The Hammons Family: a Study of a West Virginia Family's Traditions
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The Hammons Family A Study of A West Virginia Family's Traditions This is the 2018 online version of the booklet for the Archive of Folk Culture sound recording AFS L65-L66, published in 1973. This edition of the booklet was designed and assembled by Carl Fleischhauer. The publication generally retains its 1973 voice. Bibliographical and discographical references have not been updated. An editorial review in 1997 adjusted the text to eliminate inconsistencies. Three items have been changed: the name of the fiddling uncle of Burl, Maggie, and Sherman is now spelled as it was pronounced, and as Edden Hammons himself spelled it; the title "Old Sledge" is identified as the name of a 19th-century card game; and an important minstrel-era publication of "Sandy Boys" is cited. Several photographs created or discovered after 1973 have been added. The Archive of Folk Song is referred to as the Archive of Folk Culture, its name since 1981. Maggie Hammons Parker passed away on July 26, 1987; Sherman Hammons, on September 3, 1988; and Burl Hammons, on January 2, 1993. The cover photograph depicts brothers Pete, Paris, and Neal (Cornelius) Hammons. The torn print on the cover is from the Hammons family's own collection, copied in 1972. In 2018, the Center obtained a digital version of an undamaged version of the same photograph, reproduced below. Meanwhile, information provided by Robert Cooper in 1980 identifies the photographer who made the 6x8-inch glass negative as Bob "Captain" Colebank of Sutton, West Virginia. Cooper quotes O.L. "Hink" Holcomb of Sutton as reporting that Colebank and Lory A. Holcomb were avid deer hunters who often sought out the Hammonses as hunting guides. Hink Holcomb said that, for this photograph, either Colebank or Lory Holcomb brought a phonograph and recordings of fiddle music with them to the Williams River and the phonograph was included in this picture. Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 4 A History of the Hammons Family Before the Civil War .......................................................................................................... 7 The Civil War Period.......................................................................................................... 12 Living in the Wilderness .................................................................................................... 14 The Music ........................................................................................................................... 24 Family Life and the Logging Period .................................................................................. 29 The Present ........................................................................................................................ 40 Tape Sources For Quotations in the Hammons Family History ................................... 43 The Recordings Disc 1, Side A (L-65) 1. Old Sledge ............................................................................................................... 44 2. Camp Chase .............................................................................................................. 45 3. Three Forks of Cheat ................................................................................................ 46 4. The Yankee and Marcum ......................................................................................... 46 5. Sugar Grove Blues.................................................................................................... 49 6. Turkey in the Straw ................................................................................................. 50 Disc 1, Side B (L-65) 7. The Route ................................................................................................................. 51 8. Fine Times at Our House ......................................................................................... 52 9. Jimmy Johnson ........................................................................................................ 52 10. Parson's Rock ........................................................................................................... 54 11. In Scotland Town ..................................................................................................... 56 12. Little Omie ............................................................................................................... 57 Disc 2, Side A (L-66) 13. Young Henerly ......................................................................................................... 58 14. Muddy Roads ........................................................................................................... 59 15. Bringing Back the Sheep .......................................................................................... 60 16. The Sandy Boys ....................................................................................................... 62 17. Wilson's Clog ........................................................................................................... 62 18. Sugar Babe ............................................................................................................... 63 Disc 2, Side B (L-66) 19. We're Marchin' Around the Levees .......................................................................... 63 20. Riddles ..................................................................................................................... 65 21. Mercian Tittery-Ary-A ............................................................................................ 68 22. Jay Legg ................................................................................................................... 69 23. When This World Comes to an End ......................................................................... 71 Bibliography-Discography .................................................................................................... 72 The Hammons Family Introduction Carl Fleischhauer and I first became acquainted with the Hammons family in 1970. Since then we have visited them regularly, though not as often as we should like, and at some point in our acquaintance it dawned upon us that a full- length study of the family which brought together recordings, print, and photography, and which combined music, lore, oral history, documentary historical research, and general cultural reflections, offered us the best means at our disposal for conveying publicly something of the profound impact the family has had upon us. The Hammonses, who likewise bear a profound respect for the traditions which nurtured Ruffed grouse in an Audubon reprint and a pair of grouse tails commemorate them, have encouraged and woodland hunting at the Hammons home in Stillwell, near Marlinton. assisted us at every stage of the project. We should like to express here our gratitude since colonial times. My newer notions are by no to them for all they have given us. means conclusive, for we know remarkably little The study of the history and traditions of a about these matters; but they are worth setting down single family, though rarely pursued in American now, if only to prod students of demography and folklore research, has proved exceptionally cultural history into pursuing them more thoroughly. stimulating. The family unit is important anywhere, First, around the Hammons family history, as but in the case of the Hammonses it weighs even more one pores over the census records and other heavily in the balance with community influences, for documents, arises a broader picture of a definable the family has been migratory since its arrival upon culture area within the more amorphous the early frontier some 175 years ago, rarely staying in "Appalachians," more or less encompassing central one place for even a generation. Following the trail of and southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and the family over several generations could not be perhaps the far southwestern counties of Virginia. accomplished exclusively through documentary The area is fairly uniform topographically, consisting sources, so we have meshed documentary evidence largely of the sloping plateau running west from the with the family's own oral history. The oral stories and Allegheny Front, broken up everywhere into the printed documents complemented each other precipitous hills and narrow hollows by the creeks nicely, enabling us both to determine many facts of and rivers winding their way toward the Ohio River the family's peregrinations and to understand better basin. Studies in dialectology and (to a lesser extent) the present generation's view of the past and its folklore tentatively confirm the essential significance. homogeneity of the region. The settlement patterns The close study of the history of one family for the area suggest the possibility that the dominant has dramatically affected my previous notions of the early influences came not only from the "Scotch- general pattern and flow of culture in the upper South lrish," or "Ulster Scots," that many cultural historians __________________________________ - 4 - The Hammons Family cite in discussing Appalachian immigration, but from Hammons family is an example of the latter group. If already fully established American stock from the separate cultures, rather than a single homogeneous Virginia and North Carolina Piedmont, moving up Appalachian culture, are indeed a historical fact,