Beth Durham's Blog, page 16
June 27, 2019
Greenwood Biscuits
Biscuits are a scrumptious southern delicacy. The ability to create them golden brown, light and fluffy is a mark of great culinary success. Like all bread-y recipes, biscuits are impacted by a lot of factors from barometric pressure to freshness of leaven, and certainly the nuances of the oven.
Lots of folks on the mountain well remember their grandmothers and even their mothers cooking on a wood stove. Well baking on a wood stove is nothing short of an art form! And I guess a wood stov...
June 20, 2019
Good News, Old News
Here’s an excerpt from the book I’m working on now…
As Katherine Ingle busied herself boiling coffee and cutting big slices of last night’s cake, Gracie pulled a tattered newspaper to her. News was often hard to come by on the mountain and papers were read and shared until the print was practically worn from the pages. Once illegible, the paper found additional uses around the farm. The date on this paper was nearly a month ago…
Photo courtesy of www.
I wrote about the newspaper in that...
Good News, Old NewsHere’s an excerpt from the book I’m wo...
Good News, Old News
Here’s an excerpt from the book I’m working on now…
As Katherine Ingle busied herself boiling coffee and cutting big slices of last night’s cake, Gracie pulled a tattered newspaper to her. News was often hard to come by on the mountain and papers were read and shared until the print was practically worn from the pages. Once illegible, the paper found additional uses around the farm. The date on this paper was nearly a month ago…
Photo courtesy of www.
I wrote about the...
June 13, 2019
The Natchez Trace
This will be our final installment from Harry Lane’s
Tennessee Memories
. I sure hope you’ve enjoyed it as I have certainly loved sharing it with you.
One of the most famous highways in U.S. history is the Natchez Trace, that extended from Nashville, Tennessee across the western part of the state, thence across the northwestern tip of Alabama and across the heart of Mississippi to a terminus at Natchez, on the Mississippi River. The Natchez Trace was the oldest land route of significance in...
June 6, 2019
The Trail of Tears and Nancy Ward
Text and Artwork from Harry Lane’s
Tennessee Memories
One of the most unhappy stories in Tennessee history involves the removal of Cherokees from East Tennessee by the U.S. Army in 1838, to areas west of the Mississippi River – Oklahoma in particular. The questionable Treaty of New Echota of 1835 was the legal basis for white claims to Cherokee land, and for the eventual removals of the Indians three years later.
Despite spirited legal opposition by Chief John Ross, other Cherokees, and by s...
May 30, 2019
The Cherokee in Tennessee
From Harry Lane’s Tennessee Memories
The Cherokees were the “mountaineers” of the southeastern Indian tribes. Their nation extended from Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina northward through the eastern part of Tennessee, western North Carolina, and Virginia as far northward as West Virginia. The boundaries of their nation were vague, and this was one difficulty in the Cherokees’ attempts to oppose white settlement in their territory.
This tribe’s subsistence involved hunting, gathering, a...
May 23, 2019
The Coves of East Tennessee and Gold in Coker Creek
We’ve talked
here
before about Gold in Tennessee - but Mr. Lane’s work revealed a new location for me - there’s just no telin’ what’s in our moutains!
The northwest side of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee displays the features known as coves. These are basins on that side of the mountains that have resulted from special geological circumstances. Here, old faults (cracks in the earth’s crust, with movement along the cracks) onto rocks of younger age. The total overthrust movement was as...
Part 2 of Those Wild Tennessee Place Names
From Harry Lane’s Tennessee Memories , this article is lengthy so I’m only sharing excerpts and have broken those into 2 weeks.
The tools of everyday life are honored in Tennessee place names. The Sawteeth, ridges in The Great Smokies of Sevier County, are an example. Tilthammer Shoals in Sullivan County recalls the heavy drop hammers of the many forges that once were numerous on the landscape. …Whetstone Mountain in Morgan County and Grindstone Hollow in Coffee County recall the times, no...
May 16, 2019
Part 2 of Those Wild Tennessee Place Names!
From Harry Lane’s Tennessee Memories , this article is lengthy so I’m only sharing excerpts and have broken those into 2 weeks.
The tools of everyday life are honored in Tennessee place names. The Sawteeth, ridges in The Great Smokies of Sevier County, are an example. Tilthammer Shoals in Sullivan County recalls the heavy drop hammers of the many forges that once were numerous on the landscape. …Whetstone Mountain in Morgan County and Grindstone Hollow in Coffee County recall the times, no...
May 9, 2019
Those Wild Tennessee Place Names!
Part 1
From Harry Lane’s Tennessee Memories , this article is lengthy so I’m sharing excerpts this week and next.
All of the artwork in Tennessee Memories are original creations by Mr. Harry Lane.
A careful look through a volume of place-names that actually appear on Tennessee maps, reals a large number of names that are fascinating, for various reason: some are very beautiful, many are hilarious, others are puzzling, still others reveal something significant in the history of the state. Man...
