TNMARSHA-L Archives

From: Karen in Ky <>
Subject: Re: [TNMARSHA] Tn Pioneers
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 18:26:54 -0800

Hi Bobby!
I'll repost this for anyone else who didn't get a chance to read it. It was
written by one of the great ladies that hosts Stewart County, Tn. Its probably
one of the most touching stories I've read in ages.

"Today I am going to step into the shoes of someone else.
I live in and nearby the mountains many of our ancestors crossed to settle
Middle Tennessee...I don't think about it much until I drive out or in, and
then it never fails to cross my mind and I am in total awe. What kind
motivation did it take for folks to set out on a journey over mountains that
unwelcoming and that daunting, in danger of natives, nature
itself....KNOWING full well they may never see the end of it, and that if
they did they were more than likely to lose half their family in the
process? What kind of thoughts crossed their mind when they made that
decision? What kind of inner strength and fortitude did they possess that
many of us today do not? Well...bear with a bit of a reverie here...may not
totally be historically accurate, but I think the thoughts of a mother and a
wife are...I stepped into the past and into the shoes of someone who might
have been one of those folks:

"Johnny is decided. I reckon I have but one choice and it ain't an easy
one. He says we have no choice, that we have to move on west and that now
is the time to do it. There is land waiting in Tennessee he says, land that
can be ours. He says any citizen of North Carolina now has a right to what
ain't taken. He says there is nothin here for us anymore, and I am
reckoning that is right too. But my heart is twisting in the inside of me
and that is so as well. I got three babies buried out back there to leave
behind. The fever got Jakie... buried him at the age of two and like to
broke my heart. Big strong boy, was sure he would make it...but the fever
got him. Lizzie died at two months and Johnny never knew her name. He told
me plain she wasn't healthy and not to get attached to her, to leave off the
name so I wouldn't until we knew would she make it or not. But I couldn't
stand putting her down in the ground without a name. I called her Lizzie in
whispers and the day we buried her I whispered in her ear hopin somehow she
would hear me, "Yore name is LIZZIE...Elizabeth Jane Clark, after your
grandma, you hear? I named you after the mama I loved and that is yore name
cause I love you too." I knew full well how it is to bring youngins into
the world and knew I would be burying them too, but I couldn't stand that
baby nameless. Ain't no marker there, but I know it is Lizzie...nobody else
does and when I leave here won't nobody know. Mattie is the third and I
don't know how Johnny can not think of that...I reckon he does but does no
good to be dwellin on it...a man's way. Mattie lived to be twelve. She was
Johnny's pick. Yes, it twists my heart the thought of leavin those babies
out back there, worse even than it twists my heart I am leavin my mama's
grave and those of my three brothers and two sisters. Won't nobody know my
babies are there, won't nobody else pass by and stand a minute to remember.
I won't never be back. I done decided before I go I am gonna go out back
there and lay some big stones where they are, gonna scratch their names in
it if I can, gonna lay some flowers there and tell them good-bye. I know it
don't make no sense, but somehow I feel like I am deserting my babies, even
if I cain't talk to them nor they to me. That ain't all the thinkin and
heart twistin I am doin about leavin here...Papa has my brothers that are
livin, and my sister Jane, but I know the day I tell them goodbye is the
last time I am gonna see them. I know Papa will die and I won't be here to
bury him, nor any of the others either. There is somethin comforting about
washing and dressing your dead...about lovin em gentle-like one last time
and doin all you can for them before you send them on to the next world, and
I won't get to do that...won't even know when it happens...will live all my
days wondering if Papa is gone yet, or the others, and when they went, and
how. I won't watch my neices and nephews grow up and I won't have Jane no
more to talk to. Maybe I can send them word somehow along the way we are
all right, maybe sometime they can send me word...but don't see how as
things are now. They don't show no notion of following us to Tennessee.
Only Johnny's brothers going to do that. All I will be able to do is look
up at the stars at night and think "well Papa and Jane might be looking up
at these same stars...might not be together, but we in the same world with
the same roof...that is something". And the heart tuggin just goes right on
too....I pitched an everlovin fit when Johnny come up with this. I looked
at my livin youngins, all six of them, looked at their eyes a 'shinin as
Johnny told em what was waitin out there for the takin, the times we would
have, the future they had ahead...and I tell you my heart broke like
somebody took a hammer and crushed it, over and over six times and no mercy.
Those blue eyes shinin, those bright heads dancin up and down in
excitement....and not a one of em old enough or with sense enough to know
that they all wouldn't make it. We'll wind up burying some of em on one of
those mountains loomin up like walls that reach to the clouds, or beside the
river..I know we will and there ain't no two ways about it...and I know if
my heart is breakin now it is gonna break even more then...Johnny won't have
no time to let me stay there a spell and grieve..we will just have to leave
them behind where ain't nobody, not even Jane, gonna know or drop on by and
stay with them a spell now and then...I won't even know for sure where it is
I left my babies on the way. Don't know how we will even go about buryin em
right, puttin them away like a mama ought to have the right to lay her
babies to the final rest. And taint no sense dwellin on it. I know good and
well could be none of us gonna make it, and for sure, if we stayed here
neither
there ain't no guarantee ...whole families I watched wiped out by first one
thing and then
the other. Caint vouch that the natives won't get us, nor a sickness, nor
bad water,
nor a piece of bad blood waiting to ambush us on the
trail. Cain't vouch that river won't get us, have heard about that river
and the places in it. Cain't vouch how long what supplies we have will
last, nor for sure we can get more. Caint vouch for nothin much at all,
cept Johnny is right. Ain't nothin much for us here, gettin less and less
all the time, and what of our babies make it, if any of em do, well they
will have a better chance for it. They may can own their own land this way,
get by easier in the world once that place is settled in. Maybe they
can have things someday me and Johnny never dreamed of.
But it shorely is a high price to pay. It shorely is.
And I reckon I'll follow Johnny even if my heart is twisting and bleedin
inside of me to where I don't know how I am gonna keep on keepin
on. Johnny is decided and I reckon he is right."

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• Re: [TNMARSHA] Tn Pioneers by Karen in Ky <>