Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  RUTH HOLCOMB: Down on the creek—this was a long time ago—they said a white lady had a Negro baby and she didn’t want people to know she had it.

  Women used to wear these big long hatpins in their hats to keep them from blowing off. So she stuck that hatpin down in the top of that baby’s head and killed it. They tell me now she buried it on the side of the hill down there. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they can hear that baby a-crying. After she killed that baby, she left here. Nobody knows where she went.

  MAELANE HOLCOMB: Back when I was about ten years old, we moved into this big two-story white house right at the edge of Hiawassee. The house had a big set of stair-steps that went upstairs, and there was two big fireplaces up there. That’s where Daddy and Mom was a-sleeping and the bathroom was right under the stairs. Me and my sister, Von, slept in one end of the house, and Daddy and Mama slept upstairs at the other end. We’d been living there about three months when one night they woke me up, woke us all up, and we heard something crying just like a little baby. Daddy looked and he couldn’t find nothing.

  After we heard that, Mama and Daddy got to talking around to people that lived in town and they said nobody wouldn’t live in that house no length of time, that it was haunted. We come to find out that this girl had had this baby and she’d got rid of it. She had cut it up and flushed it down the commode. And that crying had sounded just like it was coming out of the bathroom there under the stairs. We all heard it.

  It scared Mama and Daddy both. It wasn’t but about three days till they packed us up and we moved. That house is tore down now. There just wasn’t nobody that would live in it.

  RUTH HOLCOMB: They said a long time ago this lady and her daughter went to live way up on some mountain somewhere and nobody would carry them any food. They stayed on the mountain and starved to death. The woman died and the daughter got her buried. Then she died, too. They said after she was dead and buried that people could go near that mountain and hear her screaming. Said now since she was dead, they could still hear her screaming. I don’t know why nobody would go near them. Back then they had typhoid fever so they could have had some disease that no one wanted to get.

  Grandma Ada Crone used to tell me “haint tales” when I was little. When we interviewed her, I asked her to tell some of those stories to us again and they follow:

  CAROL RAMEY

  Between Tiger and Clayton, there was a graveyard called the Roane graveyard. Well, they claimed that you could go by there and you’d see a light there at night and it would follow you. It never did try to hurt nobody but it would follow you.

  Well, there was a man—I forget his name now—but he went to see a lady that was called Gertrude Rose. And when he left her house, he told her he was scared that that light would take out after him. She says, “No.” She says, “I’ll fix it where that light won’t hurt you.” She got a lamp and she lit it and she stuck a pin through the wick. She said that would scare off any kind of a ghost or anything that looked like a ghost. Well, he started home and he went [through the graveyard] and the light took out after him. He throwed his lamp down an’ he ran. He fell in a branch an’ he was wet all over an’ skeered to death. When he got to his house he was out of breath, and his wife asked him what in the world was wrong with him. Was he drunk? He said, “No, that light took out after me and I ’uz skeered t’death.” Says, “I’ll never go through that way again in my life.”

  I guess they had some haunted houses [back when I was a girl]. I don’t really know. I know of one they said was haunted. I really don’t know about that though. It was pretty close to where we used to live and we had to turn off the highway goin’ through the woods to our house. And there was a log house there and a man had been killed there. One of my brothers claimed when he came through there that he’d see a man a-walkin’ ’side of him without a head. He had his head in his arms holdin’ it walkin’ along. My brother started running and the man without a head would run too, but he’d carry his head in his arms. And my brother was skeered. He said it skeered him half to death. He tried to run off and leave it but the more he run, the more it would run. If he slowed up and walked, well, it would walk too. But it never did try to hurt him. He said he tried to talk to it, but it wouldn’t say nothin’. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but that’s just a tale that I was told.

  * * *

  Mike Cook, one of the Foxfire staffers, told us a while back that his grandmother, Mrs. Eula Carroll, had some interesting stories of her childhood. Well, we went to Cleveland, Georgia, and taped her and found Mike was right. This story happened when Mrs. Carroll was about sixteen years old.

  We went to a circus in Gainesville—me and my sister and a cousin. My daddy told me if we didn’t get back ’fore dark, I’d have to milk. We had a flat tire down here about Clermont, fifteen miles below Cleveland [Georgia]. It was on a T-model Ford. [It was getting late] and it started mistin’ rain. Then it was dark as pitch [by the time we got home]. Oh, it was so dark, and my daddy was so upset with us.

  PLATE 377 Mrs. Eula Carroll

  He told me I had to go to the barn and milk that cow. He wouldn’t let me take the lantern, and he wouldn’t let me take the collie dog. So I went on down to the barn and opened that huge door. And honey, it was so wide! It had rollers on it and they needed greasing. [They’re like little wheels on the top of the sliding door.] I opened that door and it screaked all the way down. It sounded terrible. Oh, me! It sounded like some kind of haint.

  So I opened that door, and I couldn’t see a thing in the world. I walked down that huge hall to get the cow’s feed. We swept that hall and kept it just like a house. There was what they called a “hack” parked in there. It was like an old-fashioned surrey, except it was larger. It had three seats and you could take out the seats [to haul things in it]. That was what they carried my [mother’s coffin] to the cemetery in. It had curtains that came down and snapped, and it had little isinglass windows in each one. I had to walk by that hack and I had a horror of it.

  Well, I got on by that and went on to this other huge door. I had to open it to go get the cow in out of the pasture on the other side of that barn. I got the cow and I opened that big door again to come back. The cow knew exactly where to go. [The cow and I] got back alongside the hack and something made a loud noise—sounded terrible. [If you’ve ever been around stock, they blow when they’re frightened. She was just blowing.] She wouldn’t move a pace, wouldn’t move a step. And every time I’d move, that awful noise would sound again. And just about the time I’d stop a little bit, and she’d quit blowing, it’d start again. And I was standing there, and I was just praying. I was a Christian and I said, “Oh God, help me.” I knew something was after me, was gonna grab me any minute. I knew it was gonna grab me. So I was praying, “Oh Father, help me. I can’t go any further.” The cow wouldn’t move. She was standing, and she’d back up right against me.

  And all at once I saw this halo of light up in the loft. Beautiful light! And in this light was my mother sitting on a straight chair. And she had on the last dress I ever saw her wear. Beautiful! It was a navy with white dots, and it had lace all in it. She’d made it, and it had long sleeves. She just looked lovely. And her hands—I had hands just like my mama—her hands were slipping down out of her lap. She said, “Eula, don’t be afraid. I’m here.” And I wanted to run up those steps.

  The cow went on in then and went in the right stall, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. I went on to milk the cow, and she stood just as still. Then I went on out, and that old door screaking didn’t bother me a bit. I wasn’t afraid anymore.

  I [started walking toward the house] and Little Brother was sitting up at the other gate with a big raincoat over him, and had a lantern and the dog. If I had hollered, he was gonna run to me. My daddy wouldn’t let him [come to barn with me to milk]. I went on in the house and I told my daddy [what I’d seen in the barn], and he cried. He said he’d never do that again. I said, “I’ll go back tonight if you
want me to.”

  Oh, and the noise … When I went back by that hack [later], I saw that one of those curtains had come down in the back. See, there were three sections, and one had come loose and it had come down and was flopping against that spring seat in there. And you can imagine—well, it was weird. It was just blowing enough to move it and then it’d hit against that seat and then it’d flop. The wind had probably caught it. It had those three tiers of curtains and they came down, and it’d come loose.

  PLATE 378

  I just knew … It looked like I would have known they wouldn’t have made a noise if somebody was planning to get me.

  My mother had been dead around seven years. Now I know that anything that happens to me, my mother’s always there.

  WITCH TALES

  LOLA CANNON: People I knew didn’t believe in witchcraft like it was practiced in Salem, but they did have some certain superstitions, I guess you would call them.

  My grandmother had this funny belief. I think it was amusing to her. I don’t know. She’d make a cross in the dirt with her toe, spit in it, and make a good wish for somebody. Any time she left the house and had to turn back, that was her idea. She would always smile when she did it. I think it was sort of fun to her.

  There was one thing she wouldn’t let us do. That was what she called “spin a chair.” You have probably seen people standing and talking, swing the chair back and forth. She wouldn’t let us do that. Said it was unlucky.

  And she didn’t allow us to walk with one shoe on and one shoe off. That’s a habit I still have today. I just don’t walk with one shoe on and one off.

  People said it was unlucky to set out a cedar tree because when it grew tall enough to cast a shadow the length of a coffin, a member of the family would die. And a great many people wouldn’t set them out.

  And then there was a man named Mr. Page who lived down near the Chattooga River, in the Warwoman district. I just remember going to his house once. I had suffered with a toothache for a long time and he had a toothache remedy.

  There was only one doctor in Clayton back then and children were pretty shy about going to the doctor anyway. Sometimes we’d suffer terribly without letting our parents know.

  My grandfather took me down to Mr. Page’s and he asked me how long my tooth had been hurting, all about it. Then he got up and went to a chest in the back of the house and took out something that looked like a piece of rich pine kindling. He cut a tiny sliver off of it and sharpened it. He said, “Suppose you pick the gum around your tooth till it bleeds.”

  Well, I did. Then he wrapped a piece of cotton around the point of this pick and went back and put it in a box.

  Well, the tooth still hurt me on until we went home. I was terribly discouraged. I thought it was supposed to stop magically. I went to bed that night and slept, and the next morning my tooth wasn’t hurting me! It didn’t hurt anymore.

  Some people would call that witchcraft, I guess.

  David Payne asked his grandfather, John Lee Patterson, if he remembered any scary stories he’d heard or that had happened when he was young and these are two he shared with us.

  This here is the story of back in the olden times around 1820 till about 1875, when they claimed they had witches in this county. Some of my grandparents used to tell me about an old lady who was a witch, and she lived over on Bullard Mountain. Her name was Holly Bullard, and the mountain is just after you cross the bridge on [Route] 76 west going toward Hiawassee. On top of that mountain is where she lived.

  Her and her father were the only ones. Her mother passed away and she became a witch they claim, now. I don’t believe in them myself, but back then they said there was such a thing.

  [My grandfather] told me a tale about her that one time she wanted to buy a pig to fatten from one of my grandfather’s uncles, and he wouldn’t sell one to her, which they didn’t sell for much back then. Three dollars, two dollars, maybe even seventy-five cents. I don’t know. But she said, “They won’t do you no good if you don’t sell me one of them.” Then he run her off, and she said, “Them pigs ain’t going to do you any good. Something is going to happen to them Pigs.”

  So he claims that she went on home, and the pigs quit eating and would run around squealing and getting poorer and poorer until they finally fell over dead—all of them.

  So one day she was a-walking down the road and asked him how was his pigs a-doing, and he said that they all died out because of some disease. Then she told him they died because he wouldn’t sell her one. And then she just went on down the road.

  Then there was another man by the name of Alp Teems, and he was a distant cousin of my granddaddy, and they claimed he could turn himself into anything he wanted to and make you think he was a horse or cow or something or other like that.

  So he had a brother who was all the time trying to kill a deer. There was a deer they claim would cross the river up there from one mountain to the other to eat, and they’d shoot at him and couldn’t never kill him. So his brother was up in a gap on the mountain waiting for this deer one morning just about daylight, and then they said this big ten-point buck came down the ridge right by him. So he picked up his muzzle-loading rifle he had ready to shoot, and when the buck got up on him he shot him point-blank, and the buck jumped up the hill like a rabbit jumping, and then turned around, snorted a time or two, come right down by him, and he already had his gun loaded again and he shot him again.

  He knew he didn’t miss it, and he said the deer just kept hanging around there out in the thicket. Then he remembered his grandmother and grandfather telling him that if he scraped some silver off a coin onto his bullet and loaded it in his gun that he could kill any kind of witches with the next bullet. So he pulled a silver piece out of his pocket and scraped some of that silver off of it and packed it in there with the wadding and loaded his gun, and about that time he raised up and there stood his brother, Alp. And Alp said, “You wouldn’t shoot me, would you, brother?” And his brother said, “No, I was trying to kill a deer and I have already shot it twice, so I thought I’d try this remedy on him.”

  And Alp said, “Aw, that was me pulling a joke on you!”

  A SECOND LOOK AT THE LOG CABIN

  A major chapter in The Foxfire Book was devoted to log cabin building. Since the publication of that book, we have been able to collect additional information that rounds out the log cabin chapter in significant ways. Some of that material follows.

  The first section has to do with the Rothell house, a huge log home which had stood abandoned in an adjacent county for years and was up for sale. It was purchased by our organization and moved to Rabun County; its history and reconstruction were documented in the Summer, 1984, issue of Foxfire. A portion of that material is published here for the benefit of a number of readers of this series of books who will be interested in specific architectural details that were revealed when the home was disassembled.

  Following the Rothell house material are short sections that illustrate a puncheon floor, and the making of a maul and a broadax handle—all things referred to in The Foxfire Book, but not actually documented until now.

  THE ROTHELL HOUSE

  The two primary living sources for the history that we have gathered so far for the Rothell house are Moot Friar of Stephens County and Mitch Anderson of Rabun County. Both were directly connected to the Rothell family.

  Before we moved it, the Rothell house was located in Stephens County on Rothell Road, a gravel road that runs parallel to Toccoa Creek not far from the point where that creek enters the Tugaloo River. Before Stephens County was created on August 18, 1905, the land on which the house sat was in Habersham County (and probably would be in Habersham still had not the residents of Toccoa been so incensed at the defeat of their struggle to make their town the county seat of Habersham, instead of Clarkesville, that they decided to form a county of their own). Prior to the creation of Habersham County in 1818, the Rothell house land was in Franklin County—the county formed
through various treaties with the Cherokee Indians in the late 1700s.

  The last resident of the empty log house was Amanda Rothell, who never married. Her brothers and sisters were named Mae, Lucy, Bruce, Keith, Clifford, and John. Mitch Anderson married Mae, who is now deceased. Lucy was Moot’s mother. Born and raised in the log house, she was ninety-four on the third of September, 1984, but we could not interview her as she is in a nursing home and is very ill.

  From the courthouse records, as far as we can determine, the house was actually built by James Blair who was born in 1761 in Virginia, moved to Franklin County, and by 1805 had been chosen as one of its commissioners. Aside from serving during the Revolutionary War as one of the Kings Mountain Men under Colonel McDowell, Blair was perhaps best known in our part of the country as the surveyor who surveyed the boundary line between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation known as the Blair Line. He was a state senator at his death in 1839.

  Foxfire acquired the house in the summer of 1983. Greg Darnell, one of the students in the program, tells the rest of the story in his introduction to the issue of Foxfire that featured the home:

  A summer crew was hired by Foxfire to move the house. It consisted of Pat Shields as the foreman, and high school students Chris Crawford, Richard Trusty, Scott Shope, and Anthony Wall. Two former students, Clay Smith and Darryl Garland, helped also. Their main job was to remove the siding, remove the roof and debris, number the logs, and move them to Mountain City where they would be put back together. They also took pictures of the steps as they went along. Along with the photos of the house, the first interviews were done with Moot Friar and Mitch Anderson, two men who knew the Rothell family well. This work continued all through the summer.