SHORT SKETCH OF SOUTH AMERICA

Picture of Scott
 
 

FROM THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER

Friday January 3, 19??(38)
 
 

GERMANY AND SOUTH AMERICA ARE FOUND
IN BELL COUNTY, KY, FOUR MILES APART

by Henry Wallace

Pineville, KY., January 2--How far is it from Germany to South America?

You might be skeptical, but if you're from Missouri, Bell Countians will show you it is only four miles over a road that is rough in summer and rougher in winter.

When residents here talk of South America they usually refer to a community of 300 families who live on the creek beds and steep slopes of a rugged mountain section 18 miles southwest of Pineville, and Germany is a slightly smaller community four miles farther along the rock-mud road that comes out at Jellico, TN, after passing through a corner of Whitley County.

The story of how these typically pioneer American communities acquired their foreign names harks back in the case of South America to the early nineteenth century, and in the case of Germany to 1916.

In 1812 two hardy pioneers, Edward Henderson and Shelton Partin, moved from their North Carolina homes and settled on Laurel Fork, a small stream that flows through South America and Germany. Their first home, to which they brought families of 15 persons each, was 11 miles from Pineville and seven miles from the present center of South America.

Partin and Henderson were veteran hunters and they had tramped over rough territory in their days, but when they entered the region below their homes they were confronted with the wildest country they had seen.

A direct descendant of the early Partin, Scott Partin, seventy-three-year-old historian of the community, repeats the story told him by his father, a Union soldier of the war between the states, who got the account direct from his father, Shelton.

"The country below where they settled was so rough and hard to get in and out of that most people wouldn't even go near it. It was full of wild animals, including bears, wildcats, and deer and was the best hunting country anywhere near.

"My grandfather and Henderson had stories about the rough and wild country of South America and so they figured it must be about like this part here on Laurel Fork. They began referring to it as South America and it's been that ever since."

Partin explains the naming of Germany this way:

"During the first World War the people down there were always fighting. They had lots of feuds and did a lot of shooting and killing. So people up here began calling the area Germany because it reminded them of all the fighting the Germans were doing in Europe. For a long time just people outside of the section called it Germany, but now everybody, including the people who live there, has accepted the name. They don't tie it up with the war anymore."

Since Germany got its name, the historian comments, the feuding has stopped and the community enjoys a quiet respectable life. "Most of the feuders left or got killed off," he explains.

Center of South America, which is the most widely known of the two communities, is the Henderson Settlement School, a Methodist institution operated by Rev. H.M. Frakes, a former resident of Indiana. He built it 15 years ago on a 1,200-acre tract, much of which was donated by Partin.
 
 

This is an autobiographical sketch of South America. The residence of an Anglo-Saxon people that has lived here since the date of 1812, a period for 126 years.

This section of the country is known as South America, situated in the Southeast section of Bell County, Kentucky. If you will follow the foregoing article, you will find how and why this particular section got its name, South America.

The people of this particular section are not much known or acquainted with the outside world. They have lived here all this number of years, by their own perception, by the medium of the sense, ideas or concention of external things.

In explaining the folklore of the people of South America, I feel put to it for proper words and nouns to explain the full details of the genealogy of the people. Therefore, they are my people, they are of my own blood and relation and it makes me stand in awe--as I must give them justice.

In my foregoing articles I gave the geographical history of this not much understood and less known people of this wild and woolly South America. My great grandfathers were Partins and Hendersons. My father was a full blood Partin. My mother was a Henderson and here mother was a Partin. My great grandfathers Partin and Henderson originated from England. All are supposed to be Irish descent. My great grandfather Partin had in his possession six boys and three girls when he landed on the shores of Old Virginia and Henderson had in his possession the pitiful number of thirteen boys and three girls when he landed in Virginia.

There the two wayfaring parties accepted the hospitality of the English colony and lived there for a while, I do not know how long. This was somewhere about the date 1800. Then they emigrated from Virginia to some place in North Carolina. Some of the Hendersons traveled down into Tennessee to a place they called the Purchase, some place on the big Tennessee River. Grandfather Henderson tarried in the Purchase for some time, then went back to North Carolina and lived there until the date 1812.

One Richard Henderson had come from England some thirty-five years previous to 1812. He came to Kentucky with Daniel Boone, date 1775. Boone and Henderson came through Cumberland Gap and went on to Boonesborough and there they built an Indian fort.

Richard Henderson then went back to North Carolina and joined his people. In the year 1812, the Partins and Hendersons made up a party to migrate to Kentucky. Richard Henderson had related the fact that game was very plentiful in Kentucky and that was a great satisfaction to the party for they were all great game hunters.

But while the expedition was preparing to come to Kentucky, my grandfather William Henderson and my great grandfather Shelton Partin got leave to come to Kentucky and look out a location suitable for hunting purposes. So they fitted themselves with an outfit, a horse each, two bear dogs and a flintlock rifle gun and plenty of bullets for guns and a good supply of cornbread and hog meat and flints and towe, that is made from flax. This was the mode of catching fire in those days. Just put a small amount of gun power in towe and hold between thumb and finger, with the towe on the underside of the flint. Then take a pocket knife or piece of steel, make down stroke with knife or steel striking flint and watch the fire fly. If you get burned that's your bad luck.
 
 

So Henderson and Partin saddled their horses and hit the Indian trail coming through Cumberland Gap. When they had got through Cumberland Gap safely they were well pleased, for Indians were very numerous in this country at that time. When they got to the foot of the Cumberland Mountain on the north side, they were surprised to find a man living there by the name of Davis--Richard Davis. Davis lived on what is now known as Davis Branch. Davis Branch is located in the East End of Middlesboro, KY.

You will learn more about Davis later in the advancement of these articles. Partin and Henderson followed the Indian trail down north to where Pineville is now located and there found a white man living by the name of Gibson. Henderson and Partin got a night's lodging with the man Gibson. I have been informed that Gibson's name was Thomas Gibson.

When Partin and Henderson got ready to go on their way the following morning, Gibson made a bid to Grandfather Henderson to buy his horse, gun and dog. Gibson proposed to give Henderson all the land where Pineville is now located in exchange for horse and dog and his flintlock rifle gun, but Henderson not being interested in the deal told Gibson he wanted to get further back in the wilderness for the purpose of hunting game such as bears and deer, which were very plentiful in their country at that time and for years to come.

So Partin and Henderson went on their way and traveled southwest up Clear Creek, fifteen miles to the headwaters of the creek and Henderson picked out a plot of land now known as the Henderson Farm. Partin went back down to the mouth of Clear Creek and decided to locate there. So after searching out their locations they got on their way back to North Carolina.

Partin and Henderson took the same route back to their North Carolina home. On their way back they came in contact with savage Indians but used their hog rifles to a good advantage for a couple of shots, then got off safely, by putting spurs to their horses and speeding for life.

After riding hard, they got back to North Carolina and after a few days rest got busy on the work of arranging a return trip to Kentucky. When leaving North Carolina they came the same route back, passing through Cumberland Gap, coming north through the Gap, following the Indian trail, passing down into the valley where Middlesboro now is located. They set up camp on the farm of Richard Davis, on a branch known as Davis Branch.

My great grandfather, Shelton Partin, brought with him his wife and six boys. Their names were as follows: Ira Partin, Jonathan Partin, Elan Partin, Jack Partin, Shelton Partin and Anderson Partin. He also had three girls, one of whom was named Elizabeth. The names of the other two were not known.

My great grandfather Edward Henderson, brought his wife and four boys and three girls with him to Kentucky. His boys names were William Henderson, James Henderson, Allan Henderson and Kriss Henderson. Some of the boys in both families had wives when they came to Kentucky.

When the party left the campground on Yellow Creek, they followed in the Indian trail north down to where Pineville is now located, then followed the trail south up Clear Creek fifteen miles to the location that my grandfather Henderson had located on his first trip to Kentucky. On this plot of land he squatted and built a log cabin and lived on the same tract of land until he died being 97 years old when he died.
 
 

My great grandfather Partin traveled five miles further south and squatted on a tract of land which is situated on Laurel Fork Creek, where the Henderson Settlement School is now located, twenty-three miles form Middlesboro, KY. On this tract of land he lived until death. Being 90 years old, when he died.

Partin was a slave holder. He had slaves on this farm. During the Civil War when the slaves were set free. Partin's colored folks would not leave him. They continued on his farm until he died and left them. We had one negro man they called Bill. I can remember seeing him for he lived to be very old. Bill died about 1880.

The Partins and Hendersons were first white settlers of this small community, called South America. They did not settle here for the all purpose of farming but their main desire was hunting game, deer and bear and wild turkey which were plentiful here in those old days. Aside from hunting and farming they settled in South America for the purpose of finding William Swift's Silver Mine. They had in their possession a descriptive map that they received in the English colony at Kent, VA. The map directed them to travel five miles northwest, traveling over many blue mountains and through rolling limestone region now known as Powells Valley, and through Cumberland Gap and on through a rough and rock region and into a piney mountain to a high knob lying between 36th ad  37th degrees of north latitude, which was owned and chartered by the London Company as far west as the French Colony.

I have in my possession William Swift's descriptive maps telling all about the mine and how he came to find it. If you follow further articles from time to time, you will learn more about the location of the mine.

My ancestors searched quite a lot for the mine but never did find it. They found the furnace where he worked the ore and they found all the marks and trails as described in the map. It is situated in one of the most rough and rocky regions in Bell County.

You will learn more about Swift's silver mine in future articles of the Sketch of South America. Now back to my grandfather's career.

His name was Ira Partin. He resided with my great grandfather, Shelton Partin, on Laurel Creek until he got married. Then he emigrated back down to the mouth, where Pineville is now located and squatted on a tract of land and lived there for a number of years.

He married a girl be the name of Susan Potter and how he got acquainted with her was in this wise. The people of South America in those days had to get all the salt they used from Clay County. A man by the name of Thee Garrett had a salt works on Goose Creek, three miles south of Manchester, KY. My grandfather made two trips a year to the salt works for salt. During his trips to the salt works, he got acquainted with my grandmother and married her and came back. Leaving South America, he went down to the mouth of Clear Creek and built a log house and lived there for several years.

He lived there during the Civil War. The soldiers took part of his plot of land for a burying ground. The army buried some several soldiers on this plot of land. They put some of them in shallow graves. My grandmother informed me of this fact. She told me that when they buried lots of them, they left their feet sticking out of the ground. The pike now runs where the graves are located. This was the Union Army. They camped close by fore sometime, just over on the foot of Pine Mountain.
 
 

My grandmother said they had to take their meat and corn to the mountains and bury or hide it to keep the soldiers from confiscating it. When they wanted meat and corn to eat, they had to slip out at night and slip it in home for the army had foraging crews out prowling for anything they could get to eat.

Now back to the salt and how people managed to get their salt at the early period of the first settlers of South America. The only transportation they had in those days was ox teams and a slide on a two yoke of oxen and the wooden cart.

Money was scarce and hard to get at that time in this part of the country, so when the people wanted salt they all formed a company and traveled together and went after the salt. They always left men folk enough at home to take care of the women folk back home, for wild panthers and bears were numerous here at that time. But the worst thing they dreaded was the wild Indians, for there were quite a few in the mountains here at that time. But the Indians always kept at a distance.

The people at that time exchanged blood for salt. The salt works had to have a certain amount of hog and beef blood to purity the salt in its making so the people at hog killing time saved all the blood from hogs and cattle and bear and deer and put it in barrels, loaded it on their two wheeled carts and were on their way to the salt works.

You probably want to know how they got their barrels to put the blood in. My father and grandfathers on both sides were coopers. They had made all the barrels and household utensils for the whole community; such as churns, water buckets, bread trays and they made one kitchen vessel that they called a keeler, which was used around the kitchen to keep milk in. A bread tray was made from a block of buckeye wood, 18 inches by 12 inches hewn with a concave inside and a handle on either end. The young folks of today  would not know what a bread tray was if they happened to see one, but the wood tray came in handy for more useful things than to make dough for baking bread. The tray was used extensively for the purpose of gritting corn meal for bread. The grittier was made from a sheet of tin, eight by twelve inches and nailed to a three foot board with one by one strips nailed under either side of the tin. You first placed the tin on a block of wood  and used a No. 8 nail for a punch. You punched the tin full of holes and had a make shift grist mill.

This process was used in South America very extensively before gristmills were invented. When the grittier is completed, just set the tray on a chair and place one end of the grittier in the tray and the other end on your stomach. Rub the corn on the cob up and down on the grittier and you have enough meal for a family in no time.

During my grandfathers stay at the mouth of Clear Creek he had some immigrants for neighbors. One man was named Ralph Moss, father of Dr. Moss of Williamsburg, KY., and also the father of the late Judge Sill Moss of Pineville, KY., Judge Moss was the father of White L. Moss and Ray Moss of Pineville.

My grandfather with his wife and eight children went to work and built a two-story four room log house. When the house was completed, he moved into his new possession and immediately began to split rails and fence land for farming in that antediluvian period of South America.
 
 

He began his work on his new possession in the date 1840 and resided on this same farm until his death. He died in the date 1864.

My grandfather's name was I.A. Partin. After he got his farm in shape for production, he and his boys built an overshot water grist mill on Clear Creek, close by where Chenoa is now located, and the mud sills were put down with native hemlock and they still remain as were put there in the date 1845. The mill ran for many years and the people came for miles to get their corn ground into meal. While this mill was under construction, my father was helping to dig a water race to carry the water to the wheel of the mill at the head of trace 200 yards up the creek. They cut a ditch across the creek for a dam to turn the water through the trace and on one side of the creek was a large rock cliff and one end of the ditch went under one end of this rock house. In digging, my father dug up the skeleton of a man. The man had been buried face down. My father moved the skeleton a few feet away and reburied it by the face of rock under the rock house.

This work was done about the date 1845 and the date about 1885 I decided to excavate all the dirt under this rock house. So I removed all the dirt by the help of an ox team and a sled. I dug up and removed all the dirt that was under the rock house and removed it and spread it on a garden for the dirt was good fertilizer. And in my excavation I found the same skeleton, but a little more decomposed. This skeleton had been placed there before the inhabitants of the white race, of a civilized generation. From the appearance of this wonderful rock house, it had been used very extensively for a camp or home for some race of people now extinct. It is a foregone conclusion that it was the Indian or Mound Builders that once inhabited South America.

In my excavation under this rock house, I found hundreds of ancient relics such as Indian tomahawks made from granite or limestone rock and from the same grade of rock I found a tool about six inches long, made sharp on one end and round on the other end, with a ring around the end for what purpose I do not know. I also found great heaps of mussel shells in good preservation. I found various types of crucibles such as used for melting metals; I found many varieties of awls made from bone and various kinds of pieces of pottery made from clay. I also found some human jaw bones with the teeth yet in good condition.

I found many other trinkets, such as beads and buttons of various shapes and sizes too numerous to mention.

This special section of mountain country is situated in what was known as a rough and rocky region, with no way of travel except the woods or Indian trail at that early period of time in South America.

Now back to my grandfather and his traits of a livelihood as a home maker in the beginning of the first settlers of South America, the place where the forgotten may have labored and chopped out a living all the past hundred years.
 
 

My grandfather had an enterprise, aside from the farm and grist mill. He was the first man to run a merchandise business in South America. He ran a small store for a number of years. He sold such articles as coffee. The coffee was of the green variety, not roasted. His best seller was gun power and lead and gun caps for hog rifle guns, for the rifle gun was the saver of life at that time in South America. The people killed their meat from the woods, such as deer and bear and wild hogs, wild turkey and the gray squirrel. It was no job to find them.

The only mode of transportation at that early date was over the Indian trail down Clear Creek and out by Cumberland Gap, or travel west as the Indian trail went west down Laurel Fork to Clear Fork River and on to where Jellico is now located. It is true to not that my grandfather and his boys carried their goods on horseback, either from some place in Virginia or Knoxville, TN. This was before the road out was made sufficient for ox and cart to travel.

He carried on his merchandise business before and during and after the Civil War of 61 to 65. During the Civil War and some years after the war, he operated a government distillery. He made corn whiskey and I have been informed, he sold it for ten cents a pint as the tax was not much on whiskey at this time.

He was also postmaster as there was at that time a post route from Pineville to Lot, Whitley County, three miles east of Jellico, TN. The distance was thirty-five miles over the old Indian trail. It took two days to make a round trip, starting from Partin's going to Pineville, and back to Partin's. Only one mail a week. This mail route did not last many years, until it was discontinued. As the population increased, they began to chop out cart roads from one house to another until they got a possible cart road into Pineville. After the above post office was discontinued, it was over fifty years before the people had an access to a post office except Pineville. They got their mail once a month, if they had any at all. There were not many people that did any corresponding in those days.

When the people wanted their mail they appointed one man to ride to Pineville, a distance of some fifteen or twenty miles, and the rider carried the mail for the whole community. This transaction happened once a month and if all were busy at work, they put the mail off for a period of months.

My uncle, William Partin carried this mail on horseback for a number of years until he joined the army as a Union soldier. While he was in the army, this mail route was discontinued. When he came back from the army, he put up a blacksmith shop where Chenoa is now located and he worked at this trade there until he got married and then moved to Pineville. He resumed his trade in Pineville for a great many years and he was always known as Blacksmith Bill.

During his stay in Pineville, he was elected sheriff of Bell County and served four years as sheriff. Then he followed his trade for a few years, then sold all his holdings in Pineville and purchased a farm in Lancaster, KY., and moved to it. He resided there for some time, then he sold out there and erected a home on 19th street in Middlesboro and lived there until his death. He lived to a ripe old age, being 85 or 90 years old when he died.
 
 

My father's name was John Partin. He was born and reared in Bell County on a farm situated near where Chenoa is now located. He lived a farm life and also was a great hunter and marksman. He delighted in hunting wild game as he was a crack shot with a muzzle loading rifle gun, for back in the 80's a hog rifle was the only kind of firearms the people had.

The people used the rifle gun for killing deer and bears, wild turkey and gray squirrels and sometimes a man got put off with the same type of gun.

I had an uncle that was killed from ambush with a rifle gun and various other such circumstances happened in this so-called South America.

My father worked on his father's farm until the Civil War broke out. Then he joined the Union army and served three years, three months and seventeen days. At least this is what his discharge had to say about it. He was in the battle of Bull Run and Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. He was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga. He was on a bridge on guard duty all night and was about to be relieved at 6 o'clock. But before they got on their way, my father decided to have a spot of fun, so he walked out on the bridge and commenced to dance what he called the Jim Crow and just as he started to dance a rebel sharpshooter shot him through the leg and he told me it did not pay to dance during time of war.

My father served under General Scott. That is where I got my name, Scott. When father got discharged in 1865 he came back to his father's home on Clear Creek which was in Knox County at that time and in 1866 he got married to my mother. Her name was Sally Henderson, a daughter o f William Henderson. The people always called him Bill.

My father squatted on a tract of land one mile distant from his father's on a small creek called Bear Creek where the Chenoa-Hignite Coal Company is now located. On this tract of land he went to work and opened up some several acres of farm land. This was in the date 1866 and in the date 1867 I was born.

This section of the country was a wilderness at that time. My father was the first white man to build a house on this creek called Bear Creek. It got its name from the wild bear. This creek lies in a large basin on the north side of the Log Mountain and at one time was noted for its coal and timber. This mountain now belongs to the Louisville Property Company. This mountain of wild land was first transferred from my ancestors to T. Cairns, Wyemon and Hull Land Company, in the date of 1888. The bears were so numerous that they would come to the house. In fact, one ran my mother into the house one night and my father grabbed up his rifle gun. But before he could shoot the bear, it ran out of the house and got away. This is only one of the true hair raising stories of the bear that happened in South America.

My father resided at his new home for about six years, then got the moving fever and sold his land to one of his cousins and moved to a farm in Tennessee which is located ten miles south of Pruden, Tennessee on Tackett's Creek.
 
 

We had not lived there very long when a cyclone came along and took the roof off the house we lived in. My father ws gone from home at the time. He was working in the wheat harvest in Powells Valley when this happened as he was a great hand with a cradle. At that time the farmers had to use hand cradles to harvest their wheat. This was before the invention of modern machinery for that purpose.

So when my father came home and found the roof gone off the house he decided to move again, so he put ox yoke on old Buck and Berry and hitched them to the old wooden cart and moved north five miles where he rented a farm in Valley Creek, Tennessee, two miles south of where Valley Creek coal mine is now located.

My father's closest neighbor on Valley Creek was a man by the name of Preston Davis, a son of Richard Davis, the same Richard Davis who lived on Davis Branch in Middlesboro from the date 1770 to 1815. My mother took me and went to Preston Davis' on a visit in the date 1873 and there I got the fright of my life, at the sight of a colored person. Mr Davis had a colored woman he called Diana. She had belonged to Richard Davis as a slave. This old slave woman wanted to get hold of me so I have never forgotten it. This is when I received my first remembrance.

My father, after living on Valley Creek one year, decided to move back to his father's home place in Bell County. So he stayed on the home place one year and moved again. This time he moved to Huntsville, Scott County, Tennessee. After staying there one year, he moved back to the old home place on Clear Creek and after one year there, he got the moving fever again. This time he took headquarters in Pineville, Bell County and he lived in or near Pineville for two or three years. During this stay in Pineville he got a government pension to the amount of $600. With this money, he purchased his father's old home place from the county as the farm had been sold for taxes and taken over by the county. So he moved back to the home place and remained there until his death, date 1889.

After my father's death things began to happen. My step mother went back to her people, leaving myself and my two sisters to make out own way. My oldest sister soon married and moved to Dorchester, VA. in the date 1891 and she died in the date 1900, and was buried in Dorchester. My youngest sister mysteriously disappeared in 1892 and has never been found. The government officials searched all states for her but to no avail. Their reason for the search was for the purpose of money due her as she was under age and my father was a pensioner and as my sister was a minor heir she was entitled to draw from the government until she was twenty one years of age.

I have given autobiography sketches of granddads and grandmothers, uncles and aunts in past sketches. Now I have decide to talk about myself and this is a very "treacherous" job for I do not like to talk about myself. But I have long since decided that every man and every living being takes his own hide to the tannery. Nevertheless, it will be hard to get my hide to market without being punctured full of holes for it has not been because of my good behavior that I am still living at the age of 71 years.  It seems to be a Providential happening, for what happens to one man the same thing  happens to all. Remember that we all return to dust whence we came.

I am writing this autobiography of myself in the interest of the present generation. Pre adventure it may be beneficial in guiding some young man to travel a different road in life from the one that I roamed in my young days. Remember that I was raised back in the 80's (1800) and 90's (1900) of the feudalism days of South America. It seemed right to
 
 

all the young men to carry guns and kill on sight at the least provocation. So was life in my younger days.

In South America, back in the 1880's young men grew up full of prejudices. This trait was an instinct that seems to have originated from the crimes of the Civil War. Before the war of 1861 to 1865 South America was inhabited with a moral and civilized generation of people, but after the war it seems that a young generation of young folks grew up with a trait of crime in their lives that was a hard problem to control or even for the law to apprehend. One reason for this fact is simply because this wild and woolly South America is a mountainous country and the people grew up without the opportunity of maintaining but little education. Some of the young folks never had the opportunity of seeing the inside of a school house. School house were scarce and far apart in South America. Illiteracy has been the occasion of 90 per cent of the lawlessness and feudalism in South America. But this is no exception to the rest of Bell County, especially back in the 80's when this particular section of country was little better than an Indian reservation.

You know that my forefather settled in the midst of an Indian reservation. In other words, my people hoo hooed the Indians out of their homes. It is not my fault that I have been born and raised in this wooded country. You have to lay that part of the work to my ancestors. So I suppose they did what suited their case best back in that antediluvian day in making of crude homes in South America.

I was born on a hillside farm on Bear Creek in the date 1867 in a one room log house with one door and no windows. This house had a stone chimney with a four foot fireplace and was situated near where the Chenoa Hignite Coal Mine is now located and at that time was in a dense wilderness.

The creek and hillsides of that time were lined with a growth of hemlock, rhododendron and ground ivy which made it very convenient for wild animals such as the bear and deer and the wild panther which were a dangerous menace at that early date, for the reason that so many of them were roaming around in South America.

I was raised at a time when the people were hard put for means of support in South America. I was thirteen years old before I had my first pair of shoes and when I received them it was some time in January and the snow was eight inches deep at the time. My father made the shoes from home tanned leather and when I got my new shoes on I soon got out into the snow and made tracks to see how they looked, I was so proud of my home-made shoes I had an unexplainable feeling. I had an exciting time. I only know I felt big to know I could make tracks in snow like daddy. I traveled around in the snow until I got my shoes soaked in snow water, then came into the house where there was a big log fire burning and my shoes began to to my feet. They finally got so tight I had to pull them off and the next morning when I got my shoes to put on they had swiveled up so much I could not get them on my feet, so my father immersed them in hot water and put them on a last and hammered and beat around on them for a while and finally got them large enough for me to wear. I felt like it would take ten yards of homemade jeans to make me a jacket.
 
 

But not many days after this, I was sitting before the fire and my father came in with a back log of wood and threw it on the fire, I had one shoe off and the hot coals of fire flew off and burned my foot so I could not wear but one shoe for a month. This accident took some of the big feelings out of me.

You must know at that date the people tanned their own leather. Tan yards was a common thing with the rich folks those that had two yoke of oxen, two cows, a herd of sheep and fifty acres of land and money enough to pay two or three dollars taxes. Those were the folks considered wealthy in my barefoot days.

But having bare feet was no excuse for not working. Everyone worked at our house, both men and women. For a vacation we children got a half day off once a month. This was always on Saturday. We got to go three miles to one of our uncles to stay for the night. But we sure had to come back home the following Sunday by 12 o'clock or receive the benefits of an oversized hickory and I mean it would be hickory wood.

In my young days, when the parents said skat they meant skat. Now in this modernized day, it seems that the young folks give the command and the old folks do the skatting.

When I was 13 years of age my father notified me that I had to start to school the next Monday morning. This was news and a great surprise to me but I was very well pleased with my new occupation. So my father armed me with a new pair of home spun jeans pants. Also I had on a new home spun cotton shirt. The shoes were not in use--I was barefoot. The next important article that I possessed was a Daniel Webster Blue Back spelling book. This completed the equipment for school.

So my father walked me two miles to an old log school house and delivered me over to the teacher, a man about fifty years old, with the instruction, "If you have to whip the boy, when he comes home I'll whip him again."

The school always began about July or later in the season. All depended on the folks that had crops to lay by and if farmers were all done with their crops by July 1, it was the trustees' job to go all over the school district and find out if all were ready for school. If all were ready for school. If all were ready to send their children to school, the trustees gave orders to meet at the school house the following Monday morning.

My father was trustee for a number of years for the reason he was considered the best qualified man in the district for the job. He was a crack speller from the old Blue Back. He was a mathematician on Ray's first, second and third parts, considered so in his day.

So when my father walked me up to the old log school house. I ran up against my first hard problem and that was to learn my ABC's.

The teacher informed me that the first letter of the alphabet was the letter A, so I learned the name of A the first day, and the old foggy headed teacher told me that I done a good days work and that made me feel good.

So I learned one letter of the alphabet every day until I got down to the letter O. Then I got stuck for some several days. The rule was in those days when you got stuck on a letter or a word you got up and walked over to the teacher with your finger placed under the word and the teacher pronounced or spelled it out loud for you. Then you went back to your seat until you got stuck again.
 
 

So I was bad stuck on learning the name of that big round letter O. I went over to the teacher so many times to ask him what its name was that he tried other means to make me remember the name of O. He asked me what I said when a briar scratched me. He thought I would say "Oh" but I answered him that I said "Ouch" when a briar scratched me.

"Well, what do you say when you stump your toe against a rock?" he asked. My answer that time was that I said "Dam that rock."

Then all the rest of the scholars laughed out and that was a very serious offense to laugh in time of books.

So the teacher gave me a thirty minute sentence to stand on one foot out in the center of the floor. This seemed hard for me to perform with all the girls peeping around their books at me. So when one foot got tired, I managed to set it down and raise the other one. This worked very well for a while until all the girls got to sniggering. Then the teacher caught onto the trick so he cracked me around the shins with his persuader, a hickory about three feet long.

My teacher was a very lazy character. At noon time he always took a nap of sleep by sitting in the only chair that the school possessed and it was a home made chair, made by my grandfather and donated to the school for the teachers only.

I decided to get even with the sleepy teacher. The students always went some distance from the house to play at noon. One hot day we played until about two o'clock and had not been called to books. I decided the teacher was taking too much of a nap. The rest of the students drafted me to go and find out what was the trouble. I slipped up to the door and peeped in and sure enough Mr. Teacher was sound asleep and sawing gourds or as some call it, snoring. He was located under a window with no panes in it and that gave me an idea.

I went around and tiptoed up to the window, armed with a small sand rock, and that stopped the snoring.

Did I run! I almost had to turn sidewise to keep from flying. I had to run about one hundred yards to get back to the rest of the students, but I made it safely by taking to the woods and coming around and in the back way and got off clean without a licking. The teacher tried hard to find out who did it but never did get the dope on anyone.

My father was the trustee and the teacher boarded at our house. The teacher told my father what had happened to him and they agreed to meet at the school house the next morning and question all the students to find the guilty party. So they had a free for all trial the next morning but could get no proof. So I felt very shaky knowing what would come next if my father found out the facts in the case.

This was one mean act of my life that I kept a secret for many years.

While I was seeking to learn the letter O I pulled one other stunt on a boy that I did not like very well. We always played what we called ball, not like the modern games of today but it was playing ball to the boys of that day. I had a cousin that I did not have much
 
 

love for and I had gotten by with all the mean tricks I had done heretofore. So I studied up how to get even with this cousin of mine.

All the kind of ball we had to play with was a yarn ball, made from yarn raveled from all the old yarn socks we could find in the wardrobe. If a boy came to school on Monday morning with a new ball all hands wanted to play with it. So I made me a very handsome yarn ball and wound the yarn very tight. In the center I placed an old time minnie ball of lead that weighed two ounces. This was what the soldiers shot from some kind of rifle gun in time of the Civil War.

When the ball game got underway I caught my chance to use my loaded ball on my cousin. I caught his head turned sidewise and let slip with all power and hit my disliked cousin under the ear. He spun around for sometime and fell full length on the ground. Then some of the students went to his aid and I was badly frightened for I thought I had killed him for sure. But after the application of some cold water he came by all o.k. but I was very careful to let no one know my method of laying the boy out for a while.

What was called a school house in my days of going to school in South America was composed of one room about twenty four feet square, with one door and two holes cut out for windows, one on each side and a big stone chimney at one end, four feet wide.

For seats, they used split logs with the split or flat side turned up. For legs they used round sticks in holes bored in the bottom side of the log. When we had a crowded house we carried in two big rocks and placed them ten feet apart and some of the big boys would rob some farmer's fence of a flat rail and bring it in and place the rail on the two rocks and call it a seat. That is all right if you like it.

Back in the 80's in South America, the folks all practically lived a like and what the leader of the community did the rest tried to follow suit. In my boyhood days I did not know that there was any other country but South America. When I looked as far as my eyes would let me see, I had an idea that was the end of the universe, but as I advanced in education I began to find out by the help of geography that there were more countries than the one I was born and raised in, the one now called South America. Why this particular section of Bell County is called South America you will learn along with traits of the people of what has been and is now this wild and woolly South America.

In the date 1884, I was then 17 years old when I begun to think myself a man. I had seen other boys carry pistols and I got the idea that I had to have one also, but my father had warned me in advance against the pistol habit and I knew he would make me jump Jim Crow if he caught me with one. But I ran the gauntlet and found a boy that had one for sale. I made a deal for the pistol, a 32 cap and ball such as was used in the Civil War. It was very rusty and badly worn. It was very very rusty. It was one of the old keyed barreled type with a 6 inch square barrel. You had to have a pair of bullet molds to run your own bullets. So I got the molds in the deal. I had to carry a supply of rifle gun caps and powder. My father had a hog rifle and I knew I could swipe a few rounds of ammunition from him, and get by with it.
 
 

My next problem was how to get by without my father finding out that I had the gun. So I conceived the idea of hiding it in the barn. I went to the barn before I went to the house and hid the pistol in the fodder. That was in Sunday and it had to stay there all the following week for the fact my father kept me busy on the farm six days a week.

But the following Sunday, my father went to visit some neighbors three miles away and I considered I had a good chance to get out the old pistol and give it a test at target practice. The rule was to use tallow on the bullets when you loaded the cap and ball. I had no tallow at hand, so I proceeded to load up the old pistol with lead bullets.

When I go six loads in the gun and placed the caps on the tubes, I picked out a spot on the tree to shoot at. I raised the gun and took aim and did it shoot! One chamber went off o.k. and before I could lower the thing, another chamber went off cafum, and it never stopped firing until the six loads all went off. When I came to my senses and examined my pistol. I was surprised to note that all I had in my hand was the handle of the gun.

I began to search for the different parts. I found the barrel about half way from where I stood to the target I had shot at. The cylinder was off to one side, some several feet and it took quite a lot of searching to find the remaining parts. But I finally got all the parts gathered up and the next proposition was to get the thing assembled. I was short one or two parts. The key that kept the barrel to the frame of the thing was gone for good and the cylinder rod was also gone. But I was always of a mechanical mind I soon had a rod made with the help of a wire nail and from a piece of flat steel I made a key for the barrel for the contraption. In no time I had the old gun looking good again.

My next undertaking was to trade the thing off for whatever I could get. So, I had a cousin who lived about two miles down the road and he came up to see me on Saturday night. He had a 22 rim fire, one of the old type called a bulldog. So my cousin got me out to the old barn to show me what a bad gun he had. I got the thing out of his hip pocket. He had it wrapped up very completely in a bandana red handkerchief. He finally got the bad gun ready to exhibit and oh, my what a surprise for me. His gun was very shiny and bright and I at once got the idea to make a swap.

I got up in the hay and scratched out the old rusty 6 in. square barrel gun and what a surprise for my cousin! I showed him how it worked and how to load the thing and he fell for it at once. He asked me to make him an offer for a trade, and of a fact, that was what I wanted him to say.

I made him a proposition to trade even. He parleyed for a while and told me he would swap if I would come down and hoe corn for him one day. I informed him that if I could get off from my father one day the next week, I would make the deal, and he being interested in my gun, agreed to go and ask my father to let me off on Saturday to down and do the day's work.

So we made the deal but my father never surmised that either of the boys had a gun. If
 
 

he had it would have been too bad for both of us.

My cousin took his army navy and hit the road back for home and I hid my .22 rim fire back in the hay for safe keeping until I got a chance to try it out. When I caught my father at a safe distance from home, I got the .22 out for a tryout and sometimes it shot and the rest of the time it snapped.

By this time I was getting disgusted with this type of gun. I got rid of the 22 and decided to buy a better one. I came in contact with a young man who had a 44 Smith & Wesson and decided this was the thing I needed, like lots of other boys then and today. Doing the wrong thing and don't realize it until it is too late to see the material point in life.

This pistol habit got in my head back in 1884 about the time when feuds began to break out in various parts of Bell County. The Sowder and Turner feud raged where Middlesboro now is.  The Johnson and Hoskins feud started in and near Pineville. Then the Rose and Lawson and the Partin and Fuson feud started in South America near where the Henderson School is now located.

At that date it seemed that all the young men in the community got the gun toting habit, so when I got my 44 Smith & Wesson, I then got the idea to be a No. 1 bad man.

About the time I got loaded for bear, a gang of drunks came along by my father's house. When they were within 75 yards of the house, they fired on me with a pistol. The bullet cut my clothes but did not get any meat.

This gave me the opportunity to get into a shooting match, the very thing I had been preparing for all the time before hand. But I did not see the bitter end of the game until too late. So I advise all boys to look and think twice before you carry a gun or shoot one in the wrong place.

A pistol is the root of half the desperation of the human race.

In referring to my diary of 1884, I find that I was fed up on the feud idea by my associates, eight or ten cousins and some other agitators that had the idea that I would be a handy young man to have around just in case trouble got started. The trouble was then on the road for the whole bunch of cousins and uncles, but I did not realize the real facts in the case at that time. In fact, I did not realize anything for good in those bygone days. I only considered the fact that I had a desire to become the bravest and worst in South America. I soon found out that this goal was very easy to maintain. It is easy to get into all the trouble you want. But remember it is hard to get out of trouble if you make it bad enough. I began to fix myself for a lifetime of regrets when I was 20 years of age. At that time in the midst of feudalism in South America, I got the gun carrying idea, the very thing that always gets a young man in bad trouble. I went down to Pineville and found a man by the name of Willie Hurst that ran a gun store, and he introduced me to his stock of firearms and I decided to buy a 44 Caliber Colts pistol, belt and holster complete for the sum of $15. Then I had to have some ammunition for the sum of $1 he sold me a full box of shells. So I put them in my new belt and filled the gun with six loads and belted the big new gun around my waist and hit the trail back up Clear Creek home, a distance of 16 miles.
 
 

I have never forgotten the words my father said to me when I returned home. He always called me Scotty. He first took the gun and looked it over for some time, then reached it back to me, and he said, "Scotty, if you are not very careful that gun will fix you to hear the jail keys crack many times before you get through with it. But at that time I did not believe snakes crawled. Not long after this my father died. When he came to die he called me to his bedside and advised me to always act honest and tell the truth, and I want to say now that those few words have always remained with me, and aside from all my self made troubles and desperate criminology I have never forgotten or discarded the dying words of my father.

One year previous to this sad circumstance I had got in the company of some of my old comrades that expected trouble and were going to start something they could not stop this side of death, at least for some of them. But I was ignorant of the fact at that time. Being a young boy I was easy mark for the slaughter.

On Sunday, one day in August 1884 one of my cousins came for me to go with him to a country church five miles away. He informed me that his three brothers were expecting to have trouble on that day, and I was anxious to go along with him, for I was headed for trouble anyway, and I took that opportunity to get the chance to try out my new 44 Colts pistol. So I and my cousin hit the trail walking five miles to church not for the good of the church but to try our hand in a free for all shooting match with the enemy.

We arrived at the place about 9:30 o'clock. Not more than one minute after our arrival war was declared. It seemed as though all the congregation were shooting some kind of firearm. But after the fight was over and I got my memory straight. I found that there were only 16 men concerned in the battle eight on a side.

Rose and Lawson on one side, and Fusons and Partins on the other side. It seemed to me that the battle lasted about ten minutes it might not have been so long. The report of guns was so great that it was noticed by people for miles in the surrounding community.

When the battle ceased it was found that there were three dead men on the ground, and six others seriously wounded. I got out without a scratch with the exception of some powder burns. And the work of dodging some close quarters, such as hand to hand fighting. There must have been 50 or 75 disinterested men, women and children on the ground, and how they all got by without some of them being shot is too much for me to explain. It was mothers clinging to sons and sisters screaming for peace. But shooting never ceased until the majority of the foolish gang was either dead or wounded or out of ammunition.

The worst feuds that I have ever known the mountains of Eastern Kentucky have originated between close kinfolk such as cousins and brother-in-law. This game seems to be an instinct born and bred in some of the mountain people, especially back in the 80's and 90's but that spirit has just about become extinct at the present time.

My advice to all young men is not to carry guns, because if you do so you will sure get in bad sooner or later. I got the gun habit in my young days through the influence of bad
 
 

company and that gun got me in a batch of trouble that has taken me 50 years to overcome and get straight with modern society. There is no harm in a gun within its self. The trouble is in the man that carries it. So I say to all boys if you want to carry a gun go join the army and help whip Germany so you'll get honor in place of the jail house or the penitentiary for which you will regret the remainder of your life, life is too short to fool it away at the breech of a gun, that is a murdering invention, especially the pistol.

This is being written the 26th of January 1940, and every one is snowed in with six inches of snow and the thermometer is 10 below zero. This morning it made my mind drift back to the 80's and 90's the horse and buggy days. Yes, it also takes me back to the 70's the ox and two wheeled cart days, when everyone called an ox a steer and a horse, they called a hoss or a critter, a mule a hardtail or a donkey and it came to vegetation they onions, ingerns and tomatoes wee nothing more that permatases. A cucumber they called a cow-cumber and a violin had to be called a fiddle. Harnes for a hoss was known by the name of geares and hoss-stall was called a stable. A bob sleigh was always known by the name of sled.

On the 6th of January 1940, the mail boy left Pearl Post Office with a mule and a sled to deliver the mail to Chenoa, a distance of seven miles in six inches of snow and 10 below zero weather. Late in the afternoon he returned with the mail all o.k. so you see there are more ways than one to get by when you are in a tight place.

Back in the 80's I was going to school in a one room old time log house with a four-foot fireplace built from stone and the cracks in the wall all open to let the wind whistle through. When the weather got too cold, everybody stayed at home.

The school session at that date, if I remember right, lasted but three months. Some where about the date 1886, the county schools raised to five months.

I remember on one occasion, I had a lady teacher and it was a custom in those days for the teacher to board with the parents of the students, go to one house tonight and some other house tomorrow night. When it came time for the school mom to go home with me, she put a question to me which I have never forgotten. She asked me if I had any cucumbers at my house and as that was a word I had never heard before I told her no, I did not have any cucumbers but I had plenty of cow-cumbers. I saw the blushed and she said, that was what I meant to ask you.

Well I said, we've plenty of them things if that's what you want to call them.

I thought she was wrong but I did not say anything about it. She knew I was misinformed about the correct name but she never corrected me. That shows the kind of teachers they had in my school days.
 
 

When tomatoes was first introduced to people of South America, it was considered a poisonous weed and was only used for a front yard ornament. Mothers watched their children to see that they did not eat any of them little red things called permatases. I know a few folks that call the tomatoes permatases yet.

In my boyhood days, the folks got to calling them tommy-toes. Later the mail order house got name as it now is, tomatoe, I do not know yet what is right or wrong about such names. All I know is what I read in books, papers and magazines.

Back in my youthful days, what is known as pants were always called breeches. Later on, they named them trousers. The next name came along pantaloons. Now it's just plain pants.

Suspenders were always known in my young days, as galluses. They later took the name suspenders.

Names and customs come and go in all generations but what's in a name as long as the people you talk to understand just what you are talking about.

But now in this fantastic cycle of the human race you have to be well versed in some several languages to let all people understand just what you are talking about.

But back in the old days of the first emigrants that settled in Bell County, especially in South America, all the language that was needed was what they brought here with them. There were but few of them and they all understood on another. But now the population has so increased that a better educational language is required to bring the people up to the standard of modern society.

The majority of the boys that grew up with me knew how to mind their parents. Today it looks as the boys have their own way and grow up a boss of the household. That's why so many young people are coming to the bad in this generation.

In my day it was bad business to cut in and speak while the old folks were inn conversation with someone else, but now I hear and see boys cut in while their fathers are talking and tell the story some other way. If I had done that in my day it would have just been too bad for me. My father would have given me just what I deserved, a good thrashing.

All this reminds me of a phenomenon I have seen come and go more than once. I refer to a child's calling his parents by their real names rather than by well recognized titles. When I was a boy it was thought crude and boorish for a child to call his father, John and mother, Nancy. Then came a wave of usage with children from the best regulated families in what would have on its way out again and who caused a riot in earlier days. It's on its way out again and who knows when the young general will call father and mother. Me and John or me and Nancy in South America. The old folklore language has gradually
 
 

disappeared to a great extent but you can yet see it sticking out of some of the old timers. But they are not to blame for there old time sayings for they came by it honest. It's an instinct for me and them which has been inherited from the old pioneers who  first settled in this wild and woolly district known as South America, which is situated in the southwestern part of Bell County Kentucky.

About the date 1855, some of my old ancestors established what they called a mining company in South America. My grandfathers on both sides belonged to it. L.A. Partin, Jonathan Partin and Shelton C. Partin. William Henderson and Edward Henderson and a man by the name of James Maine who lived on the head of Popular Creek were in the company. Maine was president of the company and some man from England was the forerunner of the project; one of the Jones on Popular Creek also belong to the company.

The man from England was some kind of a mineralogist and he claimed that on the north side of Pine Mountain, under the limestone, there was gold and all the first settlers of South America got interested in the mining project. Near the headwaters of Popular Creek about half way up on the mountainside, they dug a tunnel about 300 feet into the mountainside, but never reached the gold. What stopped the industry was the breaking of the Civil War. The majority of the company joining the army.

My father was one of the company and he served three years in the Union Army and after the war was over the mining project has been dead until the present day.

That was in the antediluvian days of South America when all the land belonged to the government. They call it vacant land so the mining company entered surveys of large tracts of land in several places containing thousands of acres in and near South America. The surveys were made in the name of all the mining company for the purposes of prospecting for gold and silver but nothing worth while ever matured from the project.

After the Civil War the mining company was disbanded and the business went dead, but during their prospecting they dug one other tunnel down at the foot of Pine Mountain that is many feet under the ground and this was without success.

In my young days, I heard much talk about the mining and its workings. It appeared to be a mania among the old ancestors of South America

In the date 1860 to 1870, there was a man who came to this country, and stayed with my grandfather Henderson and he was a counterfeiter. He had a silver mine in Pine Mountain where he got his silver ore and my grandfather had a blacksmith shop that he used to run the metal out. Then he would stamp or mold it into silver dollars. He had a set of steel dies.

When he left this country, he left this country, he left these molds at my grandfather's. I have seen them many times. My grandfather kept them hidden and would never allow them to be used any more. The man Willoughby disappeared and no one ever knew what
 
 

went with him but his name is still fresh on the minds of the old folks of South America.

One reason I mention this fact is I got this history from the old ancestors of South America and one other reason that is I know it to be true because my grandfather showed me the place where they got their silver ore. He took me to the place in the date 1888 and it had been worked to some extent. I went back to the place one year after I was shown the place and I got out some of the ore, and brought it and left it with my grandfather, and I went to Texas for one year. When I returned home, I never lost trace of the mine, but I stayed away from it for 45 years and when I went back to where I thought the place was, I could not find the place.

The timber had all been cut and logged out and the place had got filled up by the washings from log roads and the place has changed so much by the timber workings that I have got hoodooed and have not so far been able to locate the place any more. I the ravine that it is located in but have lost the identical spot.

Near the headwaters of Popular Creek there is one other mystery of this generation of people. About one-fourth of a mile up on the north side of Pine Mountain there is a hole or shaft that has been dug by some other generation of people. It was found there by the first settlers of South America. The shaft is 90 feet deep or was when he found it. It is now about filled up. What it was dug for is a mystery to the present generation of people. It has always been supposed to have been dug for the purpose of searching  for gold and silver.

Likewise on Clear Creek there is another shaft that has been dug no one knows how deep but it seems to be 100 feet or more. This shaft was drilled and shot down in a solid rock. The rocks that have been taken out show drill holes.

A man by the name of Roudy found it in the date of 1814. This man Roudy came to Clear Creek in 1812 the same year my grandfather came and settled on the head of Clear Creek. This shaft or hole has always been called the Roudy Well because Roudy first discovered the hole. If you don't believe it come and see for yourself.

In this article I am going to give you a part of what I learned concerning the history of the William Swift silver mine which has always supposed to have been located on Clear Creek, ten miles southwest of Pineville, from the description map I have in my possession. Clear Creek is located in the right latitude for the silver mine from the instructions I find Swift's diary. It is located in latitude 36-37 northwest 500 miles, starting from Kent, VA., where the English were located at the time. In the date 1775, W.M. Swift's diary tells me that he left Kent, traveling many miles coming over many blue mountains and through a rolling limestone country 25 or 30 miles, then through the door of Cumberland Gap, then some several miles through a rough and rocky region into a piney mountain to a high bald knob. where the mine is. This is what Swift made a sworn statement to when he was 86 years old and had gone blind. He says that he had worked the mine for a number of years and gone off for six years. When he came back in search of his mine he could not describe the place to his guide sufficient to ever find the place again.
 
 

This is what caused him to make the above statement under oath, that he had a lost silver mine. In his statement he offers one-half of the mine and one-half of all his hidden treasure to anyone that could find the silver mine and take him to it. He claims in the mine he left one sledge hammer with French crown cut on the face of the hammer and one sheepskin apron and some other tools and one set of money molds that he used to make French Crowns.

In the descriptive map of the lay of the country in which the mine is located, he hid six million dollars in French crowns, buried four feet under the ground with large stones placed over it. At one other place he had thirty thousand dollars in the same way. At the other place he stated he buried four ten gallon kegs of the same type.

The mine is situated on a creek that heads west and runs east and is rough and rocky. How Swift came to find the mine was he got acquainted with an Indian while he was with the English colony at Kent, VA. He said the Indian's name was Marquettie and the Indian brought Swift to the silver mine and they worked together. According to Swift's maps, the mine is somewhere in Bell County.

Swift told the Indian he could work silver and the Indian took Swift for a partner. So Swift states he purchased a set of French money molds, crucibles, ladles and guns, four ponies and set out for the mine traveling across country known as the Albermarle Colony at that time, coming through the northern part of the colony and traveling several weeks to cross several chains of large blue mountains. The they crossed a rolling limestone region 30 or 40 miles in a northern direction to a barren knob on a spruce mountain lying between 36th and 37th degrees of north latitude which was owned and chartered by the land company as far west as the French colony.

Swift said when he arrived at the place the mine had not been worked much and was partly concealed or hidden. He succeeded in coining up some of the rich metal into French crowns, two pony loads. Then he decided to go home, stay there three months. They decided to return to the mine again bringing John Martin Monday an Englishman, and Merry Cartwright for a cook.

We remained at the mine one year. Then removing to a new place in a saddle gap on a long blue ridge lying east and west. The ore was much richer that the first mine and easier to work. The silver is found in a gray hard rock. Carrying our ore into a large mountain on a little creek full of spruce pine cove surrounded by a horseshoe bend and wilderness. The creek was rough and full of large stones, running south and flowing into the main creek where two peculiar high rocks were with the creek running between them, one facing north, the other westward.

This is what has to say in part concerning the long lost silver mine. My grandfather in the date of 1815 found the smelting furnace under a rock house that fits the above description.
 
 

It was situated on Clear Creek, ten miles west of Pineville. But as the country was opened up by the white man and the population increased the furnace has been torn down and disappeared. But I know the spot where it stood. There is quite a large tree growing where the furnace stood. Swift's map tells you if you can find the furnace you can find all the hidden treasures. He states that 1200 feet due west from the furnace, he hid or buried $12,000 in French crowns. I know that this has been found. A man by the name of Gibson dreamed where it was. He dreamed the same dream three times in succession and he got a man to go with him to investigate the place. They dug down three or four feet and Gibson's helper decided to hoodoo Gibson by asking him to postpone the job until the next day. Gibson consented and lost out for the other fellow came back that same night and dug it up and left the country, and has never come back. No one ever knew how much he got or what he got. He got something valuable or he would not have disappeared.

Near the spot where this treasure was dug up I found cut on a beech tree the following inscription, Swift and Monday. The mine map takes notice of this tree and trail. There is an old Indian trail nearby. Monday was Swift's partner.

When Swift first found the mine, he and Marquettie, the Indian, went back to the English colony and took in as partners Monday, an Englishman, and a man by the name of Grist, a Frenchman, and one or two others, also Mary Cartwright, a German woman for a cook.

In the date 1778, Monday and Marquettie fell out and killed one another and Merry Cartwright buried them over in the big mountain opposite the furnace. There are two old graves, half a mile away from this furnace. They were found there when my ancestors first settled in South America.

In Swift's diary, he states that while he was working the first mine he found another vein of silver five miles south of the furnace, which was much richer than the first one. They carried their ore on ponies from the mine to the furnace.

When my grandfathers Henderson and Partin first came here in 1812. Mary Cartwright was still here. She went and showed them where Swift had disposed of the dross and cinders from the furnace. Swift would never allow the woman to go to the mine but she showed them which way they went and came. My grandfather told me he found all of Swift's signs and marks on trees and stones, all but a gun cut on something pointing south, but he never did find the mine. He was always confident it was there.

You will learn more about Swift in the future articles in "Sketch of South America."
 
 

The most outstanding tradition in all the Cumberland country is the one which is based on Swift's lost silver mine. And we find that some written records in support of this widespread tradition, whether true or forged, I cannot say.

Many maps presumed to have been made by the man Swift or one of his companions, have been circulated and copied by persons in their efforts to locate the mine. I have in my files one of these maps, different from any of the others, which came to me through correspondence from of all places London, England, several years ago.

All the maps including the one from the other side of the Atlantic are vague as to location of the mine and smelters which it is believed Swift operated. This, in itself, has encouraged search for the mine throughout the Cumberland Mountains, even lapping over into the hills of western North Carolina, southern West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The map from which all the many now in circulation, is said to have been left by Swift with a Mrs Renfro at Bean's Station, Tennessee, on his last trip out of the mountains, and a study of this map seems to locate the mine and operations somewhere in the neighborhood of Red Bird, Bell County Kentucky.

The story of Swift and his mining operations have been incorporated into many local histories of this region, but none of the writers of the histories claim anything more substantial than word of mouth tradition as a basis for their stories.

The late R.M. Addington in his "History of Scott County, Virginia." says:
One Swift, whose Christian name has not been given, is reputed to have come to Bean's Station in East Tennessee, in the year 1790 or 1791. He had with him a journal which seemed to show that he had a silver furnace somewhere about the Red Bird Fork of the Kentucky River and that he knew the location of a rich silver lode or mine. According to this journal the output of this mine and furnace were clandestinely gathered from the deep recesses of the mountains by Swift and his companions. No one outside was permitted to know the secret of its location. It was alleged that the Cherokee Indians knew of its existence in a very ancient time and had procured ores from it. The Indians connections with it added an air of mystery to the legend. Story after story grew up it as a central theme. Many a futile search was made to locate it, but it was as elusive as the will'o-the-wisp.

Knox, Josh Bell, Wolfe and Estill counties, Kentucky, had laid claim to its location, but the story was too fanciful to settle down in any one place, so it drifted into Scott County, Virginia, where people of a former generation have talked about it, believe in it and many have made diligent search to find it.
 
 

Some what in support of Mr. Addington's suggestion that the lost mine is somewhere in the Cumberland Mountains of East Kentucky, I am pulling from my files a few of the many statements of people who are or have been interested in this legend and appeared to have been convinced of its existence.

On September 18, 1941, Elder John A. Robbins, a native of Bell County, but then a citizen of Wise County, Virginia, made the following statement at his home in the village of Glamorgan: Oh it's been about fifty years, he said I was about twenty at the time. Believe it was in the year 1884. But I'm not sure about the date. Somewhere along there.

We lived on Cannon Creek in Bell County, Kentucky. A man named Bob Beasley came into the country and hired a lot of men and put down a deep drilled hole in what they called the Rockface, on Cannon Creek near where Ferndale is now.

I never seen it. But I've heard that Beasley had an old map, which he thought located the silver mine said to have been operated, somewhere in the Cumberland Mountains, many years ago, by an old man named Swift.

Swift! Yes, that was the name. I've heard the old people talk about him a sight. Some of them may have remembered him; maybe seen him. I don't know.

Anyway Bob Beasley drilled and he drilled there in the Rockface, on Cannon Creek, drilled all summer and at the last, he got so he wouldn't even let his work hands see what came out of the hole. Now wasn't that funny?

Finally, when he went to leave, Beasley filled the hole up. All that he'd say was that there was good indications of silver in the rock. The place hs been called Beasley's Hole ever since.

On August 25, 1941, one Henry W. Tompkins, of 2997 Coplin Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, wrote me concerning the lost mine, from which I quote: This story deals with two Englishmen Swift and Blackburn, about whom I think there has been quite a bit written. Swift came from England to this country and migrated to Kentucky in search of silver. He no doubt found a great abundance of silver as, according to Kentucky history, he returned to England with a fortune in silver that he had mined and refined himself in Kentucky. Later he returned to America and brought with him one J.C. Blackburn, making Blackburn a partner in his mine. That was the last actually known of Swift, but years later Blackburn was supposed to have been captured by the Indians, who had blinded him in an attempt to gain the secret of the hidden silver which Blackburn and Swift had hidden. Blackburn although blind, is said to have escaped from the Indians and was found in a critical condition by some white men to whom he told his story.
 
 

Before he dies he admitted that he had killed Swift to get all the silver for himself. He tried to lead these men to the mine and hidden silver, but being far away from the mine and being blind, he was unable to locate any trace of either.

Many people have spent their lives seeking this fortune in vain. Some thought it was in what is now Carter County. Searchers ranged from that part of the country as far south as Lee County.

In trying to describe the place where the mine and silver cache was hidden, Blackburn told of a box canyon. Within the canyon he spoke of a turtle rock from which one could look through a crevice in a hugh rock which would point to the place where three hatchet marks would point to the place where the silver had been mined, smelted and hidden.

I have enough material in my files on Swift and his legendary mine to make a large volume, many others of which locates the mine in East Kentucky.

For two hundred years, almost, folks in the Cumberlands have been talking and writing about Swift's silver mine. According to tradition one Jonathan Swift came into this region about 1750; discovered a rich vein of silver which he and two companions, mined, smelted and molded into bricks or bars, and that the bars were hidden at various places and never recovered.

That a man by the name of Swift was in the region about the middle of the 18th century is accepted by most historians, but as to his business here there is a divergence of opinion and his silver mine had been a subject of much controversy and is at least questionable.

The mine has been located in many and widely separated sections, but found in none. Go where you will in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia and you will hear stories of Swift's silver mine and you will find folks in every neighborhood that are convinced that the rich vein is right in "yar mountain" and could be located if someone would look in the right place. The mine is not confined to Cumberlands. There are stories of it being "almost discovered", time after time in other parts of the country, particularly North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
 
 

About the date of 1855, a man by the name of Merian Vanderpool moved from North Carolina to Kentucky and settled on Big Clear Creek, in Bell County. At that time Bell County was known as Knox County; Bell County was cut off from Knox in 1867.

When Vanderpool moved to Clear Creek, he did not forget to bring his wife and children along. He claimed that he did not lose any one of them on his way to Kentucky. When he landed on Clear Creek he at once took inventory of his small number of 26 children, 18 boys and 8 girls, and to make his family complete he found two grandchildren in the gang, for good measure.

He squatted on a tract of land situated near where Chenoa now is in the southwestern part of Bell County to make a living for his sizable family. He had taken to the road that pioneers of that day, that was to go to the woods and by the sweat of the brow, clear and fence land and get their living from the soil.

During the Civil War he emigrated from Clear Creek to get further away from the war zone at Cumberland Gap, for the soldiers were making raids on Clear Creek during the war. So Vanderpool pulled stakes and moved across Pine Mountain to the water of Popular Creek in Whitney County, and there purchased a farm on a very large mountain where he opened a large acreage of land and lived on this tract of land the remainder of his life. On this land he opened up a coal vein known as the Vanderpool Coal Mine.

Where he lived at that early day he had to travel five miles from his home to reach any civilization. There was a man who lived down on Popular Creek five miles away who sold a few dry goods such as shoes, hats and various other articles. In the fall of 1866, Mr Vanderpool went down to this dry goods store to buy his boys a round of hats. He called the hats up and picked out 18 hats.

The merchant got inquisitive and asked Vanderpool what he wanted with 18 hats. The answer was "I want them for my boys".

The salesman informed Vanderpool if he had 18 boys to go back home and bring them down. If he could prove he had 18 boys, the merchant promised to make Vanderpool a present of 18 hats.

So Vanderpool went back home and brought his wife, 18 boys and for good measure heaped up and running over, eight girls and two grandchildren. The merchant got satisfied by Mrs Vanderpool's statement that all 26 children belong to her and her husband.

So the merchant gave the 18 hats as he had promised and also gave the eight girls goods to make eight dresses.
 
 

Oh, what a family. We are in great need of several hundred thousand just such families today if we expect to lick Hitler. Who said birth control is the proper thing to indulge in. I think it a part of the abomination of desolation spoke of in the Bible according to Daniel the Prophet. All through past ages people have multiplied and God said they shall multiply and replenish the earth, and I have never forsaken that idea

When Eve was in the Garden she found that the forbidden fruit was good for food and to make one wise. She took therefore and did eat and gave to her husband and he did likewise. They violated one of God's commandments. Then God drove them out of the Garden and commanded them to go out and multiply and replenish the earth and their seed should become as innumerable as the sand of the sea.

If Eve and Adam just ate one apple, Merian Vanderpool must have eaten a bushel of apples.

Oh, just think of 26 children and two grandchildren and man and his wife all living in one log house, five miles from civilization.

As the population increased in Bell and Whitley counties, this family of 28 mountaineers all grew up to be a credit to the community in which they lived and now the descendants are scattered over Whitley and Knox Counties.

Now I want to ask this question: Why is it that the majority of rich folks do not raise large families and the majority of poor folks raise large families? If any of you folks can answer this question, you've got one on me. All I can say is that if I were a millionaire, I would want to raise one hundred boys and girls, and build them a good school and see to it that all got a good education. I think this would be the greatest deed of any man's life.

Three cheers for Vanderpool and his 26 children.

This sketch is interesting for many reasons. One reason is because of the type of man I am writing about. His name is J.G. Fuson, aged 88 years; born June 13, 1855, has been married four times and is now a widower. He is the son of Thomas Fuson who emigrated from Tennessee about 1840. He is known by all the old people of Bell, Knox and Whitley Counties as Uncle Joe Fuson, the fox hunter. He always kept a pack of hounds and chased foxes in Pine and Brushy Mountains. With the exception of four years, he has
 
 

lived all his 88 years on the headwaters of Greasy Creek in Bell County. He is yet gay and hearty and gets around well for his age. I have known him for over 60 years myself.

I went to see him a few days ago and as I asked questions he gave me the details of his
life as I am writing it. I asked him how many times he had been married and he looked at me kindly shyly and gave the answer, four times. I asked him the names of his wives. He said his first wife was a Bennett the mother of 7 children; his second wife was a Dinsmore, the mother of 5 children; his third wife was a Nelson the mother of 9 children; his fourth wife was Mary Young, had no children. I asked him how many children he had been father of, and his eyes shone up at me and his answer was; "Lord I don't hardly know. But I have been accused of being the father o f 72 children". I asked him how many children he had raised at home and his answer was 36, 33 raised to be grown and 3 died young. I asked him if he was going to marry any more, and with a hearty laugh he answered "No more marring for me".

He makes his home with one of his sons who lives on the old home place. He is or has been a large landowner. On the side, he has been a great hunter. When he was younger he kept all kinds of animals as pets, foxes, coons, opossums, squirrels, polecats and wildcats. He had a place fenced in for that purpose. He said he got a great kick out of watching the antics of the animals. Before I left he told me about his dogs running a coon in a cave on the north side of Pine Mountain. The hole was just large enough for a man to get in. When he got inside the cave was very large, and while in the cave he found a lot of spears or daggers hanging down from the top. He broke off some and brought them home. When he examined them he found they contained metal. He sent them to an assayist and they sent him back an assay of pure gold. But he had bad lucky and lost the place and never has been able to find it. It was in the night time when he found the gold and he said he was about halfway lost when he found the gold. He has hunted for years for the place, but has never been able to locate it. Still he knows the boundary and lay of the woods. This is the way he informed me, it happened.

Then back to his longevity. He said all men ought to die at age 60 years of age. I asked him why. He claims you would not have so much to worry about. If you want to get in hot water just name religion to him. He will quickly tell you that they are all wrong. He is a dyed-in-the-wool, Adventist. He claims that the souls of all men will be saved and not lost. He argues that the flesh and blood of all men will be burned up, but that the spirit or soul will relieve neither root nor branch, turn to God who gave it. Uncle Joe was one of the best Bible read men I know of.

His memory is wonderful. When he reads a verse he never forgets it. It would be interesting for you to see Uncle Joe and hear him talk. But don't try to argue with him.
 
 

Now back to myself for a while. As an officer of the law in South America. I write this article to inform the public of some of the most important traits and workings of the people of this part of Bell County. Being situated in the extreme southwestern part of the county bordering the Tennessee line, South America is situated on a creek called Laurel Fork, so named by my ancestors, the first settlers of this end of the county. This water course was named Laurel Fork because it abounded in much laurel and great masses of ivy. It got its name about the year of 1840, by my great-grandfather, who were deer and bear hunters, both for meat and sport. Reason for settling in the remote district.

There was no Bell County at that date. It was a part of Knox County. In the year 1867 Bell County was formed by being cut from Knox County through the Legislature, the bill being put through the Assembly by a man named Josh Bell. So Bell County was named after its sponsor. But later on the Josh was omitted and it became just Bell County.

In the year 1867 is my birth date and I can boast of being a twin brother to Bell County. This fact gives me an opportunity of knowing a great many people and the happenings in the county over a long period of years. I have grown up with the people of South America. The people here are mostly all my blood kinsmen.

About the year 1888 I took the Texas fever and decided to go to Texas and be a cowboy or join the army and get rich quick, so I sold a 50 acre tract of mountain land for $300 and with this money in my jeans I packed my suitcase and hit the trail for Austin, Texas. I went from Bell County to Burnside Point where I waited for three days for a steamboat to arrive, and carry me to Nashville. The boat I was on was a freighter. It stopped at every town and farm to pick up freight, such as wheat and cotton. At last it stopped at a large sawmill just at dark and they loaded lumber in the hull all night. This trip of 300 miles lasting four or five days. I landed in Nashville the next day with $17 less money for boat fare, and after taking the town in. I went to a hotel. This next morning I found I was short $3 more for my stay. I checked out and went down Main Street on a shopping tour. The first thing I met interesting was a dummy Indian in front of a cigar store, the first one I had ever seen, I spoke "Howd'y do" to it, but it never paid me any mind, so I decided I wouldn't go in where people would not speak to me, and marched on down the street. I soon met a man who was in the mood to speak. He was one of those back slapping Jews, and as I was in the market for a new suit of clothes, the Jew marched me right in. He said, "Vot can I do for you?" I picked up courage to tell him I wanted a suit of clothes.
"Right this way; I've got just vot you want for only 25 dollars but today will sell him for only $18". I picked on a suit that suited me and tried it on. "Ah, vot a fit, vot a fit!" said the Jew. I decided as the Jew was so generous I would take the suit, and what do you think? While I changed back to my old suit the Jew went to wrap up the new suit. When I came out of the dressing room, the Jew was waiting to put the new suit in my suitcase.
 
 

I was all fixed up the Jew says, "It's just ten minutes until train time for Texas". I grabbed my suitcase and made a rush for the depot and got there in time to shell out $26 more for a ticket to Austin. I was two days and nights on the train. I landed safe in Austin January 16, 1888, went to a hotel. Next morning I decided to try on my new suit. But trying was all, it was not the suit I had bought. The coat was too small, the pants too short and was of an inferior grade.

It's good to have a lot of experience if you have the dough to back it up. I left Austin and went to Fort Worth, got a job as news butch on a passenger train that ran from Fort Worth to some place in Oklahoma, then the Indian Territory, I had to put up $100 cash bond before I could go to work. I put up the money, went to work and stuck it out for a couple of months and decided to quit. I went to the office and called for my $100. The head butch agent gave me $85 and told me I was short on goods to the amount of $15. So I decided I was making too much money. I went out and got a job on a farm 7 miles out of Fort Worth, but before I went to the farm I went up to the White Elephant gambling house and blowed the $85 by betting on this game and the other game. This is what I call experience well paid for. So I went to the farm flat broke. I stayed on the farm long enough to get money to come back to Bell County. I landed back in Middlesboro in 1889 when Cumberland Avenue was a mud hole, with thousands of men at work. I took meals in an eating place under a tent where the Three States paper is now situated. The post office was then located in the house where the Rhodes fruit stand is at this time. Left Middlesboro and came back to South America, ran a sawmill and lumber camp for 40 years, and that takes a stout back and weak mind. But I know more now than I did when I started on my trip to Texas.

When I got back to South America the people wanted to know where I had been and what I had been doing. I told them I had been out to Texas learning myself some sense. I was just a green mountain boy. I thought as far as you could see was the jumping off place, until I got to Texas, then I decided this is a big world after all. You must not think that the people of South America are as green as I was when I went to Texas 54 years ago.

The people of South America are very energetic and industrious. Since the founding of the Henderson Settlement School, with all its fine teachings and refined habits, what the people used to do they do not do any more. Homicides and other law violations have appreciably diminished. For the last four years as an officer I can say that the people of South America as a whole have come under the influence and reformation of Henderson School. I think I know something about it as I have lived here the most of 74 years, long enough to see three generations come and go.

Come and see us, it doesn't cost you anything to come see for yourself.
 
 

THE MOONSHINES NO LONGER BRIGHT IN ITS OLD KENTUCKY HOME

by Don Whitehead     Courier-Journal  Louisville, KY   December 5, 1953

Pine Branch, KY., Dec. 5  Hawk faced old Uncle Scott Partin leaned on his cane and chuckled as he looked down the valley.

He said, "Have I made moonshine? Why I reckon, son that in my lifetime I've made enough moonshine whisky to float you right out of this holler." Aunt Lena Partin, his wife, wrinkling her nose in disapproval nodded agreement.

Uncle Scott made moonshine whisky and dodged the law for more than 40 of his 86 years before he tore up his still, gave his farm to a settlement school and joined the ranks of law-abiding citizens in this mountain locked valley in Southeastern Kentucky.

Only 25 years ago this valley had a still in every cove, moonshine was the cash crop. Sons picked up the rifles of slain fathers and carried on family feuds. Strangers died violent deaths in the laurel bushes. Schools and churches were burned.

The rifle was the law in this area, known as South America because of its remoteness. It was the roughest, toughest, meanest country in all this region. That is, it was until a blue eyed, round faced Methodist Parson with as much courage as common sense stalked into the hills to fight the feuding and moonshining. He was the Rev. Hiram Frakes.

One day in 1925, Frakes walked into the County Courthouse at Pineville, KY., where he was pastor of a small Methodist Church. He entered just as the judge pointed his finger at two mountain men from that section called South America. They stared at the judge coldly without a trace of emotion.

"All right", the judge shouted. "You won't talk! You won't name the criminals. You won't help the law give your children a decent life. Go on back home! Go back and shoot and maim and murder until you're all killed off. Then we'll come in and establish a civil government!"

Right there Parson Frakes decided it was his duty to go into South America and at least give the children a chance. In the next 28 years, he fashioned a miracle from his conviction that feuding and moonshining were the result, not the cause of the hill people's ignorance and economic illness.

There is little if any smoke rising from still fires in this valley today. South America has become one of the most law abiding areas in all Kentucky. But Parson Frakes influence is sharply bounded by Pine Mountain on one side and Little Log Mountain on the other.
 
 

In the appalachian highlands stretching beyond here through Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, the still fires are burning perhaps as briskly as they did 20 years ago, when Prohibition came to an end.

Hidden in the hills there is an army of moonshiners who, as Uncle Scott Partin once did, are dodging federal agents and tending their stills. Most of the nation's moonshiners are located in the southeastern mountain country, but the cities have a good share of the production too.

Agents of the U.S. Alcohol Tax Unit, the revenuers, have destroyed more than 200,000 moonshine stills in the last 20 years. They average about 10.000 a year even though the unit has only 800 agents now to the 1,200 it had a dozen years ago.

The agents use helicopters to spot stills and walkie talkie radios to direct ground searches. But when one still is destroyed, another is likely to start up in another cover across the ridge. The game of wits never ends between the agents and the shiners.

How big is the hidden industry? Nobody knows for sure. No one can tell how many stills remain hidden in the hills and the cities, after 10,000 are destroyed annually. But this much is certain; after 20 years of repeal moonshining remains a sprawling big business. Profits for the shiner grow more tempting. In 20 years the taxes on a gallon of legal whisky have jumped from $2.20 to $10.50.

Moonshining got its first boost when the country went dry in 1918. Uncle Scott Partin said, "I was sellin' whiskey for $2 a gallon until 1918. Then the price went to $20 and $22 a gallon.

The country went on a bootleg binge in the 20's. That was the era of the speakeasy and syndicated smuggling and bootlegging, of murder, graft and payoffs on a scale never known before, of wild parties and winking at the law.

The repeal came 20 years ago today. Utah ratified the 21st Amendment that afternoon and 17 minutes later the death of the 18th Amendment was officially proclaimed in Washington.

All over the country, headlines told of crowds lining up to buy legal liquor, of drinkers thronging hotels and restaurants, of supplies running out. It was quite a fling for a few days, but it soon leveled off. There were those who saw an end to bootleggers and stills in the hills.

Want to know how moonshine is made? Here's how a man who was proud of his products did it.

The rot gut liquor that comes out of modern moonshine stills (not even a poor relation of the pure corn whiskey made by Uncle Scott Partin and his neighbors) costs perhaps a little more than a dollar a gallon to make. It bootlegs at the still for as much as $6 a
 
 

gallon or 75 cents a pint. The price varies with local conditions.

In some dry areas where the sale of all whiskey is prohibited by law, the cost of bootleg bonded whisky, produced legally, runs from $4 to $6 a pint. The moonshine bargain price is $1.50 to $2 a pint.

Some people buy moonshine because they can't afford better whiskies. Others just naturally prefer the taste of moonshine. But whatever the reason, there is still a widespread demand for it.

There is a vast difference between modern moonshine and that made in the days of Uncle Scott Partin and his cousin Bill Henderson. Known as "The King of the Moonshiners" before a rifle cut him down in 1932.         Picture of Bill and Scott

Modern moonshiners have little if any pride in their product. They make "sugar whiskey", a liberal mixture of sugar in cornmeal, and it's just too bad if a consumer is paralyzed, loses his sight, or dies in convulsions.

Uncle Scott snorted with disgust. "The call it whiskey", he said "but it ain't. Back in our time we didn't use anything but pure grain. It's the heart of the corn that makes good whiskey. I don't know why but it's a fact that when the sap's rising in March and April, corn will make a quart to a half-gallon more whiskey per bushel than in any other month.

And do you know yellow corn makes a quart more to the bushel than white corn? That's a fact, too."

Uncle Scott said, "The only whiskey fit to drink is 10 day whiskey. Don't take these fellows today more than four days to make a run. It took me 10. Here's how I did it.

"First you set up a still and heat some water in it. Then you fill a barrel half full  of the water and put in a bushel of cornmeal. Rough ground cornmeal from yellow corn. Fine ground meal won't do. It gets to clammy. You stir it good and leave it set for three days."

"After three days, you go back for the breakin up. You pour in some more hot water to thin out the mash. When it's broke up (thinned out) put a gallon of corn malt in. The way to make the malt is bury a sack of corn in a manure pile and let the heat of the manure sprout the grain. It'll sprout in three or four days. You grind up the sprouts in a sausage grinder and you've got your malt.

You let the malt work for three days but don't breath the scent in that barrel. It gets too strong it'll knock your head off.

After the malt's worked three days, you put a cap on it. Take a gallon of rye meal, pour in some hot water, stir it up good, and pour it in the barrel. The rye meal comes to the top and cuts off the air and holds in the scent. That's a cap. You let that work another three
 
 

days and on the 10th day from when you started, you put the mash in the still and bile (boil) it off. The steam goes out through the worm and condenses and that's called singlin's.

But I always made doublin's. That means you run the singlin's back through the still a second time. You clean the still good but before you do anything, take a gallon of slop from the mash barrel and pour it in the still. That takes the fire out of the whiskey and the doublin's come out nice and ropy and mellow, not like that stuff that makes you stick your head in a briar patch.

I always figured to get 21 to 25 gallons of whiskey out of seven bushels of meal. But people don't make whiskey like that any more. It's too slow. The revenuers would catch 'em before they got it run off.

Aunt Lena murmured; "And a good thing too!"

By contrast, the Nashville Tennesseean reported the modern moonshining was in the Cosby section of East Tennessee; you take a 500 gallon pot put in 500 pounds of sugar, 50 pounds of hog feed, 50 pounds of cornmeal, 5 pounds of yeast and enough water to fill it up. It sits in the pot, untended, until it stinks like rotten bananas. Then  it's ready to run."

During bottling, a pint of 140 proof isopropyl alcohol, from a bottle labeled "External Use Only", is added to every gallon.

It's a real hair puller, one mountaineer said. No moonshiner will drink the stuff unless he wants to go on a real knee walker. That's a sort of binge when a man goes wild, terrorizing whole communities at a time.

Then where does the whiskey go? Well, to Nashville for one place. And all over East Tennessee, Kentucky, the Cincinnati area, and points as far north as Cleveland and Detroit. But most of the illicit booze by far, is run in Knoxville.

Back to Uncle Scott, moonshining was the only way we had to get hold of any cash money in the old days. No body thought there was anything wrong with it. We owned our land and paid our taxes. We made our own corn. We owned our own stills. And it was nobody's business what we did with our own. Leastwise, that's how we figured.

But I knowed no man could come to a good end moonshining. It's a fact that everybody who stays with it dies a pauper. I've seen it happen time and time again. Perhaps the reason Uncle Scott didn't end up a pauper, or with a bullet in his back, was Parson Frakes came  riding up the mountain trail on horseback into South America 28 years ago.

The people were suspicious at first. But the parson sought out Bill Henderson, whom he knew to be the leader in the valley. I drove with Frakes deep into Pine Branch to see one
 
 

of his mountain friends. We walked onto a ridge to a little two room cabin. In a rocking chair sat a feeble old man, Uncle Harve Sparks. They say he is 109 years old. He looks it. The old man said; You've changed things around here parson. Maybe the man that comes after you will make it even better.

Parson Frakes found the formula for wiping out moonshining in the valley something that neither Prohibition nor Repeal accomplished. His formula; Help the people earn an honest living at something better. Maybe that's the formula that finally will wipe out most of the moonshining through the hills stretching out across the Southern States.

In the center of South America is the Henderson Settlement School, a Methodist institution operated by Rev. H.M. Frakes, a former resident of Indiana. He built it 15 years ago on a 1,200 acre tract much of which was donated by Partin.

The school composed of a cluster of frame and log structures on a wooden hill, has 350 students, many of them orphans drawn from isolated mountain areas in Kentucky and Tennessee. There are 60 boarders, part of whom are cared for all year by the school.

Partin, who says he had fought two or three feuds and had been knocked down and shot at plenty of times. Sheriff in the community. A woodworker and correspondent for a Middlesboro newspaper, Partin recalls that during his 73 years he has been sawmill operator, miner, teacher, blacksmith, mechanic, carpenter and traveler.

Most of the residents of the community are related as the Hendersons and Partins intermarried for years and few outsiders came into the area. The Partins out bred the Hendersons, though and there are lots more of us today, comments the patriarch proudly.

Uncle Scott is now 75 years old, in good health and going strong. Is one of the old timers and says that when he first visited Yellow Creek where Middlesboro is now located that it was made up of cornfields, frog ponds and hog wallow mud holes.