Cemeteries and the Life of a Smoky Mountain Community by Gary S. Foster & William E. Lovekamp

Author:Gary S. Foster & William E. Lovekamp
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030232955
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

To Everything There Is a Season, A Season to Be Born …

The first birth in the cove was Martha Oliver in 1819, the second daughter of the first settlers, John and Lucretia Oliver. Birth dates allow some approximation of conception dates, though with appropriate cautions. Only about two-thirds of all conceptions result in a nine-month gestation period. Some are closer to eight months and some are ten months or more (Wrigley and Schofield 1981). Therefore, the technique of “back-plotting” from birth to conception is useful if done only in terms of season or month of conception, but not precise date of conception. For the geographical location of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the following assignments of seasons are most reasonable: Spring (March, April, May); Summer (June, July, August); Fall (September, October, November); Winter (December, January, February).

Previous research of historical data, contemporaneous with Cades Cove’s history, reveals that births were not randomly distributed across the twelve months of a year but reflected seasonal peaks and valleys. If an examination of the distribution of births (and implicitly conceptions) across twelve months of the year revealed about eight percent of all births occurring every month (or about one quarter every season), without peaks or valleys, births (and thus conceptions) would be unpatterned and random, not influenced or driven by any other factors or variables Research suggests conception sometimes peaks in December and January, due to what is known as the holiday phenomenon (Wrigley and Schofield 1981; found by Foster and Hummel 1995; Foster et al. 1998). Patterns of natality (and conception) are consistent with the seasonal rhythms of the dominant socio-economic activities of agriculture. Cades Cove reflects peaks in conception during seasonal lulls of agricultural demand. The resultant birth peaks also occur during lulls in agricultural demand. This might suggest some planning or intentionality of conception and birth to avoid periods demanding greater labor, a matter of “family planning,” and there is some evidence to suggest that it occurred historically (Bean et al. 1990).

Birth peaks occur in May, June, December, and March (each with about ten percent of all births recorded). If births (and conceptions) were completely random, the expected would be eight percent per month (a quarter per season). While the difference of only two percent per month may seem trivial, the pattern being examined is subtle and the cumulative difference over a season, and then a year tell a story of life. Though there were only slight variations in seasonal conceptions, the most common seasons of conception were in the early spring and late summer, which account for more than a quarter each of all seasonal conceptions, resulting in a predominance of early winter and late spring births. Spring conceptions may have been an (anecdotal) response to the birds and the bees, the renewal of life that comes with spring. The greatest summer births occurred after plowing and in the lull before the harvest. Similarly, winter births occurred in an agricultural lull, and the peak of spring births occurred before or after plowing and planting.

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