The Walker Sisters Place and the women who lived within, surviving off of the land, selling trinkets to tourists
In the Great Smoky Mountains, history is often found in the hollers, in the lingering crannies found in the shadow of giant mountain ridges. It’s in these historic places that the great passage of time, which in our everyday lives is a mundane accounting until the hours, weeks, months and years, shakes off the dust of decades and opens windows, wormholes really, that help us understand that the seeming distance of the ages isn’t as far away as we thought. These places serve as links in a chain connecting points that draw together seemingly distant eras. Consider the Walker family cabin in the Smoky Mountains, built in the early 1840s.
The Walker sisters are part of the history of the Great Smoky Mountains. They lived inside the national park. The cabin in which they lived can still be seen in the park today and can be found via the Little Brier Gap Trail. The Walker family pushed back against the idea of losing the family land and way of life. In some ways, they eventually became living tourist attractions after the national park was created.
IN THIS ARTICLE
Meet the Walker family
The five Walker sisters lived in their family cabin inside the national park long before their story went viral, before Jonas Salk cured polio, and before most homes had TVs. It was a time when the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was a relatively recent creation. The sisters were of Primitive Baptist faith.
The Walker sister story starts shortly after the Civil War with “Hairy” John Walker. He was the oldest of the 15 children of Eliza and Thomas Walker. John was released from a Confederate prison and granted a release from the Union Army. He returned to Little Greenbrier Cove and made good on his engagement to Margaret Jane King. The family moved into the cabin owned and occupied by John’s mother-in-law.
It is this cabin, slightly expanded through the decades, which housed his daughters through the turn of the century, through two World Wars, the passing of their parents and the formation of a national park. They raised livestock such as chickens, sheep, goats and hogs on the farm. The homestead had a corn crib, a pig pen, a barn and a springhouse. Walker’s daughters, who’d become famous in large part due to an article in the “Saturday Evening Post”, lived in that cabin until 1964, more than 120 years after it was built. The cabin stands today, protected as part of the park that the Walker sisters – as they became known – fought so hard against.
Who were the Walker sisters?
John and Margaret Walker had 11 children, five boys and six girls. All of the boys eventually married and moved away, as did the sixth daughter, Sarah Caroline. The five remaining daughters – led by the oldest, named after her mother, Margaret Jane – became spinsters. They lived the majority of their life at the family homestead. In this period, most mountain women married young and began their own families. The Walker sisters, however, did not. Both Martha and Polly were engaged at different times but both men passed in accidents. Neither sister ever married. According to the National Park Service (NPS), the eldest, Margaret Jane, never courted any man. She chose spinsterhood early in life and it is believed her influence, through “reasoning and ridicule”, weighed heavily on her sisters.
Before the battle against the Federal Government and the formation of the park, the Walker sisters’ primary occupation was securing an adequate food supply. Corn was the staple of their diet but was supplemented by a wide variety of vegetables and fruit. The sisters were all trained herb doctors. They raised a healthy herb garden. They used the herbs for medicine and to serve meals that were far less bland than the typical fare served at a mountain family’s table. The Walker sisters spent their lives working and worshipping. They worked in food gathering and preserving, making clothes, and working the fields and gardens. Joseph S. Hall, in his book “Smoky Mountain Folks and Their Lore” described some of their remedies – which frankly contain a disturbing amount of kerosene and lamp oil for those referred to as an “herb doctor”.
The battle over living in the park
By the time the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was chartered by Congress in 1934, the oldest Walker sister, Margaret, was 63 years old. They pushed back against the idea of losing the family land and way of life. The park was inevitable and a deal was eventually struck. After lengthy negotiations, the land was purchased for $4,750. The right to stay on the land for the duration of the lives of the five sisters was included in the deal. The park opened in 1940 and the sisters became oddities, a tourist attraction like Cades Cove or the Chimney Rocks. They were living museum exhibits.
In April of 1947, the Saturday Evening Post wrote about the sisters living on their “island of self-sufficiency.” However, living in the national park changed their way of life. Hunting, fishing and cutting wood were now prohibited within the national park boundaries. With hunting outlawed, the sisters had to deal with bears stealing crops and foxes and hawks eating chickens. After they became part of the park, they had to adopt a new way of life. Visitors would flock to the park and visit what became known as “Five Sisters Cove”. According to the NPS, The Walkers saw this as an opportunity to sell tourists handmade items like children’s toys, crocheted doilies, fried apple pies and poems.
The sisters become a living tourist attraction
It’s difficult to explain the mountain people of East Tennessee to outsiders. If you don’t know people who were raised in the mountains, it’s hard to understand the character traits that developed. You see the stereotypes – which many of the mountain people, including the Walker sisters, were willing to play up for the tourist crowd. However, you don’t see the cold pragmatism, the strong-willed, self-reliance that rewards thriftiness, resourcefulness and an undying work ethic.
When visitors and tourists came to their mountain home after the creation of the national park, the Walkers may have been happy to welcome guests to their home, pose and sell trinkets. But don’t think for a second there was not a clear calculation done before they allowed that foolishness. And honestly, while the tourists came to Wears Valley and back to the cabin in the woods to get a look at the sisters clinging to their hillbilly ways, like gawking at animals in a zoo, I imagine it was the Walker sisters who got the better show. The mountain folks weren’t like those who clung to the old ways in other parts of the country.
The Walker sisters were not like the Amish, who eschewed modern technology on religious grounds. Still, they certainly lived primitive lives by more modern standards. There were a lot of communities in the mountains in places like Hancock County where people continued to live without power or running water even as late as the 60s or 70s. The Walker sisters were not cut off from the outside world. They traveled a bit. Still, their connection to the family homestead and their mountain traditions proved stronger than any lure of the larger world.
What was the Walker sisters’ cabin like?
The interior of the house is described as “organized confusion” by the NPS. It sounds decidedly more confusing than organized. The walls were decorated with newspapers and magazines and adorned with anything that the family deemed worthy. Items included calendars, letters and note boxes made from cardboard boxes. They also had lanterns, family pictures, decorative clocks, dried food and bags of seeds. Anything that could be hung on a nail could be found on their interior walls.
These items also sometimes served as insulation. The rafters of all three rooms were studded with nails or wooden pegs which supported items beyond description. There were even walking sticks, crutches, kitchen utensils and baskets that hung from the ceilings of all the rooms. Every available inch of space was used for something. The “big house” contained six beds, a sewing machine and several chairs along with smaller pieces of furniture. The kitchen was equally as crowded, with a table and benches, two stoves, a meal and flour bin and other smaller items.
The Walker sisters loved flowers. The grounds around the cabin were carpeted with all manner of flowering shrubs and plants. Roses, lilac, snowball bushes and hydrangeas were just a few of the varieties of flowers on the grounds.
What happened to the Walker sisters?
Nancy was the first of the five Walker sisters who stayed home to pass in 1931 at the age of 51. Hettie passed away in 1947 and Martha in 1951. When only Margaret and Louisa Walker were left, they requested to remove the “visitors welcome” sign. According to the NPS, they said they were too “old and tired” to get work done and also greet visitors. Margaret, the oldest, lived until 1962. The poet, Louise, passed in 1964. But their legacy and stamp on the national park they once called home, remains eternal.
Have you been to the Walker family cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park? Let us know in the comments.
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My wife and I have been to the Walker sisters cabin several times. I often wonder if I could live a life like theirs.
Yes several times. We also took our grandson’s. It had such an impact on them. It’s like going back in time. I am disappointed that it is being advertised. It doesn’t need to be. I grew up in Knoxville TN. The Smokies was a special place for us to go. Now it is so crowded it no longer is. Your artical was very well written.
I love Sevierville not for the tourist area but the area it’s self. I made a mistake using my GPS which had the Walker Sisters Cabin listed, but it was a round and round goose chase until I saw a sign right before you go up into the park that said don’t use GPS. So I asked someone and got on the right track. Got up to the wooden bridge where you can hike and picnic. Asked a ranger / worker where the trail was to the walker sisters cabin. She sent me to the road that goes up to the School house and cemetery. I didn’t see a trail head sign so I didn’t venture to try and find the cabin. Now that I see how to get there from this article I’ll definitely go back one day. This is a great read. Thank you!
I went with Uncle several times in the late 40s to deliver items from my grandma to the Walker sisters. They had a spinning wheel made by my great grandpa. They were self educated and sharp minded. My great grandpa was from Cades Cove and grew up with the sister’s parents.
CadesCove is a fur piece from little Greenbrier
My great great grandfather Daniel Walker was John’s brother. My grandmother Zulu Stott was second cousin to sisters. She taught at GB school in 21&22. She would stay with Wiley Walkers family during the week but normally spent the weekends with the sisters.
I went with my Uncle several times in the mid 40s to deliver items from my grandma to the Walker sisters. They had a spinning wheel made by my great grandpa. They were smarter than most people thought and hospitable to all.
My great great uncle married one of the Walker sister the only one to get married.
It’s been years, but I have been to the cabin a couple times, with some of my family members. Had no trouble finding it when we went there. It was so peaceful at the cabin and a beautiful area. We enjoyed seeing how and where the sisters lived. I was born, in 1952, and raised in the modern world. I had no idea there was one sister in that cabin until 1964. I was only 12 that year, but wish I could have met her.
Have never been to the Walker cabin. I want to hike up there one day. Those women were tough. I’m not so sure I could live & do what they did. I noticed they died young. Wondering what happened to all of herb remedies. Hope they were preserved somewhere. Enjoyed the article. Have got to find that place.
Yes we went to the cabin few times also took our daughter along enjoyed see how they lived and also the school house my husband grand dad helped build that so he has relatives in that grave yard very interesting would go back more times
As a child, (number 8 of 10), my Daddy took us to the Smokies to camp most summers as our vacation. We always stayed at one of the park campgrounds. The Chimney Tops was the first one we stayed in back before the rock slide closed it down.
Daddy always found interesting day trips for us every day. One such trip was to Greenbrier school and on up to the sisters’ home. Each of us got to purchase something from the 2 sisters that were there at that time. My purchase was one of Louise’s poems. These were some very special memories. We have taken our children to the Walker cabin and now have taken some of our grandchildren. I love that the NPS has preserved this historical area.
East Tennessee had families like the Walkers from Tazewell to Chattanooga.
My Mama’s parents lived in an old house where Braggs Army marched past in 1863.
When Mamaw and Papaw moved away in July 1956 they moved into a house with electricity and indoor plumbing.
It wasn’t haunted like the old house. Yes they believed it.
I went to visit in the early 60s with my family before Louisa passed. My father, LeRoy Walker used to tell us about spending the night with the Walker sisters when he was a boy. He remembered seeing the snow come in from between the logs in the winter. Will never forget visiting there. We continued to go for many years and take our children and grand children. It was a very special place.