A Mountain Homestead: A 19th-Century Childhood

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PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
Lillie Baxter grew up on a mountain homestead at the turn of the century. Her story is of a life of self-sufficiency and working for everything that was accomplished.

Sometimes we forget that many of our ancestors built for themselves lives of beauty, peace, and independence, lives that — trapped as we are in a better-things-for better-living-through-chemistry, keep-up-with-the-Joneses charade — we can only barely imagine, and perhaps never truly duplicate. We also forget how much of our time is spent in relearning skills that were almost second nature to our grandparents.

It’s a welcome event, then, when a survivor of frontier America gives us such a vivid look into her childhood as Lillie Baxter does in the following account of life at her Tennessee mountain homestead. (This, by the way, is Lillie’s first attempt at writing a magazine article, and we certainly hope it isn’t the last.)

Lillie is now a hale and hearty 89 years old and enjoys recounting the varied experiences of a busy life both during her childhood in the Tennessee mountains and in the Oklahoma Territory, to which she moved with her family in 1906.

We hope you’ll enjoy, as much as we did, this account of “Them That Did It.”  — THE EDITORS


  • Published on Jan 1, 1976
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