THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
James "Jim"
Berry, the Last of the True Mountaineers (Part 2)
Last week we
saw Jim Berry as an employee of the Pfister- Vogel Land Company that
had purchased large tracts of mountain land. Jim Berry was hired as a
security guard for the land company and had moved into the old Brewster
house on Jack's Gap Road.
About this same
time a rather crude telephone line was installed in the Choestoe-Town
Creek community. A switch at Mr. Hayes Hunter's house near New Liberty
Church could connect the community line to the forest service line. Jim
Berry's telephone that kept him in touch with the Bald Mountain line
could also, through the switch, be connected to the line to the Jesse
Washington Souther house, also just off the Jack's Gap Road. In that
house lived Varina (called "Tib") Souther. A romance began between Tib
and Jim.
She was a
daughter of Jesse Washington Souther (04/23/1836 - 09/12/1926) and
Nancy Sullivan Souther (03/22/1858 08/12/1936), her father's second
wife. Varina was the thirteenth of fifteen children of "Wash" Souther
and the sixth of eight born to her mother, Nancy Sullivan Souther. This
"second" family of Jesse Washington Souther had these children: Thomas
Souther (1877-1937) who married Mary Lou Kay; Albert Galloway Souther
(1879-?) who married Mae Pinkston; Lydia Souther (1881-?) who married
Charlie Jones; Lina Souther (1883-1915); Benjamin Souther (1885) died
in infancy; Varina Souther (1887- 1963) who married James Berry (1896-
1982) on August 13, 1913; Harvey Allen Souther (1889-1984) who married
Fannie Collins (1895-1972); and Hardy Souther (1892, died in infancy).
Thanks to the
"on line" switch that connected the Souther home telephone to the one
the forest service maintained for Jim Berry, this couple could "court"
by telephone.
With her full
siblings and her half-siblings scattered, Varina Souther Berry took the
responsibility of caring for her aging parents. She and her husband Jim
Berry lived with them in the old Wash Souther house. One son, Glenn,
was born to Varina and Jim, and they adopted a second son, J. T. Berry.
Her father died in 1926 and her mother in 1936.
Varina "Tib"
Souther Berry was nine years older than her husband, Jim. She died
October 15, 1963, leaving Jim a widower. He continued to live on in the
old Wash Souther house, with few conveniences. He graduated from a
fireplace to a wood heater to heat his house and had a Roman Eagle wood
cook stove in his kitchen. After his wife Varina died, he lived alone
for almost nineteen more years in the old house.
Jim Berry was
steeped in the knowledge of local geography and folklore. He could
recount the names of all the mountains surrounding Georgia's highest
peak, Brasstown Bald (also known as Enotah). He knew the names of
valleys between the peaks, the creeks and rivers. A good marksman with
a gun, he got his quota of deer each hunting season well into his
seventh decade of life. In his later years, people beat a path to his
door to hear his stories and listen to his wit and wisdom.
He learned to
play the fiddle from his father. He tells about watching his father
play, and then taking up the fiddle himself, finding that he, too,
could make music from its strings. He and his brother began to play for
and call square dances throughout the mountain region. He once told a
visitor that if he had his father's old fiddle, he wouldn't take a
thousand dollars for it.
In a finely
woven basket hanging from Jim Berry's ceiling, he once kept the
medicines he swore by. In individual paper bags were the herbs he
gathered from the mountains to give him robust health into his
eighties. Dried ginseng root he chewed during the winters with the firm
belief that it "cured most anything." Then he had a bag of golden seal.
This treasure from the wild cured anything ginseng didn't touch, Mr.
Berry believed.
On a spring
day, June 26, 1982, Jim Berry, true mountaineer, lay down his head and
died. At 85 years, 10 months of age, he had packed a lot of living into
his life. He was about the last of the true mountaineers who had a
close affinity with the land and its topography, the forests and its
inhabitants, and people who came seeking his stories.
c2008 by
Ethelene Dyer Jones; published September 25, 2008 in The Union
Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All
rights reserved.
[Ethelene
Dyer Jones is a retired educator, freelance writer, poet, and
historian. She may be reached at e-mail edj0513@windstream.net; phone
478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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