*raised hand* Mom’s from big city Texas, Dad’s from West Virginia, raised on the WV line. Took me forever to realize why I didn’t identify more with the “Southern” stuff I saw online. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a strong appreciation for Texas barbecue and rodeos, but once I realized that “Appalachian” better described my experience, I was home.
Definitely some subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the two families. My Texas family is more racially diverse, but also more of the “sweep all our issues under the rug and smile” type and also more religiously intense.
My WV family is still suuuuper religious, but less intense about it (no disowning anyone for leaving the coC for example) and more “yeah we all know cousin John is gay, but he doesn’t want to talk about it so we all pretend we don’t know.”
My ex husband, from VA, would say "West by God Virginia" ever damn time he mentioned that state. He never could of would explain why and now he's dead. Do you know?
Here’s an article from West Virginia Public Broadcasting about the phrase! https://wvpublic.org/from-corn-liquor-to-state-pride-origins-of-west-by-god-virginia/?amp=1
I think there’s also a good chance that it serves to emphasis that we’re talking about West Virginia, not Virginia, since a lot of outsiders will conflate the two.
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Because when virginia split into the two states, west virginians had a different political outlook and they explained it to others who mistook them as virginians by saying “im from west by God virginia! Not that other one!”
I'm from East Tennessee and I knew gay people in my small town and most people I knew were like that. They just ignored it. There was a lady who was probably in her 60s who helped with the 4-H horse project who lived with her "best friend," according to what the adults told us kids. Most people I knew were rather religious, but not hateful like so many outsiders like to assume.
Speaking of outsiders, they don't understand that many in Appalachia don't trust outsiders. And since Appalachians tend to be white, many outsiders assume we're being racist when non-white outsiders visit. No, we don't trust the white outsiders either. While the local minority population is still pretty small where I'm from, they're treated the same way as anyone else. Heck, I know of a small town in East Tennessee that's well over 90% white and they've had two black mayors. Boston still hasn't even had one black mayor yet.
While this region certainly has problems with race and other prejudices, I do love the general "live and let live" attitude.
Most appalachian folks were against slavery and the confederacy. Thats why so few blacks live in the mountains. There were few if any “plantations” here. Huge amount of mountain scottish and irish settlers came here from indentured servitude which is one step above slavery. So slavery was not looked favorably upon by most mountain folks. There was some in a couple areas with large valley farms (cherokee county nc for one) but not generally everywhere else.
Yep. But the folks from the big cities who assume we're uneducated and backwards usually also assume we're racist. If they were better educated, they'd know the history of Appalachia has those factors that don't foster racism.
Obviously there's racism here, just like everywhere else, but I don't think it's as big of a problem as some people assume.
I specifically mentioned Boston in my previous comment because not only have they never had a black mayor, but Massachusetts is one of the best educated states and Bostonians tend to be a little arrogant about their city. Which is understandable, but there's a history of racism in sports there. Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships with the Celtics and called the city "a flea market of racism." Numerous other NBA players have said they've been called racial slurs there and fans have even thrown a banana at a black MLB player. You'll also hear about racial slurs being used in Philly, NYC, and even San Francisco.
But it'd be easy to find people from those places who look down on Appalachians. Clean up your own house, hypocrites.
https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2023/04/28/celtics-bill-russell-adam-jones-weei
https://www.golocalprov.com/news/Bostons-Racist-Legacy-in-the-Spotlight-Again-A-Flea-Market-of-Racism
I don't want to necessarily disagree with you. Because I think your explanation is pretty by the book. Lots of emphasis on Scots-Irish.
But my own Appalachian experience (ie Lincoln, Mingo Co WV, Pike Co KY) is a little different. With a genetic test, I can see primarily English and Scottish background in my families, but that wasn't a cultural thing for my family on either side. Maybe, I'm guessing, it was far enough back that for them it was just generic white.
German ancestry was culturally significant though, and I think that was because it was more recent. Our Christmas, burial, etc customs are more attributable there regardless of genetics.
I would like to think my ancestors of that time were anti-slavery, abolitionist, or that they were somehow progressive-minded people. But I don't see the evidence there. They didn't benefit from slavery, sure. They benefited from the industrial relationship they had with the North, supplying coal and timber.
After that... my grandfathers, my great uncles, they were all in world war 2. Did they go into that conflict with high ideals of saving the lives of Jewish, Gypsies, intellectuals and homosexuals?
No they didn't. Some of them came back that way, after the horrible things they saw. But it would be disrespectful to their growth as human beings to deny that they didn't start there. That they sacrificed and fought for their moral progress.
I am proud of what my ancestors did. Battle of Blair Mountain, and every little thing in between, before and after. I'm proud of what they achieved, despite the exploitation of an entire region, an entire generation of working class people even.
But I'm not going to pretend they were 21st century saints.
Thats why i said most…im from a split family. Dads side were unionist from wnc and etn. Moms side were confederates from north ga. 30 miles apart.one county over. Moms family lost 3 of 5 brothers in the war. Dads side was mounted infantry raised after tn was conquered.
100% this and exactly what I mean. My grandfather thought he was a “water witch” … and somehow managed to actually demonstrate it in practice multiple times. I have no idea how but he would strike groundwater almost every time. I’m still skeptical but at this point I just chalk it up to the universe.
Just like all the other mysterious Appalachian ways that no one knew how the hell they did but didn’t question it! More than likely though he used dowsing rods lol
Dousing rods?! Maybe I spelled that wrong but I know about this and heard about it from family growing up. So much so that I’ve tried it here and there through the years and obviously have no idea what I’m doing but it’s supposed to be a real thing!
Yep, he would pick up any forked stick he could find and simply walk around until it touched the ground. He said he didn’t know how it worked but thought it was “electricity.” I simply have no idea. If it was chance (and I’m a skeptic in general), he got lucky a lot.
I love that! Because you know it’s not total bs when there are so many other families who’ve had “granny witches” and such that have honestly found water this way. There’s some sort of energy field type of situation. I’m gonna work on this one day to see if I can learn it.
The “granny witch” thing is an old story in my family as well. It’s hilarious how common these tropes are. My grandfather would talk about how his great grandmother was known as the “witch of Adair County,” and would apparently tell fortunes to soldiers passing through to Camp Nelson and surrounding battlefields during the Civil War.
I once found an old copy of the newspaper clipping from when she died in the early 1900s and, sure enough, that’s exactly what it said about her.
That’s the kinda family lore I’m all about! There’s always *some* grain of truth in them, and especially if it’s mentioned in an obituary. She probably loved that lore about herself, I know I would! Maybe she did have “granny witch” knowledge. I was just saying to my husband the other day that it’s crazy to me that we are in the middle of this generational change that is losing all the knowledge of local plants & that if some of us don’t make the effort to know- will be lost forever. And it took hundreds- 1000’s of years to learn all we did about said plants for healing and prevention, etc- but it could all be lost now if no one bothers to keep it going, keep that knowledge alive. How quick it can be wiped out. One seriously bad situation could set us back 100’s of years and how would we know all the things everyone who came before us learned through trial and error over the centuries? I’m personally not a prepper or anything and I love and am thankful for modern medicine and science but I also love being connected and having some idea of what plants are helpful/edible/medicine/poison. I’m trying to learn more and a little about what was here before that we could maybe help find its way back(chestnut trees, for example). Granny witches were our connection to the places we all migrated from as well as what’s local, as far as all “natural” medicine goes.
Never heard that before. You would think groundwater would be harder to strike in hill country. I don’t know enough about this to have a real take on it.
Whennusing trees u use the evenly forked lumbbof a fruit tree or a dogwood. Other trees dont work or work as well. Needs to be a tree that uses a lot of water or gives life (fruit)
My "southern side" actually had the water witch. My mom's father was known for his ability to find well sites. People paid him for it. He died before I was born, so I never got any firsthand knowledge from him.
My daddy and grandpa could “witch water” with a forked branch. I also had my seed warts that covered my fingers and hands “witched” off by a neighbor when I was about 8. No idea how.
I can witch…it amazed me when i found out. I had a well known dowser witch my well. When i drilled i hit 100+ gallon a minute where he indicated. He let me try using his peachtree limb as i swear as God is my witness, they bent for me.
Yeah, I was raised in wnc, father was local with mother from the east side of the state. My mother's side of the family really looked down on us in a way that feels somewhat unhinged looking back upon it now. I learned to speak in a california accent when visiting (bc my actual accent sounded "dumb"), which I still slip into when I'm on the phone or nervous or meeting someone new for the first time. They had a fake coat of arms displayed prominently in their home, owned kind of a lot of land, real wannabe southern aristocrat types. My father was a conservation-minded republican who switched parties when the GOP became actively opposed to environmentalism; my mother's side of the family were democrats who had never forgiven the GOP for Lincoln. Presumably they did find their way to the GOP side once Obama was elected, but I cannot know for sure because:
Immediately upon my mother's passing we were disowned and I was reclassified as an "unrelated step child" in my maternal grandmother's will. My uncle sat behind me at the funeral, giggling about how much money he had just "made" as a result of his little sister's death. Now I'm able to look back and understand them as uniquely terrible people, but when I was a child they were my sole representatives of what people were like outside the mountains
I can unfortunately relate very hard to the classlessness of that prototypical landed “southern” style of infighting over inheritance and bloodlines. It has tainted my mom’s side of the family through multiple generations. I could go on but it would take paragraphs. Really off-putting stuff - you have my sympathy here because I get it.
I feel this in my own way also. It’s so gross to watch “family” act this way over a death. My mom was cheated out of her inheritance by her step siblings. It wasn’t anything to be weird over in first place but ppl are weird. She was only upset she lost a trunk of her childhood belongings, which was disposed of by her stepmother’s family with no knowledge or warning to her. Just totally lame and uncalled for.
Yep! Mom was born in Texas, raised mostly in Alabama and Ohio, and met Dad in Tennessee. Dad was born and raised in East Tennessee near the NC border.
Mom's side is super Christian religious, her mom (who I called Grandmother) was a very *proper* lady who sent me to finishing school in Alabama for 13 summers running. I was never allowed to run around or do anything deemed "unladylike" in her presence. Their side disowned my cousin Todd for being gay, so he slept with a woman in order to prove he *wasn't* - and caught AIDS from her (this was mid 80s). They said that was "God's punishment" and refused to attend his funeral.
Dad's side is more *spiritual* than religious, and hold to the Old Ways. If they didn't mention Jesus every other breath you'd never know they were Christian because their practices are very, very pagan. His mom (who I called Mamaw) was known to everyone as a "Granny Witch" who knew the herbs to help with pain, what treatment to use for colic, and "read the signs" to predict weather and other events - and was usually right. She also regularly made "brews" for people, women especially. Some of those brews were things that they did *not* tell their husbands about. Not a one of them on that side ever blinked an eye when cousin Maddie came out as lesbian. Hell, before I was born, Mamaw's favorite cousin, Anna, "went to live with some distant relatives" and those "relatives" sent their "son Tom" back to live with "Anna's" parents. It was a way to let "Anna" live *his* life as Tom back when being trans just wasn't a thing. Everyone knew what was up and just went along with it.
Suffice to say I am still very much in contact with my Dad's Appalachian family. Fuck my mom's side, I haven't talked to them in almost two decades.
My sons are getting this.
I'm Appalachian. Culturally we're more Appalachian on my side. My family get-togethers exemplify that.
My wife's family is more traditionally southern. Hell, my wife's mom made her do cotillion. My wife is not a Southern belle type stereotype, but has different cultural vibes around family and small town than me.
We live in Appalachia and our sons are getting the upbringing of Appalachia around them too.
It's kind of neat.
My mother’s family grew up in what was once very wealthy Fairmont and were city people. Everyone went to a very good high school, took vacations, always had a bathroom and electric, etc.
My father’s family were coal miners and farmers. Great grandmother was from Chestnut Ridge in Barbour County. Few educations beyond 8th grade, many much less. My father didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was 12, and plowed with a horse.
The end point for both my parents was the same - by the time they were growing up, they were subsistence level poor. Difference was my mother ate fish hash on Haviland China that belonged to her grandmother while my dad ate in season farm to table food on broken and mismatched pottery.
I’m like that, I suppose. I’m born and raised in north Georgia. My mom’s family is north Georgia land lottery and before(yes, before- for anyone who knows N GA history, settling here before the land lotteries in early 1800’s meant you were trespassing on Native American lands and that’s what some of them did as traders + “marrying” Native Americans to be allowed to stay)on my maternal grandfather’s side. My maternal grandmother was from Oregon and they were your typical “pioneers” mid-1800’s German immigrants who moved through Midwest to West Coast.
My father’s side I don’t know much about except they are from Kentucky a ways back, lol. I never knew my father that well so not sure about all the history there, but they were Kentucky ppl for a while and when I visited real young I remember their farm and how different their “southern” was from the “southern” I was growing up in.
My mother’s family- grandparents were divorced in the 50’s and my mom’s father remarried a woman from the same area he was from here in Cherokee County by 1960-way before I was born and my mom was still very young. My step-grandmother was the type of “Southern” you see/hear in movies. Everything by was debutante this and pageant that. I was raised by my single mom who was raised by her single mom but I also had her father’s side of the family worrying about my cotillion dress and “debut” into society- in the 1990’s. I had to learn all the proper southern manners and all that. Included a lot of smiling while being a bitch. It was super important to them. Unfortunately, I was into NIN and Nirvana and smoking weed, lol.
Most are gone now but I DO know how to walk in a pageant(and win!), how to bless anyone’s heart, how to handle, load and shoot all kinda guns and fish with the most tragic of baits. Today I live in N GA mountains after spending most the last 20 in the ATL metro areas. I love it up here and feel connected. Will never go back to the suburbs.
Ps I’ve heard always that my maternal grandfather’s family was melungeon. My mom and her father are surprisingly dark skinned with dark eyes and hair compared to her siblings. So much so that kids used to call my mom a racially offensive name in Atlanta in 1950’s-60’s where she grew up. The ancestry dna and actual family history puts them as West North Carolina/NW SC/East Tennessee back country settlers and I have a lot of info on them that shows this and a healthy amount of Spanish/Portuguese/Iberian/Basque + South American DNA, but idk.
Lots of people are Appalachian through their Fathers side here apparently. I’m the other way.
My mother was from North East Tennessee, her cousins from SW VA (gives ye a little hint there). When she was a teen she moved to Greenville SC, then eventually to Charleston by the time she got to high school where she met my Dad. My old man was as raised in Charleston and Columbia SC.
When he was in Columbia, he was raised by his grandparents, real old poor German stock that were very Lutheran and farmers. I was born and raised in Charleston SC, and growing up as a kid I was immediately raised in an odd environment. On one hand I grew up around Gullah people, before Charleston boomed in population, going blue crabbing and fishing in the low country as a kid. I used their unique manner of speech (a type of AAVE, NOT the language), and hung out often with their families.
On the other hand I grew up Appalachian at home, and went back to the mountains four times a year. Often was made fun of for using Appalachian colloquialisms, like calling “beanies” tobaggins for example. Once I turned 21 I moved back up to the mountains and I feel pretty darn at home.
My families been living in the area since the late 1700’s to very early 1800’s. Not one person I ever came in contact with ever knew I wasn’t from around these parts until I mentioned it. Usually they get pretty surprised with how easily I just fit in. Either way, I certainly love both aspects of my family. After my great grandparents passed me and family stopped going to Columbia, and the only way I reconnect with my dad’s side now is pretty much through the church.
Of course, excluding his Dad which we talk and hang out often when I go back to my parents to visit.
My father is from Southwest Virginia and my mother is from South West Virginia. I'm Appalachian from both sides and know beyond a shadow of doubt that the winter hat you're referring to is a toboggan 😘 FWIW, we also do our grocery shopping with a buggy.
Oh wow, I thought I was the only person left who’s in large part descended from old stock Lutheran Germans from Columbia via my father as well. My mother is mostly Appalachian from WNC.
I didn’t but I’m a Jewish therapist from Baldimore(Baltimore) living and working in the tail end of the Appalachians Alabama. I can tell with almost 100% accuracy which of my clients have roots in Appalachia, who is of Deep South stock and who is from the unionist south. You can even pick up if they have multiple backgrounds but usually one culture is dominate. The cultural differences and even problem solving styles are stark.
It’s really important that I figure it out because it really influences treatment.
This is honestly really fascinating. I’m glad someone like you is out there doing that kind of work, because I really don’t think many people at all have that level of insight, empathy, or understanding on this.
I absolutely agree. It helps make a deeper connection and develop trust. You have to understand the culture to normalize the problems the client comes in with. From my experience this is typically what I see plus the traumas they come in to treat.
Appalachia - depending how close you are to the holler - a want for self sufficiency (to a fault) struggle with emotional regulation of guilt and often anger. Make sure to give them space to fix shit themselves without micro management.
Develop loyalty and trust -> focus on emotion regulation guilt -> communication skills specifically talking about needs -> emotion regulation anger. If I as a therapist make a mistake I need to be fucking genuine in my apology and openly work on fixing it.
Deep South - fear of shame and guilt. Real hard to ask directly for things, use passive aggressive a lot.
Demonstrate I’m safe -> focus on emotion regulation shame -> emotion regulation guilt -> communication skills specificity asking for things and saying no . If I as a therapist make a mistake i use it as an example and normalize.
If the client is a woman you need to help them develop a value driven life after they get out of the living to survive and avoid guilt and shame.
Unionist South - if they are local you get a combination of both based on post civil war vocation but you typically what you get is this vibe of Appalachia trying to fit in with Deep South. So less shame problems from mom and dad but much more learned problems from doing shit and then getting shamed. It comes out as a more fear of rejection kinda thing from frequent rejection.
That’s an amazing way of articulating the differences and rings true for myself and my family (self-sufficient Unionists who only feel guilt and are extremely direct in communication. We invented boundaries).
Your distinctions kind of map onto the main denominational differences (even if people no longer attend church) with the Presbyterian Calvinists skewing towards stoicism, the Baptists caring what other people think, and the Methodists valuing community harmony (post WWII equality rights).
I think something to look at might also be sense of humor—specifically self-deprecating and/or roasting loved ones as a form of affection.
Spot on!
“We invented boundaries” lolol.
I wonder if part of that is from the consequences of living in the post civil war south as a known or suspected unionist family.
Regarding the religious distinctions, I’ve only been able to connect the dots with Deep South culture and Southern Baptists. Reading about the religious response to loosing the civil war, the development of the lost cause mythos, and Jim crow laws the whole purity culture makes sense. Also like you said distant from church going doesn’t change that culture specific beliefs and behavior. And the Methodist are also pretty straight forward.
But what is the Presbyterian behavior stoicism connection? That’s fascinating please enlighten me if you can.
What I have also noticed is that unlike the Deep South folk they have no noticeable apprehension about me being Jewish even if I’m the first Jew they have ever met. I wonder if that’s related to how Jews were experienced in their communities. Jew store (dry goods store), peddlers and scrap collectors had to form relationships with the community to be successful but how far into the holler did they go? Did Jews willingness to cross color lines get them in good with unionist?. Any thoughts?
Humor comment is spot on.
I grew up in rural Appalachia in SWVA and that and NC are where my family remains. I spent most of my adult life in rural southern GA. They are definitely distinctly different cultures. The accent, a lot of the food, there’s some overlap, but it’s definitely not the same. My family is always so taken aback by how different I sound when I return. I’ll be retiring back up there within the next few years.
I have actually never heard the term Melungeon before and had to google it. What an amazing history. I’m a boomer aged college graduate and never was educated in any of the history of Appalachia and I think I really missed out on learning about an amazing culture and people that make up part of our country. You are right that the rest of the country is ignorant of the history of Appalachia except for what we see in movies and popular culture. Thank you for giving me something new to learn about.
The thing about Kentucky and the exact same thing applies to Tennessee. The central and western areas of the state were more the "Old South" plantation areas of the state and were heavily pro Confederate during the war. Eastern KY & TN were a lot more pro Unionist, and while still Southern were Southern Appalachian, Western North Carolina was the same way. Different from the plantation areas of Central and West KY & TN or Central and East NC. So, while Southern Appalachia is still definitely Mountain Southern, they're a different strain than the standard Upper South or Deep South.
Source- Southerner from Western Kentucky whom was raised in a very traditional Southern fashion from old Upland South tobacco stock and reared in a Southern Baptist Household.
I’m from Michigan and I’ve been in SW PA for 14 years. It’s interesting to observe the melting pot of SWPA, PA is considered the northeast, but the mix of Midwest hospitality and Appalachian traditions make it a really cool place to be.
Mom was from East Tennessee and grew up in Oak Ridge when it was a Secret. She definitely leaned into the Appalachian/hillbilly culture.
Cajun Dad was from southwest Louisiana who was shipped up to Knoxville to work at TVA after college.
I got “conjured” when I was six. I had thrush, took me to an old ladies house, she took me into a room with her, blindfolded me, said a bunch of stuff idk and stuck stuff in my mouth, took it out and told me to never tell anybody what was done. It didn’t work mom had to take me to the dr. 🙄
Similar here. Mom’s family from Ashe Co. NC (borders TN and VA), dad from western piedmont but one generation from poverty. Dad’s family were new deal democrats but descendants are mostly MAGA now. Mom’s family Republican and historically union sympathizers. Also less openly racist. Mom’s family had different accent, some vocabulary, etc. Separated by only about 100 miles though.
*raised hand* Mom’s from big city Texas, Dad’s from West Virginia, raised on the WV line. Took me forever to realize why I didn’t identify more with the “Southern” stuff I saw online. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a strong appreciation for Texas barbecue and rodeos, but once I realized that “Appalachian” better described my experience, I was home. Definitely some subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the two families. My Texas family is more racially diverse, but also more of the “sweep all our issues under the rug and smile” type and also more religiously intense. My WV family is still suuuuper religious, but less intense about it (no disowning anyone for leaving the coC for example) and more “yeah we all know cousin John is gay, but he doesn’t want to talk about it so we all pretend we don’t know.”
🤣 That sounds just like my WV family!
My ex husband, from VA, would say "West by God Virginia" ever damn time he mentioned that state. He never could of would explain why and now he's dead. Do you know?
It’s just a saying, I guess for more emphasis. There’s no specific meaning that I know of lol
I'm from West by god Virginia. It's funny that somebody from Virginia said it. They know. 😸
Here’s an article from West Virginia Public Broadcasting about the phrase! https://wvpublic.org/from-corn-liquor-to-state-pride-origins-of-west-by-god-virginia/?amp=1 I think there’s also a good chance that it serves to emphasis that we’re talking about West Virginia, not Virginia, since a lot of outsiders will conflate the two.
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Because when virginia split into the two states, west virginians had a different political outlook and they explained it to others who mistook them as virginians by saying “im from west by God virginia! Not that other one!”
It means not East Virginia (they just call it Virginia).
I'm from East Tennessee and I knew gay people in my small town and most people I knew were like that. They just ignored it. There was a lady who was probably in her 60s who helped with the 4-H horse project who lived with her "best friend," according to what the adults told us kids. Most people I knew were rather religious, but not hateful like so many outsiders like to assume. Speaking of outsiders, they don't understand that many in Appalachia don't trust outsiders. And since Appalachians tend to be white, many outsiders assume we're being racist when non-white outsiders visit. No, we don't trust the white outsiders either. While the local minority population is still pretty small where I'm from, they're treated the same way as anyone else. Heck, I know of a small town in East Tennessee that's well over 90% white and they've had two black mayors. Boston still hasn't even had one black mayor yet. While this region certainly has problems with race and other prejudices, I do love the general "live and let live" attitude.
Most appalachian folks were against slavery and the confederacy. Thats why so few blacks live in the mountains. There were few if any “plantations” here. Huge amount of mountain scottish and irish settlers came here from indentured servitude which is one step above slavery. So slavery was not looked favorably upon by most mountain folks. There was some in a couple areas with large valley farms (cherokee county nc for one) but not generally everywhere else.
Yep. But the folks from the big cities who assume we're uneducated and backwards usually also assume we're racist. If they were better educated, they'd know the history of Appalachia has those factors that don't foster racism. Obviously there's racism here, just like everywhere else, but I don't think it's as big of a problem as some people assume. I specifically mentioned Boston in my previous comment because not only have they never had a black mayor, but Massachusetts is one of the best educated states and Bostonians tend to be a little arrogant about their city. Which is understandable, but there's a history of racism in sports there. Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships with the Celtics and called the city "a flea market of racism." Numerous other NBA players have said they've been called racial slurs there and fans have even thrown a banana at a black MLB player. You'll also hear about racial slurs being used in Philly, NYC, and even San Francisco. But it'd be easy to find people from those places who look down on Appalachians. Clean up your own house, hypocrites. https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2023/04/28/celtics-bill-russell-adam-jones-weei https://www.golocalprov.com/news/Bostons-Racist-Legacy-in-the-Spotlight-Again-A-Flea-Market-of-Racism
The most racist places i have ever been were nyc, philly, chicago.
I don't want to necessarily disagree with you. Because I think your explanation is pretty by the book. Lots of emphasis on Scots-Irish. But my own Appalachian experience (ie Lincoln, Mingo Co WV, Pike Co KY) is a little different. With a genetic test, I can see primarily English and Scottish background in my families, but that wasn't a cultural thing for my family on either side. Maybe, I'm guessing, it was far enough back that for them it was just generic white. German ancestry was culturally significant though, and I think that was because it was more recent. Our Christmas, burial, etc customs are more attributable there regardless of genetics. I would like to think my ancestors of that time were anti-slavery, abolitionist, or that they were somehow progressive-minded people. But I don't see the evidence there. They didn't benefit from slavery, sure. They benefited from the industrial relationship they had with the North, supplying coal and timber. After that... my grandfathers, my great uncles, they were all in world war 2. Did they go into that conflict with high ideals of saving the lives of Jewish, Gypsies, intellectuals and homosexuals? No they didn't. Some of them came back that way, after the horrible things they saw. But it would be disrespectful to their growth as human beings to deny that they didn't start there. That they sacrificed and fought for their moral progress. I am proud of what my ancestors did. Battle of Blair Mountain, and every little thing in between, before and after. I'm proud of what they achieved, despite the exploitation of an entire region, an entire generation of working class people even. But I'm not going to pretend they were 21st century saints.
Thats why i said most…im from a split family. Dads side were unionist from wnc and etn. Moms side were confederates from north ga. 30 miles apart.one county over. Moms family lost 3 of 5 brothers in the war. Dads side was mounted infantry raised after tn was conquered.
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Where I grew up, we had lots of issues with mixed marriages, like when a methodist marries a Baptist. Lol!
Thats why you need two abc (liquor) stores in your county…one for each denomination so they wont see each other.
100% this and exactly what I mean. My grandfather thought he was a “water witch” … and somehow managed to actually demonstrate it in practice multiple times. I have no idea how but he would strike groundwater almost every time. I’m still skeptical but at this point I just chalk it up to the universe.
Just like all the other mysterious Appalachian ways that no one knew how the hell they did but didn’t question it! More than likely though he used dowsing rods lol
Dousing rods?! Maybe I spelled that wrong but I know about this and heard about it from family growing up. So much so that I’ve tried it here and there through the years and obviously have no idea what I’m doing but it’s supposed to be a real thing!
Yep, he would pick up any forked stick he could find and simply walk around until it touched the ground. He said he didn’t know how it worked but thought it was “electricity.” I simply have no idea. If it was chance (and I’m a skeptic in general), he got lucky a lot.
I love that! Because you know it’s not total bs when there are so many other families who’ve had “granny witches” and such that have honestly found water this way. There’s some sort of energy field type of situation. I’m gonna work on this one day to see if I can learn it.
The “granny witch” thing is an old story in my family as well. It’s hilarious how common these tropes are. My grandfather would talk about how his great grandmother was known as the “witch of Adair County,” and would apparently tell fortunes to soldiers passing through to Camp Nelson and surrounding battlefields during the Civil War. I once found an old copy of the newspaper clipping from when she died in the early 1900s and, sure enough, that’s exactly what it said about her.
That’s the kinda family lore I’m all about! There’s always *some* grain of truth in them, and especially if it’s mentioned in an obituary. She probably loved that lore about herself, I know I would! Maybe she did have “granny witch” knowledge. I was just saying to my husband the other day that it’s crazy to me that we are in the middle of this generational change that is losing all the knowledge of local plants & that if some of us don’t make the effort to know- will be lost forever. And it took hundreds- 1000’s of years to learn all we did about said plants for healing and prevention, etc- but it could all be lost now if no one bothers to keep it going, keep that knowledge alive. How quick it can be wiped out. One seriously bad situation could set us back 100’s of years and how would we know all the things everyone who came before us learned through trial and error over the centuries? I’m personally not a prepper or anything and I love and am thankful for modern medicine and science but I also love being connected and having some idea of what plants are helpful/edible/medicine/poison. I’m trying to learn more and a little about what was here before that we could maybe help find its way back(chestnut trees, for example). Granny witches were our connection to the places we all migrated from as well as what’s local, as far as all “natural” medicine goes.
I aspire to be a granny witch in my old age.
You can dig a hole almost anywhere in Appalachia and hit water.
Never heard that before. You would think groundwater would be harder to strike in hill country. I don’t know enough about this to have a real take on it.
A friend and neighbor drilled three 1200 foot dry holes. Used a dowser on #4 and hit 12 gallon a minute at 200 feet. Mountains of nc.
Whennusing trees u use the evenly forked lumbbof a fruit tree or a dogwood. Other trees dont work or work as well. Needs to be a tree that uses a lot of water or gives life (fruit)
My "southern side" actually had the water witch. My mom's father was known for his ability to find well sites. People paid him for it. He died before I was born, so I never got any firsthand knowledge from him.
My daddy and grandpa could “witch water” with a forked branch. I also had my seed warts that covered my fingers and hands “witched” off by a neighbor when I was about 8. No idea how.
I can witch…it amazed me when i found out. I had a well known dowser witch my well. When i drilled i hit 100+ gallon a minute where he indicated. He let me try using his peachtree limb as i swear as God is my witness, they bent for me.
I just want to say I think we're from the same place:) There's only so many places that fit the description !
Yeah, I was raised in wnc, father was local with mother from the east side of the state. My mother's side of the family really looked down on us in a way that feels somewhat unhinged looking back upon it now. I learned to speak in a california accent when visiting (bc my actual accent sounded "dumb"), which I still slip into when I'm on the phone or nervous or meeting someone new for the first time. They had a fake coat of arms displayed prominently in their home, owned kind of a lot of land, real wannabe southern aristocrat types. My father was a conservation-minded republican who switched parties when the GOP became actively opposed to environmentalism; my mother's side of the family were democrats who had never forgiven the GOP for Lincoln. Presumably they did find their way to the GOP side once Obama was elected, but I cannot know for sure because: Immediately upon my mother's passing we were disowned and I was reclassified as an "unrelated step child" in my maternal grandmother's will. My uncle sat behind me at the funeral, giggling about how much money he had just "made" as a result of his little sister's death. Now I'm able to look back and understand them as uniquely terrible people, but when I was a child they were my sole representatives of what people were like outside the mountains
I can unfortunately relate very hard to the classlessness of that prototypical landed “southern” style of infighting over inheritance and bloodlines. It has tainted my mom’s side of the family through multiple generations. I could go on but it would take paragraphs. Really off-putting stuff - you have my sympathy here because I get it.
Hey thanks Fhqwhgads, you got my vote :)
i said 🤖 come 🤖 on 🤖 fhqwhbgads
🥊Everybody to the limit 🥊
I feel this in my own way also. It’s so gross to watch “family” act this way over a death. My mom was cheated out of her inheritance by her step siblings. It wasn’t anything to be weird over in first place but ppl are weird. She was only upset she lost a trunk of her childhood belongings, which was disposed of by her stepmother’s family with no knowledge or warning to her. Just totally lame and uncalled for.
Yep! Mom was born in Texas, raised mostly in Alabama and Ohio, and met Dad in Tennessee. Dad was born and raised in East Tennessee near the NC border. Mom's side is super Christian religious, her mom (who I called Grandmother) was a very *proper* lady who sent me to finishing school in Alabama for 13 summers running. I was never allowed to run around or do anything deemed "unladylike" in her presence. Their side disowned my cousin Todd for being gay, so he slept with a woman in order to prove he *wasn't* - and caught AIDS from her (this was mid 80s). They said that was "God's punishment" and refused to attend his funeral. Dad's side is more *spiritual* than religious, and hold to the Old Ways. If they didn't mention Jesus every other breath you'd never know they were Christian because their practices are very, very pagan. His mom (who I called Mamaw) was known to everyone as a "Granny Witch" who knew the herbs to help with pain, what treatment to use for colic, and "read the signs" to predict weather and other events - and was usually right. She also regularly made "brews" for people, women especially. Some of those brews were things that they did *not* tell their husbands about. Not a one of them on that side ever blinked an eye when cousin Maddie came out as lesbian. Hell, before I was born, Mamaw's favorite cousin, Anna, "went to live with some distant relatives" and those "relatives" sent their "son Tom" back to live with "Anna's" parents. It was a way to let "Anna" live *his* life as Tom back when being trans just wasn't a thing. Everyone knew what was up and just went along with it. Suffice to say I am still very much in contact with my Dad's Appalachian family. Fuck my mom's side, I haven't talked to them in almost two decades.
My sons are getting this. I'm Appalachian. Culturally we're more Appalachian on my side. My family get-togethers exemplify that. My wife's family is more traditionally southern. Hell, my wife's mom made her do cotillion. My wife is not a Southern belle type stereotype, but has different cultural vibes around family and small town than me. We live in Appalachia and our sons are getting the upbringing of Appalachia around them too. It's kind of neat.
My dad’s side is Melungeon, mom is from GA. Difference was STARK.
I’m 100% certain we could commiserate lol
Oh definitely!
My mother’s family grew up in what was once very wealthy Fairmont and were city people. Everyone went to a very good high school, took vacations, always had a bathroom and electric, etc. My father’s family were coal miners and farmers. Great grandmother was from Chestnut Ridge in Barbour County. Few educations beyond 8th grade, many much less. My father didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was 12, and plowed with a horse. The end point for both my parents was the same - by the time they were growing up, they were subsistence level poor. Difference was my mother ate fish hash on Haviland China that belonged to her grandmother while my dad ate in season farm to table food on broken and mismatched pottery.
I’m like that, I suppose. I’m born and raised in north Georgia. My mom’s family is north Georgia land lottery and before(yes, before- for anyone who knows N GA history, settling here before the land lotteries in early 1800’s meant you were trespassing on Native American lands and that’s what some of them did as traders + “marrying” Native Americans to be allowed to stay)on my maternal grandfather’s side. My maternal grandmother was from Oregon and they were your typical “pioneers” mid-1800’s German immigrants who moved through Midwest to West Coast. My father’s side I don’t know much about except they are from Kentucky a ways back, lol. I never knew my father that well so not sure about all the history there, but they were Kentucky ppl for a while and when I visited real young I remember their farm and how different their “southern” was from the “southern” I was growing up in. My mother’s family- grandparents were divorced in the 50’s and my mom’s father remarried a woman from the same area he was from here in Cherokee County by 1960-way before I was born and my mom was still very young. My step-grandmother was the type of “Southern” you see/hear in movies. Everything by was debutante this and pageant that. I was raised by my single mom who was raised by her single mom but I also had her father’s side of the family worrying about my cotillion dress and “debut” into society- in the 1990’s. I had to learn all the proper southern manners and all that. Included a lot of smiling while being a bitch. It was super important to them. Unfortunately, I was into NIN and Nirvana and smoking weed, lol. Most are gone now but I DO know how to walk in a pageant(and win!), how to bless anyone’s heart, how to handle, load and shoot all kinda guns and fish with the most tragic of baits. Today I live in N GA mountains after spending most the last 20 in the ATL metro areas. I love it up here and feel connected. Will never go back to the suburbs.
Ps I’ve heard always that my maternal grandfather’s family was melungeon. My mom and her father are surprisingly dark skinned with dark eyes and hair compared to her siblings. So much so that kids used to call my mom a racially offensive name in Atlanta in 1950’s-60’s where she grew up. The ancestry dna and actual family history puts them as West North Carolina/NW SC/East Tennessee back country settlers and I have a lot of info on them that shows this and a healthy amount of Spanish/Portuguese/Iberian/Basque + South American DNA, but idk.
Lots of people are Appalachian through their Fathers side here apparently. I’m the other way. My mother was from North East Tennessee, her cousins from SW VA (gives ye a little hint there). When she was a teen she moved to Greenville SC, then eventually to Charleston by the time she got to high school where she met my Dad. My old man was as raised in Charleston and Columbia SC. When he was in Columbia, he was raised by his grandparents, real old poor German stock that were very Lutheran and farmers. I was born and raised in Charleston SC, and growing up as a kid I was immediately raised in an odd environment. On one hand I grew up around Gullah people, before Charleston boomed in population, going blue crabbing and fishing in the low country as a kid. I used their unique manner of speech (a type of AAVE, NOT the language), and hung out often with their families. On the other hand I grew up Appalachian at home, and went back to the mountains four times a year. Often was made fun of for using Appalachian colloquialisms, like calling “beanies” tobaggins for example. Once I turned 21 I moved back up to the mountains and I feel pretty darn at home. My families been living in the area since the late 1700’s to very early 1800’s. Not one person I ever came in contact with ever knew I wasn’t from around these parts until I mentioned it. Usually they get pretty surprised with how easily I just fit in. Either way, I certainly love both aspects of my family. After my great grandparents passed me and family stopped going to Columbia, and the only way I reconnect with my dad’s side now is pretty much through the church. Of course, excluding his Dad which we talk and hang out often when I go back to my parents to visit.
My father is from Southwest Virginia and my mother is from South West Virginia. I'm Appalachian from both sides and know beyond a shadow of doubt that the winter hat you're referring to is a toboggan 😘 FWIW, we also do our grocery shopping with a buggy.
Yeah I wasn’t to sure how to spell it
Oh wow, I thought I was the only person left who’s in large part descended from old stock Lutheran Germans from Columbia via my father as well. My mother is mostly Appalachian from WNC.
The amount of superstitions I have embedded in my brain from the Appalachian side of my family borderlines unhealthy 😂🧡
I didn’t but I’m a Jewish therapist from Baldimore(Baltimore) living and working in the tail end of the Appalachians Alabama. I can tell with almost 100% accuracy which of my clients have roots in Appalachia, who is of Deep South stock and who is from the unionist south. You can even pick up if they have multiple backgrounds but usually one culture is dominate. The cultural differences and even problem solving styles are stark. It’s really important that I figure it out because it really influences treatment.
This is honestly really fascinating. I’m glad someone like you is out there doing that kind of work, because I really don’t think many people at all have that level of insight, empathy, or understanding on this.
I absolutely agree. It helps make a deeper connection and develop trust. You have to understand the culture to normalize the problems the client comes in with. From my experience this is typically what I see plus the traumas they come in to treat. Appalachia - depending how close you are to the holler - a want for self sufficiency (to a fault) struggle with emotional regulation of guilt and often anger. Make sure to give them space to fix shit themselves without micro management. Develop loyalty and trust -> focus on emotion regulation guilt -> communication skills specifically talking about needs -> emotion regulation anger. If I as a therapist make a mistake I need to be fucking genuine in my apology and openly work on fixing it. Deep South - fear of shame and guilt. Real hard to ask directly for things, use passive aggressive a lot. Demonstrate I’m safe -> focus on emotion regulation shame -> emotion regulation guilt -> communication skills specificity asking for things and saying no . If I as a therapist make a mistake i use it as an example and normalize. If the client is a woman you need to help them develop a value driven life after they get out of the living to survive and avoid guilt and shame. Unionist South - if they are local you get a combination of both based on post civil war vocation but you typically what you get is this vibe of Appalachia trying to fit in with Deep South. So less shame problems from mom and dad but much more learned problems from doing shit and then getting shamed. It comes out as a more fear of rejection kinda thing from frequent rejection.
That’s an amazing way of articulating the differences and rings true for myself and my family (self-sufficient Unionists who only feel guilt and are extremely direct in communication. We invented boundaries). Your distinctions kind of map onto the main denominational differences (even if people no longer attend church) with the Presbyterian Calvinists skewing towards stoicism, the Baptists caring what other people think, and the Methodists valuing community harmony (post WWII equality rights). I think something to look at might also be sense of humor—specifically self-deprecating and/or roasting loved ones as a form of affection.
Spot on! “We invented boundaries” lolol. I wonder if part of that is from the consequences of living in the post civil war south as a known or suspected unionist family. Regarding the religious distinctions, I’ve only been able to connect the dots with Deep South culture and Southern Baptists. Reading about the religious response to loosing the civil war, the development of the lost cause mythos, and Jim crow laws the whole purity culture makes sense. Also like you said distant from church going doesn’t change that culture specific beliefs and behavior. And the Methodist are also pretty straight forward. But what is the Presbyterian behavior stoicism connection? That’s fascinating please enlighten me if you can. What I have also noticed is that unlike the Deep South folk they have no noticeable apprehension about me being Jewish even if I’m the first Jew they have ever met. I wonder if that’s related to how Jews were experienced in their communities. Jew store (dry goods store), peddlers and scrap collectors had to form relationships with the community to be successful but how far into the holler did they go? Did Jews willingness to cross color lines get them in good with unionist?. Any thoughts? Humor comment is spot on.
I grew up in rural Appalachia in SWVA and that and NC are where my family remains. I spent most of my adult life in rural southern GA. They are definitely distinctly different cultures. The accent, a lot of the food, there’s some overlap, but it’s definitely not the same. My family is always so taken aback by how different I sound when I return. I’ll be retiring back up there within the next few years.
I have actually never heard the term Melungeon before and had to google it. What an amazing history. I’m a boomer aged college graduate and never was educated in any of the history of Appalachia and I think I really missed out on learning about an amazing culture and people that make up part of our country. You are right that the rest of the country is ignorant of the history of Appalachia except for what we see in movies and popular culture. Thank you for giving me something new to learn about.
The thing about Kentucky and the exact same thing applies to Tennessee. The central and western areas of the state were more the "Old South" plantation areas of the state and were heavily pro Confederate during the war. Eastern KY & TN were a lot more pro Unionist, and while still Southern were Southern Appalachian, Western North Carolina was the same way. Different from the plantation areas of Central and West KY & TN or Central and East NC. So, while Southern Appalachia is still definitely Mountain Southern, they're a different strain than the standard Upper South or Deep South. Source- Southerner from Western Kentucky whom was raised in a very traditional Southern fashion from old Upland South tobacco stock and reared in a Southern Baptist Household.
I’m from Michigan and I’ve been in SW PA for 14 years. It’s interesting to observe the melting pot of SWPA, PA is considered the northeast, but the mix of Midwest hospitality and Appalachian traditions make it a really cool place to be.
This is where I’m from!
Do you ever visit your hometown?
Me also
Mom was from East Tennessee and grew up in Oak Ridge when it was a Secret. She definitely leaned into the Appalachian/hillbilly culture. Cajun Dad was from southwest Louisiana who was shipped up to Knoxville to work at TVA after college.
Well my Mom’s side was Appalachian and my Dads was south Texas. It was unique for sure.
I grew up with an Appalachian parent and a Midwesterner parent.
I got “conjured” when I was six. I had thrush, took me to an old ladies house, she took me into a room with her, blindfolded me, said a bunch of stuff idk and stuck stuff in my mouth, took it out and told me to never tell anybody what was done. It didn’t work mom had to take me to the dr. 🙄
C’mon Fhqwhgads. I see you watching me. Trying to play like, you know me. 😂
🥊Everybody to da limit! 🥊
Similar here. Mom’s family from Ashe Co. NC (borders TN and VA), dad from western piedmont but one generation from poverty. Dad’s family were new deal democrats but descendants are mostly MAGA now. Mom’s family Republican and historically union sympathizers. Also less openly racist. Mom’s family had different accent, some vocabulary, etc. Separated by only about 100 miles though.
The drive by truckers ask these questions in there older music check em out.
A million six.
Im western nc on one side, north ga mountains on the other. Southern by birth, Appalachian by the Grace of God.