The Pioneer Cemetery In Franklin, Pennsylvania

When I was an employee of a private, for profit program for juvenile offenders called Vision Quest, I spent a little over a year living and working in the little court house Pennsylvania town of Franklin, which is the county seat of Venango County, located about an hour north of Pittsburgh and about halfway between that city and Erie, Pennsylvania, on the shores of Lake Erie. During most of that time, I frequently supervised groups of juvenile clients who were allowed to do community service work in the surrounding town and county. One of my favorite parts of that job was to take a crew of three or four boys into Franklin to mow the grass at the Pioneer Cemetery. According to the Daughters of The American Revolution:

The Pioneer Cemetery was established in 1795 when the Borough of Franklin was established. It became known as 'The Old Graveyard Where Many Franklin Pioneers Were Laid to Rest'. For many years, the Franklin Pioneer Cemetery was forgotten. The monuments were broken, brush grew throughout and no interest was taken in this historical site. Then in 1955, the Venango Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, took interest with the help of the Franklin City Council and many area citizens to make the site once again a beautiful Cemetery. The Pioneer Cemetery now is an asset to the City of Franklin and the County of Venango. Thousands of visitors from all parts of the country have taken time to visit and walk through this quiet spot to read and admire the beauty of the Cemetery. The first permanent settler of Franklin, George Power, is buried in Pioneer Cemetery. He was sent by George Washington to help build Fort Franklin. George Power returned in 1797 to make his home in Franklin. In addition there are three Revolutionary War veterans, nine War of 1812 veterans, and two Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery. Currently the Cemetery is maintained and funded primarily by the Venango County Chapter, DAR.

The Pioneer Cemetery is one of the most historic places I have ever been, and I am proud to say that I have particapted in the effort, for that one year, to keep it clean, neat, protected, and perpetual. I loved to walk around the cemetery and read the grave markers of all the historic and patriotic early Americans who are buried there. It was a beatutiful experience. The text below is a piece of writing I produced a few years ago about that experience but never submitted to the publication source I had in mind at the times. Over the rattle, roar, hum, of the lawnmowers and weedeaters, or was it beneath those sounds, I could have sworn I heard voices, maybe across the river, maybe down the street toward the courthouse, low, quiet, distant voices. As I moved across the fenced lot among the tombstones, occasional little American flags, local stones with engravings I had trouble reading now, the voices seemed to filter in, maybe being muffled by the surrounding trees, maybe across French Creek or somewhere along the Allegheny. Then, interspersed among the voices, I thought I heard the industrious strokes of a hammer, maybe John Broadfoot’s hammer building another house for a settler just arrived from farther east, Philadelphia, or even New York. That hammer kept working steadily but seemed to recede in the distance as another voice came through sounding a lot like I might have known John McLaurin’s voice would be, quietly insistent, encouraging us to keep working to “cherish their memories and keep their graves green”. The first time I stood in front of the gate to the Pioneer Cemetery and read the sign saying “First Burial in 1795” I knew I was in a special place, among historic people, people who would have remembered the stories of Fort Machault and how the French burned it to the ground in 1759 before retreating to Canada to leave America in the hands of the pioneers some of whom would be buried in that little plot on Otter Street. I walked inside and read the markers, slowly, one by one, moving from each to the next in awe of a group of people who had been brave and durable enough to come to the intersection of French Creek and the Allegheny to wrest the land from the French and nurture it until it became a quiet country town epitomizing the spirit of these people who had left England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales to come to a new, rough, rawboned land of mountains and rivers sitting in the way of the winds blowing off Lake Erie. These were people who included Lieutenant Francis Gordon, whose entire troop died in the loss of Fort Venango, and was burned at the stake after the fort was lost. This little town of little forts always outlasted the forts, the enemy forces who besieged them, the diseases which could not be cured, and the loneliness of living on what was in the late 18th century the western edge of civilization, the extreme limits of pioneer endurance until a few years later they sent their children farther west and often followed them taking that pioneer spirit to new places, new rivers, new forts, new adventures and dangers, moving, always moving, forever seeking more, more land, more freedom, more opportunities and always willing to engage in and win the fight necessary to seize the land and hold it against all comers.

This is the link which will lead you to the Pioneer Cemetery on Find A Grave. The photo below is of the grave marker of Revolutionary War soldier William Duffield (743-1827).

The photo below is of the grave marker of Revolutionary War Captain James Gordon Heron.

The Family Cemetery In Appalachia

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.

"The Patron Saint Of Ugly" by Marie Manilla

This is a review of a book by Marie Manilla of Huntington, West Virginia which I wrote about ten years ago for submission to a magazine which ultimately went defunct at about the same time. The review was never published. I had recently had a question from a reader who identifed herself as "Ms. Teacher" who teaches in WV and was looking for books to use in her classes to promote knowledge of the state and it's culture and people. I had responded to her comment with a question, among others, as to whether or not she has used the works of Marie Manilla in her classes. I was reviewing some old storage devices today and realized that I ought to post this review here since I have never actually written about this wonderful book on this blog. I unreservedly recommend this book for any teacher in Appalachia to consider as text material in high school literature classes. In fact, this book was chosen in 2021 for the West Virginia One Book One Read Project by the WV Culture Center. I also wrote an article which was published on the Mildred Haun Review Journal website about this book in comparison with a classic old Appalachian collection of short storys by Mildred Haun called "The Hawk's Done Gone". Haun's book is also a masterpiece of Appalachian fiction and contains some of the best Appalachian dialect writing I have ever seen.That article can be found at this link but it doesn't have a direct link to each article so you have to go to the link and scroll to page 10 to find it. Thanks for the effort in advance! I also recommend the West Virgiinia Culture Center unreservedly as a place to take students of any age in the school systems of Appalachia on a day trip. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Patron Saint of Ugly Marie Manilla New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin 2014 $13.95 (paperback, 334 pages) The Patron Saint of Ugly, Marie Manilla’s second novel and third published book is set in a dying fictional town called Sweetwater, WV. The protagonist is a young woman, Garnet Ferrari, who is being studied by the Vatican for possible sainthood due to her purported ability to heal those with afflictions which make them ugly to the rest of the world. Garnet is a member of an Italian American family whose members are just unique and noticeable enough to be my relatives or yours. Garnet’s body is covered with port wine birthmarks which constitute a map of the world and her personal cross to bear. The novel juxtaposes Catholics & Protestants, immigrants & native born, Irish & Italian, rich & poor, young & old, beautiful & ugly, Old & New Religion, and WV and the rest of the world. Manilla’s manner of dealing with these juxtapositions is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor at her best. The novel won the Weatherford Award as best Appalachian Novel in 2015. The novel is presented as a series of audio tape transcriptions which Garnet is recording for the Vatican investigator sent to determine her legitimacy as a saint. They contain her autobiography and persistent denial of that sainthood as well as her deep seated desire to know that her Italian Catholic father loves her. Ms. Manilla leads us along a wonderfully wrought path from Sicily to Sweetwater that makes us all examine our own personal relationships, desires, ambitions, and flaws. Ms. Manilla’s rich sense of humor will give you a frequent chuckle and an occasional belly laugh along the way. While hundreds of supplicants travel to her door on Dagowop Hill in search of healing, Saint Garnet hides in her inherited mansion and seeks her own redemption from the highly personal demons which complicate her life along with her port wine map of the world. Along the way, Saint Garnet and the small circle of people who know, understand, and love her each suffer their own struggles. The novel introduces numerous characters all of us have known, or believe we knew. They are the familiars of all our lives, the loving and devoted grandmother, the struggling mother who deserves more, the despised and perverted cousin, the working class father who seeks to give a wonderful wife all she deserves, and the brilliant but misunderstood sibling. Ms. Manilla blends all these characters and themes into a wonderfully woven story which assists the reader in coming to self-knowledge and a fuller appreciation of her own flawed life and family. She also artfully kills off a few characters for the good of the story. For more than a hundred years, Appalachia and West Virginia have benefitted from the lives, works, and descendants of Italian American immigrants who came to perform the tasks which were too onerous or dangerous for those who persisted in the belief that they were too good, or smart, or rich, or valuable to perform those tasks. The Patron Saint of Ugly has now joined the ever growing list of such achievements from which we have all benefitted. Ms. Manilla utilizes skills learned in West Virginia and honed at the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program to create a masterful and memorable work which leaves the reader hoping for more from this group of characters and their creator. This book is a must read for the lover of Appalachia and Appalachian literature.

"Appalachian Folk Tales" Compiled and Edited By Loyal Jones

Loyal Jones was one of the small handful of individuals who created the field of Appalachian Studies during his lifetime. There were perhaps no aspects of Appalachian Culture which Loyal Jones could not disucss cogently and clearly on a moment's notice. But Appalachian Folk Tales was an area about which he produced only a small amount of writing despite being a well known public speaker on both Appalachian Folk Tales and Appalachian Humor. He also cowrote several books on Appalachian Humor with song writer and playwright Billy Edd Wheeler. But this little book of a mere 117 pages constitutes the majority of his work on the title topic. "Appalachian Folk Tales" was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation in 2020 only three years before his death at 95. The book was marketed as an introductory text on the subject for grade school aged children to "...delight and inform the children of today". The roughly three page "Note To Parents And Teachers" which serves as an introduction or foreword to the book was dated by Loyal Jones as having been written in 2010. The book contains a total of twelve Appalachian Folk Tales as told by several of the prominent experts over the last half century or so. Two of the stories have Loyal Jones listed as their author although the tale "Mutsmeg" is described in his introduction to it as having been publicly told by at least four other leading experts on Appalachian Folk Tales including Cratis Williams and Leonard Roberts who were two of the most skilled in the genre. Loyal Jones' introduction to "Jack Goes a-Hunting" describes it as having been either told or written in both "...Old World and American folk tale collections". Every tale in this little book is worth hearing and remembering. Each of them is a shining example of the folk tales which have been told and passed down from generation to generation in Appalachia ever since Old World settlers first came to this country. This book can serve as an introduction to Appalachian Folk Tales for anyone interested in the subject at any age. It is a great place to start if you know little about the topic and want the base of your knowledge to be well grounded from the beginning. Enjoy it!

Loyal Jones Photograph Above Copyrighted by Roger D. Hicks

"Contemporary American Folk Artists" by Elinor Lander Horwitz

I have made two earlier posts either about or prompted by the books of Elinor Lander Horwitz who published several books on the subjects of Appalachian Folk Art and/or American Folk Art. Elinor Lander Horwitz, who wrote numerous books on several topics, spent a great deal of time in the 1970's traveling across the United States with her two sons who were both highly skilled photographers meeting, interviewing, and photographing American Folk Artists and their works. I assume also that based on the depth and breadth of her interest in and knowledge about folk art Elinor Lander Horwitz must have owned a large collection of folk art. The book which is the subject of this blog post has individual chapters about 10 folk painters, 6 folk wood carvers, and 6 individuals whom she described as "total environmentalists". A blogger named Jim Linderman has also blogged about Horwitz and this book. The amount of work, time, travel, and expenditures which went into the creation of Horwitz's books about American and Appalachian Folk Art was very extensive and no doubt expensive. The book has 143 pages, 22 chapters each of which profiles a single folk artist. Every one of these people was a unique creator in a greater world of folk art which is also quite unique in both the singular and plural manifestations. Due to the period in which the book was researched, written, and published,the 1970's, I suspect that all, or nearly all of the artists profiled are now dead. I will briefly describe what this book has taught me about a few of them whom I consider the most interesting although I have to admit that I would have loved to have known them all. One or two, maybe less than a handful of the artists, may well have been deceased before Horwitz wrote the book. Sister Gertrude Morgan was an African American Folk Artist and street preacher in New Orleans. Clementine Hunter was also an African American Folk artist who spent her life as a servant on Melrose Plantation in central Louisiana. At the plantation, this illiterate African American cook was exposed to the French painter Francois Mignon and his work, and stated she thought she could "mark a painting" too. After seeing one or more of her unique works of African American life in the early twentieth century, Mignon began to mentor her and provide her with paints and other materials. It is possible today that she is now more famous than her mentor. Hattie Bruner was a Caucasian antique dealer in Pennsylvania Dutch country who grew up poor and only became a painter in her late sixties. She painted wonderful pictures of life in the country side around where she had grown up in an older, more quaint time. Miles Carpenter in Western Virginia was a seller of watermelons and other produce who bacan carving and selling wooden copies of his melons and then branched out to other subject matter for the rest of his life. Edward Ambrose was a Virginia carpenter who developed a sideline of carving small objects of all kinds and then creating much larger tableau of them such as country stores, blacksmith shops, and a duck decoy maker's workshop. In Yorktown, Virginia, Walter Flax was a socially isolated African American man who had desired to go to sea but lived his entire life without ever seeing the ocean and spent years decorating the property on which he lived with his ships made of whatever salvaged materials he could find in the area around his two room shack. Perhaps the most unique of these folk artists was Creek Charlie, Charlie Fields, who lived in a house which he covered with multicolored polka dots and filled with numerous polka dot painted objects in every inch of his residence. On Sundays, he welcomed anyone who wished to visit him to come to his home for conversation and friendship. His little polka dotted farm house is the cover photo of Horwitz's book. Jim Colclough was a Californian whose home was taken by the highway department under eminent domain which caused him to begin to protest the government via his folk art constructions of often animated figures carved from wood and equipped with cranks or other devices to cause them to move in unique ways. His probable favorite of these constructions was of two men, one of whom represented the government of California, and the other who represented others such as Colclough who had been adversely affected by government actions. When the crank is turned to animate the piece the representation of the state of California holding the representation of the victims of the state shakes that figure up and down to shake him loose from his money and/or property. The title of that piece is "Helping Man Decide Sell Home for Highway". I have to say that Colclough is probably my favorite of all the artists who are subjects of the book. This is a wonderful book to read and learn about more than 20 of the prominent American Folk Artists of the early to middle twentieth century. It can usually be found on most internet based used book websites. You will enjoy getting to know these unique and uniquely productive Americans.

Appalachian Folk Art and Mental Illness: Is There Any Correlation?

"An Appalachian Eulogy" by B. Camp

The author of this book is actually Dr. Dennis Campbell, M. D. who chose to publish under a pen name despite having also chosen, at some point, to make no secret of his real identity. Dr. Campbell and I worked together in both our previous careers. He is a retired psychiatrist and I am a retired mental health and addictions therapist. We worked together for about 3/12 years in a community mental health facility in a small county in Eastern Kentucky. We also grew up in the same equally small county about fifty miles from where we actually met at work. We have remained as friends ever since working together. Dr. Campbell has now written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen fiction books in several different categories and all are available on Amazon under the pen name B. Camp. I have previously written on this blog about two of his other books, "Tales From The Red River Gorge" which he cowrote with his wife who writes under the pen name Maribeth Wagner, and "Aaron Subject Number Seven". "An Appalachian Eulogy" is the most purely Appalachian book of the three in my opinion, although both of the others have settings and some characters who are Appalachian. "An Appalachian Eulogy" begins about 1825 and ends about 1975. It tells a story of a blended family in which the parents Able and Elizabeth Horn who have one biological daughter, Emily. As the book begins, their nephew Zeke is in East Tennessee living with an unrelated family who have taken him in after his parents and only brother have died of a plague. This family has written a letter who the Horns who are the brother and sister-in-law of Zeke's father. Able travels to East Tennessee in the late winter to early spring and brings Zeke back to his home which is a hillside farm on Beaver Creek in Knott County Kentucky which happens to be the creek on which I grew up. While some of the place names in the book are fictitious, most of them are actual place names still in use today in the area of the novel. The place on Beaver Creek where the Horn farm is located is about 3 or 4 miles from where I grew up. On their way to Beaver Creek from East Tennessee, they stop in a town in Tennessee for more supplies for their horseback trip and Zeke is allowed to spend some time alone seeing the sights of the town. He strays into a scene in which a group of boys are harrassing a young homeless orphan girl and rescues her from their attack. Able agrees to take the girl, Emma, along with them to his home if the local authorities agree to it. He finds the Tennessee sheriff who allows him to do just that. The three then complete the trip to Beaver Creek where both Zeke and Emma become members of the Horn family. Emma who can't remember the last name of her parents assumes the Horn name which, as odd as it might sound in today's world, was not an uncommon event in the early 19th century in the Appalachian Mountains. It was fairly common at that time for kindly, or soemetimes unkindly, non-relatives to informally adopt orphans and raise them under the family name. The three children, one biological and two informally adopted, quickly become known simply as a family, the Horn family. They live a lifestyle which was common on hillside farms in Eastern Kentucky in that time frame and learn all the chores and requirements of living a self sufficient life in the mountains. Zeke grows up to be a bright, ambitious young man and attends Alice Lloyds, Caney Creek Community Center until he graduates from high school. He then matriculates to Caney Junior College on the same campus and now known as Alice Lloyd College. Eventually, the adopted daughter Emily leaves home to marry a coal miner and live an itinerant life with her growing family in a number of mountain coal camp towns. She dies young and leaves a letter in a family Bible directing her daughter to keep it unopened until she locates another member of the Horn family from whom she has become lost due to her multiple moves from coal camp to coal camp. I won't spoil the ending. You can find the book on Amazon. If you are a fan of Appalachian fiction, the book is worth reading.