Afterword-Joan M. Kay

GOD’S MOUNTAIN, MCLAUGHLIN’S VALLEY

COPYRIGHT © 2005 JOAN M. KAY





FROM THE AUTHOR



I took my father for granted. I think most children do, so it’s not that shameful. But it is a shame—one I regret more every day.

Although to my benefit, I did listen patiently, sometimes painfully, to all of his stories. And he had a lot of them.

My father, James Lee Gray McLaughlin, loved to stretch the truth, the harmless type of stretching. He spoke of the Philippines in WWII in an easy way—nothing too heavy—but, of course, we kids had seen all the graphic pictures of the war hidden in his top dresser drawer under the neatly folded handkerchiefs. Nothing easy and light was portrayed in those dog-eared, yellowed photographs.

He also told us tale after tale about growing up during the depression in coal mining and logging country. Nothing new to kids of the kids of the depression: “I had no shoes. Well, to be fair, sometimes I had a left one and my brother had the right. We walked ten miles to school, seven days a week, in the snow, each with the one shoe, uphill…” Well, you know.

But he never once mentioned the names “Hugh and Nancy McLaughlin.” I found those names more than ten years after my father’s passing, and about 150 years after Nancy McLaughlin’s passing. But at the same time that Hugh and Nancy charmed me beyond belief, caused me to write this book, and kindled an interest in family history that I’m sure will never be sated, I felt profoundly sad that my father would never know them.

On my first step upon the path to finding Hugh and Nancy I pulled out and dusted off the endless snippets of family lore, most of it tall-tale built on tall-tale. My great-grandparents were immigrants, so my Uncle Pete claimed. Wrong. They fled the famine. Wrong. The McLaughlins were once kings in Ireland. Well, that one’s right, surprisingly enough. But still, not much help there. At that time, my interest in family history was still just mild curiosity.

It wasn’t until I finally dug my fingers into the oldest, coldest, hardest facts that I was fascinated. Of course, my more practical side just said, A nicely drawn and framed family tree makes a really nice Christmas gift.

Still, I was inspired by the humanity of these faceless names that make up a formal pedigree when I came across this passage in a Pocahontas County, West Virginia, history book, first printed in 1901:

He [John McLaughlin (1764-1838)] pointed out a spot overlooking his dwelling that is well nigh inaccessible, and gave positive orders to have his body buried there. He seemed to abhor the idea of being trampled upon… A more unique burial scene was never witnessed in that region. The pallbearers on their knees and holding to the bushes and rocks with one hand and the coffin handles with the other, and the procession following on all fours, composed a scene the like of which may never be witnessed while the world stands. Here an illustration of the ruling passion strong in death.¹

I had found my fourth great-grandfather, John McLaughlin. He’s still there, in Highland County, Virginia, overlooking his property, keeping watch.

I learned that he was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and a close contemporary to Hugh McLaughlin. Another John (Jock) McLaughlin (ca. 1780-1845), also a great-grandfather, was a major of militia. My father’s love of American history was not wasted on me.

I continued searching, and before long, a year had passed.

I spent so much time in research that I became completely absorbed in the lives I saw unfolding in front of me. Each new piece of evidence was an integral part of someone’s life and I held it in my hands. What would it mean, I thought, if I were to stuff it in a file folder and just move on to the next challenge?

There was no satisfaction in that. I wanted to write it all down, to tell the story, and that’s what I began to do.

I first wrote this book with only the facts, no assumptions, with the intention of breathing life into men and women whose habits, speech, laughter and tears have all been lost to time. Trying to revive people who, in their own way, played a part in the creation of these great United States, who touched and tasted and lived our history. I found I couldn’t do them justice.

Wait, I thought, what about fiction? It’s been done before. But wouldn’t it be wrong to put a book out there, mostly based on my own wild opinions, about people I’ve come to care for so much?

I continued my research.

“They ran away to be married.” When I read that comment in the ancient, smeared court record I was struggling to decipher, I wanted to jump and whoop and tell someone, “I knew it!” But it was 1 A.M. Sadly, I had to wait until people woke to spread the news. But, while I sat there alone I tried to put myself back in 1789, the year Hugh and Nancy “ran away.” What would cause a couple in that era to travel out of their own region--which was surrounded by rugged mountains and rivers every which way--and away from their families, just to get married? Parental objection? Societal objection? Probably both. I was assuming again.

But as I put more pieces of the puzzle together, I found that time after time my assumptions were right. That’s when I realized I could not leave this story written in the bare-bones (boring) fashion I’d started out with. But I was torn.

I could have told you that I felt strongly that they ran away together, and they did. And I know that her father absolutely did not approve and I believe I can tell you why. But I didn’t have proof (and still don’t) so I couldn’t include it. Unless I wanted to spend half of your time and mine explaining, “This could have… This may have… This probably…” ad nauseam. I thought then of just packing away the mounds of paper, full of names and dates and court documents.

But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to abandon these generations of spirited people, all of who, even if some in only the smallest way, contributed to my father’s spirit--and my own. I found their own spirits aren’t dead; their hopes, their fears and their love continue today in the countless people whose lives they’ve changed or created. They reach out across the years, the decades and the centuries and touch you. And maybe even encourage you to write a book.

And that’s the only way to know them, from the feelings they bring to you. That’s something that cannot be shared through a name and birth and death dates on an otherwise blank sheet of paper.

It’s the feeling I had, standing alone in my great-grandparents’ private graveyard for the first time, two states and three hundred miles from my home. Standing reverently away from the sunken old burial sites--to which, one hundred years before, mourners had quietly and solemnly entrusted their loved ones. One stone’s etching grabbed my heart: We’ve Lost Our Little Sister.

I lost myself there to imagination. It wasn’t hard to do. The day was still and clear and very bright. Not a car passed, and not a house was in sight. Delicate summer wildflowers wound themselves into the old barbed wire fence. Sadly ironic in afterthought, I picked a lily for baby Lillie’s grave.
The entire view is mountainous: Just gentle slope after gentle slope. This is the scene that greeted them every day. Soft peaks lost in the mists on a rainy summer morning or blazing with bright yellows and reds on a cool fall afternoon. And all still here for us to witness.

Glorious. Peaceful. God’s Mountain.

That’s when I heard the low, very ghostly sound of the century-old train whistle echo down the river. The same, far-away train has serenaded that tranquil spot since my great-grandfather, James N. McLaughlin, was laid to rest.

I felt transported.

That’s the power I want to return to them. The power to make us feel, even though they have been physically gone for one hundred--or two hundred--years.

Because I can’t take everyone for an afternoon in the mountains for the same experience, I wanted to recreate it all for you. In their time. So, I compromised.

Consequently, this is a work of fiction. Fiction fleshing out the bones of exhaustively researched and documented facts. Some characters are solely products of my imagination—call them “composite characters” perhaps—but I would never put real people into situations they could not have encountered and I’ve tried to be faithful to every known fact. I have taken it upon myself in the novel, however, to determine family relationships, motives and whatever it is that fits in the void of missing years.

To any residents or historians of the beautiful counties I have written about—I hope you can please forgive any liberties I have taken with geography, etc., whether inadvertent or intentional.

This is one more humble contribution to my family’s heritage. I am my father’s daughter, spinning lore and telling tales. Just carrying on a well-loved family tradition.

—J.M.K.



Price, William T. Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County. Heritage: Bowie, Maryland, 1990