Ramp Hollow

by Steven Stoll

  43.  Ross, “Pocketed Americans,” 171.

  44.  “If population is increasing in communities of this type a change directly to annual cropping or multi-cropping imposes itself.” Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth, 41, 44, 64. For Netting’s take on this, see Smallholders, Householders, 263–65, 270. For other observations of population and density in the southern mountains, see Gray, “Economic Conditions and Tendencies in the Southern Appalachians,” 7–12.

  45.  See “The Five-Acre Farm,” in Seymour, The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It, 35–36.

  46.  Davis, Geography of the Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, 61.

  47.  West Virginia had the lowest number of mortgaged farms of any state in 1920. This might seem like farmers had escaped the debt trap so common in other regions. But that’s not what it means. No bank thought farm property in most parts of the state valuable enough to loan against. It meant that farmers could not borrow a portion of the value of their land to buy or improve anything. Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920, Volume V, Agriculture, 481.

  48.  Smith, “Farming Appalachia,” 333.

  49.  Salstrom, “Agricultural Origins of Economic Dependency,” 275. We will consider W. Arthur Lewis’s “dual-sector” model in another section. Census of the United States (1890).

  50.  I have heavily paraphrased Paul Wallace Gates in this paragraph, taken from The Farmer’s Age, 404–405. On merchant credit and farmer debt in Floyd County, Kentucky, see Weise, Grasping at Independence, 110–12. On the barter and borrow system, see Salstrom, Appalachia’s Path to Dependency, chap. 3.

  51.  “[Twelfth Census of the United States].” Special Reports: Mines and Quarries: 1902, 701–702.

  52.  “In the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Charleston. Major Henry Totten [son of T. K. Totten] vs. Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company” (1908), typescript in the West Virginia State Archives.

  53.  Works of environmental history that consider different kinds of appropriative and communal use-rights include White, The Roots of Dependency; Judd, Common Lands, Common People; McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem; and Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature. And see Warren, “Owning Nature,” 398.

  54.  Marshall, History of Kentucky, vol. 1, 150, quoted in Gates, Landlords and Tenants, 14–15.

  55.  Blackmar, “A Speculative Essay on the History of American Land Speculation,” 4–7; Gates, History of Public Land Law, 124, quoted in Blackmar, “A Speculative Essay,” 7; Rappleye, Robert Morris, 507–10. On the China trade, see Fichter, So Great a Profit. Speculators acquired millions of acres by purchasing from grantees. Rasmussen, Absentee Landowning and Exploitation, 35. No one knows exactly how much land Nicholas and Morris owned. Some mountain families ended up with grants themselves, especially in the 1860s, perhaps for military service during the Civil War.

  56.  One of the best explanations comes from the opinion of Judge James Keith in Harman v. Stearns (July 22, 1897), Report of Cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, 58–69. The case concerns one parcel of 1,500 acres but it encapsulates much of the history of Morris’s lands.

  57.  Elkhorn Creek flows into Tug Fork, which meets Levisa Fork in Kentucky to form the Big Sandy, which drains into the Ohio River. Patents for William Belcher, Jr., are listed in the online catalog of the Library of Virginia: http://lva1.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/F/4EMDAM5K45STV47M1JTUU8XDQA4YNCBDIEHV5G12L4R6F759AY-37502?func=find-acc&acc_sequence=004638778. William Floyd Belcher, Sr., lived between 1785 and 1869. He died in Big Four, West Virginia. “Pleas at the Court House of the County of Logan before the Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery for said County on the 13th day of October, 1846,” Pocahontas Land Company Papers. Also see Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia (1857), 794. I don’t know if the younger Belcher secured title by adverse possession on forfeited land (meaning no senior patent) or if he paid for it.

  58.  “An act to prevent future conflictions in claims to land,” Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (1826), 314.

  59.  For the first law I could find, see Code of Virginia (1849), 449. I also used Philbin v. Carr (1920), quoted in Phipps, “Note and Comment,” 191–92. Furthermore, “the adverse possessor holding under color of title has prima facie a valid title, though in fact he has no title at all.” Senior patent holders had a simple way of taking back full possession. All they needed to do was reoccupy part of the land by putting up a house or planting a field. Doing this extinguished any adverse claim as a whole. Sims, “The Constructive Possession of a Claimant by Adverse Possession,” 569. The state of West Virginia adopted color of title in its second constitution (1872), in Article 13. In Cook et al. v. Raleigh Lumber Co., argued before the Supreme Court of West Virginia (June 16, 1914), the holder of a junior patent was sued for collecting firewood outside of boundaries that marked the senior patent held by the lumber company. Southern Reporter … Containing all the Decisions of…, vol. 82, 327. For an early reference of color of title by the Supreme Court of the United States, see Taylor v. Walton and Hundly, Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States. February Term, 1816, vol. 1, 141. The state of Kentucky committed itself to “confirm existing interest” by controlling adverse possession claims in “An act to prevent future conflictions in claims to land,” Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (1826), 314.

  60.  For an early reference to mineral rights, see Hitchins, History of Cornwall, 305. Rasmussen, Absentee Landowning, 56–68. On Edwards and the incorporation of his company, see Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia … 1849–1850, 415. Cody Dickens interview on October 3, 1996, Coal River Folklife Collection of the Library of Congress (AFC 1999/008, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.141006). Mayer, “A June Jaunt,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1857, 592–612.

  61.  Weise, Grasping at Independence, 259.

  62.  G. W. Duhring (manager) to E. W. Clark (president), February 1, 1889, Pocahontas Land Company Papers, Eastern Regional Coal Archives. Byrne, “Pocahontas-Flat Top Coalfield,” 33. The company was also known as the Flat Top Land Association, also known as the Trans-Flat Top Land Association and later the Pocahontas Land Corporation. I will call it the Flat Top Land Trust for simplicity. It amassed around 300,000 acres in McDowell and Mercer counties. Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Flat Top Coal Land Association.

  63.  “Note 1—Redemptions,” in General Letters (August 20, 1887, to July 2, 1889) and “List of Surveys Within the Maitland Davis Survey … February 1887,” Flat Top Land Association Papers. Here is more evidence from surveyor’s notes: “On the waters of Laurel Creek … Edmond Lester claims 97 acres. I could not find any record of a survey or grant, in Virginia or West Virginia, to answer the local description.” “On the waters of Burke and Buzzard Creeks, near the Indian Ridge … John T. Belcher claims several tracts, could not find any description. He claims as heir of Samuel Lambert.” I also used “List of Landowners and Letter From M.A. Miller” (1888), Pocahontas Land Company Papers. Billings and Blee make the point that mountain people created legal documents and kept records of their exchanges. Road to Poverty, 270–75.

  64.  Grantee Index to Deeds, 1868–1969, McDowell County, West Virginia, West Virginia State Archives. Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, 56. Billings and Blee, Road to Poverty, 270. Weise, Grasping at Independence, 226–27.

  65.  Letter from John C. Belcher to M. A. Miller (February 12, 1883), Letters, 1883–1885, Pocahontas Land Company Papers.

  66.  I edited the letter to make it more readable. Here is the original text: “Inclosed you will find leases of Hill H. Cecil. Cecil is on your land in a House he built some time ago had left it and another man had taken possession and sold his improvements to a Mr Edords. Mr Edords wonts Cecil to give him posession you will have to decide between
them.” Letter from G. W. Belcher to J. W. Davis, January 11, 1884. The author asked Davis about an important case regarding West Virginia land, in which the state repossessed delinquent land and gave it to the schools of Wyoming County for sale. The author wrote, “Please let me know what has been done with McClure vs. Maitland about the Wyoming [County] School land in the Court of appeals.” These letters are included in letters from G. W. Duhring to E. W. Clark (January 11, 1884, and January 31, 1884), Flat Top Land Trust Papers.

  67.  Letters from G. W. Belcher to J. W. Davis (January 11 and 31, 1884), Letters, 1883–1885, Flat Top Land Trust Papers. Another Belcher wanted to buy one hundred or two hundred acres from Davis. On July 16, 1885, John T. Belcher wrote, “I have signed your lease and would have been glad to have seen you as I have 2 tracts of land lying parallel with each other and you own a string between them … I would like to buy yours if you will sell it.”

  68.  An engineer and surveyor testified that he had “followed the occupation” of the land in question for twenty years. Deposition of J. E. Wagner, civil engineer for the company and land surveyor, in Major Henry Totten vs. Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company, 117.

  69.  Letter from Duhring to Clark (January 1888 and January 23, 1888), Flat Top Land Trust Papers. In the 1930s, William Zinn recalled clearing land with his father in the 1870s. “One-third of the timber which we destroyed, if standing there today, would be valued at more than the land is worth.” Zinn, The Story of Woodbine Farm, 10.

  70.  One of the last parcels of land belonged to Hiram Christian and his son Maston, detailed in this letter: E. W. Clark to G. W. Duhring, January 23, 1888, Flat Top Land Association Papers. Part of this land is detailed here: http://image.lva.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/drawer?retrieve_image=LONN&dir=/LONN/LO-7/180/180&image_number=0047&offset=%2B33&name=Grants+No.114++1857-1858&dbl_pgs=no&round=. The company announced its unbroken ownership in an internal report of February 1, 1889, and in a published report, Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Flat Top Coal Land Association … December 31st, 1889, 10. “[Twelfth Census of the United States].” Special Reports: Mines and Quarries: 1902, 701–702.

  71.  For more, see Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside. On fire and mountain logging, see Roosevelt, Message from the President of the United States, and Bush, Dorie: Woman of the Mountains, 132–33.

  72.  Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, 89–91; Fox, Blue-grass and Rhododendron, 63.

  73.  The personalities and events of the feud are far too complicated to detail here. These three paragraphs depend on Altina L. Waller’s Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860–1900. Waller uncovers the motives behind the events with great skill. Waller, Feud, 43, 80–83, 166–70, 185, 204–205.

  74.  Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, 46–47, 60–61. The average yearly inflation rate of the U.S. dollar was 2.57 percent between 1889 and 2013.

  75.  My argument here owes a debt to Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, but also to Salstrom, Appalachia’s Path to Dependency. Also see Dunaway, The First American Frontier; Simon, “Uneven Development and the Case of West Virginia.”

  76.  A board foot is one square foot, one inch thick. Fernow, The Great Timber Belt, 5, 10.

  77.  Wheeling Register, quoted in Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, 58; Hall, The Rending of Virginia, 615–19.

  78.  Summers, The Mountain State, 28, 97–98; Williams, Americans and Their Forests, 357–60; Otto, “Forest Fallowing in the Southern Appalachian Mountains,” 33. “Financial Statement for the Year 1908,” Elk River Coal and Lumber Company Collection, West Virginia State Archives. In 1908 alone, the Crescent Lumber Company sent 240 carloads of lumber to market, amounting to 2.4 million board feet. The estimate is based on 10,000 board feet per carload. Brooks, “Forestry and Wood Industries,” 44–46. Lumber manager quoted in Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, 383–84. Market logic drove the depletion of forests. James Watt Raine observed, “The best timber was cut long ago. As the price of lumber rises, and the sawmills pay more for logs, another swath still farther off may be cut.” See Raine, The Land of Saddle-Bags, 226–27.

  79.  “Timber Famine Due in 20 Years,” New York Times, November 5, 1907; Gregg, Managing the Mountains, 4, 86–87.

  80.  Otto, “The Present Condition of West Virginia Forest”; Brooks, Forestry and Wood Industries, 33. A biography of Brooks and his map of 1910 are available here: www.wvforestry.com/conservation.cfm?menu2call=conserve.

  81.  Gregg, Managing the Mountains, 16–17.

  82.  McNeill, “The Last Camp Fire,” in The Last Forest, 122–54. Among the first literary writers to notice the scale and scope of the taking and to account for the psychological loss was Francis Courtenay Baylor. See Baylor, Behind the Blue Ridge, 16–19. On powerlessness in Appalachia, see Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 20–25.

  83.  Dorie Woodruff Cope recalled this from her childhood: “It was common practice for men to be paid by the company to live in cabins on land the company was claiming through legal occupancy. Most of the lumber companies used this method to secure thousands of acres of land for timber cutting.” Bush, Dorie: Woman of the Mountains, 131. The annual reports of the Elk River Coal and Lumber Company contain substantial evidence of these leases. “The leases are, therefore, made to protect your title rather than as a source of income.” I looked at financial statements for the years 1908 to 1912. Elk River Coal and Lumber Company Collection, West Virginia State Archives. For the founding of Elk River Coal and Lumber Company, see Lewis, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, 74. James Lane Allen also noticed these tenants: “The buying up of the mountain lands has of course unsettled a large part of these strange people. Already there has been formed among them a class of tenants paying rent and living in their old homes.” Allen, “Mountain Passes of the Cumberland,” 561. And see Fox, “The Future Kentucky’s Feuds,” 14. King, The Great South, 503.

  84.  Skidmore, I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes, 105, 116; Bush, Dorie: Woman of the Mountains, 107–108, 220–21. John Gaventa notes of the first wages, “The industrial order was introduced to the mountaineers’ society by conspicuous consumption, with an exaggerated demonstration of its benefits.” Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 63. Horace Kephart said of the same people after a few years of a cash income, “They can get only the lowest wages, which are quickly dissipated in rent and in foods that formerly they raised for themselves.” Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, 383–84.

  85.  Brooks, “Forestry and Wood Industries,” 44–46; Pruitt, “Self-Sufficiency,” 335; Fox, “The Future [of] Kentucky’s Feuds,” 14; Fowler, “Social and Industrial Conditions,” 387; Allen, “Mountain Passes of the Cumberland,” 575–76. Gregg, Managing the Mountains, 18.

  86.  Fowler, “Social and Industrial Conditions,” 387; Allen, “Mountain Passes of the Cumberland,” 575–76. “Even before the coal operators came to the region,” wrote the union organizer Jim Garland, “mountain society had begun to disintegrate.” Julia S. Ardery (Welcome the Traveler Home: Jim Gardland’s Story of the Kentucky Mountains), quoted in Salstrom, Appalachia’s Path to Dependency, xxvi; Economic and Social Problems and Conditions of the Southern Appalachians, 43–46. In the words of Arturo Escobar, “Massive poverty in the modern sense appeared only when the spread of the market economy broke down community ties and deprived millions of people from access to land, water, and other resources. With the consolidation of capitalism, synthetic pauperization became inevitable.” Escobar, Encountering Development, 22.

  5. Interlude: Agrarian Twilight

    1.  Land in farms increased from 408 million acres to 839 million acres. Fourteenth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1920, Volume V, Agriculture, 80–83. Report on the Productions of Agriculture … Tenth Census, 27–28. By small farms I mean all farms in that category, owned, rented, and on shares.

    2.  The Indian
Appropriation Act (March 3, 1871), quoted in Walker, The Indian Question, 5. “Hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power, with whom the United States may contract by treaty.”

    3.  Ostler, The Plains Sioux, 84. For a discussion about enclosure and its historical specificity, see Greer, “Commons and Enclosure in the Colonization of North America.”

    4.  Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1878), 1.

    5.  Edward P. Smith, quoted in Greenwald, Reconfiguring the Reservation, 20–21.

    6.  Otis, The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands, 5–6. Originally published in 1934. The Nez Percé lost 88 percent of their reservation in the ensuing rush, but they did not stoically accept dispossession, nor were they helpless. According to Emily Greenwald, the Nez Percé selected allotments in the bottoms of canyons, where they could cluster them together, blurring the separation of households at the core of the policy. They planned their spaces to reflect recognized kinship groups and familiar social structures, and generally preserved the same economic practices they had always known. Greenwald, Reconfiguring the Reservation, 147–49.