©2009 NPT PHOTO BY DUAY O'NEIL

Looking over pictures from their days at the Fork Farm are, seated, Maxine Ellis Rinehart and
her brother Ray Ellis, and standing, Emma Jean Welch Hammer.

Editor's Note: The following the second part in a series on The Fork Farm.

During its heyday, the Fork Farm was a community unto itself.

In addition to the farm manager and his family, six other families lived on the place.

"That was the time of the sharecropper," says Ray.

Four sharecropper houses stood in "The Beeches," a stand of such trees off to the right of the entrance lane. Two more homes were located on a ridge overlooking the big house.

To name all the families who lived on the Fork Farm during the 20s and 30s would be impossible.

But together Ray, Maxine, and Emma Jean compiled quite a few names.

Cleophas and Myrtle Welch, Hart and Mary (Ellison) Welch, Orville and Minnie (Hance) Bumgarner, the Inman Ellis family, the Bowers family, Noah McGaha and his family, Walt Hatley, Sr. and his family, the Otis Miller family, Fleet Hatley, Lester Starnes' family, and people named Proffitt, Evans, Brown, and Bradshaw were among those who once lived and worked on this farm.

"Some of the families mentioned here were long time tenants," explains Maxine, "staying several years. Others were short-term families. I'm sure there were others and to them I apologize for my childhood memory. I do not mean to exclude them by any means."

In those days of segregation, there was once a black family who lived and worked alongside the many white families.

"Mr. Gregg brought a man named Jack Davis from South Carolina to work on the place," says Ray. "He brought his family with him."

"I remember he had a wife and at least two children," adds Emma Jean.

Many of the families had large families of children. "The Welches had enough boys to farm the whole place," laughs Ray.

He's not kidding. Hart and Mary (Ellison) Welch were the parents of Hugh, Paul, Vern, Cleophas, Jim, John, Sandy, Will, Lee, and Harvey, plus a daughter Rose.

Vern married Maude Jarnagin. They were the parents of Emma Jean, now married to Samuel Marion Hammer.

"My mother died in 1926," says Emma Jean. "about three months after I was born. I later went to live with my grandparents at the Fork Farm when I was about 4 years old."

At lunchtime, Mrs. Ellis would ring the dinner bell, the peals of which could be heard resounding over the acres.

"The men would come up to the house to eat," says Ray. "The table would seat 12, and they had two feedings. You always wanted to be at the first table!"

When the threshers arrived, the number of mouths to be fed increased by 15-20.

The fact that Jack Davis, the sharecropper, and Jack Dempsey, Mr. Susong's chauffeur, were black didn't matter at mealtime.

"Dad would bring them in and sit them down at the table with everybody. There was no eating out on the porch or in the car. Even though a few of the people might have been a little uncomfortable, there were no real problems," says Ray.

The list of buildings and their functions on the farm is long.

There were two tobacco barns, a chicken house, a log smokehouse, a coal house, the dairy barn, two big cribs, the blacksmith shop, the cattle barn, a mule barn, another small barn in "The Beeches" for the tenants' cows, a well house, and the springhouse.

"The farm was one mile long," Ray says.

Mostly Guernsey and Jersey cows were kept for milking. White-face Hereford cattle comprised the beef herd.

Of course, there was a stock dog, Ring, half-Shepherd, half-Collie. "He was a good retriever and a good stock dog," Ray says.

"Sister Ruth milked about 15/20 cows each morning before she went to school," says Maxine. Milk was sold in Newport to Pet Milk.

Crops grown on the place included corn, wheat, a few oats, and some tobacco.

"Dad was proud of the bushels of corn the farm produced-over 130-back in the days before fertilizer as we know it," says Ray.

Corn was hauled to the mill about every day.

Scattered across the acres, a few of the barns and sheds remain. All of the houses are gone today, but at least two of the huge maple trees Mrs. Ellis used to tap for sap still tower over a newer smaller house.

"We had pear, apple, and peach trees," says Maxine, "and Concord grapes. All these were beside the kitchen. There was also a place dug into the ground where the milk was stored."

These were the pre-tractor days. Fourteen mules, seven teams, pulled the equipment and wagons.

Both Mr. Ellis and Orville Bumgarner performed blacksmithing chores. "I turned the forge for my dad," says Ray.

The first tractor on the place was a Farmall F120, which was purchased in the late 1930s.

"Dad drove it and so did Mr. Cleophas Welch and Mr. Bumgarner," says Ray.

The remaining silos stood adjacent to the dairy barn.

Children crossed the river to attend Alexander School in a building now incorporated into Stokely Chapel Baptist Church. Their teachers included Reva Proffitt, Mrs. Ina Campbell, and Mrs. Henry Alexander.

To get there, the youngsters had to follow the old Rankin Road, which dropped off to the left of Jim Graham's driveway and go down to the bridge. "The mailboxes for everybody stood at the intersection," recalls Maxine.

Ray, called "Bug" by the older children, seems to have been the child who kept his older sisters on their toes.

Recalls Emma Jean, "Once we'd started home and that one over there (pointing to Ray) fell down and carried on like he'd broke his ankle. Mack (Maxine) and I made a satchel with our hands and carried him three miles. When we got to the top of the hill above the houses, he jumped down and ran home!"

And both women still recall his habit of waiting at the railroad tracks for a train to approach before he would cross. "He'd make Mack think he was going to be hit," Emma Jean says.

Once his shenanigans literally landed him in the drink. Ice covered the sluices, and although he'd been warned not to get on top of them, he did anyway.

"Kerplunk. He went into the river," says Emma Jean. "We had to a get a tree to pull him out and carry him home for dry clothes."

By the late 20s and early 30s, the once-pristine Pigeon River was quickly becoming heavily polluted by the mess poured into its waters upriver in Canton, North Carolina.

"We'd swim in the French Broad," says Maxine.

She and Ray recall problems their father had with people crossing the rivers to steal meat and gas. "Those were Depression days," says Maxine.

Once Mr. Ellis fired a load of buckshot into the behind of one of the would-be rogues. Then he simply came home and went to bed.

"Our mother hadn't heard the shot," says Ray. "The next morning, after breakfast, Dad said, 'Well, I guess I'd better go see who I killed out here last night.' Boy, did that upset her."

By this time the wounded man was gone. Later, Dr. Doak unwittingly spilled the beans to Mr. Ellis when he told him about a patient he'd treated for buckshot wounds.

All three-Ray, Maxine, and Emma Jean-agree that life at the Fork Farm was good.

To their knowledge, only they, plus Clete Welch's wife, remain of those who lived on the Fork Farm prior to 1942.

Ray has been back to the home place over the years, going down to fish. But a visit to the place on a sunny Thursday this past October was the first time Maxine and Emma Jean had returned to the Fork Farm.

There was a certain amount of sadness that day. But there was happiness, too, as the memories of those bygone days were resurrected and shared. Looking southward toward the Smoky Mountains, Maxine summed up her feelings with the question, "Did you ever see a prettier sight?"