Abstract
This study is an attempt to emphasize mountain folklife. Functional use of folk structures and other material culture, patterns of land use, and relationships of people to land are stressed. The investigation attempts to show how a small but meaningful part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was explored, settled, organized, and changed over the span of 205 years (1730-1935). Data on the mountain folk culture were collected during nine summers of residence in the Blue Ridge fountains (1963-1971). During this period all zones of the Blue Ridge fountains between Front Royal and Waynesboro, Virginia, were visited and twenty-five settlements, representing five gap, eleven hollow, five cove, two ridge, and two meadow communities were selected at random for in-depth study. There were three basic parts to the field research: 1) surface archeology, or the study of human adaptation to the mountain environment in historic times; 2) ethnology, or the study of the life and ways of the former mountain inhabitants; and 3) the physical and biological aspects of the mountain environment. Emphasis in this investigation was upon settlement types and their associated material culture. Five major conclusions emerge from this study after analyzing these and other folk traits: 1) that the mountain folk brought their culture from Western Europe; the culture did not originate in the Blue Ridge; 2) that two major cultural streams -- the Scotch-Irish-German Pennsylvanian and the English Tidewater -- met in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia; 3) that even after two centuries the cultural landscape still reflects these two separate origins; 4) that an interdependent system of six different settlement types with associated material culture elements occupies diverse environments in the Blue Ridge; and 5) that mountain folk isolation is self-imposed while "physical isolation" is a myth. Perhaps the most important lesson that emerges from this study is that the mountain folk culture was channeled in its actions by a fabric of social attitudes, customs, and values. The most striking aspect about the mountain folk culture is its enormous power to shape the mountaineer's actions and color his view of the actual world.
Wilhelm Eugene Joseph (1971). Folk geography of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -444899.