Mama’S Song

By Gayle Jennings

Mamas Song is a portrait of life in the tiny rural community of Elgood, West Virginia, in the early 1900s. It centers around the Higginbothams, a close-knit farming family, and particularly on Maude, their youngest daughter. It chronicles how their lives are shaped by historical events, their own personal choices, and the trials they face in an era before modern conveniences and modern medicine.

They are just an ordinary family--none of them pursue or gain worldly fame. Even so, their unassuming lives are powerful examples of faith, perseverance, and sacrificial love, and the impact that simple acts of kindness have on the lives of others.

Their journey through life teaches them that love, loss, and grief are intertwined and will always be so, this side of heaven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490859156

Gayle Jennings

Gayle Jennings and her husband, Ted, live on a farm in Camp Creek, West Virginia. Gayle has both a BS and a MS in animal science. In addition to writing, she also enjoys watercolor painting. She is a member of Johnston Chapel Baptist Church in Princeton, West Virginia.

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Copyright © 2014 Gayle Jennings.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-5913-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5914-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5915-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919975

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/13/2014

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Epilogue

About The Author

PREFACE

What motivates us to delve into the past to seek our family history? Perhaps it is the passing of our own youth that creates the desire to connect with those who have gone before. The arrogance of youth, which disregards old stories, is now replaced with a strange hunger for the past. But too often, we find that we began our search too late, and the trail has gone cold—hidden in the fog of minds which are no longer clear or lost to death itself.

My own need to connect with the past resulted from my mother’s battle with dementia. For several years, I had watched my strong, sharp, independent mother, slowly succumb to Alzheimer’s disease. The emotional burden was becoming too heavy for me to bear. The illness that was destroying her was also destroying me. As I began to surrender to bitterness and self- pity, I found myself thinking about my grandmother.

Fourteen years after her death, I realized that I had never really considered how hard her life had been. When she was only four, her mother died. Then a few years later, she almost died from diphtheria. She lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression. Her older brother was killed in a tragic railroad accident. Two beloved nephews died in World War II—one in France and the other at Pearl Harbor. She lost a baby, and then a husband, when she still had five young children to feed. In her later years, she was preceded in death by another son.

She lived more than half her life without electricity or indoor plumbing. She knew hard physical labor, which became even harder after her husband died. However, like many of her generation, she did not let these tragedies define her life. She seldom spoke of them, and when she did, it was with calm acceptance, not bitter remorse.

I longed to know what had shaped her character and given her strength to survive the devastating circumstances of her life. My search led me back to ancient Scotland, where her ancestors originated. I discovered that Scotch-Irish history was written in poverty, prejudice, and religious persecution.

Our lives are like songs. Sometimes the melodies are beautiful—sometimes discordant. Sometimes we write our own lyrics, but many times other people and circumstances write them for us. So it was with my grandmother. Sadly, many verses of her song have been lost. I have attempted to collect those which remain and preserve them.

This is Mama’s song.

Higginbothamfamily.jpg

Higginbotham family from left to right:

Cleva, Sam, Nannie, Blanche, Gene, Maude, (seated), Robert

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I want to thank my family—those who have already crossed over the Jordan and those who are still waiting their turn.

Two of those who have completed their journey hold a special place in my heart—my grandmother Maude, and my mother, Willie Sue.

I am very grateful to some who are still on this side of the river.

To my husband Ted: thank you for believing that I could write a book and encouraging me along the way.

To my Aunt Betty: thank you for helping decipher Great-Grandfather Higginbotham’s journal and typing it. But most of all, thank you for sharing your memories.

To my cousins Barry and Anna Mae: I greatly appreciate your kind words.

CHAPTER 1

Ancient Scotland

Ten thousand years ago, Scotland and Ireland were connected by a land bridge. All creatures that walked, crawled, or slithered were able to pass between the two lands. Likewise, no barriers impeded the spreading tentacles of plants as their roots snaked along the ground. Seed pods ripened and released their captives, borne on the wind to find fresh soil.

In time, the mighty forces of nature would destroy this bridge and forever sever the physical link between the countries, leaving Ireland separated from her Scottish sister. Consequently, the only animals that could then travel between the two lands were those that could fly or swim.

Eventually primitive men, though not physically designed to swim such distances, overcame this challenge by building boats. This permitted a diverse group of people, including Gaels, Vikings, Normans, and English, to conquer both lands. Like the destruction left behind a powerful storm, each would leave a lasting legacy. Many were brutal barbarians whose cultures were steeped in superstition. They practiced pagan religions, which may have included the dark ritual of human sacrifice. Over the centuries, wars would rage, blood would flow, and boundaries would be realigned.

In Scotland, people would eventually settle the land in two sections—the northern highlands and the southern lowlands. The highlands landscape was extremely rugged, and the soil was very poor, making farming nearly impossible. The lowlands provided somewhat kinder living conditions, and by 1600 most of the population was centered there.

Social organization in the highlands centered around a clan or family group, while the lowlands followed a feudal system. In this system, the quality of people’s lives depended largely on the social classes into which they were born. A fortunate few would come into the world as noblemen or lords—that is, the ruling class. A few more would be born as gentry or squires. Although not nearly as wealthy as noblemen, they were far better off than the majority of the population, who would spend their lives as tenants or serfs.

Life was difficult for these lowland serfs—essentially a struggle for survival. They labored strenuously with primitive tools. They fought adverse weather and crop blights to grow food in cruel soil. Fear would be their constant companion as they faced plagues, feuding, lawlessness, and wars.

Most lowland farmers were uneducated. They relied on oral history, which may have contained as much legend as fact. Sometimes this would be set to music, usually in the form of tragic ballads. Religion was largely Catholic and probably infused with a healthy dose of superstition.

This was the life Ottwell Higginbotham faced when he was born in Scotland sometime before 1530. Although Ottwell had a king, James V, he would be governed more directly by his local lord or nobleman. As a tenant farmer, he would be fiercely loyal to this lord, who protected him and his family. This strong allegiance to family, near and extended, would become deeply ingrained in the Scottish character. It would endure long after they immigrated to other lands.

Ottwell may well have despised the English king, Henry VIII, who wanted to extend England’s influence over Scotland. Good king Henry had a propensity for dispatching those who crossed him, including several of his own wives. True to form, when James refused to bow to his demands, Henry attempted to have him killed, even though James was his own nephew. Needless to say, this did not endear Henry to the Scottish people, further souring the relationship between the two countries. This would flower into overt hostility when Henry invaded Scotland in 1542, continuing the bloody legacy of this land.

However, two events looming on the horizon would be even more significant than feuds, battles, and wars in reshaping the destiny of Scotland. The first of these was the Protestant Reformation.

Religion in sixteenth-century Scotland was controlled by the Catholic Church. Over the years this institution had become corrupt. The church was more concerned with acquiring land, wealth, and power than preaching the gospel to lost souls. As a result, it came to own almost a third of all the land and controlled nearly half the wealth of the entire country. The church passed laws and levied burdensome taxes. People who dared complain could be labeled as heretics and severely punished.

Such oppression was bound to lead to resentment and eventually to full-blown rebellion. It is not surprising that the people finally rose up and demanded that their land be returned. Therefore, in 1560, the Scottish Parliament renounced the Catholic Church and established the Presbyterian Church as the official church of Scotland.

Out of this boiling cauldron of discontent, poverty, and spiritual darkness arose a preacher named Martin Luther. Branded a heretic by many, he began to preach a simple message that man was saved by grace through faith in Christ’s sacrificial death—contrary to the prevailing theology of the Catholic Church that man could earn a place in heaven by his own good works.

Luther insisted that the Bible alone was the source of Christian truth, and he believed that everyone should be able to read it for themselves. To achieve this goal, Luther translated the Bible into German and established schools to teach the poor class to read.

John Calvin, another prominent reformer and founder of the Presbyterian Church, held similar beliefs. But it would be John Knox, a follower of Calvin, who would introduce this new theology to Scotland.

These new Presbyterian leaders recognized the importance of educating their converts as well as feeding their souls. Calvinist principles of hard work, discipline, and building a better world were stressed.

The Protestant Reformation would be followed by the second event that would greatly affect both Scotland and Ireland—the Scottish immigration to Ireland. These new immigrants were products of the Reformation, and they would bring their religion and philosophy with them. It would not always be a happy union.

CHAPTER 2

Ireland, sometime around 1603

What nature had once separated, King James I of England attempted to unite. Desiring to strengthen England’s control over Ireland, he attempted to increase the Protestant population by promising lowland Scots free land in Ulster. Not only was this land more fertile than their native soil but also under the protection of the English army. This was enough to entice large numbers of them to accept his offer, as life in Scotland had become increasingly grim when the traditional feudal system was replaced by a land-lease system. Instead of paying with labor and a share of their crops, farmers were now charged a fixed amount of rent. As a result, some lost the land they had farmed for generations.

However, as history attests, governments can force integration, but they cannot force acceptance. And so it was with the Irish citizens of Ulster. They resented their new Scottish neighbors, fearing they would be pushed off their own land by these new immigrants. They also disliked the religion of these new settlers. Most regarded them as heretics, which led to religious discrimination and even persecution.

In addition to facing discrimination, the Scots soon discovered that the government had deceived them. Instead of actually owning the land, they had just been placed under a different system of sharecropping. All this, coupled with a burdensome tax system, the collapse of the linen trade, and several years of crop failure, left them disillusioned with their new homeland. They were ready to move on.

Stories of a distant land began to circulate among the displaced lowland farmers. Some described the land as primitive but nonetheless beautiful, with an abundance of forests, wild fruits, nuts, and berries. Game was plentiful to fill hungry bellies, with no landlords to forbid hunting.

Others painted a more dismal picture, describing a primitive land populated by half-naked savages who were more than eager to steal white women and take their husbands’ scalps for trophies.

Regardless of the teller, the stories all contained a common thread. The land was free for the taking, and it was very far away from the king of England. Though not technically slaves, they were far from free, and like the children of Israel in search of the Promised Land, they sold their meager possessions and boarded ships bound for America.

These new immigrants were neither fully Scottish nor fully Irish. They were now fused into a people who would forever be known as Scotch-Irish. Most would disembark on the shores of Pennsylvania, where finally, in the colony of William Penn, they would find the freedom they had longed for. Many would settle near Philadelphia and then encourage their extended family members to follow them.

From these early settlements, the people would eventually migrate farther south and west. Simultaneously, the state of Virginia wished to expand its population westward, offering as much as one thousand acres to any new family willing to settle its northwestern territory. Many of the Scotch-Irish would take advantage of this opportunity. They had been farmers for generations, which had instilled a love for the land in their very souls, and there could be no higher calling for them than to claim it for their own.

This was the land—the land of the majestic Appalachian Mountains—where Thomas Higginbotham, a sixth-generation descendent of Ottwell, raised his children; it would become as much a part of him as they were.

Many of his contemporaries were intimidated by the rugged peaks and deep valleys and stopped at their eastern boundaries. Thomas was not. He loved the isolation the mountains provided. He knew the hardship his ancestors had faced in Scotland and Ireland—the religious discrimination, the high taxes, and strict control of their lives by the lords and kings. He wanted his own land, and he wanted his freedom. He found both in this wild land of enormous forests and abundant, fish-filled waters. Perhaps he felt he had indeed reached the Promised Land, for he named one of his sons Moses.

Thomas loved the changing seasons in this new land. He rejoiced when bright green leaves emerged from barren trees awakened from their winter sleep. This was a universal time clock common to all who worked the land. Now was the time to dig, plow, and plant. Thomas would gather his precious seeds, cover them with rich soil, and watch potatoes, beans, and wheat sprout from the fertile ground.

Thomas welcomed the warm western Virginia summers that made his garden flourish. He delighted in the sweet strawberries, blackberries, and huckleberries. He laughed at his children when he saw juice running down their chins from the tasty treats.

Thomas was amazed by the beautiful forests when autumn’s chill changed their green canopies into a sea of colors, signaling the end of harvest and the approach of winter. Now it was time to slaughter hogs and salt the meat to keep it from spoiling.

Thomas did not fear harsh mountain winters. He had cut plenty of wood for his fireplace, and his cabin was well chinked with mud to keep out the cold air. Sometimes on freezing winter days, when the howling wind drove snow into deep drifts against his cabin door, Thomas would lift the lid of the rough-hewn trunk his father had given him, gently lift out a tattered old book and hand it to his wife.

Mary, read to the young-uns about Jesus, he would request, and his wife, who had been taught to read by her English grandmother, would gladly comply. Then Thomas would explain to his children that it was one of their own Scottish kings, James VI, who was responsible for having the Bible translated into English. He told about their Presbyterian heritage and the early church leaders who had given up wealth, land, and sometimes their lives to bring the Bible to the common people.

Then in a sterner voice, he would admonish them to always respect the land they owned, realizing it was vital to their survival. He stressed that it was worth fighting and dying for.

Thomas’ children would take this to heart, and through generations they would fight for their land. It would be bought with the blood of many of their descendants. They would fight disease and hunger; the Indians, the British and even their own brothers. But in the end, they would prevail. It is only fitting that so many Scotch-Irish found a homeland in West Virginia. They had come from a country that had been physically ripped apart by a violent act of nature to settle a state that would be torn apart by bloody civil war, where men, not nature, would redraw her boundary lines.

More than three centuries have passed since the first Scotch-Irish came to West Virginia. Much of her original pristine beauty was squandered. Some of her mountains were laid bare by strip mining. Deep coal mining gutted her, timbering destroyed many of her forests, and countless streams were polluted by the relentless march of civilization.

In spite of this, West Virginia is still a beautiful place. In recent years, man has restored many of her resources by reforestation and mining reclamation. Streams once too polluted to support aquatic life, have now been restocked. Her woodlands remain populated by many of the same species that were hunted by the original settlers.

Each season paints her mountains with different arrays of colors. The delicate shades of spring greens are intermixed with the white, red, and pink blossoms of dogwood, redbud, serviceberry, apple, and cherry trees. In turn, these will be replaced by dark intense greens, followed by an explosion of fall colors. Even the barrenness of winter becomes beautiful when diamond crystals of frost coat empty tree branches, and snow covers the mountains in a blanket of pure white.

Just as the passage of time has changed the state physically, it has also changed her socially and culturally. While the influence of the original Scotch-Irish settlers has been diluted, some has been melded into the very identity of West Virginia.

It can be heard in the speech of her people, which is often ridiculed as uneducated, branding them as backwoods hillbillies by outsiders. But there should be no shame in accents and speech patterns which were handed down from proud, hard-working ancestors.

Family loyalty, developed from generations of living under clans and feudal systems, would erupt into a famous feud. The names Hatfield and McCoy will always be associated with West Virginia.

When George Washington was recruiting an army to fight the redcoats, he turned to men living in what is now West Virginia. It has been said they were his most prized soldiers. This willingness to fight to protect their land and freedom has continued, demonstrated by the number of sons West Virginia has given to the military—more than any other state of her size. Montani Semper Liberi, the state motto, translates to: Mountaineers are Always Free. This slogan is deeply embedded in the DNA of her people.

Another gift to the nation is the music that developed in the hollers of Appalachia. It is a unique blend of stringed instruments, often accompanied by a vocal high lonesome sound. Scottish step-dancing is reflected in the clogging and flatfoot dances of the mountains.

This was my grandmother’s heritage. The Scotch-Irish blood which flowed through her veins and the land she cherished have both become part of