Gatlinburg Roots

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Gatlinburg Roots Home of the official Gatlinburg Roots Podcast. Their stories, along with the stories of countless other mountain families, form the foundation of this project.

Founded by sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-generation descendants of Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, Gatlinburg Roots preserves the stories, memories, and history of White Oak Flats and Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg Roots was founded by seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-generation descendants of White Oak Flats families whose roots run deep in these mountains. Through the Ogle and Reagan family lines, including direct descent from Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, the project grew from inherited photographs, family stories, and memories passed from one generation to the next. For generations, these families lived, worked, worshiped, raised children, and built lives in the community known as White Oak Flats. Through photographs, family histories, historical research, and firsthand accounts, Gatlinburg Roots works to preserve the people, places, traditions, and everyday life of White Oak Flats, Gatlinburg, and the Great Smoky Mountains. Every photograph has a story. Every family has a place. Every generation leaves something worth remembering. Most of us are only three generations away from being forgotten. Gatlinburg Roots exists to help ensure those memories, stories, and legacies are preserved and passed forward to the generations that follow. Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary. Keep on Rootin'.

10/17/2026

The Plant That Keeps Its Leaves Out in the Cold

When the Hunter's Moon rides high over our mountains, the old-timers say it's the time to know the story of one particular plant.

Walk the high ridges this time of year and look at the shrubs and the trees. Every one of them has already put next year's leaves to bed. Each leaf is sealed up tight inside a bud, wrapped and protected, waiting out the winter where the cold can't reach it.

Every one of them but witch-hobble.

Witch-hobble won't hide. It leaves its leaves out in the open, bare to the wind, all winter long. It stands on the tops of the mountains where the cold is bitter and it never once tucks them away.

The old folks called it a brave plant, and it's hard to argue. While everything around it plays it safe, witch-hobble stands there with nothing between its leaves and the freezing night but its own stubbornness.

So the next time that moon hangs over the mountain, you'll know which plant to look for.

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10/16/2026

Clay Jugs, Pine Needle Hats and the Dogwood Pitcher

Somewhere back in a mountain cove, an artist dreamed up a covered wagon and put it into cloth and thread. Somebody else was shaping clay into jugs. Somebody else was weaving pine needles into women's hats, using what the forest floor gave them for free.

Folks in these hills made what they needed, and they made it handsome. A quilt wasn't just something to keep you warm on a February night. It was scraps and worn-out clothes and long evenings of patient stitching, turned into something a family was proud to lay across the bed.

Then there was Hilton pottery, and that was a family affair. Ernest Hilton was raised in a house full of jugs. He started learning the craft from his father at eight years old, and by twelve he was throwing quart jars on the wheel. In 1934 he opened his own pottery near Marion, North Carolina. He turned the pieces himself. His wife Clara Maude and their four daughters, Tommie, Lera, Ernestine and Mozell, put on the glazes and the decoration.

What made a Hilton piece a Hilton piece was the dogwood. White blossoms stood up off the clay against a dark beige background, so you could run your thumb across the flowers. Anyone raised in these mountains knows why that flower was chosen. Every spring the dogwoods open white across the slopes, and a potter who worked one into clay was putting a little of April on the kitchen table to stay.

Then came the glaze. Ernest fired his pottery in a groundhog kiln and coated it with ground-up Coca-Cola bottles. Old pop bottles, melted into a shine on a pitcher that sat on somebody's table.

Jugs for the cellar. Plates and pitchers for the table. Quilts for the bed. Plain things, made well, meant to be used every day and loved while you used them.

That was the mountain way of making.

Did your family keep a Hilton pitcher or a handmade quilt in the house? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin'.

10/15/2026

1889: Good Land, Hard Work, A Family Farm

The land had been settled for a long time before Bill Parkinson was born on the family farm in 1889, and he would spend his life working it. It is not prime land, but it is good land. He carried the farm on, improved it, and changed it as conditions changed. It is 205 acres.

In the early years he did general farming, but the land got tired, and the farm had to change with it. Milk became the crop that kept the place going. For a family of seven, the dairy's check was what paid for sugar and coffee, clothes and shoes, and all the things this earth would not grow.

Milk has to be cooled properly, or it spoils and sours, and that takes back and arms. Nothing about it was easy, and every day on the farm asked something of the people who worked it.

If these old Smoky Mountain stories matter to you, tap Follow on Gatlinburg Roots so you never miss the next one.

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Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary. Keep on Rootin'.

10/14/2026

Victory Gardens Asked the Country to Do What We Already Did

During World War II, the country had a message for every family: put something in the ground. Grow your own food, and there's more to go around for the war effort. The clip puts it plainly. No work, no spuds. No turnips, no tank. No Flying Fortress, no victory.

Here in the mountains, the war didn't change much about the work. Folks were already out in the rows, planting, picking and putting food by for the winter. A garden wasn't a patriotic act. It was just how you fed a family.

For a lot of America, the victory garden was something new. For us, it was just the garden.

Tell us what your family grew.

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Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary. Keep on Rootin'.

10/13/2026

She Still Cooked Her Beans Over an Open Fire, the Old Mountain Way

In the old days in these mountains, the best beans of the year weren't eaten in summer. They were saved, strung up, and waited on.

It started in her garden. She raised the beans by hand, picked them, and carried them in by the basketful. Then came the stringing. One bean at a time went onto a long thread until the strand reached nearly to the floor. She hung those strands on the wall, and there they stayed, drying and shriveling and turning the color of an old saddle. That's how they got their name, leather britches.

When the cold came and the garden was gone, the beans were still there.

The night before a big pot, she took a few handfuls down off the wall and set them to soak. By morning they'd begun to plump back to life. Into the pot they went with fatback meat, raised right there on the homeplace, and the pot went over an open fire. Four hours of slow boiling, maybe more, until they were tender all the way through.

While they cooked, she made her dough. She rolled it out thin, cut it into pieces, and dropped them into the pot to cook in that rich bean broth. When she had hominy on hand, it came to the table too.

Nothing bought. Nothing wasted. A summer garden, a hog, a little flour, an open fire, and patience. That was a mountain supper.

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LEATHER BRITCHES WITH FATBACK AND DUMPLINGS

Beans
4 cups dried leather britches (about 1/2 pound)
1/4 pound fatback or salt pork, sliced
Water to cover
Salt and black pepper to taste

Dumplings
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
About 1/3 cup cold water or bean broth

Rinse the dried beans and break the strands into pieces, pulling out the thread. Cover with water and soak overnight.

Drain, put the beans and fatback in a large pot, and cover with fresh water by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil, then lower to a steady simmer.

Cook about 4 hours, or until tender. Add water as needed so the beans stay covered. Season with salt and pepper near the end, since the fatback brings salt of its own.

For the dumplings, mix the flour and salt, then stir in just enough water or broth to make a stiff dough. Roll it thin on a floured board and cut it into strips or squares.

Bring the pot back to a good simmer, drop the dough pieces in one at a time, and cook about 15 minutes until done.

Serve hot, with hominy on the side if you have it.

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If these old Smoky Mountain stories matter to you, tap Follow on Gatlinburg Roots so you never miss the next one.

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Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin'.

10/12/2026

Witch-Hobble Bundles Over the Doors Kept the Witches Out

Back in the old days, when ghosties, goblins and witches were said to be abroad in these mountains, mountain folks didn't trust the lock on the door. They trusted a bundle of witch-hobble hanging over it.

That's how Mr. Bill Hooks tells it, standing in front of the old Bud Ogle cabin. Witch-hobble is a native shrub that grows wild in these hills, and back then it had a job to do.

When the nights got long and the wind started worrying at the shutters, somebody would go out and cut an armful of twigs, tie them into tight little bundles, and fasten them over the doors and windows. That was the line a witch couldn't cross.

The belief came over the ocean with the people who settled these hollers. Their grandparents in Scotland, Ireland and England had tied twigs over the doorway for the same reason, and when they landed in the Smokies they found what grew here and kept right on doing it.

And they had reason to want the protection. A witch, the old people said, could sour the milk in the springhouse, keep the butter from coming in the churn, sicken a cow, or ride a man so hard in his sleep he woke up worn out. So a family did what it could. A broom laid across the doorway. Socks turned inside out at bedtime. And those bundles of witch-hobble, standing guard at every opening in the house.

Nobody can say how many of those little bundles once hung over mountain doors. But on a dark October night, with the woods pressing close and the wind testing the shutters, you can understand why a mother would sleep easier with one hanging over hers.

Did your grandparents ever tell you what the old people did to keep the witches away? Tell us in the comments.

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STAY WITH US
If these old Smoky Mountain stories matter to you, tap Follow on Gatlinburg Roots so you never miss the next one.

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Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin'.

Making Music: Where the Mountain Sound Came FromA fiddle tune doesn't come with a name tag.Somebody plays it on a porch ...
10/12/2026

Making Music: Where the Mountain Sound Came From

A fiddle tune doesn't come with a name tag.

Somebody plays it on a porch in the Smokies, and it feels like it has always belonged right there. But a lot of those tunes had already traveled a long way before they ever reached these hollers.

Some of them came with Scots-Irish families in the 1700s. They worked their way down the backcountry from Pennsylvania, through the Shenandoah Valley and on south, carrying not much more than tools, a Bible, a few ballads in their heads and a fiddle if they were lucky.

They weren't the only ones on that road.

English families brought their own old songs. German settlers brought theirs. The banjo itself grew out of instruments made by enslaved Africans and their descendants. And all of it landed in mountains where Cherokee people had been living long before any of them arrived.

Nobody sat down and decided to blend it.

It just happened, one evening at a time. A fiddle player picked up a tune from a neighbor. A ballad lost a verse and gained a new one. A banjo found its way onto the same porch as a fiddle, and the two started answering each other.

By around 1900, it had settled in deep enough that you could find it right outside the George W. Powell home.

Somebody set up a camera there one day, and the family gathered in front of the old log wall. Two of the women brought their instruments. Margurett Powell Rider had the fiddle. Harriett Powell Myers had the banjo. Both were born Powell. This was home ground.

Most of the family held still the way you were supposed to.

Margurett didn't.

She had the fiddle up under her chin and the bow already moving. Even when the shutter opened, her arm kept going, and the camera caught it as a blur.

Beside her, Harriett had the banjo across her lap. Her eyes were down on the strings, with just the hint of a smile, like she was listening for where Margurett was headed next.

A little one leaned in against the banjo neck, staring up at it like it might do something. A barefoot girl sat on the step, the only one paying the stranger with the camera any mind. Further down, an older woman in spectacles kept right on knitting. Music or no music, there was work in her hands.

Fiddle and banjo, side by side. Two old roads, crossing the ocean and the backcountry and finally meeting on one family's doorstep.

It wasn't Scottish anymore. It wasn't Irish, or English, or German.

It was mountain music.

And Margurett just kept the bow moving.

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ABOUT THIS PHOTO

Original historical photograph with modern text treatment.

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STAY WITH US

If these old Smoky Mountain stories matter to you, tap Follow on Gatlinburg Roots so you never miss the next one.

Follow • Remember • Preserve

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin'.

Making Sorghum: When Sweetness Started With a MuleThe mule had been walking the same circle since morning.Round and roun...
10/12/2026

Making Sorghum: When Sweetness Started With a Mule

The mule had been walking the same circle since morning.

Round and round, head down, pulling a long crooked pole that swung out from the mill like the hand of a clock. Every slow step turned the rollers one more time.

A boy in overalls stood at its head. That was his job today. Keep the mule moving. Don't let it stop.

The man had the other job. He sat in a straight-backed chair beside the mill, feeding cane stalks in one at a time. They went in whole and came out flat, and the juice ran out thin and green.

Behind him the crushed stalks kept piling up, already reaching toward the wagon wheels.

Ten gallons of that juice would boil down to one gallon of sorghum. Ten for one. So the mule kept walking, the boy kept it walking, and the man kept feeding.

You can't hurry a mule.

Later there would be a fire, and a pan, and somebody standing over it into the night, stirring and skimming while it went thick and dark.

But that was later.

Right now it was just the creak of the mill, the hills going soft in the haze behind them, and a boy, a mule and a man in a chair, turning a field of cane into something a family could pour over a hot biscuit in January.

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ABOUT THIS PHOTO

Original historical photograph with modern text treatment.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

STAY WITH US

If these old Smoky Mountain stories matter to you, tap Follow on Gatlinburg Roots so you never miss the next one.

Follow • Remember • Preserve

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin'.

10/11/2026

Before the 1930s on Roaring Fork, It Was the Farm or the Sawmill

Ask the old-timers how folks made a living along Roaring Fork, and you get an answer with no wiggle room in it.

"It's the only way they had of making a living. There was no other way except the farming."

He says it plain, the way you'd say the sun comes up in the east. Then he stops to think, because a man who grew up here wants to be fair about it.

"There was one or two jobs. They're sawmill jobs. But other than that, it was farming."

That was the whole list. A family on Roaring Fork lived on what they could raise out of steep, rocky ground beside a creek that never stopped talking. Corn for the table and the livestock. Beans strung and dried for winter. A hog or two to carry them through the cold months. Every child old enough to walk had a job in the field, because the field was the paycheck, the grocery store and the savings account all at once.

The sawmill was the only door out, and it wasn't much of a door. Logging crews were working the timber deep in these mountains, and a man who could handle a saw or drive a team might bring home real money for a while. But those jobs were few, the work was hard and dangerous, and when the timber was cut out, the work moved on.

So most families stayed with the land. They didn't think of themselves as poor and they didn't think of themselves as farmers. That was simply living.

Within a single lifetime, the national park would come, the Roaring Fork homeplaces would empty, and Gatlinburg would turn into something those families never could have pictured. But for the people who remember the old way, the memory still comes down to two choices.

The farm, or the sawmill. And mostly the farm.

STAY WITH US

If these old Smoky Mountain stories matter to you, tap Follow on Gatlinburg Roots so you never miss the next one.

Follow • Remember • Preserve

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin'.

10/11/2026

Sunday Morning at First Baptist Church of Gatlinburg

Before downtown Gatlinburg looked the way it does now, this stone church stood as one of the town’s familiar places of worship.

Its roots reach back to White Oak Flats Baptist, formed in 1837. The congregation once met in a log cabin on Baskins Creek, where church and school shared the same humble walls.

By 1951, the stone church downtown had become part of Gatlinburg’s Sunday morning landscape, with its tower rising above the Parkway and families coming through the doors.

There were hymns, bowed heads, worn Bibles, Sunday dresses, work hands folded in prayer, and mountain voices singing the old songs like they meant every word.

For many folks, faith was not just something saved for Sunday. It was carried back home, back to the kitchen table, back to the porch, back into another week in the mountains.

If you remember Sunday mornings at First Baptist Church of Gatlinburg, type Amen.

Follow • Remember • Preserve

Follow the Legacy — Gatlinburg Roots is an ongoing heritage project preserving the history of Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains through forgotten family stories, voices, and rare images, using alternative media forms when necessary.

Keep on Rootin’.

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