Odd Funerals Were Once Common Here

If anyone was in the position to report on the lives of the Breathitt County mountaineer it was Dr. E. O. Guerrant. During his long career of missionary work in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee his prize working ground was that black and bloody Breathitt County. Not only did he bring religion to this county, but he also established several churches and Highland Institute on Puncheon Creek.

It is, then, this man that recorded many interesting and odd accounts of the American Highlanders in Breathitt County. One such account found on pages 169-171, of his book Galax Gatherers, (1910) gives his experiences with the funerals in the highlands:

Probably in nothing are the Highlanders so peculiar as in their burial of the dead. I never saw a graveyard in a valley. They bury on the hills and sometimes on the top of mountains.

They do not often have the funeral at the time of death, but sometimes years afterwards, and generally in the fall of the year. I remember once preaching the funeral of a man who had been dead for fourteen years. This summer, the funeral of four soldiers, who died during the war (Civil War), forty-five years ago, was preached on the Quicksand.

One old Highlander incorporated it in his will, that such a service in his memory should be held every year, and it has been faithfully done for many years.

The services often begin on Friday and close on Sunday evening. All friends and relatives are invited to attend, and the preaching is done by half a dozen native preachers.

Such an occasion takes precedence over every other service. Paul himself could hardly get a congregation in the neighborhood of a Highland funeral. I once knew General Howard to have only half a dozen hearers on such a day. So he mounted his horse and went to a funeral on a mountainside, where there were hundreds of people.

During the funeral season, which comes in the fall of the year, when the roads and weather are favorable for outdoor services, it is almost impossible to have other meetings. I recently preached a good woman's funeral, two years after her death, at the grave, on a mountain-top, when her husband conducted the singing and other parts of the service, and his second wife was present.

Some years ago, I preached a man's funeral during a protracted meeting, and his widow and second husband and children sat on the front bench. These things did not seem to excite any comment, for they were not much out of the ancient order.

Twenty-one years ago I passed up this little mountain stream in the wild Cumberlands. It was a week-day morning, but the Highlanders, warned of my coming, filled a vacant house to hear the Gospel, where there was no church. Among a score who occupied it were two beautiful little girls, sisters, clad in Highland plaid.

The years rolled by, and they grew to beautiful womanhood, married, and made homes of their own. But death, which "loves a shining mark" struck down one of them, and on Saturday morning, a great concourse of her kindred and friends, laid her to rest on a mountain brow, with a beautiful babe on her breast, among hundreds of her people.

By a strange Providence, I was present, after twenty-one eventful years.

A multitude of mourners sat on the ground beneath a great chestnut tree on that mountain plateau (there is no church in that country), and heard the Gospel of love preached by Dr. Bryan, of Birmingham, Professor Manning and myself. "Proctor Bill" and Louis Hensley, who taught the Sabbath School twenty-one years before, were there, and led the singing in the plaintive melody of the Highlanders, which is heard nowhere else.

The grief of these simple-hearted people broke forth in most pitiful cries, which moved the oldest and hardest of men. Indeed, I never witnessed such an exhibition of sorrow, as they clung to the coffin and kissed the cold silent lips, still beautiful in death.

On that wild mountain-top, with God and the dead generations of their ancestors, one felt nearer to heaven than in the world below.

These poor people lack most of the blessings of civilization, but they have more of God and nature, which compensates for what they lose in culture and comfort.

No people appreciate the Gospel more, or note and it so much. It is light in their darkness, strength in their weakness, joy in their sorrow. To them it is really the "Good News of God."

These informative words of Dr. Guerrant throw a light on those strange happenings which are today as remote to this area as they were to the outside world of Dr. Geurrant's time. The events described above do sound hard to believe but such were the ways of the American Highlanders.