segment in the British Isles and Europe.
The Smokies were tall in their beginning, as tall as the brand-new Rocky Mountains are today. But the effects of wind, rain, ice, heat, and cold worked like a sculptor’s chisel, carving deep ravines and leaving tall peaks. Where the artist’s chisel sculpted through older, harder Precambrian rock of the high ground, it exposed younger, softer Paleozoic limestones and shales that had been overridden by the thrust fault.
Over time, the erosive effects became more like the fingers of an artist, smoothing the sharp edges and working down the mountains into gentler hills and valleys. The Paleozoic layers became the coves—valleys surrounded by higher and older Precambrian rock formations. The ceaseless weathering of the limestone in the coves created deep, fertile soils, making perfect homesteads for farmers like the Gallowses to settle.
* * *
Lindsay reached for a Dr Pepper in her ice chest and popped the tab, sending a tiny mist of fizz over her bed. She took a long drink before continuing to peruse the results of the Gallows farmstead survey by Eco Analysts.
Eco Analysts had not skimped on their work at the site. Before the company went under they had produced maps of the topography, the current vegetation, the distribution of surface artifacts, and a map based on their survey with metal detectors. They also had taken an aerial photograph and produced ground-penetrating radar profiles. The results of the survey with the metal detectors were particularly impressive, producing a prodigious number of hits around the area identified as the barn. A large version of their artifact map on the living room wall downstairs had the excavation units marked as black squares.
Lindsay pulled out the Cultural Resource Management report. CRM reports are often dry, and sometimes only a cursory exercise to fulfill the legal obligation that they be produced. This report, however, was a detailed description of the method and discoveries made in the initial culture survey. Lindsay looked to see who had written it and noted several of the current crew among the authors—including Claire.
She spotted another interesting name in the acknowledgments. The late Mary Susan Tidwell had been one of the informants who supplied the survey team with anecdotal information and led them to documents archived by the local historical society. Copies of those documents also were in the folder—Josh Gallows’s will, his deed to the farmstead, a church membership role, pages from a diary written by Hope Foute, wife of the local physician, and a copy of the record page from the Gallows family Bible. The CRM contained enough information to produce a reasonable history of the area, the family, and their farm, even without the data the archaeologists were currently recovering from the ground.
Knave’s Seat Cove, location of the Gallows farmstead, was a smaller version of the popular Cade’s Cove located in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The valley, lush in the summer, harsh and often inaccessible in the winter, was, for a period of time, home to several self-sufficient families. Josh Gallows bought his three-hundred-acre parcel from Clarence Foute in 1836 and moved to the property with his wife, Rosellen, and Elisha, his eight-year-old son from a previous marriage. Together, with the help of their neighbors, they built a house and barn.
According to information contained in his will, by the time Josh Gallows died in 1857, he also had built a smokehouse, a springhouse, and two other unnamed outbuildings. Listed among his property were eight cows, two horses, seven pigs, a loom and tackle, flax wheels, a hunting rifle, and several kinds of animal traps, all of which he left to his only surviving offspring, Elisha Gallows. Those possessions suggested that Josh Gallows had grown flax, from which he had made linen, that he raised farm animals, and that an important part of his livelihood came from hunting. He
The Smokies were tall in their beginning, as tall as the brand-new Rocky Mountains are today. But the effects of wind, rain, ice, heat, and cold worked like a sculptor’s chisel, carving deep ravines and leaving tall peaks. Where the artist’s chisel sculpted through older, harder Precambrian rock of the high ground, it exposed younger, softer Paleozoic limestones and shales that had been overridden by the thrust fault.
Over time, the erosive effects became more like the fingers of an artist, smoothing the sharp edges and working down the mountains into gentler hills and valleys. The Paleozoic layers became the coves—valleys surrounded by higher and older Precambrian rock formations. The ceaseless weathering of the limestone in the coves created deep, fertile soils, making perfect homesteads for farmers like the Gallowses to settle.
* * *
Lindsay reached for a Dr Pepper in her ice chest and popped the tab, sending a tiny mist of fizz over her bed. She took a long drink before continuing to peruse the results of the Gallows farmstead survey by Eco Analysts.
Eco Analysts had not skimped on their work at the site. Before the company went under they had produced maps of the topography, the current vegetation, the distribution of surface artifacts, and a map based on their survey with metal detectors. They also had taken an aerial photograph and produced ground-penetrating radar profiles. The results of the survey with the metal detectors were particularly impressive, producing a prodigious number of hits around the area identified as the barn. A large version of their artifact map on the living room wall downstairs had the excavation units marked as black squares.
Lindsay pulled out the Cultural Resource Management report. CRM reports are often dry, and sometimes only a cursory exercise to fulfill the legal obligation that they be produced. This report, however, was a detailed description of the method and discoveries made in the initial culture survey. Lindsay looked to see who had written it and noted several of the current crew among the authors—including Claire.
She spotted another interesting name in the acknowledgments. The late Mary Susan Tidwell had been one of the informants who supplied the survey team with anecdotal information and led them to documents archived by the local historical society. Copies of those documents also were in the folder—Josh Gallows’s will, his deed to the farmstead, a church membership role, pages from a diary written by Hope Foute, wife of the local physician, and a copy of the record page from the Gallows family Bible. The CRM contained enough information to produce a reasonable history of the area, the family, and their farm, even without the data the archaeologists were currently recovering from the ground.
Knave’s Seat Cove, location of the Gallows farmstead, was a smaller version of the popular Cade’s Cove located in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The valley, lush in the summer, harsh and often inaccessible in the winter, was, for a period of time, home to several self-sufficient families. Josh Gallows bought his three-hundred-acre parcel from Clarence Foute in 1836 and moved to the property with his wife, Rosellen, and Elisha, his eight-year-old son from a previous marriage. Together, with the help of their neighbors, they built a house and barn.
According to information contained in his will, by the time Josh Gallows died in 1857, he also had built a smokehouse, a springhouse, and two other unnamed outbuildings. Listed among his property were eight cows, two horses, seven pigs, a loom and tackle, flax wheels, a hunting rifle, and several kinds of animal traps, all of which he left to his only surviving offspring, Elisha Gallows. Those possessions suggested that Josh Gallows had grown flax, from which he had made linen, that he raised farm animals, and that an important part of his livelihood came from hunting. He
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