"Don't Cry For Us J. D. Vance" An Online Poetry Reading And Discussion Of Life in Appalachia

 The link immediately below will take you to the poetry reading in the title.  It is well worth your time and effort.  

 https://uacvoice.org/dont-cry-for-us-j-d-vance-a-reading-by-ohio-appalachian-authors/

On December 3, 2020, at 7pm, former Cincinnati Poet Laureate Pauletta Hansel headlined and moderated a group poetry reading on Facebook which was cosponsored by the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, Downbound Books, and West Virginia University Press.  The event featured readings by Hansel, Gregory Kornbluh of Downbound Books (co-host), Pauletta Hansel of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition (co-host and author), and Omope Carter Daboiku, Kari Gunter Seymour, Richard Hague, Michael Henson, Michael Maloney, Dale Marie Prenatt, Bonnie Proudfoot and Sherry Cook Stanforth (authors).  Each of the authors read at least one of their works and a few read more of their writing.  The title of the event, "Don't Cry For Us J. D. Vance", should be self explanatory for anyone with a solid awareness of current issues related to Appalachia and the Appalachian Studies movement.  I have added my own opinion of Vance and his scurrilous work at these two links.  In addition to taking the time to watch the recorded version of the Cincinatti reading by the authors above, I would suggest to everyone that you also read the books "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds To Hillbilly Elegy", "The United States of Appalachia" by Jeff Biggers, and "Appalachian Values" by Loyal Jones which I consider to be the most important book for any person to read who hopes to come to understand Appalachia and Appalachian Culture.  In fact, "Appalachian Values" is the first book I ever recommend to anyone who knows little about Appalachia and expresses a desire to understand our homeland and our culture.  

My wife Candice and I watched the reading we are discussing here in its live version and enjoyed it greatly.  Dale Marie Prenatt read her powerful poem about Buffalo Creek in Logan County West Virginia which is her childhood home and the destruction of the communities there by a coal company generated flood was actually experienced by her mother, Gail Amburgy, her maternal grandparents, and most of her maternal extended family.  It is one of my personal favorites from the reading and, in some ways it is personal to me also, since I worked on Buffalo Creek a great deal as a traveling salesman a few years after the disaster and met many of the survivors during that time.  My other personal favorite from the reading was the work of Omope Carter Daboiku, an African American poet originally from the Ironton, Ohio, area.  She is a refreshing and powerful voice of those African American natives of Appalachia who sometimes refer to themselves as Afrilachians although I do not know that Ms. Daboiku takes that position since we have never met or conversed by any means electronic or otherwise.  But based on hearing her read a couple of her highly artistic and expressive poems, I can assure you that I will learn more about her and her work.  

Please consider following the link above to the recorded version of the reading and partake of the entire presentation.  You will find it well worth the time.  

Displaced Appalachian Relatives In The Industrial Midwest

My wife, Candice, and I have just returned from a long weekend of visiting some of my urban Appalachian relatives in Kendallville, Indiana.  Specifically, we went to visit my 96 year old half sister, Lucy Hicks Moore, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law, Ollie and Jeannie Shepherd.  Lucy is recuperating from her second broken hip in the past several years. That, in and of itself, is amazing in a person of such advanced age.  She is back home, not walking, but doing some physical therapy, managing to crack a few jokes, and complaining about not being able to do any work.  And for those of you who ask what work  can a woman that age do, she spent much of last winter tacking about a dozen homemade quilts to give to various members of her family. She didn't sew the quilts.  Jeannie did the sewing and Lucy put the string tacking in all of them.  She also did a few small lap quilts for what she referred to as "the old people in the nursing home". 

While I was there, I also got to see my niece, Doris "Sissie" Hicks Lawson, from Sturgis, Michigan, who gave me a copy of the 2010 Minutes of the Northern New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptists.  I was particularly glad to see this copy since it contains one of the finest comments about the influence of Appalachian culture on the industrial north and one particular individual that I have ever seen.  In the obituary of Doy Riffle, the author, whose name I cannot determine, makes the following disclosure about his personal response to Appalachian culture:

I came here from Rhode Island 27 years ago and drove the road outside this very church on my first trip to Ohio as I started the courtship of my wife, one of Uncle Doy's nieces Samantha.  I walked into a new relationship, a new family, very different people, and a very new culture to me...And a whole new life that over the years has continued to broaden my understanding of people, family relationships, and love.  Sam and I married 25 years ago this July 28th in this very church and I married not only the love of my life but into a family, history and culture that I now treasure as my very own. (Obituary of Doy Riffel-Author Unknown--Minutes of the Fifty-Third Session of the Northern New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ--2010)

I have noticed for many years the influences Appalachian culture has had on individuals, family, communities, and institutions in the industrial north in the geographic area of the Appalachian migration which followed World War II.  Obviously, the best literary depiction of this phenomenon is "The Dollmaker" by Harriette Arnow.  But others have written about it and continue to do so.  Loyal Jones makes brief mention of it in his classic work, "Appalachian Values".  He speaks of how northern plant managers struggled to deal with the close knit nature of Appalachian families at times when plant workers would take time off to come back home for the funerals of relatives other than first level kin. 

In the area of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois, the Northern New Salem Association has more than 20 churches and about 550 members.  They also have one church each in northern Kentucky and Florida. Additionally, a few of the churches in the New Salem Association also are in northern states.  As with any other area in which the Old Regular Baptists practice, the circle of cultural and religious influence is much wider than the reported membership numbers.  Most members do not join the church until they are at least middle aged and in most Old Regular Baptist families one person might be a baptized member of the church while several more attend services on at least an irregular basis without ever being baptized or joining the church.  This leads to a significant expansion of the area of cultural and religious influence.  It is also worthy of note that it was communion weekend at the Little Flossie Church of the Old Regular Baptists that weekend.  This was the reason my niece had driven from Sturgis to Kendallville.  I did not attend church services that weekend and was unaware that it was communion at the church which was actually co-founded by and named for another of my half-sisters, Flossie Hicks Wicker, who passed away about forty years ago.  The experience of attending communion services in an Old Regular Baptist Church is well worth the time for anyone who is interested in Appalachian culture and religion. The Old Regular Baptists practice closed communion, meaning the actual communion event is open only to baptized members of the church.  But anyone is always welcome at an Old Regular Baptist service.  I would recommend that attendees who have never been in an Old Regular Baptist church dress conservatively with women wearing dresses and men in shirts with sleeves although they don't have to be long sleeves. The communion service will include the distribution of the bread and non-alcoholic grape juice since Old Regular Baptists never consume alcohol.  It will also include foot washing which rarely occurs in churches today.  Male members wash the feet of other male members and female members wash the feet of other female members.  Everyone whom I have heard talk of participating in foot washing describes it as a humbling experience. Its purpose is generally conceded to be an attempt to teach humility and to bring the believers closer to understanding the state of mind of Jesus and the apostles just prior to the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Even for an observer, the practice of foot washing is a moving experience.

The last time I actually attended an Old Regular Baptist service was at Little Bethlehem Church on Carr Creek in Knott County about three years ago.  I was doing research for a staff training I was scheduled to provide for a human services organization in Marietta, Ohio, and Rev. Bob Amburgey was the moderator of that church  at the time.  He graciously invited me to come to church on the evening they were baking the bread for their communion service the next day and also loaned me a large collection of Minutes from several different Regular Baptist Associations.  The service was brief but very moving and included the blessing of the ingredients to make the bread. That kind of welcoming kindness is what I expect when I go to an Old Regular Baptist Church. I wish I had known in advance it was communion at the Little Flossie while I was in Kendallville.  For those of you who know nothing about the Old Regular Baptists, Howard Dorgan wrote a very good book about them called "The Old Regular Baptists of Central Appalachia: Brothers And Sisters In Hope".  He also wrote about them in another book called "Giving Glory To God In Appalachia: Worship Practices Of Six Baptist Subdenominations". Any of his books on Appalachian Religion are well worth reading. 

There are also churches in several other primarily Appalachian denominations such as the United Baptists, Primitive Baptists, and other less prominent denominations in the industrial north. I know of at least three serpent handling congregations in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, area which were founded and are now primarily attended by members of the displaced Appalachian community.  At least one of the founders of the largest of those churches was also a significant political force in the Fort Wayne area for many years.  He owned several businesses in the city and often acted as a negotiator or go between in interactions between Appalachians and city hall.  This type of influence in the community as a whole is exercised on a regular basis throughout the industrial north.  Very rarely today, do displaced Appalachians take the quiet, shadowed existence characterized by Gertie Nevels in "The Dollmaker".

On a regular basis when I visit native Appalachians in the industrial north, I see them practicing beliefs, folkways, and cultural traditions which sprang up in the hills and valleys of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.  I know hundreds of displaced Appalachians who tend a garden every year even if it is a corner of a small yard in the middle of a city. Or it might be one stand of bees on top of a garage. They hunt, fish, can, freeze, and dry their catches.  They make and sell quilts, homemade chairs, honey, sorghum, and dozens of other products whose roots are in Appalachia. They often keep bees and raise their own pork and beef.  They practice self sufficiency to a degree that is uncommon in the dominant industrial culture. Very few minority cultures manage to resist total assimilation when they are exposed for decades to a dominant local culture. In general, minority cultures might manage to hang on to a few key elements of their cultural life but assimilate to a degree that individuals are nearly impossible to differentiate from citizens of the dominant culture.  But in many of the factory towns of the north, the Appalachian culture has thriven and nearly become dominant. 

A few years ago, I was in Kendallville for the funeral of my sister-in-law, Hattie Hicks, and stopped in the South Side Market for a Coke and a snack.  I still had my suit on from the church service and the clerk, with a pronounced local, northern Indiana accent said, "I bet you just came from Hattie's funeral."  Even though her ancestry for several generations was rooted in Indiana, she had been influenced enough by Appalachian culture that she paid attention to her Appalachian neighbors and knew who was being buried that day.  Appalachian accents are accepted in much of the north and many Appalachians refuse to lose theirs.  More noteworthy is the fact that they do not seem to face a great deal of pressure to conform and alter their accent.  Churches spring up and survive of the same denominations and beliefs that stand in Appalachia.  Funeral directors have made adjustments to adhere to idiosyncrasies of Appalachian burial practices.  Foods, folkways, folk songs, bluegrass music, Southern Gospel, gravelling for catfish, and dozens of other primarily Appalachian practices survive in the towns where Appalachians work. 

Ollie Shepherd, his daughter Tiffany, two of her friends, and me all went on Saturday morning to the Wolf Swap Meet just north of Albion, Indiana.  I saw people from all over Appalachia mixed in with the local Amish population.  They were trading knives, hunting dogs, produce, and livestock in a manner very similar to that at the Paintsville Livestock Market or the Bull Creek Flea Market. I was wearing a University of Kentucky basketball shirt and a vendor commented that if  "he is a Kentucky fan he must be all right." It turned out he was from Morehead, Kentucky.  I noticed that for many of the vendors and customers it was a time to socialize and catch up on recent events.  People interacted to a degree that is generally uncommon in the north.  I felt at home and, I am sure, so did most of them.  These kinds of events happen on nearly a daily basis in towns all over the Midwest and industrial north wherever Appalachians have congregated.  It was also common in the early days of the Great Migration for natives of a particular area to induce their relatives and friends to move to the same town and, often, to work in the same factory.  Many small towns in the industrial north have Appalachian populations which are primarily rooted in one county or small geographic area in Appalachia. 

The Family Cemetery And Burial Practices In Appalachia

The Family Cemetery

The family cemetery in Appalachia has played an important role in social life, local history, and culture since Daniel Boone led the earliest settlers through the Cumberland Gap.  The early settlers were coming into a country in which there were no roads, no white or European presence, and no prior history by their own kind of people.  It was a rugged and dangerous environment.  In a very short time, accidents, child birth, Indian warfare, and disease began to take their toll.  Customs and sanitary norms of the time required that the dead be buried immediately.  A certain percentage of those deaths took place even before the settlers were near an area where they intended to stay long term.  In those cases, the dead were simply buried in the next available bit of ground where it was soft enough to dig. Many of those trail side graves have been lost for centuries. At times of Indian warfare, it was also not unknown for the settlers to make attempts to conceal the graves of their dead.  They generally would have done this for two reasons: 1) to conceal losses of able bodied fighters from the enemy; and, 2) due to generally unfounded fears of desecration of the graves.  But after settlers had found the piece of land they intended to call home, they buried their dead on their own land.  A small piece of land would be chosen at the time the need first arose.  The first grave would be dug and that spot would be designated the family cemetery for the Browns, or White's, or Hicks'. These first and most eventual graveyards in Appalachia were usually located on a piece of high ground, often with a good view of the surrounding area.  It was often a favorite spot of the head of the household. There was also a common belief that on resurrection morning the dead in Christ would arise with the first rays of the morning sun.  The higher elevations usually got morning sunshine earlier than low lying ground.  It was also common for graves to be placed with the face of the dead toward the sunrise.

Photo of A Family Graveyard

 My maternal grandfather, Woots Hicks, chose the site for one of the graveyards my relatives are buried in when a great-grandchild died of SIDS.  It was a high spot in his cow pasture overlooking the home and garden.  It was also a spot he often stopped to rest when he was working in the fields.  In time, a fence might be added.  Some form of marker was generally made for the graves in the early cemeteries, usually a local sandstone with rude carving.  Sometimes, the marker was a piece of wood with equally rude carving or wood burning with a hot poker.  And, with a certainty, more graves would be added to the location.  Even in the last few years, I have known of families who designated a piece of land near the house in Eastern Kentucky or Southern West Virginia as a graveyard.  I know of one near a small church in Western North Carolina.  I have seen them in Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.  One of my favorites in West Virginia is the Hatfield Cemetery in Logan County which contains the graves of Devil Anse Hatfield and most of the other members of the family from the days of the Hatfied-McCoy feud. 

Woots Hicks Cemetery Photo By Roger D. Hicks

Decoration was not common on graves for many years after settlement began.  The earliest form of decoration was usually some form of flowering tree or plant. Red buds and dogwoods were common.  I have found mention in two different writers work of asparagus being used to mark and decorate graves.  Both Cratis Williams and Verna Mae Slone mention the use of what they say the locals called "spar grass" to decorate graves. I have never found asparagus on a cemetery.  But I have helped a cousin plant some on one which is located on a farm he owns in Lawrence County Kentucky since I learned of the practice.  Cratis Williams was writing primarily about Lawrence County.  Slone was writing about Knott County. The best book about Appalachian burial customs is "Death And Dying In Central Appalachia" by James K. Crissman.  He covers burial practices from settlement to modern times. He does an especially good job of documenting changes in trends and practices over time.  "Coal Camp Kids: Coming Up Hard And Making It" by Barbara Ford Ritch has a large chapter on burial practices with many good photos of graves, caskets, graveyards, and corpses. It is an oral history about the coal camps near where I was born around Wayland, Kentucky. The book has excellent recording of first person oral history and a fine collection of photos on many subjects which make up for what it lacks in expository writing. 

 The current practice of placing multitudinous plastic flowers on graves came about after the end of WW II.  It began initially with handmade flowers using wire and crepe paper.  My sister and I made some once to put on the grave of an elderly alcoholic neighbor who died without family in a house fire.  But today it is common to see relatives of the deceased spend large sums of money, which they often cannot afford, to put extravagant displays on graves.  They often seem to feel that the flowers at Memorial Day proves their continued love and devotion for the dead.  I was raised to believe and still practice the belief that a far more fitting memorial for the dead is the effort to live an exemplary and admirable life of which the deceased could be proud.  I also know of a few occasions in modern times where families have turned graves into veritable shrines to the deceased.  I recently observed a case where a family spent more than fifty thousand dollars for marble and a building to cover the grave of a young person killed in a car wreck.  I have also seen one other incident in which a mother spent extravagantly to decorate and memorialize the grave of a son who committed suicide.  In both cases, the expenditure appears to be a manifestation of the inability to fully process grief upon the early death of a cherished child. 

 At some point, shortly after the original settlement, the use of grave houses became common.  A grave house is a simple wooden or stone roof placed over the grave to protect it from the elements and, in those earliest times, wild animals which might attempt to dig out the unembalmed body.  Grave houses are uncommon today.  I know of one site in Johnson County Kentucky right beside US 23 not far from the Lawrence County line where a grave house still exists. A modern variation of the grave house is the use of a large slab of granite or marble to cover the entire grave.  These are usually heavily engraved. It is also becoming more common today for grave markers to be decorated with laser generated images of the deceased.  The most memorable use of a marble grave cover I have ever seen was in a small cemetery in West Central Georgia not far from Holy Trinity, Alabama.  It was the grave of a young boy who had died in a car wreck and was very extravagantly carved prior to the days of laser images. It also fits my earlier statement about such practices often being a response to the early death of a cherished child.  One cemetery near where I grew up in Knott County Kentucky has, perhaps, its earliest grave simply outlined with hand cut sandstones about eight inches square and two or three feet long marking the entire outline of the grave.  No one I know in that community knows who the occupant of the grave is.  But that grave has been protected for the entire time it has been there and a cemetery with more than a hundred graves has sprung up around it.  That particular cemetery is more a community cemetery than a family location.  In fact, members of a dozen or more unrelated families, including a few of my own relatives, are buried in that cemetery.

Appalachian Grave House Photographer Unknown

That cemetery also, for many years had a covered but open sided shelter with a pulpit and seating for church services which usually occur on Memorial Day or, as it colloquially known, Decoration Day. At times in good weather, funerals might have been held in such a "stand" as they were known.  The Old Regular Baptist Church, The Primitive Baptist Church, and a few other regional denominations still adhere to the practice of Memorial Meetings.  This practice is an outgrowth of the circuit rider tradition which followed the early settlers. They are often accompanied by dinner on the grounds or in the home of a nearby member of a family represented in the cemetery.  In the 17th and 18th centuries, settlements were widely dispersed, communities were small at best, and ministers were few and far between.  It was common at that time for burials to take place as soon as possible with whomever was nearby in attendance.  Someone would say a few words, deliver a prayer, a song or two might be sung, and if anyone present was literate, a few Bible verses would be read.  Then at the next visit of the circuit riding preacher, a formal service would be held for anyone who had died and been buried since his last visit.  This circuit riding practice is also tied to the once monthly Saturday and Sunday meetings of the Old Regular Baptists and a few other denominations. 

The family cemetery is less common today but, as I noted earlier, new ones still periodically spring up.  At times, they come to negatively effect the price of land when it becomes necessary for a family to sell.  I also know of at least one case in Menifee County Kentucky where new land owners have made attempts to keep relatives of people buried in a family cemetery from visiting the graves.  But, in general, most new land owners have the common decency to act more mature and allow free passage to and from cemeteries.  Usually, graveyards are excepted out of deeds along with a right of way to the site.  I have also known of one recent case in Pike County Kentucky in which an old casket believed to be from the early twentieth century was found by a land owner dumped by party or parties unknown on his property.  The embalmed body of a woman was in the casket according to press reports.  Apparently, the casket had been removed from land by a landowner or mining company and dumped on the land of the man who discovered it. His land was described in press reports as a likely dumping site because of its proximity to a paved road and lack of close neighbors.  I have never seen a report that the deceased woman or the individuals who violated her original grave site and abused her corpse were ever identified or the site of her original grave ever found.  It is likely that a relatively new land owner simply decided they no longer wanted a grave on their land.  This is a rare occurrence anywhere in Appalachia although there have been numerous documented incidents in which strip mining enterprises simply bulldozed over existing and generally unused graveyards.  

Grave digging and burial practices have changed over the last half century. I was actually grown before I ever knew of anyone being paid to dig a grave and I was nearly that old before I knew of anyone paying for a burial site.  I was nearly forty before anyone in my family was ever cremated.  Up until about the 1980's in most of Appalachia it was the rule that friends and neighbors dug graves.  I remember one old man who lived not far from us who always farmed and logged and never held "a public job".  When anyone within walking distance of his house died, he would appear the next morning at the home carrying his tools and volunteer to  help dig the grave.  It was his chosen form of community service and he was dedicated to it until he was too frail to carry his tools.  I feel safe to say that he alone helped dig several hundred graves in his lifetime.  He was also a perfectionist about grave digging and felt all four walls of the grave should be smooth, level, and unblemished.  He, and most of the people I grew up around, felt that digging the grave was the last act of respect you could show the dead and they deserved to get the best. I have seen him actually use clay or mud to fill in a small hole in the side of a grave where a stone came out and left an imperfection.  When my half-brother, Curtis  Hicks, was buried several years ago in Kendallville, Indiana, I thought of that old man at my brother's grave site.  The grave, in a public commercial cemetery, had been dug with a backhoe and one side had fallen in leaving, perhaps, the worst looking grave I have ever seen.

 It was common for several men and boys to dig graves in Appalachia taking turns and working for brief spells.  The family of the dead would supply drinking water, soft drinks, and lunch.  That was all anyone expected or got for digging a grave.  At the time of the actual burial, friends and family members would fill in the grave after the casket was lowered into the ground.  I was also nearly grown before I saw funeral home staff allowed to fill in a grave.  Today, almost no one digs or fills in a grave for a friend or a family member except in rare occasions where a family cannot afford the charge for grave digging.  During my childhood, it was still common for many people to be buried in simple pine coffins without a burial vault.  Such graves were dug in a unique manner due to the fact that the cheap wooden coffins were prone to collapse quickly after burial leaving a grave with a sunken surface of several inches to as much as two feet at times.  Such graves were dug wider in the top half and more narrow at the bottom.  An earthen vault was constructed in this manner which had edges that were offset from the upper opening by about four to six inches on all four sides.  After the casket was lowered into the grave, precut rough oak lumber of exactly the width of the grave was laid over the casket on the offset to protect the casket and decrease the propensity for sinking.  It was also common for most cemeteries of any size to have a pile of unused dirt just outside the fence for use in sunken graves. 

It was not uncommon for children in Appalachia to play on cemeteries; and, in those days, vandalism was not common as it is today.  Once several of us were playing hide and seek on a local cemetery after dark and there was one grave which was sunken to a considerable depth.  As we went to hide, I happened to be looking directly at another boy who was slipping along behind tombstones looking for a hiding place.  Suddenly he dropped totally and instantaneously out of sight.  He had stepped into the sunken grave without seeing it.  The tombstone was between me and him so I had no idea what had happened. He and I both screamed and he clawed his way out of the grave and took off running toward the gate.  However, he never even opened the gate.  He jumped the fence and kept on running straight home.  None of us who were chasing him and yelling could get him to stop.  The game of hide and seek was broken up and, so far as I know, he never again went on a cemetery after dark. 

Many of the old family cemeteries in Appalachia have fallen into disrepair and are rarely mowed these days except just prior to Memorial Day.  Often family farms have been sold off or fallen into neglect after ownership has been split between dozens of heirs without division of the whole.  Also, with the construction of flood control lakes such as Dewey Lake in Kentucky, Blue Stone in West Virginia and dozens of others in Appalachia, many of the old cemetery sites were flooded.  But federal policy required that all graves due to be flooded were to be moved at government expense.  Every flood control lake built has a government funded cemetery somewhere just outside the area of flooding.  Contactors and crews would be hired to move the cemeteries and graves from a dozen or more might be put in one large public location.  Graves from the same cemetery were usually put in close proximity and names of the original cemeteries are sometimes on stone markers near their particular graves.  These cemeteries usually are operated on an ongoing basis by a board of directors and have added space for continued sales of plots.

Today, family cemeteries are growing less common and some day may well cease to exist except as unused plots with a few old graves.  But their place in the history of Appalachia has been important and every effort needs to be made to respect and protect them.  A few people and agencies from state to state have done work recently to locate the cemeteries and use to GPS technology to document them.  In a few cases, individual marked graves are also documented. 

Addendum March 28, 2017

Recently, I did a Google search of myself as I frequently do, and as I believe everyone should do, to keep track of my publications and citations of my writing and also to become aware of any potential misuse of my online presence.  I found that this blog post has been quoted and appropriately cited in a masters dissertation by Marjorie Fey Farris in pursuit of a masters degree in history at Eastern Kentucky University which was completed and published online in 2015.  The title of the dissertation is "The Persistence of Place in Appalachia: The Phenomena of Post-Death Migration, 1930-1970".  The dissertation addresses the practice of Urban Appalachians of returning deceased family members to the region for burial in Appalachian ground.  I had discussed this phenomena superficially in this post and other writings about Appalachian burial practices but had never seen it discussed at length before.  It is an interesting practice, still common today throughout Appalachia, and unlikely to cease in the immediately foreseeable future.  If you are interested in Appalachian burial customs, the dissertation is worth the time to read.  I recommend it.