Photo courtesy of Western Carolina University Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
This 1941 image showing Betty Grueninger (1896-1971) and two men planning flagstone paths for her flower garden at her home on Hospital Hill is part of the Stearns-Grueninger collection. Irving Kip Stearns (1895-1942) was president of Carolina Wood Turning Company from 1928 until his death in 1942. Stearns’ grandfather, Jeremiah Shank, started the company in 1903 as Bryson City Pump Works and it grew to be a thriving industry for the community. In 1911, Stearns was in the first graduating class of Bryson City High School. He had one son, Joseph Pease Stearns (1917-1948). In 1935, I. K. married Betty Grueninger.
—Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
So many things I love about the 1941 photo.
I’m impressed by the planning of the flower bed itself. The paths would make the flowers so easy to admire.
I adore the men’s hats—if you look closely you can see they are two different styles. I also like their overalls and their long sleeve shirts. Reminds me of Papaw Wade even though they look younger than most grandfathers.
The clothes on the line caught my eye. I love the smell of clothes dried on the line.
Seeing the blooming daffodils on the top left of the photo tells me it was likely taken this time of the year. It looks like there’s another bunch of daffodils peeking out from behind the tree between the man and Betty.
In the top portion of the photo you can see a garden that has been har’d. I wonder if it was planted in corn once true warm weather arrived.
Since we live on a goat bluff 🙂 I’m envious of the nice flat ground that surrounds the flower garden.
If you’d like to see an enlarged version of the photo, go here and click on the photo to enlarge it.
Last night’s video: Time to Start Our Tomato Seedlings – One Step Closer to Summer Gardening!
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I love looking at old pictures. One picture can tell an entire story. You can almost hear the conversations going on as the wind blows. I noticed the string lines. My husband does this every time we plant our garden. Our land is open field in full sun. However, here in southeastern Penna our planting time starts a little later than yours. I can’t wait to get started.
I love the picture. The flat land with the flagstone made a beautiful flower garden I am sure. I just wish I knew what kind of flowers she was going to grow there. I also love the overalls and her pretty yellow dress. My parents were married in 1941 so anything I see around that time is always interesting to me. Thanks for sharing!! Can’t wait to see those tomato seedlings coming up.
I love this picture. It appears that the wind is blowing by the way the sheets are wrapped around the clothesline and her dress blowing against her legs. I think that the flower bed may have been burned off as well.
Thank you Tipper for the postings and the love of the area you live. My home has always been in the southern middle Tennessee area and I cherish it in the same way. If you build your life on appreciation for what God has granted you find contentment.
When the Covid lock down started years ago I printed out this saying:
Purpose is found in those quiet moments when no one but God knows sees the work of your hands.
Here’s a bit more about the collection…..
It is at Western Carolina courtesy of Carl Grueninger III, who is a member of Friends of the Bryson City Cemetery, where Betty Grueninger & I.K Stearns are buried along with I.K.’s aunts – Misses Jessie and Marie Shank and Nell Shank Leatherwood – and his grandparents, Helen Caughey and Jeremiah Shank.
Here is our memorial to Betty (sorry, I don’t know how to embed the link in a comment, so it’ll have to be copied and pasted unless this interface does it automatically):
https://friendsofthebccemetery.org/BCC-2.php?IndividualID=1192
If you go to that link, scroll down the page and you’ll find links to a photo of Betty when she was in high school and biographical sketch which was prepared by Carl Grueninger III.
The collection was carefully maintained by Carl’s father, Carl, Jr., a WW II veteran, for many years. Carl, Jr is pictured as a teenage boy, full of life, with his Aunt Betty here:
https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/41719
The Stearns-Grueninger collection is one of three that Friends of the Bryson City Cemetery has helped facilitate finding its way to Western Carolina. We’re grateful to Carl for the wonderful donation and as an organization, take pride in our role of honoring our mountain folks.
BTW, Daddy and Mary Evelyn Nichols both told me that the hill was called Pine Hill in the 1920s. You can see why in the background.
When I was a kid in the 60s, my Mamaw and Papaw lived in Kingston, TN before coming to live with us due to Papaw’s poor health. But in those childhood days we (my 2 cousins & I) spent every weekend & every school holiday in “the country” as opposed to the “big” city of Chattanooga. Mamaw & Papaw lived on a Knoxville nursery owner’s land and Papaw grew all sorts of trees and shrubs to supply the nursery. I remember every color of azaleas blooming, dogwoods, fruit trees…I wish I could see it through my adult eyes but am blessed to be able to recall what that grimey, sweaty little girl could see as she went from one adventure to the next. My grandparents also had 2 really big (to my childish eyes) vegetable gardens. And there were 2 wide borders- 1 at each end – of the one beside the house. Mamaw grew flowers in those borders. The ones I recall most are the dahlias. Some were the size of dinner plates and were red& white candy-striped. People driving by sometimes stopped to compliment Mamaw on her flowers and she often sent them away with an armful of fresh cut beauties. I wonder now if the garden behind the house had no flower borders because folks couldn’t see it from the road.
Thanks for giving me a place to reminisce about those golden days, though it wasn’t idyllic to that sweaty kid who hated weeding or picking beans because the bends of her chubby arms and legs were irresistible to sweat bees.
I enjoy how you can pick out the smallest details in a photo and draw us readers into that time and place. I noticed the stone walk way around the garden area. I can imagine it looked beautiful with all the flowers and grass when it had all grown.
Like you, Tipper, I’m a bit envious of the flat ground, though my slope is a modest one. Just having land is not the end of the story; it is also what kind of land. I expect Miss Betty’s flower garden story was widely known because of being remarkable in various ways at the time. I have to wonder somewhat just what the two fellas thought of it all.
There was also a Stearns business family where my wife and I grew up, though I doubt any relation. They were a sawmilling family from Michigan that came to Kentucky about 1900 and diversified into coal. The town of Stearns still exists but I don’t know if there is still a Stearns Company.
Now that’s what I call a FLOWER BED indeed! Wow! I can’t imagine having 2 guys hired to bring my flower bed plans to fruition while I stand back telling them how I want it done and they actually do it! Back in the day, you could find people willing to help you. Now just about everybody is fat, lazy and just not into doing anything requiring effort. I like that picture and noticed the way everybody is dressed. A while back a feller I know had his yard dug up to lay new water lines. He found an old Mason jar with water still in it, clear and cold from probably 80 or so years ago. It’s amazing to me to think you took your jar as opposed to a thermos or big jug for hydration on the job. I long for those days…. And I’m thinking about my tomato seed as well- Cherokee Purple all the way! Flying to Missouri for Easter so I’m just uncertain of when to start my stuff. Oh well, I’m staying calm… Holy Spirit will lead me I feel assured.
Tipper, I looked at the picture and saw the things you pointed out. My mother, grandmother and several neighborhood women had yards full of flowers. There’s were just planted here and there – no pattern. The men were dressed exactly like the older country farmers in my area during the 50’s and 60’s except for their hats, most of the men I knew wore either straw hats or felt hats depending on the time of year.I couldn’t tell if their shoes were clodhoppers. I also love the Cherokee Purple tomato although it brings back so many memories of my daughter. It was her favorite, she and some on her coworkers would have tomato sandwich lunches. Each one would bring one item, she brought the tomatoes. If the one bringing the mayonnaise didn’t bring Dukes she got kicked out! I am going to try a new purple tomato this year if I can grow some plants from seeds, it is a newer variety and is named Cherokee Carbon. It is a cross between the Cherokee Purple and Carbon tomato and said to have a real good taste. I need Tipper to start the seed for me, I don’t have a green house. I have tried the milk jug greenhouse she mentioned awhile back and had a little success although the seeds I tried were old.
Tipper–That photo has extra meaning to me in a variety of ways. First of all, I know the exact spot and it might be of interest to note that while the land is indeed flat, it isn’t in a river bottom. Instead it’s an upland flat, part of a quite extensive spread of ground, that was adjacent to the old Bryson City golf course. I spent many an hour mowing fairways on that course perched atop an ancient tractor pulling gang mowers. The plowed ground shown in this photo was still being planted in corn in the late 1950s.
Beyond that, Betty Grueninger Stearns was the grandmother of a good friend, Doug Stearns, one of two sons born to Joe “Sparky” Stearns and his wife, Joan. Sparky (a great nickname) died when the boys were just beyond infancy. Doug, who became a Presbyterian minister, his mother, and his brother lived in a home in an area just out of the background of the photo.
The image, part of a collection of photos taken by I. K. Stearns and graciously donated to Western Carolina University by the Grueninger family, is notable inasmuch as it is a quite early use of slide film. I. K. was a first-rate photographer and the collection contains lots of interesting images, including a couple of a mule drinking Coca-Cola and one of legendary angler Mark Cathey.
There is much to notice in today’s photo. The woman in the garden is wearing a dress, and the men in overhauls. The bed is very tidy and ordered. It looks like another world!
It’s fun to study an old picture closely and wonder what exactly the conversation might have been at the time just before the picture was snapped. What decisions were they making? It must have been early spring but warm enough for Betty not to require a sweater. It must have been early in the day because the men’s overalls didn’t have dirty knees and their sleeves weren’t rolled up yet. The ground must of still been damp enough that the dust from raking and shoveling wasn’t blowing to soil the freshly washed and hung clothes. The string lines must have just been stretched. The daffodils between them still standing proud untouched by the wheel barrow tire…yet. Tracey and I run a cut flower business here in Ohio. The Flower Farm at Homer’s Bay Art & Garden. Our boots and the knees of our pants are always wet and muddy this time of year, but it’s a very enjoyable time. Great picture!
The first thing I thought about was hanging laundry near turned dirt was a mistake. Isn’t it funny where our mind takes us? You certainly touched on the practical details in this picture!
I just love old pictures. And Tipper, as someone from Illinois, I’m envious of your goat bluff! We also don’t get a spring in the Midwest. We get winter, then summer.
What does har’d mean?
Ann-it is actually harrow 🙂 Here’s a post I wrote about the word usage several years back: https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/har-the-garden/
Tipper a good friend of mine that grew up on a big hog farm in Iowa did not know what harrow or har’d meant. He said they called it disc or after being plowed disced.
The harrow and disc are different implements. The disc cuts the furrows up that are left after plowing and the harrow smooths the land. Some call the disc a disc harrow. Many of the farmers I knew would have a log drug behind the disc to smooth the dirt so there was no need for the harrow.
The implement that does the work when drug behind a tractor (or horses/mules, for that matter) is properly called a disc harrow. Dropping the ‘disc’ resulted it being commonly referred to as a harrow. Eliding syllables is common to mountain speech so it went from disc harrow to “harr (or har)” and to make the past tense a ‘d’ was added; thus, harrd ground.