Foreward

Foreword

It was not too many years after old John Gilbert had crossed over the Red Bird Mountain and settled in Clay County that three adventuresome brothers also found their way into this same isolated region of southeastern Kentucky. The brothers were Peter Scalf, Jesse Scalf and Robert Scalf. They were not, however, the forerunners of the Scalfs in Kentucky since their father, John Scalf, Sr., and an older brother, John Scalf, Jr., had lived there earlier. There are records showing that John Scalf, Sr., a veteran of the Revolutionary War, worked at, the Goose Creek Salt Works in Clay County in 1811. There are other records that indicate that his son, John Scalf, Jr., was living in Clay County, Kentucky in the 1820's.

These three Scalf brothers, Peter, Jesse and Robert, yet unmarried, had decided to leave their home in Tennessee in the early 1830's to test their fortunes in the green, mountainous wilderness of the Blue-grass state. The brothers possessed that same restlessness so typical of the settlers who went there in those days. These early Scalfs with their staunchly independent ways did not actually live on the rugged mountain sides but rather along the twisting, churning creeks in the misty hollows. John Scalf, Jr. who was living in Clay County in 1826 lived along the winding Otter Creek as did Peter, Jesse and Robert also. And later in 1849 when Peter Scalf moved over into Knox County he resided along the banks of the surging Stinking Creek. These Scalfs preferred settling "up the holler" as they valued very highly their privacy and their independent style of living.

The Scalfs who lived prior to 1900 were for the most part poor but proud dirt farmers. If permitted to use a stereotype this writer would choose the label "white independent, farmer" to describe the typical early Scalf. These Scalfs, however, were "white independent farmers" by choice not because of some outside coercion. The rustic log cabins they called home in western North Carolina, southeastern Kentucky, western South Carolina, northeastern Tennessee and northern Georgia were typical of the average pioneer homes of those days. The early Scalf families knew the pioneer methods of cooking, soap making and corn shucking too. Subsistence farming characterized their life style. Their close family ties occasionally included intermarriage among cousins which although may be unacceptable by today's standards did not carry the same stigma then. Besides they would have cared very little about how outsiders might judge them as they had their own mores and practiced their own folkways. They lived this life of relative isolation for many years before changing times began to alter their way of living and closed the cultural gap that existed between them and their kind of people and the rest of society.

One constant has remained with the Scalfs down through the years, however, and this is the allegiance to and pride in the family name, Scalf.

It is with this same pride in the Scalf name that the author is pleased to share with other Scalfs and interested persons the contents of this book.

The book endeavors to accomplish two objectives. First there is an effort to explain the connection between the Scalf families living today and the family of John Scarfe (Scalf) that lived on the southwest side of the Pasquotank River in northeastern North Carolina in 1719. The second objective of this genealogical presentation is to familiarize the reader with some of the many descendants of John Scalf, Sr. who so courageously fought for his country in the Revolutionary War.

The reader will occasionally encounter errors in the material presented for which the author hereby extends his apologies.

                                                                        E.D. SCALF
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