--- title: A Rural Baby Boom: LIFE With Kentucky's 'Fruitful Mountaineers,' 1949 description: A 1949 article in LIFE chronicled the "chronic baby boom" in a Kentucky county with a birth rate double that of the U.S. as a whole. canonical: https://time.com/3461872/appalachian-baby-boom-life-with-kentuckys-fruitful-mountaineers/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-23T19:36:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:33.433Z og:title: A Rural Baby Boom: LIFE With Kentucky's 'Fruitful Mountaineers,' 1949 og:description: A 1949 article in LIFE chronicled the "chronic baby boom" in a Kentucky county with a birth rate double that of the U.S. as a whole. og:url: https://time.com/3461872/appalachian-baby-boom-life-with-kentuckys-fruitful-mountaineers/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5fb6bbafbe1d81c/6986a6ee35ba6f62d1c04343/140916-kentucky-elisofon-20.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Leslie County, Kentucky 1949 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Rural Baby Boom: LIFE With Kentucky's 'Fruitful Mountaineers,' 1949 twitter:description: A 1949 article in LIFE chronicled the "chronic baby boom" in a Kentucky county with a birth rate double that of the U.S. as a whole. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta5fb6bbafbe1d81c/6986a6ee35ba6f62d1c04343/140916-kentucky-elisofon-20.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Appalachian Baby Boom: LIFE With Kentucky's 'Fruitful Mountaineers' by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Sep 23, 2014 7:36 PM UTC  Caption from LIFE. 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 by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Sep 23, 2014 7:36 PM UTC 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: --- > “” --- 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](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk).  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\. Leslie Country, Kentucky Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Leslie County, Ky., 1949. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  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. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Leslie County, Ky., 1949. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Leslie County, Ky., 1949. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  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  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  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. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  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  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  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  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 Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  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. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Leslie County, Ky., 1949. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  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. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  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. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  The Cutshin Creek and trail, Leslie County, Ky., 1949. Eliot Elisofon—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Leslie County, Ky., 1949. 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