The Ramseys at Swan Pond: The Archaeology and History of an East Tennessee Farm by Charles H. Faulkner. UT PRess, 2008. 184 pages.

In the 20th century in America — what some now call the American Century — the idea of loyalty to a place, of belonging to a town or a region in which the houses, the trees and fields, the sky, and the very air itself nourish the blood, breath, and bones of the inhabitants like food and drink: this idea of rootedness and locality suffered from massive technological changes. Bigger became better; to be local or small was to become obsolete. The automobile led Americans away from cities into the suburbs; super-highways led to standardized restaurants and stores and motels, to plastic facades and malls and parking lots. The mass media — radio, television, popular music, computers — erased many regional differences in cultural taste, spoken accents, and native outlooks. Two world wars, followed by 50 years of lesser wars, economic upheavals, the ever-sprawling government bureaucracies with their heavy taxes on everything from gasoline to food to personal income: all did their part to create an American empire in which magnitude was equated with magnificence.

At the same time, however, many Americans, aware of what they had lost, looked to their past, seeking both comfort and wisdom from the struggles and folkways of those who had gone before them. In The Ramseys at Swan Pond: The Archaeology and History of an East Tennessee Farm (The University of Tennessee Press, ISBN 1-57233-609-9, 2008), Charles H. Faulkner offers us a look at that lost world. He takes us back to pre-20th century America and reminds us of the ties that once bound, sometimes lovingly, sometimes harshly, a people to a place.

For 20 years, Faulkner, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Tennessee, investigated the historic Ramsey house in Knox County. With the assistance of a team of scholars and students, Faulkner explored both historical archives and the grounds of the Ramsey property in seeking to uncover its history and secrets. Over this score of years Faulkner and crew uncovered from the Ramsey property artifacts ranging in time from the prehistory of the Native Americans who lived at Swan Pond to the 1950s, when the house and property were acquired by the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities.

Faulkner has divided The Ramseys at Swan Pond into chapters based on archaeological time periods. In each chapter he presents not only an account of what he and his team uncovered in terms of archaeological items and archival documents, but he also ties this written and physical evidence into an ongoing narrative of the property. He tells us the history of Swan Pond, the people who lived there and the events taking place around them. In the book’s longest chapter, “The Ramseys Reach North America: The Early Ramsey Period, 1793 — 1820,” Faulkner gives us a brief account of the Ramseys before their move westward, explains the dangers they faced on the frontier in Tennessee, and vividly describes the stone house which they built. He recreates for us as well the other buildings on the property, including a stockade meant for defense against Native Americans. From his archaeological investigations Faulkner is also able to tell us what sort of life the Ramseys led: what plates the family owned — even in their humble cabin, he says, “the Ramseys used a set of Chinese export porcelain;” what foods they prepared; even what clothes they wore, with the evidence drawn from buttons and pins.

Drawing from objects found on the Ramsey property and from other Tennessee farms that he has investigated, Faulkner can also generalize about the lives of these early settlers. We learn that buttons for clothing were being manufactured by that time, with the manufacturer’s name printed on the back; we discover that beneath the Ramsey property were bits of a glazed tobacco pipe that was probably made by Moravian potters in North Carolina; we learn that the privy was often located near the smokehouse to allow the smoky smell to mask the odors of the privy itself. Faulkner illustrates these discoveries with a variety of photographs, maps, and drawings.

Faulkner does more than create a portrait of life on one piece of farmland in Tennessee. He points out that the ideas, fostered mostly by outsiders, of Appalachia as a place cut off from the rest of the world and inhabited by a backward people wasn’t true even in the earliest days of settlement. The clothing, table settings, and building techniques of the Ramseys and others reveal a people attuned to developments in the world beyond the mountains.

At the end of his book, Faulkner writes that:

“One human trait that did endure at Swan Pond for thousands of years was the respect for the land and a close tie to kin ... While the Ramseys changed the natural environment, they preserved their kin ties to the land through patrimony, preserving those architectural vestiges of their lives at Swan Pond until they were forced to leave. Awareness of family relationships and pride in one’s earliest ancestors is alive and well in southern Appalachia to this day.”

With the rising price of gasoline, the ineffectiveness of the federal government to perform many of the basic services of a government, and the increasing wariness of the American public regarding the machinations and benefits of large institutions, perhaps the 21st century will continue to see a renewed interest in living locally, in rediscovering the value of place and kinfolk.

The Ramsey House in Knoxville is open to visitors year-round. Readers who wish to learn more about this house and its special history can go to ramseyhouse.org.