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🪑 THE FRONT PORCH
Talk it over whilst whittlin’, quiltin’, or porch sittin’
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Newman's Ridge sits above Hancock County like it's keeping a secret.

And for the better part of the 19th century, it was.

Her name was Mahala Collins Mullins. Born up on that ridge in 1824, back when it was still Hawkins County and the mountains were still wild enough to hide just about anything. She married John Mullins around 1840. Had eighteen children. Buried three sons in the backyard — one shot in the streets of Sneedville, one cut down in the dooryard of her own cabin, one hanged in Texas.

Let that settle for a minute.

Eighteen children. Three graves out the window.

When her husband became an invalid and the money ran dry, Mahala didn't sit down and wait on the county to rescue her. She did what Appalachian women have always done when the world stopped cooperating.

She improvised.

She started making whiskey.

Not bathtub rot gut either. The woman ran what amounted to a boutique distillery on a mountain ridge in northeast Tennessee. Her pear brandy had a following. Customers came from miles across the mountains, which in that terrain means they really wanted that pear brandy. She conducted the entire operation from her bed. No traveling salesmen. No distribution network. No Instagram. Just word of mouth and a product that apparently sold itself.

The government knew about her.

The revenue agents came. Regularly. They arrested her on paper, probably more than once. The judge would ask why Mahala Mullins wasn't standing before his court, and the answer he got became the most famous line in Hancock County history.

"Your honor, she is catchable but not fetchable."

Meaning: we know where she is. We just can't get her here.

By the time she was deep into her operation, Mahala weighed somewhere between 500 and 600 pounds depending on who's telling the story. Some say it was elephantiasis. Some say it was just the body she was given. Either way, she couldn't fit through her own cabin door, couldn't make it down the mountain trail without the whole enterprise potentially killing her, and the law couldn't move her either.

So she kept cooking.

For years.

Unmolested by a legal system that had all the authority in the world and none of the logistics.

Her cabin, a two-story dogtrot built from hewn poplar logs, sat straddling the Tennessee-Virginia line, which meant when the revenuers showed up, tradition says she'd just shift the operation to whichever side of the house the law couldn't touch that day.

She died September 10, 1898. Surrounded by fifteen of her surviving children.

The papers ran headlines coast to coast. "Not Too Big for Death." "Famous Moonshiner Dead."

When it came time to bury her, the community dismantled the chimney to get her out.

Twenty men carried her to her final resting place beside her husband and sons.

Today her cabin sits in Vardy Valley, moved down from Newman's Ridge piece by piece, reassembled for anyone willing to drive the backroads to find it.

Go on a Saturday between May and October.

The door's open.

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🗺 In The Kitchen With Kay
Gospel singer Sister Kay Himes Knuckles shares favorite recipes
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Back in the kitchen, a place that I find enjoyment and accomplishment. I love cooking. My interest started as a child. My mommy allowed me to bake cakes, box mix mind you, several times a week all by myself, but under her watchful eye, of course.

Each one I made, my daddy would declare it was the best one yet. With myself and four brothers, those cakes didn’t last long.

I hope you enjoy today’s recipe for the Lazy Daidy Oatmeal Cake. It is not my original recipe, but it sure is good!

Philippians 4:13

Untile next time -

Sister Kay Himes Knuckles

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🗺 KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS
Visit all 423 Appalachian counties, one week at a time
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Hancock County, Tennessee doesn't show up on many maps people bother to look at.

It sits up in the northeast corner of the state, pressed against the Virginia line like it's trying to keep warm. About 7,000 people. Two hundred and twenty-three square miles of mountain and hollow. The kind of place where everybody knows what truck you drive before they know your last name.

The county seat is Sneedville. Don't let the name fool you. It's small, it's proud, and it's got roots that go deeper than the ridge lines surrounding it.

The economy runs the way small-town economies always have — health care, manufacturing, a little education, local services. People fix things. People take care of people. More folks own their homes here than in most cities, which sounds like a small thing until you think about what it actually means to own the ground you stand on.

The numbers, though. The numbers are honest, and honestly, they're hard. Income levels run below the state average. Below the national average. Poverty isn't a talking point here — it's a neighbor. Workforce challenges aren't a policy paper — they're Tuesday.

That's the reality. Nobody's hiding it.

What they've got instead is the Sneedville/Hancock Chamber & Community Partners, which is essentially the county's engine room. Business owners, nonprofits, regular citizens — all pulling in the same direction. Better jobs. Better quality of life. A reason for people to come, and maybe more importantly, a reason for people to stay.

Their pitch to the outside world? The mountains are real. The heritage is real. The character of the place is real.

In a world selling manufactured charm by the truckload, that's not nothing.

That's actually something.

This is the big one.

Hancock County is known particularly for its population of people of Melungeon ancestry — believed to be of mixed European, African, and Native American heritage. Nobody agrees on exactly where they came from. Among the theories is that they are descendants of people who established a now-forgotten colony, or descendants of Portuguese slaves who escaped from Hernando de Soto's army.

They were here before the settlers showed up. The settlers promptly took their land anyway.

America, as advertised.

Hancock County is home to Jimmy Martin, known as the "King of Bluegrass," famous for standards like "Sophronie," "Widow Maker," and "Sunny Side of the Mountain." He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association's Hall of Honor.

He also wrote a song specifically about the county.

A man so proud of where he came from he put it on a record. That's not nothing.

The 19th century gave Hancock County the unique and immortal Mahala Mullins, better known as "Big Haley," famous for her size — over 500 pounds — and her moonshining. The revenuers could arrest her just fine.

Getting her down the mountain was the problem.

So she kept cooking.

God bless Appalachia.

WSJK-TV, Channel 2, at Sneedville was the first state-owned public television station to sign on the air in Tennessee.

A county most people can't find on a map beat everybody else to the punch.

Hancock native Alex Stewart, master cooper and world-renowned Appalachian artisan, received the National Heritage Award at the Smithsonian Institution. At the time he received the award, Stewart was the only Tennessean who had ever been so honored. A cooper makes barrels and wooden vessels by hand. A dying art even when Stewart was alive.

The Smithsonian noticed. The rest of us mostly didn't.

That seems about right for Hancock County.

This one's the crown jewel.

River Place Café occupies a lovingly restored historic general store right on the Clinch River, at the intersection of Hwy 70 and Hwy 33. The burger is hand-pattied. The catfish dinner is local. Steak Night runs every Friday, April through October.

One reviewer said to order your food to go, walk down to the riverbank, and eat it watching the Clinch roll by.

That's not a meal. That's a memory.

Don't let the name fool you into thinking it's ordinary.

Michael's has the best fried chicken around — technically a Broaster chicken — that regulars say beats everything else in eastern Tennessee. It's the kind of place where the portions make you reconsider your life choices halfway through the plate.

Yes, really.

In a county this size, a Mexican restaurant that people actually drive to on purpose is worth noting. The Burrito Supreme and the melted cheese dip have their own loyal following. When the nearest Chipotle is forty minutes away, El Azteca isn't just a restaurant — it's a public service.

Valley View Market is a great little stop for a home-cooked meal just east of downtown Sneedville. It's the kind of place that functions as part grocery store, part lunch counter, and part community bulletin board. Small. Unpretentious. Exactly right.

You don't go to Valley View Market because you're hungry.

You go because you want to feel like you're somewhere real.

Three tiers. Over a hundred feet of falling water.

Elrod Falls consists of three cascading falls of more than 100 feet, making it one of the most gorgeous waterfalls in East Tennessee. You can swim in the pools at the base of the falls, hike one of the surrounding trails, or bring along a picnic lunch surrounded by the lush beauty of the Appalachian Mountains.

The first tier can be accessed by car, and a short hike brings you up and around to the second and third tiers.

So even if your knees are arguing with you, you can still get to the good part.

Pack a sandwich. Stay a while.

This one isn't just a place. It's a ghost story with a church attached.

Over Newman's Ridge is Vardy. Located there is the Vardy Church, built in 1899 and recently renovated. Across the road is the Mahala Mullins cabin — the same Big Haley from our Famous Five list — rich with the history of the Melungeons who settled this area in the late 1700s.

The facility is open to the public on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., May through October.

It's up and over the ridge on backroads that'll make your GPS give up and go home.

That's part of the point.

Already mentioned it for the food. But it's bigger than a meal.

Originally a country store, River Place on the Clinch is a rental cabin retreat, convention center, market and café, live music venue, and outdoor recreation outfitter — all in a building that has been standing on the same location since 1940. Canoes. Cabins. The Clinch River running right outside the door.

It's the kind of place you show up to for lunch and accidentally stay the weekend.

Worse things have happened.

Here's the thing about Sneedville, Tennessee.

Population around 1,400. Median household income that would make your accountant wince. One stoplight, give or take.

And it produced one of the biggest names in the music industry on the planet right now.

Morgan Cole Wallen was born on May 13, 1993, in Sneedville, Tennessee. His father served as a local church pastor. His mother was a teacher. He grew up singing hymns in his dad's church, learning piano and violin, and playing baseball until his elbow had other ideas.

He now has 19 number-one singles at country radio, 19 Billboard Music Awards, and 198 weeks spent atop Billboard's Top Country Albums chart — the most in country music history.

He still talks about Sneedville like it made him. Because it did.

"The values that I gained from that town and those people are things that I strive to maintain and will carry with me for the rest of my life," Wallen has said.

A kid from the poorest county in Tennessee.

Now selling out arenas worldwide.

That's not a rags-to-riches story. That's an Appalachian origin story.

You already met him in the Famous Five list. But he deserves a second look standing on his own.

Jimmy Martin called Hancock home and wrote a popular song about the county. He became a major star during his years as part of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, and critics conclude that the duets of Martin and Monroe are among the true classics of bluegrass music. Martin left Monroe's group in 1954, formed his own influential band — the Sunny Mountain Boys — and recorded for Decca Records. Tennessee Encyclopedia

Two musicians. One tiny county.

One went electric. One stayed acoustic.

Both went all the way.

The poorest county in Tennessee.

That's it. That's the thing.

The median household income in Hancock County was $19,760 — the lowest of any county in Tennessee, and the 27th lowest in the entire United States.

Sit with that for a second.

Out of 3,143 counties in this country, Hancock is in the bottom one percent for household income.

And yet.

It produced Morgan Wallen — one of the best-selling country artists alive. Jimmy Martin — the King of Bluegrass. Alex Stewart — the only Tennessean ever honored by the Smithsonian for traditional craft. The first public television station in the state. And a mystery people called the Melungeons that historians, geneticists, and storytellers are still arguing about today.

There's a word for a place that's broke on paper but rich in everything else.

Home.

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📰 THE BACK PAGE
The caboose of The Wayne Train
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From the Corbin Daily Tribune, 1956