Tahlequah

The scope and mood of this memoir are best suggested by its Table of Contents as follows: Preface, Acknowledgements, Prologue, Cherokee Territory, The Land, Tahlequah Oak, The Early Inhabitants, "Pray and Work", Ramsay,Ramsey, "Ora et Labora", Family Album, Samuel Taylor Ramsey, The Way We Lived, S.T. Ramsey and Son,General Merchandise, Papa, Mama, Our Daily Bread, Food, Water, A Growing Up Like No Other, Crickets in My Shoes, Knee High To a Duck, Beyond The Valley, School, In The Good Old Summer Time, Refuge, "It's That Old Time Religion", Chestnut Hill, Epilogue, The Tale Of a Tree, Excerpts From The Family Bible, Letters from N.E.Ramsey, 1901.

This small segment of Americana covers the adventures and activities of some Anglo-Scots who searched for and settled in a secluded valley high in the Nantahala Mountains of North Carolina. Some spoke Elizabethan English using "hopa you" for "help you" and other representative phrases. Some had rudimentary education; a few were learned. All were driven by the same desires to have freedom to worship as they chose, to have property rights and privacy.

Their freedoms found, these pioneers planted crops in virgin soil. They added fruit trees of apple, pear, peach,and cherry, as well as grape and berry vines, flowering shrubs, foxglove, roses, and peonies to touch the wilderness with bloom.

Their ingenuity and creativity is best illustrated by the family who diverted part of a stream to provide water power for a sawmill, corn mill and dynamo to generate electricity. The water then was directed through a wooden trough to the wash house for launder, onward for live stock and finally swept sewage toward the sea.

In the early 1900's Tellico emerged as a place to visit. Tahlequah Oak was admired and measured by how many persons were needed to reach around its girth. Electric lights in the house and barn were a source of amazement. Visitors bought stamps at the post office, candy at the store, walked through the mills, admired the collected buggies and surreys in the carriage shed before having a drink of water from the dipper at the spring in the meadow.

The big white house was always full of family and friends. Those days have passed with the years and now the valley is filled more with memories than people. Majestic Tahlequah Oak still towers over all but is dying. As a child the author played hide and seek among the boulders under the tree with imaginary Cherokee children. She has known this Oak in all seasons for many years and remembers it as an old friend.