Excerpt: The Bee Charmer

The following is an excerpt from Stories of a Kentucky Mountain Family. Copyright (c) 2005 AMANDA ADAMS. All Rights Reserved. This story may not be reproduced in whole or in part by email forwarding, copying, fax, or any other mode of communication without author permission.

 

I’m told Great Grandma Polly Stamper walked unprotected amid the bee hives while gently waving her apron and talking to the bees, and they let her have all the honey she wanted. Meanwhile, her husband Grant Honeycutt had to cover himself from head to toe when he went near the hives and was still stung.

I would love to know what Grandma was saying to the bees, if she was chanting some magic bee words. Skeptics will say it was merely chemistry but I prefer to think it’s a family gift, one I, unfortunately, didn’t inherit. Bees do not like me at all, so I would be foolish to try to charm them. What if Grandma had lived in Salem during the witch trials, would she have been called a witch for communing with the bees?

Polly was born in Wise County, Virginia, on November 9, 1863, during the Civil War, to Joseph Stamper and Malinda Phipps. Although no record of Joseph’s military service has been found, the 1860 Census of Wise County shows his nephew Madison “Matt” Stamper living in his household, and it’s believed the two of them served in the war together. We know Madison served, enlisting in Allegheny County, North Carolina, for the Confederate cause, and Joseph’s son Marion Stamper told tales of being taken along when his father went out for muster.

While Joseph was off in Kentucky on a military campaign, Malinda and the children were terrorized by local guerilla bands back in Wise County, Virginia, and their home was robbed. Packing up her children and what belongings they had left, Malinda set out through Pound Gap for Kentucky to find Joseph. This was near the close of the Civil War and Polly was just a toddler, but had older brothers and sisters to help care for the younger children. At least one of them was younger than Polly.

Polly would grow up in the Kentucky Mountains, with only vague memories of the journey across Pound Gap from Wise County, Virginia, but being told about it, time and again, until she could see it in her own mind. The mules pulling the wagon over the rough trail that never seemed to end. Her mother stopping at last to feed the children the cold cornbread and dried meat she’d packed that morning. Polly’s older brother, just a boy, holding his rifle, his eyes sweeping across the jagged rocks rising beside the trail to the strand of trees. Watching for any movement that might warn of danger from the riff-raff that used the Gap to carry terror between the two states.

Deep in the Kentucky hollers, the story would be told and retold, about the journey to find Joseph. And then other stories would unwind further and further into the past. Back to North Carolina, where fathers and grandfathers who had fought for freedom in the American Revolution lay buried under fading fieldstone markers. Some were buried beside the mothers of their children, while others, having lost early wives in childbirth, lay beside the wives of their old age. Many children had been born. Some had died. All were remembered as the stories were told.

But mostly, the stories were of danger, of survival, of the many wars that had been fought since the earliest ancestors came in crowded ships from England, Ulster (Scots-Irish) and Germany to disembark with thanksgiving on the shores of Virginia and North Carolina. Others disembarked in Pennsylvania and later generations would make their way down the Wagon Road.

Often, something in the telling of the stories hinted at dark secrets not allowed to be told. “Tell us the story when—” was a refrain that echoed before many a fireside in the cabins alongside the creeks, and the children also listened for the things not said.

Malinda would tell Polly what she remembered about her own Pap, Devilish George Phipps, whom Malinda barely remembered, being only five when he died. Perhaps she told Polly why he was called “Devilish”; if so, the story got lost between generations. Maybe he joked a lot or had a macabre sense of humor, and it was he who passed that black humor down to us. Possibly, there was a more sinister reason; we’ll never know. But he died young and his widow Nancy, left with four young children, soon remarried. A woman didn’t stay a widow long in those days, especially with young mouths to feed, but Nancy gave her new husband a son to carry on his name.

Malinda’s Mamaw and Papaw Phipps had both died in Ashe County by 1854 so Polly never knew them. But blood kin was important and Malinda would tell Polly that Samuel Phipps had fought in the Revolutionary War, and that before Mamaw Elizabeth, or “Betty” Phipps hair turned white, it had been coal black, matching her dark eyes. “You take after your Mamaw Phipps,” she would say. “She was Portygese. Some say she also had Indian blood. Her Pap was George Reeves, and he was in the War for Independence too, was a Lootenant in the army.”

There were other things Malinda never told her. Things Polly heard the menfolk talk about as they sat before the fire on a cold winter evening. Polly liked to listen to them. She huddled in the corner, staying real still so nobody would notice her and send her to bed. Her uncles would come to visit and the men would get out some shine and start telling the old stories. Polly heard the story about Devilish George’s father Sam Phipps and his brothers, and why they left Guilford County and went to Ashe County when Sam was but seventeen. Their Pap had died and their Maw had remarried. One day the brothers came in from working in the fields to find their stepfather beating their mother.

The boys each grabbed a chunk of wood beside the fireplace and started beating their stepfather, “not intending to kill him,” Pap said. Did they kill him? Nobody said. Did they take their Maw with them when they left? Of course Polly couldn’t ask, as she wasn’t supposed to be listening. And they started talking about something else. But still she wondered.

After the move to Kentucky, Polly’s oldest sister Nancy had a baby boy, and then ran off to Ohio, leaving the baby behind. Polly helped another older sister and her mother care for the baby, feeling sorry for the poor little thing.

The year after that, Malinda died, when Polly was only nine years old. Joseph remarried and Polly had a stepmother and stepsiblings. The feuds had begun and she heard the stories of shootings and bloodshed. But, along with her siblings, she fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, and slopped the hog to get him fattened up for butchering day. Picked berries up near the woods.

On washday, she helped carry water from the creek in wooden buckets, or perhaps she drew it from a well, but the creeks ran clear back then. Filling the big tub in the yard, under which a fire would be lit. She pulled weeds in the garden while her brothers hoed the corn, and when bean-picking time came, they filled baskets with beans for canning. Some were saved for the children to string with a needle and thread, and then hang in the sun to dry, to make shucky beans.

The area they had settled in was on the Forks of Troublesome Creek near a place called Cornett’s Mill during the War, situated in a narrow valley. It was named for the first known settler in the area, Samuel Cornett, who had a gristmill below the Forks, which he used to irrigate his bottoms. He was married to Mary “Polly” Adams, who was our second great grandaunt on Dad’s side, a daughter of Moses Adams, Dad’s Great-Great-Grandfather.

Cornett’s Mill later became McPherson’s Post Office, and was in Letcher County. Even later, in 1884, Knott County would be formed from part of Letcher, and McPherson’s Post Office would be called Hindman. The town was little more than a few log houses, the first courthouse a log structure built that same year.

When Joseph Stamper moved his family into the area, wagon roads had finally been carved out of the rugged terrain to bring goods on mule-pulled freighters from Whitesburg, Hazard, Jackson and Prestonsburg. But the first wagon that made it through had been one driven by fifteen-year-old Peyton Madison Duke about 1848, a peddler from North Carolina. Peyton later married Samuel and Polly Adams Cornett’s daughter Rachel, and acquired some land.

Like the other girls she knew, Polly learned, first from her mother and then her stepmother, the skills she’d need later on. How to make cornbread, biscuits, jellies, preserves, corn relish, pickles – and lye soap for washday. While her brothers went squirrel hunting, she helped her older sister and stepmother with the washing, taking her turn scrubbing the clothes with the lye soap. Rinsing the garments and bedding in fresh water, wringing them out and throwing them over the line between two posts to dry; watching the sky for rain clouds, ready to run gather them in.

When the work was done, there was still time to play. After Polly got too old for her rag doll, she could wade in the creek, play hide-and-seek with her siblings and cousins, and gather wildflowers in the woods. One day in the woods, she found the imprints of a fish in a piece of rock and wondered how it had got into the mountains, not realizing that millions of years ago the mountains had lain beneath the sea.

In springtime, the trees on the mountains that ringed the valley were lush and green, with the white blossoms of dogwood trees scattered amid the foliage. In fall, the trees covered the mountains with splashes of red, brown and gold. But, in winter, after the leaves had fallen and lay rotting on the forest floor, the trees, stripped bare, were an army of skeletons standing watch over the valley from the mountainside. Until the snow came, covering the bare limbs, and the sun on the new snow cast its splendor over the land.

In winter, a favorite pastime was sitting before the fire listening to the stories. Some were about loved ones who had passed on and their spirits appearing later to say goodbye. Others were of premonitions, warning of danger, or death. “I begged him not to go”. Often the warnings came in dreams and dreams were looked at seriously for what they foretold or explained. When the wind howled at the window, Polly would shiver under the faded quilts her mother had stitched, wishing for a moment she could see her mother’s spirit. And then she would remember Malinda’s smile, how her face lit up in approval for something Polly had done, and she would go to sleep.

Winter kept her indoors but there was still much to do, learning to sew with tiny stitches, to mend and patch the family clothes and help make new ones. Saving the scraps of fabric to piece for quilt tops.

Undoubtedly, Polly attended school, as we know Joseph sent the older children, but schooling was only part of the children’s education. Like all children everywhere, they were learning the skills necessary to live within their place and time. And learning about the past through family stories. This was the part Polly liked best.

She would ask Joseph what it was like when he was a boy in North Carolina, in the old days. He would smile as he lit his pipe. “You mean back a hunnerd years ago?” She knew he was joking. “You ain’t that old, Pap.”

“Well, we went fishing a lot, when the field work was done, and went hunting, jest like boys do today. Ain’t much to tell.”

But Polly wanted to hear the stories the men told when they were drinking shine and didn’t know she was listening. “Was there bad folks back then, too?”

“There’s allus bad folks around, youngin, anyplace you are, anytime. Reckon as how there ‘pears to be more of ‘em today, what with the War and all. It upset a lotta folks is what it done, made ‘em turn fierce.”

But Polly had heard stories about the War ever since she could remember. She wanted the older stories, and remembered one she’d overheard parts of. “What about the bad men that killed your Mamaw? Did they get the gold she buried in the yard?”

Joseph gave her a sharp look. “Where’d you hear ’bout that?”

Polly shrugged. “Somewheres, don’t remember.”

“Little pitchers have big ears. Besides, only remember what I was told, and it happened afore I was even born.” He paused to think, then went on. “Way it was told there was three of ‘em, the bad men that is, name of Hart, Cox and Bledsoe. They come to the house when my Pap and his brothers was in the fields with Papaw. Seems the outlaws knew Mamaw had buried some gold in her yard, and they tried to make her tell ‘em where it was buried and she wouldn’t tell. That’s all. Ain’t nothin’ else to tell.”

“And they killed her,” Polly blurted out. “Cause she wouldn’t tell.” Why didn’t she just tell them where it was at, instead of dying for it, Polly wondered. “It musta been a lot.”

“Said it was seven hunnerd worth, the way I remember it. A purty good figure, ’specially in those days.”

“Did your Papaw dig up the gold?”

“Don’t know. Nobody never said.”

“Did the bad men go to jail?”

“They took off. Don’t think they ever found ‘em.”

************

Part of the gold was unearthed in the early nineteen hundreds, by descendants of Jonathan Stamper, Jr. and Mary Polly Davis, around their old home site in present-day Allegheny County, North Carolina. Later descendants erected a headstone for Jonathan and Mary, giving her date of death as 1800.