Appalachia and the Great Depression

The Great Depression is so named because of its widespread and devastating effects across the United States, and globally. The average American struggled to find employment, affordable housing, and food that was not severely impacted by inflation. For much of the country, the Great Depression began somewhere around Black Tuesday, when the stock market crashed over 25% overnight October 28-29, 1929. However, for much of Appalachia (the mountainous region extending from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania down through northwest Alabama), the Depression began years earlier. Across the mountainous region, major industries and employers such as lumber, textiles, and coal floundered during the 1920s. The areas of Appalachia that relied heavily on coal mining experienced significant overproduction and lower wages than other industries. This trend was further exacerbated when coupled with the fact that most people relied on a self-sustaining or community-founded subsistence. The land had been overfarmed and overproduced for decades, similar to the land of the Southern Plains where the Dust Bowl intensified the Depression there. “Fifty years of industrial abuse of the environment and the lack of a scientific approach to agriculture and forestry had left much Appalachian land exhausted.”[1]

By the 1920s, many Appalachian families who had previously farmed small plots of land were forced to obtain sources of income outside of their property. This meant both men and women entered the workforce during this era. My great-grandfather, John Patton, was one of these men who sought to provide a steady income for his family by working in local mines. It would ultimately contribute to his emphysema and eventual move to New Mexico for the drier climate. However, in the 1920s, mining simply meant a means to an end. Papaw’s father had died very young, when Papaw was only 2 years old. The family was stable, but by no means wealthy. Living in the East Tennessee coal mining region, John Patton joined the ranks of his peers by working in the local mines such as Windrock and Cannon Creek. My great-uncle recalls an instance where the coal car got stuck on the track, and he and his teenage friends were all pushing with all their might to get it back on the correct track. He remembered Papaw just quietly walking up, pushing his back against the coal car, and using his knees and back to single-handedly push the car back on the track. He noted, “That was just how strong those miners were.”

 

Although mining opened up a new industry and job opportunities for many isolated regions of Appalachia, there were incredible pitfalls of the jobs. These included the aspects already mentioned, as well as the requirement to leave the household and farm for other family members to tend. Often, this fell to women and young children to perform all of the farm chores. Topping this off was a severe drought in the southern region of the United States in 1930. The overproduction of the land meant that many farms began to fail, or give less productive crop returns. The meager subsistence of mountain families over several years led to an increase in malnutrition and diseases such as typhus and pneumonia, while the isolated communities of the mountains lacked proper healthcare options.[2] Sadly, this was true of John Patton’s experience as well. Just a few short years prior to the widespread availability of penicillin, John and his wife, Mildred, lost their infant son. The causes listed on the death certificate—acute ear infection, diarrhea, and malnutrition—confirm the conditions of Appalachia during the Great Depression.

By the early 1930s, when other parts of the country were just entering the Great Depression, farmers and miners in the Appalachian regions were moving from the rural mountainous areas to larger cities in search of employment. This was the case for John and Mildred Patton as well. The couple had two children in the small community of Pikeville, TN, before moving their growing family closer to the city of Chattanooga. At the time, Chattanooga was a burgeoning leader of industry, centrally located along the Tennessee River. The city offered more income opportunities for both men and women, while the labor industries of the Appalachians were almost strictly reserved for men. Although John and Mildred would move the family back to the Appalachian county of Roane by the 1940 census, they were able to better provide for their children in urbanized areas throughout the Depression.[3]

**A crucial factor within Appalachia during the Great Depression was the Tennessee Valley Authority, created and passed during the Roosevelt Administration.

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                  [1] “Impact of the Great Depression on Appalachia,” Encyclopedia.com (March 28, 2022), https://www.encyclopedia.com/economics/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/appalachia-impact-great-depression.

 

                  [2] Kisat, Courtney. ""to Give Or Not to Give:" Interactions between Rural Relief Clients and Social Workers during the Emergency Relief Period of the Great Depression, 1933 to 1935." Order No. 3588003, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 2013, 45-48.

 

                  [3] 1940 United States Federal Census, Ancestry.com Operations, 1940; Census Place: Roane, Tennessee; Roll: m-t0627-03929; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 73-5.

 

Economic Influencers of Tennessee

*This blog post is not concerned specifically with my ancestors or relatives, but rather the state and southern region in which they lived and labored.*

 

The early twentieth century produced new innovations in industry, agriculture, and retail. The first decades of the century saw the shift from a majority rural population to a majority urban population. [1] The growing towns and cities meant a larger number of citizens who needed to purchase food items. It also meant a wider variety of food that people desired to buy from local markets. Grocers and general merchandise store operators of the early twentieth century typically did the shopping for their customers, who would simply hand the clerk a list of needed items. Prices were not usually labeled, so one item may be given at a different price for two different people. 

 

In 1916, a young man named Clarence Saunders revolutionized the way grocery stores were structured. Moving from Clarksville, Tennessee, to Memphis, and working as a grocery clerk in several different stores, Saunders noticed the dwindling profit margin available to grocery owners because of the labor charges they were paying to clerks. He also realized that only one client was being served at a time, cutting into possible profits. Saunders decided to try a different approach with the grocery store layout and shopping structure. The grocer opened up a new retail grocery store that he named “King Piggly Wiggly,” the first store in the Piggly Wiggly Grocery store chain. The shopper was welcomed to the store by two turnstiles and rows of assorted canned and fresh food items, which they were free to choose and pick out on their own. They were then allowed to check out, although the store instituted a “cash only” rule, eliminating the loss of profit by allowing credit charge accounts.[2] Saunders called this the “cash and carry policy.”[3]

 

 

Saunders also changed the grocery industry by heavily marketing his stores. He wanted the Piggly Wiggly chains to be a household name, and carried popular brands and products, arranged in a way to maximize client interest in such products. This encouraged popular brands to clean up their own marketing campaigns. Saunders also engaged in outlandish promotions and entertainment events to encourage productivity. The year that he opened his first store he also advertised in a local newspaper that a beauty contest would be happening the following Saturday in his store, which led to a greater crowd that day.[4]

 

 

 Saunders further affected grocer and retail economics by lowering the prices within the store. Mike Freeman explains, “His self-service store required fewer employees than the traditional grocery store. That allowed Saunders to operate at a cheaper cost, saving him money. He wisely passed on this savings to the customer in the form of lower prices.”[5] Hence, Piggly Wiggly quickly earned the reputation for offering the lowest grocery prices in town.

 

By 1917, Saunders had applied for one of several patents for his design and organization of the grocery store. “1923, only seven years after he opened his first store, Clarence Saunders owned 1,268 Piggly Wiggly stores which sold $100 million in groceries. Saunders was a very rich man by the early 1920s. However, he also had a penchant for buying expensive items, big and small, demonstrated in the construction of his “Pink Palace.” Saunders also attempted to purchase a majority share of his company’s stocks after he allowed Piggly Wiggly to go public. According to Freeman, “To this day, his corner was the last corner recognized by the New York Stock Exchange.”[6]

 

Saunders was left financially crippled, and in 1924 he declared bankruptcy. His shareholders had forced him out of the business, but Saunders did win a legal suit to create a new grocery store chain in competition with Piggly Wiggly. Although his new chain, known as the Sole Owner stores because one judge supposedly informed Clarence Saunders that the only thing he was the sole owner of was his name, did relative well, it did not franchise to the degree that Piggly Wiggly did. Right as the stores began to thrive in the late 1920s, the Great Depression hit, deeply affecting the grocery store retail industry. Between a growing mountain of debt, and the struggle of the Depression, Saunders declared bankruptcy once more and closed his Sole Owner stores in 1933.

 

Saunders died of heart failure in 1953, and he seemed to leave behind no tangible legacy. However, his determination as an entrepreneur created a lasting concept that continues to this day. An article in The Economist has this to say about Clarence Saunders’ legacy, “As a business, Piggly Wiggly is now a shadow of its former self; it has only about 600 stores in 17 American states. But as an idea, it has conquered the world.”[7]

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[1] Census History Staff, “Urban and Rural Areas,” U.S. Census Bureau, Dec. 8, 2021, https://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/geography/urban_and_rural_areas.html.

[2] Scarlet Miles, “Piggly Wiggly Supermarkets,” Tennessee Encyclopedia, Tennessee Historical Society (Oct. 2017).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Clarence Saunders, “Piggly Wiggly, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” Memphis News-Scimittar (Sept. 5, 1916).

[5] Mike Freeman, “Clarence Saunders: The Piggly Wiggly Man,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1992): 161–69.

[6] Ibid.

[7] "The Piggly Wiggly way; Schumpeter." The Economist, May 9, 2015, 64(US). Gale In Context: Biography (accessed April 8, 2022).

 

Growth of the Small Farm in Postbellum Alabama

 The economy of postbellum Alabama was a unique period of change and recovery. In Alabama, it was an era of redirection, as large plantations and small farmers alike grappled with a land in ruin and a permanently changed labor force.  The growth and recovery of the state differed between the northern and southern regions of the state. Inhabitants of the Tennessee Valley of North Alabama in particular, underwent a different experience than their more central and southern counterparts. This included my own Isbell ancestors in Jackson County, and later Colbert County, Alabama. The James Isbell family moved from east Tennessee to Jackson County, Alabama, during the 1820s, and established a large family farm. One of his land patents, and a plat of the county with his land included, are pictured below.

 

The impact of the Civil War and the Postbellum Era significantly affected all Alabamians, including the Isbells. Following a dramatic dip in cotton production, and the destruction of a large percentage of land during the Civil War, most of the state suffered a decline in its white population. Alabamians moved to states and territories that offered readily available land and agricultural opportunities, such as Texas.[1] Between 1860-1870, the white population in Alabama decreased from 526,271 to 521,384.[2] Of the thirteen children of James Isbell, three of them moved west (two to Arkansas and one to Texas), and one moved closer to the urbanizing areas around Birmingham. Much of the westward migration was spurred by agricultural motivations. Gilbert Fite notes, “Besides having to restore declining production caused by the war, farmers faced the difficult matters of soil erosion, poor markets and transportation, and credit costs.”[3]

 

The area that proved to be an exception to this rule was the Tennessee Valley in North Alabama. The Alabama Historical Commission notes, “Almost every region of the state experienced a decline in its white population, with the exception of the Tennessee Valley.”[4] This was a perplexing reaction considering that “the northern mountains and the Tennessee Valley were the hardest hit” from devastated fields and property following the war.[5] The statewide population growth percentage was a minute 3% increase between 1860-1870, the lowest percent change of any U.S. census in Alabama.[6] The population growth percentage was created by an increase in the Black population of nearly 38,000 people.[7]

 

The end of the Civil War brought the new question of whether the South could continue in its agricultural economy, and who would provide the labor. The Freedman’s Bureau encouraged newly freed Blacks to purchase land, but the lack of assets and income often prevented this accomplishment. The emancipated African Americans needed a reliable source of income and housing. Large landowners now lacked a consistent labor force to work their land and harvest their crops. The tenant and sharecropper systems were developed in a large part to solve these problems. Woodson clarifies the distinction between the two systems by noting, “In sharecropping, the laborer works an area of land for the landowner, and is paid with a portion of the crop. In the tenant system, the tenant rented the land from the landowner, and pays his rent to the landowner with a portion of the crop.”[8]

 

Sharecroppers and tenants were both Black and White, with poor White farmers making up a large percentage of the tenant farmers in Northern Alabama. One immediate cultural implication of this system was the coexistence of both races as laborers on the same farm. However, as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth century, the percentage of white tenants dramatically increased, as black tenants increasingly moved to the urban North.[9] One statewide result of tenant farming and sharecropping was the continuation of large landowners and estates. Rather than whole plantations, however, these estates were broken down into smaller farms that were then rented and worked by tenants or sharecroppers. “According to the Census records of the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of small farms within the state increased,” but “the number of landowners decreased.” [10] This suggests that the number of sharecroppers and tenants increased throughout second half of the nineteenth century. The ratio of land owners to land tenants/sharecroppers was almost 50/50 by the 1880s, and by the 1910 census the latter had surpassed the former by 10%.[11] This was especially true in the Tennessee Valley, which had a much stronger sharecropper/tenant presence than other areas in the state. In North Alabama, mainly the Tennessee Valley region, owners made up less than 30% of the farming population, greatly outnumbered by their laborers. This was in contrast to the more southern regions of the Piney woods or Wiregrass, where the opposite was true.[12]

 

One unfortunate consequence of the strong sharecropping and tenant population in North Alabama was the stark contrast between classes. Especially within the white population, financial debt and strain were ever-present among the poor farmers. Most sharecroppers used their landowners’ credit to purchase supplies and goods, then owing the landowner for those goods at the end of the crop season. Flyn concludes, “As a result, most tenants had no idea how much debt they had incurred. Owners carried over debts from year to year, meaning that if the tenant stayed on the same land, each year often began in debt.”[13]

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[1] “Emigration to Texas,” Mobile Daily Advertiser and Register, Feb. 8, 1867. 

[2] Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. (Working Paper Series no. 56). Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, 2002.

[3] Gilbert Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Louisville: University of Kentucky, 1984).

[4]  Alabama Historical Commission, The History of Agriculture in Alabama: A Historic Concept (Montgomery: State Historic Preservation Office), 19.

[5] Ibid.

[6] 2000 Census of Population and Housing: Population and Housing Unit Counts, PHC-2-1: United States Summary. Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004.

[7] Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. (Working Paper Series no. 56). Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, 2002.

[8] Harold D. Woodman, “Post-Civil War Southern Agriculture and the Law,” Agricultural History, (Jan. 1979: 319-337), p. 322.

[9] Wayne Flyn, Poor But Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989), 60-61.

[10] Ibid., 22

[11] Ibid., 61.

[12] Alabama Historical Commission, The History of Agriculture in Alabama: A Historic Concept (Montgomery: State Historic Preservation Office), 22-23.

[13] Wayne Flyn, Poor But Proud, 60.

John Anderson and the Wilderness Road Blockhouse

 
Any American who has taken a U.S. History course has heard of Daniel Boone, and how he blazed a path through the wilderness. This is absolutely correct, and Boone's bravery continues to astound me the more I learn about the man vs. the myth. Boone, however, was not a lone pioneer braving the woods and the wilds on his own. During the eighteenth century, there were many European settlers who determined to make a way for themselves on the frontier of colonial America. Before the American Revolution, there was no territory of Kentucky or of Tennessee. These lands were understood to belong to either Virginia, North Carolina, or the Cherokee people. 

One such pioneer was John Anderson, alternately known as Captain or Colonel John Anderson (due to boundary disputes, he was at one point a Captain in the Virginia militia, as well as a Colonel in the North Carolina militia). Anderson was the son of William and Elizabeth Anderson, possibly Ulster Presbyterians, but almost certainly Scots-Irish (Scottish ancestry but immigrated from Ireland). Anderson was born in Augusta County, Virginia, (near Staunton) where his father was a successful farmer. 

John Anderson did not stay in Staunton. Instead, he served in the short-lived Dunsmore's War as an ensign under a Captain Looney. Following his participation in Revolutionary War battles, and a promotion to Lieutenant, Virginia Governor Patrick Henry commissioned Anderson as Captain of the Washington County Militia, as well as Justice of that county (Sons of the American Revolution Membership Application). Anderson married Rebecca Maxwell in 1775, before joining the Overmountain Men in the crucial North Carolina campaign of the Revolution.

With his new bride by his side, Anderson set out to form a homestead for his family. He decided on a patch of land just on the border of the Virginia colony territory, s
ometimes called North Holston due to its proximity to the Holston River. Because of the location, Anderson faced constant attacks from the Shawnee and Cherokee, so he began construction of a blockhouse, a type of fort that has a second level overhanging the first level (see picture for replica). The blockhouse quickly became a point of refuge for settlers in the area, as well as a starting point along the Wilderness Trail to Kentucky. 

During his lifetime, his home changed territories at least five times. He first lived in Virginia, until a boundary issue redesigned the land as North Carolina territory. It was eventually changed back to Virginia land. It was while he was considered in North Carolina territory that Anderson earned the commission of Colonel. Anderson was also a supporter of the short-lived State of Franklin, an attempt at statehood by several counties in what is now northeastern Tennessee. The attempt failed, but the supporters were successful in eventually earning their own state: Tennessee. In the final years of his life, Anderson was active in both Scott County, Virginia, and Sullivan and Hawkins counties of Tennessee. 

Anderson is buried in Morristown Chapel Cemetery in Kingsport, Tennessee. He died in 1817 "while trying to bring cool water from a distant spring to his ill wife" (Anderson). He left quite a legacy. Although the blockhouse burned in 1876, a replica stands in Natural Tunnel State Park. One of Anderson's grandsons, Joseph Anderson, helped to form Bristol, Tennessee. And one of his 6th great-granddaughters is the author of this blog. :)

Lyman Draper's manuscript #72 notes:

"All records show Captain Anderson to have been a man of much prominence and influence, intensely patriotic, and always at the front in defense of his country."

For anyone interested in more information, I highly suggest reading the article at the link below. Written by another direct descendent of John Anderson, it also lists the book written on the blockhouse.

Sources:

Ancestry.com

Anderson, W., John Anderson, Blockhouse Proprietor and Early Frontier Leader, in Appalachian Quarterly 9:57-67 (Dec. 2004).

"Colonel John Anderson, Builder of the Blockhouse." Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Association, https://danielboonetrail.com/history-perspectives/colonel-john-anderson-builder-of-the-blockhouse/