The Page County Watch BLOG

The following story is told by Deborah Moomaw, from stories she heard from her grandmother, Oneida Meadows Lucas.

Oneida Meadows had just passed her 13^th birthday when she first heard the rumors. Her father, Benjamin Franklin Meadows, told her not to worry, but a thing like that seemed to be worth worrying about. Her mother, Elsie Thomas Meadows, looked worried, and Oneida knew that was a bad sign for the baby her mama was carrying. The year was 1936. The Meadows family had their own house. It was made of logs, with a wood floor. It had a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, and three bedrooms. It wasn’t a mansion, but it didn’t have a mortgage. Plenty of people in America have found a six room house to be a fine-enough residence for raising a family, and Oneida’s family was no exception. They were normal Americans, but maybe not typical Americans. The depression had been going on for about seven years, but it didn’t make any difference in their lives. When you live off the land, it doesn’t much matter what is going on in the world outside the mountains.

The two Meadows boys shared a bedroom, the two Meadows girls shared a bedroom, and there was a bedroom for the parents. Oneida knew her father would get the boys, and maybe her grandfather, to help out adding a room for when the new baby came. Pretty standard living, whether it was 1936, or 2009, in middle America.

Oneida’s father, Ben, spent a lot of time with his boys. Ben’s boys put a light in his eyes, every time he thought about them. He’d taught them everything he knew about farming the land. They put the furrows in along the hillsides, to keep the rain from eroding the soil. Farming wasn’t easy in the hills, but it could be done, if you put your heart and your back into it. That’s what Ben taught his sons, and how he took care of his family. It was the same as the way his own father had done it, and his wife’s family, too. Each family staked out their plot of land, made a deal to buy it from its owner, and built a house for their family. They plowed the fields, planted what they needed, and what was leftover, they would sell. They got themselves some cattle, a few pigs, some chickens. They lived in the mountains. There were rabbits to shoot, fish to catch. Wood was available for building. Stone was free for the lifting. Raw materials were provided by nature. The real value was in knowledge of how to use wood and stone, and a willingness to work hard.

The neighbors, many of whom were blood relatives, helped out when there were big jobs to do. Elsie’s parents, John and Carrie Thomas, lived just over the hill. John was a minister, and ran a church for their little part of the universe. Not too many people could read, but John could read the Bible, and he taught its ideas to everyone who would listen. Elsie, Oneida’s mother, had gone to elementary school. She could read, but there wasn’t that much need for it, where they were living. Elsie had her hands full, raising a family. Four growing children, living on a farm, made a lot of work for their mama. She had each child right there in the house, with her friends and family helping, and nobody’d ever been real sick. Thank the Lord! They lived in a place that was truly the Lord’s house. Maple Springs, they called it, because it had a fresh water mountain spring and maple trees all around. Say what you will about fancy houses, I’d take the crisp air of a Fall day in the mountains, walking the fields and noticing the round furrows, any day over a painted closed room with brocade curtains, just about anywhere. At least, that’s what Oneida would have said. She loved the mountain, the land. They were poor, but when everybody around you is poor, you just don’t notice it. You don’t miss what you don’t know exists. You don’t need money if you can’t think of what you might want to buy. They had food, shelter, clothes, plenty of work to do, and the close company of family and friends. When you come right down to it, what else is worth having?

Oneida’s mother, Elsie, had plenty of her own interests. They didn’t use money for much, but about twice a year, they took a wagon into Luray and took their trade into the store. They needed kerosene, and feed for the animals. They would trade eggs and produce for it. Elsie collected the feedbags. Inside of them, there was a cotton lining, decorated with a colorful small print. She could sew attractive and cheerful clothes for the family with it. She taught her daughters how to cook and store food, how to sew and knit, how to crochet. It’s true none of them went to school, because there wasn’t any school nearby at the time. Oneida believed that her mother always thought she’d made a mistake not keeping up with her ability to read. She’d had it a little bit, but she didn’t pursue it, to get better at it. With all they had to do to keep the farm going, it seemed unnecessary, at the time. Still, Elsie thought, if she or the children had learned more reading, maybe one of them would have seen the notices and the flyers when they went adventuring into town. Maybe one of them would have gotten a copy of the Page News and Courier, and read the Letters to the Editor. Maybe her father would have known what was going on in time to get some of the others together to put a stop to it. But, probably not. Probably it wouldn’t have made any difference. At least, that’s what Oneida thought. Oneida wished she had learned to read. She thought maybe if she had read what was going on, she could have gotten in there herself and put a stop to it. If she’d known how to read, she might have noticed the signs on that building in Luray, where they were collecting the money to help raise the funds to buy the land for the park. But, maybe not. Maybe taking on the entire United States government would have all been too much to handle for a 13 year old girl. All the same, if Oneida had known what was going on, or how it was all going to turn out, she always thought she would have done something to stop it.

By the time the Meadows family saw the road being put in along Skyline Drive, and the camps started being built for the boys from the Civilian Conservation Corps, it was pretty much all determined. The money’d been raised, the laws had been passed, and the wheels of progress were in motion. Soon, the Page County Sheriff was going to be knocking on their door with papers. The papers were going to tell Ben and Elsie Meadows, and more than 400 other families very much like them, to get off their own land, and leave their home, by order of the Commonwealth of Virginia. They were going to be paid $1 an acre, a sum so ridiculous it would do nothing to find them a comparable place to live. There was no recourse. There was no person, nor agency, nor committee, to whom they could protest. There was no process to follow to get relief. They were just told to pack up and leave.

On the appointed day, armed troopers, sent by the State of the Commonwealth of Virginia, brought a team of horses and some ropes. They tied the ropes to the walls of Ben Meadows house, and they pulled it down while the children watched. Oneida Meadows Lucas had the events of that day seared into her mind. It changed how she thought of herself and the country she lived in.

Four hundred other families lived this same experience. They were the residents of the land that was seized to make the Shenandoah National Park. In the height of the Depression, they were thrown off their family land, ripped forcefully and violently from a place where they had been able to feed their families, work together, and make their own way. They were told to go find jobs at a time when there were no jobs to be had. Up until that day, Oneida Meadows had never gone hungry.

Next Installment: How did this happen?

Part 2: How did this happen?

Part 3. Where did the families go?

Part 4. Seventy years later