Map of Cumberland and Franklin

I have had the good fortune to find a digital version of Ramsey's Map of Cumberland and Franklin, published in 1853. The map depicts Tennessee during the time of settlement, when it was the frontier of the Backcountry. It shows the road, named "Robertson's Route," leading southwest from the Wilderness Road (from Virginia to central Kentucky) into Middle Tennessee. Two areas of settlement are illustrated: Northeast Tennessee, lying between the Great Smokies and the Cumberland Mountains; and upper Middle Tennessee, accessed by way of Robertson's Route. In between these areas there was no settlement in early Tennessee history.

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Vintage Conestoga Wagon Picture

While looking around the Web for old pictures, I ran across this shot of a Conestoga wagon with a team hitched up (click on the image to see a larger view):

This picture demonstrates several features of the Conestoga wagon. It clearly shows the "swaybacked" shape of the wagon, which has a floor that has a slight curve with its lowest point in the center. This shape helped to ensure that if the rigors of colonial-era roads jarred the cargo, it would tend to slide towards the center of the wagon, maintaining balance.

Note also that there is no seat on the wagon; the driver is mounted on one of the horses. There is a passenger seated on the side of the wagon, between the wheels.

The term "Conestoga" is sometimes used incorrectly to describe the covered wagons or "prairie schooners" used to traverse the Great Plains as the nation moved west. While some Conestogas went west, most of the prairie schooners were less-expensive flat-bottomed wagons which usually had seating built into the front of the wagon. The craft pictured below is a flat-bottomed covered wagon, not a Conestoga; note the variety of transportation animals in this picture - - the wagon is drawn by a mule and two oxen, and to the left is a rider on a burro:

Log Houses of Abingdon, Virginia

The town of Abingdon in Washington County, Virginia, grew up around an early settlement called Wolf Hill. In the early Backcountry, Abingdon was a crossroads, with settlers and traders coming down the Great Road and moving by the same road to Tennessee, or by the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Some of the log cabins built during those early times have survived and several are now now located within the Abingdon town limits.

The style of log-cabin building found in Washington County differs from that ordinarily found in the log structures of Tazewell County, many of which are preserved at the Crab Orchard Museum. Washington County cabins were built with rafter roof systems, rather than purlins, and the builders used rough-cut limestone for chimneys and foundations - - both indicating a greater availability of skilled carpenters and masons.

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1929 Sunset Mountain Pottery Ad

A collector friend from North Carolina, Peg Wiebe, sent me this reproduction of an advertisement for Sunset Mountain Pottery which was published in July 1929. Sunset Mountain Pottery was made by J. B. Cole's Pottery and sold by a business named The Treasure Chest in Asheville, NC. The dates generally given for this arrangement are 1929-1935, so this ad is very likely the first for Sunset Mountain Pottery.

This is how the advertisement describes the wares:

The gorgeous autumnal colorings of this quaint hand-turned pottery from the “Hill Country” of Carolina makes it readily adaptable to home decoration. The cool dark green or the warm sunset tones blend charmingly with late summer and early autumn flowers. Several of the pieces shown will also make delightful lamp bases.

All shapes are available in two colors – orange reds with darker markings, and dark green with darker markings. Please specify color when ordering.

The glaze described as "orange reds with darker markings" must have been the chrome-red glaze which was very popular during the Depression years and remains a favorite of modern collectors. The "dark green with darker markings" may be the same as the green and black glaze described in the 1932 Cole Pottery Catalog. Many more shapes and colors were added to the Sunset Mountain Pottery line over the years.

The Treasure Chest and another mountain crafts business, Log Cabin, were combined and incorporated in 1932 as Three Mountaineers, Inc. The business eventually came to focus on wooden furniture and other wooden articles. The Sunset Mountain Pottery line was discontinued in 1935.

Vintage Log Cabins and Stone Buildings

The early settlers of the Backcountry built cabins, barns, spring-houses, and other structures of the materials at hand - - logs and stone. Foundations, fireplaces, chimneys, and sometimes walls were built from fieldstones and river-rocks. Trees were felled and hewn into logs, planks, and shingles used to construct cabins, sheds, barns, and shops. Because nails and iron hinges were expensive, these structures were made as much as possible without them; a cabin can be built entirely from stone and wood.

The basic unit of cabin construction is the "crib," a single rectangular room, usually with a loft overhead. Logs were cut, squared, and then notched on the ends so that they could be stacked securely. After the logs were stacked, the open spaces were "chicked" with wood chips and then "chinked" with mud. A crib was from 10 x 12 feet to 18 x 24 feet in size. Cribs could be joined by "dogtrots," and sometimes double-crib cabins were built. A few of the early log cabins had stairs and a second story rather than a ladder and a loft.

There are various ways to construct the roof of a cabin; in Southwest Virginia, the method often used was to lay long poles on the top ends of the logs making up the eaves, so that the poles (called "purlins') ran with the long axis of the crib. Boards and then shingles were used to complete the roof. This construction method was simple, but eventually resulted in sag in the center of the roof unless the poles were reinforced.

Glass was also expensive and so windows typically were small. Often the windows were constructed with few or no iron components. Doors also could be made entirely of wood.

Foundations, fireplaces and chimneys were made of stone, and mantles were usually made of hewn timbers. Some buildings were made with stone walls; these were usually out-buildings such as spring-houses and root cellars where a cool temperature was desirable for most of the year. Building stones were gathered from fields and riverbeds; the use of cut stone was unusual.

The vintage log, stone, and timber-frame buildings located in Pioneer Park at Crab Orchard were carefully disassembled, moved, and reconstructed with the original materials as much as possible. The buildings cover a broad range of types, including log cabins used as residences, log and timber farm buildings, a stone and timber spring house and apple house, and shops for a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a shoemaker. For images of the many log buildings and construction details, see the Crab Orchard Museum gallery.For information on Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park, go here. See also the Museum Links in the right-hand column of the Backcountry Notes Society & Culture journal, where you can find more Backcountry museums which feature vintage log buildings.

C. C. Cole's Tourist Pottery

C. C. Cole "tourist" pottery is the secret sin of many collectors and admirers of North Carolina art pottery. Often consigned to second-class status - - as if the great bulk of North Carolina pottery of the era wasn't sold to tourists - - these colorful and usually multi-colored honey jugs, cider jugs, vases, and cream-and-sugar sets are works of artisanship in their own right.

All of the Piedmont pottery shops made "tourist" pottery to a certain extent, but this was the main product of Charlie Cole's operation. C. C. Cole Pottery opened for business in 1938 and closed in 1971; in between those points, it turned out millions of "tourist" pottery items. Many of these were wholesaled to companies like Stuckey's, which filled them with honey or syrup for sale on the pre-Interstate Highway rest stops. Like other North Carolina art pottery shops, C. C. Cole Pottery also made small pieces for wholesaling to the soap-and-candle concerns, such as Carolina Soap & Candle Makers and Tar Heel Candle Co.

Charlie Cole had been a potter in his own right but had quit turning pots after he lost a finger following a snake bite. (A picture of a Charlie Cole piece can be seen on Michael Mahan's blog.) But Charlie Cole's children Thurston Cole and Dorothy Cole Auman were among the best production turners in the business. Although they occasionally made large pieces, both Thurston and Dorothy concentrated on making large quantities of small wares, particularly the polychrome-glazed honey jugs for which C. C. Cole Pottery is known.

The polychrome glazes are not unique to C. C. Cole Pottery, but they are characteristic of its wares. C. C. Cole polychrome-glazed pieces first were dipped in a white body glaze; other colors were dribbled around the body; then the top was dipped in yet another color. Four-color glazes are typical, but there are many pieces with three-color glazes and some with a body glaze and a top glaze. There are pots glazed in single colors, including both colored lead-fluxed glazes and lead-rutile matte glazes.

The finished appearance of the multicolored glazes can vary greatly, depending on the degree of heat applied during the final burning of the ware. The glazes on some early pieces are barely vitrified; other pots have over-fired glazes which have run together. Lead-rutile glazes have a matte finish at normal earthenware temperatures but take on a high-gloss, variegated surface at higher heat levels. Part of the charm of C. C. Cole pottery is the seemingly-endless variety of colors and glaze melts available.

The great majority of C. C. Cole pieces are unmarked. For a time during the 1950s, some pots were marked with a pair of stamps reading "C. C. Cole" and "Seagrove, N.C." These are relatively scarce. Charlie Cole also had a logo which contained the name "Dixie Craft Pottery," but the logo was used only on advertising materials and was never stamped on the pots. The "Dixie Craft Pottery" name likely derived from the Carolina Craft Pottery, which Charlie Cole and his brother Everett operated in Wake County from 1927 until 1933.

Thurston Cole was still young when he died in 1966. His premature passing was a loss not only to the C. C. Cole shop but to the whole North Carolina art pottery genre. When not engaged in producing honey jugs, Thurston made large pieces; some of his big floor vases are truly spectacular. Had he lived to see the Seagrove pottery revival, there undoubtedly would have been more of these. Two fine examples of Thurston Cole floor vases are reproduced in Perry (ed.), North Carolina Pottery, at pages 63 and 76.

Charlie Cole died in 1966. Both Dorothy and Walter Auman continued to work at C. C. Cole Pottery, turning and glazing pots, until that shop closed. During its thirty-plus years in operation, C. C. Cole Pottery produced a huge volume of pottery; the honey and cider jugs alone certainly numbered more than 5 million, and maybe double that. In one perspective, Thurston Cole produced more pots in a year than most studio potters make in a lifetime. Because they were used to sell honey and syrup, many of these were damaged or discarded, but the shop's output was so high that pieces remain available on the secondary market, turning up at yard sales and flea markets on a regular basis.

For a longer version of this article, click HERE.

To see a gallery of C. C. Cole tourist pottery, click HERE.

Text and images copyright © 2009 by Jay Henderson. All rights reserved.

Fiddlers' Conventions

A tradition throughout the Backcountry - - and these days, beyond - - the "fiddlers' convention" is a gathering to celebrate traditional folk ("old time") music. Fiddlers' conventions go back at least a century, and probably grew out of smaller community gatherings where music was played.

(To listen to streaming samples of old timey fiddle music, go here for samples from the Galax Old Fiddlers' Convention and here for an excellent long-running jukebox feed from Roots of American Fiddle Music.)

Although the six-string guitar predominates in modern "folk" music, guitars were rare in the early days of the Backcountry and the American frontier.  The instruments used in that day were the fiddle, which had come over with settlers from the British Isles, and the banjo, which came over with slaves from Africa.

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Independence Day at Pioneer Park

The Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park in Tazewell, Virginia, sponsors a July 4 festival every year, filling the Park area with displays, demonstrations, and re-enactors. (Larger versions of the images are available at my Web site, Backcountry Notes.)

Period costumes (center) and displays (background):

Antique car slow-riding through the Park:

Carriage barn:

Interior of carriage barn has displays of old tools, equipment, saddles, ironwork . . .

. . . and carriages:

Games demonstrated include lawn bowling:

Making apple butter - - Virginia law permits this to be done using a traditional copper kettle:

Blacksmithing demonstration:

Carpentry demonstration - - cutting stool legs with traditional hand tools:

Bunting decks out the Pickin' Porch where traditional music is performed:

Scene set for Revolutionary War re-enactment:

Re-enactor discussing brass cannon with visitor:

And now we've strolled around the Pioneer Park to where we began:

And of course there was Southern Gourmet food available - - barbecue, beans, cole slaw, blooming onions and deep-fried pickles!

For a closer look at the vintage log buildings of Pioneer Park, see the picture gallery at Crab Orchard Museum.