Rare look at Upper Cumberland wins History Book of the Year Award

Editors of People of the Upper Cumberland gather with contributors at the Putnam County Library. Front row from left: Ann Toplovich, editors W. Calvin Dickinson and Michael Birdwell, Janey Dudney and Mark Dudney. Back row from left: Laura Clemons, Troy Smith, Opless Walker and Randal Williams. Photo by Hal Harder

White County resident among writers

Who better to write historical studies of the Upper Cumberland than the people who live here?

For its insightful essays about this rarely studied region, People of the Upper Cumberland: Achievements and Contradictions has been named Tennessee History Book of the Year by the Tennessee Library Association.

White County resident Troy Smith, a member of the history faculty at Tennessee Tech University, has written an essay published in the collection, which includes stories of historical significance from communities across the county.

“The Upper Cumberland is covered in the edges of other books, but very few have been devoted entirely to the region,” said W. Calvin Dickinson, professor emeritus at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville and co-editor of People of the Upper Cumberland.

The book covers the Tennessee-Kentucky Upper Cumberland, which spans the 24 counties that, for the most part, border the eastern half of the Cumberland River — from Pulaski County, Ky., in the north to Warren County, Tenn., at the southern-most edge.

Termed “astonishingly fresh” by the Tennessee Historical Commission, most essays characterize the region by its people — both the famous and the infamous.

Co-editor Michael Birdwell, a professor of history at Tennessee Tech University, is a native Cookevillian and has interviewed people throughout the Upper Cumberland for 40 years.

“There’s so much more to cover; this is not the only book we’ve written about the Upper Cumberland, and it won’t be the last,” said Birdwell. “We keep lists on possible topics for others. People have asked, ‘Why don’t you do a book on industry?’ We need one on crime! While this is an academic book, it’s not a dissertation, where you’ll have an audience of three. We wrote this book for a popular audience” — for people interested in their heritage and environment, whether they live here now or once did.

That heritage includes stories from towns throughout the region:

•In the mid-1800s in Jackson County, Tenn., Granville’s population periodically jumped to 10,000 when farmers drove pigs to market via steamboats hauling stock and produce from the Granville port to Nashville, Louisville and Cincinnati.

•In Cookeville, Tenn., John’s Place — a tavern in a historically black neighborhood — is one of 10 local properties on the National Register of Historic Places because of the role it played in improving race relations in Putnam County.

•A Clarkrange, Tenn., resident, Kate Bradford Stockton, was the first woman to run for governor in Tennessee. Campaigning for equal rights for women, among other issues, Stockton lost to Gordon Browning.

•The Pleasant Hill community in Cumberland County, Tenn., boasted one of the earliest tuberculosis sanitariums in the region. Its founder was May Cravath Wharton, one of few doctors in the area in the early 1900s, let alone a woman doctor. She also founded the county’s first hospital.

•Wayne County, Ky., and White County, Tenn., were the childhood homes of the first Tennessean appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, John Catron.

•McMinnville, the southern edge of the Upper Cumberland, was home to Tennessee’s most distinguished composer of classical music, Charles Faulkner Bryan, who tutored a young African-American man who would go on to become one of the most celebrated gospel singers in the U.S., Europe and Africa.

Editors and contributors drew source material from local history museums, archives and libraries with comprehensive sections on Tennesseans and their history, housing treasures their directors are eager to share with patrons.

“Our ‘Tennessee Room,’ which contains material on local and regional history, is so valuable to us,” said Stacie Netherton, executive director of the Putnam County Library. “We get a lot of local historians, plus people doing personal family research. We had a recent reference question from a man researching the original boundaries of the farm his family acquired in the 1860s. We were able to help because we collect not only books but primary materials like the family files of the Upper Cumberland Genealogical Society and very early maps of this region.”

The majority of essays were written by residents of the Upper Cumberland. Contributors are Michael Allen, Birdwell, Laura Clemons, Al Cross and David Cross, Dickinson, Janey Dudney, Mark Dudney, Mary Evins, Wali Kharif, John Nisbet III, Troy Smith, Ann Toplovich, Opless Walker and Randal Williams.

A jury of professional librarians and academic historians representing East, Middle and West Tennessee oversees the selection of each year’s award.

The Tennessee Library Association bestows two book awards annually: the Tennessee History Book of the Year, in collaboration with the Tennessee Historical Commission, and the Volunteer State Book Award for best children’s books — as chosen by students through the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

People of the Upper Cumberland, a 2015 release by the University of Tennessee Press, can be ordered directly from the publisher at utpress.org and at amazon.com. Copies of the first Upper Cumberland history collection edited by Birdwell and Dickinson, Rural Life and Culture in the the Upper Cumberland (The University Press of Kentucky, 2004 and 2009 editions), is also available at amazon.com.