By Buddy Gettys
For the Salisbury Post
A dry stone wall enclosed the graveyard. Wild flowers grew thick along the outside of the wall and tall pines and huge aging oaks gave a comforting backdrop to the darkening gray tombstones of those resting in peace ó many for as long as 200 years. This was a place where silence was like a blanket, day in and day out, disturbed only by the caretaker coming by periodically to cut the grass and pull the weeds.
But once a year on this day, a tall, thin, gray haired woman could be seen standing at the foot of one of the graves. This year, a pimply-faced boy stood beside her, constantly blinking behind his glasses. His height reached the women’s shoulders. They held hands.
It was late in the evening on a brisk September day. Soon, darkness would collapse around them and the fall colors of the trees that covered the mountains in the distance would no longer be visible.
Next to the tombstone before them was a small Confederate flag put there by the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. There were several more scattered throughout the cemetery, but the others had no significance to Samantha and her grandson. They had placed flowers on her great-grandfather’s grave, just as Samantha had been doing for almost 50 years.
Samantha was intrigued by history and the times during which her great-grandfather had lived and died. She carried his picture in a small frame with his name, Samuel, engraved in gold across the front.
She was his namesake and was blessed with his deep blue eyes. He had died on Sept. 16, 1923, 14 years before Samantha was born.
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In a quiet placid voice, Samantha told her grandson the story of Samuel that she had first heard as a small child:
1838 was dubbed as the “coldest winter in Georgia in forty years.” The valley where Samuel lived in a small log house with his young parents was cut off by snow drifts and the Chatahoochee River had frozen over. Samuel was only 15 months old. In an effort to stay warm, Samuel’s father had built a roaring fire in the big stone fireplace in the main room of their home.
During the night a log rolled from the fireplace and set the house ablaze. Samuel’s parents died in the fire. Samuel was not there that night. He had the whooping cough and was staying with his grandmother, who lived across the hollow.
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By the time he was 14, his grandparents had died and Samuel went to live with his aunt and uncle and several cousins in Copper Hill, Tennessee. He joined his uncle and two cousins working in the copper mines.
When he was 18, his uncle became sick from breathing fumes from smelting copper and sulfuric acid. The family purchased a farm 30 miles west of Asheville in the North Carolina mountains and went there for him to recover and build a new life.
Being isolated in the hills and self-sustaining, they knew little about the civil war that was destroying the South around them. One day while Samuel was plowing new ground along a logging road near their home, a gang of Confederate soldiers came along. They had found a still and helped themselves to the supplies. They were singing and having fun, carrying their rifles over their shoulders like they were baseball bats. Samuel picked up the banjo that he carried everywhere with him and started to play. He made friends and learned about the cause they were fighting for.
He joined the Confederate army that spring day in 1863 and was assigned to a Rebel stronghold at Cumberland Gap. In September the Feds captured the Gap and the Confederate soldiers scattered throughout the hills.
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By the fall of 1865, Samuel and a dozen other soldiers found themselves in the path of Stoneman’s Raiders near Winston-Salem. Stoneman was headed to Salisbury to liberate the Confederate prison. Although the war was actually over, the gangs of Confederates put up a fight near Mocksville and finally retreated against overwhelming odds.
Samuel found his way to the head waters of the Yadkin River at Thunder Hill where he met a young widow with five children. Her husband had been killed at Cumberland Gap.
Several months later, Samuel married the widow and not only did they have five children of their own, they adopted three Cherokee boys.
Samuel built a church on their property and mountain folks from everywhere attended services on Sunday mornings along with Samuel’s family. Samuel was the pastor, music director, a farmer and a leader. He started a bluegrass band in which he picked the banjo when they played at the church.
Later in life, Samuel was elected to the North Carolina legislature and traveled to meetings in Raleigh by horse and buggy. He became a friend of the mountain folks and was known as ‘the Congressman with a banjo.’
Samuel died in 1923, two days after being kicked in the face by a mule. He was 86. At his funeral, the bluegrass band played while Samuel’s banjo leaned against a tree.
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About 20 years ago, while searching for my family ties in the backwoods of western North Carolina, I stopped at an old county store that had been off the beaten path for more than 60 years. I met the owner. His name was Sam, Samantha’s grandson. He was then 33 years old. He explained that he did various construction jobs and ran the store on the weekends. I purchased a Coke and crackers and we sat on the porch and talked with our feet propped on the steps.
A shallow stream ran behind the store with the whitewater slapping the rocks. Trout jumped frequently in the water. Birds flittered in the birch trees and a chicken pecked at the ground.
With a country drawl that dripped like honey, Sam told me about his visit to the graveyard with his grandmother when he was 13 and the story about Samuel. Samantha had been told she had leukemia and had been given only a few months to live. She asked Sam to take care of Samuel’s grave. She had made arrangements to be buried in the same graveyard. Sam was now taking flowers there several times a year and would tell Samuel’s story to anyone who would listen.
After an hour or so of chatting, I bid him goodbye. The sun was low on the horizon, just inches off the top of the mountains.
Sam got up, reached inside the screen door and brought out an old banjo. He stood for a moment in the shadows of the porch. His long hair, tied into a pony tail, and his stubby beard were separated by deep blue eyes. His brogans were scarred and caked with mud, and his jeans were dirty and torn at the knees. The sleeves of his flannel shirt had been cut off at the shoulders. He strummed the banjo a half a dozen times, and then played “The Wildwood Flower.” An old hound dog howled from somewhere under the porch.
With a smile and a wave, I got in my Mazda RX-7, turned the key and the dashboard brightened. I gunned the little sports car onto the winding roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains and promised myself that one day I would write this story.
Buddy Gettys is a former Mayor of the Town of Spencer and writes occasionally for the Salisbury Post.