Family History

Ever since visiting my sister a few weeks ago, I've wanted to write a little ditty about our family history b/c its unusual and interesting and it involved one of my favorite things ever--the Appalachian mountains.

I'll start with my mom's side of the family, the Johnston side, b/c that is shorter and sweeter. The Johnston clan originated on the English/Scottish border hundreds of years ago as "Johnstone" and ended up moving to the States during colonization, eventually landing in rural, western Kentucky where my mom was born, 1 of 7 kids, to a farmer and his sweet wife Katie, my grandmother and name sake. They were poor and backwoods--my mom still remembers using an outhouse and chamberpot and getting water from the well. Up until a few years ago, the well and outhouse were still standing at the farm, though unused for years. Grandpa took to storing chicken wire in the outhouse, which I'm sure was not its original purpose. And for those of you wondering, it was only a 1 seater.

My grandparents farmed until they passed away--growing soy beans, corn, tobacco, pigs, and cows. I saw my first birth there (baby pigs), my first death (a deer get shot), caught my first fish, ate my first bite of squirrel and turtle (yes, turtle), learned how to snap peas, can strawberries, make peach preserves, clean a fish and fry it up, and remove ticks. That farm was a haven for learning, and my grandparents and parents were great teachers. What I gathered there didn't necessarily improve my SAT scores, it vastly improved my life, and that matters a little more than stupid SATs.

Now on my dad's side, this is where it gets a little more interesting historically, and its how the Appalachians tie in. My great grandmother was a Cable, and she married a Carringer, which is my maiden name. Now during the Revolutionary war, John Cable arrived to fight the colonist turncoats for the English, though he was German, a Hessian hired to fight by the mother country. John ended up defecting after the war and settling down in the heart of the Appalachians, in what is now east Tennessee. Other families joined around the settlement, and the area became known as Cade's Cove.

For years, Cade's Cove thrived and grew, until the Civil war, when the settlement became suspicious of outsiders, gathered their ranks, and shut off from the rest of the country. There was a little cousin on cousin marriage, I'm sure. These people perfectly fit the "hill billy" mold--poor, uneducated farmers who lived mostly off what the land provided them. My dad still remembers visiting his grandmother, Fanny Cable, up in the holler where her fridge was a cold spring under a rock and she sang "Angel Band" as she cooked in her apron. Fanny had 11 kids, one being my grandpa, at her home there in east Tennessee.

Cade's Cove still exists as a state park, and if you visit there, you can see Cable's Mill, started by John Cable, where my great grandma, Fanny, worked as a young woman. It even has a water wheel.

As a kid, we moved a lot, and no where ever felt like home to me until we landed in North Carolina, where my dad grew up, and especially when I went to school in Asheville. That was my first time really diving in to Appalachian life, with the music and dancing and craft and food. Up there you can still find Carringers and Cables and Crisps, names you don't see too often outside the hills of North Carolina and Tennessee. There, you find people who are country, and sweet, and use muscadines for cider and possum grease for croup. That's where I feel most at home. As much as I love my parents and love being at their house, its the mountains that call my name.

Chris and I talk about moving there one day, somewhere in the Appalachians. We want our kids to play in the woods and have animals and grow a garden. I want those things for me too. I'd like to have a life a little like my great grandmother and my grandparents in Kentucky--a little less money, a little more faith, and a lot more of God's creation around me.

Maybe one day...