Appalachian Stereotyping, Railroad Barons, Early Industrialization

This class lesson is devoted entirely to the stereotypes related to the self-sustaining Appalachian Mountain people of Henderson County and the rest of the region.
This class lesson is a compilation of the following resources, along with historical facts related specifically to Henderson County:

“Encyclopedia of Appalachia” (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006) Abramson, Rudy and Haskell, Jean, editors

Walker, Matthew H. “Discrimination Based on National Origin and Ancestry: How the Goals of Equality Have Failed to Address the Pervasive Stereotyping of the Appalachian Tradition,” (2013) University of Dayton Law Review

Drake, Richard. A History of Appalachia (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2001)

Shapiro, Henry D. Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870–1920. UNC Press

Whisnant, David E. Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power and Planning in Appalachia (1980) and All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (1983), UNC Press

Otto, John Solomon. “Hillbilly Culture: The Appalachian Mountain Folk in History and Popular Culture,” Southern Quarterly, (1986)

Eller, Ronald D. (2008). Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945. The University Press of Kentucky and Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930 (1982)

Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History (2002) University of North Carolina Press

“Mountaineers and rangers: A history of the federal forest management in the Southern Appalachians 1900-81” by Shelley Smith Mastran, Nan Lowerre, United States Department of Agriculture. Forest Service

Resources at web site: http://collections.library.appstate.edu/research-aids/parks-and-people-effects-national-parks-appalachian-communities

“Hill People: Appalachian Culture and the American State” Introduction to Cultivated Country: Subsistence Farms, the New Deal, and the Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia” by Sara M. Greg, Yale University Press, Yale Agrarian Studies Series

“Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes” published by University of Kentucky, ed by Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, Katherine Ledford

Three of the above resources are used extensively in this lesson. These are:
“Encyclopedia of Appalachia” (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006) Abramson, Rudy and Haskell, Jean, editors
http://encyclopediaofappalachia.com/introduction.php
Rudy Abramson, Reston, Virginia,
and Jean Haskell, East Tennessee State University
© 2010 – 2016, University of Tennessee Press.
“Mountaineers and Rangers: A History of Federal Forestry Management in the Southern Appalachians 1900-81” by U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington, D.C. FS-380; Shelley Smith Mastran and Nan Lowerre , Manager and Researcher Maximus, Inc., McLean, Va.
“Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes” published by University of Kentucky, ed by Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, Katherine Ledford

In reading and using the above resources, keep in mind the following facts related to Henderson County:
In the North Mills River section of Henderson County, it was George Vanderbilt who first began buying the land for the timber for his railroads.
During this period of time, with timber companies, power companies, land developers and others buying the land of the people, through the tactics discussed in the above resources, there was an out migration of our local people from the late 1880s until about 1920.
Through the study of Henderson County history and culture from the 1780s until 1920, students know that the stereotypes and mythology created about our Appalachian Mountain are not true.
Another byproduct of the arrival of the railroads was textile mills in some sections. Most textile mills at this time used water-powered electricity and the swift-flowing mountain rivers were ideal for water-powered electricity. Power companies began to buy the land in the same manner used by the railroad barons. As the textile mills were built, the people who sold their land began to move to these new mill towns for employment and left farming.
In Henderson County, this primarily occurred in the communities around the Big Hungry River and the Green River.
The textile mill jobs were considered “good paying” jobs and this created a solid middle class in some instances. Then, the decline of American textiles beginning in the 1970s caused severe unemployment and more displacement.
With the arrival of the railroads, wealthy tourists and others began arriving to the area to get away from large northern cities and the summer heat in Florida and other areas. Late 19th century vacationers and folklorists “discovered” the area and decided it was a temperate climate for vacationers in the summer, particularly the urban elite. This resulted again in inflated land prices and higher property taxes, resulting in more dismantling of the middle class in the Appalachian region. Today, this continues with retirees discovering the region. Again, with the results of inflated land prices, higher property taxes, loss of agricultural land, and low-paying service industry jobs.
There were also people who wanted to “reform” the Appalachian Mountain people based on stereotypical perceptions of the people. These reformists perceived the people’s way of life as “unsustainable,” using the rhetoric of poverty and backwardness. This is the reformist ideology of home missionaries. Here in Henderson County, this is seen in areas such as Bat Cave and Edneyville where Episcopal missionaries came.