There were too few families on Big Cataloochee for both a Methodist and a Baptist church. In 1858 Colonel Love’s son had deeded a small tract there for the Palmers, Bennetts, Caldwells, and Woodys to use as a Methodist meetinghouse and school. Since then, the Messers and Hannahs and several others had formed a community of their own 8 kilometers (5 miles) north, across Noland Mountain, along the smaller valley of the Little Cataloochee. They built a Baptist church there in 1890.
But the differences were not great. One of the Big Cataloochee’s sons became and remained the high sheriff of sprawling Haywood County with the well-nigh solid support of the combined Cataloochee vote. Running six times in succession and against a candidate from the southeastern part of the county, he was rumored to have waited each time for the more accessible lowlands to record their early returns. Then he simply contacted a cousin, who happened to be the recorder for Cataloochee, who would ask in his slow, easy voice, “How many do you need, cousin?”
The preacher came once a month. He stayed with different families in the community and met the rest at church. More informal gatherings, such as Sunday School and singings, took place each week. And during late summer or fall, when crops were “laid by” and there was an interval between spring’s cultivation and autumn’s harvest, there came the socializing and fervor of camp meeting. A one-week or ten-day revival was cause for school to be let out at 11 o’clock each morning. The children were required to attend long and fervent services. But between exhortations there were feasts of food, frolicking in nearby fields and streams, and for everyone an exchange of good fellowship.
Besides these religious gatherings, women held bean-stringings and quilting bees, men assembled for logrollings or house-raisings to clear new lands and build new homes. One of the few governmental intrusions into Cataloochee life was the road requirement. During the spring and fall, all able-bodied men were “warned out” for six days—eight if there had been washout rains—to keep up what had become the well-used Cataloochee Turnpike. If a man brought a mule and a bull-tongue plow instead of the usual mattock, he received double time for ditching the sides of the road. This heavy work gave the men both a chance to talk and something to talk about. But any of them would still have said that the hardest job of the year was hoeing corn all day on a lonely, stony hillside.
By the early 1900s, Cataloochee had become a mixture of isolation from the outside world and communication with it. Outside laws had affected the valley; in 1885 North Carolina passed the controversial No Fence law, which made fences within townships unnecessary and required owners to keep cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs inside certain bounds. But other laws were less heeded; local experts have estimated that 95 percent of Cataloochee residents made their own whisky. Several families subscribed to a newspaper—“Uncle Jim” Woody took The Atlanta Constitution—and almost everyone possessed the “wish-book:” a dog-eared mail order catalog. But no one in Little Cataloochee bought an automobile.
The valley thrived on local incidents. A man shot a deputy sheriff and hid out near a large rock above Fate Palmer’s homestead; Neddy McFalls and Dick Clark fed him there for years. Will Messer, a master carpenter and coffinmaker over on Little Catalooch, had a daughter named Ola. Messer was postmaster, and the post office acquired her name. Fate Palmer’s shy son, Robert, became known as the “Booger Man” after he hid his face in his arms and gave that as his name to a new teacher on the first day of school.
George Palmer, son of Jesse and brother to Sheriff William, devised a method of capturing wild turkeys. He first built a log enclosure, then dug a trench under one side and baited it with corn. The next morning 10 turkeys, too frightened to retrace their steps through the trench, showed up inside the enclosure. But when George stepped among them and attempted to catch them, the turkeys gave him the beating of his life. Thereafter he was called “Turkey George.” And his daughter, Nellie, lent her name to one of the two post offices on Big Catalooch.
“Turkey George” Palmer of Pretty Hollow Creek in Cataloochee used to tell people that he had killed 105 bears. Most of them he trapped in bear pens.
Edouard E. Exline