My tour of dad’s childhood area Part 1
Link to slide show of photos and maps of the tour
Day for Touring
I took a day off from researching to tour the area and see the places that were mentioned in my dad’s life in Tennessee. The area I drove that day was mountains with rolling, twisting roads and trees everywhere. It was wonderfully green. If I could tune at the poverty it was an incredibly beautiful area. The poverty, however, was rampant and very sad to me.
One thing I will say is that at every stop I made there was nothing but the sound of bird song. It was striking how quiet the places were and how many birds were singing.
The first stop was in Huntsville, the county seat of Scott county, to visit the Scott County Historical Society to see if they had information that might help me. Unfortunately they had a change in people running the group and had to close for a few months to get a handle on their inventory. While there I did see a lot of court record books so it might be worth a trip back in the fall when they are open for research again.
From Huntsville I headed north to Oneida since that was dad’s birthplace. Huntsville had been a long narrow town between the mountain ridges. Oneida was farther from mountains, much larger, and not a very pretty town. It may have been where dad was born, but not worth a visit in my opinion.
Lick Fork Rd.
There was no way to cut across from Oneida to Elk Valley so I returned the way I had come until I could take 297 north from Route 63. 297 is a beautiful winding road through the trees and I easily found Lick Fork Rd. running off to the west which was the address on the 1940 census.
I went past the address at 319 quite a distance until it turned into single track gravel road that I thought I had all to myself until I stopped to take pictures and had a lumber truck come barreling my way. I was barely able to get over enough to allow the truck by and decided I’d better get back to the somewhat wider pavement before another truck came along.
Trulene had helped me find that Clay and John Smith were buried at Valley View Cemetery across from Elk Fork Baptist Church. On the way back on Lick Fork I saw a church on the right and a cemetery on the left. It was a very small cemetery and no sign of their grave markers but I took a few pictures anyway just in case.
On the way back to the car an old man I had seen standing in front of a shack behind the church started yelling at me “What are you doing? Do you have permission to take pictures?” so I walked back toward him explaining that my dad had grown up in the area.
Once he decided I wasn’t a threat he ended up telling me how he came to own his house – that his father-in-law to be stepped off an acre of land and gave it to him before he married. He wanted me to come into the house to talk to “Mother” since she might know where the graves I was looking for were located.
I looked at this man with no teeth and the house that was a large shack and wasn’t sure I wanted to go in there. I wasn’t afraid of him — he turned out to be very nice. I was afraid of what I would encounter in the house. But I didn’t wish to offend so I followed him into the house.
We entered the kitchen where “Mother” was standing at the sink. Almost every flat surface was piled with junk, but what got me was the smell. I had to make a conscious effort not to gag while I talked to them.
They were both so nice to me. They explained that they had feared I was a “tree hugger” – the group of people opposed to the strip mining and clear cutting that was resulting in the top of the Zeb mountain being removed. They admitted the mining and logging had ruined the creek downstream, but there still wasn’t any call for those people to protest and block the road.
I didn’t tell them that I was indeed a “tree hugger” but instead that I was just interested in finding out information about my dad. “Mother” figured out I was at the wrong church. They lived by Elk Lick Baptist Church and I needed to find Elk Fork Baptist Church so she told me how to get there. I had completely missed the distinction.
She asked what my dad’s name was and despite my protests she tried calling a couple people to see if they remembered him and was frustrated when their phones lines were busy. It was clear I could have stayed there all day because they were having a great time telling me stories, but I gradually extricated myself so I could continue my tour — and escape the smell.
I drove back to where 319 Lick Fork Rd. was on my GPS.