Near Rugby in Morgan County, Tennessee — The American South (East South Central)

Early Rugby’s Appalachian Neighbors

Independent and Self-Reliant

Photographed by Tom Bosse, March 18, 2023

1. Early Rugby’s Appalachian Neighbors Marker

Inscription. Living Off The Land Area mountain folk like the Massengales farmed and used the natural resources of the forest to build their log cabins and outbuildings. They produced virtually all of the goods they needed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. What they couldn’t raise, hunt, gather or make would require a rare journey to the outside world for salt and other essentials like crockery. In the Rugby area prior to 1880, this meant traveling some fifteen miles by ox or horse-drawn wagon to Jamestown in Fentress County on the Old Jacksboro Road, described as a “dim mountain trail”. Probably the first, and possible most important, positive impact of the new Rugby Colony for these Appalachian families was the need for only a short walk or ride to the Commissary and other Rugby shops for their “store-bought” goods.

Mountain folk produced a wide variety of food products for the families, including meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables. They raised cattle, sheep, hogs and poultry for meat and other purposes. Cattle provided milk, cheese, butter, hides used to make leather goods. Poultry provided eggs and feathers. Sheep

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wool was used to make clothing, and beef or sheep tallow and pork lard yielded candles and lye soap. Like other area families, the Massengales used fleece from their sheep to spin and weave wool for clothing and coverlets, as Elizabeth’s and Dicie Fletcher’s pictures show. In 1880, according to an agricultural census, the Massengales reported 180 pounds of butter and 100 pounds of honey. Those quantities and the 200 apple trees listed suggest that butter, honey, and apples were being sold to coal miners who were beginning to settle in nearby Glen Mary and to the earliest Rugby colonists, a few of whom began arriving in late 1878.

The 1880 census, year-round activities lists and the chart shown here help us visualize the constant work it took to wrest a living from this Cumberland Plateau land. The return was an independent, owe-no-man lifestyle especially prized by English-Scots-Irish immigrants and their descendants throughout the 17th to early 20th centuries in Appalachia.

[Captions]: Aunt Dicie Fletcher was Rugby’s most accomplished spinner and weaver; an example of the dozens of weaving patterns she used is above.

An 1880

Photographed by Tom Bosse, March 18, 2023

2. Early Rugby’s Appalachian Neighbors Marker

Marker is on the left.

graphic from Harper’s Weekly shows a somewhat romanticized view of Rugby colonists at the Tompkins homeplace that also predated the colony.

An unidentified family at their log home in or near Rugby. It’s possible they are Massengale relatives.

Massengale Family 1880 Agricultural Census Record Nineteenth century census records included agricultural reporting that reveals much information about the Massengales’ farming activities and lifestyle.

Census Farm Value and Output Report
Value $1,000 for property
Value $1,000 for property
17 acres tilled
3 permanent structures
433 acres woodland / forest
$10 farming implements / machinery
$280 livestock
4 milk cows
2 calves dropped
1 horse
11 lambs dropped
31 sheep & 31 fleeces
50 swine
27 poultry
250 lbs. butter made on farm in 1879
300 eggs produced in 1879

Crops:
15 bushels buckwheat
150 bushels Indian corn
7 bushels rye
1 acre in sorghum
40 gallons molasses in 1879
25 bushels potatoes
5 acres in apple trees – 200 trees
100 lbs. honey
8 lbs. beeswax
Wood cut in 1879 – 60 cords

Typical Year-Round Activities
The

Massengale Homeplace Site image. Click for full size.

Photographed by Tom Bosse, March 18, 2023

3. Massengale Homeplace Site

Massengales and other Appalachian families had to work long hours in every kind of weather to provide for their needs and wants. Usually, every man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler, miller and tinker. Another family member or neighbor might serve as his very occasional barber and dentist, and the maker of a rude wooden coffin when he or a family member died.

Every wife and other probably worked even longer hours than ”her man”, usually handling all the gardening, cooking and clean-up, stock feeding and milking, spinning and weaving, soap making, wood and water carrying, gathering of wild plants and nuts for cooking, dyeing and medicinal use – usually in addition to having a new baby to raise every year or two.

Compare this partial list of how the Massengale family and their Appalachian neighbors spent much of their time each year to how the average America family lives today.

Farm Work
Feeding, breeding, doctoring farm animals
Dealing with free-range stock
Sheep Shearing
Hog killing
Egg gathering
Milking
Beekeeping
Plowing, planting & weeding
Orchard tending
Shucking corn

Map to Massengale Homeplace Kiosk image. Click for full size.

Photographed by Tom Bosse, March 18, 2023

4. Map to Massengale Homeplace Kiosk

& harvesting grains
Taking corn and grains to mill for grinding
Cleaning stables, coops and outhouse
Fence post, shingle and trough making
Tool making and blacksmithing

In and Around the Cabin
Firewood splitting and kindling gathering
Cooking, indoors & out
Spinning, weaving, making & mending clothes
Cleaning, sweeping and laundering clothing
Churning butter
Rendering lard and tallow
Gathering, storing and drying fruits ad vegetables
Gathering and utilizing wild herbs, nuts and dyestuffs
Carry water
Making feather ticks and pillows
Caring for children and grandchildren
Fruit fermenting for beverages, including the making of distilled spirits (moonshine) for personal use and perhaps for sale.

Erected by Historic Rugby.

Topics. This historical marker is listed in this topic list: Settlements & Settlers. A significant historical year for this entry is 1880.

Location. 36° 21.38′ N, 84° 42.128′ W. Marker is near Rugby, Tennessee, in Morgan County. It can be reached from Farrington Road. Touch for map. Marker is in this post office area: Rugby TN 37733, United States of America. Touch for directions.

Regionally, this

Massengale Homeplace Family Spring image. Click for full size.

Photographed by Tom Bosse, March 18, 2023

5. Massengale Homeplace Family Spring

marker is in East Tennessee

and in the Cumberland Plateau.

It is also in the American South,

specifically in the Upper South,

in Appalachia,

and specifically in Southern Appalachia. Globally, it is in North America,

the Western Hemisphere,

the Western World,

and the Anglosphere.

Historically, it finds itself in what was once the original Cherokee Nation,

the territory of the Mississippian Culture,

one of the Confederate States of America,

and the Antebellum South.

Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within 6 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies: Welcome to the Massengale Homeplace (within shouting distance of this marker); Meet the Massengales (about 600 feet away, measured in a direct line); Roadside Cottage/Grey Gables (approx. 0.3 miles away); Perrigo/Alexander Boarding House (approx. 0.4 miles away); Thomas Fardon's Drug Supply & Home (approx. 0.4 miles away); The Tabard Inn (approx. half a mile away); Gentlemen's Swimming Hole (approx. 0.9 miles away); Morgan County / Scott County (approx. 5.4 miles away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Rugby.

Related markers. Click here

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for a list of markers that are related to this marker.

Credits. This page was last revised on April 8, 2023. It was originally submitted on April 6, 2023, by Tom Bosse of Jefferson City, Tennessee. This page has been viewed 252 times since then and 27 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. submitted on April 6, 2023, by Tom Bosse of Jefferson City, Tennessee. • James Hulse was the editor who published this page.