Cratis D. Williams and I On Death, Dying, and Funeral Rituals In Appalachia

I am currently reading "Tales From Sacred Wind: Coming of Age in Appalachia" by Cratis D. Williams and I will write about it more fully in a more formal kind of book review when I finish it.  But I have just read some important sections of the book about the deaths of various people in the Sacred Wind community of Lawrence County Kentucky in the book and they prompted some memories of my own which led me to write about that aspect of Williams's observations and to insert some of my own.  I also wrote another post about "Tales From Sacred Wind..." since I posted this one which has also become quite popular with lovers of Appalachia and Appalachian History and folkways. It is about both our experiences as children in traditional Appalachian children's games.  At the time I wrote these two most recent posts about Cratis Williams, I neglected to mention in either of them that I had written a much earlier post called "Responses To Some Reading Of Cratis Williams" which might also be interesting to some of you.  It is a response to a small pamphlet he wrote about his most important early teacher, William H. Vaughan, who was a primary influence in leading Williams to pursue a career in academia which was not common at the time in Eastern Kentucky. 

Cratis D. Williams--Photo by The Williams Family

I have written previously on this blog about these topics but the practices in Appalachia have been ever changing in both my lifetime and that of Cratis Williams who was born about forty years before me and has now been dead for thirty-five years.  Cratis Williams was one of the premier scholars in the field of Appalachian Studies and served in various capacities at Appalachian State University.  The best, and perhaps only book, devoted solely to death, dying, and burial practices in Appalachia is "Death and Dying In Central Appalachia" by James K. Crissman.  But it was published in 1994 and is becoming a bit dated twenty-six years later.  "Tales From Sacred Wind..." was published in 2003 based on manuscripts which Cratis Williams had left unpublished at his death in 1985 and is also a bit dated.  There is a genuine need for a more recent scholarly look at death and dying in the region.  Crissman's book is excellent, well researched, professionally documented, and wide ranging in its coverage and I have cited, quoted, and recommended it for many years.  But the work of Williams in "Tales From Sacred Wind.." provides a brief but needed addition to the work of Crissman.  I hope my own observations from a long life in Appalachia also contribute to the field.  

My primary impetus to write about Williams's observations came about quite serendipitously shortly after I read his section on death practices through an e-mail exchange with a new acquaintance about a cemetery in our native Knott County which both of us have known all our lives.  I grew up near that cemetery and my acquaintance has several relatives buried on it.  In his book, Cratis Williams tells a story about one of his elderly female ancestors who planted two cedar trees beside some graves on a cemetery at Sacred Wind.  The old woman would not allow anyone else to assist her in planting the trees and expressed an old folk belief that the person who plants a cedar tree will die before the tree is fully grown.  As my e-mail exchange progressed with my acquaintance about the Knott County cemetery, he said this: "My grandfather died in (a) mining accident in 1948, and my grandmother later moved to Michigan. Her last visit to this cemetery was in 1974. During that visit, she planted some cedar trees near the grave of my grandfather. She told me  there was an old saying, that if you planted a cedar tree, you would be dead by time the tree was large enough to shade a grave.  My grandmother died five years later, in 1979. The cedar trees are still standing, and are posing problems to headstones due to their roots."  It is always fascinating to me to read, and especially to hear first hand, about any Appalachian folkway or folk tale.

Another friend of mine, both on Facebook and in real life, John D. Shelton, responded to this post after I had posted it on Facebook with this story about planting cedar trees which concurs almost exactly with Cratis Williams's story and the one above from my other acquaintance.  "As a teen, I was going to plant a Cedar Tree my Uncle scolded me saying never plant Cedars, because you will die when they are big enuff to shade your Grave."  Obviously, the folkway or folktale about planting cedars and impending death of the planter has spread across a wide area.  

Williams also discussed several funerals he had attended both as a child and as an adult in Lawrence County including the deaths of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.  He even discusses one funeral which his entire one room school attended for the father of a classmate who had died from "lockjaw", tetanus, after having stepped on a nail while tearing down a house.  He discusses the man having been buried in a shroud or winding cloth only one of which such funerals I have ever known about in my life.  A man who owned property adjoining ours in my childhood home and, in fact, adjoining the cemetery which my acquaintance and I have been discussing was the only person I ever knew who was buried in a shroud or winding cloth and I did not attend that funeral which I regret.  For those of you who have not encountered either term, a shroud or winding cloth is a plain flat, usually white, garment or sheet in which a dead body is wrapped in the casket.  As I understand it, a full sized or larger sheet was used in most cases and the body was placed with the feet a foot or two above a corner with the head a foot or two below the diagonally opposite corner in order to increase the length and folding options of the shroud or winding cloth.  The washed and prepared body was then wrapped in the cloth usually beginning with a fold of the lower corner over the feet up to about the knees.  Then one side was folded over and possibly under the body and the other side was folded in the opposite direction in the same manner.  Usually after a viewing, visitation, or funeral, the top corner was then folded down to cover the face of the deceased.  It is my understanding that in some other countries, especially in the Middle East, this is still the dominant method in use.  In Appalachia, America, and several other countries, the use of white cloth is, of course, a symbol of purity.

Cratis Williams also discussed having known people who had their coffins made while they were alive and storing them in attics, barns, or spare rooms.  In an earlier post on this blog, I wrote about Clabe Mosley, an Old Regular Baptist preacher, whose coffin hung in the attic of my maternal grandparents' house for several years before he actually died.  Williams, in this book, also concurs with my writing that these people who had coffins built while living would sometimes actually get in and test the coffin as I reported that Clabe Mosley had done.  John D. Shelton also relayed this story about a person who had their coffin made well before they died and allowed the coffin to deteriorate in a fence row before his death.  But others, after the death, repaired the coffin and used it to bury the original buyer.  "I had another relative who was poor, so he built his own Casket and painted it, tried it for size, placed it in the Grave Yard fence row, it sat there many years covered in grass and weeds, no one moved it, he died and a Cousin and Preacher dug it out the weeds and cleaned it and made repairs, and a woman from Church made a cloth lining, and he was buried in it. This happened a few years back."

Cratis Williams also discussed grave houses in "Tales From Sacred Wind..." as I did in my post about burial practices in Appalachia in which I also included a few photos none of which are originally shot by me.  One of the funnier stories in the book is about a distant relative of Williams who, after getting drunk at a square dance, decided to crawl in the grave house of an ancestor to avoid walking home in the rain.  The man was awakened and terrified by an old sow and her pigs when the sow decided to use the grave house to scratch an itch.  Williams's relative thought he was experiencing a "hain't" and left the cemetery in terror until he realized it was only a sow.  I know of a couple of grave houses on a small cemetery near the Johnson/Lawrence county line on US 23 which are clearly visible from the divided highway.  I also know a few in Lawrence and Elliott counties in an are near where Williams grew up.

Williams also discussed, and his posthumous editors provided several photos of his grandfather David O. Williams who had a large stone, homemade mausoleum, or grave house built to hold the bodies of himself and his wife.  I know of one hand cut stone grave house of a similar nature at a small cemetery between Mousie and Lackey in Knott County Kentucky which is unmarked and said to contain the body of one of the first white settlers to that area.  That stone grave house has several cracks and openings where the stones have settled over the years and I have to admit that I have been tempted to return with a flashlight to see what is visible through the cracks.  I also know of a similarly constructed grave house in a small cemetery near Morgan County High School in West Liberty, Kentucky which also shows signs of settling and age. John D. Shelton, whom I mentioned above, also reported this anecdote about a grave house he had seen: "There is one Grave Yard in Clinton County (Kentucky) which has a little House on one Grave about four feet tall that has Windows in it, I guess they wanted the Loved one to get Sun and be able to see out."

I am thoroughly enjoying reading this book and regret that I was never able to meet Cratis Williams in the flesh.  He is funny, informative, at times risque, and well worth reading.  "Tales From Sacred Wind..." is a book which ever student of Appalachian Studies should place on their "Must Read List". 


 

"Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy" Edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll--Book Review

This is a book which I should have immediately bought, read, and written about as soon as it was released in March 2019.  I'm only 13months late which is pretty good for me at times in my effort to keep up with my "To Be Read List".  The book was created as a response to the horribly defamatory "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" which I have written about in this blog a little over two years ago.  Since I mentioned "Hillbilly Elegy..." let me append the opening and concluding sentence of review of that drivel here: First and foremost, let me say unequivocally that the fact that I chose to read this book (Hillbilly Elegy...) and write about it on this blog should never be considered a recommendation that anyone read it."  No one, whether or not they consider themselves to be Appalachian, should ever read that book without first having read "Appalachian Values" by my friend Loyal Jones.  Although I am not totally pleased with "Appalachian Reckoning...", I will say also that it would be a good idea to read this book as well before entering the intellectual wasteland of J. D. Vance.  

And, since I have mentioned that piece of garbage, I have appended above the sentence with which I began and ended my thoughts on J. D. Vance's screed about the region of which he knows little and cares nothing: "Appalachian Reckoning..." was conceived and edited to be a response to Vance's diatribe in the form of essays, poetry, and a few photos and photo essays by various writers who perceive themselves to be native to and writing in the best interests of Appalachia.  It is a lengthy work of slightly over 400 pages and I read it, as I often do collections by numerous authors, in fits and starts because I prefer to allow one writer's work to congeal in my mind before I further muddy the water with more on the same topic(s) by other authors.  That is both an advantage and a disadvantage with a work of this size.  It greatly enhances the reader's ability to fully grasp the writing in a single essay and the collective total but simultaneously lengthens the time involved from start to finish in completing a book of this size.  But it a technique which I have utilized in my reading for many years, one to which I am long accustomed, and one which I believe makes me a better reader in the long run.

The list of authors in this book ranges from the editors themselves to established experts on the region such as Dwight Billings to others whose existence was relatively unknown and unheralded until the publication of this book.  They range in their areas of expertise across the spectrum of the written word including academics, essayists, novelists, photographers, and poets.  On the face of it all, they can be argued to have been a broadly based and well selected group of authors.  But, the number of genuine, proven experts on the sociology, history, and economics of the region is a bit thin.  While I found a few essays to be well reasoned, well written, and solidly grounded in knowledge of the region, I found at least one or two to be works which I doubt most other professional Appalachian editors would have included in a work intended to dispute, disprove, and de-legitimize Vance's misbegotten best seller.  At least one of the essays is at best an apology for Vance, and at worst, an attempt to justify his illogical conclusions and should never have been included in the book. Most of the poetry is above average, reasonably well written, and acceptable.  But I question the use of artistic works in general in an expository work intended to be a disputation of another which was mislabeled, based in a plethora of misconceptions, and  often accepted as being accurate in its conclusions.  I love poetry and even have one friend, Dale Marie Prenatt, who has an excellent poem in the book; but, I do not love poetry as a form of academic argumentation.  Let me go further and say that my argument about this aspect of the book is not against the poets or their poetry.  It is against the inclusion of that poetry in such a book with such a stated purpose.  

I have been aware for many years that there are three different definitions of Appalachia, which I have stated in this blog in other places.  While the Appalachian Mountain Range extends from Central Alabama to Newfoundland and Labrador in the maritime provinces of Canada   that definition is purely geographic and used primarily by the US Geologic Survey and other federal government agencies.

The Broad Geographical Map of The Appalachian Mountains--Photo by Thomas's Legion

 The definition of Appalachia which the US Congress and the Appalachian Regional Commission uses extends from Mississippi to Upstate New York and includes 35 counties in Alabama, 32 in Ohio, 52 of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, and is purely a political and economic definition which came about over the years in congress as the need for votes to approve various pieces of pending legislation caused this mythical region to spread much like a fungus solely in the interest of pork barrel politics.

Appalachian Regional Commission Map by the ARC

The definition of Appalachia I use is purely cultural and is rooted in the work of early Appalachian scholars including John C. Campbell and Horace Kephart.  That definition does not cross the Ohio River and does not extend into the northeastern US beyond Western Maryland and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.  It only includes a small number of Alabama counties in the Sand Mountain area and does not remotely include any portion of Mississippi or Ohio.  For those who would belabor this definition, I urge you to go stand in the middle of the Ohio River and convince that little puddle that it does not constitute both a geographical and a cultural barrier. This final map which I have appended below is very close to my definition of the cultural region of Appalachia although, in my opinion, those counties of Pennsylvania which are included are not truly culturally Appalachian.  I also state for the record that for a more than three years I worked for a Pennsylvania based human services company and performed home visits all over the state while living for a year in Venango County Pennsylvania which is not remotely Appalachian but is included in the political and pork barrel definition of the region which is used by the Appalachian Regional Commission.  I also spent a year living in the Mid-Hudson region of New York State, some of which is included in the ARC map which is far too inclusive in terms of cultural accuracy.

Map of Cultural Appalachia by Medium.com

I freely admit that hundreds of thousands of native Appalachians left the region of Central and Southern Appalachia and moved into the midwest and industrial north.  Some of them remain there as displaced Appalachians but their descendants are not Appalachian in any way other than heritage. Moving to Appalachia or Watts or Harlem does not make a non-native of any of these areas a legitimate Appalachian, African American, or Hispanic.

Now, let's get back to my discussion of the book in question, "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy".  In conclusion, it is a generally readable and enjoyable book.  But I do not remotely believe that the book has yet been published which will serve as the best, most logical, most accurate response to "Hillbilly Elegy..." I do hope that someone, someday writes and publishes that book.  If you read "Appalachian Reckoning..." I would suggest that you read it with a jaundiced eye, scan every essay closely the truths you know about the Appalachia which you know, use your critical thinking skills to examine it, find what truths you can in it, but do not blindly accept it as the authoritative response to "Hillbilly Elegy...".