By Ruth A. Ringelstetter
In the spring of 2010, on our way home from North Carolina, we crossed a small corner of Western Virginia. Even though it was such a small section of the state, we made the best of it.
One of the locations we passed was an overlook called Lovers Leap. We were in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which were turning an early spring green.
There are multiple locations in the Blue Ridge Mountains called Lovers Leap, and other locations around the country, all with legends of “the leap” associated with them.
The legend of this Lover’s Leap is that the son of a settler was love-struck when he first laid eyes on the local Indian Chief’s daughter, Morning Flower. They began to meet each other in secret and their love grew.
When the Indian Tribe and the settlers found out about their love, the young couple were threatened and shunned. From this location, high in the mountains, with the trees, rocks, and wildflowers as their backdrop, they leapt together off the mountain so they could be together forever.
I hope we can return to the Blue Ridge Mountains someday and take in more of the scenery and the old homesteads that were saved along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Happy Shunpiking!
Ruth
Shunpiking To Heaven Backroads Blog
Showing posts with label Virginia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virginia. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Mabry Mill, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia
By Joann M. Ringelstetter
Two years ago, on the last day of April, Ruth and I wrapped up our photographing in North Carolina in the early dawn. Then we crossed into Virginia and enjoyed our breakfast around 6:45 a.m. while sitting in front of Sheppard’s Mill. From there, we spent an hour with Clayton and the Moonshine Girl and then headed towards Mabry Mill.
I’m sure you’ve seen some wonderful photos taken along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs more than 450 miles between Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. On this trip, however, we were only on the Blue Ridge Parkway long enough to get ourselves to Mabry Mill, which is one of the most photographed subjects on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
I know Ruth was trying to get us to Mabry Mill in the early morning before the sun was too high in the sky but I delayed us with the time we spent with Clayton and Pauline. It was about 10:30 a.m. by the time we reached the mill, so the lighting was far from ideal.
Edwin Boston Mabry was born in Patrick County, Virginia in 1867. In 1891, he married Mintoria Lizzie Dehart (who was known as Lizzie) in Floyd County, Virginia. For a few years, Ed worked as a blacksmith in the coal fields of West Virginia. Around 1903, he and Lizzie returned to Floyd County and bought some land with Ed’s earnings from the coal fields. There he built a blacksmith and wheelwright shop. It later became a sawmill and, finally, a gristmill.
With the help of his friend, Newton Hylton, who was also a blacksmith, he built and balanced the wooden overshot waterwheel. Then he bought some millstones from a rock quarry on Brush Mountain, cutting furrows in the surface of each stone for grinding. Because the land surrounding the mill was fairly level, Ed dammed the creek above the mill, bought more acreage, and built a series of connected races to bring enough water power to the mill.
If you search for information about Mabry Mill, you will find that most sources only mention Ed Mabry. However, his wife Lizzie was his partner in the operation of the mill and she worked long, hard hours, too. They started their day at 4 a.m. with a hearty breakfast, skipped lunch, and worked until 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. when they had their dinner. When Ed did his blacksmith work, Lizzie pumped the bellows. When he was sawing timber for the neighbors, she removed the boards from the saw blade. And if Ed was busy shoeing a horse or fixing someone’s tools, Lizzie ground the corn into cornmeal.
In addition to working alongside her husband, Lizzie tended to a garden, picked and dried berries and beans, canned sausage, made butter, and took care of chickens, two cows, and a hog. Around 1930, for reasons unknown, Ed lost the use of his legs. In the years that followed, the mill, waterwheel, and wooden flumes fell into disrepair. In the mid-1930s, the park service acquired the mill and Lizzie was thrilled that the park service intended to restore it to be enjoyed by future generations.
Edwin Boston Mabry passed away in 1936 and Mintoria Lizzie DeHart Mabry followed him in 1940. They are both buried within a few miles of their now famous mill in DeHart-Mabry-Richardson Cemetery (officially called the Caney-Richardson Cemetery).
Before we left on this trip, my friend Erin told me to find a beautiful mountain stream and to take off my shoes and socks and put my feet in the ice cold water. Throughout our travels in North Carolina the previous week, the opportunity had never presented itself. As I walked around the grounds of Mabry Mill, there were many places where you could access the mill races.
Not wanting to admit that I never got around to doing what Erin had told me to do, I returned to the car, put most of my equipment away, and told Ruth I had one more thing I needed to do. I then grabbed my camera, headed back to the mill race, sat on the footbridge, took off my shoes and socks, and plunged my feet into the icy water as it rushed toward the mill.
As Jacobean playwright John Fletcher advised in the early 1600s in his play entitled Faithful Shepherdess:
Do not fear to put thy feet
Naked in the river sweet.
Happy Shunpiking!
Joann
Photos in this blog post can be purchased as wall art, paper prints, downloads, phone cases, and keepsakes by clicking on the photo. You will be taken to the gallery website where you will see a big blue "BUY" button. Or to see all photos available, click on the "Browse Galleries" button on the menu at the top of this page. Thank you for your interest!
Two years ago, on the last day of April, Ruth and I wrapped up our photographing in North Carolina in the early dawn. Then we crossed into Virginia and enjoyed our breakfast around 6:45 a.m. while sitting in front of Sheppard’s Mill. From there, we spent an hour with Clayton and the Moonshine Girl and then headed towards Mabry Mill.
I’m sure you’ve seen some wonderful photos taken along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs more than 450 miles between Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. On this trip, however, we were only on the Blue Ridge Parkway long enough to get ourselves to Mabry Mill, which is one of the most photographed subjects on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
I know Ruth was trying to get us to Mabry Mill in the early morning before the sun was too high in the sky but I delayed us with the time we spent with Clayton and Pauline. It was about 10:30 a.m. by the time we reached the mill, so the lighting was far from ideal.
Edwin Boston Mabry was born in Patrick County, Virginia in 1867. In 1891, he married Mintoria Lizzie Dehart (who was known as Lizzie) in Floyd County, Virginia. For a few years, Ed worked as a blacksmith in the coal fields of West Virginia. Around 1903, he and Lizzie returned to Floyd County and bought some land with Ed’s earnings from the coal fields. There he built a blacksmith and wheelwright shop. It later became a sawmill and, finally, a gristmill.
With the help of his friend, Newton Hylton, who was also a blacksmith, he built and balanced the wooden overshot waterwheel. Then he bought some millstones from a rock quarry on Brush Mountain, cutting furrows in the surface of each stone for grinding. Because the land surrounding the mill was fairly level, Ed dammed the creek above the mill, bought more acreage, and built a series of connected races to bring enough water power to the mill.
If you search for information about Mabry Mill, you will find that most sources only mention Ed Mabry. However, his wife Lizzie was his partner in the operation of the mill and she worked long, hard hours, too. They started their day at 4 a.m. with a hearty breakfast, skipped lunch, and worked until 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. when they had their dinner. When Ed did his blacksmith work, Lizzie pumped the bellows. When he was sawing timber for the neighbors, she removed the boards from the saw blade. And if Ed was busy shoeing a horse or fixing someone’s tools, Lizzie ground the corn into cornmeal.
In addition to working alongside her husband, Lizzie tended to a garden, picked and dried berries and beans, canned sausage, made butter, and took care of chickens, two cows, and a hog. Around 1930, for reasons unknown, Ed lost the use of his legs. In the years that followed, the mill, waterwheel, and wooden flumes fell into disrepair. In the mid-1930s, the park service acquired the mill and Lizzie was thrilled that the park service intended to restore it to be enjoyed by future generations.
Edwin Boston Mabry passed away in 1936 and Mintoria Lizzie DeHart Mabry followed him in 1940. They are both buried within a few miles of their now famous mill in DeHart-Mabry-Richardson Cemetery (officially called the Caney-Richardson Cemetery).
Before we left on this trip, my friend Erin told me to find a beautiful mountain stream and to take off my shoes and socks and put my feet in the ice cold water. Throughout our travels in North Carolina the previous week, the opportunity had never presented itself. As I walked around the grounds of Mabry Mill, there were many places where you could access the mill races.
Not wanting to admit that I never got around to doing what Erin had told me to do, I returned to the car, put most of my equipment away, and told Ruth I had one more thing I needed to do. I then grabbed my camera, headed back to the mill race, sat on the footbridge, took off my shoes and socks, and plunged my feet into the icy water as it rushed toward the mill.
As Jacobean playwright John Fletcher advised in the early 1600s in his play entitled Faithful Shepherdess:
Do not fear to put thy feet
Naked in the river sweet.
Happy Shunpiking!
Joann
Photos in this blog post can be purchased as wall art, paper prints, downloads, phone cases, and keepsakes by clicking on the photo. You will be taken to the gallery website where you will see a big blue "BUY" button. Or to see all photos available, click on the "Browse Galleries" button on the menu at the top of this page. Thank you for your interest!
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Clayton and the Moonshine Girl
By Joann M. Ringelstetter
In April of this year, after spending over a week in North Carolina, we crossed a small section of Virginia on our way to Mabry Mill. It was a beautiful sunny morning in the mountains and we had been photographing some of the area’s tobacco barns, which are quite different from the tobacco barns we’re used to seeing here in Wisconsin.
As we came around a corner, we saw a well-kept log tobacco barn beautifully lit by the morning sun. It was one of the nicest looking tobacco barns we had seen, so I pulled the car off the road into a tractor lane near the barn. As I was taking my camera equipment out of the back seat, a car pulled up on the road and the woman driving rolled down her window and said, “I was just checkin’ if y’all was havin’ car trouble.”
“No, we’re fine,” I said, “but maybe you could answer a question for me. Pointing to the tobacco barn, I said, “That’s a tobacco barn, right?”
“Yup,” she said, “it’s ours.”
“Well, what is that piece of equipment with the funnel that’s sitting on the side of the tobacco barn?”
“That was used to plant corn,” she said (mistakenly, because we later found out from her husband that it was used to fertilize tobacco). “You poured a bag of fertilizer into the funnel along with the corn.”
“Do you know what year it’s from?”
“No, but my husband could tell you. He’s ill with emphysema, so he doesn’t come out of the house, but he’s sittin’ on the porch. Why don’t y’all go up and talk to him.”
I then introduced myself and she told me that her name was Pauline and she would really like us to stop and visit for a while. I told her that I didn’t want to distract her from where she was going, but she insisted we come to the house to chat. We’re sometimes hesitant to get side-tracked from our mission, but I knew we would enjoy these folks and learn something in the process.
So we followed her back to the driveway next to their house and she took us into the porch and introduced us to Clayton, her husband. Clayton was sitting in a chair on the porch and, although he struggled to breathe, he had a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.
Clayton gave us all kinds of information about tobacco growing methods in Virginia and he reminisced about his childhood and his life as a tobacco farmer. He explained the piece of equipment with the funnel, calling it a fertilizer distributor and listing plow. When we asked what “listing” meant, he told us that just meant preparing the ground for planting by producing furrows and ridges. He said some people call them ridgers.
That discussion clarified a big question we had about the tobacco fields we had seen that had ridges from one end of the field to another and were ready for planting or had just been planted. As we talked, Pauline got to thinking that they had a couple things in the garage that we might be interested in. So we followed her to the garage. Clayton, who barely had enough breath while sitting in the porch, couldn’t resist coming out to the garage to talk some more with us.
They showed us an antique tobacco basket and Clayton explained that the tobacco farmers would take their bundles of tobacco to the auction and they would pile their tobacco in the baskets, which would then be inspected by the buyers. They also showed us an old grain cradle scythe.
Then I asked Pauline if I could take a picture of an old outhouse that was down the hill from the back of the house. Pauline was entertained by my desire and said, “Sure, if you really want to.” As she walked with me towards the outhouse, we came upon the most beautiful view across the mountains. She said, “Just look at that view. It’s always been my favorite view.”
In the meantime, as Pauline and I headed towards the outhouse, Clayton was telling Ruth about an old friend of his that came down to see the Smoky Mountains. Towards the end of his trip, he came to visit Clayton and Pauline. After seeing Pauline’s favorite view, he said, “I should have known you’d have the best view right here.”
I set up my tripod to photograph the weary outhouse that seemed to defy gravity. It leaned heavily to the right, as if it wanted to lie down on the cool mountain soil. And then Pauline said, “That poor old thing. I just can’t bear to take it down.” As I turned away from the outhouse, I noticed a very colorful building in a field next to the house. Pauline explained that it was the tobacco packing house.
We visited with Clayton and Pauline for over an hour and then told them we had to get going because we had a lot of ground to cover yet that day. We thanked them for their kindness and then Pauline insisted that we take along some drinks from their refrigerator on the porch. As she opened the refrigerator, the following conversation took place.
Clayton: “I wish we could offer you something more…” (Chuckling) “…like maybe some moonshine. You know, tobacco may have been the main source of income, but I think moonshine ran a close second.”
Pauline: “You know, I grew up in the mountains…over there.” (Pointing off in the distance). “When Clayton and I were courting, some of the people around here thought that Clayton was too good to marry a mountain girl. And when we got engaged, they said to Clayton, “Well, Clayton, looks like you got yourself a moonshine girl.”
As we were leaving, we asked them for their contact information. Pauline had already written it on a piece of paper for us and then she said, “I don’t know why but I keep feeling like I know you from somewhere.” We kind of felt the same way. Moonshine girl or not, Pauline and Clayton were our kind of people. And we wish Clayton a return to good health.
Happy Shunpiking!
Joann
In April of this year, after spending over a week in North Carolina, we crossed a small section of Virginia on our way to Mabry Mill. It was a beautiful sunny morning in the mountains and we had been photographing some of the area’s tobacco barns, which are quite different from the tobacco barns we’re used to seeing here in Wisconsin.
As we came around a corner, we saw a well-kept log tobacco barn beautifully lit by the morning sun. It was one of the nicest looking tobacco barns we had seen, so I pulled the car off the road into a tractor lane near the barn. As I was taking my camera equipment out of the back seat, a car pulled up on the road and the woman driving rolled down her window and said, “I was just checkin’ if y’all was havin’ car trouble.”
“No, we’re fine,” I said, “but maybe you could answer a question for me. Pointing to the tobacco barn, I said, “That’s a tobacco barn, right?”
“Yup,” she said, “it’s ours.”
“Well, what is that piece of equipment with the funnel that’s sitting on the side of the tobacco barn?”
“That was used to plant corn,” she said (mistakenly, because we later found out from her husband that it was used to fertilize tobacco). “You poured a bag of fertilizer into the funnel along with the corn.”
“Do you know what year it’s from?”
“No, but my husband could tell you. He’s ill with emphysema, so he doesn’t come out of the house, but he’s sittin’ on the porch. Why don’t y’all go up and talk to him.”
I then introduced myself and she told me that her name was Pauline and she would really like us to stop and visit for a while. I told her that I didn’t want to distract her from where she was going, but she insisted we come to the house to chat. We’re sometimes hesitant to get side-tracked from our mission, but I knew we would enjoy these folks and learn something in the process.
So we followed her back to the driveway next to their house and she took us into the porch and introduced us to Clayton, her husband. Clayton was sitting in a chair on the porch and, although he struggled to breathe, he had a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.
Clayton gave us all kinds of information about tobacco growing methods in Virginia and he reminisced about his childhood and his life as a tobacco farmer. He explained the piece of equipment with the funnel, calling it a fertilizer distributor and listing plow. When we asked what “listing” meant, he told us that just meant preparing the ground for planting by producing furrows and ridges. He said some people call them ridgers.
That discussion clarified a big question we had about the tobacco fields we had seen that had ridges from one end of the field to another and were ready for planting or had just been planted. As we talked, Pauline got to thinking that they had a couple things in the garage that we might be interested in. So we followed her to the garage. Clayton, who barely had enough breath while sitting in the porch, couldn’t resist coming out to the garage to talk some more with us.
They showed us an antique tobacco basket and Clayton explained that the tobacco farmers would take their bundles of tobacco to the auction and they would pile their tobacco in the baskets, which would then be inspected by the buyers. They also showed us an old grain cradle scythe.
Then I asked Pauline if I could take a picture of an old outhouse that was down the hill from the back of the house. Pauline was entertained by my desire and said, “Sure, if you really want to.” As she walked with me towards the outhouse, we came upon the most beautiful view across the mountains. She said, “Just look at that view. It’s always been my favorite view.”
In the meantime, as Pauline and I headed towards the outhouse, Clayton was telling Ruth about an old friend of his that came down to see the Smoky Mountains. Towards the end of his trip, he came to visit Clayton and Pauline. After seeing Pauline’s favorite view, he said, “I should have known you’d have the best view right here.”
I set up my tripod to photograph the weary outhouse that seemed to defy gravity. It leaned heavily to the right, as if it wanted to lie down on the cool mountain soil. And then Pauline said, “That poor old thing. I just can’t bear to take it down.” As I turned away from the outhouse, I noticed a very colorful building in a field next to the house. Pauline explained that it was the tobacco packing house.
We visited with Clayton and Pauline for over an hour and then told them we had to get going because we had a lot of ground to cover yet that day. We thanked them for their kindness and then Pauline insisted that we take along some drinks from their refrigerator on the porch. As she opened the refrigerator, the following conversation took place.
Clayton: “I wish we could offer you something more…” (Chuckling) “…like maybe some moonshine. You know, tobacco may have been the main source of income, but I think moonshine ran a close second.”
Pauline: “You know, I grew up in the mountains…over there.” (Pointing off in the distance). “When Clayton and I were courting, some of the people around here thought that Clayton was too good to marry a mountain girl. And when we got engaged, they said to Clayton, “Well, Clayton, looks like you got yourself a moonshine girl.”
As we were leaving, we asked them for their contact information. Pauline had already written it on a piece of paper for us and then she said, “I don’t know why but I keep feeling like I know you from somewhere.” We kind of felt the same way. Moonshine girl or not, Pauline and Clayton were our kind of people. And we wish Clayton a return to good health.
Happy Shunpiking!
Joann
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