People of Passion: Spotlighting Southern Appalachia, Representing America

I read the other reviews, and it seems that I am the first teenager to review this book. People of Passion caught my eye. It was lying on a table at home. My mother brought it back from a conference she attended in Gatlinburg. The title, the painting on the cover, and the Stories of Faith & Determination appealed to me. I picked it up, flipped through it, and read one of the stories. Then I read another, and then another - until I finished the entire book! Each story in this book about the early inhabitants of the Great Smoky Mountains and the Southern Appalachia Highlands runs three to four pages, with some a little longer, some a little shorter. Since I flipped open to a story and didn't start at the beginning, at first I didn't realize the personal stories are in historical order, covering 200 years. After realizing this, I went back and read the Introduction and then proceeded to read the rest of the book in order. This made the reading even more interesting and helped me better understand the feelings and actions of the people during the periods they lived. I noticed that none of the other reviewers mentioned The Acknowledgments & Notes in the back of the book. I found this section also to be very interesting and informative. I've already decided that this book will be the basis of my research paper in school this year. I was intrigued by the way the author mixed the history of the area with the inhabitants' personal stories. You don't really realize it's a history book since it reads like a novel - or a group of short stories, which it is.

It surprised me - and I'm quite sure that many people are unaware of the leadership provided by Southern Appalachia settlers in abolishing slavery in America long before the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. I enjoyed the 48 stories in this book about these settlers, but I especially appreciated the one titled "Freedom For All." It describes how early America, much like Europe, primarily had two classes of people: (1) the aristocratic land and business owners, and (2) the menial working class. The middle class had not yet been established. The aristocrats grabbed up the fertile lands near the east coast; in the South, the system of large plantations limited the number of Americans who could prosper. Seeking opportunities, hardy colonists accepted the challenge of the high mountain ranges. Scotch-Irish and Germans, along with Huguenots (French protestants), Quakers, and poor English who had been indentured servants in the East made the trek. Many settled in the mountainous regions of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Later, they moved on down to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Eventually, the Shenandoah Valley became a channel for a continuous stream of people passing through, moving south into the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. The process accelerated as eastern aristocrats decided that enslaving Africans was more profitable and productive than the European indentured servitude system. As black slavery increased, more and more indentured servants were freed to find independence to the south and beyond the mountains. An antislavery sentiment grew among the mountaineers who came from the indentured culture and struggled to establish an individualistic way of life. Whites whose families had personally experienced the effects of servitude formed antislavery groups. One such group was the North Carolina Manumission (set free) Society. This society denounced the importation and exportation of slaves, and they provided for the purchase of slave contracts to help them gain freedom. Through their efforts, over 2,000 slaves in North Carolina were freed between 1824-1826. Between 1817-1830, Baptist ministers in the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky joined forces to promote and encourage emancipation. Earlier efforts by a group of Scotch-Irish immigrants led by Presbyterian minister David Rice paved the way for this work. As early as 1792, when Kentucky penned a state constitution, Rice led a group to push for excluding slavery in the state. The Friends of Humanity was formed in Kentucky in 1807. Led by 11 ministers and 13 laymen of several denominations, the group promoted freedom for all humans. Leaders in East Tennessee pushed for providing education for slaves. Groups were formed in Maryville and Knoxville to spotlight the plight of slaves and take steps to assist them. The "Presbyterian Witness," published in Knoxville, ran an editorial that claimed there was not a solitary argument in

I can relate to this book. "People of Passion" contains stories so very much like the stories my grandmother used to tell me. Today, with all of our conveniences, it is good to read these accounts and see what our ancestors went through during "the good old days." The stories are varied, of course, since they span 200 years. I appreciate them all, and the brevity with which they are told. But I especially liked the one titled "Female Ingenuity." It's about about Ella, whose inflammatory rheumatism kept her in bed one winter for many weeks. But that didn't stop her. One of the things she did was ask her husband Jacob to get some eggs from neighbors who had chickens. He got two dozen, and Ella put them in bed with her. Keeping the eggs under the quilt and close to her body, Ella turned and shifted them as carefully as a mother hen. Twenty-three fluffy yellow chicks were hatched. And by that time, Ella was improved enough to get up and care for her brood.I would like to tell Ella, "You go, girl!" And I would like to thank Carl Mays for gathering and sharing these wonderful stories, which should be saved and passed along...

When I was a child growing up in Cincinnati, my family would visit Gatlinburg, TN and the Great Smoky Mountains annually. It was always a fun trip, with candy apples, attractions, drives through the national park, and a lot of swimming in the hotel pool. But before I acquired this book on a recent trip as an adult, I never truly understood and appreciated the heritage of the area, even though I knew something about it. "People Of Passion" paints great word pictures of what came before the candy apples, attractions, rides through the park, and hotel pools. As I read the book, I could see the people in my mind and almost feel their pains, struggles, joys, and accomplishments. It caused me to feel proud of them and appreciate what they went through. I especially enjoyed the stories of Hattie Whaley (a strong, mountain woman who saved herself and children from death); Caleb Porter (a man who dealt bravely with the slaughter of his wife and child); Dr. Robert Thomas (a medical missionary to the settlement of Pittman Center); Miss Marjorie Chalmers (a heroic nurse who took care of the people of Gatlinburg for 30 years); and Nero & Jethro (twins, whose story caused me to laugh and cry at the same time). I highly recommend this book to both adults and children.

What a great book! It is subtitled "Stories of Faith & Determination That Will Touch Your Heart & Warm Your Soul," and the content does just that! It contains 48 short stories that cover 200 years of personal accounts of people of Southern Appalachia (1768-1965). Having moved from New York to Atlanta, I was in Gatlinburg, TN and picked up a copy of this book, and was intrigued by it from the opening page. I certainly gained an appreciation for this area and for the Cherokees, mountaineers, and highlanders who settled it. Prior to reading this book, I had an entirely different opinion of this part of our nation and the people who settled here. I am encouraging my students and my own children to read this book. It is well-written and well-edited. It pays an honest, sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-rending tribute to simple, important people - the type of people who have helped to make America a great country in which to live.