The Backbone

The Backbone
Story by Dodie (Smith) Browning
(Photo 1999 by Frank Thompson)

Webster defines a backbone as a main support or major sustaining factor and he also defines a backbone as a mountain ridge. The Backbone, which is a “mountain ridge” in Logan, West Virginia is easy to discern in the above photo, showing quite clearly that it runs along the Guyandotte River, parallel to Route 10, towards the community of Aracoma. Part of Deskins Addition is pictured in the foreground and Coal Branch on the backside of the ridge.  The Backbone separates Coal Branch from the outskirts of the town of Logan.

There are numerous mountain ridges in Logan, but only one to my knowledge, that is called “The Backbone”.  I don’t believe anyone knows for certain when nor how The Backbone was named, but we know that it was named by the early settlers or by the Native Americans from the Shawnee tribe of Chief Cornstalk’s daughter, Aracoma.

The Backbone is directly across the Guyandotte River from the Island, where it is said that the battle took place circa 1780  between the whites and the Shawnee Native American tribe, led by Aracoma and her white husband, Bolling Baker. (Note: Aracoma is most often referred to as a “princess”.  That is not historically correct, because there was no such thing as an Indian/Native American “princess”).

According to Ragland’s History of Logan County, “The blushing Sallie [daughter of Henry Farley] became the wife of Peter Dingess during the year 1805, and they set up housekeeping just across the river where Mrs. John W. Deskins once lived, and to the happy couple there was born, on the 30th day of October, 1806: William Anderson Dingess, “who, during a long and useful life (dying December 13th, 1893, in his eighty-eighth year), bore the proud distinction of being the first white child born in Logan County.” (Ragland’s History of Logan County).

Thomas Dunn English, the famous poet moved his family to Logan County in 1852 and lived there four years.  He lived at what is present day 219 Dingess Street  where the Old Depot was built (now housing Logan County City Hall and the Logan Fire Department).  T.D. English mentioned The Backbone in one of his poems:

Excerpt from GUYANDOTTE MUSINGS II
“I raise my eyes—all passes;
And yonder “Backbone” stands,
With coat of grey and cap of green,
To watch the lower lands—
With coronet of oak trees
To guard the lower lands.”

The backbone holds special memories for me, a child of Logan County, who loved to roam the hills as a child and “watch the lower lands”.  We lived on the very top of the residential area of City View Hill, which overlooked part of Logan and nearly all of Deskins Addition.  I attended a little clapboard two-room school with outdoor “facilities” at Coal Branch from 1943 to 1946 (grades 1 through 4).  The backside of the Backbone loomed over Coal Branch Hollow and I saw it every day that I went to school or went to town, which was every day.

Sometimes when I could talk my playmates into it, on weekends or in the summer or fall when there was no school, we would pack a lunch and climb the hill and spend the day hiking the length of the Backbone across the top overlooking Logan and Slab Town.  I remember two different times that our Christmas trees came from the Backbone.  My mother was a devout Christian but did not believe in Christmas trees. She obviously had mixed feelings about it, because if we went out and brought one in, she would allow us to put it up and decorate it, but she didn’t participate. She said it was a Pagan custom and called them “Nimrod Trees” and insisted it had nothing to do with the birth of Christ nor  the Bible.  I will not comment farther, but will leave it up to anyone reading this, to “Google”  Nimrod Tree if you are interested and see what you find.

I was very little in 1943, just six years old. My sisters were older and more interested in boys than Christmas trees, but I had been begging my sister, Helena to go to the Backbone with me to cut a tree and she finally gave in on Christmas Eve.   She helped me pick out a tree, cut it down with a hatchet and drag it all the way home on a home-made wooden sled.  We dragged it from the Backbone, down Coal Branch Hollow, up City View Hill to the very top where we lived in the second house at the top of the hill.  Helena helped me cut strips of wood and nail them to the bottom in a cross design, in order for the tree to stand on the floor.

World War II was in progress and there were shortages of nearly everything.  We had no decorations for the tree and I had no one to help me make decorations, but I had been working on decorations since Thanksgiving. We had made decorations for the tree in our classroom at school, so I had learned how to make decorations like the pioneers had used. I made paper chains cut from strips of different colors of construction paper.  We always had food at home, and  Mother always purchased English Walnuts for her holiday baking. I cracked English walnuts for mother to use in her nut rolls, but was careful not to break the nut-shells.  I saved the shells and made decorations to hang on my tree.  I  “collected” old finger nail polish from family and neighbors and used it to paint the walnut shells bright red and pastel pink, with many different designs.  I mixed blue ink in some of the nail polish to get nice shades of purple and magenta, so that gave me more colors. I made turtles and bunnies and an assortment of strange animals and “what-cha-ma-call-its” out of the walnut shells.  I used my school paste and glued string to the walnut halves to hang them on the tree.  Mother did try to find some electric lights and promised to buy a set, but none of the stores in town had any since the war had only been over for a few months and everything was still scarce.  I made a star out of yellow construction paper. The tree was a scraggly pine tree with crude decorations made by a six year old, but to me, it was beautiful and brings back wonderful memories of the Backbone and my sister, Helena.  That was also the year that I learned the “truth” about Santa Claus.

Helena wouldn’t go with me the following year and when I was seven years old, I went to the Backbone by myself and chopped down a tree and dragged it home alone.  When I think back of how my character was formed, I am grateful that I learned about hard work early and that the Backbone was part of it, because it was, abundant with scraggly pines. I learned early in life, like most folks who grew up in those days, that if you wanted something, you had to work to get it. I am proud of the fact that the Backbone is part of who I am and a part of my heritage.

We can determine from old deeds and Ragland’s History Of Logan County that the area near the Backbone was where John Deskins lived and that apparently the community of Deskins Addition was named for him. If Ragland was correct in the location of the residence of Peter Dingess and wife Sallie (Farley), then the area near The Backbone, Deskins Addition (AKA Black Bottom), is where the first white child was born in what is today, Logan County, West Virginia. On the other side of the river from the backbone (the Island) is where the last of the Native Americans in that area died.