Located in the heart of North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains, Avery County has a rich cultural heritage that lives and breathes in the musicians, artists, storytellers and craftspeople featured in this publication. Made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, the purpose of this documentary project is to create the first comprehensive list of the people practicing Appalachian traditions in the county, the institutions that support them and events that celebrate them. At the same time we hope to pay tribute to our elders who bore the tradition and helped connect artists with each other and a wider audience both in and outside the region.

Appalachian traditions can be defined as any activities that have an expressive style distinctive to Appalachia, and which have historically been handed down from person to person within the community. Crafts, music and storytelling fit this description, but so do what we call lifeways; what were once everyday activities such as farming techniques, knowledge about wild plants and animals, canning, cooking and other foodways, useful and unique skills that are becoming more and more rare. By recording the state of traditional Appalachian folk practices in the county and offering an opportunity for people to learn about them, we are hoping both to help enable a greater understanding of Appalachia and help preserve Appalachian folkways for future generations.

---Steve Kruger, Folklorist
Avery Arts Council

Database participant Rick Ward and 95 year old Benjamin Hicks

Avery County Townships & Communities: Geography

Avery County’s borders run across some of the most distinctive landscape in the Southern Appalachians. To the east, the county line runs along Grandfather Mountain. At nearly 6000 feet above sea level, it is the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Escarpment. To the south, the line runs across the rocky outcroppings of the Linville Gorge, one of the deepest east of the Mississippi. To the west, the Roan Mountain chain’s “balds” - high treeless summits-look out over the communities of the Toe River Valley, Plumtree, Cranberry, and Montezuma, down past Three Mile to the mineral deposits of Spruce Pine in Mitchell County. To the north, the Watauga county line follows the Beech Mountain massif, site of the highest township in the east, and below it Banner Elk, home to Lees- McRae College. The center of the county is a series of lower ridges and valleys, creeks and hollows cradling the land around Newland, the county seat, and historic Crossnore. Avery’s population is mostly rural, the economy built upon Christmas tree and cattle farming, and in some places tourism and second-home development. It is the youngest county in the state, carved in 1911 from Watauga and Mitchell counties.

Folklorists traveling through the Appalachian Mountains in the early part of the 20th century found that the relatively isolated communities in the high country had held on to traditions that had died out elsewhere. Ballad collectors found songs and tunes that had been recorded in Europe hundreds of years earlier. Most people in Appalachia still lived on small farms, growing their own food, making their own textiles and furniture; a resourcefulness that characterizes the Appalachian people to this day. Many of the food and lifeways practices dated back to the earliest Native American inhabitants of the area. Apart from being beautiful as a piece of art or music, much of what we call traditional art was primarily functional, not commercial. Quilts and woven goods were meant to give warmth. Music was made for enjoyment by the community, not usually for monetary gain. In the days before radio and television, storytelling, music and other oral traditions were the entertainment and often a form of news media for a community. As mass media and modern technology became more common in the region, the older ways of life started to fade away, but today many of the older residents of Avery remember and many younger people have taken up traditional activities.

Avery County HALL OF FAME

Scotty and Lulu Belle Wiseman
“Sweethearts of Country Music”

Local legends Scotty and Lulu Belle Wiseman performed on radio programs heard across the country, on record and appeared in seven motion pictures during their 25 year musical career. Their chemistry together and their tight harmonies gave them the name the “Sweethearts of Country Music.” They were part of the generation that grew up playing pre-commercial styles of old time mountain music and helped shape the sound of early country and bluegrass music. “Skyland” Scotty (1909-1981) grew up in the Three Mile community of Avery County, raised in a family known for its fine musicians. Myrtle “Lulu Belle” Cooper moved with her family to Illinois when she was a teenager from her home in Boone, North Carolina. During the 1920s and 30s many Appalachian people moved to the mill and factory towns to find work. The popularity of rural or “hillbilly” recordings and radio programs grew to cater to the new urban population. Scotty Wiseman met Lulu Belle in Chicago while performing on the WLS National Barn Dance radio program. They married in 1934 and performed on WLS for 24 years when they weren't making records, motion pictures or touring. In 1936 Lulu Belle was given the title of “Radio Queen” in a nationwide poll of radio listeners. In 1958 the couple retired to their home in the mountains. In 1971 Scotty was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame for penning such classics as “Have I Told You Lately that I Love You,” “Remember Me,” and the bluegrass standard “The Brown Mountain Lights,” written about a local paranormal event. Lulu Belle ran for State Legislature and served two terms as the Representative for Burke, Avery and Mitchell Counties. Today the Wiseman Family is still known for its musicians. As fiddler Lawrence Wiseman, (who also left his home to play on the radio and the road in the 1930s) puts it, “It's something in the blood.”

Old Time Music, Storytelling and Folk Arts on Beech Mountain

Ray Hicks Dancing to the music of Buna Hicks and Frank Proffitt

Beech Mountain rises above Banner Elk and forms most of the northern border of Avery County. Although today it is the site of the East Coast's highest incorporated town and Ski area, the “back side” of Beech remains largely undeveloped. During the 1930s folklorists Anne and Frank Warner were traveling through the area and found a tightly knit musical community. The people living in the hollows and high meadows on Beech sang songs and told stories that originated hundreds of years ago in Britain. The Warners recorded several ballad and religious singers and musicians who played old time songs on homemade mountain-style banjos and dulcimers. The older musical styles that had died out in other areas were alive and well on the Beech and survived in several large families, particularly the Wards, Hickses, Harmons, and Presnells. One of the musicians, Frank Proffitt, who had married into the Hicks family sang them a version of the local murder ballad “Tom Dooley” which would later be recorded by the Kingston Trio and help spark the folk revival of the 1960s.

During the folk revival a cottage industry of craft, music and storytelling helped provide families with extra income. Instrument makers such as Edd Presnell, Leonard and Clifford Glenn, Tab and N.T. Ward, and Stanley Hicks began taking orders from all over the world for their beautiful handmade instruments. The tradition of making wooden inset rimmed mountain banjos and dulcimers is carried today by Charlie Glenn and Rick Ward. Jack Guy started a homemade toy company and store that sold local crafts and recorded local musicians. Other folklorists, including Thomas Burton, students from nearby Appalachian State University and folk music enthusiasts from around the world visited the area and recorded local Buna Hicks, Hattie Presnell, and Monroe Presnell, both born during the late 19th century. Storytelling and traditional lifeways lived on in the mostly agricultural community. The Beech Mountain area was the chief source for many of the collections of Jack Tales, the stories about the trickster figure who fought giants and outwitted the Devil. Ray Hicks was known all over the world and was the subject of several books, documentary films, and audio recordings. Other members of the family still tell the old tales and riddles, and gather wild plants and heirloom vegetables.

The families from Beech produced two National Heritage Award winners, Stanley and Ray Hicks. NC Heritage Award winners from the area include Leonard Glenn, Edd Presnell, and Elsie Trivette. Today the music of Beech Mountain can be heard on several recordings including The Warner Collection, (available from Appleseed Recordings), and The Traditional Music of Beech Mountain, (Folk-Legacy) and individual recordings by Stanley Hicks, Frank Profitt and others. Although the area has changed drastically in the last few decades, a few of the old timers and their children still sing “The House Carpenter” and tell “Jack the Giant Killer.”

The Miracle in the Hills: The Crossnore Weaving Room

One of the oldest continuously operated traditional weaving facilities in North Carolina is located in Avery County in the historic community of Crossnore. The Crossnore School was founded in 1913 by Dr Eustace Sloop and Dr Mary Sloop to provide a better education for local children. The weaving room followed several years later, as a source of income for both the school and the weavers. Students learned how to weave from visiting instructors from the Berea School in Kentucky and from elders in the community. In the early days everything was handmade on site, from the dyes to the handspun fibers, to the buildings made from local river stone.

Weaving on a hand loom is an ancient art form, and requires skill, patience, and strength. Patterns are arranged by hand until line by line, a beautiful pattern emerges. By the early 1900s many traditional crafts such as weaving were disappearing, even in the mountains, replaced by cheaper and less time consuming factory good. An interest in preserving these practices and a new appreciation for the beauty of traditional crafts as fine art led to the founding of craft organizations such as the Southern Highland Craft Guild in the 1920s and 30s. A new market outside the region for these handmade goods developed and a cottage craft industry provided many opportunities for mountain people, especially women.

Visitors to the weaving room on the grounds of the Crossnore School can watch weavers in action, purchase crafts and learn about the history of the school, the craft revival and weaving in general in the new museum. Classes and workshops are offered in the summer. The weaving room has survived a fire, the Great Depression, and over 8 decades of ups and downs. Today Shirley Gragg, Lisa Banner, Virginia Coffey, and Virginia McClellan weave and work with patterns that date from the Colonial Period to the present, such as Whig Rose, Martha Washington and Lee's Surrender.

Former Crossnore Master Weaver, Ossie Clark Phillips, 1998 NC Heritage Award Recipient, and a weaver since the age of 12