the case, it still reflects on the bigger picture. There is a reason these specific stories are told.
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Merriam (1964) also discusses the idea of functionalism in one of the seminal works in the field of ethnomusicology. He states that all music has both a use and a function. This goes a step beyond the idea of functionalism as given by Spiro. According to Spiro and the idea of functionalism, all things in culture have a purpose. Merriam posits that there are multiple purposes to music. The first is what he terms “use.” This, he says, is the way in which music is used. Balladry may be purely entertainment. It is often used this way. The second purpose, though, is what he terms “function,” and it is here that he falls more into line with functionalist theory. The function of music is its role within the culture it comes from. This goes beyond simple things like entertainment.
Rather, this refers to things like enculturation (Merriam 1964, 209).
Furthermore, Durkheim wrote of the impact of the group upon the identity of the individual. He states that “in traditional society, where the collective conscience is strong, the individual is subject to the tyranny of the group” (Durkheim 1972, 28). In this, he is talking about the constraints of societal expectations and the way in which breach of these constraints is often punished by society. However, this is true in many things. In the instance examined in this thesis, this collective conscience is the web of collective historical knowledge typical of this region. The collective conscience does still play a large role in the development of personal identity. Usborne and Sablonnière tell us that
“personal identity answers the question ‘who am I?’ and represents the set of goals, values, beliefs and characteristics that an individual has developed or internalized”
(2014). Because the collective conscience dictates many of these beliefs and values, it has a direct role in shaping individual identity. What it means to be a person in the time and place in which an individual lives is a major part of the answer to “who am I?”
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In terms of folklore and storytelling, this can be seen in the function of stories.
Stories can be and are often used to teach listeners about how to function as a member of the culture they come from. They offer insight into how one is expected to behave, what is considered important, and what it means to be a productive member of society.
Blacking notes this usage of songs as tools for teaching societal values in his work on
Venda children’s songs. According to Minks, Blacking “discussed the role of music in establishing a sense of belonging, music as an ‘audible badge of identity’ among social groups” (2002, 388). As such, music can also help to establish the foundations of personal identity. After all, teaching things like where the teller’s ancestors came from, how one should relate to the world around them, and what should be considered important, these stories also teach what it means to be human in that particular society.
Mink goes on to further explain that songs can help to cement practices and beliefs that are held as norms in the societies from which they come (2002, 388).
This is true of the stories told in the mountains as well. These stories help to form the basis of personal and regional identity. They help people figure out how to relate to one another and how they are connected to the area’s history. Stories are used to help establish kinship ties, as comparing stories and finding stories two tellers have in common can often lead to finding some way in which they are related. They are also used in figuring out one’s relationship to the history of the area. The stories that are told
– especially family stories – are a way to frame the past. They serve to provide a sense of connection with the area and the other people who live there. And finally, in helping to establish these things, they provide a foundation for personal identity. They show the place of an individual within the context of the region and the other people in it.
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Identity is a tricky subject to discuss. It is ephemeral and intangible and as such no single definition is universally agreed upon. Bauman says of identity, “One thinks of identity whenever one is not sure of where one belongs; that is, one is not sure how to place oneself among the evident variety of behavioural styles and patterns, and how to make sure that people around would accept this placement as right and proper, so that both sides would know how to go on in each other’s presence” (1996, 18). This is not far off the mark. He discusses in his article the problem of defining and conceptualizing identity. What his overall message is, however, is that identity is largely performative.
That it is a process not so much of a single individual, but of the interactions between that individual and the people and environment around them.
All of this echoes Malinowski’s writings on the place of knowledge systems. He says of knowledge, “Systems of knowledge serve to connect various types of behavior; they carry over the results of previous experiences into future endeavors and they bring together elements of human experience and allow man to coordinate and integrate his activities” (1925). These systems of knowledge make up the “collective conscience” that
Durkheim discusses. They also inform our day to day lives. Folklore exemplifies
Malinoswki’s point that systems of knowledge bridge past and future experiences and integrate human experiences. Folklore, and especially oral histories, is a way of transmitting knowledge. It is, itself, a type of knowledge system, just as Blacking also posits that music is a cultural knowledge system (Mink 2002, 394). That knowledge influences how we see the world. We learn that things work a certain way, through teachings from our families and from others around us. That certain way we are taught the world works then impacts our understanding of our place in it.
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Radcliffe-Brown reiterates these points in talking about social life and cultural traditions as systems of knowledge by which we learn to participate in our own societies. Beyond simply repeating Malinowski’s ideas, however, he posits treating these systems and traditions as processes rather than entities (1952). This suggests that they are not something stagnant. Rather, they are ongoing occurrences not limited to a single event. This makes a great deal of sense in approaching folklore and oral history. These may recount certain specific events, but they are not stagnant entities.
They are, instead, the ongoing process of transmission.
I have often heard in conversation folklore described as being a bit like playing a game of telephone across both time and space. We may study the individual stories, but they will always be just as much the way in which they are perpetuated as the stories themselves. There is, then, a place for both of these perspectives in how we study folklore. In order to study the entity of the story, we must study the process of its transmission. In order to study the process of transmission, we must study the entity of the story, and do so with the understanding that this is a living entity rather than a stagnant one.
Just as all of the concepts and knowledge systems we are exposed to throughout our life help to shape us, so too does the lore we are raised with. It helps to teach us who we are by teaching us the values and history of the people we come from. In this way, these tales help us to determine who we are as individuals, how we can relate to the people and land around us, and what our place is in the larger scheme of all of this.
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Methods
In order to research this topic, I conducted a review of literature already available. I also spent two summers in the region, conducting field interviews, visiting historical museums, and attending events related to music, storytelling, or the specific ballads I was examining. Over the course of the two summers I conducted six interviews. Each person I spoke with had a slightly different connection to the ballads. In addition to formal interviews, I also spent a great deal of time talking to people informally. Some of these short, simple, candid conversations were almost as revealing as the actual interviews I conducted.
I also visited the Caldwell County Historical Museum, the History Museum of
Burke County, the Wilkes Heritage Museum, and Whippoorwill Academy and Village. Of these, I spent the most time at the Caldwell County Historical Museum. The library there contained a collection of books, articles, and newspaper clippings related to the two ballads and the people involved with them which proved invaluable resources.
Whippoorwill Academy and Village was also a site I visited several times, both because of the Tom Dooley museum and because of the festival related to the ballad. In addition to the Caldwell County Historical Museum library, I also spent a great deal of time at local and university libraries. These included the Lenoir public library, the Hickory public library, the Morganton public library, the Appalachian State University library, the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill main and special collections libraries, the
North Carolina State University library, and the Wake Forest University library. I attended the Tom Dooley Days festival at Whippoorwill and went to see a performance of “Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend” by the Bleu Moon Productions theater
10 company. I also attended old time jam sessions and festivals at various locations and times throughout the two summers.
Literature Review
There is a small amount of literature already written about these ballads, as well as a fair bit of literature on the Appalachian storytelling tradition, balladry, and old-time music. However, it can still be difficult to find information about the ballads themselves and their individual stories. In order to find the facts of the cases, it was necessary to turn to newspaper articles, self-published books, and non-academic – sometimes even fictionalized – accounts of the story. In the case of Frankie Silver, very little remains of the original documentation. Most of the court records have been lost over the ensuing
185 years. For Tom Dooley, the source of the confusion surrounding his story owes more to the popularity, and therefore distortion through multiple retellings, of the tale.
Folklore and oral history are similar to a massive game of telephone spanning generations. As such, there will necessarily be variation in the tales depending upon who is telling them.
One of the best and most comprehensive books is A Tree Accurst: Bobby
McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver by Daniel W. Patterson, a professor at University of North Carolina. This book came out of the UNC Chapel Hill press and was the only university published book I was able to find on Frankie Silver’s case. It is an ethnographic piece centered around Bobby McMillon, a professional storyteller and ballad singer from Lenoir, North Carolina. Patterson goes into great depth about the case, detailing the trial to the greatest extent existing documentation will allow. The book centers on McMillon’s relationship to the ballad and includes a transcript of
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McMillon’s telling of the story as well as a transcription of the ballad itself. Perhaps
Patterson’s primary objective, more than reporting the facts of the case, is to examine how Frankie’s story is viewed and what impact it has on the people who hear and tell it.
Another helpful book on the Frankie Silver case is They Won’t Hang a Woman, by Maxine McCall. McCall’s objective is very clearly to humanize Frankie in a way that the ballad and some of the tellings of her tale do not. While the book is a fictionalized first-person account of the trial, it contains a section where McCall details her research on the case. She provides images of documents such as the warrant for Frankie’s arrest and her indictment, along with her analysis of the facts provided by these documents.
While the account may be fictionalized, as we can never really know what happened all that time ago without records, McCall was meticulous in her research, tracking down what probably constitutes all remaining court documents regarding the case.
Finally, Perry Deane Young’s The Untold Story of Frankie Silver: Was she
Unjustly Hanged? is a solid, if sensationalist, resource on the story. Young, like McCall, did extensive research. Sensationalism is actually an integral part of Young’s approach in the book. He examines the wilder and more outlandish coverage the ballad has had over the years and compares them to what can be uncovered of the facts of the case.
The result is a good breakdown of what has happened to the tale over time. His bent on the issue, though, is that of proving Frankie’s innocence. He sets out with that goal in mind and it is that goal which shows through very clearly in the book’s writing.
The most comprehensive book on Tom Dooley is The Tom Dooley Files: My
Search for the Truth Behind the Legend by Charlotte Corbin Barnes. While not entirely scholarly in tone and, at times, a bit difficult to sift through due to the formatting, Barnes
12 devotes a stunning amount of research to searching out everything she could about the ballad and its story. Introduced to the Kingston Trio version of the ballad as a child, she did not realize until she was much older that the story the song told was true – with a few tweaks by the band in the name of record sales. The book recounts her research journey as she learned who Tom was, from his family history and neighbors to his service records, and about the path that ultimately led him to the gallows. At 485 pages, the book is a nearly exhaustive portrait of Tom, the Happy Valley area, and the murder case. Much like Young with Frankie Silver’s case, Barnes does, admittedly, seem very invested in the idea of clearing Tom’s name. She begins the book with the desire to prove Tom was innocent. Despite this, however, the book is a wonderful source of raw facts.
The True Story of Tom Dooley: From Western North Carolina Mystery to Folk
Legend by John Edward Fletcher is much shorter, but also a helpful piece of research. It does no cover anything drastically different from the Barnes book, but it does offer a less narrative approach which can be helpful at times. The layout is also easier to read, and the chapters feel a bit more organized. Additionally, without all the heft of The Tom
Dooley Files, finding key information is not as time consuming. Fletcher is clearly trying to present the most fact-based approach to the story he possibly can here. He reviews older scholarship on the ballad and its story and works to either prove or disprove various hypothesis on what really happens. His conclusion is that both Ann and Tom, who will be discussed in a later chapter, must have been involved in some way with the murder, but the main line of argument throughout the book is that we will likely never know what really happened, though he goes into much more depth as to why.
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On the broader topics of balladry, storytelling, and old-time music, there are several excellent books that have served well as resources for this thesis. Chief among these is American Murder Ballads and Their Stories by Olive Woolley Burt. One of the older books on the topic, it is nevertheless a very good analysis of what captivates people about murder and murder ballads. The book begins by relating Burt’s history with balladry. It then moves on to discuss a wide array of American murder ballads, most of them documenting actual killings, from all over the country and from all eras thereof. Burt was a dedicated song collector, as is evident from her attention to detail. If
Burt has an argument in her book, it is that people are fascinated by the macabre and the sensational and that these stories sometimes take on a life of their own. She discusses at length the impact of the gruesome natures of these crimes. These were sensational stories, the sort that would catch the attention of national media in today’s world. It is this, she concludes, that gives them their staying power.
The keyword listing for Crimesong: True Crime Stories from Southern Murder
Ballads by Richard H. Underwood perfectly encapsulates these ballads: “history/folk music/law/true crime.” These are the things that unfold the moment one begins to delve beyond the surface of any murder ballad. Underwood’s text has a similar bent as
American Murder Ballads. It catalogues several Southern murder ballads and examines their origins. As a storyteller and law professor, Underwood has a slightly different take on the stories and the role of the justice system in them. He also makes a case for the lessons one can learn from the ballads – both in terms of what the ballads themselves may be trying to sell, and in terms of what they can teach us about when and where they came from.
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Richard Jones-Bamman’s Building New Banjos for an Old-Time World is a helpful text not just for exploring the history and culture of banjo music, but of old time music more generally. The book discusses the role banjo craftsmen play in the old-time world. Banjo craftsmen, he argues, are particularly involved in the old-time world in ways that makers of other instruments may not be. It is less common, he argues, for violin craftsmen and makers of guitars to be a part of this unique culture in which their instruments are played. Many banjo craftsmen, however, are drawn to the craft by their love for and participation in the music. As such, he states, they have a unique view on what old time is and what it means to both the people who play it and the craftsmen who work to supply its instruments. He details what old time banjo players look for in a banjo and why they are important. He also discusses the overall culture of old time music and old-time conventions and jam sessions.
One of the best books I have come across on traditional storytelling is not so much about storytelling as the stories and the tellers. After all, you can talk about storytelling until you run out of breath or ink, but unless one tries to do storytelling, one will be missing a critical element. Storytelling can never be captured in its entirety in the written word, in much the same way that music or dance can never be fully captured with mere description; however, a good transcription of the story as told by an experienced teller is of greater value in understanding the tale and the art than a coldly detached text. More Best-Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival, collected and edited by the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling, is a collection of tales from the 1992 festival. It includes a small biography of each teller, but the best biography is the story each tells. The stories
15 themselves are, in part, about the act of storytelling and are a wonderful introduction to the art. And as one of the tales puts it, “For storytellers, I understand, tell the kind of tales that try to uncover the truth and hold it out for everybody to learn from” (National
Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling 1992, 84).
Another very useful book on storytelling is Southern Jack Tales by Donald Davis.
Davis is a well-known traditional storyteller and in this book, he recounts a number of
“Jack tales” he learned growing up. These tales all feature a fool character named Jack and are intended to teach lessons about morality and practicality. They come from the
British Isles originally, but like the families who brought them, they have become an essential part of Appalachian culture. Davis discusses the importance of the Jack tales and argues the reasons for their longevity. He discusses why it is that these stories have had the sort of incredible staying power that they have, as well as why location has been key to this. This book is a little more explicitly about storytelling than More
Best-Loved Stories, but it uses the stories themselves to shape that discussion.
There are, of course, a number of other resources on the topics. Those listed here, however have been the most helpful in putting together this thesis.
Structure of the Thesis
This thesis contains, in addition to this introduction, contains chapters on storytelling and old-time music, Frankie Silver and her ballad, and Tom Dooley and his ballad. In the chapter on storytelling and old-time music, I will discuss the narrative traditions of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the musical traditions of this same region. I will discuss the way in which these have been perpetuated and why as well as their
16 baring on regional cultural identity. In the chapters on Frankie Silver and Tom Dooley, I will outline their respective stories, the facts behind these stories, and how these stories remain relevant today, both in a more functional manner as well as in the popular culture.
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Chapter 1: Storytelling and Old-Time
North Carolina was one of the original thirteen colonies. At the beginning of its history it, along with South Carolina, made up the colony of Carolina, founded in 1663.
The split between them occurred in 1711, and North Carolina and South Carolina officially became separate colonies (Britannica n.d.). Although not as heavily involved as the New England states, North Carolina did play a significant role in the American
Revolutionary War. It became a state in 1789 with the ratification of the Constitution
(Britannica, n.d.).
The region is primarily composed of mountains, foothills, and coastal lowlands.
The western part of the state is part of the Appalachian Mountain range. The section of the range that falls within the North Carolina borders is known as the Blue Ridge
Mountains. The Blue Ridge range spans parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West
Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Most of my study was done in the Brushy Mountain spur of the Blue Ridge. The Brushy Mountain spur is situated entirely in North Carolina and includes Alexander, Caldwell, Iredell,
Wilkes, and Yadkin Counties. This spur is separated from the larger Blue Ridge range by the Yadkin River Valley. The Valley was itself the site of some of the events recounted in the ballads I have chosen for this study. Burke County, another site of events
18 and study, is located on the other side of the Yadkin River Valley and is not part of the
Brushy Mountains.
Figure 1 Map of the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains showing the general area in which the events of the ballads occurred. This area, while not as inaccessible as some parts of the Appalachian
Mountains, has still historically been isolated by its geography. The mountains are ill suited to the construction of major roadways. I was based, for most of my fieldwork, in a small town in Caldwell County called Dudley Shoals, roughly half way between
Taylorsville and Sawmills. It sits in the shadow of Hibriten Mountain, the highest peak of the spur. In that town, most roads are either tarred gravel or dirt, with a few being loose gravel. There are no roads in the town, once one leaves the NC 127, that are asphalt.
Even the paving of those roads done in tarred gravel was within living memory of many of the residents, as I have been told many times by relatives there, including the aunt I stayed with while conducting fieldwork.
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It is easy to see, then, how the area may have resisted the change brought by outside influences for so long. Even with the paving of the main roads, the area can still be difficult to navigate, especially in severe weather. While snow is scarce in the region now, older residents will recall stories of knee-deep snows and roads nearly impossible to travel. When roads and conditions are clear, it is typically a half-hour or longer drive to basic destinations such as grocery stores and doctors’ offices. So, in a time before paved roads and automobiles, the area was very difficult to travel, especially in harsh conditions.
Which then begs the question, who were the people who settled in this difficult environment? The state of North Carolina was largely settled by Scottish, Irish, and
English immigrants, and later by German immigrants. There was also a sizable number of African slaves in the state. They all, of course, brought with them their music and culture. This included everything from food to religion, instruments to stories. There are several songs and musical styles found in the wider Appalachian Mountains that are either extinct or very scarce in their countries of origin. It is, in part, the isolation of the area that has preserved these practices (Patterson 2000; D. Davis 1992).
Old-Time Music
I attended my first old-time jam session on May 25th, 2017 at the Brushy
Mountain golf course. Old-time music is a style of music endemic to the Appalachian
Mountains, alternately known as Appalachian string band music. I packed up my guitar and drove the half an hour through the winding roads of the foothills to Taylorsville,
North Carolina. The jam session, which takes place every other Thursday throughout the summer months, was held in a banquet hall at the back of the golf course’s
20 restaurant and bar. When I walked in with my guitar, looking completely lost, one of the waitresses just laughed and pointed me to the back room, knowing exactly why I was there. The group had already begun to assemble and despite my shyness I was soon ushered over and given a space. At my admittance that I did not know how to play the instrument I had brought with me, I was told enthusiastically that “there’s no better place to learn!”
Jam sessions are a musical social event and a staple of summer in the mountains. At these events, musicians of all ages and skill levels get together to play music and to talk about life. At this first jam session, the two biggest topics were who had caught the biggest catfish that week and who was going to which festival in the coming weeks. The musicians ranged in age from preschool into their seventies. There was no requirement of skill level – I was welcomed to play despite barely being able to keep up with chord changes. The event was entirely informal, with most of the musicians dressed in t-shirts and jeans and people coming and going as their schedules permitted. There were numerous children in attendance with their parents, many of whom played multiple instruments. The most popular with the children, however, seemed to be the guitar and the fiddle.
The instruments one could see at the gatherings varied by week and location.
Guitars, fiddles, and banjos were almost always represented. More often than not, there was at least one mandolin player, or someone who played other instruments but had brought a mandolin with them. String basses also made an occasional appearance.
Mountain dulcimers were rarer but did show up once in a while. The flute and penny whistle were much common at these gatherings than I had originally anticipated, though
21 given the Irish influences it should not have come as a surprise. One could also find less conventional instruments at some gatherings. Washboards, washtub basses, homemade fiddles, and spoons were less common than other instruments, but still present and represented.
As I mentioned regarding the mandolin, many people would bring multiple instruments with them. Some of them would switch instruments depending on the song.
Many of them were perfectly comfortable with letting a friend in the group borrow an instrument, whether for a song or for the whole session. And a fair few of the adults brought children with them. Usually this was the younger adults in the group, and often they were the parent of the child or children accompanying them or some of the children with them were friends of their own children. There is, in my own experience, a much more relaxed view on parenting there compared to what I experienced growing up in a
Northern suburb that might account for the gaggles of children tagging along with their friends and their friends’ parents. My personal experience may be twenty years out of date, but from all appearances, not much has changed. This is not something that I examined in my research, but it is certainly a topic on which more research could be done. I would posit that it has to do with the kinship ties shared by most of the area’s residents. Regardless of this, however, there was no shortage of children present at these events, which means that this tradition is still being passed down.
The instrumentation in these groups shows heavy Irish influence. The fiddle reels played at the gatherings were largely Irish in origin. The presence and prevalence of the pennywhistle, or tin whistle, also suggests Irish roots, as this is an instrument common in Irish traditional music (Dannatt 2001). Some of the instruments have origins in other
22 parts of Western Europe and some of them are distinctly American. The mountain dulcimer is an instrument that has developed here in the States, but most likely has its roots in Germany, Norway, and France (Long 2014). The banjo is another distinctly
American instrument. It comes from the African akonting. The banjo developed out of the influence of enslaved Africans brought to the States (Jones-Bamman 2017, 21).
Like the European immigrants, they too brought their music with them. And while traditional instruments and musical styles were often forbidden or even illegal, these traditions did not die out entirely. The banjo as we know it today was popularized by blackface minstrelsy shows (Odell and Winans 2001; Jones-Bamman 2017, 29). It was picked up by white musicians and adopted into the broader instrumentation already used in their music.
While it is one of the more popular instruments at these gatherings, guitar actually did not come to the mountains until the beginning of the twentieth century, several decades after the popularization of the banjo. It came to prominence with the influence of guitarists like Henry Whitter and Maybelle Carter (D. R. Davis 2011). The current popularity of the instrument, especially among younger players, may be influenced by popular music styles such as pop, rock, alternative, and country – some of the styles most often heard on the radio – in which guitar is a central instrument.
Music has always been an important part of life in the mountains. As illustrated by the jam sessions, it serves as both entertainment and a chance to socialize. I can still remember some of the same songs I heard at the jam sessions being played and sung at family gatherings. Usually, any music performed earlier in the day would be vocal, meant to accompany work. These were interspersed with stories, especially from older
23 family members. In the evening, once everything was finished, people would bring out instruments. Storytelling serves much the same function. It is a form of entertainment, a tool for teaching cultural and moral lessons, and a means of socialization. They were kept alive and thriving by “the need to light up those long nights with astonishing scenes and daredevil journeys, made safe and familiar by the soft wind of the storyteller’s breath” (Davis 1992, 12). Of course, music and storytelling are inextricably linked and often the tales have songs associated with them.
Merriam discusses the use and function of music. He says that all music has a use and a function (Merriam 1964, 209). The use is the everyday place of music. The use of balladry and storytelling, then would be entertainment. It was and is a way to pass the time. But that still leaves the question of why these stories? Why are these the tales that are told? The answer to that points to the function of balladry and storytelling.
The stories told in any culture reflect that culture’s world view, social mores, and traditions. Traditional ballads and stories are a good indicator of a society’s values.
The stories themselves, whether or not they are set to music, have many different individual functions. The first of these is cultural instruction. This may be something ritual, as with Child 78, “The Unquiet Grave.” It tells the tale of a soul who cannot rest because their lover has continued to mourn beyond the prescribed year and a day. It uses this to give guidance on proper mourning. The guidance given by a story or ballad may be more specifically geared towards social mores, as with “The Twa
Sisters.” This ballad tells the story of two sisters in love with the same man. The one who has been spurned kills the one whose affection is returned. Oddly, this lesson is lost in its Appalachian variant, “The Wind and the Rain.” The instructive quality of a
24 ballad may also be spiritual. This is the case with the Frankie Silver ballad, which warns of the consequences of jealousy.
Storytelling
In the mountains, many older traditions have been preserved due to isolation.
Joseph Daniel Sobol discusses in the introduction to Davis’ Southern Jack Tales of the fate of traditional storytelling, saying “During the nineteenth century, these long oral tales began to die out in the towns and lowland settlements where access to the world was greater and the daily requirement of distraction easier to fill. Yet in parts of the
Southern mountains, where isolation and intensive family ties provided occasions for the stories to be passed along, they endured undisturbed” (1992, 13).
One thing that the collections of stories presented in both Southern Jack Tales and More Best-Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival make clear is that the stories we tell are a part of who we are. They are used to teach as well as to entertain. And what they teach is an important thing to understand. This returns to
Merriam’s idea of use and function. While at surface level, these stories are purely entertainment, they function as teaching tools.
There are a number of stories from More Best-Loved Stories that illustrate nicely
Merriam’s idea of use and function. Perhaps the most obvious of these is “Granny
Gifts.” The story is about the teller’s grandmother, who grew up in a small town in
Kentucky. All the children of the town, when they reached a certain age, were given a gift by the granny-woman who lived in the town. Granny-women were older women who kept traditional knowledge, particularly medical knowledge, though often they are
25 attributed an almost mystical status. The term is commonly used to refer to traditional midwives in Appalachia (Tabler 2018; Appalachian Magazine 2017).
The granny-woman in this story would give each child a gift that the child felt would help them in their life. In the story, the teller’s grandmother, Mollie, talks about how, when it came time for her to visit the granny-woman, she was undecided as to what gift would be best. So, the granny-woman sent her by way of magical yarn to visit three of her cousins, who had asked for beauty, eloquence, and wealth respectively.
And one by one Mollie sees how these gifts can backfire. In the end, she asks for a peaceful spirit, so that she can bring peace to those around her. To this end, the granny-woman sends her to live with a storyteller. The truth that storytellers bring to the world, the teller says, allows one to figure out how to help bring peace to the world
(National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling 1992, 79-84).
This story is certainly an interesting one and fulfills its use as entertainment quite nicely with its magical details and fanciful imagery. However, there is a very clear lesson to be found in this story. The function of this story is to teach what is truly valuable. This is done through the fates of the various cousins.
The first cousin asked for beauty. This brought her many suitors and the promise of a good life. When she fell ill, though, her beauty faded and everyone abandoned her.
Outward beauty, then, is not necessarily a thing worth striving for. Vanity will not bring true happiness and as looks fade, so too will their advantages. The second cousin asked for eloquence. This made her sound very smart and interesting, but she talked so much that no one could stand to be around her and she never allowed anyone else to speak. Pretty words, we see, do not make for a good person. The last cousin asked for
26 wealth. When Mollie visits, the cousin gives her all manner of beautiful things and invites her to a big party. However, Mollie witnesses the cousin’s mistreatment of a poor, old beggar woman. Wealth, Mollie sees, has only made her cousin greedy and unkind. It is these experiences that allow her to see what is really important, and that is the ability to be content with one’s own life and to help those around them. These are values deeply held in traditional Appalachian culture. It has historically been a place where neighbors and family members have relied very heavily on one another for support and survival.
Another very similar story is “The Three Brothers.” In this story, a dying man asks his three sons to guard his garden. They take turns doing this each night, and one by one the prophet Elijah visits them and grants them a reward for following their father’s words. The first is given the choice of wealth, great knowledge, or a good wife. He chooses wealth, so Elijah gives him a coin that will bring him the wealth he seeks. The second is given the same choices and chooses great knowledge. Elijah gives him a book that will make him a great scholar. The youngest son choses a good wife, stating that “a good wife is better than riches” (National Association for the Preservation and
Perpetuation of Storytelling 1992, 18). So, Elijah takes him on a journey to various inns during which Elijah, who can understand all languages, listens to what the animals at the inn say about the daughter of the innkeepers. It is at the third inn that they find a young woman who is beautiful, wise, and kind. She falls in love with the brother and they are married.
Years later, Elijah returns to visit the brothers. In visiting the first brother, he disguises himself as a beggar. After being turned away, he orders the brother to return
27 the magical coin as penance for his greed. When visiting the second brother, Elijah asks him a question and is rebuked for wasting his time with foolishness. So, Elijah orders the brother to return the magical book, as his knowledge has made him self-important.
Finally, he visited the youngest brother in the guise of a poor man. The brother’s wife took pity on him and offered him food, drink, and a place to rest. For this, Elijah gave the couple the coin and book he had taken back from the other brothers and the two lived happily for the rest of their lives (National Association for the Preservation and
Perpetuation of Storytelling 1992, 17-20).
This story holds some of the same lessons as “Granny Gifts.” The idea that greed and vanity will not be rewarded remains here. Wealth and knowledge are not necessarily good things in and of themselves. The difference lies in what is seen as valuable. The youngest brother chooses a good wife over knowledge or wealth. This can be seen in several senses. First, the wife is a pious woman who is kind and wise.
Secondly, they have a happy marriage. Both of these things could be seen as making for a “good wife.” It is worth noting here that this story comes from a Jewish story tradition. Hospitality is an important value in Jewish tradition, as it is seen in both the
Jewish Torah and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. So, in saying that the youngest brother wishes for a good wife, the woman’s kindness is tied closely to her piousness and this shows in the way in which she is tested. Additionally, the animals at her parents’ inn state that the brother must be “righteous” if he is to marry her (National
Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling 1992, 19). Here, again, we see the function of this story is to instill traditional values of the culture from which the story originates.
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Many stories from the Southern Appalachian range come from the British Isles.
This is something that Davis, a North Carolina native, discusses in Southern Jack Tales.
He discusses in his opening chapter how Jack is a sort of “everyman” character in
English story traditions and the personification of most salient traits in the broader
British Isles (D. Davis 1992). Jack is often a trickster or fool, depending upon the tale and the teller. In most stories, though, whether through sharp wit or sheer dumb luck,
Jack finds good fortune.
These stories travelled with immigrants from their land of origin to this “New
World,” such as it is. Here, Jack has found new life. The Jack tales also show the adaptability of folklore. Bits and pieces of the tales may change depending on when and where and by whom they are told. The central stories of them, however, remain unchanged. Of course, not all Jack tales come directly from the British Isles. Storytelling is a living art. It is not something that can simply be relegated to the pages of a book. It changes, adapts, and grows. As such, there are Jack tales that originate in the United
States – in much the same way as there are ballads in the tradition of the British Isles which originate here.
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Chapter 2: Frankie Silver
Just before Christmas, 1831, Charlie Silver was preparing to leave for a hunting trip. He was to go with a friend to hunt for Christmas dinner. However, winters in the tiny settlement of Deyton Bend, along the Toe River, were harsh, with cold temperatures and deep snows. As Charlie would likely be gone for several days, his wife, Frankie, asked him to chop some extra wood. She told him that it would be needed to heat their one room cabin and keep herself and their infant daughter, Nancy, warm while Charlie was gone. Charlie did as his wife asked and chopped enough wood to last them a few days.
When he had finished this task, Charlie was quite tired. It had been hard labor to chop that much firewood. So, he laid down on the sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace and went to sleep. While he was sleeping, Frankie took the ax with which he had chopped the wood and swung a mighty blow, striking Charlie in the head. Charlie jumped up and shouted, “God bless the child!” before crumpling to the floor, dead. Once he had expired, Frankie took the ax and chopped his body into pieces. She spent the entire night feeding those bits into the fire she stoked with the wood he had chopped.
What of him would not burn, she buried in the woods the next day. Then she cleaned all traces of blood from the cabin’s walls and floor.
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A couple of days later, Frankie bundled up her daughter and trekked the half a mile through the snow over the ridge to the home of her in-laws. She told them that
Charlie had gone on a hunting trip and had not been home in several days and could one of his brothers please come help her feed and water her cows. But Charlie’s family noticed how agitated Frankie seemed and became worried for his safety. After all,
Charlie was a well-known philanderer and they knew her to be a very jealous woman.
They employed a local tracker while Charlie’s father travelled north to seek the services of a black slave in Tennessee who was well known for using a conjure ball to find lost things.
The slave reported that Charlie never left his cabin, but with the deep snows, the tracker had little luck. That is, until he noticed that Charlie’s hunting hound refused to leave the cabin and if it was made to, would return as soon as permitted. Trusting the dog’s loyalty, the tracker examined the cabin and found the fireplace overfull with ash.
The ash had grease in it, as though someone had been cooking meat directly in the flames rather than in a pot hung above them. While the cabin outwardly showed no evidence of the murder, the tracker instructed the search party to pull up the puncheon floors. On the hard-packed earth beneath, they found bloodstains.
Frankie was arrested and taken to Morganton and held in the jail there. Her mother and brother were arrested as well but were later released. Frankie waited in jail until spring, when the court circuit arrived. She pled her innocence, but was not permitted to speak at her trial, nor did her lawyer call any witnesses. After the jury found her guilty, Frankie confessed to the crime, but wrote in this confession that Charlie was abusive, and she had killed him spontaneously in self-defense. She had burned the
31 body, she said, in panic and fear. Then she tried to make it appear that he had fallen through the ice while crossing the river to his hunting partner’s home so that it would not be discovered what she had done.
The society ladies of the town were quite upset to hear this, as she had been convicted of murder in the first degree. This was a hanging crime and Frankie had been sentenced to death. They commenced at once a campaign of petitions on her behalf.
They fought to have her conviction reduced to manslaughter, for which she might face life in prison, but which was not a hanging crime. All these petitions fell on deaf ears, however, and there appeared to be little hope for her survival. In a last, desperate attempt to save her life, an uncle and cousin of hers broke her out of jail, using a whittled wooden key to unlock her cell. They cut off her hair and dressed her in men’s clothes and the whole family headed west.
The police, however, were quick on their tail. Perhaps Frankie would have gotten away if not for her uncle. When an officer asked her for her name, she replied to him that she was called Tom. The officer asked if that was true, if she was really called Tom, to which her uncle replied “Yes, sir, she is.” It was this that tipped them of that this was, in fact, Frankie. Otherwise the poor girl might have lived.
They took her back to jail, along with her uncle, and later that summer she was hanged. It is said that when she went to the gallows, she asked for a piece of cake.
Then she sang a song proclaiming her guilt and remorse and her fear of what awaited her. When she had finished her cake, she was asked if she had any last words. From the crowd below, her father shouted, “Die with it in you!” And so, she said nothing as the rope was placed around her neck and she went to meet Death.
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This is the story as it is often told. Really, it is more an amalgam of tellings. Each teller adds or subtracts various details. Some make no mention of the cake or the conjurer. Others say that her father helped her to dismember Charlie’s body and may have even told her to kill him. Charlie Silver was hacked to death with an ax, his body dismembered and burned, and Frankie was hanged for the crime. Beyond that there is little consensus on what really happened that dark, snowy night.
Present Day
Renowned storyteller Bobby McMillon was raised with this and many other stories. Although raised in Lenoir, North Carolina, in the Brushy Mountain spur of the
Blue Ridge, he had grandparents in Kona, the town once called Deyton Bend. He speaks of learning the story as a child. In addition to the ballad and the tale, he says there was a tree near the site of Charlie and Frankie’s home that is cursed. If one climbs it, they will not be able to get back down. In fact, he speaks of having become trapped in the tree as a child (Patterson 2000, 43).
These stories were a hugely influential part of McMillon’s early life. He learned the art of storytelling organically, from the people around him. In particular, his grandmother was a big influence on his love of storytelling and balladry. From her, he learned stories from many different types of people. In Patterson’s book, he recounts how his grandmother, who was an illegitimate child, dealt with difficult circumstances as a child and young adult. In her teens, she worked as a hired girl – a domestic servant working either around the house or doing light physical labor – and was therefore around all manner of people. He recalls that she had always had a love of singing, so she picked up many ballads from the people she met while working (Patterson 2000, 8).
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McMillon does have a personal connection to the case. As he states in the transcript of his telling, “[Charles Silvers] was my third cousin. My grandfather, or my great-great-grandfather was his first cousin” (Patterson 2000, 32). As a member of the
Silver family, however distantly related, it is unsurprising that McMillon falls in with those who feel Frankie was guilty, having killed Charlie out of jealousy or some other motive besides self-defense. Furthermore, in McMillon’s telling, he states that Frankie’s father was the mastermind behind the whole thing. He says of the night Charlie Silver died,
Well, according to my granny’s uncle, [Frankie’s] father was there too and
ate supper with them, and when they got done, Charles said that “I’m
beat.” And Frankie looked at him and said, “Well, I fixed you a pallet by the
fireplace.” Said, “I thought you might want to take a nap until you got ready
to go to bed.” […]
Well, after he seemed to be sound asleep, Frankie’s daddy looked at her
and said, “Now’s your time, Frankie, now’s your time.” And so they went
outside, and Charles had sharpened his ax and come back in. And she
stood over him, and she’d rear back with her ax and start to come down
on him. […] The third time she finally said, “Well, I can’t do it, I can’t kill
him a-smiling at me like that.” And Charlie’s – or Frankie’s father – said,
“Well, now, if you don’t kill him,” said, “I’ll kill you.” Said, “If you don’t kill
him, I’ll kill you.” So finally she come back and she came down on him and
give him one good lick to the side of the head (Patterson 2000, 33-34).
Here, McMillon lays the blame for Charlie’s murder squarely at the feet of
Frankie’s father, Isaiah Stewart. Isaiah, McMillon says, wanted to move the family west.
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However, they needed money to be able to do that. To that end, they wanted Charlie to sell his farm, which he refused to do (Patterson 2000, 40). McMillon is one of the tellers who mentions Frankie’s father’s comment at her execution. This was supposedly to prevent her from revealing his involvement in the murder.
It should be noted that McMillon does refer to Charlie Silver as Charles Silvers.
There are several different spellings of the names of all those involved in the case listed in both unofficial documentation and what remains of the official documentation. The
Silver family may also be listed as the Silvers family. The Stewart family may also be listed as the Stuart family. Frankie’s name often appears as Franky in older publications. Blackstone’s name appears as either Blackson or Blackston in places.
This owes mainly to the era and location, as records often reflect the pronunciation rather than the legal spelling of the name. The same can be seen in the case of Tom
Dula, where the Dula family name is often spelled Dooley – including on the documentation of Tom’s release from a Union POW camp (Fletcher 2013, 22) – Laura
Foster’s name is often spelled Laurie, and Pauline Foster is often listed as Perline.
There are very few clear facts about the Silver case. On or around December
22nd, 1831, Charles Silver was killed and dismembered with an ax in his cabin in Deyton
Bend, North Carolina, his body partially burned in the fireplace, and the remnants buried in several locations in the surrounding woods (Patterson 2000; Burt 1958; Underwood
2016; Nash 1939b). This is where the agreement on the case ends. Frankie’s indictment lists the date of the murder as December 22nd, 1831. However, as Frankie reported that Charlie was missing for several days, it is difficult to say what the exact
35 date was. Also arrested for the crime were Frankie’s mother and brother, Barbara and
Blackstone Stewart. They were later released without charges (Patterson 2000).
Figure 2 A recreation of Frankie and Charlie Silver's one room cabin at the History Museum of Burke County in Morganton, NC. Photo by Andy Martinez. It is critical to first understand the legal environment in 1831. There were several factors which worked against Frankie. The first was her location, the second her family’s status,
the third her gender, and the fourth was the odd law in place at the time which
prevented a suspect from testifying in court (Patterson 2000). The courts in the state
were, at the time, based primarily on the courts of England (Patterson 2000, 53, 58).
Said courts had been in a state of constant evolution since the thirteenth century and
therefore contained some laws that were either antiquated or historically biased, but they were also ruled by the Church of England, placing a religious slant on many of their
laws.
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The religious slant of the law can be clearly seen in the indictment against
Frankie, Blackstone, and Barbara. The beginning of the indictment reads,
The jurors for the State upon their oath present that Francis Silver
Blackstone Stuart and Barbara Stuart all of said county not having the fear
of God before their eyes but being moved and seduced by the instigation
of the devil on the twenty-second day of December in the year of our Lord
one thousand and eight hundred and thirty one with force and arms in the
county of Burke aforesaid in and upon one Charles Silver in the peace of
God and of the State then and there being feloniously wilfully [sic] and of
their malice aforethought did make an assault (McCall 2008, 75).
This sort of language is part of a system of such religious influence common to the era.
The issues of Frankie’s location and family status are inextricably linked. The
Stewarts were new to the area, having just arrived less than a decade earlier (Patterson
2000, 51). Accounts differ over the family’s socioeconomic status. By some accounts,
Frankie was illiterate, while others claim she was educated in the low country. These will occasionally blame her level of education as a factor in her jealousy. The Silvers, by contrast, had been in the area for much longer and Charlie was well liked and respected. Another challenge caused by the location was the court cycle. In the 1830s, judges came to the county only twice a year and were present for only a week
(Patterson 2000). Meaning all trials for a six-month period had to be held within that week, and all arrests during the interim had to wait for a judge to come through. This gave very little time for attorneys to prepare and examine cases. The condition of North
Carolina’s roadways at the time also may have made the forty-mile distance between
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Morganton and Deyton Bend an insurmountable obstacle to the defense in obtaining character witnesses, if indeed they tried. There is no record of whether or not such an attempt was made (Patterson 2000).
The lawyer employed by the Silver family either did not explain to Frankie before the trial the idea of murder in self-defense or did not make clear that this was a valid defense. Either this, or he felt her chances of winning her case by pleading self-defense were too slim. Regardless of the reason, her lawyer took an approach of total denial.
Ultimately, this failed. After the trial, Frankie confessed to the killing, but stated that
Charlie was abusive towards her. She said that he had threatened her and was loading his gun when she picked up the ax and swung it at him, striking him in the head. In a state of panic, she dismembered his body and burnt it in the fireplace before scrubbing the floor and walls of the cabin in an attempt to hide what she had done. She then tried to make it appear as though Charlie had fallen through the ice crossing the Toe River and went to his family about his absence to lend further credence to this story
(Patterson 2000).
When this confession was made public, the ladies of Morganton, where the trial was held and where Frankie was in prison awaiting execution, tried to save her. While
Deyton Bend was rural in the extreme, Morganton was a fairly large city for the region at the time. There were quite a few society ladies from well-regarded families in the town.
They, together with some of their husbands, wrote petitions on Frankie’s behalf. If
Frankie was the victim of domestic abuse, then she did not deserve to die for defending herself from her abuser. And many tellings that do not cast Frankie as the villain recount that Charlie Silver was a mean drunk, including Sharyn McCrumb’s novel (1998, 84,
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166). However, the mention of Charlie’s drinking is notably absent from McMillon’s telling. The petition writers asked the governor to reduce the charges against Frankie from murder in the first degree, which implied forethought and was a hanging crime, to manslaughter. Manslaughter implied that, while Charlie’s death was Frankie’s fault, the killing had been accidental and not premeditated. Manslaughter could have carried the sentence of life in prison, but it was not a hanging crime (Patterson 2000). This reduction in charges would have saved Frankie’s life.
The reasons given for her pardon in the petitions were many. Some spoke of her disadvantaged childhood. Patterson recounts that the petitioners “described her as ‘of
Low and humble Parentage who have ever been incapable of administering either to the mind or body, such comfort as nature and Childhood may have required’” (2000, 144).
Another reason given was that the disposal of Charlie’s corpse – the manner of which had been noted at trial as particularly gruesome and vicious – was possibly the result of the intervention of family who meant only to help her conceal what had happened in the interest of her safety. This was in accompaniment to her confession, in which she states that she killed Charlie in self-defense. Frankie may, therefore, have taken the blame for the family members behind the manner of disposal (Patterson 2000, 145).
There are several factors which may have, either individually or in combination, contributed to the failure of these petitions. First, the petitions came during the last year of the sitting governor’s term, a time wherein most governors did not issue pardons
(Patterson 2000). And when that governor stepped down, the new governor had been the prosecutor in Frankie’s case. As if this were not enough, Frankie’s family staged a successful jailbreak.
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Her uncle and cousin whittled a key to open the lock on her cell and snuck into the prison during the night. In order to get her out of the state without being spotted, they cut off her hair – something considered taboo for women at the time – and dressed her in men’s clothing before setting off towards South Carolina. Supposedly, the reason she was caught was that a policeman saw her playing catch. The way she caught the ball was different from what one would expect from a boy, as women would often use their skirt or apron to catch things (Patterson 2000). The jail break may have been what ultimately lead to Frankie’s death.
Frankie Silver in Popular Culture
At several points over the course of my fieldwork, I was asked if I had yet read
Sharyn McCrumb’s novel The Ballad of Frankie Silver. At the time, I was unaware of the author and her work. McCrumb has published a series of novels, aptly called “the Ballad
Novels,” which includes both Frankie Silver and Tom Dooley. In these novels, she takes the stories told in the ballads and gives the perspectives of their characters. In The
Ballad of Frankie Silver, she weaves the tale of Frankie’s trial and appeals into a modern day crime story, using Frankie to parallel the case the young sheriff in the novel is pursuing.
This is just one of the many pop culture iterations of the ballad. Others include a play written by Perry Dean Young and a movie. The ballad has also been adapted by a composer and a choreographer into a ballet. While not as well-known as Tom Dooley,
Frankie’s story has still achieved an international audience.
However, for all the attention that this case receives, it is still often confused with another story. The Ballad of Frankie Silver is often confused with Frankie and Johnny.
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Many of the people I spoke to believed them to be the same song, with the exception of museum staff and one of my uncles who is interested in the history of the area. Frankie and Johnny is an early 20th century ballad recounting the 1899 murder of Alfred by
Frankie Baker. The murder took place in St. Louis, Missouri, in an area which at the time was predominantly Black. Both Frankie and “Johnny” were Black, as was the man credited with the composition of the ballad. It is likely due to this that Frankie and
Johnny has more characteristics of jazz or ragtime music than it does of Appalachian traditional ballads. The ballad has more than 300 variations, some of which give the murdered man’s name as “Johnny,” others as “Alfred.” It is, then, understandable that people would question whether “Johnny” was really Charlie Silver.
Function
Interestingly, in Frankie and Johnny, the ballad usually concludes by talking about
Frankie’s execution. That is, however, one of many differences between the two cases.
Frankie Baker was not executed. She was, in fact, never even convicted of Alfred’s murder (Underwood 2016). But while the ballad typically concludes with an execution that never occurred, there is no moral teaching in it, either. In fact, many versions of the ballad conclude with the following stanza or something comparable:
This story has no moral This story has no end This story just to show that there ain’t no good in men He was her man, but he was doin’ her wrong.
This is a fairly drastic contrast to the Ballad of Frankie Silver. Despite the greater doubt of guilt in Frankie Silver’s case, her ballad is almost entirely a moral lesson. It does
41 recount the murder to an extent, recalling that she killed Charlie with an axe before burning his body, but there is a great deal if Christian imagery and the entire thing reads as a warning against the evils of jealousy.
Ballads which record true history can give us insight into the places – geographic and temporal – from which they come. This includes the social climate. In some cases, that can tell us a great deal about the importance of religion in social and legal environments. “The Ballad of Frankie Silver” is most certainly one such ballad. The lyrics are thought to have been written by a pastor, which would certainly account for their religiosity (Patterson 2000).
Kip Lornell states that ballads tend to focus most on the more dramatic aspects of the events recounted and “they are usually told without commenting on the event itself” (Lornell 2012, 84). This is mostly true of “The Ballad of Frankie Silver.” The events are recounted relatively dispassionately, but there is a high level of detail placed on the gruesomeness of the crime. More focus than even that, however, is given to the idea of what comes next. There is very heavy and vivid Hell imagery in the ballad, alongside numerous questions about what the condemned should do now that she finds herself doomed to spend eternity there. There is more focus given to religious questions than the actual murder.
The religious imagery of eternal suffering in Hell paired with Frankie’s supposed confessions regarding jealousy leave little doubt as to the intent behind the lyrics. The second stanza begins with an appeal to God. In the fourth stanza, she says
“But Oh! That awful judge I fear, Shall I that awful sentence here:
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“Depart, ye cursed, down to Hell And forever there to dwell” (Traditional)
The “awful judge” of this passage is either St Peter, who in Christian tradition guards the gates of Heaven, or more likely God Himself. The ballad then moves on to talk of ghosts and devils and of her husband accusing her of stealing his life from him.
This sort of vivid narrative surrounding the Silver case continued up through the early part of the 20th century. It can be seen in newspaper reports as late as the 1940s.
One such story, for instance, introduces Frankie thus: “No less famous was his pretty wife, Francis, or Franky [sic] as she was called, a comely little woman with fair skin, big bright eyes, a winning manner, and as charming as any woman living in her circumstances could have been” (Nash 1939a). This same article also describes Charlie
Silver’s “ability as a talker, teller of tall coon stories.” It contains supposed conversations between the two, as well as florid depictions of Frankie as a vindictive murderess. It reads less like dispassionate journalism and more like a fairytale. This is far from the only newspaper article to address the crime in such a manner, but it is the most flamboyant of the ones I encountered in my time visiting various historical museum libraries. All of the articles, however, seemed to fall into one of two camps: either they believed Frankie was guilty or they did not. And those that did seemed to favor demonization of her actions, generally in very Biblically based terms. This falls neatly into line with the intent behind the imagery in the ballad.
Just as the lyrics were, at the time, a moralizing tool for the Christian ideology of the area, the story has been used in other ways. Certain tellings through a feminist lens have become more pronounced in recent decades (Patterson 2000). Rather than a tale
43 of jealousy and the consequences thereof, it has become a tale of an innocent woman caught in the web of the patriarchy (Underwood 2016; Young 2012; McCall 2008). It tells of a miscarriage of justice that saw a victim of domestic violence executed for defending herself from her abuser. This is especially meaningful when used to reflect on the parallels in today’s justice system, where one can still find women serving life in prison or facing execution for killing the men who abused them.
Shelia Kay Adams, an author and professional ballad singer from North Carolina, supposes that this stems in part from an older era when many topics were considered taboo. Like humor and theater, ballads and other forms of traditional storytelling often transcend these prohibitions, allowing people to discuss topics which would otherwise be off limits. Adams has discussed the way in which she and her family have used ballads in this manner. For instance, singing “Pretty Polly” to express disapproval of her sister’s boyfriend. She also mentions that a majority of the ballads she knows contain a great deal of violence towards women. This, she says, may have been a way of discussing issues of domestic abuse at a time when such issues were not talked about
(Duvall-Irwin 2017).
Interestingly, McMillon’s telling contradicts most of the Silver family. Wayne Silver is a Silver family historian and a descendant of Charlie’s family. He says of the story,
The story goes that Charlie had been sent to get the Christmas liquor. On
the way home he does what any 19-year-old might do. He takes a nip. It's
good. He takes another nip. That's even better. He arrives home to a
complaining wife and a screaming baby. Suddenly, Charlie is in a foul
mood. Things turn ugly. He picks up his gun and shouts. 'So help me
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Frankie – if you don’t shut up, I'm going to shoot the both of you!' He
probably didn’t mean it. But by this time Frankie has picked up the ax.
'No!' She screams. 'I won’t let you hurt me or my baby!' She swings the ax
and Charlie is dead. I will never believe it was premeditated murder and
few in my family have ever believed it. In fact, it was more of an accident
than anything else (Haines 2001).
The tale is not a mark of shame, as is the Tom Dooley story, which I will discuss in the next chapter. It is more a tragedy, a story of misfortune. And it is openly discussed within the family and community. A notice for the 2005 Silver family reunion advertises that Maxine McCall, the author of They Won’t Hang a Woman, would be in attendance to discuss her book (Cowan 2005). This same notice also states that the family reunion is not just for family, but has become a public event. One need not be a
Silver to attend; anyone who is interested in learning about the family’s history is welcome.
The family still operates a small museum in Kona, North Carolina. It is housed in the old, one room church that served the community in Frankie and Charlie’s time.
Charlie has a modern stone in the churchyard, though his actual graves are some distance from it. The museum is open to the public during the Silver family reunions.
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Chapter 3: Tom Dooley
It was a bright day in May 1868. A young man rode through the streets of
Statesville, North Carolina, in the back of a wagon, seated atop his coffin. With his violin in hand, he played to entertain the crowds gathered to watch his execution. He was, after all, a prodigious fiddler. And as he took this final journey, he sang of his innocence.
But how did he come to be here? What had brought him to this point?
The year was 1865. The Civil War, the ‘War Between Brothers,’ had just ended with the Confederacy’s defeat. A young Confederate veteran named Thomas Dula was returning home to the town of Elkville, North Carolina in an area called Happy Valley, where the Yadkin River cuts a path between the Brushy Mountains and the rest of the
Blue Ridge. The war had been a grueling affair that saw Tom captured and imprisoned by the Union army. When he left home, he left behind the woman with whom he was having an affair. Ann Foster Melton had been Tom’s childhood sweetheart, but had married James Melton, a local cobbler. Not that this had done anything to diminish the passion between Tom and Ann.
When he finally arrived home, Tom was looking to settle back into life as he had known it before the war. A renowned fiddle player, Tom was a hit with the ladies and soon began courting Ann’s cousin, Laura Foster. However, he
46
was still having an affair with Ann, as well as with Ann and Laura’s cousin
Pauline, who had come to stay with Ann and her husband while she was being treated for syphilis. It was a complicated arrangement and may have contributed to Laura’s fate.
Just under a year later, in the small hours of the morning of May 25th, 1866,
Laura took her father’s mare and rode off. A neighbor saw her headed out towards the old Bates homestead. It was the last time she was seen alive. When several weeks later her body was found stabbed through the heart and buried in a shallow grave, Tom and
Ann were suspected of killing her.
When Tom got word that he was suspected of killing Laura, he fled north to
Tennessee, where he found work on the Colonel James Grayson. But when Grayson got word that Tom was a wanted fugitive, he turned him over to the posse from Wilkes
County who had come to collect him. It is said that, being a just man, Grayson travelled with the group to ensure they did not lynch Tom on their way back to Wilkes County.
Eventually, both Ann and Tom were put to trial. Ann is said to have claimed,
“They’ll never put a rope around this pretty neck.” And indeed, they never did. Ann was later released. Tom, however, was convicted. He sought an appeal, which was granted, but which he lost. Even though he claimed in the beginning he claimed that he had never harmed a hair on Laura’s head, after his conviction, he changed his story. And much to the dismay of those who loved him, he refused to say anything other than that he was guilty. To the very end, he maintained that he, and he alone, had killed Laura.
Finally, just before he was to die, he wrote a letter stating that Laura’s death was solely his crime. In 1868, Tom was hanged for the murder.
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However, suspicion remained against Ann. Until the day she died, she maintained she had had nothing to do with it. But on her death bed, tortured by visions of what awaited her in the afterlife, she is said to have confessed to the crime.
A century and a half later, many of the descendants of those involved in the sordid mystery still live in Happy Valley. This story is still passed down both orally and as a ballad. The murder has become a world-wide legend and has spawned all manner of media, from movies to novels. In these versions, the details of the crime are often lost, and the story gains a modicum of anonymity. But in the Happy Valley, it is precisely those details that keep the story alive.
Present Day
I began my fieldwork on a hot day in July 2016. The temperature was in the 90s all month and the mountains’ humidity made it feel even hotter. When I arrived at
Whippoorwill Academy and Village in Ferguson, North Carolina – the town once called
Elkville – I found myself in the middle of a huge field, looking down the drive at a 19th century farm house. Whippoorwill sits on the Carter family homestead, a wide expanse of pasture land with several buildings of its own. The woman I was there to meet was
Margaret Martine, the daughter of Edith Ferguson Carter, the founder of Whippoorwill.
Margaret took me out to Tom Dooley’s cabin, moved to the village from its original location when it faced demolition. All the buildings in the village have that in common. Margaret warned me as we made our way from the small shop that serves as an entry point across the village square to the cabin that it would be just as hot there as it was outside. It was a log cabin, and while they had run electricity to it in order to put in
48 lights, there was only so much the box fans placed at strategic points around the structure’s single room could do.
Rather than being set up just as it would have been when in use, the way the other buildings in the village are, Tom’s cabin has been made into a museum about the story. Around the walls are a collection of paintings, all done by Margaret’s mother,
Edith. Margaret recounted how her mother had sung the ballad to her and her siblings while she worked on the paintings. She told me that she and her siblings had known
“Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley” before they learned “Jesus Loves Me.” Given the religious tendencies in the area, that was certainly saying quite a bit about her mother’s love for the ballad. And she was far from the only one entranced with the story.
“The story of Tom Dooley has been, over the years, a blend of fact and fiction. It is a story that holds a fascination to all who hear it, and so often more facts and fiction have been added,” says Carter of the ballad in the foreword to Fletcher’s The True
Story of Tom Dooley (2013). The title of this book is of a particular and peculiar interest.
It follows right along with Barnes’ The Tom Dooley Files: My Search for the Truth
Behind the Legend. But that truth can be difficult to unravel. After all, as Carter points out, the tale has always been a blend of fact and fiction to which more facts and more fictions are perpetually added.
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Figure 3 Thomas Dula in his Confederate uniform. Painting by Edith Ferguson Carter, courtesy of Margaret Martine. The Case
What do we know, then? There are some things that we can know for certain.
According to the 1860 Caldwell County census, Thomas Caleb Dula was born in 1845 in Caldwell County, North Carolina. His father was also named Thomas Dula and his mother’s name was Mary Dula. He had two older brothers named William and John and the older sisters named Sarah, Anna, and Eliza (Barnes 2016, 277; Fletcher 2013, 19).
The family lived in the small town of Elkville, then home to about 280 people constituting about 40 families, in the part of the Yadkin River Valley known, ironically, as Happy
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Valley (Fletcher 2013, 14). Tom’s father died in 1854 and his brother John died of pneumonia in early 1862 (Fletcher 2013, 19-20).
The Dula family, whose name would have been pronounced “Dooley” in the local accent, were neighbors and possibly relatives of the Foster family. It was not uncommon at that time for families in small mountain towns to intermarry extensively. If one goes back far enough, the family trees of most of the old families in the region – my own included – begin to look more like briar patches than trees. As such, the possibility that Laura and Ann were in some way related to Tom would not have necessarily precluded their affairs, nor would it have made them in any way illicit, as those involved were not siblings. The only illicit things about the affairs would have been the premarital sex and the fact that Ann was a married woman.
When the Civil War broke out, Tom and William joined the Confederate Army on
April 24th, 1862 and served together in Company K of the 42nd Regiment of the North
Carolina Infantry. Tom is listed as a musician and William as a private. On March 10th,
1865, both were captured by the Union Army. During their captivity, William died of typhoid fever (Barnes 2016, 30-31). Tom, however, was released in June of 1865 after swearing an oath of allegiance to the Union (Fletcher 2013, 22). Afterward, he made his way back home to Elkville.
This is what exists in official records. From there on, things become a bit hazier, and most documentation is of witness testimony at Tom’s trial. Tom and Ann resumed their affair upon Tom’s return from the war or shortly thereafter. This is attested to by
Pauline Foster (Fletcher 2013, 22). According to Pauline, Tom and Ann were quite brazen about their affair. Pauline also testified that she did not have a sexual
51 relationship with Tom and that any appearance to the contrary was as a front for Ann at
Ann’s request (Fletcher 2013, 24). Pauline having an affair with Tom would have given a reason for Tom to spend as much time as he did at the Meltons’ home, give Pauline was living with them at the time. However, as it is known that Tom, Ann, James, and
Laura all contracted syphilis after Pauline arrived and she was in the area in order to seek treatment for the disease, it is very unlikely that her story about not having a sexual relationship with Tom is true. It is more likely that this testimony was meant to deny that she was involved in any kind of premarital sexual relationship. Given the values of the era, that would have been a logical course of action.
Laura’s father also testified that in March of 1866, Tom began visiting Laura frequently (Fletcher 2013, 24). However, he stopped visiting about a month later and applied to a local doctor for treatment of syphilis, which he reported he had contracted from Laura Foster. According to Fletcher, this is impossible, as the time between the beginning of his affair with Laura and the time he sought treatment would not have been long enough for the disease to incubate and begin showing symptoms (Fletcher 2013,
26). However, if he believed that Laura gave him the disease, that would still have provided a motive for her murder. According to Pauline, Ann was furious about the news and swore she would kill Laura for infecting both her and Tom (Fletcher 2013, 27).
Another point made against Ann is that Laura was buried in a very small grave.
As the ballad specifies, the grave was only four feet long and three feet deep. There has been speculation over whether Tom, as an able bodied young veteran, would have buried her in so small a hole. Between the manner of her death and the way in which she was buried, some have come to the conclusion that it was Ann who killed her. Ann
52 was a small woman, at the time unaccustomed to hard physical labor, for whom digging any bigger grave in the red clay soil may have been nearly impossible.
Such was the lack of evidence linking Tom to the actual murder, however, there was a call in 2001 to reopen the case and drop the murder charges against Tom
(Associated Press 2001). This did not eliminate the suspicion of Tom being an accessory after the fact or just an accessory.
Influence
Each year in Ferguson, a festival is held to celebrate the legend the story has become. Tom Dooley Days at Whippoorwill Academy and Village draws on many aspects of the story’s ongoing process of transmission. Old time music is closely intertwined with balladry, and numerous old-time musicians perform at the festival, using the village’s covered pavilion as a stage. The festival also hosts the Bleu Moon
Productions theater group based out of Wilkesboro. The cast and crew make use of the setting to perform scenes from the stage-play “Tom Dooley, a Wilkes County Legend.”
But the festival about more than just music and theater. Storytelling and lineage play a very important role. There are Dula and Foster family trees to which people can add their branches. It is a place where people gather to share their family’s stories about the events that took place there so long ago.
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Figure 4 Dr. Carter's medical bag, on display at the Tom Dooley museum at Whippoorwill Academy and Village. Photo by Andy Martinez. Courtesy of Margaret Martine. Margaret, for instance. was quick to tell me precisely what her family’s connection to the murder was. Her great grandfather, she said, was the same Dr. Carter who performed Laura Foster’s autopsy. His bag is on display in the small museum in
Tom’s cabin. Other items include her mother’s paintings portraying the different characters and scenes of the story, Tom’s and Ann’s original grave markers, and a copy of what may be the only known photograph of Tom – provided the photograph is authentic, which has not been proven. Margaret told me that she has always been fascinated with the case. She grew up with the story, and with her family connection, it is very important to her.
For Margaret, as for many people in the area, the ballad and the story it tells are a major part of their relationship to the world around them. But not all of these are positive associations. I spoke to a woman at Tom Dooley Days who asked me to
54 change her name, and to that end I will refer to her as Sarah Dula. She was attending the festival with a cousin. The story she told me about growing up as a descendent of
Tom’s sister, Eliza, was in stark contrast to Margaret’s. She spoke of the story as a sort of open secret in her family. It was something everyone knew, but no one talked about.
These two cases give a good example of how collective conscience and collective memory influence personal identity formation. Both women grew up around the story and with a connection to it. The major difference is precisely what that connection is. In the case of Sarah, there is a well-established sense of shame pertaining to the story. This stems from her family’s connection to it. Sarah obviously wasn’t alive 150 years ago when Tom was hanged for Laura’s murder. She had nothing to do with the events. However, the memory of that event has been kept alive in the minds of the community. This memory is so strong that despite local calls for pardon beginning in 2001, as the evidence which led to Tom’s conviction was circumstantial at best (Associated Press 2001), the stain of the murder remains.
By contrast, we have Margaret’s relationship to the events in the ballad and tale.
Dr. Carter is an important supporting character in the tale. From his conclusion that
Laura’s death was a homicide to the tellings of the tale that place him at Ann Melton’s bedside just before she died, the only witness to her supposed confession, it is inarguable that he played a major role in the way the events unfolded. As such, even though he is not often mentioned by name in the story and is not brought up at all in any version of the ballad, there is still a sense of pride attached to being the descendent of someone who was a force for good in the story that has put the area on the map.
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It is apparent, then, that these different impressions have colored the way these women related to the area and to the people around them. For both women, Ferguson is their home and, like many people in the region, they did not give any indication that they were in any hurry to leave. However, the way they viewed themselves in the context of their family histories and how that informed their interactions with those around them is also not going anywhere.
Tom Dooley in Popular Culture
There are at least three versions of the ballad which come from three different families, each with some tie to the murder. Perhaps the best-known version is the
Proffitt family version. The Proffitts were neighbors of the Dulas at the time of the murder. This was the version collected by Frank Warner, printed with permission by
Alan Lomax in his book “Folk Songs USA,” and was eventually picked up by the
Kingston Trio, sparking the 1959 copyright battle and the dispute over who owns folk songs.
Other versions are the Watson family version and the Grayson family version.
The Grayson family version of the song was recorded by J.B. Grayson, the grandson of the “Sheriff Grayson” mentioned in the ballad. The most famous recording of the
Watson family version was done by Doc Watson, who said that he was taught the song by his grandmother, who had attended Ann on her deathbed.
It is, though, the Kingston Trio version of the ballad that has catapulted it into the international spotlight. Recordings of this version can be found in many languages and the English version can be found even in a wide range of non-Anglophonic countries.
The story has also been made into several movies, most of them based on the Kingston
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Trio ballad. Most of these have some rather imaginative flair to them. There are those that at least resemble the Kingston Trio’s version of events, but there are others that take the story a different direction. The curator of the Statesville Historical Collection in
Statesville, NC, mentioned a German film in which Tom is an old west outlaw who wrestles alligators. Subjected to a far wider audience than merely those with direct connections to the story, there will, necessarily, be a certain amount of artistic liberty exercised.
Figure 5 Top left and top right, movie posters for and stills from various movies based on the ballad. Bottom left, recordings of the ballad on CD, 8-track, and player piano roll. Bottom right, publicity images from international tours by the Kingston Trio. Photos by Andy Martinez. Courtesy of the Statesville Historical Collection.
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There are also, however, some adaptations that have stayed a bit truer to life, if with a few flourishes. The Ballad Novel series by Sharyn McCrumb was already mentioned in the last chapter. Sharyn is a native of the area and devotes a large amount of research when writing her ballad novels. While there is no way we can know what the various people involved were thinking, nor their conversations unless they are on record in trial testimony, she does adhere to the majority of known facts about the case.
Figure 6 Playbill for "Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend." Image belongs to Bleu Moon Productions. Likewise, the Bleu Moon Productions Group stages a play nearly every summer in Fort Hamby Park called “Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend.” The play opens with
58 a scene from the Civil War. A Union solider and a Confederate soldier, separated from their companies, are stalking each other through the woods. However, when they get closer to one another, they realize that they are uncle and nephew. They discuss how neither of them is really fighting for the ideals of their respective army; they simply joined whichever army the other men in their town were joining. This was a common trend in border states during the war (Bleu Moon Productions 2016). The military provided food and money, which was a good offer among the working class, even if they were ambivalent about the war itself.
From there, the play moves on to recount the story of Tom and Laura’s courtship, of Tom and Ann’s affair, of Laura’s murder, and of Tom’s subsequent trial and hanging.
The play also draws on what is known about the case. However, as one letter to the editor in a local newspaper pointed out in perhaps the most comically over the top way possible, this is still a work of fiction:
What Professor West fails to notice is the word “legend” in the subtitle of
the play. It’s subtitled “A Wilkes County Legend,” Professor, not “A Wilkes
County Fact as Published In My Books Dating Back to Early 1970.” And,
according to my dictionary, the word legend means “a story handed down
through the years and connected with some real events, but probably not
true in itself.” Using this definition as a standard of measure, I’d say the
play was perfectly subtitled (Van Buskirk, date unknown).
Unfortunately, this was from a newspaper clipping found in the library at a county museum, which did not list the date or exact city. It would have been revealing to be
59 able to read the entire chain of letters to the editor, as it seemed the two authors had been at this for several weeks.
This quote demonstrates several points. The first is the protectiveness of people about the lore. People have a vested interest in these stories. It is common knowledge that folk stories may give an incomplete – or even entirely erroneous – picture of a historical even, but this does not invalidate the stories. Tellers are aware the stories they are telling may be exaggerated or even flat out lies. That, however, is hardly the point. The reason we have history books is to record history as the facts seem to indicate it happened. Yet even there, it is easy to misinterpret the past because of lacking or misunderstood evidence. It is the function of legends, by contrast, to record the feelings and perspectives of those involved. Furthermore, legends are a sort of living history. They adapt and change over time. That which stagnates, dies. This is no less true of folk stories than it is of living organisms. Tales change. They change to keep the attention of their audience, they change to reflect current social or political climates, and they change based upon the feelings of the teller. No two tellers will tell a tale in exactly the same way. But far from being a weakness, this is the beauty of these stories. So, although the story in “Tom Dooley: A Wilkes County Legend” may not be entirely historically accurate, what is important is the connection it makes with its audience.
That is the point of any folktale. No matter the message or the information conveyed, if a story fails to connect with its audience, then it has failed. Tom Dooley, however, has connected with audiences across both time and international borders. The deepest connection, though, remains in the place where the story originated. With
60 remaining family connections, the ballad has retained its impact locally in a way that helps to define the area and the people in it.
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Conclusion
In this thesis, I have discussed two specific ballads from the North Carolina Blue
Ridge Mountains and their associated history and folk tales as well as the practices of storytelling and balladry more generally. These practices, as well as these specific examples of them, play a large role in informing identities of those in the region by helping to define the relationships they hold to the place itself and the people around them. This may be through the values displayed in the stories, as is the case in the
Frankie Silver ballad. Likewise, this may be through the connections people have with the stories that help to inform the way that they relate to the area, its history, and the people around them.
The way in which storytelling is used, both generally and in these two specific examples, demonstrates the idea of use and function as put forth by Mirraim, but also exemplifies Malinowsk’s theories on knowledge systems and Radcliffe-Brown’s idea that cultural traditions are processes rather than stagnant entities. These stories are a form of entertainment. They are, as Sobol describes, “a way to light up those long nights” (D. Davis 1992). This is their use. And while to some in the broader world, this may be all they are, they serve a different function in the lives of the people with connections to them. They tell these people about their ancestors’ roles in the area’s history. As Malinowski explains, they are the knowledge systems that connect the pasts
62 of these families to their present. They tell the people with these connections how they are related to one another through the lens of these events. This forms a basis for figuring out how one is situated within the social and cultural life of the area. From there, it helps to form a sense of self.
The way one is related to the people in the area does have a direct impact on one’s relationship with the place. Nowhere is this more evident than in the familial stories that form a living history of the region. The stories that are told and the way they cast the people in them – and thereby their descendants as well – has a strong hold on the area.
These stories are not merely folktales, nor are they merely cases resigned to the annals of history. They are something more than either of those things. It is the way in which they shape the sense of awareness of the people connected to them that has both kept them alive and that has made them into what they are. Storytelling and balladry are living traditions. These stories perhaps exemplify best what that means.
They are ongoing processes of remembrance and transmission. They are alive and well and thriving in their places of origin and, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world, they show no indication that they are going anywhere any time soon. In all likelihood they will persist long after the people who tell them now have gone, still finding new meanings and new iterations with each passing generation of tellers.
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