Promise: The Moving Frontier

By Carolyn M. Osborne

In 1821 in southwest Virginia a woman named Mattie married a complex man who was both a Methodist preacher, and a doctor. Abram was intelligent, restless, determined, deeply religious and a firm Southern abolitionist. Over the forty years that followed, Mattie made homes in seven different houses—mostly log cabins—in four states She raised nine children and moved continually westward, meeting the demands of his church. During those years, from age about forty to fifty-five, Abram returned to riding a huge, difficult and dangerous circuit in the wilderness, and was away for three-month stretches at a time.
Alone while Abram served frontier communities, Mattie and her children faced hazards from both wilderness and humans, especially from conflicts over slavery and secession that devastated Missouri and Kansas. Mattie learned, grew, and became an inspiration to her own family and many other frontier families. The Moving Frontier is her story.
This book takes you from the woods of Southwest Virginia to camp meetings, the great wilderness of northern Missouri, Civil War battlefields, and Kansas prairies. You’ll meet Freedmen, runaway slaves, Jayhawkers, feminists, churchmen, Border Ruffians, plantation owners, Shawnees, militiamen, and spies. You’ll experience frontier life, religious revivals, the personal family heritage of a massacre, and the passion that drove the legendary circuit riders of the early 1800’s.
The Moving Frontier is the story of Martha Poage Moore Still and Abraham Still and their children—an inspiring saga of faith, courage, and personal growth during America’s strife-filled 1800s. It’s a real-life love story that goes far beyond romance.
The Moving Frontier is Volume IV of the five-book Helena’s Stories series, which brings personal perspectives to documented history. Volume V, The Golden Hills, will complete the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carolyn M. Osborne
• Release date: Sep 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005176549

Carolyn M. Osborne

About the AuthorCarolyn Osborne lives well off the beaten path in Virginia, on a little mountainside near the Blue Ridge. She shares her in a 200+ year old house with her very tolerant husband and their dog, cat and birds.Outdoors, she walks a lot, tends her chickens and ponds of orfes, water lilies and lotus.Indoors, she writes, reads lots of history and science fiction, and cleans house very little. She loves her family, doing research, and bringing history to life.

Book preview

Table of Contents

The Moving Frontier

What Readers Say About Helena’s Stories

Promise: The Moving Frontier

Copyright

About the Author and a Reader’s Guide

Dedication: Helena’s Stories

Acknowledgements

Section One: Virginia

The Still Family in Virginia

Virginia, Chapter One: The Pastor’s Wife

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Two The Jeffers

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Three The Circuit Rider

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Four Companions

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Five Campground

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Six Rowdies

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Seven The Massacre

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Eight News

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Nine Brother Aloysius

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Ten Mattie’s Basket

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Eleven A Warning

CHAPTER NOTES

Virginia, Chapter Twelve The Pastor’s Family

CHAPTER NOTES

Section Two: Tennessee

The Still Family in Tennessee (1833-36)

Tennessee, Chapter One Abram’s Choice

CHAPTER NOTES

Tennessee, Chapter Two Better People

CHAPTER NOTES

Section Three: Missouri

The Still Family in Missouri (1836-1852)

Missouri, Chapter One The Long Move

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Two Friends Found

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Three A Sorry Situation

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Four Into the Forest

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Five Buckskin

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Six Drew and the Iron Stove

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Seven Grrracie

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Eight Serving Two Masters

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Nine Doctors

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Ten How Will I Tell Mattie?

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Eleven Far-off Kansas

CHAPTER NOTES

Missouri, Chapter Twelve A Letter from William Moore

CHAPTER NOTES

Section Four: Kansas

The Still Family in Kansas – Spring of 1852

Kansas, Chapter One The Mission

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Two Killaque

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Three Gretta Goes Out There

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Four All Cattywampus

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Five The Poker Moonshiners

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Six Saloon Busting

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Seven Doctor Drew

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Eight Gretta’s Calling

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Nine The Rift Opens

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Ten Tom Makes His Move

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Eleven This Cruel War

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Twelve Satan’s Peak

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Thirteen Losing the Children

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Fourteen The Emigrants

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Fifteen Gretta Makes the Leap

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Sixteen The Messenger

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Seventeen Dreams

CHAPTER NOTES

Kansas, Chapter Eighteen Never Alone

CHAPTER NOTES

Dear Reader

Still Progeny

MOORE AND STILL FAMILY STORIES

CHAPTER NOTES

Eave Still Rocks, Rattlesnakes, and the Devil

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Bibliography

The Moving Frontier

In 1821 in southwest Virginia a woman named Mattie married a complex man who was both a Methodist preacher, and a doctor. Abram was intelligent, restless, determined, deeply religious and a firm Southern abolitionist. Over the forty years that followed, Mattie made homes in seven different houses—mostly log cabins—in four states She raised nine children and moved continually westward, meeting the demands of his church. During those years, from age about forty to fifty-five, Abram returned to riding a huge, difficult and dangerous circuit in the wilderness, and was away for three-month stretches at a time.

Alone while Abram served frontier communities, Mattie and her children faced hazards from both wilderness and humans, especially from conflicts over slavery and secession that devastated Missouri and Kansas. Mattie learned, grew, and became an inspiration to her own family and many other frontier families. The Moving Frontier is her story.

This book takes you from the woods of Southwest Virginia to camp meetings, the great wilderness of northern Missouri, Civil War battlefields, and Kansas prairies. You’ll meet Freedmen, runaway slaves, Jayhawkers, feminists, churchmen, Border Ruffians, plantation owners, Shawnees, militiamen, and spies. You’ll experience frontier life, religious revivals, the personal family heritage of a massacre, and the passion that drove the legendary circuit riders of the early 1800’s.

The Moving Frontier is the story of Martha Poage Moore Still and Abraham Still and their children—an inspiring saga of faith, courage, and personal growth during America’s strife-filled 1800s. It’s a real-life love story that goes far beyond romance.

The Moving Frontier is Volume IV of the five-book Helena’s Stories series, which brings personal perspectives to documented history. Volume V, The Golden Hills, will complete the series.

What Readers Say About Helena’s Stories

Volume I, A Perfect Plan: Based on a true story of real life and real love in 1780s England.

I loved the characters and the story. I didn’t want to see the story end.

A delightful story based on family history. I love the authors style and her ability to transport me back in time. I look forward to her next book.

A lot of research went into writing A Perfect Plan. The details of the time period bring the reader back to the late 1700s which makes the great story even better. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

... based on her family history. Lovely!

Volume II, Rule!: Stories of real lives during the rise and decline of empires from the 800s through the 1800s.

"I can only hope that some descendant of mine manages to write such an interesting story about my life!

These stories are a fine blending of histories wonderfully well researched and delightfully embellished with fictional details. They are literate, thorough and accessible.

This book is written the way historical novels should be written.

A pleasurable read by a gifted writer who conveys in each story the pivotal choices that shaped history as well as a vivid sense of life in that time and place. I especially appreciate that it is well researched with interesting end-notes and references at the end of each chapter.

Volume III A Good Place: a story of James River settlers in 1620s Virginia.

Household routines, farming techniques, societal and religious life, commerce are all woven seamlessly as we follow the life of this family over the years. I thoroughly enjoyed it all

"Carolyn does a marvelous job of combining fact and fiction into a book that took me back to the 16 hundreds in Virginia, as though I was there.

Promise: The Moving Frontier

by

Carolyn M. Osborne

Copyright

August, 2022 Carolyn Melander Osborne

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. If you have obtained a copy of this from someone else, you are strongly encouraged to purchase a copy for yourself.

Formatting by Anessa Books Historical Fiction

Adult and Young Adult

The cover illustration is from A Path Through the Forest by Albert Bierstadt, painted ca 1860. US:PD

About the Author and a Reader’s Guide

I’m Carolyn Osborne. I live well off the beaten track in Virginia on a little mountainside near the Blue Ridge. I share my life in an ancient (by American standards) log house with my wonderfully tolerant husband, our dog, cat, and parrot.

Outdoors, I walk a lot, tend our yard and ponds. Indoors, I read history and science fiction, write a lot and clean house very little. I love my family, doing research, and bringing history to life.

Reader’s Guide for the Book

Mark Twain is famously credited for writing in some notebook somewhere, There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy. That seems wise, though possibly undocumented.

My goal in writing Helena’s Stories is to give an accurate sense of the dramas, comedies, and tragedies of our ancestors during different stages of history, based on the bits of information we have about them. I also want them to be stories that are interesting of their own accord. There’s a lot of research involved in this process, as well as the addition of some fictional characters and stories to help things along. In The Moving Frontier, I identify new characters (real and fictional) and put footnotes at the end of each chapter. I also sometimes added historical information to help clarify the circumstances of the story. The story doesn’t need it, but many of us enjoy knowing such things, and of course it should be accurate.

Dedication: Helena’s Stories

ON A SUNNY July afternoon in 1998, we were driving from my sister’s house in Greensboro, North Carolina to our home near Charlottesville, Virginia. The road seemed endless ahead of us, and the sun and the miles traveled were making us sleepy. In the back seat, my husband was snoring softly. I was driving, and my mother was ‘riding shotgun.’

Probably to help me stay alert, Mom started talking about our old family stories. Some of them were familiar, but many were not. Not respecting any order of time or place, she told me stories set in North Carolina around 1800, France and England in the 12th Century, India in Victorian times, the remote island of St. Helena in the 1800s, California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains in the 1870s, and England in the 1780s. She talked about wars and shipwrecks; massacres and weddings; preachers and bandits; heroes and ordinary folk; wagon trains, horses, and rattlesnakes. And, she said, these are only some of the family stories.

These stories needed to be preserved. I asked her who was related to whom, and she tried to explain ten centuries of a documented but not quite articulated family tree. I finally had to ask, Mom, where is all this written down?

Oh, said she, rather breezily, I have several boxes and many bags, and some drawers of mixed clippings, copies of stories and family trees, letters and much more. All of them work done by your Aunt Grace, my Uncle Rob, my cousin Erina, myself... The list went on, naming family members I knew, and some I didn’t.

What these dedicated family researchers had not had, but we now did, was the great benefit of being able to do research in the Age of Information. The following December my husband and I drove from Virginia to Mom’s house in Texas to celebrate Christmas. We returned home a week later, our car loaded with the results of years of work by many people. There was a big project ahead.

I organized and entered all the data I could, used the files, the internet and hard-copy books as resources and after about two years ended up with a comprehensive, 2,000+ member family tree, of which one line covered 38 generations, back to Charlemagne.

The family tree was a project I was glad to assemble. It couldn’t though, tell the stories behind the tree, some that were already in our family and others I found while doing this research. To me, the stories are especially important. Whether they’re rock-solid truth, fantastical or somewhere in between, our family stories are part of our identity and culture.

Twenty-five years after the start of the project, I still find the stories exciting. Some of them are inherently dramatic but most are just occurrences in the ordinary lives of ordinary people that gain drama and interest from their historical context. I promised Mom that I would someday write at least some of these stories from the perspectives of the people they happened to. Doing this involved much research, some guesswork, and often only sort-of justified assumptions. On the other hand, the more historical research I do, the more I am aware how much history has been fleshed out exactly that way. I am happy to call Helena’s Stories historical fiction, but each tale contains at least a few documented kernels of reality from another time. Toward the end of each book or story, AUTHOR’S NOTES distinguish between recorded history and assumptions, and real versus fictional characters are identified.

There is nothing singular about my family—everyone’s ancestry is filled with stories. The struggles, successes and failures that underlie and create human growth and progress generate stories in every family worth remembering and handing on.

Mom died in 2004, but survives in the hearts of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and in her furtherance of the tales of our ancestors. It is to my mother, Helena, and my sister Dorothy, who stand together on the other side of the river, that I dedicate Helena’s Stories.

Acknowledgements

Writing a book is a big job, especially when it involves a lot of research. The Moving Frontier came out of a massive variety of newspaper clippings, funeral programs, personal recollections written long ago, two autobiographies and a biography. It took me a long time to assemble these into the book, and then write it. I was helped along the way by friends and family, and I want to thank them.

My ideas folks and inspirers, without whom I couldn’t have gotten this done, include Nancy and Don Montagna, Susan Collins, Jen Bierhuizen, Kent Thompson, Fran Cecere, and the Pen to Paper Writing Group (Windmore Foundation, Culpeper, VA).

Feedback from writers Jennifer Bierhuizen, Fran Cecere, and Don Montagna identified discrepancies in time frame, caught writing errors, Nancy Montagna helped me think about the nature of religious revival and issues involving grief and anxiety.

​My son George gave me the background idea for waiting at the river and long ago my beloved first husband Peter, who later crossed the river, helped me write Boaz Still and the Rattlesnakes. Skip, my very dear Mr. Osborne, helped and helps by being interested and supportive, a great sounding board, and tolerant of the craziness that accompanies a project such as this.

And there were countless folks who listened politely while I yammered on about this book for three years.

Thank you, you wonderful people.

- C

A black and white drawing of a flower Dogwood, cornus florida

Dogwood, cornus florida

Section One: Virginia

1821- 1833

The Still Family in Virginia

Abram - Abraham Still, born August 25, 1796, Buncombe Co., North Carolina

Mattie - Martha Poage Moore Still, born January 28, 1800, Abb’s Valley, Tazewell Co., Virginia

~~~~

Ed - Edward Cox Still, born January 15, 1824, Jeffersonville, Tazewell Co., Virginia

Jim - James Moore Still, born February 5, 1826, in Jonesville, Lee Co., Virginia

Drew - Andrew Taylor Still, born August 6, 1828, in Jonesville, Lee Co., Virginia

Janey - Barbara Jane Still, born November 29, 1830, in Jonesville, Lee Co., Virginia

Tom - Thomas Chalmers Still, born July 6, 1833, in Jonesville, Lee Co., Virginia

Virginia, Chapter One: The Pastor’s Wife

at the Pastor’s residence

Jeffersonville, Tazewell County 1826

MATTIE’S HEART WAS aching, and she couldn’t stop trembling. Dear God, what have I done? How could I do this to myself? How could I have done this to him? She stopped pacing and sat at the table. Face in her hands, she grieved. I thought our marriage would always be smooth and happy. I didn’t know. Granma warned me, but I couldn’t believe it could happen to me, to us."

Abram’s conference had assigned him to a strange place one hundred miles from everything and everyone she knew. Mattie hated even the thought of going. I might never see my home, my family, again.

They’d had angry words that morning and Abram had left, slamming the door of their little log house. Of course, he’s gone. He’s always gone, and he’s left me to deal with this move, that I don’t want—to a place I don’t know.

Her coffee had cooled but she drank it anyway. I need to calm down. I’m not being fair. I know Abram had to go out today. Someone’s dying, and that’s terrible. But there’s always someone dying, or injured, or doubting God, and Abram must be there, not here with me, with Eddie.

He has his calling, and I must support it. We’re not free—that’s a fact. We belong to the many people who need his help. And now, that conference of his tells us we must move and so we must—we have no choice.

Why didn’t I marry a farmer? I could have had my husband and my home here always, never changing.

Five or six full days of travel, if all goes well. Abram says we’ll be fine. Maybe we will, but I won’t be here, where my home is. I won’t be here—where I belong. Granma was right.

She remembered her grandmother warning her five years earlier, after Abraham Still first called on them.

~:~:~:~

Grandmother Taylor’s House

Jeffersonville, November 1821, five years earlier

MATTIE, THAT PREACHER’S not someone ya want callin’ on ya. Circuit riders are rootless and strange—not good husbands. And once he settles at one church, they’ll just move him, an’ you, somewhere else in a few years anyway. Methodists—well, ya don’ want anything t’ do with a Methodist. They’re crazy and loud and don’t worship proper. They’re just too... new.

But Granma, that’s not fair. Reverend Still’s quiet and well-spoken and smart, and sincere.

Yeah. Good lookin’, too. I know. But he’s spent all the past four years ‘r so ridin’ around, preachin’. Men don’t fall into that kind of work then stay in it for long by accident. I doubt he’d stay in one place for long, but mebbe I’m wrong. All I’m sayin’ is, you don’ haf’ta marry a difficult man. Pick a good man who’ll settle down an’ give ya a good home an’ who’ll be there with ya.

Granma, I really believe Reverend Still’s a good man.

Might be, but there’s a lot to figure out about him. Bein’ married’s hard enough as it is. When ya do find a good man, yer next problem’s figurin’ out how to live with him.

Jane Taylor shook her head at her granddaughter. Mattie, it’s just a fact. When ya marry, yer life isn’t yours anymore. Ya go where he goes, and ya live as he chooses ‘til one of ya dies. You’ll starve with him in early years and bad ones and hope ya’ live long enough to feast with him in good years if there are any. If he’s not a good husband, even if he means to be one, he can ruin yer life. Marry a farmer from around here, honey, a good Presbyterian like that Jimmy who’s always coming around. He wouldn’t drag ya from pillar to post, an’ nobody’s gonna tell him to.

~:~:~:~

MATTIE GROANED, NO, no. Granma was right. Even now, though he’s settled into a church—and I like Pisgah church—Abram still spends most of his time riding around being a preacher and a doctor, leaving me at home with the cows and the baby. Did I make a terrible mistake marrying him? Being married to a preacher is hard, and to a man who’s both doctor and preacher is even harder.

But no. Abram’s a good man. I love him and I know he loves me. He’s doing God’s work—may God help us both. I’m just thinking in circles. I’ve got to stop this.

Eddie woke from his nap. Mama? Mama!

Come here, Eddie. Mattie lifted the three-year-old onto her lap. Still flushed from sleep, Eddie clung to his mother for those precious minutes before he came fully awake.

You’re getting to be my big boy, aren’t you?

Daddy be home soon?

Yes, he’ll be home in a little while.

Still sleepy, Eddie rubbed his head against her chest. Sing ‘Rhody’, Mama.

All right. You sing with me.

Go, tell Aunt Rhody,

Go, tell Aunt Rhody,

Go, tell Aunt Rhody,

The old gray goose is dead.

The one she was savin’

The one she...

Wide awake now, Eddie saw the cat saunter by and wanted to play with her. Giving up on the song but demanding one more hug from her little son, Mattie reluctantly set him down.

I need to think, anyway.

In just a few days we’ll take everything we own and go far away to serve people I don’t know, the Methodists of some town far from Tazewell. Now, five years married, I really am leaving home. How can I do it?

As she toiled, folding and packing, setting up sacks, bundles and boxes to be loaded onto their new wagon, the song stuck in her head. Go tell Aunt Rhody the old gray goose is dead. It brought back a happy memory of a barn in nearby Crab Orchard five years earlier.

~:~:~:~

A Barn in Crab Orchard

Tazewell County, 1821, five years earlier

THE WORK OF the husking bee was finished. Huge piles of dry field corn had been husked and various prizes awarded, for the most corn shucked, oddest and best colored ear and such. Then the dried silks and husks were swept off the barn floor, and two fiddlers took the center and started playing Turkey in the Straw while everyone sang. Some folks even danced.

A friend introduced her to Abraham Still, the Methodist circuit preacher who served Tazewell County. He was tall and narrow—a dark haired man with a long, somber, bronzed face, but with eyes of clear moss green with intriguing golden flecks. Her friend moved off to talk with someone else, leaving the two of them standing in awkward silence.

Mattie cleared her throat. So, Reverend, do you live near here?

I board at the Edwards’ farm not far from here for a few nights about every three weeks. The rest of the time I ride my circuit around the county.

A circuit rider. Mattie had seen them before, and heard one preach from time to time but had never known one to speak to. That must be interesting. What’s a day like when you’re riding your circuit?

Well, a lot of it is riding from place to place. I meet with people and preach somewhere almost every day. On one three-week circuit I’ll preach about twenty or more times, at different locations, and I also serve Methodists throughout the county, calling on people in need, helping where I can. I’m a doctor, too, so I can help them with medical, as well as spiritual, problems.

I see. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but when you’re out on circuit, what do you eat? Where do you sleep?

It all seems to work out. When I’m riding circuit, I usually sleep in different people’s houses or barns. If not, I sleep in the woods. Folks are generous and share their meals with me, and I usually keep a little bacon or cheese and bread with me, too that I can cook for myself.

Do you do that all year round? It sounds like a hard life.

The preacher grinned; his teeth white against his bronzed skin. Well, I can tell you that loaf of bread gets hard as a rock sometimes. But it’s not as bad as you might think. I like sleeping outside. If I may ask, Miss Still, do you live near here? I would surely remember if I’d seen you before.

We’re Presbyterian. I live with my grandmother, Jane Taylor, above Jeffersonville. I was born in Abb’s Valley, and my father, James Moore, lives there.

He focused more intently on her. I’ve heard of James Moore. Isn’t he a survivor of a Shawnee massacre?

Father was already a captive of the Shawnee when the massacre took place. His parents and his brothers and sisters were victims of that raid. Mattie’s body tighten up as it always did. It’s a terrible story. I don’t like to think about it.

The fiddlers started playing ‘Go Tell Aunt Rhody’ and soon almost everyone started singing. Mattie smiled. I’m not one for dancing, but I do love this tune. She started to sing along:

Go tell Aunt Rhody,

Go tell Aunt Rhody,

Go tell Aunt Rhody

The old gray goose is dead.

The one she was saving,

The one she was saving,

The one she was saving

To make a feather bed.

The goslings are cryin’,

The goslings are cryin’,

The goslings are cryin’

Because their mama’s dead.

She died in the millpond.

She died in the millpond.

She died in the millpond

From standing on her head.

Go tell Aunt Rhod...

Mattie stopped when she realized the preacher wasn’t singing but was watching her, smiling.

You have a pretty voice, he said.

Mattie’s cheeks were getting warm. Thank you. I love to sing. I sing almost all day long. She smiled, self-conscious. It helps the time pass, you know, and makes the chores go a little better. Remembering who she was speaking with, she hastily added, I sing hymns too, of course.

Of course. ‘Aunt Rhody’ is a great song to sing, he said, but it’s a strange song, isn’t it?

Strange, how?

He made his voice dark and foreboding. An old goose drowns in the millpond in a most peculiar way—standing on her head. Isn’t that strange? The lines around his eyes had wrinkled with amusement.

Trying not to laugh, Mattie clutched dramatically at her heart, gasping in mock horror. You’re right. This is strange. We must look at it from the goose’s side.

The circuit rider chuckled. "I know we can solve this mystery. Now, I can’t think why she would have been murdered, but if she wasn’t murdered, then did she kill herself? Why did she choose to die? Why would a goose choose to die?"

Hmm. Maybe she was tired of just being nothing more than useful. You know, Aunt Rhody wanted her for her feathers and each year that goose had a passel of goslings to hatch and care for and then had all her beautiful soft down plucked off as well. Maybe her days and years had become too much the same and life wasn’t offering her much, poor thing.

The preacher shook his head. That is sad. We must think kind thoughts for the sorrows of the poor old gray goose.

Mattie chuckled. I like this man.

The music picked up again and Reverend Still move a bit closer so she could hear him. He smelled very good, like the woods in summer.

Miss Still, I’d like to call on you. Together, we can explore the problems of that poor dead bird without having to shout over music. May I do that?

I’d like that.

Abram smiled.

~:~:~:~

THAT WAS FIVE years back and now Mattie had a three-year-old, another baby on the way, a cow to milk twice a day and a house, a log cabin, to run. We’re moving everything we own in three days, but my husband is attending an old man on his death bed. He’s not here with me, helping me get ready for a move I don’t want to make. He should be here, but he should be there, also. She chuckled ruefully. I imagine he’d be in two places at once, if he could.

She didn’t much feel like cooking, but of course she had to. It was a good thing she did, as Abram surprised her by getting home in time for supper.

He strode into their cabin saying, Where’s my big son? After tossing Eddie in the air a few times, he set the giggling boy down and took Mattie’s hands in his. "Darlin’, I’m sorry we parted angry today. I hadn’t thought how strange and hard leaving Tazewell County must be for you. You’ll get past it in time, but it must hurt now, and I’m sorry I’m not able to make it easier.

All this long day I wanted to turn around and come home to tell you this, but Mr. Williams, and especially Missus Williams, needed me there. He’s having a hard and painful death, I’m afraid, and she’s frightened and grieving. I do have to go back there in the morning. He kissed her forehead. I’m sorry, darlin’.

Mattie looked into those interesting green eyes and her heart softened. I’d follow you anywhere, Abram. I’m sorry, too. I knew what I was getting into when we married. It wasn’t a problem then and, I promise, it won’t be a problem again. I’m proud of your dedication to your calling. She started getting teary but stopped herself. I got past those angry feelings today, Abram. What you’re doing is important and valuable and it’s my calling to support it. Do you think Mr. Williams’ um, illness will change how soon we leave?

"Yes, but only by a day, or two, I think. I’ll know more tomorrow evening and I will get home well before supper. Missus Williams’ sister should arrive today from Staunton to help her."

Good. That will be good.

He looked down at Mattie and caressed her cheek. Darlin’, don't be afraid of moving. God always watches over us, wherever we are. He drew her into his arms and Mattie rested her head against his chest listening to the slow, steady beat of his heart. I’ll go where he goes. His heart is my true home.

CHAPTER NOTES

CHARACTER NOTES

Mattie - Martha Poage Moore Still was born in January 28, 1800 at her family’s farm in Abb’s Valley in Tazewell County, Virginia. Her mother, Barbara Taylor Moore, died when Mattie was two and not long after that Mattie was sent to live with her widowed grandmother, Jane Taylor. Mattie married Abram Still January 22, 1822 in Tazewell County.

~~~~

Abram - Abraham Still was born in 1796 in Buncombe County, North Carolina. He was ordained a minister of the Methodist Church when he was around eighteen and spent about four years as a circuit rider before he was assigned to serve the newly formed Pisgah Methodist Church in Jeffersonville (now the town of Tazewell) in Tazewell County, Virginia, where he’d ridden circuit for several years.

~~~~

Granma – Jane Taylor, born Jane Walker (?), was the mother of Barbara Taylor (who married James Moore III of Abb’s Valley in Tazewell County) was the maternal grandmother of Mattie and her brothers

~~~~

Mattie’s Father - James Rutherford Moore III—called the Captive—was born 1770 in Newell’s Tavern, Rockbridge Virginia, died 1852 in Abb’s Valley, Tazewell County, Virginia. On September 7, 1784, James was captured by a raiding party led by Shawnee chief Black Wolf. After his return he married Barbara Taylor—daughter of William Taylor and Jane Walker(?)—on February 13, 1797 in Abb’s Valley. Their three children were James Rutherford Moore (born February 23, 1798) who eventually settled in Texas, Martha Poage Moore, and William Taylor Moore (born March 7, 1802 and died December 30 1891 in Abbs Valley). Barbara died in 1802. James married Nancy Shannon September 15, 1803, who died in 1823. He then married Mary Price December 10, 1824.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Circuit riders are rootless and strange—they’re not good husbands.

Circuit riders were ministers of Protestant faiths who constantly travelled over and through an assigned area, in all seasons and weather conditions, preaching wherever they could gather a few people together, lodging at homes of the faithful, sleeping in the woods when necessary, and spending long days on horseback. On the frontiers they were valuable contacts for isolated settlers who lived miles apart from each other. Circuit riders usually picked up some medical skills through the frequent need for first aid they encountered. Some, like Abraham Still, became doctors as well as preachers.

Circuit riders were viewed as very interesting and somewhat romantic because of their roaming and their preaching, but few of them married until they could be assigned an established church. Most riders were encouraged to settle into such positions after three to six years on circuit because it was a strenuous lifestyle and those who chose to make circuits their life ministry often died young.

The explosive growth of Protestant churches in America in the 1700s and 1800s is attributed to the efforts of circuit riders.

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Go Tell Aunt Rhody was a popular American folk song in the 1800s, thought to date well back into the 1700s.

https://balladofamerica.org/go-tell-aunt-rhody/

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each year that goose had a passel of goslings to hatch and care for and then had all her beautiful soft down plucked off as well.

Live geese were often plucked, the down pulled from their breasts, each spring and would d grow new down over the summer. Goose down was highly valued then as an insulator, as it still is today.

Virginia, Chapter Two

The Jeffers

Jeffersonville, 1825

EARLY THE NEXT afternoon someone knocked on the cabin door. Mattie answered with Eddie clinging to her skirt. A large, middle-aged Black man filled the doorway, hat in hands. Ma’am, I’m sorry to trouble ya’, but is this Reverend Still’s home? My name’s Dan’l Jeffers.

Yes. I’m Missus Still. The Reverend’s not here right now but should be back in a while. Would you... would you want to wait for him? I’m not sure how long he’ll be. Mattie hesitated. She’d never had a Black person enter her house and wasn’t sure what to do. What if I offend or embarrass him? Then Abram’s words about getting over fear came to her. Oh, what foolishness this is. He’s another person, no more, no less.

Come inside and sit, please, Mr. Jeffers. Can I get you something to drink? There’s water of course, and I have coffee.

Water’d be very fine, Ma’am. He sat at the table. Eddie, who was going through a shy phase, followed Mattie like a puppy as she brought the man a cup of water.

Is there something I can help you with?

He thanked her for the water, then said, Well, Ma’am, my wife Becca met Reverend Still ‘bout five years back. He... he helped her with a bad problem she had an’ was good to her. We live quiet back in the mountains near Bramwell, mebbe thirty miles from here. I don’ usually go this far from home, but my wife just lately learned you live here, and heard you’re leavin’ this place. She asked me to come down an’ bring a message for Reverend Still. Her name’s Patience, but she uses her middle name now, so we call her ‘Becca.

This is Patience’s husband. Abram will be so glad to know she and Steady are safe.

Mattie smiled at him, and the man continued, "Her message is that her little boy, we call him Billy now, is eight and is growin’ tall and doin’ fine, and that her arm healed up real good. We thank God and Reverend Still for that. There’s reasons she don’t dare, um, ta come down here hersel’, but you can get a message to me, Dan’l Jeffers, at the store in Bramwell, anytime you want.

There’s somethin’ else, though. Becca said ta tell you wherever you go, if you want us to help, even if you want us ta move with ya, she’d be happy to go along, an’ me an’ the boy agree. We don’t have our own place yet, and that’s what we want to find someday. My mother, Rachel, would come with us, too. We could work cheap for you, Ma’am, and we work well. Becca’s a fine cook, Mama’s old but healthy an knows how to do ‘most everything, and we’re all good with livestock and general work."

Mattie was confused. "So, do you want to move away?"

Yes, Ma’am, away from here. We want ta get out from this area, away from... He drew in a sharp breath and looked directly at her. Away from, well, slave catchers, so my Becca c’n hold her head up and not fear. We think mebbe if we’s a family serving a pastor an’ his family some counties away from here it might keep us from bein’ questioned.

This man is taking a great risk, speaking so freely to me. Mattie was touched by his trust. We’re moving about a hundred miles from here. Then we’ll probably move again in a few years, I don’t know where to. That’s my husband’s calling. He told me, and only me, about Patience—Becca—and I’m glad to hear she and her son are well. And, she’s your wife now?

Yes, Ma’am. She an’ I married last winter. Her husband’s gone. Nobody’s heard of him for ‘bout seven years. For years she’d sent out questions with anyone goin’ anywhere who might help and she finally heard that mebbe six years back he was sold onto a sugar plantation, likely in Florida. After that no one heard of him anymore. His shook his head. Cutting cane’s nasty hard, and I hear that with the heat, the long work, the big machetes and the snakes, it kills lots a folks. We figure he must be gone, that poor man. God bless him. He spent a respectful, quiet moment then said, Becca and me, we’re happy together, Missus Still. Young Billy’s happy, too. He’s a real good boy.

I like this man. Mr. Jeffers, you do need to talk with my husband, but he may be a while yet getting here. We have a lot of work to get us ready to move, though, and I could use your help. Do have enough time that you could work for us a few hours today? We just bought a farm wagon and mules. You could grease the wheels and check the wagon and its cover and the harness to make sure everything’s fit to travel. I guess we should check the animals, that they’re ready too: feet, you know, or whatever. We were going to leave in two days, but Reverend Still’s been called away to visit someone from his church who’s dying, so we’ll probably be delayed a few days more. There’s more to be done here than I can manage, and I’d be glad of your help and happy to pay you what I can for it.

Sure, I’d do that, Ma’am. Becca’s not expecting me back for a coupla days.

Eddie stumbled over the hearth and started crying. I need you to excuse me now. Mattie smiled. Babies don’t care how busy we are, you know. I think you’ll find the grease and tools and such that you might need in the shed. Can you get started from that?

Dan’l Jeffers stood I’m sure I can. Thank you, Missus Still.

As the cabin door closed behind the big man. Mattie stood for a moment, trying to remember as much as she could about the story Abram had told her, about Patience and Steady, four years earlier.

CHAPTER NOTES

CHARACTER NOTES

Dan’l Jeffers is a fictional character.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

The Jeffers family and parts of their story are constructed from Census information and mentions in Andrew Taylor’s Autobiography. See The Jeffers Family, in this book’s end notes.

Virginia, Chapter Three

The Circuit Rider

Tazewell County, four years earlier, Autumn of 1821

THE WOODS WERE dense with underbrush right up to both sides of the path, so Abram had to watch out for woodland surprises. The weather was nice, though and this stretch of path was smooth and undemanding. Abram had set out on his circuit thinking over and over his talk with Mattie’s father. There was a lot to consider.

The tale James Moore told him of the massacre at the Moore farm was horrible and sad but didn’t shock him. He’d heard of such incidents from the past century, when conflicts between Native and White settlers had broken out along the frontier lines. The raw cost of those conflicts was terrible, and long-lasting scars remained in many settler families and in very many Native families.

To him, the struggle seemed sadly inevitable. Though his mother was not very attached to the Cherokees, she’d learned Cherokee ways from her mother, and Abram liked and respected what little she told him about that background. Cherokees aren’t savages. They’re people like us, who are being pushed off their farms and land. I doubt that could happen without violence. I’m not ashamed of my Native blood nor my White blood, but I’m ashamed of the way people act toward each other. I must preach more about tolerance and understanding.

Mattie’s father is right about my circuit not being suitable for a married man. It defines my life for these days and will until I’m told otherwise. I hope Mattie can see that: I think she can. I must get settled into a church so we can marry. He looked up at the sun streaming through gold and red leaves and beathed in the smell of the woods. A dogwood right by the trail was covered in scarlet berries and he remembered it in spring, with pearly white blossoms gleaming in the sun. I’ll miss riding this circuit.

The path darkened as the day passed. Abraham had left early, hoping to reach Pounding Mill well before sunset to help his host family haul in wood and split rails, but he still had more than an hour to ride. He was hungry, and his mind went from pleasant imaginings of a future life with Mattie to how satisfying a bowl of Missus Thompson’s good stew would be that night. He thought of the comfort of sleeping on the cot in the lean-to instead of on the ground in the woods.

A cluster of bushes by the trail rustled and caught his attention, but his horse didn’t seem anxious, so he didn’t pause. Maybe I startled a fox or some rabbits. Then, Abram heard a stifled moan. He pulled Bruno to a stop, climbed down, and walked carefully toward the bushes.

That could be the sound of someone in trouble or it could be someone intending trouble. It could be a trap, a thief. I’m a fool to have left Bruno. I should get back on him and go. But I don’t have much worth stealing. What if it’s someone in need, maybe injured? I can’t ride away and leave him suffering. Lord, I beg, please, help me do Thy will.

Thinking of the Good Samaritan, also frankly curious, he peered into the bushes as quietly as he could. A little child was bending over an adult lying on the ground, groaning. The child was whispering, Hush, Mama. The dog man’ll hear us.

Dog man? Abraham coughed then moved branches aside and crawled on his knees beneath the bush. Don’t be afraid. I have no dogs and I won’t harm you. I promise. Is your mother hurt?

They were Negroes. A little boy maybe four years old, knelt by a young woman probably not yet twenty. Are they slaves? Abraham didn’t know of many free Negroes in Tazewell. Thinking they might be runaway slaves, he wasn’t sure what to do, but set the question aside. There’s an injury to be treated. At least I know how to handle that.

I’m a preacher, and a doctor. I can help you. Where are you hurt?

The woman rolled a bit further onto her right side and said, My arm... it’s my arm. Lord Jesus, it hurts.

In the waning daylight he could see a bleeding wound on her left forearm and that her arm looked twisted.

Well, then. Let’s see if we can start this wound healing before it becomes more trouble for you. Here, let me help you get out of this brush. I can set the bone and close your wound, then you should be all right.

Soon the woman was standing, leaning against Abraham for balance. Thank you, sir. Her eyes narrowed. I’m, um, on an errand for my master an’ I took m’ boy with me for comp’ny.

It was unlikely any woman would be on an errand in the woods almost at nightfall with a tied-up