Nestled deep in the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a small cemetery, once overrun with weeds and debris, offers a rare glimpse into a little-known aspect of the Appalachian culture.
The graves of George and Hannah Dickey, the great-great-grandparents of author James Dickey, best-known for the novel “Deliverance,” are atop Hogback Mountain alongside their slaves. The slave cemetery, one of only a handful known to exist in the county, is a rare find in the north Georgia Appalachians, a region that was known to be more loyal to the Union than the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The 30-by-40-foot cemetery, where simple stones mark the graves of at least 26 slaves surrounding the Dickeys’ white marble tombstone, represents what some believe was an unusually close relationship between the Dickeys and their slaves and provides insight into a culture that snubbed antebellum plantation life yet passed down slaves for generations to tend farms.
On Sunday, the white Dickey descendants will join African-American Dickeys believed to be the descendants of the slaves at the newly restored grave site for a rededication ceremony. The event, which includes a musical combining Appalachian fiddles and black gospel at the church founded by the Dickeys, is designed to ignite a renewed relationship between two families whose ties go back more than 150 years.
The white Dickey relatives hope that the cemetery will help them learn more about Hannah and George, who moved from North Carolina to the Georgia mountains in 1840 and brought their slaves with them. Some family members also see the preserved grave site as a gesture of reconciliation for the deeds of their ancestors and they plan to use the rededication as a stepping stone toward better race relations for future generations.
“What we want to accomplish is a simple statement of respect and reconciliation. White America does not understand that the legacy of slavery to many African-Americans is still an unresolved issue,” said Fred Dickey, 60, a San Diego relative who spearheaded the cleanup effort after visiting the site two years ago. “We’re not starting a national campaign; it’s a little thing, really. But goodwill is made up of a lot of little things.”
For Michael Dickey, an African-American, the grave site provides a reservoir of rich family history that most blacks never will know. Official records were not kept for most slaves, so tracing African-American genealogy is difficult for families whose history was not passed down through word of mouth or in letters.
“It didn’t really hit me until I came up here in person several months ago, and I felt like I was standing on hallowed, sacred ground,” said Michael Dickey, 50. “I don’t hold any ill feelings toward anyone. Slavery was a cruel business, but it was just a sign of the times.”
Dickey, who lives about an hour away in Cleveland, Tenn., said his family had heard the stories of Hannah Dickey and her slaves.
No one knows why George and Hannah moved to the Georgia mountains so late in life. He was 64 and died just two years after their arrival. Hannah, believed to be a niece of President Zachary Taylor, was 63 and lived to the age of 91. She died in 1868, five years after slavery was abolished.
The Dickey family owned several farms around Hogback Mountain, an area of steep, rugged terrain surrounded by Tennessee’s Ocoee River and Georgia’s Toccoa River. The family had a wealth of land, by some estimates as much as a thousand acres. Like most, they were farmers and hunters.
“Most of what people grew here was for their own use. They would grow the food and preserve it for winter use. There weren’t the large plantations here and really not many slave owners,” said Ethelene Jones, a local historian who compiled a book on the history of Fannin County.
The 1860 Census listed a total of 143 slaves in Fannin County. Hannah Dickey was the second-largest slave owner in the county with 15 slaves–two women and 13 children. Her slaves lived together in a house on her property. She apparently acquired others before her death.
Family members don’t know why Hannah and George chose to be buried atop Hogback Mountain. Other members of the Dickey family are buried in a plot a few miles away, closer to where the family’s farm used to be.
Local legend has it that Hannah was kind to her slaves and that they were devoted to her until her death.
“The speculation is that they had it tough and they depended on one another and were like family. I was told that one of the women slept with Hannah in her old age to help keep her warm,” said Joe Dickey, 53, who has lived all of his life in Fannin County.
Despite the minor comforts Hannah Dickey may have provided her slaves, the harsh reality of slavery is evident in the cemetery. The small stones are the only evidence these people existed. The markers bear no inscriptions, making it impossible to identify the buried. Their names, their birth dates and the dates of their deaths will never be known.
It is likely that the slaves took on the slave master’s surname, which was customary.
That the grave site could have remained intact all these years is quite surprising; few documented slaves’ graves exist today because they were either unmarked or have been desecrated.
Dickey relatives believe this one was preserved because it is not easily accessible. Though Hogback Mountain has been a popular camping area, the cemetery– encased within a 2-foot cinder block wall 3 miles from the major roadway–is hidden among pine, maple and oak trees at the end of a long, winding gravel road.
Dickey relatives always have known about the cemetery, but there was never an effort to restore it. James Dickey, who was born in Atlanta and later lived in South Carolina, visited the area once, in the 1970s. An inscription on a new memorial placed at the site comes from one of his poems.
The cemetery has generated interest in the region to further explore the Appalachian slave culture.
“What we have here is rare because slave-holding was not that common in northwest Georgia,” said Kevin McAuliff, a preservation planner for the North Georgia Regional Development Center. “A number of counties in the area voted against secession, not because they had ideological problems with it but because it would not have benefited them. There was great turmoil during the Civil War here because so many people from north Georgia ended up fighting for the Union.”
The high level of poverty in the mountains probably accounted for why slavery was not widespread in the Appalachians. “A slave probably cost a working man’s full year salary,” McAuliff said.
Life in the Appalachians– which run from northern Georgia through the Carolinas, the Virginias, Kentucky, Tennessee and Pennsylvania–has never been prosperous, but residents in Fannin County always managed to make a living. In the 1900s, virtually everyone worked in the copper mines, but about 20 years ago the mines shut down, leaving behind bare, red hills and hundreds of unemployed. Today, with no industries around, residents must travel elsewhere to work.
The area never has attracted large numbers of African-Americans. Most who remained after slavery migrated north to the industrial jobs early on. Today, only 0.2 percent of the 17,750 residents of Fannin County are African-American.
In an area where virtually no African-Americans live, building race relations could be difficult. Still, the Dickeys feel it is worth a try.
“Maybe by bringing everybody together and opening up this little bit of history, we can find out at the end of the day what life was really like back then,” said Chris Dickey, 47, the son of James Dickey, who died in 1997. “That will help bring about healing.”
