Appalachian women are some of the smartest women I know. Quick witted and sensible, when left to their own devices, they can figure out a solution to any problem. Although a formal education isn’t always achieved, the Appalachian woman is an intelligent woman with plenty of common sense.
Years ago, there were many factors in why our ancestral mothers and grandmothers didn’t receive the formal education they deserved. Working the farm they lived on was the major factor. Needed at home to work the fields alongside their brothers they were often absent from school. Poor roads and hardly any transportation was another.
My mother was a prime example of a woman with intelligence with very little formal education. She went to school and got through several years, but she repeatedly had to miss, being needed at home on the farm.
My mother had a great desire to learn, but with her absents she had a hard time learning to read well at school. She was tutored by a neighbor lady I’ll call Mrs. B. Mrs. B. subscribed to the Grit paper. The Grit paper had a story section in it and when my mother would go visit Mrs. B., she would sit down with my mom and read these stories to her. My mom was sharp as a tack and caught on quickly. Soon Mom began reading the stories to her! Mrs.B let her take the Grit story sections home so she could practice reading them. She would bring them back the next week and they would go over the words together. My mother always looked up to Mrs. B for taking the time to do that for her.
Momma always loved books and learning. She would order books for us, sometimes secretly, not telling our father of the money she spent on them. My oldest brother had a presidents book. It was passed down to me and I remember looking at the pictures with her, before I could read. She would tell me which president was in each picture. Before long I was reading their names and I was barely 5 years old.
None of the females in my family before my generation had finished high school. But I often wonder if my grandmother, aunts, and mother had the privilege that afforded an education in the 40’s or, with my grandmother, in the early 1900’s, what could they have achieved? How far could they have went, had they not married young or had to work so much when they were children.
Appalachian women today have the same advantages as anyone, anywhere. However because it is so common now to have a formal education, Appalachian women often forget the life of their ancestral mothers. Appalachian women of the past have had an especially tougher path than women of other regions. No local schools or colleges, work, poverty and old ways of thinking, prevented women to push farther. God bless the determined ones who fought to finish high school and college. They went on to be a part of their community and often broke barriers that hadn’t been charged through before and opened the gates for us.