Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions

by Ralph Lee Smith

  Figure 5.3. Charles N. Prichard. (Courtesy C. E. Turley)

  Victory

  Then, on Saturday, January 25, at 9:30 a.m., I received a call from Mrs. Golda Queen Frazier of Columbus, Ohio. Her son, who lives near Hun-tington, had seen the article and had sent her a copy. “I’m 86 years old,” she said, “and I am the granddaughter of John Wesley Prichard, Charles N. Prichard’s brother. Yes, Charles made dulcimers. First he made them at Bolt’s Fork, Kentucky, and then he made them in Huntington.”

  In her phone call and in a follow-up letter, Mrs. Frazier told me that her mother had always wanted one of her Uncle Charles’s dulcimers but had never been able to obtain one. When she was eight years old (this would be about 1913), Golda and her mother visited a lady named Mrs. Hicks, who owned a Prichard dulcimer. Golda’s mother planned to buy it. Mrs. Hicks was poor, and Golda’s mother was confident that she would sell. Mrs. Hicks played the instrument for her visitors, but she surprised and disappointed Golda’s mother by refusing to sell it. Mrs. Hicks, it might be noted, was not the last poor person of Appalachia to refuse to sell a beloved dulcimer to a visitor who was prepared to pay whatever the owner would ask.

  Soon after calling me and writing to me, Mrs. Frazier spent an afternoon with a lady who was a childhood neighbor and has been a lifelong friend. “After she was here awhile,” Mrs. Frazier wrote to me in a second letter,

  I ask her if she remembered a Mrs. Hicks that lived on her Grandfathers farm. Her answer was Oh yes. On Sat. after our work was all done we kids all went to her house to hear her play the Dulcimer and sing and we would stamp our feet to the music. I said to her, they were so poor, where did get the Dulcimer. She said a Mr. Prichard made Dulcimers and when he found she could play it. He gave her one.

  A New Finding

  The road of discovery soon took a remarkable turn. Bolt’s Fork is located in Lawrence County, Kentucky, a short distance west and south of Hun-tington. I have a friend named Lea Coryell, who is a Library of Congress librarian and is also a fine old-time banjo player. During my search for information on Prichard, I kept current on my findings. Lea searched for additional information in the Library of Congress.

  Looking over the library’s holdings of summaries of old census records for the area, Lea came upon a summary of the 1880 Census of Lawrence County, Kentucky, that had been compiled by a lady named Opal Mae Muncy in 1979. John W. Prichard, Golda Queen Frazier’s grandfather and Charles N. Prichard’s brother, was listed in the census, with his wife and children. The breathtaking information was contained in the entry for John’s occupation. Ms. Muncy had transcribed it as “Dulemore Maker,” immediately followed by a question mark. Checking the microfilm rolls of the original census, Lea found that the census taker’s handwriting was unclear at one point, but that the entry does in fact read either “dulcmore maker” or “dulemore maker.”

  I called Mrs. Frazier and asked if her grandfather John had made dulcimers. She replied no. This, of course, simply means that she had not heard of any such activity on his part. The 1880 census was taken many years before Mrs. Frazier was born. Did the brothers work together? One might suppose that they did, with John and Charles both making instruments and Charles doing the selling.

  This raises another series of interesting questions relating to dulcimer history. In 1871, a 21-year-old farmer named James Edward Thomas, who lived in Letcher County, Kentucky, some 75 roadless mountain miles south of Lawrence County, began to make dulcimers. We have already mentioned him and will tell his story in chapter 6. Did Thomas and either or both of the young Prichards ever meet? Whether they ever met or not, did Thomas see or know about the Prichard dulcimers? Or did John and/or Charles Prich-ard learn about dulcimers from seeing one of Thomas’s? No one knows. This is another secret that the mountains will almost surely keep.

  NORTH CAROLINA

  Now, let us change scenes. In June 1994, I sat on the porch of Ray and Rosa Hicks’s house, on a slope of Beech Mountain near Banner Elk, North Carolina. Both passed away some years after I visited, and I feel fortunate to have met and known them. Ray had been born in the house and lived in it all his life. The house was built in 1914 by his father, Nathan Hicks (1896–1945), with lots of help from his neighbors, and is now the oldest house on Beech Mountain. A year before building the house, Nathan married his cousin, Rena. She was 13 years old.

  By the standards of today’s lifestyles, Ray, Rosa, and their son, Ted, who lived with them, had few needs. They grew vegetables on their mountainside land. The house was heated with wood-burning stoves, and Rosa did all the family cooking on a wood-burning cookstove. Ray and Ted chopped the wood, stacking it in large piles on the porch and near the house. There were some loose boards on the porch floor, but no one was disturbed by it—I was simply warned where not to place the little ladderback chair that was cheerfully brought out for me when I arrived unannounced. Arriving unannounced is the only way you could arrive. They had no phone.

  Ray Hicks was a member of a western North Carolina family that has been supplying field collectors with folk songs and folklore for more than 70 years. Various family members were also makers and/or players of fretless banjos and dulcimers. A book about Ray and the Hicks family, Ray Hicks: Master Storyteller of the Blue Ridge by Robert Isbell, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1996. Much of the book is devoted to material secured during many hours spent with Ray, Rosa, and Ted.

  Ray’s father, Nathan, was a well-known North Carolina dulcimer maker and player. Figure 5.4 shows Nathan holding one of his dulcimers. The pattern of the dulcimer strongly resembles that of the dulcimers made by Charles N. Prichard in West Virginia. The dulcimer exhibits the long reverse curve of the body running from the head to the upper bulge or bout that is a major feature of Prichard’s pattern; Allen Smith called it “sloping shoulders.” By contrast, old dulcimers from the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, shown in figure 6.1 in the next chapter, have “broad shoulders”—that is, a short straight or convex line running from the head to the upper bout. This difference in body patterns is an important key to the geographical origins of old hourglass-shaped dulcimers.

  Figure 5.4. Nathan Hicks holding one of his dulcimers. (Photographer unknown)

  The Stranger from the West

  The West Virginia dulcimer pattern found its way into western North Carolina in the 1880s. Some old West Virginia dulcimers, other than those made by Prichard, share their “sloping shoulders” pattern with his instruments, but only Prichard is known to have made dulcimers in any quantity, and only his instruments achieved significant dissemination. It is an odds-on likelihood that the original dulcimer to enter the Beech Mountain area of North Carolina was made by Prichard.

  According to local legend, the agent of transmission was a mysterious “Stranger from the West.” The name Millard Oliver, born in the area about 1873 and listed in the 1910 U.S. Census as living there, floats through some of the tales, either as the Stranger himself or as having some other unclear relationship to events, but no one really knows. I am grateful to Greg Gunner of Riga, Michigan, who has been patiently researching the records of the ancient and ramified mountain families involved and sending me copies of old records, for some of the information that appears below.

  The most widespread version of the tale is the one that was related to me by Clifford Glenn, son of Leonard Glenn, both leading dulcimer makers of western North Carolina (see chapter 7). Leonard was the grandson and Clifford the great-grandson of Eli Presnell (1845–1939), shown in figure 5.5 with his wife, America.

  According to the tale, the Stranger passed through the region on horseback about 1885 and stopped at the little Beech Mountain home of Eli and America, whom everyone called Americy, and their four-year-old son, Nineveh, known to all as Ninevey. The Stranger requested a night’s lodging, and the kind mountain couple unhesitatingly offered it.

  The traveler unpacked his horse, including a dulcimer that he was carrying. Eli Presnell, who had never seen or he
ard of dulcimers, was fascinated. As the Stranger sat together with the family that evening, it seems likely that he played it for them. With the Stranger’s permission, Presnell examined the instrument and made a tracing of it.

  Dulcimer Making Takes Root in North Carolina

  Eli Presnell made at least one dulcimer from his tracing of the Stranger’s instrument and may have made two or three. The instrument or instruments made by Presnell were the prototypes for the spread of dulcimer making throughout the Watauga area of western North Carolina. It is not clear which makers may have seen a dulcimer made by Presnell or one made by someone else, but the entire tradition reflects the design of instruments made by Charles N. Prichard of West Virginia.

  Figure 5.5. Eli Presnell (1845–1937) and his wife, America (1844–1936), who offered a night’s lodging to “the Stranger from the West” when he passed through the Beech Mountain area in 1885. (Courtesy Clifford and Maybelle Glenn)

  According to reports, one person who may have owned a dulcimer made by Eli Presnell is a farmer named Roosevelt Presnell (1902–1992). Whether or not he owned a dulcimer made by Eli, Roosevelt himself made several instruments, none of which have survived. Roosevelt passed on his instrument-making skill and his design to his son, James Miles Presnell (1934– ), whose instrument making extended into the 21st century. Another maker was a man named Iris Presnell, Leonard Glenn’s first cousin. Eli Presnell was their common grandfather.

  Eli made a dulcimer for his son, Ninevey, which, according to one story, Ninevey used as a sled! Whether or not that is true, it is definitely true that Nineveh Presnell lived all his life in the house that had been owned by his parents, that he kept the dulcimer his father had made all his life, and that he often sat on his porch playing it. (See appendix E.) When the instrument needed repairs, Leonard Glenn fixed it and traced its pattern, which he and Clifford used for making their own dulcimers.

  When Nineveh died in 1965 at age 83, the dulcimer passed to his granddaughter, Mrs. Ida Harmon of Boone. It is shown in figure 5.6. The pattern and measurements of this instrument do not perfectly duplicate those of Prichard’s dulcimers, but they are close. Dulcimers made by Nathan Hicks and other members of the Hicks family in the Beech Mountain area also reflect the West Virginia/Eli Presnell “sloping shoulders” pattern. Measurements of all these instruments appear in appendix B, where they can be compared.

  The Hicks Family

  The progenitor of the Hicks mountain clan was David Hicks, dates of birth and death unknown, who moved to the Watauga River wilderness in what is now Watauga County, western North Carolina, before or during the Revolutionary War. The earliest written reference to him is in local tax records for 1778. David had two sons—Samuel, born in 1753, and David, born in 1756—and three daughters. David Jr. had 14 children; his family moved to Indiana in 1817. Samuel, known in family lore as “Big Sammy,” had five sons and four daughters. These children were the ancestors of today’s western North Carolina Hicks families.

  Figure 5.6. Dulcimer made by Eli Presnell in the 1880s, based on his tracing of the instrument carried by the Stranger from the West. The head is a replacement made by Leonard Glenn in the 1950s.

  One of Big Sammy’s sons was Samuel II or “Little Sammy,” born sometime between 1798 and 1800, date of death unknown. Little Sammy had four sons, two of whom were killed in the Civil War. One of the other sons, Andrew, had a son named Samuel, known as “Sammy III” (1848–1929).

  With Sammy III’s sons, we at last arrive at dulcimer makers. This generation became adults after the Stranger passed through and Eli Presnell had made one or more dulcimers. Two of these maker/players were John Benjamin “Ben” Hicks (1870–1945) and Roby Hicks (1882–1957). Their brother, James Brownlow (1872–1949), is also reported to have made one or more dulcimers, but no instruments survive.

  In the late 1970s, researcher Lucy Long did extensive interviews with Hicks family members and other local people as part of her research for a Ph.D. thesis on the dulcimer in western North Carolina. The thesis is entitled “The Negotiation of Tradition: Collectors, Community, and the Appalachian Dulcimer in Beech Mountain, North Carolina.” Among the information that Long sought was anything that might shed light on the early history of the dulcimer in the area after Eli Presnell made his instruments. Long uncovered some old evidence regarding Roby Hicks and his wife, Buena Vista, known as “Buny.”

  Roby and Buny were married when Roby was 15 and Buny was 13. Both said in independent interviews that when Buny was 11, 13-year-old Roby came courting, carrying a dulcimer, which he showed her how to play. This would have been around 1898–1899, about 15 years after the Stranger from the West passed through. Unfortunately, this instrument of Roby’s youth has not survived, nor has any information about who might have made it.

  The only dulcimer definitely made by Roby Hicks that I was able to locate was made in 1932. The instrument closely follows the Presnell/West Virginia “sloping shoulders” pattern.

  Some Old Dulcimers That Are Hiding

  Apart from the above information about Roby and Buena Vista Hicks, little is known about the history of the dulcimer in western North Carolina between the time that Eli Presnell made his first instrument and the 1930s. Leonard Glenn told me that a local man named Mac Presnell brought an old dulcimer to him many years ago to be repaired, but Mac is now deceased and the whereabouts of the dulcimer are unknown. Ray Hicks said in the early 1990s that, some 18 to 20 years previously, a member of the Farthing family, another large mountain clan, brought an hourglass-shaped dulcimer to him whose top and bottom were still joined by the end blocks but whose “hoops”—sides—were missing. The instrument had no sound holes. Ray’s brother Floyd replaced the sides and cut heart-shaped sound holes in the top. Unfortunately, the owner of that instrument is also deceased, and the dulcimer has disappeared.

  Ben Hicks and His Children

  Roby Hicks’s older brother Ben is another key figure, as much for who he taught and influenced as for his own work. The Hicks family genealogy, The Hicks Families of Western North Carolina (Watauga River Lines), by John Henry Hicks, Mattie Hicks, and Barnabas B. Hicks, says, “Ben, as he was called, made a living by farming and gathering herbs. He was a talented woodworker and increased his income from the sale of wooden spoons, bowls, three-pronged toasting forks and dulcimers.”

  Edd Presnell, a transitional dulcimer maker who will be described in chapter 7, married Nettie Hicks, who was Ben’s daughter. Presnell told me that Ben Hicks made a number of dulcimers; Presnell’s estimate at different times ranged from “a few” to “many.” The instrument shown in figure 5.7 is the only one that has thus far been recovered. It was made by Ben as a wedding present for Edd and Nettie, who were married in 1936.

  The reverse curve from the head to the upper bout shows it to be one more progeny of the instrument carried by the Stranger from the West. But, in typical mountain fashion, Hicks has freely modified the old pattern, making it shorter, higher, and chunkier and eliminating the overlap of the top and bottom panels over the sides.

  As a child in the 1920s, Nettie learned to play from her father, Ben, and she became one of the finest traditional players. Presnell himself learned to make dulcimers by copying the instrument made by Ben Hicks that is shown here.

  Nathan Hicks

  Ben Hicks also had a son, Nathan, who was making dulcimers by the 1920s. It is not clear that he received his pattern from his father, however. His instruments closely resemble his Uncle Roby’s 1932 dulcimer. In fact, Nathan and Roby often worked together, and at this remove in time it may not always be possible to know which of them made what.

  Figure 5.7. Dulcimer made by Ben Hicks, no later than 1935. The pegs are replacements made by Edd Presnell.

  There was no market for dulcimers in Nathan and Roby’s world. However, in the late 1930s, word of Nathan’s dulcimer-making was carried outside Appalachia by folk song collectors Maurice Matteson and Frank and Anne Warner. Nathan began to sell a moderate number of du
lcimers to people in New York, and Roby joined him to create a little dulcimer enterprise. Nathan charged his customers $5 for the instruments. Roby made some and sold them to Nathan for $3, giving Nathan a $2 profit. Edd Presnell also made a few instruments for Nathan. Everybody was happy, including, undoubtedly, the customers.

  A similar set of circumstances occurred later when Frank Profitt, who was Nathan Hicks’s son-in-law, achieved national recognition as a folk-singer. Profitt, who had more orders for dulcimers than he could fill, commissioned Leonard Glenn to make some for him, which he sold as Profitt dulcimers. Such joint efforts appear to reflect a culture in which a good product was often seen as more important than the exact way in which it was produced or the person who produced it.

  Once, Nathan shipped two dulcimers to New York buyers. Coy Rominger, the postal rider, carried them down the mountain by horseback in his mail sacks. When the instruments arrived in New York, both were broken and were returned by the customers. The post office paid Nathan $5 each for them, which was the amount for which they were insured. Roby went to work on the instruments and fixed them up as good as new. Once again the dulcimers journeyed down the mountain in Rominger’s mail sacks. This time they arrived in New York intact, and the customers happily dispatched their checks!