Weaving a Legacy

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Features

How a Yale-educated missionary preserved a fast-fading tradition in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Little Ivy Creek roared with icy water, threatening to spill over its banks. The torrent was moving faster than expected, but Frances Louisa Goodrich wasn’t turning back after traveling nearly 16 miles through the western North Carolina mountains in the dead of winter.

“On we go,” she shouted to her pony, Cherokee, over the thunderous noise. 

And so they went, fording the stream and then navigating deep, sucking mud and disorienting laurel hells to reach the residence of Squire Wesley Angel by nightfall. Upon arriving, Goodrich delivered a very important parcel: wool yarn dyed with madder and walnut root. There was enough for Mr. Angel’s wife and daughters to weave three coverlets.

“We left our yarn and returned home the next day,” Goodrich would later write in “Mountain Homespun: The Crafts and People of the Southern Appalachians,” her 1931 memoir. “Three weeks later, having sent a messenger to the Paint Fork, there was excitement at the cottage as we saw him returning with the web in a roll across the back of his saddle. There, in one long strip, were the three coverlets….”

Coupled with Goodrich’s vision and robust entrepreneurial talents, these blankets would revive Appalachian handicrafts and lay a strong foundation for the establishment of the Southern Highland Craft Guild (SHCG)—an organization that today represents more than 800 makers across 293 counties in nine southeastern states.

“She was an artist, teacher, missionary, leader in her community, business owner and meticulous record keeper,” Janet Wiseman, education director of SHCG, says of Goodrich. “I would also call her a person who was interested in elevating the lives of women—a feminist before that term was coined.”

The Call to Appalachia

In 1856, Frances Louisa Goodrich was born into a family of Presbyterian ministers and intellectuals in Binghamton, New York. Though much of her childhood was spent in Ohio, she and her family moved abroad in the 1870s. It was during this time that she began studying art.

Upon returning to the States, Goodrich followed her creative penchant to the Yale School of Fine Arts, where she earned a certificate of attendance. (Women weren’t allowed to receive a diploma at the time.) She spent the ensuing years studying under the tutelage of an acclaimed New York artist and exhibiting her own works.

Despite her success, Goodrich felt called to do more. And so in 1890, she accompanied a friend to a graduation ceremony at the Asheville Home Industrial School for Girls. During the proceeding, principal Florence Stephenson turned to Goodrich and asked, “Now, do you suppose you could go into some mountain community and live there yourself, raise the standard of human life and bring some sort of order out of chaos?”

She supposed she could.

That fall, Goodrich joined scores of female missionaries dedicated to improving the lives of mountaineers. Though critics of these women say they “meddled in local culture,” Anna Fariello, former director of Western Carolina University’s Craft Revival Project, doesn’t see it that way.

“They were very sincere in their efforts,” she says. “In their journals, the women often said they learned as much as they taught.”

Goodrich took an unpaid volunteer position at Riceville’s College Hill School near Asheville. After two years of doing everything from making funeral arrangements to bringing medicine to the sick, she accompanied teacher Evangeline Gorbold to Brittain’s Cove in northern Buncombe County. It’s there that they established a small mission community with a schoolhouse, a meeting place called “The Library” and a church.

According to Goodrich’s memoir, Brittain’s Cove was a rural, isolated place located about 12 miles from Asheville.

“In those days, 12 miles was a long distance, and the journey to town, made in a mountain wagon or in the saddle, consumed three or four hours,” she writes. “Once in a while, the men and older boys made the trip with tobacco and other produce; the children for some months of the year had school to keep their minds alert and happy; but for the women, life had less color; for them, there were few or no outings, and many of them were shut in to monotony.”

Goodrich was determined to “bring material help to the poorer among these neighbors,” particularly the women, but wasn’t quite sure how. And then, one day, Mrs. William Davis knocked on the door of her humble cabin.

The Gift of Inspiration

“I’ve brought you a present, knowing that you take delight in such as this,” Mrs. Davis told Goodrich as she handed her a 40-year-old coverlet—a token of “pure goodwill and affection.”

Per Goodrich’s description, the blanket was woven in the “Double Bowknot” pattern and golden brown on a cream-colored background. “The brown had been dyed with chestnut oak and was as fine a color as the day it was finished,” Goodrich writes.

That summer, Goodrich took the coverlet up north to show friends and family.

“There was a lot of interest in the piece, and people asked where they could buy similar work,” says Wiseman. “This gave her the idea of getting local women … to create more coverlets and bring much-needed money into the area.”

Upon returning to the cove, Goodrich found a single loom stowed away in a barn loft. The loom was soon set up in the community library “with much talk of ‘harness’ and ‘gears’ and ‘sleys’ and ‘rakes’ and ‘temples.’”

The women then got to work dyeing, carding and spinning raw wool into yarn. When they were complete, Goodrich loaded up her pony and made the 16-mile trip to the Angel home. The coverlets woven by Mrs. Angel and her two daughters were quickly sold to northern clients by mail order. This “really got the ball rolling,” says Wiseman. 

“Realizing that the market for large things like coverlets and curtains would be limited and that we must secure quick sales, we began to weave short lengths also, for table runners, pillow tops, trunk covers and the like uses,” Goodrich writes. “Soon, there were other looms going as the desire to learn this craft spread among us.”

The Quest for Craft

In the coming years, Goodrich traveled through rugged Buncombe and Madison counties in search of weaving drafts—long strips of paper covered with lines or numbers that would direct weavers on how to set up their looms. Leaning into her art background, Goodrich would paint watercolors of the respective coverlet pattern so weavers would also know what the final product might look like.

According to Wiseman, Goodrich was always accompanied by someone on her travels, “but often it was another woman, and neither took weapons.” Considering Goodrich was an outsider and just barely five feet tall, this took an incredible amount of grit. It also took mutual respect, says Fariello.

“One thing that is often overlooked is just how much women from the outside, like Goodrich, respected local women’s ability to make beautiful objects,” she explains.

Wiseman seconds this view, adding that Goodrich likely developed trusting relationships with locals by accepting them as they were.

“[S]he didn’t try to change them to her religious beliefs or make them feel ‘less than’ because they didn’t have her wealth or education,” says Wiseman.

In fact, Goodrich was known as “The Bishop” in the Laurel community of Madison County. She relocated to this area in the late 1890s and promptly turned an old drover’s rest stop into Allanstand Cottage Industries, a weaving cooperative. Eleven years later, she opened a sales showroom in downtown Asheville where she peddled traditional crafts. There were woven coverlets, of course, but also rugs, brooms, dolls and more.

The Enduring Vision

In 1930, Goodrich would come together with movers and shakers like Olive Dame Campbell (an American folklorist and founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School) and Mary Martin Sloop (founder of Crossnore School) to establish the Southern Highland Craft Guild—a collective charged with the mission of “cultivating the crafts and makers of the Southern Highlands for the purpose of shared resources, education, marketing and conservation.”

Devoted to the cause, Goodrich bequeathed Allanstand to the guild. The shop provided the guild’s only source of income for the next 18 years. 

“Her gift of Allanstand … gave the young organization a firm foundation,” says Wiseman, noting that the Allanstand Craft Shop is now located inside the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Recognized as the oldest craft shop in America, the store represents more than 400 artists working in jewelry, textiles, pottery, glass and other mediums.

But Goodrich’s legacy goes well beyond Allanstand. According to Fariello, this mountain matriarch helped instill a regional respect for craft that persists even today, some 80 years after her passing.

“There’s a huge appreciation of culture in Appalachia, from pottery to weaving,” says Fariello. “This is one of few remaining places in the country where you can make a living with your hands.”  

Allanstand Craft Shop is located on the main level of the Folk Art Center (Milepost 382, Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, N.C.). To learn more, visit southernhighlandguild.org.

The story above first appeared in our November / December 2024 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!