Religion: A Light in the Mountains

Uncle Scott Partin remembers well the first time he saw Parson Frakes. “I had a jug of moonshine in one fence corner,” he recalls, “and a shotgun in the other. I had a notion to shoot him. I thought he was a revenuer.”

Methodist Parson Hiram Milo Frakes had ridden his pony into the patch of Kentucky wilderness cut off by Big Pine and Little Log Mountains to bring religion and book learning to the dirt-poor, illiterate mountaineers. When Scott Partin found that out, he gave the parson some land to start building his school and church on. Bill Henderson was another Kentuckian who helped. He chipped in a 65-acre farm because “he’d rather his children would have an education than to have the farm.” Before he could see the settlement that Parson Frakes made of his land, Bill Henderson was shot to death in a feud.

Last week, just 25 years after Parson Frakes rode into the Kentucky backwoods not far from Cumberland Gap, the mountaineers gathered at the settlement to celebrate the anniversary. There are now 22 buildings on 750 acres of farm, timber and coal land. The sign over the post office door reads: “U.S. Post Office Frakes, Ky.”

Almost everybody turned out to the oak-covered slope where a semicircle of seats had been set up. White-bearded, 106-year-old Uncle Harve Sparks, who came over from Bean Fork Hollow, sang a tune in his squeaky voice when the parson introduced him. Tall Scott Partin himself was on hand to reminisce about the old feuding days: “There would be mountain prejudices and it would spread . . . You’d have to go in shootin’ and come out loadin’ a gun.”

In the little white church with knotty pine paneling, ruddy, bald-domed Parson Frakes, now 62, got up to preach one of his last sermons as head of the settlement school, from which he is retiring to devote more time to the Methodist Home Board of Missions:

“Outside is a sign, ‘What Hath God Wrought?’ It is to remind you what God hath wrought. Friends everywhere have helped. They felt we were building a Christian citizenship here in the hills. A Middlesboro [Ky.] Jew gave a substantial check. Catholics in Middlesboro and Pineville have helped.

“There are no finer people than these in the mountains. I know, because I have lived with them.”