Mountain Heritage By Jack Burris
Our forefathers settled this country with an axe and a long rifle. They came from all over the world and all nationalities. They had the dream of a better life, independence, and fierce pride. They would help each other relentlessly. Usually, shelter for the family came first, then they would build a church/school. They chopped and sawed logs day after day to build their one-room log cabins. Chimneys of fieldstone, chinked with mud, and the fireplace was for heating and cooking.
A mountain heritage we inherited. There are no more loyal, fierce, proud, honest, loving folk in the world than were the mountain men and women who settled the valleys and scratched out a living out of the earth. Did you ever think about what they ate until crops were made? The mountain men hunted for food. It was not easy. When we see an old barn or the remains of a log cabin, we smile and take pictures, and we should; but sometimes, we overlook the work and hardship it took to survive.
These people came over these ridges and looked to settle down, with their tools and dreams and always with an old KJB or English version of the Bible. They had a tremendous faith and exercised it openly and often. Sunday was rest day unless your ox was in a ditch; and if he got in a ditch often, you sold him. My grandfather was a mountain man. He was lanky and dark and had Indian blood along with Scotch-Irish and German and others according to family tree searching. I remember a little log cabin beside a trout stream in Shelton Laurel with the mountains rising up all around it.
In my imagination, I can see one of these old pioneers coming up on top of a ridge with rifle in hand and supper in the pouch of a hunting jacket; and looking down in the valley below, see the warmth of smoke rising from his stone chimney. A hint of fog coming off the creek. The mule standing in the opening of the barn, perhaps wondering if plowing was on the agenda or was it Sunday, he hoped. I can see him standing there looking at his work; looking at his oldest son milking over by the gate; another one is letting the chickens out and checking for eggs, though it is early in the day; and there is his woman, one reason for all his hard work. She is sweeping off the porch with an old birch broom. As he listens, he can faintly hear her humming and singing. The sound is so sweet to him, and he weeps… The words he hears? “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,” and he heads down the ridge to go to work, yet another day.