Further Reading — Chapter 9: Women on the Frontier — Gender, Labor, and Survival in Mountain Communities

Foundational Works on Appalachian Women's History

Inscoe, John C., ed. Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. While not exclusively about women, this collection includes several essays that address the intersections of race and gender in Appalachian history. Essential for understanding the experiences of enslaved and free Black women in the mountains.

Pudup, Mary Beth, Dwight B. Billings, and Altina L. Waller, eds. Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. A landmark collection that challenged the myth of Appalachian isolation and included substantial attention to women's economic roles. Several essays address home production, market participation, and the gendered division of labor.

Engelhardt, Elizabeth S.D. The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. Examines the intersections of gender, environment, and literature in the Appalachian context. Provides a theoretical framework for understanding how women's relationships to land and labor have been represented — and misrepresented — in Appalachian writing.

Blee, Kathleen M., and Dwight B. Billings. "Where 'Bloodshed Is a Pastime': Mountain Feuds and Appalachian Stereotyping." In Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes, edited by Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. While focused on feud mythology, this essay is relevant to Chapter 9 because it demonstrates how gender operates within Appalachian stereotypes — the "feuding" narrative renders women invisible while sensationalizing male violence.

Women's Labor and the Frontier Economy

Jensen, Joan M. Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Though focused on the mid-Atlantic rather than Appalachia specifically, Jensen's work on farm women's economic roles — particularly butter production, textile manufacturing, and market participation — provides an essential framework for understanding women's labor in the mountain economy.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. The definitive demonstration that midwife records can reveal entire worlds of women's experience. While Ballard practiced in Maine, not Appalachia, Ulrich's methodology — reading women's diaries against the grain of conventional history — is directly applicable to Appalachian women's records.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Examines textile production as both economic activity and cultural symbol in early America. The chapters on spinning wheels and woven textiles are directly relevant to understanding women's home production on the Appalachian frontier.

Dunaway, Wilma A. Women, Work, and Family in the Antebellum Mountain South. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. The most comprehensive scholarly treatment of women's labor in the Appalachian economy before the Civil War. Dunaway documents the full range of women's productive activities and argues for their centrality to the frontier and antebellum mountain economy. Essential reading.

Midwifery and Healing

Cavender, Anthony. Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. The most thorough scholarly treatment of Appalachian folk medicine, including herbal remedies, healing practices, and the cultural contexts in which they operated. Extensively documented with both historical sources and twentieth-century fieldwork.

Breckinridge, Mary. Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1952 (reprinted 1981). Mary Breckinridge's own account of founding and running the Frontier Nursing Service in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. A primary source that documents both the conditions that made the FNS necessary and the methods that made it successful.

Dougherty, Molly C. "Southern Lay Midwives as Ritual Specialists." In Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles, edited by Judith Hoch-Smith and Anita Spring. New York: Plenum Press, 1978. An anthropological examination of the midwife's role as social and ritual specialist, not just medical practitioner. Relevant to understanding why the displacement of midwives by hospital-based care involved the loss of social functions beyond healthcare delivery.

Ettinger, Laura E. Nurse-Midwifery: The Birth of a New American Profession. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. Traces the history of nurse-midwifery in America, with substantial attention to the Frontier Nursing Service. Provides context for understanding how the professionalization of midwifery affected traditional practitioners.

Cherokee Women and Indigenous Gender Systems

Perdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. The foundational scholarly work on Cherokee women's status, power, and the erosion of that power under colonial pressure. Perdue documents the matrilineal system, women's political roles, and the deliberate project of gender transformation imposed by missionaries and government agents. Essential for understanding the comparison at the heart of Chapter 9's Section 6.

Miles, Tiya. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Examines the intersection of African American and Cherokee experiences, including the experiences of enslaved Black women in Cherokee communities. Relevant to understanding how race, gender, and cultural context intersected in complex ways on the Appalachian frontier.

Hill, Sarah H. Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. A detailed study of Cherokee women's material culture, tracing basketry traditions from pre-contact through the twentieth century. Demonstrates that Cherokee women's creative and economic activities persisted through enormous cultural disruption.

The Captivity Narrative

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Arthur Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. A comprehensive literary and historical analysis of the captivity narrative genre. Examines the conventions, functions, and evolution of the genre across three centuries. Essential background for understanding how Mary Draper Ingles's story has been shaped by genre expectations.

Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Analyzes captivity narratives through the lens of gender and ethnicity. Examines how the genre constructed white femininity in opposition to Indigenous cultures and how captive women's actual experiences often contradicted the genre's conventions.

Thom, James Alexander. Follow the River. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981. The bestselling fictionalized account of Mary Draper Ingles's captivity and escape. While a novel rather than a work of history, it is the version of the story most Americans know and is therefore an important object of analysis for understanding how the captivity narrative genre continues to shape popular understanding.

Hale, John P. Trans-Allegheny Pioneers: Historical Sketches of the First White Settlements West of the Alleghenies, 1748 and After. Charleston, WV: Kanawha Valley Publishing Co., 1886 (reprinted). Includes one of the earliest detailed written accounts of the Mary Draper Ingles story. A primary source for the events at Draper's Meadow and the earliest published version of the escape narrative.

Legal History and Women's Status

Salmon, Marylynn. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. The standard scholarly treatment of coverture and women's property rights in colonial and early national America. Provides essential legal context for understanding the framework within which frontier women operated — and the gaps in that framework that allowed practical economic autonomy.

Shammas, Carole, Marylynn Salmon, and Michel Dahlin. Inheritance in America from Colonial Times to the Present. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Examines inheritance patterns including dower rights and women's access to property through inheritance. Provides data on how many women actually exercised property rights and under what circumstances.

Material Culture and Traditional Knowledge

Wigginton, Eliot, ed. The Foxfire Book. New York: Doubleday, 1972 (and subsequent volumes through Foxfire 12). The Foxfire series documents traditional Appalachian skills including spinning, weaving, quilting, herbal medicine, food preservation, and many other practices described in Chapter 9. The interviews with elderly practitioners — many of them women — are primary sources for understanding women's knowledge systems.

Eaton, Allen H. Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1937 (reprinted by Dover Publications). A classic survey of Appalachian craft traditions including weaving, basketry, and quilting. While Eaton's perspective reflects the biases of his era (including a tendency to romanticize craft traditions), the documentary detail is valuable.

Abramson, Rudy, and Jean Haskell, eds. Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. The comprehensive reference work on Appalachian culture, history, and society. Entries on women's history, midwifery, folk medicine, textile production, and food traditions provide accessible overviews with bibliographic references for further research.

For Students Pursuing Community History Portfolio Research

County Records: - Court order books, deed books, and will books from your selected county often contain evidence of women's property transactions, dower assignments, and court appearances. Many county records have been digitized and are accessible through FamilySearch (familysearch.org) or state archives.

Archives with Women's History Collections: - Appalachian Collection, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State University - Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries - West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University - Special Collections, Virginia Tech University Libraries (particularly strong on New River Valley women's history) - Southern Appalachian Archives, Mars Hill University

Digital Resources: - Foxfire Digital Archive: foxfire.org - Frontier Culture Museum (Staunton, Virginia): frontiermuseum.org — exhibits on frontier women's work - Museum of Appalachia (Norris, Tennessee): museumofappalachia.org — extensive material culture collections

Further Reading for Chapter 9. See also the Bibliography appendix for full citation details. Chapter 10's Further Reading covers the American Revolution and the Whiskey Rebellion in Appalachia.