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Appalachian Baby Boom: LIFE With Kentucky’s ‘Fruitful Mountaineers’

3 minute read

In December 1949, LIFE magazine published an article that, all these years later, still feels rather odd. Titled “The Fruitful Mountaineers,” the feature made the argument that, in postwar America, “the chronic baby boom of a Kentucky county, denounced as a ‘biological joy ride to hell,’ [rolled] merrily along to replenish the nation.”

In short, the article suggests, Leslie County, Ky., was (and who knows, perhaps it still is) largely populated by people who really, really enjoyed making babies, and—depending upon one’s point of view—their vigor was either a positive omen or a harbinger of disaster for the nation:

The great U.S. baby boom which reached its squalling crest in 1947 [wrote author T. S. Hyland] is now on the downgrade. It has started sliding back toward the neatly rationed, two-to-a-family level that seems a cherished feature of the American dream of middle-class respectability. Only in one area does the boom heedlessly persist: in Leslie County, deep in the Kentucky mountains.

There is always a baby boom in Leslie County. In fact, its mountaineers are probably, in this respect, the busiest people on earth, multiplying at a birth rate about double that of the U.S. as a whole and equal to that of the swarming hordes of China and India. [But] the most striking fact about Leslie County is not how many babies its people have but how much they enjoy having them. In the two-room cabins along Hell-for-Certain Creek, Greassy Creek and Thousandsticks Mountain, the gospel of planned parenthood has fallen on deaf ears. . . .

While the Kentucky mountaineer has, on occasion, been praised as a proud, intelligent, independent member of the “Old American” frontier stock, he has also been damned as a degenerate, inbred, shiftless congenital moron. His proliferation has been called a “disgusting perversion of evolution” and (with equal venom) “a biological joy ride to hell.”

By now, most readers will not only have caught a glimmer of the enjoyment that T. S. Hyland evidently got from reporting and writing “The Fruitful Mountaineers,” but will also have begun to sense one of the key, unsettling crosscurrents of the article. Namely, Hyland’s contention that, in the eyes of some people (purse-lipped New Englanders, for example), Kentuckian fecundity was hardly something to celebrate; instead, for many, it was a revealing emblem of the fact that the “wrong people” were procreating at an alarming rate, while the “right people”—bankers, lawyers and other ostensible paragons of probity—were having smaller and smaller families.

“The gist of the wailing,” a biologist in Hyland’s story noted sardonically, “is that the bad boys and girls reproduce too much and the good boys and girls too little.”

Seven decades later, the terms employed when discussing the issue are perhaps more decorous than they were in the ’40s: for example, not many people today speak or write (openly, at least) of “the swarming hordes of China and India.” But often-heated conversations about the birth rates among different sectors of society ensure that planned parenthood, contraception, abortion and other contentious—and, for some, morally freighted—issues will remain topics of debate for as long as men and women in the U.S. and around the world stay fruitful and multiply.

 

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Waltis Kilburn's family on Trace Branch of Cutshin Creek is one of Leslie County's biggest. All his 14 children, ranging in age from three months to 25 years, were delivered by midwives. Mrs. Kilburn (left) is satisfied "with just what come."
Caption from LIFE. Waltis Kilburn's family on Trace Branch of Cutshin Creek is one of Leslie County's biggest. All his 14 children, ranging in age from three months to 25 years, were delivered by midwives. Mrs. Kilburn (left) is satisfied "with just what come."Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Mrs. Corie Couch holds her youngest child, Cilvie, Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Mrs. Corie Couch holds her youngest child, Cilvie, Leslie County, Ky., 1949. Leslie Country, KentuckyEliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Happy children are Flora (left), 4, and Jackline Couch, 6. They belong to seven-child family at foot of Thousandsticks Mountain.
Caption from LIFE. Happy children are Flora (left), 4, and Jackline Couch, 6. They belong to seven-child family at foot of Thousandsticks Mountain.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Midwife, 67-year-old Mrs. Mahala Couch, gestures with hands that have "coached" babies for 32 years. Called Granny by mountaineers, she has had 11 children of her own.
Caption from LIFE. Midwife, 67-year-old Mrs. Mahala Couch, gestures with hands that have "coached" babies for 32 years. Called Granny by mountaineers, she has had 11 children of her own.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
At Possum Bend Nursing Center a young patient gets whooping cough and diphtheria shots from nurse Lydia Thompson while other children and their mothers wait.
Caption from LIFE. At Possum Bend Nursing Center a young patient gets whooping cough and diphtheria shots from nurse Lydia Thompson while other children and their mothers wait.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Mrs. Mary Breckinridge runs Frontier Nursing Service with 29 nurses who staff hospital at Hyden and seven subsidiary nursing centers, three of them in Leslie.
Caption from LIFE. Mrs. Mary Breckinridge runs Frontier Nursing Service with 29 nurses who staff hospital at Hyden and seven subsidiary nursing centers, three of them in Leslie.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
County sheriff Wiley Joseph, sitting by fire in courthouse, says religious meetings provide outlet for mountaineers' energy that would otherwise increase work for him.
Caption from LIFE. County sheriff Wiley Joseph, sitting by fire in courthouse, says religious meetings provide outlet for mountaineers' energy that would otherwise increase work for him.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Pentecostal Church of God is in Perry County, just across line from Leslie. Ray Sizemore (center) of Bull Creek, Leslie County, leads the congregation in a hymn.
Caption from LIFE. Pentecostal Church of God is in Perry County, just across line from Leslie. Ray Sizemore (center) of Bull Creek, Leslie County, leads the congregation in a hymn.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Doctor Robert Collins, born in Clay County, began practicing medicine in Hyden in 1907. Instrument shortages often forced him to operate with carpenter's tools.
Caption from LIFE. Doctor Robert Collins, born in Clay County, began practicing medicine in Hyden in 1907. Instrument shortages often forced him to operate with carpenter's tools.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Senior-class girls indicating how many children they want, Leslie County High School, Ky., 1949
Caption from LIFE. Number of babies wanted by senior-class girls of Leslie County High School is shown by upraised fingers. The highest was six; six girls wanted four, one wanted none.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Senior-class girls indicating how many children they want, Leslie County High School, Ky., 1949
Senior-class girls indicating how many children they want, Leslie County High School, Ky., 1949Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Hell-For-Certain School, an old-time one-room affair has an ex-GI student, Dan Woods, 30 (right). He joins in song-with-gestures about building a house.
Caption from LIFE. Hell-For-Certain School, an old-time one-room affair has an ex-GI student, Dan Woods, 30 (right). He joins in song-with-gestures about building a house.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Family life in Leslie County's mountains has the warmth of a father singing to his children.
Caption from LIFE. Family life in Leslie County's mountains has the warmth of a father singing to his children.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Man in Leslie County, Ky., engaged in a shooting match, with a chicken as a target.
Man in Leslie County, Ky., engaged in a shooting match, with a chicken as a target.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Cutshin Creek and trail, Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
The Cutshin Creek and trail, Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.
Leslie County, Ky., 1949.Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

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