Before it became a national park that draws more than 12 million people a year, The Smoky Mountains National Park was home to the Cherokee, and after that, settlers from Europe. They settled in the ‘coves’ or flat valley areas in the mountains which allowed them to raise crops and livestock. They had churches, schools, unique cantilevered barns, henhouses, and cabins. Thankfully, a historian had the foresight to encourage the government to preserve homesteads in the park as cultural heritage sites. And that is where the research journey for my novel, The Truth of Who You Are began.
 
What drew me first to the region (besides the majestic mountains) were the stories of the people who once inhabited Cades Cove. The community structures are still intact, preserved by the park for visitors to witness what it may have been like growing up in the shadows of the mountains. Regional museums have books about the people who once lived in the area, how they conducted business, and lived before the government bought them out to make the national park during the Great Depression. This eleven-mile circuit holds what remains of an entire community that once lived there: homes, corn cribs, barns, smoke, and spring houses.

Anyone researching the Appalachian culture at the turn of the 20th century is likely to find the ethnographies of Emma Bell Miles and Horace Kephart. Miles’ The Spirit of the Mountains (1905) and Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders (1913 and 1922) document the daily lives of the people living in the mountains of the southeast United States in the early 1900s. Their lyrical prose on the familial culture, unique dialect, art and music—influenced by isolation—are entertaining and insightful reads. 

Emma was the inspiration for Ben Taylor's mother, in my novel The Truth of Who You Are, set in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I found her personal story both tragic and inspiring. And the contrast of Emma Bell Miles' fate compared to Horace Kephart, (considered legendary in the region for advancing the National Park) smacks of irony. So I delved into to their personal lives further. And this is what I found. 
 
An examination of these two authors reveals parallels in their writing style and the influence their education had on their perception of the culture. Emma went to college for two years at the St. Louis School of Art.  Horace attended college in the mid-west and then went on to graduate school at Cornell University in 1881 to study history and political science. Both authors had educations that were for the most part beyond that of the people they were studying.  Rather than condescending, the authors had a penchant for describing their neighbors with grudging respect and awe for their resiliency. Moreover, both authors were amateur naturalists. Kephart wrote numerous articles for magazines such as Field and Stream on camping and the flora and fauna of the region, while Miles wrote and illustrated a book titled Our Southern Birds, in 1919. Both weave vivid narratives of the natural beauty of the region throughout the Spirit of the Mountains and Our Southern Highlanders.
 

Connect here for my next post on the history of lumber industry in the Smoky Mountain region.

This is an ode to those public historians who went out of their way to write and publish local history that would otherwise have been forgotten. Whether it was about their own past experience, or the history of a place, these books are gems for those of us writing historical fiction. They are accounts of the ordinary people, ones who may not have been famous, but whose lives are the fabric of the past. I've found my share of these treasures while researching my novels.